Years before the twins were the faintest inkling in Hop's mind, the house up the street stood forlorn and empty on the knoll.
No one in Postwick seemed to remember a time when it had been inhabited: all it had to show for a garden was a thicket of briars higher than the waist, and parts of the drystack wall were cracked, where the errant yew roots had burrowed under.
Hop's last memory of Leon in Postwick centred around that very house. It was early evening—or perhaps his memory coloured the sky wrong—when the older boy, taking the house's unspoken dare, scaled the garden wall with his brother cheering him on. Landing with a thump on the other side, he blundered through the leaves, twigs crackling merrily underfoot.
"Whoa, Hop, you have to see this! There's roses here!"
Five years old and his brother's shadow, Hop was quicker to follow than to think. One hand over the other, he clambered up the stones till he straddled the drystack, and his vision swayed when he saw that his legs only reached halfway down the wall. There was Lee, waiting in the tangle of briars and roses. "Just one jump!" he shouted, pumping a fist.
So little Hop yelled, and leapt, and tumbled in, piercing his knee on a thorn.
The boy's wailing was what brought their mum and grandpa sprinting up the street, crying out his name in panic. He would never forget how the blood streaked his palms, red as the roses, and how his tears blurred the colours together while Leon shouted curse words he wasn't allowed to say.
That was the last trouble the two brothers got into together before Leon, turning ten, left on his gym challenge. He'd seen it coming: they had been counting off the days on a Galar League calendar in the kitchen, and when the big red-circled day came with its blue sky and Wooloo-white clouds, the older boy slung his brand new backpack over his shoulder and hugged each family member in turn, promising that he'd win the cup.
That was the last they saw of him, and soon Hop had forgotten all about the briar roses, with only a scar on the knee to remember them by.
Weeks later, Hop's mum still found the boy bursting into tears in the stairwell, screaming at the top of his lungs for Lee as if his voice would bring his brother running back. He wouldn't hunker down till she scooped him up and carried him to the couch, doing the only thing she knew how. "There there," she would murmur, rubbing circles in his back. "You're a growing boy, you know, I can't carry you forever. Why don't we call him tonight?"
After all, Leon's departure had left Hop the only child this side of the lake, and though he soon learned that his crying couldn't bring his brother from the other side of Galar, his desolation never thawed away.
So when a blue lorry rolled up by that decrepit house of brambles half a year later, two children peering from the window, he was the first one at their gate.
"Hello, I'm Hop! Can we be friends?" He wasted no time, words spilling over like spring water, as they piled out of the truck: a boy and a girl with the same brown hair and eyes.
The latter blinked, a smile spreading on her placid face. "I'm Gloria!" she answered, patting her chest. "And that is my brother Victor."
Hop's face lit up. "Nice to meet you, Gloria and Victor! I have a brother too, you know."
Victor cocked his head to a side, still not entirely through his coldness. "Can we see him?"
He shook his head. "He's not here. He's doing the gym challenge."
Their mother rounded the front of the lorry right then, a bespectacled lady, same brown hair, draped over one shoulder. "Meeting the neighbours already, are we?" she cooed, a hand coming to rest on each twin's shoulder. "You must be from the house down the road."
Hop put on his best smile. "Yeah! I can't wait to play with Gloria and Victor, we're going to be great friends!" Overhead the clouds rolled through the blue, and the warmth promised the sweetness of flowers and fruit.
The next time Hop went by the house up the road, that decade-old carpet of briars had been torn right up. Within the week there were pots, overflowing with young roses and violets, and the lady had hacked down the old yew so that Postwick's last secret was at last lain bare. The stones shone brighter, and Budew began to crop up in the compost, two of which she caught for the children.
It didn't take long for the mums to start seeing each other's children as their own, to send them up and down the road for homework and barbecues. Just as they shared their houses and pastures, the children shared their chores, herding the Wooloo into their pens beneath the sinking sun and celebrating with a roast afterwards.
It was clear that Gloria and Hop were cut from the same rugged cloth. "The rowdy two" was what their mothers called them, as they sprinted round and round the house, tumbling dizzily over each other in breathless fits of laughter. They were always the first out of the house at any sign of their neighbour at the gate; their choice greeting was to wrestle on the grass while Victor ("the sensible one") dodged about playing referee.
"Three, two, one!" The boy counted as Hop forced Gloria into a deadlock, slamming his hand on the lawn on each count. "Four points for Hop, none for Gloria!"
"You're cheating!" Gloria cried, sticking her lower lip out. "You count faster for Hop!"
" Not ," Victor taunted, sticking out his tongue, before she shoved him into the ground.
Sleepovers were always at Hop's, with his bed the size of Postwick Lake. The boisterous pair would hurtle in together, giggling while Victor tucked himself into his own sleeping bag. They would crawl under the duvet with his mum's phone, forming a tent over their heads, and watch Leon's videos till midnight, the green of the stadium turf glowing in their eyes. "Isn't he just amazing?" Hop would sigh while onscreen Leon commanded another raging Wildfire upon his foe.
He never failed to bring some rambling commentary, pulled straight from one of the thousands of match analyses he'd read. And Gloria would listen with starry, screenlit eyes, wondering how many shelves of books there must be inside her best friend's head.
Twenty minutes: that was how long it took Leon to end the Champion's six-year reign.
The news swept the sleepy town like a summer storm in Hulbury, stirring everyone and everything into exuberant chaos. An hour after the match was over, there was a cheer through the town and the sound of bottles breaking. At the same time, the call came through from a crying Leon to his equally tearful mother, promising a visit back home.
By the next morning the house was spotless, and the door stood unlocked.
Hop was there at the first call of "Hello?" from the door. He flew at his brother with a tackling hug, burying his face in the boy's jersey with a cry.
"Lee! I missed you!" Leon had gotten too tall to hug back, so he tousled his brother's dark hair, laughing that laugh he had manicured for the cameras. "I'm your biggest fan, you know?" Hop exclaimed as he loosened his vice grip, before spinning into his brother's signature pose, two fingers thrust into the air to signify Charizard horns.
"That you are!" said a beaming Leon. Gosh, it was so good just to hear that voice echoing in these halls again, not the tinny rattle of Rotom speakers. "So, my biggest fan, how's everything been at home? Anything happen while I was gone?"
Hop's face brightened more, if that was possible. "Lots! A couple kids moved into the house up the road—come see them with me! I want to show them my amazing brother!"
The Champion grinned, already headed for the stairwell. "I'd love to, but I only have a day home and I want to spend it with you and mum." He winked as if that could make up for it, and Hop only grumbled, deciding he should brag harder the next time he saw the twins.
When Leon came to Postwick, he seemed to stir the entire town from its slumber, bringing forth grins and greetings like flowers in full bloom. When he left one barbecue and one night later, this short stutter of liveliness subsided. But his aura lingered, as a whispering among the townsfolk, and an upsurge in children begging their parents for Charmanders.
The nights lengthened through the cold months, but they were easier now that missing Leon had become second nature to them. The next summer's heat brought more trophies and ribbons, unusually-shaped parcels in the mail. Now and then, one of them would bring the Champion himself home, taller and more distant with each turn of the sun.
Galar was watching a play-by-play of his life from their living rooms. Leon, Leon was the background noise in Hop's life—there in the muffled cheers from the telly, there in his mother's taunts when he groused about eating his greens. She filled the walls with newspaper clippings; she filled the dining room with retellings of his triumphs.
