The car rattled along a somewhat bumpy country road.
Kyosuke cradled the palm-sized electronic pet, his little feet swinging back and forth.
He had gone over the manual several times already, memorizing every icon and the function of every button.
On the screen, a little pixelated bird cocked its head and chirped, "Pidgey! Pidgey!" in electronic tones.
It was a Pidgey.
It wasn't the Pikachu he'd been dreaming of, and at first, Kyosuke had been just a tiny bit disappointed.
But when he pressed a button to feed the pixel bird a berry and watched it happily flap its wings, his disappointment quickly melted away, replaced by wonder and delight.
About every ten minutes, the electronic pet chimed to remind its owner to interact with it.
Kyosuke couldn't get enough. He fed it, cleaned up the "poop" on the screen, and tried playing little games with it.
The drive, which had seemed so long because they were going to Grandma's house, suddenly felt very short.
"Kyosuke, don't just play with that. Look at the scenery outside," his mother reminded him, turning around.
"Mm-hmm!" Kyosuke replied, but he couldn't bear to take his eyes off the screen.
Pidgey was running in circles on the screen, its little pixel wings flapping up and down. It looked so adorably clumsy, just like a chicken on the ground.
"Pidgey's exercising!" Kyosuke cried excitedly. "Mom, look! It's going to get stronger!"
His father glanced at his son in the rearview mirror and smiled, shaking his head.
"Don't spend all your time playing with that electronic pet when we get to Grandma's, okay?"
"Okay!" Kyosuke answered halfheartedly.
They arrived at Grandma's house in Qingmei City just before noon.
Warm sunshine spilled across the little courtyard, paved with bluestone slabs.
As soon as Kyosuke got out of