Flower and Heavenly Thunder

"Ah, it's so soft...!"

Chloe stretched out on the top of the two bunk beds in the room she had taken at the Pokémon Center in Lunargent Town.

"Eievui...!"

Next to her, Eevee also stretched out.

She was wearing the pajamas she'd packed - modest, yellow pajamas that covered her arms and legs, and getting ready for bed after a nice hot shower and all the time spent drying out her hair. It was still a messy mop, a curly mess that hung off her head, but she would worry about brushing it and braiding it in the morning before they went to go see Serena's performance in the square.

The door opened to the room, and Serena entered, wearing pajamas that, to Chloe, looked much comfier - just a fleece top that looked like a hoodie and shorts, with a pink bow in her hair.

Serena saw her looking down at her. "You really took a while in the shower," she said, sitting at the desk before she plugged in her blow dryer to dry her own hair.

Chloe frowned, looking at it. Her hair was much longer than Serena's and she did let it dry, but she didn't pack her blow dryer because her Mom said it was a bit much to bring on trips like this.

Letting hair like hers air dry took a while, but she'd managed to do it, all the same.

"Well, you know," Chloe said, shrugging. "I've got a lot of hair."

Serena looked up at her and quickly grew excited. "Ooh! Come down, come down! I want to see it."

Chloe looked down at Eevee, who had already fallen asleep, and shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

Taking the second chair, she sat in front of Serena and showed off her hair.

"It's so long...!" Serena said, impressed. "I think it's longer than mine used to be!"

"You used to have long hair?" Chloe asked. "Why'd you change it?"

The question seemed to catch the performer off guard and she looked away, a blush clearly coloring her cheeks all the way to the tips of her ears.

"Well... It's not a simple story," she said.

'Oh,' Chloe thought, lowering her eyelids halfway. Already the word 'promise' was ringing in her ears, and the shy way she had acted around the subject with Ash today at the fair was definitely more than enough to make her suspicious.

But rather than tease the girl, Chloe decided to simply be blunt about it.

"I don't think Ash cares one way or the other about what your hair looks like."

Serena's face went red, like she had bitten into a Tamato Berry. "I-I didn't cut my hair because of Ash!" she stammered, angry and embarrassed by the accusation.

"So you say," Chloe said, frowning.

"I'm serious!" Serena said, sitting down once more. "I cut my hair as a promise I made to myself."

This wasn't the promise Chloe had expected to hear about. "A promise you made to yourself?"

Serena nodded. "Yeah. When I participated in my first Showcase, I ended up making a huge mistake that cost me everything. And up to that point, whenever I ran into a stumbling block, I usually gave up and did something else. Except..."

Chloe frowned, tilting her head. "Except?"
"I didn't feel that way this time. I was just more excited and more determined to do better next time. That's when I really knew it. That I was standing at the starting line to the race to my dream." She ran her fingers through the loose ends of her short hair. "So I decided that I was going to... you know, do something a little symbolic. I completely reinvented myself. I cut my hair, and I sewed an entirely new outfit for myself."