The rows of cherry blossoms formed a canopy over the sidewalk, blocking out the night sky, and each tree was illuminated by a small lamp from below. Josh, Ash, and Ryan walked along the sidewalk; among a throng of people with picnic baskets, blankets, and cameras. Ash had always told the two of them that the cherry blossom festival in Cerulean City was famous, and they were only just now seeing for themselves how many people it attracted.
The crowd was a mix of people of all ages, some dressed in traditional yukata and some dressed as casually as the three of them. Josh felt awkward around so many people, especially the little kids and old women walking around, but didn't want to seem rude by pushing past them. He followed Ash's lead, who seemed to navigate the crowd with no issue despite being so short.
"Here we go," Ash said with a big grin.
The crowd thankfully thinned out, and they were in a grassy clearing with rows of food vendors. The three of them surveyed their options like Wild Pokemon scavenging for food.
"Bingo," Ryan said, "candy apples."
"Chocolate covered bananas!" Josh said.
Ash sighed at them.
"You don't start with the sweets first, you gotta try the hot foods," she said.
But the two of them ignored her — like usual — and made straight for their chosen desserts. Meanwhile, Ash secured a serving of takoyaki on a paper plate. She savored each mouthful as the doughy crust melted in her mouth and gave way to the gooey, sweet interior. Ryan's candy apple gave a satisfying crunch each time he bit into a new section. Josh bit off more banana than he could chew, and had to hold a hand under his chin to salvage the sprinkles that fell from his mouth. He poured the sprinkles into his mouth with his free hand once he finished the banana — although he almost choked on them when he made eye contact with a pretty, pink-haired girl watching him.
The three of them reconvened at an outdoor table and wiped their mouths with the napkins provided.
"Okay, this was worth the detour," Ryan admitted.
"There's lots to see in my neighborhood," Ash said with a smile.
"How come they don't have good food like this back in Pallet Town?" Josh wondered aloud.
"Cuz there's nothing to do in Pallet Town," Ryan said.
"That's not true," Josh said, "there's the baseball field, and The Sweet Onion."
The Sweet Onion was a pizza place that doubled as a bowling place. At least half of the birthday parties Josh and Ryan had gone to had been there. Ryan's name was in most of the machine's there as the highest scorer.
"You think they don't have baseball and bowling here?" Ryan said as he dabbed his sticky hands on the napkins to get rid of the syrup. "They've got baseball fields, football fields, tennis courts, basketball courts — a beach and a huge water park, for some reason."
They had both seen the giant billboards for 'Typhoon Harbor' since they had arrived in Cerulean, and Ash had spent many summer days there. It had a giant, rotating water fountain shaped like a Starmie. It had six water slides shaped like Gyaradoses that twisted and coiled around before ending in the shallow end of a massive pool.
Josh couldn't think of anything to say to that. He looked at Ash, but she only shrugged at him. Ryan balled up his napkin and threw it in a trash can a ways away. Then he spoke again, "Ash really had it made, growing up here. I don't know why you ever moved."
"It wasn't my decision," Ash said, "my dad had to move for his job."
"He couldn't get another job here?" Josh asked.
"I don't know," Ash said, as she started to fold her napkin into a square. "Sometimes, he'd have to fly out to other places because the company needed him there to train other people how to do his job. And eventually, he had trained so many people how to do his job that they decided they didn't need him anymore. A friend from H.R. warned him he was going to get laid off. So my dad started looking, and Pallet Town was what he found."
It was strange hearing adult words like 'laid off' and 'H.R.' from Ash's mouth. Josh usually only heard that kind of thing from his parents. But Josh had heard Ash use adult words like that before, usually in school. It always threw him off, the way that Ash would talk about things that were so serious so plainly. Ash lifted her hands from the napkin she had been folding, but it didn't retain whatever shape she had folded it into. It sat on the table a soft, crumpled mess.
"There's lots to do here, but it was pretty lonely growing up here," Ash said. "Not like you two were here when I was."
Ryan and Josh looked at each other. She had never said anything like that before.
"I liked having you around," Josh finally said.
"Pallet Town was way more boring before you showed up," Ryan said.
"Yeah," Josh said, "and at least the Professor's Lab is there."
Ash smiled, flicked the crumpled napkin away, and brought out her Pokedex. Josh and Ryan did the same.
"27 out of 149," Ash said as she tapped away at the Pokedex's buttons. She had learned to use it as deftly as she used her phone.
"Pretty good, I think, after just two months," Josh added. He was much less skilled at working the Pokedex, and mostly fiddled with the controls in his free time.
"It's really starting to happen," Ash murmured.
"What do you mean?" Josh asked.
"If we keep going at this rate, we're going to have all the Pokemon in Kanto in here," Ash said, "pretty soon, we'll know everything there is to know about the Pokemon here. And every Trainer that comes after us will know that, too."
"So we're doing all the work for every five-year-old kid here," Ryan said with a smirk.
"Not all of them," Josh said, "some of them might get 'real jobs', like my mom says."
"I don't think the kids sticking their faces in the Magikarp pond will grow up to be doctors, or anything," Ash said.
"Well, if Avery can get into med school, anyone can," Ryan said.
Ash tried to kick Ryan under the table, but he swiftly pulled his legs up before she could. "Too bad the Pokedex doesn't say who's added which Pokemon," Ryan said.
"That's probably on purpose," Ash said, "Professor Oak knows not to encourage you two."
The three of them grinned at each other as they snapped their Pokedexes shut and put them away.
Ash felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned to see a girl with pigtails. She looked about six years old.
"Excuse me, is that your real hair?" she asked.
Josh watched as Ash looked around for a moment, before answering. She was always a bit awkward around younger kids.
"Yeah?" Ash said.
