I smell Hearthome before I see it—candlewax folded into the cool, the faint sugar of incense, warm bread from somewhere the wind keeps visiting. Lanterns glitter ahead, rows of orange eyes strung between dark eaves, and a slow bell-beat drifts over the road like a heartbeat you can walk to if you're not in a hurry. Maps call it the City of Friendship. Trainers on the routes call it the Ghost city with a respectful little shrug, like they're making space for something they don't want to step on.
Tyrunt's claws tap a quick impatient rhythm on the cobbles. Luxio pads at my left, whiskers forward, tail-tip ticking sparks that don't live long enough to be trouble. Grotle brings weight to the soundscape—deliberate, patient steps, leaves trembling with the pace of a creature that never bothers to pretend it's light. Honedge rides across my back under my pack straps, tassel draped over my shoulder like a scarf; the eye on his guard swivels with unshowy vigilance.
I tell myself not to think about Cynthia. I fail. I always fail in the minute before a city announces what it wants from me. In my head she is already here, hands in her pockets, gaze angled up at the lantern ropes. She would map the place by breath and shadow, not by street names. She would ask: what story does this city force you to tell about yourself? And then she'd refuse that story politely.
A boundary stone marked with Unown stands at the first cross street. The lantern strings begin for real after that—every span straight as a taught line, no sag to catch stray wind. Children in matching vests are tying thin bells onto their Starly's leashes; the bells tinkle when the birds hop, and their trainers laugh, the sound a fraction too loud in the dusk. A Drifloon bobs at roof height with the sullen dignity of a balloon that stayed at the party out of spite. Window glass carries reflections like shallow water.
The Pokémon Center glows like a hearth tucked into a corner. The doors sigh open and the light inside hushes my pulse in the way hospital lights do—clean, unmarred, purposeful. I step into the queue, palm brushing each of the four balls at my belt in order: Tyrunt. Luxio. Honedge. Grotle. That four-count taps some calmer rhythm into me. No one in this lobby cares who I am; they've all got their own teams and their own square of the schedule to worry about.
When it's my turn, the nurse takes my team with professional economy. She's middle-aged, hair in a neat coil, expression that says she has seen a thousand trainers at this exact threshold between nerves and wanting to look collected. She loads the balls onto the scanner one after another and watches numbers I can't see. The machine hums like a low hive.
"They're in good condition," she says after a minute, tone all clinic. "Hydration is fine across the board. Your Tyrunt shows normal microtears in the tail musculature consistent with strength work—keep an eye on soreness tonight. No heavy rotational strain until he's comfortable." She turns a screen my way to show a line graph I don't need but want to see anyway. "Your Luxio's heart rate is mildly elevated compared to earlier in the week; nothing pathological. Likely excitement and the headwind you just came through. Offer a long, easy cooling walk before sleeping. Honedge's metal stress is nominal—guard and edge integrity are strong. Regular oiling is doing its job. Grotle's shell presents clean; minor superficial abrasions, nothing through the keratin. I'll note a routine check for leaf insect activity—one small clutch of harmless hitchhikers removed."
She returns my team and the clipboard with that small, practiced smile medical people have perfected: here is what's yours to manage and here is what is not. No comments about the gym. No move talk. No tactics. Only what bodies can and cannot do at sunset, facts clean as instruments. My shoulders drop a notch. It's unexpectedly soothing to be treated as a caretaker and not a challenger.
I nod my thanks, move aside, and cross to the League kiosk. The Hearthome Gym page blooms in soft lavender and dusk-blue swirls, a little too theatrical for my nerves. I do not watch the highlight reel of Fantina's Mismagius drifting like a chandelier through a theater of shadow. I check the schedule. Tonight is full. Tomorrow still has cracks of green around the afternoon. I choose 13:50 before my doubts can stage a protest. The confirmation chime lands like a drop of glass in water. Twenty-one hours and change. I rub my thumb along the corner of my phone and feel the square waiting in my calendar like a ticked box I haven't earned yet.
Luxio brushes my knee with his head and static needles through denim. Tyrunt's tail thumps the base of the sign as if he could make the appointment come faster by adding percussion. Grotle's breath is a low, grassy hush behind me. Honedge's tassel tightens once around my shoulder and relaxes—a small "noted" I feel more than see.
Outside, Hearthome has drawn the night on like a coat that fits. Lantern ropes burn a warm path between buildings with eaves low enough to invite ducking. Paper charms hang from doorframes. A thin ribbon of incense slides around my ankles. Somewhere out of sight, bells count the minutes the old way. I let the street teach me what's normal so I can tell when it isn't.
