The sun was arched high in the bright blue sky, and a flurry of graduation caps flew into it.
Traditional high-school graduations were designed similar to the graduations one would have in college; not all the students would be going on to further, higher education, since most of them were of age and able to start a Pokémon journey of their own.
Perhaps Touya Kibo would be one of those.
He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted to do.
He'd graduated salutatorian—the second-best in his entire class of nearly four hundred students. Which he found surprising, given people he knew like Cheren and his own twin, Touko, were amongst the students. The title attracted the unwanted attention of giving an opening speech, which was two minutes of him standing in front of the crowd of graduating teenagers and their families and stuttering out some inspirational nonsense that Touko helped him write, but it also attracted wanted attention in the form of colleges. He'd applied to many places, even reaching out-of-region, nearly ten of them. All ten, he got accepted into, most of them being full-rides, which made both of his parents jovial.
Yet at the same time, Touya wasn't sure that's what he wanted to do.
He wasn't exactly surewhat he wanted to do.
College was an option, and most places said that they'd hold his place for a whole year and a half, if Touya wished to take a journey around the region, and even the length of time was debatable.
When family members he hadn't seen in years asked him at the reception after the graduation, Touya shrugged it off, trying to feign the same confidence his sister had.
Touko was a natural at talking to people, an outgoing soul living in a house full of introverts. It was some sort of miracle that she never ended up going insane on cold days when she couldn't leave the house. Once she got her own Pokémon, though, it was much easier.
Technically it was meant for both of them—a Patrat, who Touko nicknamed Meatloaf, because he was often sluggish and a bit of a sloth—but Touko took him out more than Touya ever would, nonetheless.
The reception was followed by a battle by the top two students—not Touya, who didn't train a Pokémon of his own, or even the girl who was valedictorian. The top two students in the battle courses were called back to the center of the gym, their graduation robes flowing dramatically with them.
Cheren Kimura was one of the two. He was one of the few students not native to Asperita, where the high school technically was, like Touya and Touko were. There were four of them, in total, complete "outsiders"—they lived in Nuvema, and had to take a fifteen-minute walk to even get to school. He called out his Purrloin, and his opponent, a girl who Touya only knew as Eri, who in return, sent out a Pansear.
He'd watched them battle before. It had ended in a tie the previous time, Eri holding strong with her Pansear and Cheren's speed to his advantage with his Purrloin, and Cheren had barely managed to defeat her. Either way, the two of them were going to be the two who battled in front of the graduating class on graduation day, as the rules go.
Touya found his sister, sitting in the seats, next to the other student from Nuvema—a girl named Bianca Taketatsu, but Touko often shortened it to "Bel". They'd been inseparable since the first day of high school, and Cheren was dragged into a bit, too. Touya himself was technically part of their friend group, but on the technicality that he was the twin brother, so none of them were really friends-- acquaintances, more or less.
"Who do you think's gonna win, Touko?" Bianca asked, looking down at the fight with her fists clenched, but eyes wide and sparkling.
Touko was a natural battler, and really deserved the spot that Eri had, but she'd flunked out on the battle trial the last day on purpose, to avoid the unwanted duties that the students who won had to have. She only took a glance down to the field before saying, "I think it's gonna be Cheren. Cleo's got a slight advantage because of her dark-type, and Chili's strongest move is Lick, which is ghost-type."
Bianca nodded in response. Sometimes, Touya wondered if Bianca really understood anything that was going on.
True enough, the battle went as expected. For two fledgling trainers, Cheren and Eri, the battle was dramatic and worthy of an epic soundtrack behind them. For the parents and students who had seen grander battles, it was a bit more...lackluster.
But it was over soon enough, with Cheren grabbing a last-second victory over Eri. Which was rightfully deserved, Eri was a prick, mostly to the Nuvema town kids like them.
"Go, Cheren!" Bianca called out from where they sat, her hat nearly falling off of her face in the process. Cheren glanced up at the sudden sound of his voice, but upon finding out who it belonged to, blushed feverishly and looked down to the ground. Embarrassed, sheepish, shy? It was obvious to everyone but Bianca the boy's massive crush on her-- and Touya didn't have to look into his memories for that.
Speaking of which, the gloves on his hands were getting really hot.
🌠🌠🌠
Touya and Touko Kibo were born to Aiko and Yasu Kibo on a cool December morning, only a few minutes apart. Each twin would tell you they're the oldest, contradicting the other, but in reality, Touko first saw the world, and he was silent as the morning he was born on. Touko was the verbal one, crying as she took her first, gaping breaths, but Touya didn't cry at all. He was immediately taken by the doctors, to make sure no fluid had caught itself in his lungs, but it took the moment his mother held him for the first time for him to cry.
It was brushed off, at that point. Touya and Touko were both perfectly healthy babies, only a few days after their expected due date. They were inseparable, even as newborns, and they were just the same as night and day, Touko a bright, giggling girl, Touya a quiet baby, both with the large brown eyes of their father.
Touya was healthy, but would wake up every night as a toddler, for no known reason. They blamed it on just Touya being a baby and crying, as babies do, and if he didn't cry in the morning, maybe he only cried at night like some sort of vampire (a fun joke his father often told). Aiko took him to the doctor one day for a checkup, to make sure that Touya was as healthy as the day he was born, and the tests for everything came back negative. They tried moving the crib into their room for a while, instead of down the hall, and it worked for a few months, but there would still be nights where Touya would wake up, crying, for no reason.
"It must be nightmares." said the doctor, finally, after his four-month checkup. "There's not much you can do about it except comfort him if he does happen to wake up."
