Tired souls

The smile on the other’s face when he spoke his name made Victor smile as well. He was happy he’d pronounced it right because he had no idea how to spell it. Though that ended up not being as difficult as he’d thought it would be since Sāng said he could write his name the way he’d pronounced it. Victor nodded, picked up his phone and put the other’s name into the contact information of the number he’d just gotten a kissy face emoji from; a message that made him smile when he saw it.

“Are you from Fènghuáng?” he asked the other. It wasn’t because his name was from that region, that Sāng had been born there. Victor knew a bit about the country, but not a lot. Just some general information and some other facts he’d picked up here and there. His father had made him study certain languages in the past and because of that he spoke several, but he’d never learned the language spoken in Fènghuáng. And since it hadn’t been part of his studies, he’d never learned much about Fènghuáng.

Listening closely when Sāng explained how he’d been born in Fènghuáng but hadn’t grown up there, Victor wondered what that must’ve been like; to be part of two cultures. “Is it very different, the culture?” he asked, curious about what Sāng could tell him about the region.

Victor nodded when the other asked him to confirm he was from Galar. “It was a nice way to get away from home,” he admitted. Life at home had never been easy, but the past years it had only gotten worse and he'd needed to get out. “I did choose Cerynia because of the university.” Their medical programme was one of the best. “But also because I was curious about affinities. We don’t have them in Galar.” He’d learned opinions about affinities were divided, but he found them nothing but interesting.

Victor laughed at Sāng’s question. “They are. It's extraordinary to see what pokémon can do," he said. "Though I have to admit I haven’t participated in many.” He'd done a few fights with Edgar, but he'd mostly watched others fight. Important ones had been broadcast on television and those had been on a completely different level than any of the fights he'd participated in.

Curious to learn more about Fènghuáng and Cerynia, Victor asked whether the cultures of the two regions were very different. He’d never been to either place before he’d come to Cerynia a month ago and there was only so much you could learn from books. Victor laughed at the story. That was definitely very different from what he was used to. “And you didn’t tell them?”

Affinities were one of the clearest differences between Cerynia and Galar. Victor hadn’t been able to imagine life with affinities before he came here while Sāng forgot they even had them. “Do you have an affinity?” he asked the other. He’d seen numbers on how common they were; maybe he’d even already met some people with an affinity without realising it.

Victor didn’t know much about the politics here. He tried to avoid things like that as much as he could—he really hated politicians—and couldn’t tell you anything about parties or what their opinions were about pokémon battles. “Are a lot of people in favour of bringing battles back?” He’d never lived somewhere where pokémon battles were prohibited before and the intricacies of Cerinian politics were lost on him.

It was strange how something as simple as a name could be treated so differently in different cultures. For Victor, it hadn’t been that difficult to adjust to. The typical names of Cerynia weren’t the same as those in Galar, but they still used the same naming conventions of having a first name followed by a last name. What Sāng described must have been bizarre for him.

Victor looked at Sāng curiously when he asked if he had an affinity, but the other shook his head in the negative. “Aren’t you curious what it would be like to be able to do things like that?” Victor asked. He definitely wouldn’t pass up the chance at an affinity. Maybe it would be difficult to control at first, but the possibilities an affinity gave were endless.

A typical digotemy between the younger and the older generation. Victor raised his eyebrows when Sāng said that pokémon fights were still held illegally. “People still battle with pokémon here?” He hadn’t come across any pokémon battles and so hadn’t expected this, but it didn’t come as a big surprise. After all, making something illegal often only encouraged more people to partake.