The job board beside the Center door is dense with promises and pleas. Post-its overlap, layers of tape turn the corners glossy. I read everything, even what I don't need. It's a ritual I've grown on the road: learning the kinds of work a city thinks are worth asking for.
LANTERN‑STRINGERS WANTED. 100 Poké/hr. Steady hands.
Night escort to Amity Square. Bells provided. Tips split.
Sparring partner for Ghost prep. No Knock Out. No Hypnosis. 45 minutes. 250 Poké. Lot behind the old chapel.
The sparring tab tears off in my hand with that ragged satisfaction paper gives when it cooperates. I text: Forty-five okay. Bringing Dark coverage and an anchor. I'll mark shadow limits. The reply pings back almost immediately: 20:15 behind the chapel. Signal your angles. No status nonsense.
Good. Honest. It leaves me enough time to lay hands on the city in a way that makes it partially mine. Lantern-stringing first.
A foreman with rope-polished palms and a voice like a drum gives me a coil and a bundle of paper lanterns stamped with Unown characters. "Keep your lines straight," he says, businesslike. "Slack invites trouble. Double-knot the end hooks. We pull them down for rain."
Grotle kneels obediently, the plates of his shell giving me footholds as tidy as steps down a riverbank. From up there, the street becomes a book spine I can read. Tyrunt ferries small knots of rope in his mouth from barrel to barrel, tail high—proud of being included and trying not to run. Luxio watches every flame like it owes him an apology. Honedge slips into my shadow, slides up past the lantern line on the other side, and steadies my wrist with a gentle tassel press while I tie. We find a cadence: measure, knot, pass, test. When I stretch, Grotle inches forward exactly the distance I need, patient as a moving platform. The bells on someone's sleeve behind me count our rhythm.
When the lamps are all lit and not a rope sags, the foreman presses coins into my palm and nods. "Steady work," he says, like a benediction. "That kind of hand keeps a city from shaking you loose."
He doesn't say gym. He doesn't need to. I can feel the appointment in my pocket like a pebble.
I buy cinnamon rings from a stall because I am not a saint and the sugar smell puts a hand on the back of my neck and turns me. Luxio nudges my hip. I break a ring in half and he takes it delicately, pupils big with satisfaction. Tyrunt refuses his with offended dignity, watches Luxio eat his half with an expression of theological crisis, and then eats his anyway. Grotle chews slowly, eyes half-closed; sweet is a philosophy for him. Honedge gets the ritual instead of a treat: a warm cloth run along his edge, a careful oil at the guard. His eye narrows in contentment the way a cat's does.
At 20:15 I'm behind the chapel. The building is dark stone with stained-glass windows that still breathe back some of the daylight they drank. The lot is swept clean in the disciplined way that says it didn't start that way. A girl about my age waits with a Banette floating at her shoulder, zipper-grin open, eyes like banked embers.
"You answered my post?" she asks, practical.
"Yeah." I snap a light bell onto my own sleeve hem, just enough sound to locate myself if the shadows decide to lie. "Honedge for guard, Luxio for Dark pressure, Grotle for anchor. Tyrunt's footwork and controlled tail arcs. I'll call my angles."
She nods once. "Three rounds. Slow forms, midspeed, then controlled live. We call status aloud if we use it; we won't use it much. Mark your shadow boundary so we're clean. Banette doesn't mean harm but she's dramatic."
We chalk an oval on the ground and promise to keep tricks inside it.
Round one is catechism. Banette threads black filament through the air—a suggestion of Nightmare, the hint of a Night Shade—but stops it before it bites. I turn slowly, count my steps in bells, teach my ears to own the space my feet want. Honedge drops in front of my chest with a hush and lifts with a hush, guard vertical to catch, flat to disperse. Tyrunt practices the step-through that keeps his tail safe: anchor foot, lead foot, hip half-turn, tail follows like a well-told sentence, stop before the flourish. Luxio moves like a stalking decision, not a spark in sight. Grotle is a wall that keeps choosing not to be a trap.
Round two hums with the possibility of mistakes. Banette flickers across the edge of the oval; Luxio tracks with his eyes and his shoulders, not his teeth, and I can almost hear Cynthia in the back of my head approving—choose the right tool before you choose any tool. Tyrunt taps the air space Banette will want to occupy, not where she is. Honedge threads through my shadow and rises at my left hip to cut a Night Shade illusion with a flat tap that pops it like a soap bubble. Grotle turns a quarter step into a denial; the space a ghost wants is just not there when it arrives.
