The morning shift in HR was manageable.
Naoki sat at his desk looking, to all appearances, like a man thoroughly absorbed in his paperwork.
In reality he had the player forum open and was slacking off with practiced ease.
Section chief Sato made his rounds through the office, pausing here and there to reprimand a few junior staff members he caught dozing at their desks.
He turned, and his eyes landed on Naoki sitting at his workstation with an expression of focused diligence.
Sato nodded to himself approvingly.
That young man Naoki.
Truly dedicated worker.
He gave Naoki an approving pat on the shoulder and moved on.
Naoki stared after him with no idea what had just happened.
He shook it off and turned back to the forum.
The time he had spent slacking over the past two days had actually yielded a fair amount of useful information.
The current timeline appeared to be the original series era.
Ash had only recently set out on his journey.
From the post written by the player who had beaten Ash, Naoki had gathered that the NPC known as Ash currently traveled with only a Pikachu and a Caterpie at his side.
That was interesting.
It meant that across Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh alike, countless opportunities had yet to be discovered by anyone.
The massive Dragonite at the Lighthouse.
The red Gyarados hidden in the Lake of Rage.
The Zapdos haunting the abandoned Power Plant.
And the major story events that had not yet come to pass.
Mewtwo’s birth and awakening.
Lugia’s emergence.
Mew at the Tree of Beginning.
The ancient Pokémon sealed beneath Pallet Town.
A shame he was nowhere near Kanto.
There was nothing he could do about any of it from here.
Naoki felt a quiet pang of regret.
Though even if he were there, he would not have been capable of participating in any of those events anytime soon, let alone catching Pokémon of that caliber.
He was still an ordinary person without a single Pokémon to his name.
He stared at the documents in his hands and thought it through.
Those rare opportunities and legendary Pokémon were out of his reach for now, and given how aggressively these players were tearing through the open world, it was only a matter of time before someone else stumbled onto them.
What he could do was sell the information.
The red Gyarados at the Lake of Rage, the giant Dragonite at the Lighthouse, and more besides.
Whatever players did with it after that was their problem.
The red Gyarados was manageable enough for players to handle.
The giant Dragonite and Zapdos were a different matter entirely.
The game had only been running for two months.
Player strength had nowhere near reached that level yet.
He listed several pieces of information on the forum and waited for offers to come in.
While he waited, another post caught his eye.
Shocking discovery: the physical constitution of humans in this world is absolutely terrifying.
The post described in detail how native inhabitants of the Pokémon world, after taking a direct hit from a Thunderbolt, were incapacitated for only a brief period before bouncing back as though nothing had happened.
“The classic Pallet Town constitution,” Naoki murmured to himself.
He read through the section where players compared human durability across the two worlds with genuine amusement.
Good times never lasted.
Before he knew it, the lunch break had arrived.
Rather than going straight to eat, Naoki left the office and walked to the Mesagoza police station to ask Officer Jenny about the mute girl.
Officer Jenny looked surprised the moment she heard why he had come.
“Oh?
She didn’t come find you?”
“Come find me?” Naoki blinked.
“Shouldn’t she be with her family by now?”
Officer Jenny’s expression shifted to one of understanding, and she explained.
“That girl wasn’t human.
She was an illusion created by a Pokémon called Zorua.”
“Zorua?!”
It hit him all at once.
No wonder the girl never spoke a single word.
No wonder she had been so drawn to the Pokémon snacks he was carrying.
It all made sense now.
Zorua.
The Tricky Fox Pokémon.
A Dark-type with the ability to transform into the likeness of people and other Pokémon, known by some as the master of illusions.
Before evolving into Zoroark, Zorua were cautious and timid by nature, rarely allowing themselves to be seen by humans.
A Pokémon like that was genuinely rare.
Something stirred in Naoki’s chest.
Perhaps his search for a starter Pokémon had just resolved itself.
“A Zorua appearing in Mesagoza of all places,” Officer Jenny said with a smile.
“And it didn’t run from you either.
You’re quite lucky.”
Naoki thought back to the previous night.
Though where the Zorua had gone now was another question entirely.
Pokémon were generally straightforward creatures, but a few snacks hardly seemed enough to earn a Zorua’s trust that quickly.
After leaving the station he made a loose attempt to search the surrounding streets for it.
But faced with the crowds moving in every direction around him, he gave up before long.
Finding one Zorua among all these people was not a realistic proposition.
He let it go.
If Officer Jenny’s instinct was right, the Zorua would find him on its own terms eventually.
Naoki settled for a burger at a nearby shop and ate alone.
While he waited for his order, the two students at the next table caught his attention.
They were deep in an animated conversation, voices pitched with excitement, talking about the forum and the leaderboards.
“Did you see?
The top-ranked player, Ichiyo Chishu, has already collected six Gym Badges.
Unbelievable.”
“Apparently he caught an incredibly rare Dragon-type Pokémon recently.
I’m so jealous.”
Naoki’s hands stilled for a moment.
Players?
He took a quiet look at the two of them.
Both wore Naranja Academy uniforms.
Students, then.
He said nothing and made no move to approach them.
He simply opened the top player leaderboard without drawing any attention to himself.
At the very top of the rankings sat a player called Ichiyo Chishu, exactly as they had said.
The leaderboard displayed only the top one thousand players, and this person occupied the first position without question.
Listed alongside the name was the player’s current team.
No.
1 — Ichiyo Chishu: Incineroar, Flygon, Krookodile, Swanna, Mienshao, Scolipede.
Naoki stared at the list.
Flygon, the Pokémon sometimes called the disgrace of the Dragon-type family.
Was that really considered exceptionally rare?
He was not sure it quite met that bar.
Still, the team composition made one thing clear.
This player was operating somewhere in the Unova region.
Naoki closed the screen, finished his lunch without lingering, picked up his briefcase, and walked out.
Nobody gave him a second glance.
From the outside he looked like exactly what he was: an ordinary, tired office worker with nowhere interesting to be.