"Hey, Teacher Qingyu!!!"
After spotting Qingyu in the distance, Nemona, who had been chatting with a pink-clad girl whose back was to him, immediately brightened up and waved to him with a smile.
At Nemona's greeting, the girl beside her quickly turned around too.
Qingyu froze for a moment when he looked over.
Lacey? What was she doing in Kitakami?
Wait, at this point in the timeline, she probably hadn't officially enrolled at Blueberry Academy yet, just like Nemona, right?
It would be pretty weird if I called her my senior now.
"Nemona, are you visiting Kitakami too?"
"Yep! My parents aren't coming home for New Year's this year, so I decided to come to Kitakami on vacation with a friend!"
Nemona quickly jogged over to Qingyu and Cynthia. After exchanging a greeting with Qingyu, she turned to Cynthia, her eyes instantly taking on a fangirl's gleam.
"Hehe, Cynthia, we meet again~"
"What a coincidence, Nemona."
Cynthia smiled. She was quite fond of this energetic, warm, and cheerful apprentice from Qingyu's Gym.
And Nemona seemed to have set her sights on following in Cynthia's footsteps as a Champion. Under Qingyu's guidance, she was preparing to challenge Paldea's Champion.
Who in this world wouldn't like someone with a goal and the willingness to work hard for it?
Qingyu was watching Nemona too.
Come to think of it, Nemona's parents and older sister had never appeared in the game's story either. They only existed in her accounts of them.
As the owners of the Rotom Phone company, her parents must have been pretty busy, right?
That was probably why Nemona, who had grown up largely left to her own devices, had developed a personality that Penny described as having "Own Tempo as her Ability"...
While he was thinking, Lacey, who had been