She, like he, never missed the chance to ramble about their dear little Champion, at the grocery, at the cafe, in every corner of this tiny town.
"Little Hop is the spitting image of Leon," the grocer answered once, handing a bag of cherries over. "You just watch, he'll give his brother a run for his money." Slowly, subtly, the magnetic north of Hop's world shifted, to rest squarely with Lee.
Meanwhile, the yard up the road brimmed with flowers, and the new family grew into a part of Postwick, as surely as their red northern roses took to the southern soil.
On warm summer afternoons, Hop and Gloria would take a picnic basket and venture out into the moor by the Weald, but never past the gate their mothers had told them never to cross. There, with a view of the fields of purple flowers and the blue hills beyond, they would eat sandwiches on stone barriers, and talk till the sun began to set, turning the sky pink.
The sandwiches always fell apart in their hands, and they once argued about whether it was the lack of butter or the quality of the bread before starting to bring them in lunchboxes. Victor never came along, so picking on him became their favourite pastime out on the fields. "He's a poop head," Gloria announced once, and both guffawed, banging foreheads in laughter.
When the Saturday evenings turned the same shade as a Corviknight's plumage, the two boys holed up in the shed and talked about their plans as they ran shears through the Wooloo's fur.
"I'm going to be the next Champion!" Hop declared one day, kicking some wool into a ball.
"Not if I'm the next Champion, you won't be," Victor snapped right back. He flicked some wool into a sack at his feet.
"Then we're rivals!" he shouted, clenching a fist. "We'll see who wins, and sorry, but it's going to be me! I'm the Champion's brother, it's pretty much in the bag!" He ended with his brother's Charizard pose, but Victor was too busy shearing to acknowledge it.
"The only thing that will be in the bag is all this wool on the floor," he grumbled. "You're going to have two rivals, you know. Gloria's set on doing the gym challenge, too."
Life was easy, and life was bliss. The year of their tenth was the year their classmates began teasing each other about being in love, and that's how the trio learned that romance was the grossest thing in existence.
For two years, all three furiously bragged that they would never do something so icky as have a crush . They would needle each other with taunts of "you'll be first", retaliating with shoves as twelve-year-olds did.
That is, of course, until it happened.
The three had long left sleepovers behind in yesteryears, both mums citing homework, though the truth was that it seemed less appropriate now they were about to enter teenhood. But picnics were still within bounds, so Gloria and Hop kept up their weekly tradition, loath to part with their Victor-free hours.
This fateful trip in the secret depths of summer was no different from any other. Hop had brought a video game magazine to while the lazy hours away with. Laying the picnic blanket on the grass, they scarfed down sandwiches and let the breeze turn the pages, marvelling at characters from games they would never play, though Hop already knew their storylines by heart.
Gloria became aware, in a way she never had before, that they were sitting with legs touching. She found herself absently thinking that it felt nice, pressed up to her best friend like this, and began to lean more and more onto him, shoulders together, then elbows overlapping—until he noticed.
Hop sprang away with a "hey!" and found that his entire head was aflame with blushing. He laughed, and locking eyes with her was a mistake, because it sent a riot of strange new feelings exploding from the place where they had lain dormant till now.
"Sorry," Gloria gasped, though she knew she wasn't sorry at all.
They went home that evening strangely buoyant, strangely dwelling on each other's touch. It dawned on them both, over the course of weeks, that they could no longer brag that they had never had a crush before.
They learned the hard way that these feelings would compel them in a way they weren't ready for. Despite their best efforts at hiding it, everyone noticed: their mums, watching them lean together over their fences and laugh too much at each other's jokes, and Victor, who passed Hop picking yellow dandelion flowers from the roadside, and later found Gloria holding them in their front yard with the Budew at her feet, a bright blush on her face.
"You like my sister!" Victor levelled the accusation when the last Wooloo was in the pen. "You have a crush on her!"
Hop slammed the gate too hard and fumbled with the latch. "What?" he shouted. "No way!"
"Hop and Gloria, sitting on a tree—"
" Sshhhh! " he gasped.
"K-I-S-S—"
"Can't hear you!" Hop stuck his fingers in his ears and strode unsteadily away—and straight into the pasture gate. "Ow! I thought this wasn't locked."
"You do fancy her, don't you?"
He puffed up and folded his arms. "So what?"
"Ohh, you do! You fancy Gloria!" Victor stuck out his tongue as they walked briskly up the road. " Gross! "
It didn't take them long to make out a silhouette leaning on Hop's gate, one that materialised into Gloria. "Glo, what are you doing out here?" Victor shouted. He glanced at Hop, who had turned resolutely away.
She hastily brushed hair behind her ear. "Oh, I was wondering when you'd be back, it's gotten dark so fast!" she answered, pitch rising with every word. Her eyes kept darting to his companion, who by now had given in to the temptation of looking.
Snatching Gloria's shoulder, Victor tugged her away from the gate, allowing his neighbour an unimpeded path back. "See you!" Hop shouted, waving as Victor dragged his twin sister up the road.
Victor spent two weeks watching the two dance around the topic while finding ever newer ways to bump into each other "by accident"—walking to groceries together, trading chores with him when they saw that the other was there. The feeling was so painfully mutual that he knew it was only a matter of time before things fell together.
And they did. They were walking out to Wedgehurst on errands—together by "coincidence" yet again—when they both announced they had a gift for the other.
Giggling, Hop and Gloria exchanged the objects: a red apple with sticky-note Applin eyes pasted on, and a translucent red heart-shaped pendant which, from that day, would become Gloria's favourite piece of her party outfit.
Here and now, in the softening evening light, Hop's eyes flew wide and he blurted, "Gloria! I like you!"
She chuckled—and rose on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. "Me too!"
They shared the apple all the way back home.
The next morning, Hop marched Gloria into his family kitchen, holding her hand. "Gloria and I are dating now!" he declared.
His mum, slicing celery at the counter, laid the knife down. "Are you sure?" she said curtly.
Hop stomped his foot on the ground and dove into a hot-faced rant about how mean she was and how little she took him seriously and how Lee would have congratulated him. "Let's go somewhere else," Gloria cut in, and they ran away, leaving his mother to sigh over her shoulder. They dashed to the pasture, where they tumbled into the long grass and lay, giggling, with fingers interlocked and the flowers leaning lazily over their faces.
They were two twelve-year-olds, lovestruck for the first time. In a week, people as far as Wedgehurst had learned of their young love and joined the teasing. "If it isn't my favourite couple!" became the florist's choice greeting; they took turns buying each other flowers and fruit, like Rookidee impressing their mates. Sonia, the girl from the lab, had come to know them from their visits to the cafe, and had made a habit of sitting with them and treating them to hot chocolate.
"Word of advice," she said on a particular Friday evening as she handed out the drinks. "You'll know it's real love when you love each other even when it's boring."
"But we do!" Gloria insisted. "We do groceries and homework together!"
The professor's assistant chuckled with a hand to her mouth, and said she had experiments to run, leaving them to sip hot chocolate together.
"You reckon she's being like your mum, not taking us seriously?" Gloria said.
"Yeah, I bet," Hop groaned. "But she's a scientist, she has to know what she's about."
Nevertheless, it wasn't two months before these stolen dates became as banal as homework and groceries—fleeing to the fields, kissing cheeks, making Victor scowl at their dwindling attention for the chores and for him. Then they started to skip the hugs when they met; they stopped holding hands so they could hold books and baskets instead.
