On the second day of summer, the girl barges into Beach Cave.

I ignore her. Past experiences have taught me that when children my age find me, I can expect to be fishing my backpack out of the rubbish bins or to be scrubbing permanent marker off my brows.

Instead of reading my glare, the girl marches up to me and says:

"Are you always this rude?"

While I work on a caustic remark to reinforce my allegedly audacious background, the girl holds out her hand, a gesture nobody has ever made to me, and says:

"I'm Cynthia."

My father has always reminded me that in life one should pay people back in kind. He also condoned stepping on others as the only way to move up the corporate ladder—and in society. I decide to follow in his former teachings and offer my hand—along with my name.

"Like the sun!" she says.

When she utters my name, with all the meanings and implications those two syllables might carry, I feel my whole self loosening.

To even the odds, I emphasize the beauty of her name, how it shines as lovely and radiant as the moon itself.

The way she smiles leaves a permanent impression in my mind. Comparing her smile to anything else is meaningless. For when she does it, her eyes and nose and mouth magically fall into place, all these individual parts synchronizing so perfectly into a product so… complete. It is beyond logic.

"You're funny. I like you."

Cynthia then makes as if to sit down beside me. Even a nonentity like me knows that the corduroy dress she wears cannot come into contact with the excrements of the sea. So I remove my patched-up jacket and spread it over the wet sand like a beach towel. She sits on my favorite garment, sighing as she gazes out to the cloudless blue sky.

"Do you live here?" she says.

"In the cave?" I say.

Cynthia looks as me as though that is the stupidest question she has heard in her short life. Then she starts laughing so hard that tears pool in her eyes.

"No, dummy. In Sunyshore."

"Do you?"

"Of course not. It smells like old people, everything is expensive, and the beach is always crowded."

I find no solid arguments in favor of my hometown to disprove her.

"So why did you come here?" I say.

"My dad teaches archaeology in Canalave University. He took the whole family to Sunyshore for summer vacation."

Her father seems very different from mine. "Where do you live?"

"Celestic Town."

Even a bedridden child like me has heard of Celestic Town, although I have never been there. I imagine it as a sort of village made up of small houses with steep roofs and walkways lined with ginko trees, temples and teahouses. An isolated world ruled by tradition.

"I don't like Celestic Town, and this sand hole isn't any better," Cynthia is saying. "I don't have any friends here."

The following words tumble out of my mouth.

"I can be your friend. If you'll have me."

Cynthia regards me with a mixture of curiosity and surprise.

"Do you like stories?" she says. "My mom is a historian. She gathers myths from every region and tells me stories very few people have heard."

That's the second thing we share in common. Our interest in stories, I mean. My mother is a renowned court-appointed lawyer.

"I make my stories up," I say.

"Really. Tell me one."

"Now?"

"No, dummy. Find me and remind me in twenty years."

That evening, the stranger named Cynthia becomes my first human audience. I tell her my story about human and Pokemon, curses and legends, of fugitives escaping through the snow in a universe fated to burn in the wake of an incoming meteor. When the narrative concludes and the heroes are rescued from the aftermath of the meteor's destruction, Cynthia, moved with emotion, vows that she will publish my story into a book to share with the world.

"I have to go back now," she says. "I'll see you tomorrow. Same place!"

Waving at me until she vanishes down the beach, Cynthia leaves my life as abruptly as she entered it. I pick up my jacket and put it on, feeling her warmth and aroma over me. Then I smile to myself and, finally identifying the emotion swelling in chest to be happiness, I realize that after tasting such delicious poison I have never been more driven to live to tomorrow.