This chapter we continue to explore the past of Olivia and Alcea. They've arranged a nice meeting at Olivia's sister's birthday party! Hopefully, nothing will go wrong, and they'll be able to have a perfect night together! Wouldn't that be nice?

Guest: Alcea is a minor celebrity, so it would be unlikely that her incident on the island would go unnoticed by someone with Olivia's information network.

KedharS: I didn't know that would have been a surprising reveal, I didn't exactly play the cards close to the vest on this one.

Just a Bad Writer for Fun: Blake doesn't love her at all. Let's see what happens.

Thunder Fire: Poor thing, stuck there for all those years, think of all the parties she missed.

JoshGamerV: It's quite a tragedy on multiple accounts, sadly.

Pokemon Academy: Beginning of Beginnings

Chapter 771

Olivia sat on a bench in the Evergreen Mansion Rose Garden and waited for Alcea to show up. She would be here any second now with a smile on her face, dressed in another pretty red dress like last time.

Olivia was sure of it.

She was just running a little late, that was all.

Olivia clutched her embroidered red handkerchief tightly. It had been her most cherished possession ever since Alcea had given it to her all those weeks ago. It still carried the faint scent of roses from Alcea's perfume.

She would be here. She was an upstanding and proud, noble girl. She was Olivia's friend! She had promised. There was no way she would break her promise. She was going to show up, Olivia knew it. She just had to wait a little longer.

Six hours had passed, and Olivia still hadn't given up. The party had wound down to a close and the lights of the ballroom and the main house were all out. Only the dim glow of the outdoor lighting of the garden kept Olivia from being bathed in darkness.

Her heart wasn't so lucky.

Olivia didn't want to accept it. She didn't want to believe that it could be true, that Alcea could have actually stood her up. But with each passing minute it became clearer and clearer that that was what had happened.

Tears began to well up in her eyes. She didn't want to cry, but she couldn't help it. She had been looking forward to tonight for so long, but it seemed like it had all been for nothing.

Alcea wasn't coming.

When Olivia finally accepted that, her heart broke into pieces.

How lucky, she happened to have a handkerchief perfect for wiping away her tears, it was rather convenient. But she didn't exactly appreciate the irony.

In the end, Olivia waited the entire night. She had dozed off on that bench, falling fast asleep in the cold with only her tears to give her company. When the morning came, the gardener found her, asleep on the bench.

She had caught a cold from staying out all night, but that discomfort was nothing compared to the pain in her heart at losing the girl she loved.

When she awoke in her bed, she thought, for a moment, that it had just been a fever dream, brought on from sickness, and that Alcea hadn't actually abandoned her that night. But as the fog cleared and her wits returned to her, she realized that was just wishful thinking.

Alcea hadn't come to her. She had waited the whole night, and had never heard anything from her so-called friend.

The thought of that made her wish she had never woken up.

It just wasn't fair! She had waited so long for a friend, to have some sort of positivity in her life, something to fill that emptiness that her mother had left in her heart. Pokemon were lovely, of course, but they couldn't compare to another human being that she could talk to and interact with, someone who could really be a friend to her.

Olivia had thought she'd finally found that, after looking for it and hoping for it for so long, but it turned out that Alcea really didn't care about her after all.

That thought brought another wave of tears to her eyes, and she kept crying right up until she got a knock on her bedroom door.

Confused, Olivia asked who it was, since she didn't get many visitors. And when she saw who her visitor was, she was definitely shocked. It was her father! Her dad never came to see her, not ever, so seeing him coming to her bedroom while she was sick was quite a surprise.

"S-Sir…" Olivia stuttered, sitting up in bed. She had to catch herself from saying "daddy", not sure who else could hear.

He raised his finger to his lips and smiled, closing the door behind him. Olivia sighed in relief, her disappointment about being stood up by Alcea momentarily fading in the face of her father coming to see her.

"How are you doing?" Her dad asked, walking over and crouching down beside her bed. "You were out pretty late last night."

