I had not eaten dinner yet, and the aroma drifting from Dawn's house suddenly made my stomach growl.
"Oh, then I'll make a portion for Baicai, too."
"Sorry for the trouble. I'll take you up on that."
And so, thoroughly embarrassed but eager all the same, I went into her room and had a very late dinner.
Ayako's piping-hot cooking softened Dawn's expression. Every concerned word made her deep love for her child unmistakable.
Incidentally, it warmed both my stomach and my heart, too.
(...This was nothing like yesterday's Cup Noodles...)
I cursed my own inability to cook a little.
And, naturally, I finished every last bite.
"Mm-hmm, I see. What happened after that?"
"Right, after that-"
After eating, I sat to Dawn's right to listen to her, our shoulders pressed together.
With her cute pink bed behind us, it was the perfect place for us to lean back together.
Listening to Dawn, I remembered something Yuto had said.
"Strong Pokémon, weak Pokémon-that's for people to decide. If you're a Trainer, you should strive to win with the Pokémon you love."
Those words included the idea of striving for victory, and at first glance, they might sound like an exhortation to work hard to win. But I did not think he was all that fixated on victory.
People often said,
"It's hard to win battles using only the Pokémon you like."
Use powerful moves from powerful Pokémon to defeat your opponent.
I thought that had been the prevailing attitude here until now. Probably not just here, either.
But he must have really disliked that.
That was why he spoke out against it.
Then, to keep fighting alongside the Pokémon he loved-no, the Pokémon who looked up to him-he studied all sorts of things about Pokémon, accumulated that knowledge, and put