I couldn't remember the last time I fell in love. Not even in a familial or platonic sense. As a kid, I knew I was subject to a broken home. My friends and peers would come to school and would talk and talk about their family night and birthday parties and how they would come home and bake cookies with their mom unprompted by anything other than 'I was in the mood for some cookies'. I never had any of that. I would sulk home every day after school and sneak into my tiny room, back against the wall trying to avoid running into my parents because when I did, my next few hours would be a living hell of blind, unawarded servitude.
"Lugosi, make your father dinner."
"Lugosi, why aren't my clothes ironed and in the closet yet?"
"Lugosi, what the cuss are you doing? There are dishes in the sink!"
My friends didn't think it was anything abusive. They called them chores. They did it, too, they said. Abuse would be—like—burning your arms, they said. It wasn't abuse if the bruises faded away the next morning. I liked my friends, but they invalidated my experiences, so I couldn't love them. I was afraid of my parents. Whenever I saw them, I would be writhing in pain soon after. I was afraid of them, so I couldn't love them either.
The academy was my light at the end of a long, burning tunnel. Naranja Academy, the famous Paldean school specializing in Pokémon battling, sponsored by the region's champion, La Primera Geeta, herself, accepted students of any age. The school offered core classes for graduation while also tying Pokémon knowledge in with elective classes. It was a fascinating experience that required students to live in dorms in the gigantic building in order to embark on the twenty-four-hour on-site adventure. I didn't care much for Pokémon battling, but the idea of finally living on my own, to not wake up every single day in petrifying fear of being beaten, to finally experience what it was like to be free, was exhilarating. My mom told me she wasn't going to sign me up until my high school years. She said it would take my focus away from the important classes, so I had to wait 15 long years before I could taste salvation. She died when I was pretty young, so it didn't matter anyway. I wasn't able to sign myself up for the academy until I was 17. The house was finally quiet and safe, but I couldn't help but hear her voice down the hallway. Just being around the house gave me intense anxiety.
The first day of the academy was heavenly. It was so bright outside and the Pokémon were singing all around me as I left the house in my new uniform. My neighbor, Nemona, joined me on the path and let me know about the director's special initiation for every student. Every new student was gifted one of three starter Pokémon native to the region: quaxly, fuecoco, or sprigatito.
"Do you have any idea who you're gonna choose?" Nemona asked me as we walked alongside each other towards the walled town in the distance.
I shrugged. "I've never had a Pokémon. Couldn't afford a ball."
"Lucky for you, La Primera makes sure every single student in the academy is able to have a full team of their own. We all get our own belts, look!" She lifted the edge of her white shirt to show me her black belt with three red Pokéballs attached to either side.
"Wow," I admired. "Aren't Pokéballs expensive? And for every student?"
Nemona giggled. "La Primera is the champion of Paldea. Of course, she has the money. Plus, some of the best trainers have come out of the academy because of her curriculum." Nemona attended the academy all her life. Her parents were what informed mine about it. According to her classmates I had met when they visited the neighborhood, Nemona was the most ambitious trainer the director had ever seen. She made her way up to school president and had recently begun a path to defeat the Pokémon League. She had told me that Geeta, herself, visited the school to help send her off on that journey. It felt like everyone in the academy was rooting for her.
There was a rustle by the beachside. A pretty loud one at that. Something big was nearby, and it was rare that anything of decent size was in the south province, let alone by the town of Los Platos. I stopped in my tracks. Nemona must've heard it, too, since she was standing behind me, looking into the bushes. Curiosity had me creeping towards the noise. "Lugosi," Nemona whispered. "What are you trying to do? You don't have any Pokéballs yet." I've seen many Pokémon in my life, some were friendly, and some were a bit sensitive. I figured that if I approached whatever it was calmly, it wouldn't attack. Nemona followed close behind, worried about my safety.
I began to see a red shape behind the shrubs, digging its long muzzle into the sand, looking for something. Before I got any closer, I slipped my bag off my back silently and pulled out my lunch. I had made myself a meat and cheese sandwich that morning. I ripped off a small piece at the end and went forward, waving the piece around, hoping the Pokémon would smell it.
"You're trying to feed it?" Nemona hissed. She was very good at pointing out the obvious. The Pokémon made a high-pitched cooing noise, raising its head and sniffing around. It noticed me and the food in my hand and stared at it eagerly with its two round, amber eyes. I waved the piece a little more, trying to get the Pokémon to come over to me. I could hear Nemona holding her breath behind me. It started to come out of the undergrowth. It was a pretty massive quadruped reptilian creature with huge claws at the end of each limb. It had pretty blue, pink, and white feathers at the top of its head that were quite dirty from the sand. I had never seen a Pokémon like it before. It looked so powerful yet extremely tired.
