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Cal wasn’t sure what to do with his hands; normally they’d be crossed over his chest as he stood up straight enough to present a bit taller than he actually was, but now that didn’t quite feel appropriate. He tried not to shrink behind Victoria as she walked him past whispering students and into her sensei’s office. He didn’t know if the moisture at his palms and the back of his neck was from nerves or the unbearable Apophyll heat.
Victoria stepped aside as if presenting him like a gift when they entered a relatively small and simple room. Sitting there had to be none other than Kiki, short pink hair and a look of pure calm on her face. He’d heard Victoria describe her before, but this was his first time actually meeting her.
“Ah, Victoria. It’s good to see you back.” She stood and gave a polite bow to both of them, Victoria smoothly following suit while Cal floundered and stuttered through the simple movement. “And who might you be? A new student?"
Cal nodded, struggling and unable to find the words on his tongue when Victoria stepped in to his rescue. “This is Cal! I met him in the city; he was looking to enroll here in the academy.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Argall.” There’s his voice, he was looking for that. She didn’t respond immediately to his greeting, which put unease under his skin. Was he not supposed to address her like that? Should he call her ‘Sensei’ like Victoria does? She looked at him, her eyes seeming to reach past every wall within him. He pressed his hands together so he didn’t start tugging at his hair out of stress and waited.
“Cal,” she finally said, “I can sense you’ve experienced many hardships in your life, but you show great resilience. It would be my great pleasure to welcome you as a student here at Apophyll Academy. Victoria? If you could accompany me in walking Cal through the enrollment and introducing him to the facilities, it would be appreciated. Soon I’d like you to start doing it yourself; I think you’re getting the hang of it quite well.”
Victoria beamed, fists enthusiastically folded at her side. “Yes, Sensei! Let’s go, Cal! I think you’re really going to like it here, you’ll fit right in!” He nodded with a wobbly smile, a bit embarrassed from the attention.
They welcomed him with open arms, no questions or predisposition. And that was that. It was that easy to start over.
Had someone asked him a year ago where he thought he’d be, Cal would’ve never imagined it would be here. He stood in his dorm, faced with his reflection in the mirror, blinking the early morning exhaustion away. He combed his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth out the cowlicks from day after day of styling it to stick up. Each time he held them down, they flicked right up again.
To make matters worse, his roots were coming in and it didn’t help that they were such a starkly different color to the dye he’d been using. Small tufts of blue crept into bright red and in any other case he’d immediately be going for a touch up, but lately he didn’t quite have the time to re-dye his hair.
He was in the middle of messing with it when there was a knock at his door. He opened it and was face to face with Victoria, who looked like she was readying to knock again. “Oh. Good morning.”
“Morning! Sorry if I interrupted something, I just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t be late to the lecture.” Cal figured out very quickly that Victoria was the textbook definition of a morning person, bright-eyed and ready to go as soon as the sun rose. He wished he could say the same for himself; he was used to it being dark and gloomy up in Ametrine where the sun was shy until the late morning.
He shook his head, stepping out of his dorm and closing the door behind him. “Not interrupting anything, I was just getting ready to leave.”
“Great! I always end up getting there a little early, so maybe if we start walking there together in the morning that’ll help balance it out,” she offered, her tone light and slightly joking as she nudged his shoulder.
“You think so? Maybe that would be nice.” He liked Victoria’s company, she’d been nothing but kind to him since they met in Lapis, and over the short span of time he’d spent at Apophyll he’d come to consider her a good friend. It was a warm feeling, he liked having friends. He wanted to be someone deserving of friends. He wants to be someone deserving of Shelly’s friendship.
He looked over to see Victoria smiling, flushed and bashful for a reason he couldn’t place. Now that he thought about it, maybe it was a little warmer out this morning? Cal pushed the thought aside as they walked to meet the other students in the courtyard. Since it was so early in the morning, he supposed nobody had the courtyard reserved for battles yet.
They split off from there, though. Victoria liked to stand right up at the front, actively participating and engaging with the other students. Cal usually preferred to linger at the back. It wasn’t that he wasn’t paying attention, because he was, but he was a bit more reserved and didn’t care for drawing any attention to himself. He was here to learn and work on himself, not bask in the spotlight of being a good student.
That was another thing. He was doing remarkably well at the academy, all things considered. Better than he expected at least. Everything Kiki taught he took to heart and put into practice and found himself receiving lots of praise at every turn. It was weird. He had never once been recognized for his own accomplishments, and he’d argue that he never really had any to begin with. He didn’t think anyone would disagree with that sentiment. This was the first place where people around him saw him as something impressive and not have a better version of him to compare to.
Kiki’s voice was clear in his ears, a lesson of the peace of body and peace of mind being intrinsically tied. When both are reached and the core is truly centered, then great feats can be accomplished. Even if those feats are something minor or even invisible to the eye on the outside, the internal change is what makes them great. Cal didn’t ask any questions, he never did. He simply stood, his posture fixed proper with his arms folded at the small of his back.
