I decided to continue my Unova travels since my vacation technically still hadn't ended. This time, I chose to explore Castelia City, the sister city to Nimbasa City. The reasons for choosing Castelia City was because geographically, Castelia City is located at the southern end of Unova and the city was situated very close to Nimbasa, which would mean lesser time spent travelling. It is also slightly warmer there as opposed to the other cities located in the north of Unova.
Furthermore, unlike the other places which I had visited previously, Castelia City is a place meant to attract tourists. There will be many things for us to see and explore here. The only gripe I have was that the regulations here regarding the releasing of pokemon was particularly strict due to the importance of the city to Unova. Such regulations were necessary as Castelia City is the heart of business and economy of Unova.
Castelia City was the first destination I arrived at when I first reached Unova. However back then Sebastian teleported us straight to Nimbasa right after I had disembarked and so I never had the chance to actually tour the place. Castelia City is one of those "must visit" places if a tourist ever comes to Unova, which was another reason why I decided to tour this place.
As usual, Sebastian requested to tag along on grounds of concerns for my personal safety. This time, I agreed, knowing that he is simply trying to do his job as our family's butler and also because by this point I'm almost certain that Dad and Vance left him here in Unova to keep an eye on me in their stead. If having Sebastian by my side helps to let them have a peace of mind I guess I'm fine with having him tagging along every now and then.
Castelia City is a huge seaside city. Geographically, it is also the largest city in Unova. It is a huge sprawling metropolis, sporting many towering skyscrapers and other tall buildings. The centre of the city is a central business district where most of the huge skyscrapers and commercial buildings could be found. A complicated network of alleyways lead into this area and these alleyways are where the smaller shops were set up among the city traffic. Most of these shops sell food-to-go for the busy Castelia residents who always seem to be in the midst of making their way somewhere within the city.
The streets here are almost always constantly crowded and I heard it's only going to be worse during the rush hours. Like how Slateport is in Hoenn, Castelia City is Unova's perfect harbour city, their gateway to the world. The city's outskirts are where their famous harbours were built, where ships that provide traffic to other regions in the world would leave from and also arrive in Unova.
As a result of it being the main harbour city of the region, Castelia City is also heavily influenced by other cultural elements from the other regions because this is where visitors from outside Unova would first arrive at when visiting Unova. Castelia City is well-known to be a melting pot, incorporating cultures and foods from other regions into their everyday lives. In fact, one thing that Castelia is famous for is how artists from all over the world would gather here to meet other artists, exchange pointers, make friends, and open their art galleries. In a manner of speaking, its very similar to how scientists and technological experts from all over the world love to flock to Kanto.
Thus, the first place I decided to visit was the famous Studio Castelia. Despite its fame, it is only a small art gallery located in central Castelia. However, it showcases many beautiful paintings from artists who live in Castelia and it was said that many artists from all over Unova will come to Castelia to get inspiration from the city's Gym Leader, Burgh, and this studio is where they will hang their paintings.
The studio is also a place where up-and-coming young artists would gather in their attempt to kickstart their career and make a name for themselves. You can see many artists setting up roadside stalls along the entire area around where the studio is located in order to sell their paintings. It is a very unique sight because this is not something which I will be able to see in Hoenn. Hoenn isn't very big on the arts.
There were many kinds of paintings on display at the studio. Some were abstract art, some were portraits, some were paintings of famous landmarks or sceneries. Truthfully, touring the studio didn't take up much time. Most of my time was spent exploring the roadside stalls where the up-and-coming artists were displaying their works and hoping that someone would buy them.
One particular painting caught my eye. It was a painting that depicts the scenery of Castelia City. I really loved how the artist captured the magnificence of the city's unique skyscrapers and tall commercial buildings while blending the surrounding environment into the picture as well. He painted the harbours and the sea, and also the tall trees surrounding the city outskirts where pokemon can be found.
