The sound of a ringing phone was lost in the din of rolling wheels, chatter and beeping in a hospice in Sunyshore City. Doors were flung open below. Perry's oldest brother, Jon Oak, rushed there from the international airport in Jubilife City. The last-minute flight cost him over two million Pokémon Dollars, but he had no choice. His grandfather on his mother's side, Volkner, was dying.
Jon didn't care about his mom, Daiya, who dumped him on Toru as soon as she realised a baby wouldn't make him stay. He did care about Volkner. He always made sure that Jon knew his mom was the only member of their family who didn't want him. He was even kind to Toru when he was without a father figure.
'Grandpa... I'm here...'
Jon heard sobbing and feared his grandpa was already dead, but Volkner looked as bored as ever as two of his children and one grandchild broke down. Jon's aunt, Daiya's sister Winter, rushed there like he did, from Unova where she was a member of the Elite Four. Her twin brother, Vetle, was the one keeping his cool. He looked as bored as his father. Daiya sobbed even more when her abandoned son ignored her.
'Hey, Jon...'
'I got the last seat on the plane... Dad couldn't make it...'
'Doesn't matter...'
The phone rang for the ninth time outside. No-one in the room heard it. Reira was about to try again, because she had to get through somehow, but then she wondered if Jon was there. She found his number and called him. He ignored it. Would he be more likely to pick up a relative's call? She called her daughter, the Orre League Champion Amaryllis, who asked Perry to call Jon. When he felt his phone vibrating again, he reached to switch it off, but he knew Volkner wasn't exactly joking when he said a telemarketer would be more interesting than listening to all that sobbing.
'Perry? This is bad timing...'
'I know, I know! But Rillie's mom's been trying to call the hospice and there's no answer. She needs to talk to Volkner before he drops dead.'
'Really sensitive phrasing, Pezzinator.'
Volkner sounded vaguely curious. 'Who wants to talk to me?'
'I'm gonna hang up so she can call. Answer it. OK?'
'I mean... if you're OK with it, Grandpa...'
Daiya glared. She didn't care who was calling. She didn't want her father's last moments to be taken up by some stranger. Winter and her daughter were so shaken by the news and rushed journey that they didn't even know what to think. Jon answered Reira's call.
'Hey...'
'Hello, Jon. I know this is the worst timing possible, but may I please speak to Mr. Pasternak?'
'OK...'
Volkner couldn't hold the phone, so Jon held it to his ear.
'How can I help...?'
'I am Senior Inspector Reira Mesquite Fayed of the International Police.'
'Really...? This does sound interesting... vaguely, anyway...'
'If you are up to it, I need to ask you about the Ginkgo Co., formerly known as the Ginkgo Guild – or specifically, a certain member, Volo Lucine.'
'...Volo? Never heard of her...'
'He was a man, but anyway – I wondered if, as the oldest living descendant of his employer – Ginter Pasternak – you might know of any of his diaries or records.'
'...Ginter's records...? They...'
Jon's chest tightened when his grandfather's weak speech turned to a coughing fit. This was like a bad movie.
'Forget it!' Daiya insisted, 'Dad! Forget that! Dad! No! Don't waste your voice–!'
'...Shut up, Daiya... Ginter's records... they... a drawer... the office... J...'
Vetle finally looked as stricken as he felt inside. He owned the Ginkgo Corporation. He knew who Ginter was. He had no idea that such old records or diaries existed, let alone where they were.
'J...? Jubilife City...? The Ginkgo offices?'
'Vetle!' Daiya shrieked, 'Stop it! Let him talk to us!'
'Jon... Audra... see ya.'
Volkner's last words addressed his grandchildren. Daiya clung to his hand, which was still warm, but it would soon grow cold. He would say no more.
'Dad... no...'
Vetle held out his hand to Jon. He blankly passed his phone to his uncle.
'I'm the chairman of the Ginkgo Corporation. I'll search the offices.'
'Thank you,' Reira awkwardly replied, 'And... I'm so sorry. Please take your time.'
'But I have no idea which office he meant... or if that "J" was him trying to talk to Jon... so if you want to send a cop who can help me, go ahead...'
'I will. Thank you.'
Daiya glared even more fiercely at Vetle when he picked up his coat.
'Now you're – you're just leaving?! You don't even care!'
'It's what Dad would want... and what Dad would do. Excuse me.'
The door slammed shut behind him. Only a few moments later, a doctor asked the family to leave the room regardless. By the time she left, suited men waited with a body bag. That sight was cold, cruel confirmation to Jon that his grandpa was dead. He felt like he had to return to the room to say goodbye, because he was so stunned he was yet to actually say it; but he got the inexplicable feeling that his grandpa's spirit was long gone.
