Shen Qi soon realized something was wrong.
Sayaka in the Normal World Line had lost both hands in a car accident. She even needed a maid to feed her, so she could not possibly hug a Pokémon.
Although technology in the Pokémon world could be astonishingly miraculous, it had not reached the point of regenerating limbs.
They should be prosthetics or something like that.
"Sayaka, your hands..."
"Heehee." Sayaka lifted Petilil as though showing off.
As a juvenile form, Petilil was a Pokémon resembling a small flower bud, with three leaves on its head and a body shaped like a tiny bud.
Compared with an ordinary Petilil, Sayaka's was not quite as light green, instead bearing a faint golden gradient.
It was a Shiny Petilil.
"Shen Qi, your encouragement gave me the courage to hatch this child..."
"Hey, hey, hey! What are you saying?!"
That phrasing made it sound as if Shen Qi and Sayaka had fallen in love and given birth to a Pokémon, Petilil.
For Lilligant, how was that not also a kind of...
"Tsk, honestly. Your mind always goes straight to the gutter."
With Shen Qi's reminder, Sayaka realized that what she had said sounded a little odd.
"I mean, you encouraged me... and made me want to become a Co-driver, or even a Driver, again. I could start by being a Pokémon's Co-driver, like you."
It was also because Sayaka had begun thinking about stepping out of the darkness and starting a new chapter of her life that she had wanted to buy another Pokémon Egg and raise a Lilligant belonging to her new self.
She had not expected the Petilil that hatched to be Shiny.
"Your hands shouldn't have anything to do with Petilil, right?"
Shen Qi had been observing for a long time. Sayaka's