"No, no!" The slightly bookish Li Ke blushed scarlet. "D-don't joke about things like that."
"Hahahahaha." Hinako clutched her stomach with laughter. "You're very cute too."
Chapter 498: Research Conference
"Shen Qi, are you all right?"
Over the phone, Xiao Chun asked with concern.
More than two months had passed since Shen Qi had left for Celadon City to compete in the Spring Race.
This truly exceeded the longest Shen Qi had ever been away from home.
Xiao Chun and the other classmates regularly sent messages asking how Shen Qi was doing and received replies saying everything was fine, but his prolonged absence from school still left them uneasy.
Today was the weekend, and Xiao Chun had made a special call.
"I'm fine. I'll be back soon."
As Shen Qi answered, he took his ceremonial outfit out of his suitcase-the clothes a Driver wore onstage to accept an award after achieving a good result.
Shen Qi had also worn this outfit when accepting the Skeleton Fossil Professor Cozmo had given him.
"By the way, Xiao Chun, how has Pokémon High School been doing lately?"
A month had passed between enrollment season and the start of classes. Shen Qi knew the teachers and principals must be busy, and their usual contact had been limited to everyday greetings, so he really knew little about how the school had been operating lately.
"Ugh, terribly."
"How so?"
Shen Qi remembered Jixiang mentioning that more than eighty new students had enrolled this year. The previous two intakes had been smaller, but Pokémon High School only had eighty or ninety students in the Third-Year Class anyway.
Each year's enrollment fluctuated between eighty and a hundred, which was reasonable. At most, it was a pity they had failed to attract students from the Orange Islands.
"That bastard