Chapter 3 – First Night
Sandgem Town was small.
That was the first thing Ryan noticed. After the forest and the dark and the Ursaring and everything else, he had half expected the first real place he saw in Sinnoh to feel significant somehow. Dramatic. Like arriving somewhere that matched the weight of what had happened to him.
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 he couldn't place.
He walked beside Mara and said nothing and tried not to stare at everything.
He failed at the not staring part.
A Starly sat on a fence post near the road, completely unbothered by their 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.
Ryan kept his face neutral and kept walking.
The trainer's lodge was a low building near the center of town, a hand-painted sign above the door, warm light visible through the front window. Mara pushed the door open and exchanged a few words with the woman behind the desk. The woman looked at him with the particular expression of someone who had seen stranger things and handed Mara a key.
"Room four," Mara said, passing it to him. "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?"
Ryan looked at the key in his hand. Small. Ordinary.
"No," he said. "I'm fine. Thank you. For everything."
Mara smiled. "Get some sleep, Ryan."
She left. The Empoleon followed without looking back.
Ryan 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.
He found room four, unlocked it, and sat down on the bed without turning the light on.
The room was small and clean. One window, one bed, a wooden chair, Enough moonlight came through the window to see by.
He sat with his hands loose in his lap and stared at nothing.
He was dead.
Not dying. Not in a coma somewhere. Dead. His heart had stopped on a quiet street and whatever came after was not a place anyone could reach him.
His mother's message was still sitting unread. He'd kept meaning to reply. Three days. He'd had three days and he hadn't found five minutes.
He thought about that for a long time. Not with sharp desperate grief but with something quieter and heavier the kind that sits in the chest and doesn't move and doesn't ask for anything, just stays.
She would know by now. Someone would have found him. Eventually someone would have knocked on her door.
He hadn't said goodbye.
Ryan lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling and let that be what it was. He didn't try to push it away or reason around it. It just was, and it was heavy, and he let it sit on him until it settled into something he could breathe around.
After a while he turned his thoughts to what he knew.
Sinnoh. Sandgem Town, which meant Professor Rowan's lab was nearby. Jubilife City was northwest. He knew the routes, the gyms, the things moving in the background that most people here didn't know about yet.
He had no Pokemon. No money. No identification. No explanation anyone would believe.
He needed all of those things.
He stared at the ceiling for a long time. Sleep didn't come for hours every time he got close something pulled him back, a sound from outside, a Starly call, his own thoughts cycling back to the same places. The room was unfamiliar in the particular way that unfamiliar rooms are at night, every creak and shadow slightly wrong.
Somewhere around what felt like three in the morning his body gave up arguing and he slept.
The knock came early.
Two firm raps. Ryan was already half awake, the sounds of the town pulling him up in increments Starly calls outside the window, distant voices, the smell of something being cooked somewhere in the building.
He sat up. Ran a hand over his face. The room looked different in daylight, smaller and more real.
"One second," he called.
He stood, straightened his jacket still the same one, still with the tear near the shoulder and opened the door.
The man standing in the hallway was somewhere in his forties, average height, with an open and unhurried expression. He wore a plain field jacket and carried a small notebook tucked under one arm. An Eevee sat at his feet, looking up at Ryan 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?"
Ryan looked at the Eevee. Then at Owen.
"Sure," he said. "Come in."