The Journey Begins

Just Another Day

"Alright, alright I'm up!" I yelled holding Pikachu up in my hands. "Mom put you up to this didn't she?"

"Pika pi." It said cheerfully waving its limbs in assent.

"Why are you so happy about it?" I grumbled frowning. "Ah well." I put Pikachu down and it hopped out of my room as I sat up in my bed.

"Arthur, hurry up or you'll be late for school. Today you have a maths test remember?" my mom called from the kitchen.

"Coming mom." I replied getting out of bed and going into the bathroom to bathe. While bathing I 'evaluated' my dream.

I know it sounds weird so allow me to explain. It started about three years ago. We were discussing about dreams in Languages class after reading a poem on them and someone raised a point about why we couldn't recall a dream upon waking up from deep sleep. I became curious and decided to try recalling my dreams. In a few months I was able to recall each and every dream I had seen regardless of how deep my slumber was. One thing led to another and now I not only recall my dream but also 'evaluate' it which mainly consists of reflecting on how detailed the dream was, what details were missing etc. What I found interesting was that being able to recall dreams increased my ability to focus on things. Hence it became a sort of training regime.

While I was getting dressed, the doorbell rang. I knew it was Gary. I quickly finished and came out of my room for breakfast. I found Gary sitting on a chair at the dining table. Beside him, on the floor my Pokémon (Pikachu, Charmander, Buizel, and Elektrike) and Mastiff, Rock were having breakfast. Across the table from him my mother's Pokémon Machop was laying down my bowl of ramen and two glasses of chilled chocolate milk. He turned his head at my entrance and I saw the same sly but comforting smile.

"Hurry up or we'll be late again." He said taking one of the glasses.

"Yeah yeah." I said sitting down to eat.

On the way to school on our bicycles Gary asked me about my dream. So I told him about it.

"Good detailing but I made some mistakes." I said after finishing my description.

"Such as?"

"Such as, I seem to have forgotten that plane crash survivors tend to be injured; yet apart from that shallow cut on the girl's cheek there was nothing else."

"You also forgot that it's tigers that live in rainforests while lions live in savannahs and grasslands." He said.

"Well they do, sometimes." I said.

"Not rainforests."

We argued on the topic for the rest of the way. We reached school ten minutes earlier and climbed the stairs to our classroom on the second floor. There were less than ten of our classmates in the classroom and we knew the number was not going to increase by much since it was the last day of school before the two and a half month long summer break began. We dropped our schoolbags on our usual places and strolled out into the corridor.

"Did you see their bags?" Gary asked me as we rested our elbows on the railing with our backs turned towards it and faced the classroom.

"Nope." I replied.

"Well then it seems like they're late today." He said clearly relishing the moment. To tell the truth, so was I. The two topics of our discussion have been the bane of our school lives. They always manage to reach school before us (even though they live farther from it than us) no matter how early we start. This had been happening every day for about a year and a half. And by their account (and others') they always arrived five minutes before us and always appeared to be completely oblivious to our situation.