The girl stepped forward, turned around, and sat in Ash's lap. She pressed her cheek to Ash's face, and with one hand she gently swept some of Ash's hair onto her own head.
"See, Mom, this is the color I want!" she said.
Ash froze up, and her face went red as a tomato. She turned and looked at Josh with big, pleading eyes, but Josh could only stare back in response. Ryan hid a smirk behind his hand.
After a few seconds, the girl's mother appeared and shooed the girl off of Ash's lap.
"I'm so sorry," the woman said to Ash. Then she took her daughter's hand and quickly led her away. "Hailey! We don't do that, that's very rude…"
With the mother and daughter disappearing back into the crowd, Ash quickly readjusted her hair. Then, she looked back to Josh and Ryan. The two of them finally burst out laughing.
"The look on your face," Josh said.
"Can you imagine? Ash, with a kid?" Ryan said between laughs.
"Shut up!" Ash said. She balled up another napkin and threw it at Ryan, who caught it with his throwing hand without even looking.
"I bet you got a lot of that, growing up here," Ryan said.
"I did," Ash grumbled, "I don't miss that."
A group of kids about their age ran past their table, giggling and yelling to each other. Josh and Ryan sat up and craned their necks to see what they were running for. Ash smiled to herself.
"Speaking of growing up here — c'mon," she said.
She stood up and followed the crowd of kids, Ryan and Josh following close behind. They walked to the shore of the river, with a few cherry blossoms floating gently along the current, and saw another group of kids gathered on the other side of the river.
Before either Josh or Ryan could ask what they were doing, a single firework shot into the sky and exploded into a dazzling, pink star.
Every kid on the river's shore — including Ash — tossed out a Poke Ball, and the dozens of Pokemon that emerged jumped into the river and began collecting the cherry blossoms. Josh and Ryan reacted quickly. Ryan's Spearow emerged from her Poke Ball and flew low along the river's surface, plucking a cherry blossom with her beak.
Josh was scrambling to get his own Pokemon into the action. He pulled Hermes's Poke Ball from out of his bag, but it slipped out of his hand and fell to the riverbank. Josh dropped to his knees and lunged for it, just barely managing to grab it before it fell into the river. Josh heard gasps all around him as he stood up, but as he turned to see where it was coming from he realized he was surrounded by girls.
Lying on the ground next to Josh was an open Poke Ball, one of his, and his Eevee was sitting next to it. The Eevee tilted his head, staring up at the girls surrounding him.
"Aww!"
"Oh my God!"
"He's so cute!"
The girls descended on Josh's Eevee like a swarm of Pidgeys on freshly dropped bread, petting and stroking his fur, cooing, and squealing in delight.
Josh looked back to the river. All the cherry blossoms were gone by now. Ash's Squirtle was dropping some of them into Ash's hand.
"Good job, Pat," Ash said, giving him a gentle nuzzle on the head.
Josh turned back to the crowd of girls surrounding his Eevee. He cleared his throat to try to get their attention, but none of the girls even so much as glanced at him. Josh sighed. Finally, he got back down on his knees and beckoned to his Eevee from between the girls' legs. Josh could've sworn his Eevee saw him, but the Normal-type didn't move.
Ryan's Spearow landed in front of Ryan and deposited a single cherry blossom into his hand.
"Thanks, Cybele," he said, then he turned to Ash. "What are we supposed to do with this?"
Ash grinned and ran along the river's shore, toward a group of kids gathered around a tall, beautiful blonde woman wearing a red-and-white yukata. She was standing next to a Dewgong, and she looked like a model with her hair in such an intricate style, held together with a series of flower-shaped hair pins. Ryan hesitated for a moment, unable to do anything but stare at her.
Ash stepped up and handed the woman four cherry blossoms. The woman took them, gently flattened them between two thin pieces of glass, and then handed them to her Dewgong. The Dewgong gently blew out a gush of air, freezing the glass pieces together. The woman inspected the now-frozen cherry blossoms, and then handed them back to Ash.
"Thank you," Ash said, "how much do I owe you?"
"Oh, nothing at all, Ash," the woman said with a smile, "it's nice to see you again."
"T-thanks, you too," Ash said.
Ash walked back to Ryan, still holding the four cherry blossoms.
"Who is that?"
"Daisy," Ash said, glancing back over her shoulder to her, "she's Misty's older sister. I had no idea she even knew my name…"
"That's Daisy?" Ryan gawked, "she's nothing like Misty. She's actually pretty."
Ash glared at Ryan.
"Well, you're nothing like your sister, either," she said. "Jerk."
Ryan simply responded by making a hmmph sound that Ash had heard him make a thousand times in the time she had known him. It was a sound that meant he didn't care about whatever Ash had just said to him.
"So who are those for, then?" Ryan asked.
"My mom, Josh's mom, your mom, and Avery," Ash said, as she stowed them in her bag.
"Ew."
"They say these are supposed to grant you a love that lasts a lifetime."
"But all our moms are married already. And not like Avery needs help getting a boyfriend."
Ash rolled her eyes. "Well, maybe flowers are just a nice gift for a girl, ever think of that?"
Ryan shrugged, and walked towards Daisy. Her Dewgong froze Ryan's single cherry blossom, and Ryan gave a lazy bow in thanks before returning to Ash.
Ash raised an eyebrow at him. "So who's that fo—"
Ryan tossed the cherry blossom at Ash, who just barely managed to catch it before it hit her in the face.
"You," Ryan said, "God knows you're going to need all the help you can get with that attitude."
Ryan walked past Ash before she could respond. She glared daggers at the back of his head before stowing the extra cherry blossom in her bag. Then, Ash caught Daisy staring at her with a knowing grin. Ash quickly turned away, she could already feel her face turning red again.