Eventually, there came a walk near the end of July, where Gloria seemed to be paying more attention to her fingernails than her companion. Though it nettled him, Hop did well not to dwell on her odd mannerisms, until they came to a halt in front of his gate.
"Hop?" Gloria finally said.
"Yeah?"
"I was just thinking," she addressed her fingers. "All this dating? It feels...just like being best friends. And I don't, I don't think this is what it's supposed to be..."
An arrow of terror tore through Hop's chest. "What...what does that mean?"
"It means that maybe...maybe we aren't actually in love?"
He blinked. This had been a summer full of fledgling feelings, and he hadn't thought there could be more—but here and now, a new emotion took its first faltering flight in his ribcage, rending his heart in two.
"You don't like me," he breathed.
Thunder rumbled over the hills. Gloria's eyes widened and she snatched up his hands. "No, Hop, no, no , I like you! I like you as much as I always have!" she shouted. "But—it's just—don't you think we could have been wrong about our feelings?"
He blinked faster, blinked the threat of rain away. Sonia's words reverberated in their heads: If real love meant loving someone even when it was boring, then maybe they had been wrong. Yet his heart betrayed him, and the next words were bitter as chalk in his mouth.
"You're right. Maybe we should be best friends."
And that was the lid on their relationship at last.
It took them both a week to cry it out—the longest of weeks, of staring at rain-streaked window panes and trembling, trapped alone with the question, am I going to lose you forever?
But come next Saturday, their eyes met over their fences, beneath the summer rain, and they laughed awkwardly and talked again under umbrellas. And they knew the answer was, and always would be, no : Hop and Gloria, Gloria and Hop, they were here to stay.
When Victor got wind of the news, he let out the sigh of relief he had been holding for weeks, though of course he would not admit it. If there was one good outcome to the break, it was that Victor started joining them on the pasture for chores again. Reunited, the three resumed herding the Wooloo they had grown too tall to ride.
It had all come and gone in a season—so briefly that Leon did not visit a single time while it was happening. By the time the Champion of seven years swung by the family home that autumn, their brief stint as sweethearts was a thing of the past, nothing worth mentioning next to the shiny new trophy he had brought home.
All the same, Gloria never stopped wearing that plastic heart-shaped pendant whenever she wanted to look pretty.
The day of the twins' sixteenth sat right in the middle of autumn, when the last festival banners had been rolled up, the golden afternoons succeeded by the glow of hearths through the chill of dusk.
A year ago, the Postwick trio had sat together in the twins' dining room among piles of torn giftwrap, birthday cake smudged on their faces. There they had made a promise, to finally embark on the gym challenge once their next birthday came around.
Today, they made good on that promise. All three flew straight from black forest cake in the dining room to jamming clothes into their bags, chattering about the future to mums who watched and smiled while their hearts ached.
"Remember, I'll always be a Corviknight Taxi away," sang Hop's mother, rolling up a stack of shirts to shove into his duffel bag.
Hop broke off from narrating his fantasies to laugh. "I know that, but I won't come back without the Champion Cup!" he declared, waving a fist.
To him, that was the inevitability at the end of the journey, from the second he stepped out the door and bade his mum goodbye. After all, that's what had happened with Leon. One day he was on the doorstep hugging his family, and the next, he stood there framed in sunlight, the red-and-gold mantle on his shoulders.
So he knew he would win the Champion Cup. There was no reality in which leaving home didn't end in victory. The morning after the most restless sleep of his life, Hop sprinted out into the autumn sun, straight into that future, and straight into his first battle.
His first battle was his first loss.
Hop didn't know if it was better or worse that it was Victor who delivered it, in front of his brother and the eminent Professor Magnolia. He didn’t know if it was better or worse that he added “sorry mate” at the end, while trying not to grin too hard.
Instead of dwelling on the backhanded slight, he locked gazes with Gloria and grinned, already fishing a pokeball from his pocket. She had beaten Victor, and Victor had beaten him, so it was only right, only fair, that he won this last matchup.
Well, life, he was starting to learn, did not care what was fair. Any hope he'd had of evening the score was crushed the second Gloria cried, “ember!” and her Scorbunny began spitting sparks on his Grookey.
It was certainly not the beginning Hop had planned for.
Of course he only laughed, as he always did, the sunset glowing on his face. He lost himself in the aroma of sizzling sausages at the barbecue and he ran about the yard, passing meat skewers around. But he knew Leon had seen him sulking in the lulls of the evening, because at ten o'clock that evening, when everyone had gone home, there was a knock on his bedroom door.
"You want to talk about it?" came Leon's muffled voice.
Fancy him trying to console Hop—the undefeatable Champion who'd never known, who couldn't possibly know, how this felt. "It's not a big deal," he groaned back, flopping onto his bed. "They got first pick on the starters, and we haven't even trained them yet."
Still, for the rest of the evening, the boy sat in bed poring over the laminated type advantage table he'd gotten for his tenth birthday—over and over, just to be sure he could still rattle it off from memory. And he set his alarm for six the next morning to scout the grass outside Wedgehurst, battling Rookidee till he met one that withstood three stabs from his Grookey's branch. That one, he made his own.
When, that same morning, he lost both his second battles to his neighbours, the blame fell to his strategy instead. Of course he should have seen that Pound coming, he should have weakened its attack, should had his Grookey growl at Sobble first, or had he been right to go on full offensive right away?
Hop thought and thought and wrote and wrote, till he was sure he had a handle on exactly what had gone wrong, and he took to the road with a plan under his belt, for when he came to his next battles with the twins.
Then it went downhill.
It wasn't that Hop never won. On the road from home to Motostoke, he breezed through every roadside battle, against roaming schoolchildren and workmen, against cyclists on their morning drills. By all rights, he should have been proud.
But then he hit three-nil on his losing streaks to both Gloria and Victor, and it couldn't be, it was preposterous, that he was somehow falling behind.
It was like autumn, the cold seeping through the daylight warmth, withering leaves and shrivelling fruit. That was how it felt, realising that the dreams he'd spent years building were starting to crumble at the edges. Like watching that dilapidated house up the road slowly overtaken by vines, the rain wearing away at its footpath stones so it was barely recognisable for more than a ruin.
More and more, the once-distant idea that he might not win the Champion Cup was starting to loom, larger and larger, a shadow on the edge of his thoughts. As the road wore on, through Motostoke and Turffield, he found stranger question creeping into his mind. Who was he, and who had he been this whole time, if not destined to win ?
Up until the Galar Mines, Hop floated through these losses on a cloud of denial. About once in every city his path crossed with Victor's or Gloria's, but losing to them was easy; they made it feel natural. And they always treated him to dinner thereafter, their not-so-subtle "sorry."
But then there was Bede, who had thrust himself in their lives at Motostoke, who looked at Hop like an ant beneath his shoe. "It’s positively criminal of you," was his greeting, voice biting like the crisp breeze, "wasting the time of someone as important as I am." From then, his sneer had clung like a burr in his mind, fury churning in his gut at the very thought.
Still, the two had managed to skirt along without battling once—till now. Now Bede snapped, and then came the inevitable challenge, the words spoken like spears being thrown—and Hop wasn't sure why it made his mouth feel dry.
Now he knew.
