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Chapter 1: Things That Stay and Things That Don't
The movie ended quietly.
No loud climax. No final battle stretching into spectacle. Just a long shot of the sky, clouds drifting slowly, and Pokémon standing beside humans as if that had always been the natural order of things.
The title faded. Music lingered.
Pokémon: Echoes Beyond Tomorrow.
Aarav stayed seated until the credits finished scrolling. He always did. It wasn't reverence—just habit. Leaving early felt like abandoning something before it had fully said what it wanted to say.
Around him, people stood, talked, laughed softly. Someone mentioned how good the animation was. Someone else complained about the pacing. Normal reactions.
Aarav stood, adjusted the strap of his bag, and followed the crowd out.
The night air outside the theatre was cool and faintly damp. The earlier rain had left the road slick, reflecting streetlights in broken yellow lines. Traffic moved steadily. Not rushed. Not slow.
He walked without checking his phone.
Aarav was twenty-one. He worked part-time at a veterinary clinic, mostly handling intake and recovery. It wasn't glamorous work. It paid poorly. It involved more loss than success.
He'd chosen it anyway.
Pokémon had been part of his life longer than he could remember. He wasn't sure when it had shifted from "something he liked" into something quieter and deeper. At some point, Pokémon stopped being about battles or power and became about coexistence.
Maybe that was because he loved animals.
Or maybe he loved animals because Pokémon had taught him to look at them that way.
He'd stopped trying to separate the two.
Three weeks ago, his dog had died.
Chronic disease. Diagnosed late. Managed carefully. Medication schedules taped to the fridge. Measured hope. Controlled expectations.
Aarav had known how it would end.
That didn't make the silence afterward any easier.
The apartment felt wrong now. Too orderly. Too empty. No sound of movement when he came home. No weight settling near his feet when he sat down.
Pokémon lived longer, he thought again.
Some lived decades. Some centuries. Some were spoken of as eternal.
The idea didn't comfort him. It just highlighted the difference between fiction and reality.
He reached a pedestrian crossing and stopped. The signal was red.
That was when he heard the barking.
High, sharp, uneven. Panic more than aggression.
Aarav turned his head.
A small girl stood on the sidewalk holding a leash. The leash wasn't attached to anything. The clasp dangled uselessly from her hand.
The dog ran.
Not fast. Just fast enough. Slipping slightly on the wet road, moving without direction.
The girl froze for a moment.
Then she ran after it.
Her parents shouted. One reached for her arm and missed.
Aarav moved.
He didn't think of it as a decision. It felt more like muscle memory. He'd done this before—chasing animals that bolted, stepping into situations where hesitation made things worse.
He crossed diagonally, eyes fixed on the child.
The dog reached the road and stopped abruptly, confused by the lights and noise.
The girl followed.
A car approached from the right.
Not speeding. Not reckless. Just close enough.
Aarav reached her just as she stepped forward.
He grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled back hard, turning his body so she took the fall instead of the road. She hit the pavement and cried immediately, more startled than hurt.
The sound was sharp. Alive.
The dog barked again.
The car swerved.
There wasn't enough space.
Aarav felt the impact as weight and force, not pain. His body hit the ground at an angle. Shoulder first. Then his head.
The world tilted.
He lay still, staring up at the streetlight. It flickered once, then steadied.
Sounds came in fragments. Someone shouting. Someone else kneeling beside him. A voice asking questions he couldn't answer.
He tried to move his fingers.
Nothing happened.
His chest felt heavy. Breathing took effort.
So that's that, he thought, without panic.
It didn't feel dramatic. Just final.
His dog came to mind—not the sickness, not the clinic, just the way it used to wait by the door even when it was tired.
Aarav exhaled slowly.
Pokémon movies always made endings feel cleaner than they were.
His vision narrowed. The edges darkened.
Then something changed.
The streetlight vanished.
In its place was light—not harsh, not blinding. A soft, golden glow that filled his fading vision.
There was a shape within it.
Not clear. Not defined. It stood on four legs, tall and steady. The outline reminded him vaguely of a horse—or maybe a large dog—but the form was indistinct, as if the details didn't matter.
Its body wasn't solid.
It shimmered, as if made of light held together by intention. A golden aura flowed around it, calm and contained.
It didn't move.
It didn't speak.
It simply was.
Aarav stared at it, detached, accepting. Hallucination made sense. His brain misfiring at the end made sense.
Still, the image lingered.
The figure's eyes met his—not human, not animal in any ordinary way. Clear. Steady. Unreadable.
Not judging.
Not inviting.
Just present.
His thoughts slowed.
If this was the last thing he saw, he decided, it wasn't a bad image to go out on.
Golden light. Stillness. Something that looked like it could endure.
His vision dimmed completely.
Consciousness slipped away.