The lesson was nearing to a close and he could tell some of the other newer students were getting a little antsy, shifting their weight or twitching their hands ever so slightly. “Before we part this morning, I will leave you with one more thing. When struggling with more complicated endeavors, whatever they may be, sometimes returning to your beginnings will guide you to the path you are seeking. Thank you.”
She dismissed them with a bow and the students smoothly followed suit. Standing towards the back, Cal had the benefit of being one of the first ones out and quickly started towards the mountain’s edge. Kiki’s closing words of the morning circled his head and he absentmindedly touched the small patch of blue at the roots of his hair.
His train of thought and physical path were put to a halt by some students approaching him. He recognized them as Lettie and some of the other girls that he met through Victoria. They were more of her friends than they were his, but he didn’t mind making conversation with them; being up to date on the academy’s gossip was a weird bonus. He stopped, wondering if they needed something from him.
“Heyyyyy, Cal!” That was Lettie, her eyes all-seeing– and the main reason news got around the academy so quickly. He waved, a bit confused and awkward. “We haven’t seen you in a bit! How have you been settling in here at Apophyll?”
“Oh, uh. It’s been good, I guess. I really like it here.”
One of the other girls piped up. “We like having you here! You became a top student so quickly, we had to make sure Sensei wasn’t playing favorites.” He made a face. Kiki wouldn’t play favorites. The girls laughed, so he figured they were joking about that part.
Lettie circled back around to look at Cal. “So, do you have any plans today? We were all thinking of getting lunch if you wanna come with us!”
Cal glanced back at the mountain, smoothing out his hair and resting his hand at the back of his neck. “Well… I was thinking of going up Pyrous to meditate at the peak but if you guys want…” He didn’t like refusing them anything when they’d been so kind to him, but he always felt awkward accompanying them when Victoria wasn’t around. She was usually able to read his signs that he needed attention directed away from him or when he was feeling worn out and needed to leave. Truthfully, he wanted to socialize more with them, but he wondered if right now was really a good time.
Having heard all they needed to, though, the girls started tugging on his sleeves and began pulling him towards where some of the other students were meeting for lunch. Awkward panic flashed on his face before he saw a head of dark hair come to his rescue.
“What are you guys doing?” Victoria was a bit flushed and out of breath, so he assumed she just finished some training alongside her Pokémon.
Lettie waved her over. “Hey, girl! We were just about to take Cal to get lunch. You wanna come with?”
Victoria sighed, hands on her hips with an expression she could’ve only learned from being Kiki’s apprentice. “Is that so? Because it looks like you’re about to drag him off to an execution.”
Cal laughed a little with a small smile. “It’s fine, Victoria. I was going to go meditate but I can spare a few minutes for lunch.”
“More like a few hours. You won’t escape until sundown with these ones.” Victoria made a shooing motion with her hands. “Stop bothering Cal, he’s busy! He has a lot to learn and catch up on, so quit trying to steal him for your sinister schemes.”
“Whaaat? Sinister? It’s just lunch, ‘Tori. If Cal makes the other boys jealous, that’s totally not our fault.” Lettie giggled, leaning against Victoria’s shoulder. “Besides, are you sure that’s why you want us gone? I think you just want aloooone time with Cal,” she teased, making Victoria sputter and push her friend away by the cheek.
“Stop that! Keep it up and I'm feeding you to the King Pyukumuku!” Cal watched on in confusion, eyebrows raised as he tried to make heads or tails of the situation. King Pyukumuku? He saw the ones on the beach, but never heard of something like that.
Lettie eased up eventually, waving Victoria’s flailing hands away. “Okay, okay! We’re going, we wouldn’t want to interrupt the focus of the academy’s top students, right, girls?” Her friends shook their heads, releasing Cal’s sleeves from their hold. “Right. Well, if you do wanna eat with us, you know where we are! Bye, ‘Tori! Bye, Cal!”
He waved to them as they left, talking and giggling to themselves as Victoria sighed with a quiet laugh of her own. “I’m so, so sorry about them. Sometimes they get excited and forget about boundaries.”
Cal shook his head, reassuring her. “No, it’s alright. I don’t mind it, really, it’s a little amusing if anything. It’s a little hard to keep up with them, but it makes me happy that their opinions of me aren’t being influenced by things that aren’t me, y’know? Nobody here but you knows about how I used to be, about my brother… I’m not pretending that never existed, but it’s nice to get away from it. To have people see me as my own person.”
Victoria smiled at him, warm and kind. “I get that. I’m really happy Apophyll has been treating you well. And for what it’s worth, I met you before you came here and I think you’re pretty great, too.”
He smiled back.
They talked a bit more as Victoria walked him to the entrance of Pyrous Mountain, glancing down at her shoes before looking back to him. “I should get going,” she said. “Kiki’s waiting for me, and I know you’ve got things to do, too. I’ll see you later!”
“Yeah, see you later. Bye, Victoria.”
“Bye, Cal!”
He stood at the entrance for a while as she left, feeling something he’d never known before. If he had to put a word to it, it would be acceptance. He felt acceptance. He was accepted by the academy and its students. He made friends. They were so genuine with him; he never knew anything like it before.
He wished it could last forever.