It could hardly be called a battle at all. As he watched his companions crumple, as he clutched each successive pokeball in sweating palms, Hop's heart thrummed louder in his ears for he knew what was waiting for the Pokemon inside. Bede blitzed through their defences, each one folding uselessly before the onslaught, faster than he could think and calculate.
As Gothorita's last roaring Psybeam dissipated and Hop's Thwackey thudded backward into the earth, he gritted his teeth, willing his eyes not to sting.
Through the clearing smoke, a sneer spread on Bede's face. "What was that?" he laughed, that ugly, snarling noise. "You make your brother look bad, you know that? I'd be embarrassed if I were him, having his rubbish little brother running around Galar, dragging his name through the mud. That's all you are, aren't you? A fraud, propped up by your brother's fame. People like you don't deserve to be in the gym challenge."
Fight or flight kicked in. A numbing surge of adrenaline burned through his limbs. But Hop clenched his jaw and forced himself to look Bede in the eye; he knew he would never forgive himself if he turned tail and ran right now. "I'm not quitting because some bully tells me to," he managed to growl.
Perplexion gave way to pity on the blond boy's face. "Go on, then," he spat back. "Keep being an embarrassment."
It was half an hour of numb, hazy wandering down Route Six, and a vague awareness of the painful lump growing in his throat, before Hop finally halted at a blockade held by two Team Yell hooligans. Someone had already engaged them in a yelling match, whose silhouette he instantly recognised.
Gloria turned at the same moment he noticed her, and waved, shouting, "let's join up!"
He only managed a shake of his head. "Think I’ll leave this to you, Glo."
The smile slipped away, like the waning summer warmth. "Ah, all right."
He paid her the courtesy of staying to watch, and midway he began to realise he wished he had just walked away. Though she took their challenge one on two, she made short work of them. Like a walk in the park , his mother would have called it, and she made it look that easy—like soaking in the September sun.
The boy's vision and hearing went foggy. His throat clogged up at the thought of his friend’s victory, at the thought of her success, as if the last thing in the world that he wanted was to see her win again.
When Gloria turned, she gasped, "what's wrong?"
He could not find words, and spoke the only way he could, by pulling her into a hug. He was only faintly aware of her arms coming to encircle him, his head falling to her shoulder as he began to explain himself, in words broken apart by sobs.
"I just can’t get those words out of my head—"
"He said what ?" Gloria shouted, arms tightening.
"If I'm weak, then people'll think Lee’s weak, too."
"Don't listen to him now," she said, shaking his shoulder. "You're downright brilliant, I don't know a single person as smart as you are."
His brow furrowed. "That's all so easy for you to say, but that's the whole problem," he groaned. "I'm always thinking and wasting time on the battlefield, while you just battle, like it comes naturally—"
"It doesn't just—"
"—You're like Lee in that, and Vic."
"—no! Hop! You're amazing, you hear?"
"Watching you and Raboot and Carkol take those Team Yell grunts, I finally figured it out. I've been dragging you down this whole time. I didn't get it at first, but now I do! This is just a dead end for me." He stepped back, wiping tears from his face. "I'm calling it quits."
"You're what —"
"I'm giving up on the gym challenge."
"Shut up ! " Gloria spat. Her lip was trembling.
Now there was an edge to her voice that hadn't been there before, like Hop had crossed some invisible line and now no holds were barred.
“Now you're just making yourself feel bad on purpose," she snarled. "And you dare make me a part of the problem? I'm trying to help, I've told you what's great about you, I always do! But the only thing you'll listen to is the voice in your head, yammering on about what Bede said and what Lee did and it's like you don't even think you exist."
She stepped abruptly away. He was rooted to the ground.
"I thought you were stronger than that. Because you bloody well are, and you'd know it if you just spent a minute looking, really looking, at everything you've achieved. That's all I can say, and you can take it or leave it. I love you, but you're too much sometimes."
Hop couldn't muster the words to answer Gloria's tirade, to make his case, to retract his accusations, or anything. He just watched, as Gloria marched off around the bend. And every step she took was agonisingly slow, as if she wanted him to stop her and change her mind, but the longer she stayed in view, the more his courage shrank away.
That night, under the moldy bedsheets of a tiny Stow-On-Side inn, Hop could not sleep until he had cried himself to exhaustion.
One week of not seeing Gloria meant one week to analyse their disastrous last conversation like a literary novel. One week to pick out every wrong word, every regrettable impulse.
Hop had now told himself off thirty times over. He'd been an idiot. He'd made her feel like the cause of the problem. She'd extended him an olive branch, and he had knocked it from her hand. Might as well have told her to sod off and never talk to me again.
By the time he arrived in Spikemuth, the boy felt like a tempest-battered ship limping into port. But here among the neon lights and graffitied walls—here, everything looked worn-down and unashamed of its damage— here his pace slowed, and his bubbling anger froze to an icicle of guilt, so sharp he had to clench his jaw against tearing up.
He'd been barely holding it together then, and he was only barely holding it together now—as Piers' Obstagoon slumped in slow motion to the mosh pit floor. As the cheers overwhelmed the thump of drums and siren synths, as the pink strobe-light shadows swept across it, Hop blinked, wondering if this was some trick.
This time, he hadn't just stumbled to a stalemate. He had actually won , fair and square, his Rillaboom and Snorlax dominating, and the startlement on Piers' face was what drove it home. With all of Team Yell watching, he couldn’t afford the indignity of tearing up right now, so he simply grinned and thanked the audience as he accepted the badge.
His resolve only took him as far as the stadium doors. Marnie was waiting there, leaning on the chipped doorframe. “Hey, Hop,” she said in her gravelly punk-girl voice. “Everythin’ all right?”
“What?” Hop exclaimed. "Of course I'm alright, I just won!"
Two Team Yell grunts whirled around at his shout and began to shake fists at him. "Keep away from our Marnie!" one bellowed.
“Shut your gobs,” she snapped, and like Boltund brought to heel they fell silent and slunk away. She turned back to Hop. “I’m just sayin’, you ain't lookin' so hot. You're the sort to chatter like a Rookidee at every chance but today you were...so quiet. Don’t tell me nothin's up, I won’t believe it.”
He laughed nervously. “You’ve got a good eye, mate,” he answered. “I just didn’t think I’d win today.”
“Didn’t ya?” she seemed perplexed. “What’s th’ matter?”
He shook his head. “I lost my gym battle with Melony on the first go. And I lost to Gloria before that. And Bede before that .”
“Bede? The li’l pink prissy pants? Knowin’ him, he can’t’ve been kind about it.”
With those words came an empathetic look that, all at once, saw the floodgates of his memory opening. “He put all these horrible thoughts in my head,” the words tumbled out. “He said I’m dragging Lee’s name though the mud, making him look bad. I just, I don’t want people laughing at Lee because of me, and all along, I really thought...“
“I see how it is,” Marnie said. “Leon’s the champ, that’s gotta be rough on you. Havin’ everyone thinkin’ that he’s Galar’s treasure. That you're just him, but littler.”
Hop had to catch his breath for how effortlessly her words cut through to the bone.
She was right, in a way no one had been right before. There was no way she could have known it, and yet she did.
The clues suddenly came together, pieced together from all his years of silent longing. It had always been Leon before Hop. Even in his own head. Leon on the living room walls, trophies glittering from ahigh. Leon on the telly, twenty-four seven. Leon’s voice and dreams.
He'd woven his entire life on the weft of Leon's fame, and now that Lee was rapidly vanishing into the distance ahead, everything was unravelling around him, too quickly, too soon.
