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There are many problems with having amnesia, but for the most part people focus too much on the whole “not knowing who you are and where you come from and whether you have any family or friends out there looking for you because they miss you even if you can’t remember enough to miss them” thing. Which, admittedly, is a pretty big thing, but what people just never seem to get, no matter how Ingo explains it to them, is that the real problem is the thousand minor yet incredibly annoying issues that come from only knowing his name and an approximate age range.
Yes, it would be very dramatic if Ingo spent all his time gazing intensely into the middle distance whilst grappling with his identity, but mostly he dwells on the little things, like what plant it is that makes him sneeze all spring, or why he can never find it in him to partake of the Slowpoke tails the hunting parties bring back.
Now, the issue he is currently facing is a food craving. That should be fairly simple to deal with, right? In a just world, he would simply be able to eat the food, or at least find something similar enough to it to fulfill the craving. Unfortunately, the almighty Sinnoh, for reasons known only to themself, did not create a just world. So for the life of him, he can’t remember the name of the food and what he does remember of it is... odd, to say the least.
It is a breakfast food, he thinks, or at least that’s the time when he feels the craving hit the hardest. It is a bread, he knows this, but it isn’t baked like bread usually is, or it isn’t just baked. He’s pretty sure it’s... boiled?
“Ah, so like a dumpling?” Gaeric suggests.
“No.”
It is not like a dumpling, it is like a bread, he knows this. And it is not just boiled, it is also baked after being boiled.
“That sounds like a waste of good firewood,” Calaba scoffs.
“It’s worth it, trust me.”
It is also very oddly shaped. It’s round and flattened, kind of like a bun though it is not a bun, because it also has a large hole right through the middle.
“And then you stuff something in the hole, like an onigiri?” Palina asks.
“No.”
Nothing goes in the hole, it's just there. However, there is something that goes on top of the bread. A type of sauce, though he knows that’s not the right word for it. It’s made of milk, but thick and spoiled.
“Ew, gross!” Liam squeals.
“It’s delicious, trust me.”
Or, it’s not spoiled, exactly, but it’s... sour?
“Only someone like you would like something like that,” Melli sneers.
“Please stop judging me.”
"Never."
Anyways, regardless of what is wrong with the milk sauce, it is schmeared on top of the holed bread after it is baked after it is boiled, and together these ingredients make some unnameable dish that he occasionally craves like water in the desert.
It worries him, sometimes, how he can so strongly remember the sensation of biting into this bread-milk-thing, the squish of the bread and the milk sauce smearing on his upper lip and what might be some sort of seeds getting caught in his teeth. It’s just food, not something particularly significant. He should be able to remember more important things than that, like where his village is or the name of the man in white who he can sometimes see in the corner of his eye.
It really doesn’t reflect well on him as a person, he thinks, and then he ends up wondering exactly what sort of person he is, and then he spirals into yet another identity crisis, and then he spends the rest of the day feeling like he’s not quite attached to his body. There’s a name for that, he thinks, but he can’t quite remember that either.
And once he’s come back to himself, he’s still hungry. Even more hungry than before, in fact, because he often forgets to eat during these spells of his. However, by that point he is too hungry to care about any cravings that might lead him away from whatever he can cram into his mouth as quickly as possible, so really, it takes care of itself in the end.
“Ingo...” Irida sighs.
“You don’t have to worry about me. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Yes, but-“
“I’m fine, I promise.”
“Hey Ingo,” Emmet says as he and Ingo exit the hospital that Ingo had been quarantined in until now for fear that he would unleash some ancient Sinnohan plague on modern Unova, “Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” Ingo answers, staring in awe at the city around them. It’s magnificent, so much bigger and brighter and louder than even Team Galaxy’s village, and it’s his home. He’s finally home.
“Well, that bodega we used to go to a lot is right around the corner. Wanna grab something before we go home?”
Ingo isn’t exactly sure what a bodega is, but he nods anyways. Anything has to be better than the bland soups and brightly colored jiggly desserts that he’s been living off of.
Emmet smiles at him, even if it doesn’t seem quite as wide as it used to before, well, everything, and takes his hand to tug him along to some sort of food store.
They enter and the woman at the counter immediately reacts very strongly to their appearance. Ingo freezes. Emmet, thankfully, immediately deflects her attention onto himself and spares Ingo the embarrassment of trying to interact with someone who only sparks the vaguest sense of familiarity. He breathes through the sudden rush of warmth in his chest and once again thanks Sinnoh or Palkia or Arceus or whoever for having the kindness to give him a brother.
Emmet happily chats with the woman and Ingo knows they’re talking about him, but he isn’t listening. All he can focus on is the ring-shaped bread things displayed prominently in a glass case, because that’s it! That’s what he’s been looking for!
As he contemplates the viability of traveling back in time again to shove one of these things in Melli’s face because take that Melli, he isn’t going senile, also he’s actually thirty-two and just has an unfortunate familial tendency towards premature graying, Emmet notices what has drawn his gaze.
“Oh, of course,” he says, and then turns to the woman, “And can you ring up a bagel?”
“With cream cheese?”
There’s a pause
Emmet turns to him and asks, “You want cream cheese on... uh, you doing okay there? Ingo?”
Ingo opens his mouth and-
Well...
Ingo’s, er, enthusiasm could be heard from nearly three blocks away. The only reason they aren’t banned from the bodega is because the proprietor apparently lived in Johto for a few years and thus understands the pain of not being able to get a proper Unovan bagel anywhere.