"I'm sorry, dad," Olivia said, blushing in shame. "I… I was waiting for someone to show up, a friend of mine…"

I thought she was my friend, anyway…

Olivia's father had a stern expression on his face. "Olivia," he harshly chastised her, causing her to wince, "the gardener found you outside in the garden in the morning. Did you stay out there all night?" He asked, clearly knowing the answer.

Olivia had no choice but to meekly nod. "I'm sorry," she apologized again. "Like I said, I was waiting for my friend…"

"And now you have a cold," he sighed, shaking his head. "Olivia, I know that I'm… not much of a father. Not as much as I would like to be. But I'm still worried about you, you're my beloved daughter. You understand that, right?"

Olivia understood it, of course she did. It just didn't feel that real to her, given the fact that her father so seldom had words of praise to spare for her. But the knowledge that he did care for her was something that filled the pain in her heart quite a lot, even if nothing could make it go away entirely with Alcea's absence.

"Of course, daddy," Olivia smiled, addressing him as sweetly as she could. "I promise I won't stay out so late ever again."

Her father sighed in relief. "That's good," he smiled. "You're lucky you got off with just a cold. It could have been a lot worse, you know, I don't want to see you get sick like that ever again, do I make myself clear? Even if you're waiting to meet your friend, I want you to come inside to wait next time, okay Olivia?"

Olivia winced, and looked down. She saw the red handkerchief, set neatly on the end table beside the bed, and felt the tears start to come up again.

"That… that's okay, daddy," she said, shaking her head and trying her best for her father's sake not to look completely destroyed inside. "I don't think… I'm going to be waiting for any more friends after last night."

It crushed her to say, but it was better than holding onto some pipe dream. She'd thought that Alcea was her friend, but clearly she had been the only one who had thought that. Alcea was just some noble girl, who didn't have the time for someone like her.

"Hey, come on now, why are you saying that?" Her dad asked, reaching out and brushing her hair from her eyes to see her pretty face. "You're a lovely girl. I'm sure you have lots of friends at school who would love to get to know you better, right?"

Olivia felt like her father was squeezing her heart to pieces. He didn't know anything about her, did he? He acted like a good father, as good a father as he could be, and he definitely did love her, she knew that much.

But in terms of understanding her? He was very poor father indeed. He didn't understand that she didn't have any school friends. She wasn't like her brother and sister, the center of attention at a private school, rubbing elbows with the other rich kids, young as they were.

"No, I don't… I don't really have any friends," she admitted. "Not anyone really close to me, I'm just… not good at making them, I guess."

It was a little more complicated than that, but she didn't feel comfortable telling her father the finer details about her school life. Partly because it made her feel miserable, partly because she knew he wouldn't be able to help, but most of all, because she felt that it wasn't her place to explain what the problem was, given the rather sensitive nature of her issue.

At the public school she attended, Olivia just had the standard common folk around her. And she wasn't exactly what one would consider normal. If she was just blonde, then sure. But her mother's features carried through on her face, showing that she was of Sinnohian descent. A Sinnohian with blonde hair and blue eyes, just different enough from her peers to be seen as odd and foreign. She was exotic at first, but by this point she was just another weirdo.

So no, she didn't have many people in her life who she could consider a friend. She was just the weird girl.

But Alcea had been different. Alcea hadn't minded that she was a mixed-breed, daughter of a maid. She didn't comment on how Olivia's eyes were a little too slanted to be normal, or how her cheekbones were a little higher than one would expect.

She had just treated Olivia like she was normal, and befriended her anyway. That was what had made Alcea such a treasure for Olivia, the fact that she was willing to treat Olivia like she was normal in spite of all the reasons otherwise.

…Wait, no, that was wrong. Olivia had to correct herself. Alcea wasn't any different from them. In the end, Olivia's strangeness had been rejected by her "friend" as surely as if she had never made the promise in the first place.

