Chapter 325: Lisia
"What's going on with Brendan? Did you two have a fight?"
Lillie knew it was a blunt question the moment it left her mouth, but she asked it anyway. Ryan quietly took a sip of his black tea and settled back, ready to listen.
May let out a slow breath, sat down beside Lillie, and started talking.
The short version: after Brendan and May had taken over as Hoenn branch co-leaders, the workload had picked up steadily. Between running the branch and helping track down the scattered Arceus Plate fragments across the region, the two of them had been constantly on the move. It was tiring, but it was good — the kind of work that felt meaningful, and the time spent traveling together had brought them closer in ways that the quieter days at headquarters hadn't.
Then, during a Pokémon Contest Grand Festival, Brendan had met someone.
Her name was Lisia. She was a fellow Coordinator — and not just any Coordinator. Lisia was one of the most recognized names on the Grand Festival circuit, the kind of performer the crowds came specifically to watch, known widely as the Contest Idol. After that introduction, Brendan had started meeting with her regularly. Private meetings. Outings that he hadn't mentioned until after the fact, and recently, hadn't mentioned at all.
May's delivery was controlled and even as she laid it out. Her hands were folded in her lap, her voice was level, and she was clearly working to keep it that way. The effort was visible.
Ryan listened to the whole thing without comment, turning his empty teacup slowly in his hands. He knew May. He knew the particular quality of anger in her voice — the kind that came from feeling genuinely hurt rather than just annoyed — and he took it seriously. But he also knew Brendan, and Brendan wasn't the type. He simply wasn't. Whatever was actually happening here, Ryan was confident it wasn't what it looked like from May's side. He kept that thought to himself for now and made a decision.
"Alright." He set the teacup down and stood up. "Lillie, you two stay and talk. I'm going to go find Brendan."
Lillie caught the look he gave her over May's shoulder and nodded once — I've got her, go — with a small gesture that said she understood exactly what he was doing.
Ryan slipped out of the lounge and closed the door behind him.
In the corridor, he pulled out his Pokégear and called Brendan. The holographic display flickered to life, and Brendan's face appeared — lighting up with genuine surprise for about half a second before Ryan's expression and his opening line brought him back to earth.
"Brendan. Where are you? I'm coming to you. Alone. It's about May."
The enthusiasm on Brendan's face deflated. He ran a hand through his hair and made a quiet, resigned gesture. "Petalburg Woods. I'll send you my location. Come find me."
Ryan ended the call, tucked the Pokégear away, and walked out through the branch's front entrance. He released Charizard with a smooth underhand toss, swung up onto its back before it had fully landed, and Charizard launched skyward with a single powerful downstroke that scattered a small crowd of onlookers and flattened their hair in all directions.
Within seconds, Charizard was a speck against the sky. Then it was gone entirely.
Back at the branch entrance, approximately forty-five seconds later, May appeared at the front doors with Lillie half a step behind her.
May had made her decision with the kind of speed that suggested she'd already been thinking about it before Ryan had even left the room. She sent out her Beautifly — no, on second thought, she reached for a different Poké Ball entirely. Colress's Genesect production program had reached the milestone Ryan had set months ago: one unit for each elite-level Guild member. May's Genesect unfolded from its disc configuration the moment it materialized, its cannon mount rotating into a stable position.
"May," Lillie said carefully, "are we sure this is a good idea? Ryan went specifically so they could talk privately—"
"Brendan is going to explain himself today." May pulled Lillie onto the Genesect's back with zero hesitation and gave the command. Genesect tilted forward and accelerated in the direction Charizard had gone.
Lillie held on and decided that some situations were simply outside her ability to manage.
Charizard covered the distance to Petalburg Woods in under four minutes. Ryan dropped from its back and recalled it in one motion, and found Brendan exactly where he'd said he'd be — standing in a quiet clearing between the trees.
He wasn't alone. The girl beside him was about their age, with bright eyes and an easy confidence in the way she stood. She was wearing a Contest Coordinator's outfit — performance-grade, the kind of thing you wore because it was your identity, not just your job.
Brendan looked up when Ryan arrived, and managed a tired smile. "Long time no see."
"Save it," Ryan said pleasantly. "What's going on between you and May?"
Brendan opened his mouth, closed it, and looked sideways at nothing in particular with the expression of someone who had practiced an explanation and was now reconsidering the whole thing.
The girl beside him, however, stepped forward without hesitation and extended her hand to Ryan. Her smile was composed and completely unrattled. "Hi. I'm Lisia. You're the Guild President — I've heard a lot about you." She shook his hand with a firm grip. "And you've probably heard about me in a less-than-flattering context."
"Contest Idol," Ryan said. "The name came up."
"It usually does." Lisia withdrew her hand and glanced at Brendan with the fond exasperation of someone who had been watching a disaster develop in slow motion. "I'll just tell you directly, since Brendan clearly isn't going to. There's no story here. We've been meeting because Brendan has been asking me for advice on Coordinator culture — what resonates with audiences, how the performance side of Contests works, that kind of thing. He wanted to understand it better." She paused, letting that land. "Because he's been planning to propose to May. And apparently he thought the best way to do that was to ask someone who knows the Contest world for help putting something together that she'd actually love. He just didn't tell her any of that, because—" she gestured at Brendan with one hand, "—this is what he does."
Ryan looked at Brendan.
Brendan was staring at a tree with great focus, his ears visibly red.
Ryan pressed two fingers to his forehead and took a slow breath. "Brendan. I love you. You are one of my closest friends. But May is fiery, perceptive, competitive, and does not handle uncertainty well. You know this. You have known this since you were ten years old. And your solution to 'I want to do something nice for her' was to disappear repeatedly without explanation—"
"I didn't want to spoil the surprise—"
"Ah! Stop!"
Everyone froze.
May had emerged from the treeline, Lillie one step behind her, both of them slightly out of breath. May's face was red — not from the flight, Ryan noted, but from everything else. She was staring at Brendan with an expression that was cycling rapidly through several competing emotions at once.
Lillie caught Ryan's eye and gave a small, helpless shrug. I genuinely tried.
The clearing went completely quiet.
May looked at Brendan. Brendan looked at May. The red in his ears had moved to his entire face, and he had stopped pretending to look at the tree.
After a long moment, May's voice came out very small and very carefully controlled — about as far as it was possible to get from her usual tone. "...Were you actually planning to propose?"
Brendan's jaw worked. He managed approximately no words.
Ryan looked at Lisia. Lisia looked at Ryan. Without a word, Ryan took Lillie's hand, Lisia fell into step on his other side, and all three of them quietly moved away through the trees, putting a reasonable amount of distance between themselves and the clearing.
Some conversations needed exactly two people.
(End of Chapter)
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