The next morning, the former bus driver called Aiden bright and early.
According to him, Maractus Town had seen an immediate surge in visitors ever since Aiden’s video went live.
With more and more people arriving every day, the man had already resigned from the bus company and decided to devote himself full-time to giving visitors the best possible experience in his hometown.
He had also learned something interesting from the archaeologists who came to investigate the newly discovered ruins.
The structure Aiden had fallen into was now being referred to as the Titan Ruins, and there was a strong possibility that it had originally been built to enshrine the very Golurk Aiden had caught.
The man sounded almost emotional as he explained it.
“Who would’ve thought there was a ruin that close to Maractus Town?
The archaeologists said the whole complex is enormous, too.
You just happened to fall into one of the rear sections…”
He talked for quite a while, but most of the conversation was really just him thanking Aiden.
After all, once Aiden had learned the truth behind the Shiny Maractus scheme, he hadn’t condemned the man in his video.
Instead, he had explained the circumstances with a fair amount of understanding.
Because of that, many viewers who later visited Maractus Town had treated the man warmly rather than angrily.
It had honestly touched him.
“Sni~”
“…?”
The man paused.
Thinking back, he suddenly realized that ever since making the call, he had been doing all the talking.
Then something finally clicked.
“S-Snivy?
Wait…
have you been the one answering this whole time?!
No wonder…”
He had been wondering why Aiden sounded so unusually lifeless today.
Turns out the bastard had simply left Snivy’s phone number as the contact information.
“Haha…
Sorry to bother you.”
The man awkwardly scratched his head and ended the call.
Snivy looked down at the disconnected phone, shook her head, and calmly resumed her intensive morning internet browsing.
…
“Woooow~ Another beautiful day full of energy!”
Aiden sat up in bed feeling refreshed, only to notice one of his phones lying beside the pillow.
He frowned.
‘Did I forget to charge it last night?’
Then he shrugged.
“Good thing I have two phones.”
He plugged the dead phone into a charger and began his usual morning routine of getting dressed and washing up.
“Sprigatito, Snivy, come wash your faces!”
“Meow~”
Sprigatito’s head emerged from beneath the blankets.
She let out a huge yawn, shook herself awake, stretched until her back arched, then hopped off the bed and padded toward the bathroom.
Snivy, meanwhile, waited until Sprigatito had left before using her vines to smooth out the sheets and neatly fold the blanket.
Once the bed looked perfect, she gave her work a satisfied nod.
“Sni!”
After Aiden and Sprigatito finished washing up, Snivy even grabbed a broom and quickly swept the room before finally following them out.
That was when Aiden noticed something.
“You seem…
really happy today.”
Snivy wasn’t behaving dramatically differently from usual, but Aiden had spent enough time with her to notice the little things.
Normally, while he and Sprigatito were crowding around the sink, a vine would tap their legs and silently tell them to move aside.
And if Aiden leaned his face this close to hers, Snivy would usually get embarrassed and look away.
Today, she did neither.
Instead, she simply walked out of the room with a noticeably lighter step.
Aiden thought back to the phone he had found by the pillow.
His eyes narrowed.
“You didn’t secretly read the comments last night, did you?”
“Sni?!”
Snivy visibly startled, then immediately began shaking her head far too vigorously.
“Snivy, you really shouldn’t read comment sections.
That stuff will destroy your mental health.”
Faced with Aiden’s sincere concern, Snivy suddenly felt a little embarrassed.
She couldn’t exactly admit that she genuinely enjoyed watching strangers argue online.
So she obediently nodded and let the matter drop.
…
By the time Aiden and the others finished breakfast and stepped out of the Pokémon Center, ready to challenge Nimbasa Gym—
“Aiden!”
He turned toward the voice.
It was Lacey.
“I watched your video!
You’re challenging the Gym today, right?”
Her eyes were practically sparkling, excitement and anticipation written all over her face.
Between that expression, her pink hair, and the shape of her hairstyle, a familiar voice seemed to echo somewhere in the back of Aiden’s mind.
‘Waku waku~’
“Lacey, Lacey, stay exactly like that!”
Before she could react, Aiden hurriedly pulled out his phone and pointed the camera at her.
Lacey blinked in confusion.
“Now repeat after me.
‘Waku waku!'”
“Uh…
waku waku?”
“More excited!
Like you’re really looking forward to something!”
Lacey tried again.
“Waku waku!”
“Perfect!”
Aiden nodded in satisfaction and immediately decided the clip was going into a future video.
Then, as though nothing unusual had happened, he put the phone away.
“So, what are you doing here?”
Lacey: “…”
She watched him casually shove the phone back into his bag, looking faintly disappointed for reasons she wasn’t entirely willing to examine.
Still, she quickly recovered.
“I saw your video and knew you were planning to challenge Nimbasa Gym today, so I wanted to come watch…
if that’s okay?”
“Of course!
You’re welcome to come!”
Aiden had absolutely no reason to refuse.
If anything, he had been hoping to get Lacey on camera.
Someone that cute was bound to help the view count.
And considering that she would eventually become one of Blueberry Academy’s Elite Four, there was a decent chance people would dig up these old videos years later.
During some future lull in traffic, a clip featuring a younger Lacey could suddenly send his numbers soaring again.
Aiden was already planning for long-term passive views.
Lacey, meanwhile, visibly relaxed after being welcomed along.
What she didn’t say was that she had spent most of the previous night worrying after hearing that Aiden and Sprigatito planned to enter the Vertress Conference.
She worried that Aiden might fail to qualify at all.
Then she worried that even if he did qualify, he might get eliminated before ever meeting Togo.
And then she started wondering what she should say if Aiden actually lost to Togo once they finally battled.
By the time she finished running through every possible disaster, she had barely slept.
From Lacey’s perspective, if she hadn’t gone out of her way to confirm whether Sprigatito was the same Pokémon Togo had abandoned, Aiden might never have decided to enter the Vertress Conference in the first place.
Of course, she didn’t know that Aiden had already been considering the tournament long before meeting her.
After all, when it came to major events in Unova, few competitions generated more attention than the Vertress Conference.
Only events like the Champion League, where League Conference winners challenged the Elite Four and Champion, could compete with that level of public interest.
And by now, Aiden had developed quite a taste for chasing popular topics.
There was no chance he would willingly ignore something as high-profile as the Vertress Conference.
Lacey, however, knew none of that.
After thinking it over for most of the night, she had finally come up with a plan.
She would first see exactly how strong Aiden was.
If he turned out to be weaker than expected, she would help him improve.
If he was already strong, she would help him become even stronger.
Either way, Lacey had silently decided that she was going to become Aiden’s personal cheat code and make sure he was capable of defeating Togo at the Vertress Conference.
Aiden, naturally, had no idea that the cheerful girl walking beside him had already begun imagining herself as the mysterious mentor character who would secretly guide his growth.
If he had known—
He would only have wished that a few more rich girls like her would volunteer for the job.