And that was where the first seeds of resentment were sewn. Alcea was a marvelous gardener, but the flowers she had planted in Olivia's heart would one day be made into a quite bitter medicine in the future.

But right now, Olivia was going to be introduced to reality of a far crueler sort than just a life without any real friends, or even the idea of a so-called friend betraying her.

"I know your friend didn't come tonight, but that's okay," her dad tried to comfort her. "You don't need to think about friendship in terms of who shows up! I'm sure she's a lovely friend, she must be, if you were going to wait all night for her!"

"But she wasn't here," Olivia said, trying hard not to cry. "Wouldn't… wouldn't she be here, if she cared?" She wanted to be wrong, she so desperately wanted to believe that there was some other reason Alcea had abandoned her, but if there was, she had no idea what it could possibly be. All she could see was her loneliness right now.

But her dad was still trying to see the positives. "Maybe this friend of yours was just a little busy last night," he suggested, smiling encouragingly. "Just because she missed one night, that doesn't mean she's not your friend."

Olivia looked hopefully at her dad. Was he really right? Well… maybe, maybe she was overreacting, after all, and she had just let her disappointment at not seeing Alcea get the better of her.

"Maybe… maybe you're right," she admitted, wanting to believe more than anything that her dad was right. "But… I don't know how I can check with her," she admitted. "I don't have her phone number, after all…"

Olivia couldn't get in contact with Alcea. But she knew her father could. Alcea had been one of the guests at his parties, so he would definitely know how to get in contact with her, at least through her family.

Honestly, she was still a little cautious about doing so in case her father was wrong, but she was too desperate to connect to Alcea to care about things like that. "Daddy… no, father, I was wondering, do you know… would it be possible for me to speak with Alcea? Could you get me in contact with her, please?"

Olivia seldom asked her father for anything. The times she had genuinely requested a favor of him could be counted on one hand. It would be overstepping her position under normal circumstances, but this situation was far from normal.

When her father's face went pale and he seemed to pull back from her slightly, his face looking haunted, she wondered at first if she had done something wrong. Had she asked for too much? "F-Father? Is there anything wrong? I-I know it's not normal for me to ask such a thing, especially given her status, but I was just wondering! If it's not possible, then I apologize!"

Seeing how stricken her father looked, any notion of contact with Alcea had left her thoughts. Right now, she was far more concerned with her father not getting angry at her for overstepping her boundaries.

But Olivia had no idea that it was something else entirely.

"Your… friend…" her father said quietly, his voice numb and distant. His eyes held a glassy, hollow stare to them, and he seemed to scan the air in front of him for the right words to say. "You said… her name was… Alcea…?" He asked.

Olivia was confused at her father's confusion. Why was he acting so weird? She'd never heard him sound like that.

…Well, almost never. Once, a long time ago, she had heard this haunted tone of voice from her father, but it wasn't a time she liked thinking about. It was back when her mother had died, before she even knew that her dad was her dad, back when he was still just "Lord Evergreen." He had told her what had happened, with that same distant tone, like his whole world had collapsed.

Just hearing him speak like that should have informed Olivia that something was desperately wrong here. But she was so caught up in the fact that her father knew about Alcea that she completely pushed those doubts aside, and nodded eagerly.

"Yes, exactly!" Olivia said. "Alcea Vermeil! She's my friend, I met her at your party a few months ago, do you know her?"

Lord Evergreen recoiled like Olivia had struck him across the face, rising to his feet and staring at her with a look filled with disbelief, sorrow, and remorse.

That was what Olivia realized that something was very, very wrong.

"…Daddy?" She asked quietly, shaking a little. She wasn't sure why he had reacted that way, but she felt a surge of worry begin to take root in her gut. "What… What's wrong?"

"Your… your friend, Alcea…" Her father muttered, his voice cracking. He held his hand over his mouth and turned away from Olivia, unable to meet his daughter's innocent gaze. He had been the source of so much disappointment in her life already, he didn't want to be responsible for this, as well. She would never forgive him if he told her what had happened. "No, never mind," he muttered, hoping to end things there.