Round three is the nearest thing to truth I can afford. The girl calls "Trick" and Banette feints direction, appears where we aren't. My sleeve bell keeps me honest about how much I moved without meaning to. Honedge guards—that is the job I have given him and the job he performs with a precision that has calmed me since the first night I tried to sleep with a sword hovering in the corner. When Banette rushes with teeth like theater, the thing she meets is silence. Luxio lunges exactly when the dark thins and bites space in a way that is a promise rather than a wound. Tyrunt flicks his half-tail and stops, checks himself mid-arc—control like that doesn't come from wanting; it comes from reps. Grotle holds the corner so the whole room has to take us on our terms.
We stop at the first sheen of sweat. The girl transfers 250 Poké to my account with a flick. "You'll be fine," she says, not smiling, which makes me trust it more. "Fantina loves narrative tricks. She'll try to make the room tell you a story about yourself that you accept before you know you accepted it. Don't let her write you. If you find something that works, change the rhyme the second time you use it."
"I was thinking the same," I say, and mean it. Cynthia would like that phrasing—change the rhyme, not the word.
The girl shrugs into her coat, recalls Banette, and melts into Hearthome like a local shadow.
I take a corner of the lot and do what the nurse gave me permission to do earlier with clean numbers: care. Tyrunt lies on his side and I run a thumb gently along the tail muscles, checking for heat, working out a careful line of pressure the way the tech showed me in the last city's rehab wing. He huffs at me as if offended I might discover he is mortal, then goes heavy at my touch in the way things do when they decide the world is safe for a minute. Luxio's cooldown is movement, not stillness; we walk a rectangle, his paws soft on stone, ears loosening, tail settling from a metronome to a line. Honedge hovers so close the edge of his blade brushes my shoulder; I take a cloth and re-run the oil once because it centers both of us. Grotle lets me check the seam between two shell plates where grit likes to hide; I dab a bit of water there and he makes a small noise that is both thanks and embarrassment.
We cut through the market to get back to the Center. Hearthome after dark isn't a carnival; it's a series of rooms people agree to move between. Charms hang from a stall's awning—bones, brass, folded paper—and the seller doesn't overpromise. "They make you different," she says, "which is the only thing charms honestly do." I buy Rawst berries because discipline pays a burn tax tomorrow. I add a packet of bells and thread two into my sleeve seams. If I can hear my own feet, I'm harder to fool. I pick up chalk. I don't buy anything pretty because I want to keep luck where it belongs: on practice.
Training weaves itself between streets. In a small park that is mostly permission, not grass—a fountain that tastes like pipe, two thin trees, a memorial stone—someone is teaching two Machop to spot each other on squats, palms under ribcages, faces comically solemn. Tyrunt imitates with dignity, then teeters when his tail unbalances him; he looks betrayed by physics and I tell him we'll get it tomorrow and mean it. Luxio snorts and then pretends he didn't. Grotle lowers his head so a kid walking past can touch his shell and say "whoa" like he's met a slow planet.
We pass the gym to see what its skin says in moonlight. Fantina's place is dusk-colored stone in curves she has chosen for drama. The practice yards behind are closed, but stone talks through gates. I tap my heel along the border and one seam answers with a slightly different tone. Maybe there are panels that shift. Maybe not. Fantina likes to move rooms without moving them far—just enough to tangle a foot with a thought. I chalk a tiny X on the inside of my wrist in the place the seam would be if the arena mirrored this yard. It won't, probably. It's not about maps. It's about mapping.
A woman in a League polo watches me from the alley mouth, arms folded. "You booked?" she asks.
"Thirteen fifty," I say, sleeve bell ticking as if it wants to be included in the conversation.
"Good hour." She studies the team in the lazy, efficient way of someone who could tell you how you stand with three blinks. "Don't let that Grotle be scenery. People park a wall and then forget to move it. Fantina will sign you up for that mistake and sell tickets. The Luxio thinks he's the answer to unsaid questions. Make him listen—the ears are there, use them. That Tyrunt wants to prove a point. Make him prove a pattern. And the Honedge—" She tips her chin at him. "Guard first. Mirrors second. If you must cut, cut illusions. Leave dueling for poets."
I nod. "Guard first."
She nods back, satisfied that I heard the part she meant, and goes about her business. Advice here comes from other trainers, not the clinic. That sits right in my bones.
