With my Charmander sleeping peacefully in a bed, a rather egg-shaped nurse keeping watch over it, I nipped out of the centre. Or rather, I tried to. A man held me up at the door, and told me that I could use everything in there at no fee, which I already knew very well.
He then proceeded to ask me whether I would like to come back to his place, but I politely declined.
Leaving him to his apparent disappointment, I turned my nose towards the mart. It sat squat and silent, with a blue roof on, and with the occasional customer heading in or out. To me, it had always looked cosy and pleasant, but right now I somehow felt that it loomed a bit.
So I stopped outside, and waited for a few seconds before gathering the courage to push the door open.
There were three people inside. Two of them were customers scouring shelves in the back, and the third was the shop's owner, Mr. Dale.
He peered at me in incomprehension, before a gear clinked, and he raised his hand. "Ah, hello? You are from Pallet, yes yes?" he said urgently, with a bit of an accent.*
I nodded. Mr. Dale had a terrible long-term memory, and a slightly worse short-term one. It was rare, if not miraculous, for him to keep track of a face from one day to another, and names he was often even worse with. He was known around town as 'One-Day Memory Dale', although that was being too nice about it. If you spent more than one hour with him, he might suddenly go blank, then shake your hand vigorously and tell you that he didn't see you coming there, and who are you please, and what's your name, and where is this please, yes yes?
He tended to keep his bearings, just barely, by having a sign behind the desk that listed three bullet points: 1. Your name is Marcus Dale; 2. You run this shop; and 3. You have a bad memory.
Today seemed to be a good day, though, seeing as he had guessed where I was from. He smiled oddly, and lifted something out from below the counter. It was a quiet sort of package in brown, one that would barely be noticed even if you put it on a dais and set a spotlight on it.
"This," the shopkeeper continued, "is for good professor, professor, ah... For good professor in Pallet. Came in not minute ago!"
I carefully approached the desk, and reached a hand out for it, asking: "Should I take it to him, mist'r Dale?"
"Ah, yes yes, please do," he responded, pleasantly.
Just as I had taken the package in my hands, and had opened my mouth to ask if I could buy a few things, the man froze, and his hands balled into fists. The other two customers looked up, then down again. This was perfectly normal.
Not a moment afterwards, he returned to his usual demeanour, and a smile broke out on his face. His eyes located me, upon which he smiled even wider. "Ah, young child! Who are you? Where is this? What name is mine?"
"Read th' sign, mist'r Dale," I said, patiently, attempting to indicate the spot behind the counter where the reminder was hanging. I failed.
"Sign? So many signs! There is one, yes yes," he gabbled, pointing at a wall where prices were listed on a piece of cardboard. Without hesitating even a split second, he walked out from behind the counter and went over to read it.
I watched quietly as he suddenly and loudly discovered a product tag right beyond it, one that was much shinier and had happy pictures of fruits on.
Perhaps this is a bad time to shop, I thought, as I inched backwards to the exit.
* I had never grasped why he had an accent. He'd been born and raised in Viridian to what mother had described as "sensible parents", and had never left the place even for a vacation. It just seemed to be one of those things.