“Is it all right if I cry?” he said.
“No shame in that,” Marnie replied.
“I need—I need some time to think about this,” Hop sputtered.
“Hey, hey, it's all right. If I can offer a smidge of advice? I don’t think Leon wants his own brother, of all people, to look at him like some distant shinin' star.”
The boy blinked. There went the tears, rolling down his face, and once they had started, they would not stop. He sobbed, wiping his eyes with his arm. “You think?”
“I know ,” she replied, and he felt a hand patting his shoulder as he cried. "I know."
Gloria was starting to learn that its bitter cold would not fade so easily.
Three days down this long road to Wyndon, her fingernails were frozen blue, the slush soaking and refreezing in her soles so she could barely feel her toes as she trudged on. Nothing here wanted her to stay. Every breath hurt.
And Hop...
Faltering to a stop between two barren trees, she slung down her pack and clawed out her camp supplies with numb fingers. Under Cinderace's watch, she began hammering tent pins into the icy ground, hit after hit finding no purchase.
Now, more than ever, Gloria longed achingly for Hop. For his glowing warmth, his sunlight smile, to come within reach again. Like the world in its elliptical orbit around the sun, it was like winter fell every time she moved too far from him.
"But even if I bump into him now, he won't talk to me," she muttered, dropping her hammer to the ground. It was no use. The ground was frozen over—no place for anything to take root. "Great going, calling him 'too much.' Cinder, what do I do? How do I make it up to him?" Cinderace blinked back at her, giving a confused mewl.
Struggling to tie the tent ropes taut on the bowing tree, Gloria found she could no longer see the road in the thin dusk light filtering through. She breathed a long sigh, an ache biting in her chest.
There was no way their paths would stay apart for long; all roads lead to Wyndon. But when that time came, she wasn't sure if she would know how to break the ice between them.
When Hop and Gloria next met, it was beneath the stadium, where air seemed to vibrate with the force of the hopes and fears converging here, the walls not thin enough to muffle the scream of a thousand vuvuzelas.
Their first faltering smiles were promptly interrupted by the blaring tones of the public address. Both winced, unable to hear themselves over the shrill of, "This is the final call for registrations for the Champion Cup semifinals. All trainers, please report to the reception counter immediately."
"Maybe you should go do that first," Hop said, instead of whatever he was going to, pointing across the sunlit lobby.
"No, wait—"
"Don't worry, mate, I'll be right here!" he grinned and nodded at her, and she nodded back, before hurrying away.
When she returned, an entire Victor had materialised right next to Hop. "Gloria!" Her brother grinned and waved as she came, but quickly realised he was the only one grinning. His smile faded again. "What's up, you two?" He glanced from one to the other. "Did you have a fight?"
The silence was all the answer he seemed to need.
"Aw, no, no way!" her brother gasped, clutching his head. "Not my two best friends in the world."
Hop managed to smile wanly at him, and then at Gloria. "Hey. We should probably talk, about what happened in the mines. Yeah?"
The screen flashed to life, and there was their tournament tree. Gloria versus Marnie. Victor versus Hop.
"We should," Gloria replied. "As soon as the tournament is over."
Hop didn't say it, but when Victor’s Arcanine dealt the closing blow on his Rillaboom in a firestorm that swallowed the arena, it almost felt right .
It was agonising, of course. It made his heart ache in new, untold ways, seeing his own dear starter thunder to the ground, their defeat broadcast across the country, and to hear the crowd rouse in answer.
But something about it made sense. Vic had always been the one to put his nose to the grindstone, the one shearing the sheep while he had been gambolling on the fields with his books and picnic baskets.
It was a dizzying cocktail of emotions, the pain and shame smarting like salt rubbed in a wound, the comfort of his neighbour's grin, the adrenaline rush of ten thousand voices roaring as the two neighbours shook hands and reaffirmed their friendship in this unfamiliar light.
"Thanks, mate," he said as they did. "I'm really glad you were the one here with me."
"You did great," his friend answered with a grin, voice echoing across Wyndon. "Not just today, but the whole journey. I mean it. It’s been amazing. Learning and growing with you.”
"You too, mate," Hop replied, turning the little gesture into a hug. "Go do me proud, yeah?"
"I'll try," laughed Victor, "but we both know Gloria's got this thing in the bag."
When Victor defeated Gloria, the snow began to fall.
By the time the umpire had raised the flag on the side of Gloria's collapsed Ludicolo, the air was a blur of snowflakes, and half the stadium sat stunned. None seemed more stunned than Gloria herself, the camera zooming in on her wide-eyed stare as she and Victor watched each other across the field, the applause faltering and weak around them.
Of course, they quickly forced smiles on, like masks that didn't fit, and met in the centre among the drifts of snow on the astroturf, shaking hands for the cameras. But the air of bewilderment lingered upon Wyndon Stadium long after the twins had left the pitch.
It was obvious the battle could have swung in either direction, right down to the last matchup. It was also obvious at times that Victor had just been playing for show, laughing each time his sister took out one of his Pokemon—right up until his Inteleon tore through her two Fire types in a row. Then, seeing the opening, he had kicked into high gear.
And now here they stood, one ending the other's run, with no fanfare.
"Congratulations, Victor!" the compere's cheer shook their bones, the rises and dips of his intonation too much, too grating for the moment. "You're going to the finals! What an amazing young man. What a shining star."
Hop watched all this from the stands, the snow falling like confetti around him, landing on sleeves and eyelashes and turning the crowd pleasant. His heart ached at the way Gloria's lip trembled, twenty-foot high-definition above the heads of the crowd.
But as the twins struggled to smile, he began to feel something else, a relief, seeping through his chest from beneath the heartache. He couldn't help the thought that Gloria might begin to understand now, how it felt to lose, and keep losing. Maybe the wall between them would be more amenable to crumbling now.
He frowned, even as he clapped. How could he be happy for something so plainly painful for her?
It was battling this guilt and sorrow in turns that Hop later stepped out of the snow into the lobby of the Rose of the Rondelands—only to find Gloria herself, walled in by a bevy of newsagents.
It didn't take much looking to pick up the tone of the encounter.
“How do you feel about losing to your brother?” One newsagent jabbed the mic at her face with a stare harder than the pin on his lapel. “Do you think you deserved the loss?" "You seemed surprised, would you say this was an upset?" "Do you think this will hurt your relationship with your brother?"
And Gloria was barely breathing, in stops and starts, beneath this suffocating pile of questions, her shoulders bunching up closer with every word. She turned shakily at the sound of Hop's arrival, and he winced to see the terror so plain in her eyes, her face blanched and her hands curled up against her chest.
Hot anger welled up in him. "All right, that’s enough!" he yelled, shoving himself through the line of reporters. One exclaimed in annoyance; this one he turned to with a scowl that saw her scampering back. "Clear off! Gloria’s already tired from battle! And you’ve been asking rather rude questions!"
He sheltered her from them while she fled to the lobby couch, and he only followed her there once they had dispersed in a disappointed mutter. He found her curled up in one corner, against the armrest, legs hugged to her chest.
It felt wrong, to see her so diminished and afraid.
Taking a seat beside her, Hop did the only thing he knew how to do. He laid a hand on her back, waiting for her to give a sign—a glance, a weak nod—that this was alright, that he could go on.
