Chapter 9

  Goddamnit!

  I’m in the laboratory room, sat at a desk which Zuqimori cleared for me, doing homework. It’s 8 o’clock in the evening and I’ve been grinding my brains out translating my notes into written Standard.

  That’s right, speaking and listening to Pokénglish is one thing; reading and writing it is something else altogether. I’m picking it up unnaturally fast (so did Zuqimori), but goddamn does it mess with your head.

  There’s a whiteboard on the other end of the desk with the entire Standard alphabet which to a kid coming from Canada, looks like a bunch of Sumerian hieroglyphs or some shit. Two days ago, it looked like complete gibberish – like when you paste an image on the Notepad app. I had to keep referencing it, letter-by-letter, painstakingly copying all the notes I wrote for the day onto a different notebook. Today, I only have to reference every other letter, but it’s still fucking torture. I’ve cursed more times than I can count in the last hour, and even worked up a sweat - but it’s necessary.

  Garuvan the Galvantula has kept me company, hanging from its thread, swinging and crawling lazily around the lab, making sure I don’t get lonely.

  Zuqimori’s in the kitchen making dinner, but he’s warned me that I won’t get to eat until the entire day’s notes are translated, and I believe him.

  “Hey, can you stop that!” I yell, finally breaking and furiously sitting up in my chair.

  Missy has been phasing through the walls every ten minutes or so, and Drilbur and Sewaddle have been chasing her around, clambering along the corridors and barging past the doors, playing the noisiest game of hide-and-seek like I’m not trying to cram a whole fucking language or anything.

  She sticks her tongue out as she floats across the room from me.

  “You’re just trying to piss me off aren’t you! You’re a bitch!”

  She doesn’t seem to understand when I speak English, and this isn’t the first time I’ve cursed at her, though I only do it when Zuqimori’s not in earshot. She makes her ugly “Nyah” sound, accompanied by a nasty smile, and I get the feeling that she wants to rub Drilbur and my other ‘failures’ in my face.

  “I have Emolga,” I grin bitterly back at her, making sure to speak Standard. “And Garuvan is so much better than you, so go ahead and laugh cause the joke’s on you!”

  “‘Monga, where?” she says with her annoying little excuse for a voice, smirking tauntingly. “‘Monga where?”

  My eyes dart over to another workbench by one of the monitors.

  Where is her Poké-Ball… where is it…

  When I can’t spot it, I smirk bluffingly and pull out Emolga’s empty Poké-Ball from my pocket. It is full-size when I point it at her.

  Her expression changes in an instant, eyes widening in horror and mouth stretching into a mean, leering scowl. Drilbur and Sewaddle are just toddling into the scene for the tenth time this evening when they spot Missy’s grotesque expression.

  I close my eyes shut.

  “Sweeewoooh!” Sewaddle whistles in fright.

  “Grron?!” Drilbur grunts in shock.

  Closing your eyes helps against the paralysis – I figured it out yesterday when she used the move on me after I was coming out of the washroom. She had done that, I guessed, because earlier on I had tattled to Zuqimori when I saw her opening a jar of poké-blocks in the cave’s pantry room, with Foongus and Deerling patiently waiting like a pair of shady cops getting bribed. Why was I there myself? Just exploring the cave, I tell ya.

  Anyway, closing your eyes doesn’t do much against the cold, tingling feeling that wraps around your body like a wet blanket. I can see why it lowers speed.

  “MR. ZUQIMORIIII!!!” I yell. “SENSEEEI!!!”

  Zuqimori yells something back, and Missy wastes no time.

  “Wyaaahhhhh!!!” she begins wailing.

  The Scary Face effects quickly start fading and I open my eyes and stare at her disdainfully.

  “You’re so dumb…”

  Her crying intensifies, and she makes her way slowly through the air, heading for the corridor leading to the kitchen. Drilbur and Sewaddle start wailing too and scurry after her, though Drilbur really just sounds pathetic (“Gwoh-woh! Gwuh-wah!”). It’s so obvious he’s putting it on that I trust Zuqimori will be able to sniff out the truth.

  “You’re all bitches!” I rage, pushing off my desk and stomping after them. “Garuvan! Don’t let anyone touch my stuff!”

  Garuvan, hanging from his web, reassures me with a crackle of sparks.

  He’s the only one with sense around here.

  Like I hoped, Zuqimori was skeptical when the three bitches all barged into the kitchen, all worked up and fussy, and me right behind them shouting my defense.

