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It was a Friday. After her last class of the day, Aresdra ate a quick dinner in the school cafeteria, hoisted her large backpack onto her shoulders, and caught the last bus back to the apartment.
She unlocked the front door, stepped inside — and stopped.
The apartment was empty.
Not untidy, not rearranged — empty. Every personal belonging she owned had vanished. Her shelves were bare. Her corner of the room was completely cleared out. For a moment she just stood there, trying to decide whether she had walked into the right flat.
Then she noticed the slip of paper sitting on the coffee table.
She picked it up. The handwriting was immediately familiar.
Go find it. I've moved everything to No. 12, Full Garden, Mountain Street.
Aresdra stared at the note for a long moment.
What is Nova playing at now?
And he hadn't even told her he was back.
She folded the note, tucked it into her pocket, and walked back out of the building, trying to work out how she was supposed to get to Mountain Street at this hour. The suburban buses had stopped running for the night. She stood at the edge of the road under the streetlamp and thought.
Then she noticed the bird.
It was perched on the low wall across the road — an enormous, dark shape that gleamed under the lamplight. She had no idea what species it was. Pokémon like this were rarely seen in the Norlandia Alliance, and she couldn't place it. And yet, looking at it, she felt something strangely familiar, like a memory just out of reach.
The Pokémon looked as though it had been forged from metal. Its feathers caught the light with a cold, steel-like sheen, and its eyes — deep crimson — were fixed directly on her with an intensity that was, frankly, a little unsettling. She took a cautious step back toward the lobby door, keeping it in her peripheral vision.
The reaction she got was not what she expected.
The moment she stepped back, the bird let out two sharp, urgent calls and flapped its wings in something that looked unmistakably like panic. Corviknight! Vik! It hopped on the wall, ruffled its feathers, and looked at her with an expression that seemed to say it had not meant to frighten her and was not entirely sure how to fix this.
Aresdra paused.
The Pokémon seemed to collect itself. It turned deliberately, showing her its broad, solid back rather than its sharp beak and intense gaze. Then it spread its wings slightly and lowered its body — a clear, patient invitation.
Climb on.
She understood. She stepped forward slowly and reached out, running her fingers gently along the feathers at the back of its neck.
The texture was extraordinary — firm and cool, like touching the edge of armour plating, but warmer underneath. Corviknight went very still. Its nictitating membranes slid quietly across its eyes, veiling the red pupils. It let out a low, contented sound.
And then Aresdra recognised it.
That reaction. That particular stillness when someone touched the back of its neck.
"You're Little Blue, aren't you?" she said, her voice rising slightly. "You evolved — congratulations!"
Little Blue was the nickname she had given the Pokémon back when it was still a Corvisquire. The story behind it had come out one evening after dinner, when Nova had been in one of his chatty moods and decided to share the bird's more embarrassing early history. She had learned that as a Rookidee, it had once rolled in mud in an apparent attempt to blend in with a group of Pidgey. The image had delighted her so thoroughly that she had immediately given it a commemorative nickname.
The Corvisquire had not been pleased.
Somewhere in the back of its mind, it had noted that this couple — both apparently charming on the surface — were, upon closer inspection, united by a shared enthusiasm for making its life difficult. One told the stories. The other gave the nicknames. They deserved each other entirely.
Nidoking, for its part, had its own quiet grievances. Nova had taken to calling it by a short informal nickname that he always seemed to find funnier than necessary. The exact joke, if there was one, remained unclear. What was clear was that it happened every single time.
Aresdra had always known Nova paid close attention to details — sometimes more carefully than she did herself. She wasn't surprised that he had thought ahead. He had known she would need to get across the city at night. He had known the buses would be finished. He had sent Corviknight — now fully evolved and more than capable of carrying a passenger — to wait for her.
She adjusted her backpack from her front to her back, looped her arms around Corviknight's neck, and held on.
The posture was not elegant. She was aware of this. But Corviknight's armoured frame was solid and steady, and it didn't appear to mind. It didn't need a running start. One deep beat of its great wings gathered the Flying-type energy beneath them, and the ground simply dropped away.
Aresdra made a sound that was half a gasp and half something else entirely.
By the time they landed, her legs felt like they had been replaced with something unreliable. She stood at the gate of Full Garden, took a slow breath, and considered whether kicking Corviknight would be satisfying or simply ineffective. Probably ineffective. The blasted bird had performed at least three unnecessary aerial manoeuvres during the flight, looping and banking while she had kept her eyes firmly shut.
Nova was standing at the gate. He was grinning.
"I didn't realise you were afraid of flying," he said, extending a hand to help her steady herself.
Aresdra fixed him with a look.
"When did you get back?" she asked. "And what happened to our apartment?"
"This is our home now." He gestured behind him toward the villa. "I made some decent money on the trip. I bought this place from the Landlady. What do you think?"
She didn't look at the house. Her gaze stayed on him, moving slowly from his face downward — checking, in the methodical way she had, for any sign that he had come back with injuries he wasn't mentioning. Satisfied that he appeared unharmed, she asked, "You weren't hurt?"
"Not at all. I'm fine — why?"
She stepped forward and raised her hands to either side of his face, fingers resting lightly at his temples, lacing together at the back of his head. She pressed her forehead gently against his. Their eyes were level, close, and for a moment neither of them said anything.
"Whatever pays this well must have been dangerous," she said quietly. "Don't push yourself like that. We don't need a big house, Nova. As long as we're together, it doesn't matter if it's a rented flat."
He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, and for a while the gate and the lamplight and the cool evening air all faded into the background.
When they finally stepped apart, the silence had shifted into something lighter. Both of them looked away at the same moment, cheeks warm.
There was a beat.
Then, at exactly the same time, both of them said:
"I have a gift for you."
A pause.
Then, again in perfect unison:
"You go first."
They looked at each other. Then they both started laughing.