"How much are you selling this?" I asked, and the artist seemed genuinely surprised that somebody was actually interested in his work. He's selling it for a thousand pokedollars and while bargaining is accepted in this area, I decided against it because I personally felt that the painting is worth the price. Besides, I am earning money as an interpol agent and I haven't had a chance to really spend it due to how busy with work I was for the past few months. To me, a thousand pokedollars really isn't much, but to the artist, it may help him pay for his rent this month.
Five minutes later, I have a nicely wrapped painting in my arms. I simply stored it in my backpack which I brought along with me for the very purpose of helping me keep any souvenirs I had decided to buy on my trip since it is the newest model that boasts a much larger storage capacity with the latest improvements in Foldable Space Technology. It was after I zipped my backpack shut that I saw Sebastian looking at me as if there's something he wanted to say but didn't get a chance to, and I realised that he actually wanted to help me carry the painting which I just bought but I had kept it in my backpack before he could do or say anything.
"Erm… I was planning to hang the painting in my room…?"
"Ms Velda, my job is to assist you. You do not need to carry the items yourself."
"I will… keep that in mind?" I replied awkwardly, still not used to the idea of having someone waiting on me hand and foot for every little thing because that was not how I was raised. I guess my family really is an oddity among other families of similar statuses, with close to no servants, living in a small house despite owning too many luxurious properties to count and preferring to do everything ourselves, including the chores in the house. Come to think about it, is this a Vera "tradition", or is this simply something that started from my parents' generation?
Maybe I should ask them when I have the chance.
We exited the area and Fuzzy excitedly tapped my shoulder, catching my attention. He pointed to a nearby ice cream stand, obviously wanting to have a taste of ice cream.
"Have you seen your belly?" I lightly poked at Fuzzy's belly, to which he replied with an indignant squeak, telling me that he had not been growing fatter like what I had been insinuating. Still, I walked towards the ice cream stand to get what Fuzzy wanted. For some reason, there is a lack of customers despite the fact that the ice cream stand was situated in an area with high foot traffic.
"Hi, three casteliacones, please," I placed my order after taking a quick look at their menu. Casteliacones is the name of their featured ice cream and its outward appearance was rather similar to a vanillite.
I handed Fuzzy his ice cream and he proceeded to take huge bites out of it instead of licking the ice cream cone, getting cream all over his face as a result. I decided to ignore him for now and handed Sebastian a cone too, which he took after getting over his surprise that I actually bought one for him. The last ice cream cone was for myself and I shared some of it with Rena, who didn't seem to really like eating cold desserts in such cold weather. In the end, I gave my unfinished casteliacone to Fuzzy, who delightfully finished up the entire thing within a minute.
"How are you not getting a brain freeze?" I cannot help but question as I took out a piece of tissue to wipe off the ice cream that Fuzzy had gotten all over his face. Fuzzy replied with a loud squeak, clearly content with his meal.
Seeing Fuzzy eating so ravenously made me a little hungry as well. I decided that we might as well have lunch since it was nearing noon. I found a place that caught my interest after a quick search on the internet, a cafe that goes by the name of Cafe Sonata that's apparently located at Castelia Narrow Street.
"Ms Velda, I propose that we… choose another place."
I could understand why Sebastian said those words as we stood at the entrance of Narrow Street. As it turned out, Narrow Street was not like the other streets that we had walked on earlier today. Narrow street was a back alley with a number of dumpsters and rubbish bins lined up against its sides and like its name suggested, it is a very narrow street. It was poorly lit and contained very few people. It looked exactly like the type of place where unsavoury people would choose to hang out.
Why would any cafe choose to set up shop here?
"It's fine, we are more than capable of taking care of ourselves."
Since we were already here, I decided to continue trying my luck to search for this Cafe Sonata. Also, I am now curious as to why anyone would set up a cafe here in one of the dingiest parts of the city. I would not be surprised if we encountered any shady people on our way there but as I said, we are more than capable of handling any wannabe thugs.