  He told me to calm down because he couldn’t take me seriously when I was that upset. He had been biting back a smile when he mentioned something about my cheeks jiggling and that “fat people should not get angry”. That the “danger for heart attack” was high. His jibes came across so elementary and goofy that it was hard to get offended. Zuqimori was one of those guys who could mock your insecurities, and you wouldn’t feel the sting.

  “Tell her to play elsewhere, then!” I had roared, and he patted me several times on the shoulder, guiding me to a chair.

  I watched with a burning satisfaction when he searched through some drawers under the counter, found a Poké-Ball, and put Sewaddle inside.

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  “Nyooh…” Seeing Missy’s expression was too sweet to describe.

  “Mogurew! Out!” Zuqimori barked at the moron of a mole, and it waddled out of the kitchen quietly.

  I couldn’t resist doing a “Nyeh!” at Missy, who looked away snobbishly.

  Zuqimori chuckled. “Baruto-kun, I never see this much anger on you. It is good. It means your balls are working.” He groped his groin, grinning, but when I didn’t react, he turned to Missy and spoke in Japanese. She left promptly.

  “She’s a pain in the ass. I’m sure she’s been telling them wrong translations, Mr. Zuqimori.”

  Zuqimori is smiling calmly, waving my comment off to let it go. “She is having a lot of fun with you, Amerikan, but don’t worry, I say to her no playing when Baruto-kun is studying, OK? She will not do again.”

  “I hope so…” I grumble, finally cooling down.

  …

  “You are here, let us eat.”

  He goes to the counter and sets two large bowls down, putting a pair of chopsticks in one, and a fork in the other. When he lifts the lid off the saucepan on the cooker, the hot scent of udon begins filling the room. Out of the oven, he pulls a tray of crisp, mouthwatering rinds that look like sliced jumbo-sized sausages.

  Meals at the Zuqimori lab-cave have been coming irregularly. In the past three days, we’ve had dinner at wildly different times. Yesterday was a basic pot-noodle meal I ate alone around six o’clock. The night before had been at ten. Tonight is the first proper-looking dinner I’m having at a proper dinner time, and I’m glad that he’s forgone all that “no homework, no eating”, ‘cause I was barely half-way done.

  “Did you have many friends in Amerika?” Zuqimori asks out of the blue as he puts a bowl of udon noodles in front of me.

  I pull my chair closer to the table and lick my lips. It smells amazing.

  “Not many.”

  “No friends?”

  I shake my head. “It’s surprising isn’t it…”

  His expression is blank, then I remember that he doesn’t quite understand my sarcasm.

  “Why not, Baruto?”

  I lean back in my chair, groaning. “I don’t know… I’ve never been very popular…” Not the good kind anyway.

  “Ohhh,” he nods repeatedly, grabbing his own bowl and joining me at the table. “But you look so, so unique.”

  There, I look into his eyes, trying to tell whether he’s setting up another punchline. His cracked glasses are up on his head, holding his wild bangs away from his face and I see nothing but plainness in his eyes.

  I shrug. “Erm… what do you mean?”

  Chopsticks click together as he stirs his noodles. “In Japan, we have sumo fighter…”

  Here we go… My fork clinks against my bowl as I twirl it, gathering up for a bite.

  “… even here, Baruto-kun! In other region, there is a place where pokémon fight in sumo-style!”

  I nod lightly before bringing a forkful of noodles to my mouth. They’re so thick and gummy.

  “Mhm-hm,” I hum to let him know I’m paying attention.

  “Tell me about Amerika, Baruto-kun…”

  I almost choke on my food at the sudden change in topic. It takes me a while to chew, but when I eventually swallow the mouthful, I frown at him.

  “I told you before, I’m not American.”

  “Ah, you are Jamaican, yes?” He smiles before slurping a mouthful of noodles himself.

  “Canadian.”

  He clinks his chopsticks at me, nodding impatiently as he chews. “Ok, ok – tell me about KenNerDerR…”

  I roll my eyes and stuff another mouthful of noodles before replying.

  “Dunno, it’s just like-”

  “Amerika!!!” Zuqimori interrupts, grinning with bits of seaweed vegetable clinging to his teeth. “You finally admit…”

  “I was going to say like anywhere else…”

  “Wah…” He doesn’t buy it. “So Kenada is like Japan, Baruto-kun? Kenada is like India? Kenada is like this?” He waved his chopsticks nowhere in particular. “Like Unova?”

  “You know what I mean -”

  “No!” He stares at me straight in the eye, pointing the chopsticks accusingly. “You must not mix the things!”

  I reach out for one of those delicious looking rinds of meat and stab it with my fork.

