After lunch, Ash and the others boarded the speedboat Xiaomei had repaired and left Shamouti Island, reluctant to go.
But although Ash had left, his mother, Delia, unsurprisingly stayed behind.
This mother, who lived alone and felt somewhat lonely with her son traveling everywhere, would wait until Professor Oak finished his research here before returning to Pallet Town with him.
Although Xia You did not want to take a narrow-minded view of things, all the signs before him made it hard not to wonder whether the two of them had some special relationship.
Still... Xia You was in no mood to look into that gossip now. After all, he had troubles of his own at the moment.
After he and Sabrina finished packing, they did not leave right away. Instead, they left their luggage in the room for the time being and set off for the altar on the other side of Shamouti Island.
There was still a rare Pokémon there waiting for Sabrina to catch.
Walking through the dense forest, Xia You looked to either side and saw that the trees had suffered varying degrees of frost damage from the Thunder God's earlier freezing.
Fortunately, although their branches and leaves looked wilted, they were largely unharmed and remained full of life.
Now, their surroundings were quiet. With no one else around, the two finally had another chance to spend time alone together.
Along the way, Xia You had wanted to say something, but seeing that Sabrina treated him exactly as she always had, without any change in her attitude, he could not help feeling puzzled.
After something like that happened, shouldn't she at least demand an explanation?
Why did she seem... somewhat unmoved?
After all, she was the one who had lost out!
Xia You could not make sense