The sour and foul scent of trash lingered in the air as we walked deeper into Narrow street thanks to the dumpsters lined up along the sides of the wall. I could spot small groups of trubbish running around to gather food from the dumpsters and bins although they fled the moment they spotted us. As I suspected, this place was indeed a favourite haunt for thugs and shady people, but Sebastian and his medicham easily put anybody that tried to harass us in place so it wasn't an issue. These thugs quickly learnt not to get in our way.
It was also thanks to one of those thugs that Sebastian had beat up that we finally found the Cafe Sonata that I was looking for. It really was a small cafe, lined with red tile floorings and dimly lit with an orange glow. In the centre of the cafe was a small platform where a guitarist was performing his songs and from what I could see, there's only two other customers present.
We quickly found ourselves a table. For some reason, there didn't seem to be any waiters or waitresses around to give us a menu to look over or to even take our orders, so Sebastian and I decided to simply walk over to the counter to ask for a menu. The person at the counter was a portly man who was talking to a tall muscled young man with short black hair in harsh whispers. A scrafty could be seen beside the young man.
"-telling ya, I need more info bout the-"
"There are other customers, keep your volume down," The portly man behind the counter who I assumed was the cashier reminded the young man before looking over the young man's shoulder to give me a small smile. "My apologies, young lady, we are rather short on staff right now. Please take a seat first, we will attend to you shortly. In the meantime, feel free to have our singer sing a song of your choosing."
I nodded my head in understanding and I heard the young man giving an annoyed click of his tongue as he finally turned his head to look at who the cashier was talking to. The first thing I noticed about him was the unique colour of his eyes, a bright scarlet red, which actually reminded me of Leticia because her eyes were of the exact same colour.
"What'cha staring at?"
"I'm sorry, excuse me," I apologised when I realised I had indeed been staring at the man's eyes for a little too long when I spaced out earlier. Not wanting to incite an argument with the unfriendly man, I decided to walk back to our table to take a seat and wait to be served. The only other customer stood up and left, having already finished his meal. Business here doesn't seem to be too good if this is the number of customers they have for their lunch crowd, but yet the reviews I found on the internet tells a very different story.
We didn't walk into the wrong cafe, did we?
"We are in Cafe Sonata, right?" I asked Sebastian with a soft whisper, who merely nodded his head.
"From what I could see, this is indeed Cafe Sonata, unless there is another Cafe Sonata which we weren't aware of," Sebastian replied, and from the corner of my eye I could see the cashier still talking to the unfriendly young man in soft whispers. It didn't seem like they would be done anytime soon.
"Ms Velda, I think this place doesn't only serve as a cafe. It would be wise to act ignorant if we were to see or hear things we are not supposed to know if we want to avoid trouble," Sebastian spoke to me in a soft volume such that only I can hear him and I cannot help but give this cafe another sweeping glance. If not a cafe, what else is this place supposed to be?
I looked at Rena, who merely gave an indication that nobody here harboured hostile thoughts towards us. To me, that was enough assurance that this place is safe, so I decided to stay and wait.
The guitarist walked up to us and asked if there's any song that we wanted to hear him sing since we currently are the only customers in the cafe if we exclude the red-eyed man. I was too lazy to think of a specific song, so I simply asked him if he could sing something relaxing. It was also at this moment that the cashier was finally done talking to the red-eyed man and came over with the menu. There really wasn't much to choose from because the menu only had five items if we excluded the drinks.
The meals better be worth it, considering that I took all the effort to locate this place after reading the five stars reviews on the internet.
To my delight, our drinks were served almost immediately and the guitarist had also finished re-tuning his guitar at around the same time. The guitarist started off by singing a relaxing song as I had asked him to, his heavenly song and his beautiful voice lifting my mood almost instantly.
"When I was young I'd listen to the radio, waitin' for my favourite songs."
I closed my eyes and idly hummed along with the tune, fully immersing and enjoying myself and the song. It wasn't until the song was nearing the chorus that I suddenly realised that something really wasn't right.
Wait a sec. I know this song.