Jon didn't want his mother's comfort. He didn't hate her. He just didn't want her comfort, because frankly, she was no more than an acquaintance. Winter was the one who hugged him until his tears dried up.
The officers awaiting Vetle at the Ginkgo Co. HQ both had purple hair, but they weren't related. The older one, with darker skin and green eyes, showed her badge first.
'Bonjour. Senior Inspector Mirabelle Tayri. This is Detective Inspector Lien Eno.'
Vetle stiffly shook their hands. There was a pale line on Mirabelle's ring finger where a wedding band once was.
'Vetle Pasternak.'
'How are you feeling?'
'Can we not talk about that? Let's just get on with it.'
'Of course.'
The Ginkgo Co. logo glowed over the spotless lobby in fluorescent yellow. Vetle knew the company began as a merchant guild. He knew it evolved into the giant it was today, which even owned the auction site RotoBay, in the last century. His knowledge ended there. He focused on running and improving the company, not learning about its past. Volkner clearly mentioned an office. There was no point in searching the underground warehouse or common areas. Lien released two Pokémon, Growlithe and Swinub. Vetle doubted anyone but Volkner had touched some old records, so he gave the Pokémon an old hat to pick up his scent. They returned to Lien with a pencil case, jacket and another hat, but nothing more.
Meanwhile, Mirabelle and her Pokémon pulled on sterile gloves to search every drawer in the building themselves. Vetle was going to offer to help, but as soon as he gave her directions, she hurried off without another word. He got the impression that she wanted to be left alone. In fact, as he frowned, hearing thudding and crashing on every floor until she was so distant that it was barely audible, he got the impression that she was in a foul mood.
'Mr. Pasternak, I wondered if your wife...'
Lien's voice trailed off when she saw Vetle's expression. She was talking about his current wife, but in the aftermath of his father's death, he momentarily forgot he ever married again and thought she was referring to the wife who died when they were only 32. Lien would have understood if he said so. She joined the International Police after losing her father to Team Plasma.
'...You mean Faith. Right.'
'Yes...'
'Well? What about her?'
'Faith is Dawn's daughter, right? I wondered if she ever mentioned someone named Akari Akihiko.'
'You mean – that Akari? What's the deal with this Volo, anyway?'
'We know very little about Volo, except that he was erased from history. But the person who told us about him also mentioned Akari.'
'Didn't your colleague say he was called Volo Lucine? So he's something to do with Helene and Cynthia?'
'Probably, but they've never heard of him.'
'Anyway... are you talking about Faith's sister Akari? Or...?'
'Faith's sister...?'
'She went missing 44 years ago.'
'Oh! Yes! We are aware of that case, of course – but we assumed this Akari was an ancestor.'
'I wouldn't know if there was another Akari, to be honest... Faith couldn't care less about history. Ask Dawn. She's into that stuff.'
Khalid did ask Poppy if she had ever heard of Akari Akihiko. The answer seemed so obvious that she assumed Khalid was implying she was so self-absorbed, she didn't remember that her own aunt disappeared. Everyone knew she stormed out after an explosive argument. It was on the news.
'Thank you. I will ask Dawn.'
Lien was going to wait for Mirabelle's permission to leave, but two hours later, she was still busy searching. Lien was bored. Vetle continued to stare at the polished floor while she flew to Dawn's house in Hearthome City. The flat-roofed suburban home, with an overgrown garden, would have been unassuming without the tail of the legendary Pokémon Dialga sticking out of an upstairs window. Lien rang the doorbell. She heard a faint voice that still spoke Kantonian with a Unovan accent.
'I'll get it.'
Dawn's husband, Hilbert, answered the door. He looked exhausted, which only intensified when he saw Lien's badge.
'Come in...'
Dawn didn't need to see the badge to know that Lien was an International Police officer. She recognised the black suit right away. She resisted the urge to sigh. Before she sat beside Hilbert on the faded pink couch, she yelled to her Lopunny to switch the vacuum cleaner off.
'How can we help you?'
'I wanted to ask about Akari...'
Their faces lit up. For a moment, they both looked 10 years younger. It was years since the International Police even wrote to them to say there was no update on Akari's case. For an officer to visit them, they thought there had to be progress. Lien felt guilty.
'Unfortunately, this isn't exactly about Akari herself...'
The dark cloud of weariness returned. They looked their age again.
'But we're investigating a man who was erased from history – Volo Lucine – and the person who told us about him also mentioned an Akari Akihiko.'
Dawn's mouth opened and closed. She frowned.
'A man erased from history...?'
'Recent history?' Hilbert asked, 'Or...?'
'He probably lived about 300 years ago.'
Akari's parents blinked in synchrony. They couldn't imagine what in the world this had to do with their daughter.
'So I wanted to ask if you named Akari after an ancestor.'
Dawn shook her head.
'No... there was a bright red sky the morning she was born. She was named after that.'
