Through the Fog

"Could you pass the pepper flakes, please?"

"Heh... I never thought you'd like something that spicy."

"There's a lot of things you don't know about me."

Goh sat there, silently chewing on a piece of garlic bread. Unhappy and feeling, internally at least, more than a little alone.

Not that he was lacking company, as the conversation at the table proved.

He was joined at the table by his fellow research fellow partner and friend Ash, and his long-time childhood friend, Chloe. And the evening seemed to start off well enough, considering that Chloe's father, Professor Cerise, had left all of them at the lab this evening to go learn something about the Sinnoh Region's gastropod Pokémon, Shellos and it's evolution Gastrodon. With no simple way home and with her family likewise busy, Chloe decided to spend the night at the lab once again, and planned to leave the next morning to go to school.

This all led to Mr. Mime making a huge bowl of spaghetti for dinner with garlic bread on the side. For the humans, anyway. The Pokémon with the humans, being Pikachu, Grookey, and Eevee, all ate Pokémon food mixed with berries.

The three of them sat at the kitchen table, eating, when Chloe asked Ash to pass the red pepper flakes over to her.

"Spicy food is the best kind of food," Chloe said, wagging her fork in the air. "Just after sweet food, I mean."

Ash nodded. "I know what you mean. Spicy-sweet is really good!"

"Ah, I've never had a chance to eat anything spicy-sweet!" Chloe said. "Now I'm jealous."

Ash chuckled. "I'm not even sure where you'd find 'em. It was ice cream with a Tamato Berry filling!"

Goh silently crunched on the garlic bread, listening to the conversation, but not contributing. He kept his eyes on his food and off of his friends having a happy conversation around him. Thinking at the current moment felt like a chore, like a dense fog was sitting right between his ears, making it hard for him to see his brain.

"Tamato Berries?" Chloe responded, surprised. "That's REALLY spicy! They use those in this incredibly delicious ramen they serve at this ramen place that's in one of the subway stations downtown," she explained. "The broth turns a reddish orange from the berries and it's so spicy and rich!"

"You know about Tamato berries?" Ash asked.

Chloe looked over at Goh, and he caught her green eyes in his. There was a mischievous flicker in them, reflecting the lights in the kitchen. "Oh, Goh and I know all about Tamato Berries."

Goh looked up at her, thinking for a moment, his mind moving at the pace of a Shellos as the memory came back to him. "Oh yeah, we do, don't we?" he said.

Ash slurped down another forkful of pasta. "Oh, c'mon! Ya gotta tell me about it if you go THAT far, you know?"

Chloe giggled and looked back at Goh. "Well, should you start, or should I start?"

Grumbling a little under his breath, Goh sat up and went through the story in his head. "Okay, so this one time, me, Chloe, and some of our school friends were staying after school waiting for our parents to come pick us up. Mine were busy with work and Chloe's Dad was out of town, so we were mostly waiting for mine to get finished or for Mika's dad to come by and pick us up in his truck."

"Mika is a friend of ours from school, and one of the ones with us," Chloe explained as she continued to dig into her own pasta.

"Anyway, you know how our school has that big garden, right?"