He began rubbing gentle circles in her back, like his mother used to. Round and round, like the rolling of tides. "There, there," he whispered. "Breathe, breathe in.” She breathed in. He felt her shoulder blades move with the inhale. “You'll be all right. You did amazing today."
Her shoulders loosened little by little, and as her breathing grew steady again, the tears finally ran from the corners of her eyes. "I hate them,” she said shakily. “They wouldn't leave when I told them to, I—”
“Their idea of good fun is harassing us trainers," he said with a grimace. "Nothing juicier than a celebrity lashing out at reporters. Sorry they got you, it was rude of them. Want a hug?" When she nodded, he let his hand shift from her back to her shoulder, pulling her into his arms.
Hugging her was as natural as breathing, as easy as falling asleep in a warm bed. He felt her tears soak into his shirt. “Thank you, Hop," she whispered. "Just having you here makes it easier."
"I'm glad I can help," he replied. "Don’t worry, all right? As long as I'm here, I'll make sure they don't get to you again."
"Th—thanks." She cleared her throat as they pulled apart, eyes darting to him and then away again. "Can you stay here till Leon arrives? I don't think I could be alone with myself right now."
"I'll stay as long as you need! I have most of the day free, and I'd do anything for you, you know that."
"Even after...the way I was?"
"Yeah, of course." He smiled, reaching out by instinct to wipe a tear from her chin. "I really appreciate it now, what you did back there. I'm sorry I was being difficult."
"No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kicked you when you were down. Kind of made me no better than Bede."
"It's not one bit the same! You're my best friend and rival! You can always be harsh on me."
She laughed, and he was so glad to hear the sound that he pulled her into another hug on impulse. Her arms encircled him tight in answer. "You too," she whispered. "You can always be honest with me."
"Yeah?" he replied. His hand lingered on her wrist after they had pulled apart; he couldn't bring himself to let go completely, as if losing contact would let her sorrow return. "Well, I never want us to stop talking for that long ever again."
"Us both," she replied. "I don't want to go another minute without you. If I had my way, you'd always be with me."
"I can be, you know."
She looked up. Her eyes were red and wet, and her hair was mussed up, and she looked…breathtaking.
He rubbed the side of his neck, where he could feel a blush spreading. “So…”
“So.”
“When’s Lee going to get here already?”
Then, as the story goes, a storm swallowed Wyndon, putting the entire Champion Cup on hold.
When it seemed all of Galar might be torn apart, the trio found themselves thrown suddenly back into the silent outskirts of their hometown, routing about in the fog for the ancient artifacts Sonia had told them of.
When they came upon the altar in the mists, they found only two—a sword and a shield, exactly as Sonia had said—and there were three of them to pass them between.
Glancing at each other, there was a long silence, all of them seeming to know what to do without speaking.
So back they flew, sword and shield in tow, to face down the end of Galar alone. They were starting to learn, as children of Postwick, and as rivals to the Champion, that this was a legacy they were bound to inherit—the glory and tumult, the burden and thrill.
It was Gloria and Hop who stood side by side, summoning the old kings to their sides, commanding their boundless strength. Then, when Eternatus had dwindled back to its original form, they nodded to Victor, who had the honours of throwing the Ultra Ball to capture it.
Victor hurtled through the finals, borne on a momentum that everyone watching knew would not be halted. Unstoppable force versus immovable object, Leon made it a fight for his money, but even he seemed to know it, what everyone else did: it was time for a changing of seasons, inching closer and closer with every blow that Victor's formidable team landed.
With the boy's Dynamaxed Inteleon tearing through his Charizard's defences, the door into that future began to open in earnest.
The stadium was immersed in rain and steam and flame, over and over, obscuring the battlers in mist. When the final whistle shrilled and the clouds parted, Charizard lay motionless on the ground.
The flag went up.
The applause came slowly, like the first spring rain—a patter, and then a deafening roar. "People of Galar!" declared the voice in every speaker. "You are looking at your new champion, Victor!"
Everyone had forgotten how to celebrate the victory of someone other than their Champion. For some, Leon had been Champion all their lives. His name had been carved into stone, immutable history.
History had changed, just like that. The old kings had woken. Eternatus had been put to rest. At long last, Leon lifted that heavy mantle from his shoulders, while everyone in the stands awaited the thawing of the Wyndon snow.
Victor was most awestruck of them all, staring wide-eyed at his own face on the billboard while confetti spiralled from the deepening sky.
"Hop! I just had a call—I think—I'm going to become a protégé, for a gym, like an understudy—"
Hop began the day with Gloria almost crashing into him in the lobby that morning, that jumble of words tumbling out as she steadied herself. "Slow down, Glo!" he exclaimed, and when her breathing had evened out, he said, "All right, come again?"
"This morning the receptionist told me Kabu was here asking to speak to me earlier!" She was off like a rocket. "So of course I called him, and he said he's been looking for an apprentice—a proper protégé, someone he'll train to take his place if he decides he wants to throw in the towel—just in case, not that he's thinking of it—and he says he's never seen a better fit for the role than me—"
" Whoa! That's amazing, Gloria!" he shouted, voice echoing down the carpeted hallway. "You said yes, yeah?"
She was practically bouncing on her toes now. "Yeah, I did! He wants me in Motostoke to study and train, five days a week, maybe more as the Champion Cup season rolls around, and—" It caught like fire, the excitement radiating from her grin as she detailed the proceedings of the call, and soon he was grinning along, the dawning glow of her joy seeming to fill the corridor. "It's a three-hour ride to and from Wedgehurst, I could go in every Monday and come back every Friday. But..."
"But what? You could do it—you're right!"
Now her gaze dipped away, thumbs twiddling over her cardigan buttons. "I don't know. I was starting to think I'd follow you wherever you went."
"N-no way!" Hop choked, hands clamping down on her shoulders. " I'm honoured, but I have to say no to that. I don't even know where I'm headed! Don't tie yourself down because of me. You should go for it. I'll be there for you all the way!"
The truth was, if he could simply let her follow him, if all it took for her to always be by his side was for him to say "yes" right now—he would. But he couldn't.
Gloria looked on the brink of saying something, lips parting and closing again. "Thank you, you're always so supportive, I—I'll think about it," she said, venturing to smile. "What do you want to do, anyway, now that the Champion Cup is over? Challenge my brother next year?"
"Of course," he replied. "But till then, I don't know. But all that doesn't matter right now!" He shook his head. "I'm happy for you—Kabu's right, you know. You're going to be amazing."
He knew what it meant, of course: it was one more thread pulled from the weft of his life, one more unknown variable. The seed of her future was planted. But his, he hadn't found. And he was starting to fear he'd be caught out in the cold forever.
Then it happened in the Weald.
Well, first, their homeward return was disrupted, yet again, by a pair of brothers with the worst haircuts Galar had ever seen.
One complication led to another, quickly growing into a tangled yarn of plots. Hop, Gloria and Victor found themselves racing about Galar yet again, freeing Pokemon from the thrall of these hooligans, who seemed to derive joy from nothing but to see these Pokemon driven mad by an upsurge of Dynamax energy.
As they quested along, the trio fell into a sort of ad-hoc dynamic. Victor and Gloria were quick to their pokeballs, whittling down the berserk victim's defences with sheer firepower.
But Hop could not, and could never, harm them. He knew this. He couldn't command Dubwool to injure his kin; none of it felt right at all, and his hand was locked in place. Always like this , he found himself thinking as he flinched at the flying debris of a sudden Earthquake—a rubbish battler with no instinct, it's no wonder I didn't make the finals.
