Chapter 3 – First Night
Sandgem Town was small.
That was the first thing I noticed. After the forest and the dark and the Ursaring and everything else, I'd half expected the first real place I saw in Sinnoh to feel significant somehow. Dramatic. Like arriving somewhere that matched the weight of what had just happened to me.
It didn't. It just looked like a small coastal town at night maybe thirty buildings, a few lit windows, the distant sound of water. The air smelled of salt and pine and something faintly electric that I couldn't place.
I walked beside Mara and said nothing and tried not to stare at everything.
I failed at the not staring part.
A Starly sat on a fence post near the road, completely unbothered by our passing. Two kids were still outside despite the hour, chasing something small and fast through a garden while their mother called from a doorway. A Budew sat in a lit window box, leaves curled inward for the night.
Normal. All of it completely normal to everyone here.
I kept my face neutral and kept walking.
The trainer's lodge was a low building near the center of town, hand-painted sign above the door, warm light through the front window. Mara pushed it open and said a few words to the woman behind the desk. The woman looked at me quick, not unkind, the look of someone who'd learned not to ask and handed Mara a key.
"Room four," Mara said, passing it to me. "Breakfast is early. Someone from the research station will want to speak with you in the morning nothing serious, just standard procedure." She paused. "Do you need anything else tonight?"
I looked at the key in my hand. Small. Ordinary.
"No," I said. "I'm fine. Thank you. For everything."
Mara smiled. "Get some sleep, Ryan."
She left. The Empoleon followed without looking back.
I stood in the small lobby for a moment after the door closed. The woman behind the desk had already gone back to whatever she was doing. A Clefairy clock on the wall ticked steadily.
I found room four, unlocked it, and sat down on the bed without turning the light on.
Small room. Clean. One window, one bed, a wooden chair. Enough moonlight to see by.
I sat with my hands loose in my lap and stared at nothing.
I was dead.
Not dying. Not in a coma somewhere. Dead. My heart had stopped on a quiet street and whatever came after was not a place anyone could reach me.
My mother's message was still sitting unread. I'd kept meaning to reply. Three days. I'd had three days and I hadn't found five minutes.
I thought about that for a long time. Not with sharp desperate grief but with something quieter and heavier, the kind that sits in your chest and doesn't move and doesn't ask for anything. Just stays.
She would know by now. Someone would have found me. Eventually someone would have knocked on her door.
I hadn't said goodbye.
I lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and let that be what it was. Didn't try to push it away or reason around it. It just was, and it was heavy, and I let it sit on me until it settled into something I could breathe around.
After a while I turned my thoughts to what I knew.
Sinnoh. Sandgem Town, which meant Professor Rowan's lab was nearby. Jubilife City was northwest. I knew the routes, the gyms, the things moving in the background that most people here didn't know about yet.
I had no Pokémon. No money. No identification. No explanation anyone would believe.
I needed all of those things.
Sleep didn't come for hours. Every time I got close something pulled me back — a sound from outside, a Starly call, my own thoughts cycling back to the same places. The room felt wrong the way rooms do when you don't know them yet, every creak slightly off.
Somewhere around what felt like three in the morning my body gave up arguing and I slept.
The knock came early.
Two firm raps. I was already half awake, the sounds of the town pulling me up in increments Starly calls outside the window, distant voices, the smell of something being cooked somewhere in the building.
I sat up. Ran a hand over my face. The room looked different in daylight. Smaller and more real.
"One second," I called.
I stood, straightened my jacket — still the same one, still with the tear near the shoulder and opened the door.
The man in the hallway was somewhere in his forties, average height, nothing about him that stood out. Plain field jacket, small notebook tucked under one arm. An Eevee sat at his feet, looking up at me with wide curious eyes.
"Ryan?" he said. "My name is Owen. I work with the research station here in Sandgem." He smiled, easy and professional. "Mara mentioned she found you on Route 201 last night. I was hoping we could talk just a few questions, nothing serious. Do you have a moment?"
I looked at the Eevee. Then at Owen.
Then back at the Eevee, because it was very cute and I was only human.
"Sure," I said. "Come in."