I felt its hot breath as it came closer to my hand and took the offering. It gobbled it down messily in a few ravenous chomps. "It's friendly!" I shouted, turning my back to it to face Nemona.
She pointed by my feet, eyes wide. "Watch out!" I jumped instinctively. The Pokémon had muzzled its way into my backpack and was slobbering over the rest of the sandwich.
"Hey!" I yanked my backpack up by its straps, and the sandwich rolled out of the top. I tried to catch it with a hand, but the reptile snagged it with its quick jaws. "Aw, I was gonna eat that," I whined.
Nemona placed a hand on my shoulder. "What did you expect to happen feeding a wild Pokémon? Oh, well. We have a cafeteria at the academy."
"Why didn't you tell me that before I gruelingly slaved over making my lunch, huh?" I scolded her. I zipped up my backpack and swung it back over my shoulders, following my friends back onto the path.
"You get grumpy when I call you in the morning."
There was a lighthouse on our way to the academy we liked to touch for good luck. We lived by the shore, so it wasn't much of a journey to get there. Nemona insisted that today was the perfect day to touch the building. "To start the year with good luck!" We both raised a hand and placed it on the highest brick we could reach on our tippy-toes. Nemona was a lot taller than I was, so she was probably going to soak up most of the magic.
The door to the small hut attached to the tower flew open with a crash. "Do you have anything better to do than scream incoherently?" A tall boy in a school uniform stood in the doorway, long blondish silver hair a frizzy mess, blue eyes narrowed in irritation.
Nemona waved, "Hi, Arven! I've never seen that door open. Is this your lighthouse?"
"No!" The boy said quickly as if he were defending something. "It doesn't matter. School will be starting in— Hey! There you are!" I turned around. The big, red Pokémon had been following us. "Get back here!" Arven dashed after him, and the reptile leapt out of the way and cowered beside me, his strong body pushing me into a stumble.
I pet the Pokémon's feathery head. "Aw, is this cutie yours?"
Arven snarled. "He's my mom's. He's a freak Pokémon from her lab she's been researching, but she gave him to me because she didn't need him anymore. He never listens to me though!" I glared at the Pokémon, and it growled at him. "If you want him, you could have him. He gives me enough trouble." Arven held out the ball. I looked over at Nemona.
"Director Clavell will still give you a starter," she told me. "Go ahead!"
"This is your first year?" Arven laughed sinisterly, underhanding the ball to me. "Good luck with him."
I played with the smooth, red ball in my hand. That enormous Pokémon was somehow able to fit in the tiny thing. "What is it?" I asked. I needed to call the Pokémon something.
"My mom called it a koraidon. I don't know anything about it. That's all I know. It's a koridon," he explained.
"Koraidon," I whispered.
"Do you wanna walk with us?" Nemona offered, Arven already beginning to shut himself back into the light station. "We're heading to the school right now."
He paused to take a breath. "No." He slammed the door shut behind him.
Nemona shook my shoulder. "Don't mind him. He's always been like that. Gotten a lot worse actually. Let's show the director the koraidon you got!"
We continued on our way down the dirt path through the rolling hills, the koraidon following behind, poking my backpack every so often. "That's the professor's son," Nemona explained. "Professor Sada. She's incredible. She's invented almost everything we have on the island."
"Wow. Do you think the lighthouse was Arven's lab?"
Nemona shrugged. "Maybe. It's always locked, and the only person I know who has the key is him now."
Mesagoza was the academy town, completely surrounded by a huge, concrete wall. It was very student friendly, local restaurants of every culture, open clearings for Pokémon battles, benches and tables strewn about. It was outstanding how the academy treated its students just by the atmosphere. The gates opened up to allow us both in, and the bustling noise of excited new and returning students filled the air. The koraidon started and returned to its ball. Nemona gestured at a pointed castle-like building at the top of an enormous flight of pearly white stairs. "That's Naranja Academy. You can't miss it. It's in the middle of Mesagoza wherever you are."
"Where do we get the starter?" I asked, having to raise my voice to be heard over the crowd.
"I'll take you to your dorm. Director Clavell will be visiting you there sometime today." She waved at me to follow, and she skipped agilely into the fray.