Even then, he did what he knew how to do.
The twins thought he was mad the first time he did it—stepped into the red winds raging about them, hands up in surrender. It didn't make sense, and yet it felt right—to be the third option—to talk instead of fighting.
Each time he placed himself before their foe, whispering reassurance and comfort, he saw a change sweep over the Pokemon's eyes. Sometimes they, too, began to settle. Sometimes it took more words, sometimes he burned his hands, before they began to hear him. Then he would feel the shift in the tone of the roar around him, as the wind descended slowly back into control, and the jealous red tendrils of energy finally let go.
Each time, as the red light began to dwindle in it, he glimpsed a gratitude in its eyes.
And each time, he thought he felt a new light turning on in his mind, starting to form a picture.
That was where things came back to the Weald. It was always the Weald—as it had all begun there, so would it end there and, like the new year at spring, begin anew.
Here it was that Zamazenta now fled to, crying out, tangled in the throes of madness. Here it was that Hop found the legendary Pokemon, crouching beneath an overhang of leaves, shivering and scarred.
Quietly he inched through the undergrowth, towards the trembling hero. He could see the strain of control in their eyes, the red light flickering, a whimper torn from their throat each time.
He'd seen Gloria battle Zacian into submission. Here, now, he briefly thought to do the same. But here, again, something in him stayed his hand. How weak , he might have thought before, but today he knew different, and today he didn't care.
Instinct drew him closer and closer, hands parted in welcome, head bowed in sympathy. He saw the red light burning low in Zamazenta's eyes, saw the warning in them: Don't come closer.
"It's all right, I'm here," he whispered back.
Zamazenta shook their head, retreating under the leaves. "It's all right," he repeated plaintively. He, too, crouched and shuffled in under the foliage. On his knees two metres away, he stopped again, meeting a trembling Zamazenta's eye. The red was guttering now, and the fear in their gaze was thawing to weariness, as if the Slumbering Weald were working its magic upon its keeper.
"There, there," he whispered, like his mother had in old memories. "Everything’s all right. You don’t have to lose control. You can manage this...I know you can!"
As Hop finally came to rest before Zamazenta, they flinched, then cautiously lowered their head, eyes glowing up at him. With a nod, he reached out, and scratched them under their chin, as he sometimes did with Dubwool.
The effect was the same: their eyes closed, and their throat rumbled. He beamed and pulled their head carefully into his embrace, stroking between their ears.
Blinking expectantly, Zamazenta nuzzled his Pokeball pocket. "Really?" He breathed, reaching for the item. They blinked their great eyes at him, and bowed their head again, the last red lightning winking out at last.
The legendary wolf slipped into the Pokeball almost willingly, closing their eyes as if finding home. Picking up his new companion, he turned around to find Sonia and the twins gaping.
Right there, the realisation bloomed in him, all the lights coming on at once, a heart-aching certainty that he knew exactly what he wanted.
This. He wanted this. To meet Pokemon, to learn their language, raise them, heal them, know them.
"Say, Hop," said Sonia. "Fancy becoming my assistant at the lab?" And it was like a jigsaw puzzle clicking in place, like the first green shoot pricking through the frost in the flowerbed of his future.
Coming home to Postwick felt strange, like planting a tree back in the pot where it had first grown. Their return was met with a crowd of a hundred, bearing banners and bouquets of springtime flowers. The three were not the same teens who had left it a year ago, and everything was out to remind them: how the fences seemed to have grown shorter, draped in early flowering blankets of honeysuckle, how those upper shelves were suddenly within reach.
Their mums were proud as pudding, leading the crowd when they made landfall at the station. They walked their children all the way home with tireless interrogations.
"We'll throw you a homecoming feast!" declared Hop's mother. "Once Lee joins us, that is, but he's still two days out."
Two days passed entirely too quickly, full of shuffling boxes down stairs and diving into boutiques. On the evening of the promised feast, Hop was first to the dining room. He had a new jacket for the occasion, yet somehow it only seemed to worsen his nerves, to give him more to fiddle with.
He spent the half-hour walking back and forth between kitchen and front door, tweaking his collar and refolding his sleeves in front of every window.
"You'll wear the floors thin pacing like that," his mother sighed as he entered the kitchen for the fifth time.
"Sorry Mum, I'm nervous!"
"What about, dear?"
"I don't know!"
The answer began to dawn on him when the doorbell rang, and he ran to answer it.
It was the twins. Gloria had never been so tidied up as this, magenta silk dress shimmered like the river at dawn, and beside her Victor had on a grey blazer and a dress shirt tucked into crisply-pressed pants. Victor grinned when he met his old friend's eye, but Gloria's gaze was nowhere to be found. It was like she kept dodging his eyes on purpose—and all the better, because he was well and truly struggling not to look.
"How's everything?" asked Victor, about ten seconds into his staring.
"It's good! Really good! Come inside!" Hop said too loudly, hurrying backward into the house.
"You three, say Champion Time!" Without warning, Gloria, Victor and Hop found themselves in a Leon selfie. All four were clumped at one end of the table: Leon at the head, which seemed unavoidable, Victor at his right hand, and Hop and Gloria on his left. "Good one, another!"
The house was full to the brim. Sonia and Magnolia had hurried in from Wedgehurst on a day's notice, and more guests had been trickling in all day. Magnolia had brought all her grandchildren, and Sonia had brought her neighbours, and Leon had brought his penchant for posing at every opportunity.
The photos were in all their inboxes within the minute, all three swiping through them with scrutinising eyes.
"Hop, nice jacket." Gloria said absently as she swiped over a picture of the two making Scorbunny ears behind each other's heads.
"Thanks! I like your dress too." The words popped out with even less thought, so loud that a few people turned, including a smirking Victor. Face burning, he added, "It suits you. It's very pink."
Her face was also very pink when she chuckled, "Thank you, it took me a day to pick out." He dropped a piece of pie off the table.
Hop felt the nudge of their Purrloin closing in on the fallen morsel, as Leon rang his bowl with a spoon. "Thank you all for being here!" he announced over the din. "We are delighted to have you in our house today...I can guarantee we're going to have a Champion dinner!"
"You were literally the last to arrive," Victor muttered.
"I would like to propose a toast! To our new Champion, Victor—" he made a sweeping gesture at the boy beside him, whose scowl instantly became a grin— "and our two semi-finalists, Hop and Gloria! Not only brilliant trainers, but also the saviours of our beloved Galar!"
Inching a little in Hop's direction as the speeches ended and dinner commenced, Gloria gave him a nudge in the arm with her elbow. "So...how's work going?" she asked.
It was magical how these words lit his face up. Right there, he launched into a ramble, the way she knew he only did when someone he trusted was listening—about the experiments that Sonia had delegated to him, the database searches, the obnoxiously abstruse language of the academics of half a century ago.
His eager verbosity called back to summer days long past—back when they had sat in the grass and he had lectured her on type charts and region maps and every species of Pokemon on the fields of Postwick and Wedgehurst. Then, they had shared a sandwich, and she had watched the sun go down to the sound of her best friend extolling the wonders of the Hoenn region.
Gloria smiled, eyes closing. The Hop she knew was back. And it was lovely beyond words to hear his voice so steeped again in the sun-warm joy that had begun to wane with the Champion Cup's travails.
The Champion Cup—that had been his brother's dream. A hand-me-down.
This, though? This dream was all his.
