The passenger seat had been removed and replaced with a Poké Ball Rack. Little Sheep and the other race cars had all had their front sections modified into roughly this configuration.
The back seat was empty. Venusaur leaned forward a little. "Venu~~"
Finally, something other than "grass."
Shen Qi thought over some words of encouragement.
Sayaka had described Meng Ai as an "angel." He definitely had to mention that.
There was also the fact that Meng Ai had improved enormously.
From the Saffron City Regular Race to the Palmpona Preliminaries, he could feel how dramatically the driving skills behind the Cultivation Pod had advanced.
In the second round of the Preliminaries that followed, Meng Ai had been placed in the same group as Ayaka and still advanced, once again proving how much her abilities had improved.
"Shen Qi..."
Meng Ai called out first. He was the only friend on her phone aside from her relatives.
"Hmm?"
"I want to withdraw..."
Shen Qi froze for a long while before recovering from those few short words. All the praise he had put together earlier caught in his throat, a thousand words reduced to one.
Shen Qi: "Fuck!"
Venusaur: "Grass!"
"Do you know what you're saying?"
If Sayaka learned that the little angel she believed had stubbornly flown from her sickbed into the sky was suddenly withdrawing, she would probably lose it on the spot.
Even setting Sayaka aside, Meng Ai casually withdrawing would affect her career, at least in the short term.
In a Class T Competition, competitors could not withdraw on a whim once their registration was confirmed.
Of course, emergencies such as health problems were exceptions.
Withdrawing out of sheer willfulness without giving a reason amounted to showing contempt for the event and the other competitors. It could result in