"Let's find somewhere to sit. I'll tell you everything."
May paused mid-step. She had been fixing her wind-tousled hair, her fingers still tangled in the ends, but forgot to keep twisting them.
They reached a small park in the south of the city. A few oak leaves lay on a bench. Lin Hao brushed them aside and sat down, then let out a quiet hiss as soon as his back touched the backrest. The spot scraped by the wooden plank earlier still hurt.
May sat beside him, knees together, both hands resting on her legs. She rubbed the fabric along her trouser seams twice before laying her hands flat. Pikachu hopped from Lin Hao's shoulder onto the armrest, curled up its tail, and quietly watched them.
"Where should I start?" Lin Hao tipped his head back to look at the sky. Clouds covered half the moon.
"At the beginning."
"That might take a while."
"I have time."
Lin Hao set his backpack by his feet and stared at the red marks on his palms from climbing the building. His tone grew serious. "I'm not from this world."
May stopped clutching her trouser leg, leaving a shallow nail mark in the fabric.
"I come from another world. There are no Pokémon or Trainers there, and no League." Lin Hao opened his hands, then closed them again. "Over there, I was just an ordinary wage slave cramming onto the subway to get to work every day."
"Wage slave?" May didn't quite understand the term.
"An ordinary person whose job squeezes the soul out of them every day," Lin Hao explained. "The pay wasn't great, life was boring, and I played games after work."
"And then?"
"Then one day, I went to sleep." Lin Hao tapped his knee twice. "When I woke up,