But Olivia wasn't about to drop it. If Alcea had just been an ordinary friend, then maybe she would have accepted her father's refusal to go into further detail. Perhaps she would have been cowed by her father's superior status and her tenuous position with the Evergreens. But Alcea wasn't just a friend, she was Olivia's first friend, and more than that, she was Olivia's first love.

If her father knew something, then regardless of her position, regardless of his reaction, she HAD to ask, because she needed to know what was happening!

"Daddy?! What about Alcea? Do you know something? Do you know why she didn't come to the party last night?!" Olivia pleaded. Had her family fallen on hard times? Did she have a prior engagement?! What had happened that would make Alcea not keep her promise?

Aaron Evergreen was a strong man, under many circumstances. Throughout his life, he'd had but one weakness, Runa Himeko, the woman he loved. He couldn't refuse her, no matter what she'd asked of him. Even when she insisted that they could never be married, and refused to run away with him, either, forcing him to go through with his arranged marriage.

He could never say no to her. And her daughter Olivia was so much like Runa. He could see his former love in her eyes, even though they were the same sparkling blue as his. As much as he hated to tell her, as much as he knew how much this would ruin her, he couldn't deceive that pleading gaze of hers, filled with desperation.

He didn't want to ruin this for Olivia. She'd already lost so much. But what was he supposed to do? He may have considered himself a strong man…

But he wasn't that strong. Maybe no one was.

"Alcea Vermeil… is dead," he whispered.

And Olivia's room went deathly cold.

"Wh-What?" Olivia asked, unable to believe her ears. Her father… he was saying that… no, she must have heard wrong. "Father, I'm sorry, what are you saying?" She asked, desperate for confirmation that it had all been a mistake.

"Alcea… the Vermeil Family's eldest daughter… lost her life, less than a month ago," Aaron said, the pain in his daughter's voice burning a hole in his chest. "Her family went for a cruise, near the Alola Region, to celebrate their daughter's 10th birthday. And the ship got caught up in a storm, and… she couldn't make it to a lifeboat in time."

He tried to be as gentle as he could in describing what had happened, but he could tell that it didn't make a difference, not to Olivia.

Olivia sat in her bed, staring at her father, trying to understand the words that were coming out of his mouth.

The shock of what she'd heard was keeping it from sinking in.

Alcea… her friend, Alcea… when she'd woken up this morning, Olivia had been devastated, thinking that Alcea had blown off their promise because she didn't consider Olivia a friend.

But now she was hearing that that wasn't the case? That the reason Alcea wasn't here was because she… because she-!

She was dead?

"N-No," Olivia said, shaking her head, her eyes blurring as tears rolled down her cheeks. "You're lying, you're lying, Alcea… she- she's my friend, she's not… she's not dead! She can't be!" Olivia clutched Alcea's handkerchief, the faint aroma filling her nostrils. She shook her head. "No, no, no!" She cried. "No, you're lying!"

"I'm sorry, I know this is hard to hear," her father said solemnly. Olivia searched desperately for some sign that this was a lie. Some cruel lie her father was telling her. She would have been fine with that. He was lying to her because he didn't think that it was right for someone of her standing to associate with Alcea Vermeil. That was okay. Tell her that! Tell her he was lying, and that was the truth!

Tell her anything other than that lie that her best friend, her only friend, was dead!

But the look in her father's eyes held nothing but the cold, bitter truth.

Olivia had cried when her mother had died. That day, she had believed that nothing she went through would ever compare to the pain she'd felt at the loss of her mother.

But hearing that Alcea was dead, that she had lost her dearest friend forever, after only one night together, she knew just how naïve of a child she had been that day.

There was nothing she could do but cry, and feel that emptiness in her heart grow wider and wider as the chasm of her room swallowed her whole.

Poor Olivia. She thought she had found a friend in Alcea, but in the end, she lost her, as well.