"Every sha-la-la-la, every wo-o-wo-o, still shines."
"Every shing-a-ling-a-ling, that they're starting to sing, so fine," I whispered the next stanza to myself in an inaudible volume, eyes wide, and my suspicions were confirmed when I was able to match the lyrics word for word to what I remembered in my mind.
I had long forgotten the title and the original singer, but I know for a fact that this song that the guitarist was singing had to be a song from my previous life. I don't remember the full lyrics of the song either, but I certainly remember parts of the chorus and the general tune of the song.
This shouldn't be possible. Why and how on earth does this guitarist know of this song?
"Ms Velda?"
"It's fine," I shook my head after hearing Sebastian's concern, my eyes now glued to the guitarist and trying to observe him a little more closely. There should be only seven of us in this world and I had already met them all. This guitarist is not one of us, I am sure about that.
"Where did you learn this song from?" I asked the moment the guitarist finished singing that very familiar song that I still could not remember the name of.
"It's a nice song, ain't it?" The guitarist replied with a chuckle.
"It is," I agreed, trying to hide my impatience while trying to probe further. "Who composed this song?"
"It was about… close to three months ago, I believe? We had a customer here doing business with old John over there before staying a little longer to have a meal. Actually, I think he sat at the same table you did, and I heard him humming this song to himself while having his meal. Just hearing a portion of it and I knew immediately that this song's gonna be a big hit, so I asked him if he could sell it to me. I was willing to pay any price, man, but he was kind enough to give it to me as long as I paid for his meals and gave him some info I happened to know."
"Do you have his name?"
"Eh, that's the thing, none of us here do," the guitarist shrugged his shoulders helplessly before pointing in the direction of the counter where the portly man who took our orders was currently at. "I mean, you can try asking old John but I doubt you're gonna get a word out of him. His lips are very tightly sealed when it comes to our customers."
"Do you at least know what he looks like?"
"He's… actually kind of handsome in a plain way, I'm not really sure how to describe it but if he simply remained still you won't even notice he's there. His eyes were really striking, that's for sure. Like one look and you know ya not gonna find the same pair of eyes anywhere else."
I frowned a little after hearing that. Like I had suspected, this song was not composed by the guitarist, it was by the hands of somebody else. No, it's more like somebody had regurgitated the entire song from memory and passed it over to him.
Problem is, who? Someone with really unique eyes… Oh.
"I'm going to make a call outside," I told Sebastian and stood up from my seat. He looked like he wanted to follow after me but I had also hinted very clearly that I wanted this call to be private, so he remained at his seat. Still, I made sure to stand outside at an angle such that Sebastian could clearly see me through the window. At least this way, he didn't have to worry about me suddenly being attacked by the thugs that infested Narrow Street.
I dialled the number which I only just received yesterday and my video call was promptly picked up.
"What?"
"Not even a good afternoon?" I asked dryly, noting that Jayce didn't even bother to turn on his camera for the video call.
"If there's nothing else I'm hanging up."
"Did you visit Cafe Sonata in Castelia City a few months ago? The one at Narrow Street?" I quickly asked, knowing for certain that he would really hang up on me if I didn't get to the point. I'm almost certain that the person who gave the guitarist that song was Jayce because it couldn't be Volkner but I have to be sure, because if it wasn't Jayce then we have another issue on our hands to deal with.
"How did you know?"
"You gave the guitarist there a song," I released a hidden sigh after hearing his answer. It's been confirmed, Jayce was the one who gave the song to the guitarist, not anybody else.
"Now that you mentioned it, I think I did something like that. How did the interpol know about that place anyway?"
"I found it through the internet while searching for places with good food. Thought I would try it out after reading the reviews."
There was a brief moment of silence from the other end of the line.
"Velda."
"Yeah?"
"I don't know how that cafe ended up having reviews on the internet, but that place is not just another cafe. That place is a cafe, yes, but that is the farce it shows itself to the public. That cafe is a place where people go to sell and buy information. As long as you are willing to pay for the right price and as long as they have the right information, there's no information that you cannot buy from them. The people running the place are underground information brokers."
