After talking with Auntie Hibari for a while, Mingyou stopped short of asking what had happened to her family. He went upstairs with Ogerpon and the others.
His thoughts were still on that Misdreavus, and memories began to surface...
Only when he reached the third floor and saw the familiar security door did he come back to himself. He took out his key, slipped it into the lock, and turned it.
Click—
The lock opened. He gently pushed the door inward, and a faint smell of mildew and dust greeted him. The apartment was dim and still.
He flicked the light switch, but the living room stayed dark. Maybe the electricity bill hadn't been paid, or maybe the bulb had burned out. Following the route he remembered, he pulled open the curtains. Harsh sunlight poured in, catching tiny specks of dust as they drifted through the air.
"Still the same..."
After opening a window to air the place out, Mingyou looked around the living room. The old furniture stood exactly where it always had.
There was the dust-covered Psyduck plush on the sofa, the Noctowl wall clock, the Pikachu-shaped music box on the TV cabinet... and a family Group Photo on the bookshelf.
He picked up the frame. Dust had long since obscured his parents' faces. Alongside the three of them were several of his parents' Pokémon, and a Misdreavus biting his hair while he struggled to pull it off.
"Misdreavus..."
Mingyou murmured its name, his spirits sinking as he remembered everything about it.
A fall when he was little had injured his head, leaving him especially easy to fool. Once, while playing with other children from the neighborhood, he'd found a Pokémon Egg in a tree outside Levincia.
He remembered the other kids convincing him that the egg could