And they did. For three years, until Touya was able to speak.
One sunny afternoon in April, as Touko played in the backyard with the family Pokémon, a Delcatty that Aiko had picked up during her stay in Hoenn, that Touya tugged on her dress. The young boy was extremely touch-averse to everyone but his sister, and he held onto the bottom of Aiko's dress and asked his mother, "How do you stop the things?"
"What do you mean, Touya?" Aiko asked, leaning down to her son. She placed her hand on his shoulder, being mindful of the sleeve. Even then, Touya flinched.
"I-- the things you see, when you t-touch people." Touya glanced down at his hands. "When people touch me, I see things."
"Like what, honey?" Thinking it to once again be Touya's overactive imagination (and strange obsession with the myth and lore of the county), Aiko entertained it. It wasn't like he was a psychic or anything, because those were rare and few in numbers, and people with abilities are as rare as people with Albinism.
"When-- when Daddy picked me up today, a-and I froze up, I saw Daddy, but Daddy was like Obito's age, and a Pokémon, and..." As the young toddler continued to babble about what he had seen, Aiko's mind shifted. What if her son was one of those people born with abilities.
It turns out, Touya was. After a long flight from Asperita to Opelucid, and a visit with a specialized doctor, Touya was "diagnosed" as a P.U.A.-- a person with an unusual ability. To Unovan law, no such person was subjected to any League-associated law, not on any sort of registered list for people like him, allowing him to live freely.
Or, as freely as he could, with a growing case of hapephobia and misophonia.
At least then, they understood Touya's true abilities. His ability was dubbed "Clarivoyance", allowing him to see the memories of anything living or nonliving he touched. The nonliving aspect of his ability was easy to control, but if the palms of his hands (or, strangely, the soles of his feet, too) came into contact with a living person, or if a living being touched him without warning, his ability would trigger an "episode", where he could either zone-out for a good five minutes, or even faint.
Nearly eighteen and a half years later, Touya still didn't have full control over his ability-- gloves were his precaution, and he became adjusted to wearing long-sleeved clothing or avoiding people when it got blisteringly hot out. No one knew about his ability, except for his family, and Bianca and Cheren (who had, unfortunately, witnessed an episode when he was fourteen at school), and Touya was determined to keep it that way.
His ability led to a bit of withdraw from the world, which he didn't mind much. But he was always hoping, always waiting for the moment when the world would try, maybe one last time, to allow him into it, and when that opportunity came knocking, Touya opened the door wide.
🌠🌠🌠
"Professor Juniper is looking for lab assistants?" Touya asked, peering over the paper his sister had just handed to him.
Touko nodded, too quick for him to see, smiling and brushing Meatloaf's fur. They both sat on her bed together, looking over the flyer that Touko had, admittedly, ripped off of the window of the local laboratory and immediately taken home for Touya to see.
One week ago, the both of them graduated, unsure of what they were going to do in the world. They both knew travel was on their list, but it was hard for the Kibo family to afford to keep both Meatloaf and the family Delcatty, Roma, fed along with them. College was next on the list, and though they both got accepted into many schools for little to no money, there was a bit of hesitation there. After all, most people took a gap year, or two, or three to travel, and whatever college they ended up deciding on, their spots would be hold for at least two years. The twins figured that one day, once they figured out how they could make money on the road, they would set out, and Touko would help catch a Pokémon partner for him.
"And it's paid?"
Touko shrugged. "I don't know how much. By 'pay', she could mean that we would get paid for every job we did, or they can also mean 'we'll pay for your expenses on the road'." She stopped brushing Meatloaf's fur, pulling knots of fur off of the brush in disgust. "Honestly, Loaf, where does all this fur come from?"
The Patrat only chirped in response, closing her eyes and expecting more pets. She was, lack of a better term, spoiled.
"But, but, but but!" Touko looked Touya dead in the eye, their matching brown eyes meeting. "Whether or not it's paid, I think it's worth a shot."
"How many people are going to go for it?" Touya asked. "If we're out against real competition--"
"Oh, my dear brother, my dear Debbie-Downer brother, always the pessimist..." Touko interrupted, picking up Meatloaf and putting her on top of his lap, instead. She stood talk and proud, crossing her arms. "It asks for the young people in Nuvema. How many of there are us?"
"...Four."
"Right! We can grab 'Bel and Cheren, and all four of us have an excuse to leave this small town and see the world!"
Touya glanced back down at the paper. In smaller text, below the eye-catching "HELP WANTED: LAB ASSISTANT" title, was, "Only Three Spots." Three was a common number with Professors, associated with the three elemental starters that they're known to give out. "But the three--"
"Three spots for the three starters." Touko winked. "I've got Meatloaf now." She was always registered to Touko's trainer card, both the provisional and now their new, shiny badges. It made sense that Meatloaf would go along with her. Touko sighed again, sitting back down next to him on her bed. "I guess... I'm not really that into the whole job thing. She's asking us to go around the region, which I was already going to do. It'd be nice to get paid, but if there are really only three spots, then..." Her eyes met his again, and they sparkled. There was no sign of lost, forlorn look in them, his sister was anything but sad. Sad wasn't something Touko felt, at all, it seemed. She was always happy, always positive, and she was determined. "I want you to have it."
Touya glanced back down at the flyer, and then, the room around him. Their entire bedroom took up the entirety of the second floor, the roof bending into the room at awkward angles. The only thing separating them and giving them separate spaces was the old divider, which only stood half-open, most of the time. Touko would do anything for him, and he would do anything for her. They were each other's cornerstone, even when they were not around each other.
"Okay. I'll try it."