In Sunyshore, calendars identify only two seasons: summer and the rest of the year. During those three long months when the sun smiled upon the coast of Sinnoh, the local government worked ten times as hard so tourists and visitors from the mainland can come in search of sand, sun, and expensive ways of passing time.
I am convinced that the memories of that summer was a cruel product of a fever dream. And as such, almost without my noticing, one day and then another fly by, and autumn marches in like a lion.
The day before I am to start school, my father requests that I accompany him to his business meeting in faraway Eterna City. Initially, I was overjoyed. Upon receiving a script for how to act and speak, I realize that my presence will only be a selling point since his prospective client has a boy around my age.
I don't mind being treated as a tool, but a part of me wishes for my father to look at me and see me, instead of another asset he can use. Even if I prove my worth, however, he will still not take notice of me.
Eterna City is a network of narrow alleys and avenues where one can easily travel back fifty years into the past by just stepping into the main sanctuary of an ancient shrine hidden behind the shadow of a condominium.
Time and memory, history and modernization merge in this enchanted city like watercolor in the rain.
On some streets still stand houses of a bygone age. As I've gathered from the elders of the city, its occupants are members of a dying dynasty—families whose names once filled entire pages of local papers back when the electric rice cooker was regarded with skepticism as a Western invention.
Now those people are hostages of a rapidly fading era who refuse to abandon their sinking ships. Fearing, perhaps, that if they dare step out of their withered homes they might turn to ash in the wind, they choose instead to waste away like convalescents confined in relics of lost glory.
The initial meeting goes well. I follow my father's script to the grain of ink: smiling so hard that my muscles ache, laughing politely at the client's poor attempt at humor. I profess my talents for academics, my penchant for the piano (I can barely distinguish between musical shifts), and my dreams of heeding my father's company after I graduate college.
"You've raised the perfect son!" the client says.
My father pats me on the head and says loudly, "That's my boy."
As far as I can remember, this is the first time he has displayed such intimacy. I almost do not recognize the man who has his hand steadied paternally on my shoulder.
The contract is secured. While my father spends the next days negotiating, I am not to disturb him.
So I explore the city. In its heart is a statue that apparently existed since the dawn of Sinnoh, constructed to commemorate the birth of a Pokemon whose heartbeat initiated the flow of time.
My father is like that statue. No matter how close I am to him, I cannot get his attention. He continues to stare determinately off into the mountains without looking down.
Aside from the ancient statue, the other place of interest is Eterna Forest. If Cynthia is here, she will run right in. I enter the forest alone, armed with doubt and curiosity.
The air is thick with moisture from the recent storm, but as sunlight scatters the mist, the trees are set aglow with specks of copper. Steeped in warm shadows, the dark ground swallows my small, cautious footfalls.
No matter how far I walk, there is no change in the landscape. The trees stand indifferent to my presence. Sometimes there is a slight incline or slope. The lack of variation makes me uneasy, as though I am wandering around in circles, and bit by bit I begin to freak out.
When the cold wind blows, the surroundings transform. The sun is no longer in the sky. All around me are vast rows of trees pointing their skeletal branches into the darkness. Unable to see, the writhing clusters of leaves encroach upon me like a malevolent beast.
I scream. My ankle gives out, and I tumble down into a ditch, falling facedown into a well of water that had collected below. When I manage to pull myself up to my knees, I realize that the fetid water is alive with hundreds of black spiders. I scream again, my arms flailing about, and scramble up the dirt walls where I keep running.
My plight brings me to an abandoned mansion. The gates are secured by a rusty padlock, so I slip through a hole in the side and barricade myself inside the house.
Trembling with fright and cold, I pull off my soaked clothes. My limbs are covered in tiny, bleeding dots. Bites. The spiders in the ditch had not wasted any time.
Their poison burns in my blood. I lose consciousness shortly after, falling into a darkness somewhere between awareness and sleep.
I wake up to the gentle radiance of the moon illuminating rectangles in the rotten carpet. A ball of light has been watching me sleep. To be more precise, it is a creature that emits light, similar to a firefly, and equally as benign.
"Do you have a matchstick?" I say.
The creature returns with a lighter. I remove the safety pin from my shirt and burn it over the weak flame. Once the metal blackens, I blow on the shaft and test it with the pad of my finger. Cool and sterile. I hold my breath and inject the pin into one of the many bumps on my arms, wincing as pus and blood gleefully spray out like liquid gelatin, and work my way down to my legs.
I feel immensely sore afterward, but cleansed.
"Thank you," I tell the creature.
The mechanism within its form whirls in response, a sound akin to the purring of a well-oiled motor.
"Can you show me the way back?" I venture.
More than happy to oblige, the creature of light leads me out the mansion, over the river and through the woods until we arrive at the sunlit entrance. Before I leave, I turn back one last time. Behind its smile is a loneliness that disarms me.
Then and there, I make up my mind.
"Do you want to come home with me?" I say.
The sadness immediately dissipates from its eyes, and the creature begins flying around my head like a planet orbiting a sun. I sense the beginning of another wonderful friendship.