This time, it was my turn to remain silent, not knowing how else to reply. Suddenly, everything seemed so obvious in retrospect.
Jayce also seemed to understand why I suddenly went silent because I could hear the sarcasm oozing out of his voice in the next moment.
"Come on, were you really that dumb to believe that there would be people who really chose to set up a cafe at Narrow Street? Even if that's not impossible, wouldn't the lack of any customers in the cafe be a huge red warning flag waving right at your face? Surely you would have bumped into some thugs on your way there? Did you seriously think a cafe would have survived at such a location without being forced to wind up by the end of the month?"
"Yes, yes, laugh at my stupidity for all you want," I sighed and facepalmed. "Still, information brokers? Do they have info on…?"
"Yes, they do. If you wish to buy or sell information you simply have to tell old John that you are ordering a cup of espresso macchiato and you want it on the table in 45 seconds. He will tell you that serving your order in 45 seconds is unreasonable and that moomoo milk is out of stock today. If you reply that now you want a double espresso in 30 seconds, you are telling him that you are here to buy information. If you reply that now you want a ristretto to be served in three minutes, you are telling him that you are here to sell information. The wordings are very important because just a single word out of place and he will assume that you are not here to exchange information. If you ask him directly about his secret business he will deny it till the very end and you can forget about buying or selling information at his place ever again. It is his way of hiding and protecting his business from the local authorities, so do remember that."
"That's… informative. Thanks."
"It's not a big deal. Actually, I had one of my cousins help me get something from them today, assuming that he doesn't get sidetracked and do something else entirely on his way home. If he retrieved any useful info about the Plasmas from the cafe I will have him duplicate a copy for the interpol, so don't worry about that."
"Wait, are you talking about a red-eyed guy?" I straightened my back when I suddenly made the connection. Everything suddenly made sense. "I thought he looked a bit like Leticia."
"You met him? Yeah, that guy's my younger cousin."
"Looks nothing like you."
"Is there anything else? If not, I'm hanging up."
"Fine, I won't disturb you any longer. Bye."
Jayce hung up the call and I walked back into the cafe. It was at the right time too, because our orders were finally served and we finally got to eat. The guitarist continues to sing his songs. This time, I don't recognise any of them to be songs from my previous world.
I think Looker might want to know about the existence of this place, although there may not be a point to it any longer since Jayce was already buying information about Team Plasma from the information broker here and will be giving us a copy which he thinks will be useful for our work. Another sweeping glance through the cafe told me that the red-eyed man who is Jayce's cousin was already gone. He probably had exited through a backdoor since I didn't see anyone exiting from the front while I was outside making a call.
If such places like Cafe Sonata exist right under everyone's noses in a city as bustling and bright as Castelia, it really makes me wonder just how much of these inconspicuous underground information brokers exist back home in Hoenn as well. Who knows, maybe I had walked past or even visited such places during my travels back then without knowing the true nature of these places.
Still, Jayce was right. I really should exercise my common sense a little more and keep my eyes peeled for such places in the future, especially when I found places that looked normal when they clearly are not, just like Cafe Sonata.
Character and pokemon list:
Velda Vera, Age: 14, Female, Pokemon Trainer, Member of the International Police
Pokemon on hand:
1) Rapidash (Flamel), male
2) Swampert (Bigblue), male
3) Banette (Dolly), female
4) Flygon (Snap), male
5) Absol (Kelsa), female
6) Charizard (Toothless), male
7) Cradily (Lily), female
8) Espeon (Rena), female
9) Pachirisu (Fuzzy), male
10) Tyranitar (Kratos), male
11) Clefairy (Joy), female
12) Nidoqueen (Ness), female
13) Pangoro (Hulk), male
14) Porygon-Z (Jarvis), genderless
15) Scizor (Archer), male
16) Lapras (Chill), female
17) Gengar (Wacky), male