Striation City's Killer

Chapter 6

Cilan's point of view!

Me, Ash and Iris have been travelling together for a bit now. It's going pretty much perfectly. Iris tags along, Ash does the battling, and I still get to kill things every now and then. Ash and Iris don't know, but hey, I do the cooking so who really cares?

That and I'm still feeling those weird feelings for Ash. He's cute and I don't want to kill him. I'm holding his hand, for some reason it just makes me feel at ease. As we walk over a hill, I start seeing a new, shiny Pokemart with ribbons hung everywhere and designed to look rather separate.

"Look! A Pokemart!" Iris calls out, pointing to it. Of course I can see it.

"Hey! Look! Let's check it out!" Ash says enthusiastically. I kind of like his enthusiasm. It's great.

"Yeah!" I agree with him, squeezing his hand slightly. Ash and Iris break out in an excited run, yanking my arm and pulling me along. There could be some nice stuff in there, so I follow along.

Ash throws open the doors excitedly and wows at the contents inside. Everything is shiny and all new, it's so nice. Even I think I can see some things that interest me! Iris wows and immediately runs off somewhere to some stall to browse. Ash stays with me, still holding my hand, though. Somehow this makes me happy.

"Should we go look around for some things?" I offer, glancing around before seeing the stand of another connoisseur. "Ah! Look!" I say. I point to the stand.

"Is that another connoisseur?" Ash asks me.

"Yes!" I reply.

There's a large line outside her stand, though, and really, she seems to have adopted a 'fortune teller' look, which I'm not sure about.

"Maybe you should go get an evaluation." I say. "It'd be useful to get another point of view on your Pokemon."

I glance around, my eyes scanning for something that might be useful me or the journey. I spot a stand of books somewhere, which seems to be beckoning and wanting my attention.

"Sure." Ash says. "I'll go wait in the line, okay?"

"Okay. I'll go look around for some things. Bye!"

I wave goodbye and walk over to the bookstand, as Ash goes to stand in line. My hand suddenly feels cold – Ash's hand was so warm... I approach the book stand and glance along the selection, most of which being fiction books. Although it's a rather wide selection, books often with no correlation to each other. One caught my eye.

"Dealing With Emotions"

I don't know why, but... For some reason it's intriguing me. I look around, before picking it up and opening the pages. It's of course about dealing with anger, grief, sadness and the like. I just flip through the pages boredly. Anger, grief, sadness, as expected. Until I come across one page...

"Love"

I stop skimming and scanning the pages half-heartedly and actually read this one bit. Not sure why this particular thing is intriguing me as much as it is...

"Love is a very confusing emotion and can be hard to interpret or understand. It can make you feel happy, or it can make you feel sad. It can make you feel just about anything."

It makes you feel other emotions and it confuses you. Great. Love must be horrible.

"It is common for teenagers or adolescents to become infatuated with someone and become very confused."

Yes, of course, as I know from being told this hundreds of times and working at the restaurant and getting assaulted by girls every 8 seconds.

"Determining whether you're in love with them actually comes down to the person. You can figure it out for yourself, but there are multiple 'love languages' on how you show your affection. Acts of service, physical touch, compliments, spending time, gifts..."