  “Tell me about Kenada…”

  I’m just enjoying the food. He’s really nailed it tonight. Mouth working, I let out a sigh and speak between mouthfuls.

  “Okay, hmm… well I grew up in Calgary… it’s a city in Alberta… Was pretty good. Cold in the Winter… ehmm… Then we moved to Toronto when I was ten, and it wasn’t as good there because I left some friends behind… then my dad died, and uhh… we moved to Thunder Bay last year… I was actually born there, ehhm… It’s alright, I guess, but school sucks…”

  Zuqimori is surprised to hear that my father is dead. It’s another rare occasion where he doesn’t immediately crack joke but instead looks on quite pensively.

  I got over it long ago though, and the main take away was this:

  Whether you were the hottest chad or the ugliest loser, soon enough – maybe tomorrow – you would be dead and everything you ever thought or did would mean shit. Sure, some people talk about your ‘legacy’ and what you leave behind for others, but even then, I still thought, What’s the point of a legacy? – you’re dead. That’s like spending your life building a bridge you’ll never get to cross.

  Zuqimori stares at me evenly and puts his chopsticks down. “Let me tell you my story, Baruto-kun.”

  Despite being here the past few days, I haven’t really had the chance to listen to how exactly he came to be “trapped”. He’s been busy reviewing things and he’s given me plenty to do with my time. All I know is that Ken Sugimori and Satoshi Tajiri apparently fucked him over big time – all for Game Freak’s profit.

  I listen, still eating, but taking smaller bites and sometimes pausing as he talks a mix of Japanglish and Standard…

  In 1990, Zuqimori said, he and Satoshi Uwaki (before he stole the name ‘Tajiri’) had been working in Tokyo, using experimental technology which could “drive small, quantum holes through matter”. He said that at first, they only got glimpses of “other worlds”, but that many adjustments later, they were able to send objects through (and retrieve them!). They got curious and eventually made the cross themselves. Yeah, even Satoshi’s seen this world with his own eyes, but after the first crossing, something “unsettled him”, and he had a short-lived existential crisis.

  Zuqimori had been more resilient and continued his crossings, which is around the time Ken Hanage (before he stole the name ‘Sugimori’), was hired to decipher and process the images from data packets that Zuqimori would compile during his crossings. So Ken’s “drawings” of the original 151 pokémon were more like “tracings”. No originality whatsoever. But his job wasn’t to create art, just to translate the data into something visual. They had set out to document this world but ended up using the data to kickstart Game Freak under the guidance of another Japanese man called “Miyamoto Shigeru”.

  Zuqimori had agreed, thinking it would be a good way to reveal “a truth” whilst avoiding the inevitable government and private interest that would ensue if they found out that such worlds really existed.

  Satoshi and Ken still have access to the technology to send and receive data from Zuqimori but claim that the “Travel Plates” (the material needed to send people through) got wasted after repeated use. Zuqimori had been making frequent returns before then, until one day, he found out that he couldn’t. As travel back to our Home World is only possible if there is a “recipient machine”, Zuqimori has been unable to return on his own.

  Operation Brightstar had been his all-out attempt, using an extremely rare material as a power source but even then, its mysterious properties had proved too mysterious, producing unintended effects:

  Me. Here.

  By the end of it, I can understand why he’s slightly bat-shit crazy. The Travel Plates conveniently breaking with him still on this side; not getting a single glimpse of home in over 25 years; and the way Ken and Satoshi stole his names as some twisted way to honor him…

  I feel sorry for him.

  As for myself… I haven’t felt quite this good since I was a child. I still feel bad about my mom, but maybe now, without me, she can actually carry on with her life. She is still in her thirties, so finding some new man isn’t unrealistic. She loved me, but objectively speaking, I was just a burden on her. Still, if there had been a way to let her know I was alive, I would have done everything I could without hesitation. She deserved that – but the universe didn’t care about such things.

  …

  “What are you going to do, then?” I ask Zuqimori.

  He brings the shattered glasses down to his eyes and stares at me dumbly.

  “We will hunt new star, Baruto-kun. Once you become trainer, you are going to help me.”

  My heart starts pumping faster. Me – a real-life pokémon trainer.

  I keep my straightest face, trying to be cool about it, and say, “Where did you get the last star-piece?”

  After a single blink of his eyes, the corners of his mouth begin to turn up into a smirk.

  “You know Jirachi-pokémon, Baruto-kun?” he asks, pushing the bridge of his glasses against his brow.

  “Ah, yeah…”

  “Star-piece is beheaded Jirachi-pokémon.”

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