I choose a cheap room over the bakery because yeast and warmth feel like competence and I want that smell in my lungs. The walls are thin enough that laughter moves through them like the city's pulse. I lay out what I'll need to remember in the morning and what I'll forget if I trust adrenaline: wraps, tape, oil cloth, Rawst and Awakening, chalk, bells, a length of rope, two bottles of water, a clean cloth, extra socks because I am not above respecting small comforts. I write the plan where I can see it from the bed and from the floor and from the moment in a battle when I'll want to lie to myself.
Open with Dark pressure. Luxio first, not for volts but for Bite and speed. If Fantina punishes that rhythm, pivot to Grotle Bite and anchor lines, then move the wall.
Honedge guards. Flat strike to cut Night Shade illusions, punish overreaches with small answers, then leave. Do not mirror-duel for long.
Tyrunt works position. Half-arc only until second exchange. Use controlled tail taps to move targets into Grotle's radius or Luxio's lane.
Listen to bells. If sound lies, it's not mine. Reclaim timing.
Do not repeat the same success. Change the rhyme. Fantina hunts habits.
I hear Cynthia in my head on that last line. She'd ask what story I plan to tell about us. If I bring the cocky kid with the predatory Luxio, Fantina will edit me out of my own chapter. If I bring the clever boy who hides behind a sword, she'll make me a footnote. If I bring patience that refuses to fossilize into passivity, pressure that changes rhyme before it's requested, listening as a form of force—maybe I'll make her rewrite with me.
We eat on the floor because beds are for sleeping and my team knows the difference. Luxio curls like spilled mercury on the blanket and pretends he is not watching to see if I notice how bravely he's cooling down. Tyrunt nosedives into his bowl with the loud athleticism of the perpetually hungry and then blinks up at me like he can't believe food exists. Grotle eats with slow purpose, eyes on the candles flicker out the window; he is a creature built for longer meals and longer thoughts, and I love him for it. Honedge has the ritual again: water along the edge, oil at the guard, a slow rub that leaves my hands smelling like clean metal and citrus. His eye droops into happy slits, and if a sword can purr, the hum he makes is that.
Night in Hearthome is not silent; it's curated. Bells step through the hours like careful conversation. I thread two of the small bells I bought into my left sleeve cuff and two into my right, where my wrist will tell me the truth if my eyes don't. I loop rope around a chair leg and around my waist and practice short pulls and clean releases while Grotle watches me with the tolerant bafflement of a friend who has seen weirder. Release matters as much as pull; letting go at the right second turns a hit into a miss.
When the bakery below raps pans, the room vibrates at a domestic frequency I want to bottle for later. I sit with my back to the bed frame and let the day unfurl out of my shoulders one muscle at a time. I don't rehearse glory. I rehearse not flinching when the room tries to make me hurry. Every time my brain starts to cut together a montage of us winning, I swap in words: breathe. Listen. Pivot. Half-arc. Flat strike. Bite when the space thins. Leave before it bites you back. Change the rhyme. The list is not magic. It's a handhold.
Tyrunt sprawls with abandon, tail draped over my shin; I slide my palm under the muscle so it cools supported, not twisted. Luxio's whiskers twitch as if the afterimages of sparks are dream-weather crossing his face. Grotle makes the soft snore of a contented cupboard. Honedge shifts once in the corner where the curtain makes a deeper dark and then becomes furniture in the best way.
And, because the city is the kind of teacher that checks whether you did your reading, a shadow at the window moves wrong for a moment—too deliberate, too smooth—and my sleeve bells go tink at an angle that's not mine. I turn my head without haste. Just the wind. Or something that wanted to be mistaken for it. I say aloud, for the benefit of my heartbeat and maybe for anything listening, "I hear me," and the bells answer as if to say good.
Tomorrow is a square on a screen and a room that will want to tell me a story. The nurse at the Center gave me only the facts bodies live by. The city gave me the rest in chimes and ropes and people who don't insult you by pretending ghosts aren't real. Cynthia—that careful voice I keep in my pocket—gave me the lens for it: refuse the first version of yourself the room offers. Write your own second line.
The lantern strings outside hold their intervals with no sag. The bells settle. My hands smell like oil and chalk, and the little bell I tied to Grotle's leaf earlier murmurs each time he breathes. I close my eyes not because I have made peace with outcomes, but because I have a list and a team and a story that will try very hard not to rhyme in an obvious place. The window listens. The floor keeps me. The city breathes, and I breathe back.