"—and some days I come into the lab to find a new stack of work on the desk, when I had just finished up a stack of the same size the day before! But it's such fun, you know? Even when I'm nodding off or..." He trailed off, drew in a breath. "Glo, thank you."
She looked up. Hop was looking right at her. How long had he been looking? Did her hair still sit right over her ear? Had he always looked so radiant? "Ah?" she answered, heart racing. "What for?"
"You helped me a lot, you know," he said. "You have no idea just how much! I didn't even know what I wanted, or what I was good at, till you put it right in front of my face. So thank you."
Tinny muzak drifted from the telly in the living room, and the aroma of the roast wafted in from the kitchen. Gloria and Hop's fingers overlapping on the edge of her armrest. "I can't take the credit for that, you did all the work there." Her hand nervously played at holding his. "You figured it out yourself!"
"Not without you, I wouldn't have. I gave up on myself, but you never gave up on me."
"I could never." She beamed. "After all, you were always there for me, too. Supporting me even when you had all that going on."
"And I'll always be! Whatever you do from now, I'll be your biggest cheerleader," Hop answered earnestly.
She finally pried his hand up from the wood, and wrapped her own fingers tightly around his. She saw a grin break through his surprise, and spurred by the moment, he leaned down and kissed her cheek.
Music, chatter, cutlery clattering on dinner plates. Everything moved in slow motion as Gloria took in the sensation of his lips against her skin, thrill, horror welling up in her chest. Meanwhile, their mums brought the roast out upon the largest, shiniest platter they had ever seen, a crescendo of chatter rising around them.
It had been years since she'd last felt those lips, and they were still soft, and she still loved being kissed by them.
Hop pulled back abruptly, and they looked away at the same time, hands equally cold on the armrest.
They didn't notice Leon turning to Victor and Sonia with a frown, whispering, "Hey, have Hop and Gloria always been...like that ?"
Goggling at the pair till now, Sonia turned to him. "Don't you know? Oh, no, of course you don't, you weren't even here!" she replied, shaking her head.
"Know what?"
That night, Gloria slammed her door shut and flung herself backwards onto her old bed and yelled.
She'd done well too, to push the thought down to the pit of her heart each time it threatened to well up through the cracks.
"We did this years ago!" she yelled, gripping her pillow. "We said, we promised—best friends! Look, we have lives now, plans, jobs! We can't do this again!"
In his room, Hop pulled the covers over his head. "No, no, no!" he shouted, words muffled into his duvet. "She's not going to come back around after five years ! We're past that. We're both moving on. It's not happening."
"Best friends! We agreed!" She squeezed her eyes shut, breathed in, held it, let it out. There we go. All gone now.
No, she still wanted to kiss him, and hold him, and be held by him, and—
—he wanted to walk with her to the grocer's again, hand in hand, and lie with her in the flowers in the balmy summer sun, and help her with homework, and everything in between...
No one could help this feeling of deja vu. Not their mothers, watching Hop and Gloria talk over the fence, hands brushing among the honeysuckle leaves, fighting not to lean too close together, not to laugh too hard at each other's jokes.
Not Sonia, who caught her assistant sneaking off to the marketplace during sample collection, and later found him staring at his best friend over hot chocolate in the town cafe while their fingers tangled thoughtlessly with each other's, but never committed to holding.
And certainly not Victor, who had to listen to his sister's flustered phone calls with the newly-minted lab assistant, laughing dizzily as she begged him to describe his lab work in excruciating detail, and he proceeded to do just that.
Not Victor, who was going to do something about it this time.
"Hop. Hop!" Victor screamed, careening onto the lab premises. Hop was right where he should be, on the patio round the back of the lab, with a tray of aloes. “You're in love with her, aren't you?”
He whirled back in alarm as his once-neighbour hurtled towards him, panting like he'd run all the way from the next town. "I, what?"
Victor clutched his head. "Oh Arceus, do we have to do everything again? Just own up, you're in love with my sister, aren't you! Again! "
"I, I—a second!" Without another word, Hop dashed off through the glass doors, and stumbled back out without the potted plants. He snatched the Champion's shoulders decisively and shook him. "Vic! Yes, I am! I need help! I really thought we were done, but now—"
"Tell her then, you dolt!" Victor shouted. "I can not watch this one second longer. Not this time!"
"No, no way!" Now it was a shouting match. "What if she gets mad that I'm bringing it up again? After we promised to be best friends and everything?"
"Well, she won't be, so you tell her right this very instant !"
The doorbell rang. Victor's head perked up. Ah, of course. It was four thirty, right in the middle of Gloria's daily stroll to Wedgehurst.
Sure enough, there came the sound of her unmistakeable gait, tramping through the grass and round the back.
Gloria froze when she found her brother and their neighbour scowling at each other on the patio, shaking each other's shoulders.
"Whoa, did I interrupt on something?"
"No!"
"Yes!" Victor shouted, dragging Hop towards her by the arm. He turned to the lab assistant. "Say something! Say it right now!"
Standing face to face, Hop did his best to meet Gloria's eye, eyes darting back to Victor for assurance. The Champion offered "assurance" with bared teeth.
"Glo," he said then, forcing their gazes to lock.
"Yeah?" she replied, eyes big as saucers.
"Er, I know we dated once, and got bored, and agreed to be friends, but I think." He faltered.
"You think?"
"I think...this time, I think it's real."
Her jaw dropped. "Oh."
He shook his head. "Sorry, I know it's weird, after all this time! It's just, you know," he twiddled his fingers, "we got to talk a lot more during our gym challenge, and it made me realise—I know you, but I want to know more. Your hopes, your plans, everything! I just love knowing you're out here living, achieving new things, and I just love hearing your thoughts about t hings , and I just love you !"
The words reverberated across the garden.
"Ah?" It was a sound of both disbelief and pleading. By now, she was a telling shade of pink, and she was swaying on her feet. "I, I do too, you know. Love you, I mean. And I don't think I ever stopped."
So Gloria leapt up on tiptoes, grabbed Hop by the shoulders, and kissed him, properly this time, dragging him towards herself, and he leaned into the kiss. She stumbled backward with his weight, through the sprouting dandelions and thistles, and they tripped and tumbled into the grass. And still they were lying among the thorns and flowers, kissing, his body arched over hers, her arm pulling him against her chest, palms scraped by thorns. It stirred the memory of an old day, in that house up the road, before the twins had moved in, before the thicket in the yard had been uprooted.
Victor covered his eyes, listening to them sigh and make other sounds in between. "I almost regret this," he muttered. No, he didn't regret it one bit, but the relief, the release of years of tension, was so rapt he began to feel like he shouldn't be watching.
"Be my partner?" Gloria whispered. "Again?"
"Yes! Again! Always!" And then he winced, lifting a bleeding hand. "Ouch, not this again."
Three days from then, Victor would return to Wyndon, taking Leon's duty. Five days from then, Gloria would take a train to Motostoke for her first day as a gym trainer.
Today, Hop burst into the house kitchen waving a bleeding hand at his mother, who was scooping peas into a lunchbox. "Mum! I need a plaster," he announced, waving a bleeding hand in her face.
Mum was more than happy to oblige, peeling the waxed paper away and smoothing it out onto his skin. While her head was still bowed over his palm, he cleared his throat, and said, "Mum, you know, Gloria and I...we are dating."
And this time, she only lowered his hand, and sighed, "Oh, thank goodness, finally."