'So... you don't have any ancestors called Akari...?'
'Not that I know of... why? Was there an Akari Akihiko around 300 years ago...?'
'Possibly.'
Hilbert glanced at his wife. Ingo's disappearance, a year before Akari's, upset him. He had fond memories of challenging the Battle Subway with Hilda, Neptune's mom. They came up with many theories about Ultra Wormholes and time travel. It never occurred to him that something similar could have happened to his own daughter... because that was the only explanation for why an Akari Akihiko would be mentioned alongside someone who lived 300 years ago. Dawn was still shaking her head.
'I went back 400 years in my family tree. There was never another Akari. I know there wasn't.'
Lien wasn't sure exactly why she was asking the next question, but intuition propelled her to regardless.
'When did you last edit your family tree?'
'Uh... I don't remember.'
'Was it before Akari disappeared?'
'Yeah...? I kind of stopped caring about my ancestors when my own daughter disappeared into thin air...'
'I understand.'
Lien hesitated. She told Vetle that she knew of Akari's case, because she did have a vague recollection of its existence, but she didn't really know anything about it.
'Would you mind reminding me what happened...?'
'She was here... in her room upstairs... and then she wasn't.'
'There were no signs of a break-in,' Hilbert added, 'She was just gone. The cops couldn't even find her footprints leaving the house. No fingerprints on the windows or anything...'
'But her phone was gone,' Dawn continued, 'And even though its last recorded location was here, in this house, the police couldn't find a single shard to suggest it was broken here...'
'It was literally like she disappeared into thin air... like... Ingo...'
Over six hours since she began her search, Mirabelle re-emerged from the elevator. Vetle was no longer there. After four hours passed, his Electivire gently shocked him. He finally stopped staring at the floor to realise that as usual, he was bored. He also subconsciously decided that Volkner wasn't going to mention Jubilife City when he tried to say something beginning with 'J.' The next thing he said was Jon's name. Perhaps, if Mirabelle hadn't found anything within four hours, Volkner was referring to his own office from when he reluctantly took over the company, before Vetle moved their HQ from Sunyshore City. He flew back to his father's hometown.
The office block was still owned by the Ginkgo Corporation. It housed their call centres. Staff glanced nervously at the chairman, but he hurried straight past. The old chairman's office, with a pleasant view of the ocean, was now a storage room. Electivire shoved broken cabinets and chairs aside. Vetle opened the desk's drawers. They were all empty. Perhaps his epiphany was a figment of boredom. Why would Volkner leave anything remotely important there? He resented having to look after his family's company when his aunt died. The records would be in the messy room he called an 'office' at home. That meant they were probably reduced to ash. Daiya's Ponyta once kicked the locked door open and, because she was young and inexperienced, it accidentally set fire to the room. All of Volkner's notes about remodelling Gyms and the city were destroyed.
'I don't think they're here, buddy...'
Electivire broke open a locked cabinet. A fusty smell drifted from the drawer it pulled out. It was full of wooden files. Inside the files were hundreds of pages of yellowed paper. They were Ginkgo Guild ledgers. The first one was dated 4 August 1749, before Ginter was even born.
'Well... maybe not.'
If Vetle had cared about his family history, it would have been fascinating to see the guild growing through the ledgers. Like Dawn stopped caring when her daughter disappeared, Vetle couldn't have cared less when his father had just died in the present; so why was he even bothering? It was like something compelled him to.
The handwriting changed in 1791, four years before Ginter took over from his father. Impatiently leafing through the pages, Vetle missed the point where Ginter recorded employing a Volo Lucine, but he couldn't miss the stash of notes that fell out after a certain point in the year 1811. Goods were going missing. Someone was stealing. There was never proof of who it was, but in 1812, more notes complained that Volo was becoming unreliable.
Amongst the guild's losses in late 1812 was a 'near apocalypse' that 'affected business for some time.' Then Volo himself disappeared. Vetle thought this couldn't get any more bizarre, but the notes proceeded to tell him that Volo was a 'lunatic' responsible for the 'near apocalypse,' which Ginter blamed for people seeming afraid of his merchants.
Vetle gathered the scattered notes and shoved the stack of files into his backpack. He took them back to the HQ in Jubilife City, where he spread them out on the table in a conference room for Mirabelle. She looked annoyed that a civilian found them before her, but she did see the page about Volo's employment that Vetle missed.
'Ah! Fantastisch! His ID!'
Indeed, there was a yellowed photo of Volo's ID. They could be certain, now, that he existed and was erased from history, but why? By who?
What did it have to do with Cipher or Team Plasma? The suggestion that they were connected seemed ludicrous, but it wasn't, because those Pokémon from Volo's time were alive and well in Galar; under the control of someone who looked like N, King of Team Plasma.