With his first victory secured, Mingyou checked his ranking. He had shot straight up from 999th to 851st. Apparently, beating an opponent ranked far above him earned him more points.
"Not bad. Once things here are sorted out, I'll move on to the next match. I'm getting more and more excited to see what kind of opponents I'll meet~"
Putting away his Rotom Phone, Mingyou smiled and waved at the livestream Ogerpon had started. He could easily imagine how lively things must be at the school in Kitakami right now. Here, on the other hand...
Silence hung over the helipad. Gladion had meant to use Mingyou as a stepping stone to show his family how much he had grown over the past two years, only to get utterly thrashed in less than five minutes.
The defeat had been so crushing that he could not even muster any resentment. The gap between their abilities was simply too vast.
"Hey!"
"Huh?"
Hearing the voice ahead, Gladion looked up and saw Mingyou smiling at him. He snapped back coldly, "Here to mock me...? Fair enough. The loser deserves to be humiliated by the winner. But this defeat... I'll—"
"Haven't you gotten something wrong?"
Mingyou cut him off, his voice growing calmer. "Does winning or losing matter that much? Don't you have something more important to deal with right now?"
As he spoke, his gaze fell on Lusamine and Lillie in the nearby crowd, and he murmured, "You made your family worry. Whatever your reasons were, and whatever brought you back all of a sudden, shouldn't you... go apologize to them?"
"Ogu..."
Ogerpon glanced up at him. There was someone right here who was always making his family worry, too...
Gladion trembled at his words. He had come back precisely to prove he had