Alola, Alola

✽1. Alola, Alola

One more week. Mizuki stared at the calendar in dismay, her fingers tracing every marked box until they landed on the current day, her coal-gray eyes fixated on the short, unmarked stretch of blank squares. Over and over she counted them, yet no matter how many times she wished it weren't so, the sum was always five. Just five.

Suddenly her knees felt weak, and the black-haired girl found herself sitting back in her bed, her gaze refusing to lift itself from the calendar. On it were cute pictures of Chimchar, Turtwig, Piplup, and Sinnoh, Sinnoh, Sinnoh, yet all she could see in her head was Alola, Alola, Alola.

This can't be it. I can't be on my last week. Hopelessness began to flood the girl's mind, and the only thing that seemed to be able to pierce through its unbearable darkness was the epic bright sun that was the region she was in—the region she loved.

Heaving a long sigh, Mizuki rose to her feet and slipped on her shoes. She should have known that this was happening—time was an inevitable force, after all. Furthermore, if she spent the day and the rest of her stay moping, she'd bury herself in regret. That was what Professor Kukui had told her on her first day of arrival, and those words remained true even now, a near three months later.

No matter how much she wished to, she couldn't reverse the days on the calendar, but she could make the last five the most valuable. With that goal sharp in her mind, Mizuki grabbed her hat and slid on her bag as she headed out the door.

✽✽✽

She didn't want to go to Alola at first. She'd hated the thought and outright objected the idea, but she was given no choice. That's how life was with her overly dominant parents—no choices whatsoever. She internally scoffed at the idea that they had so much control over every detail of her life when they couldn't even manage their own.

Her parents had had the ever so grand idea to send her off to Alola for the summer, with the purpose of "gaining experience", or so they called it. She was part of the Alola Summer Program, where children from all regions—except Alola, of course—would travel to and stay in the sunny region for the entire summer, learning about different Pokémon and culture, all while having what the brochure called, "tropical fun".

Mizuki had loathed the idea of meeting weird, even downright creepy-looking Pokémon, along with being forced to walk and tour in the hot sun for hours a day. Now her mindset had taken a complete switch, where weird became awesome, creepy became cool, and hours in the sun became far too short.

Now she loved Alola and everything about it—the gorgeous scenery, the bright blue ocean, the amazing food. Before it seemed as though she would have needed luck to escape, but now she would need it to stay.

However, the only stretch of luck she'd ever had had been when she was sent to the region in the first place. She hadn't appreciated it then, but little had she known that it was a blessing in disguise. Now she would be chasing as many blessings as she could in the little time she had left.

✽✽✽

As Mizuki stepped out into the open, she smiled a cheerful greeting to the glistening sun perched in the sky high above her head, to which she swore smiled back as its rays seemed to burn brighter than ever upon her arrival to the outside world.

I'll miss you, sun.

Back at home, she could rarely see a sun that wasn't harshly filtered by cold clouds and the overall gloomy gray of the sky. Here she saw what a sun was meant to be—a shining beacon of light that never stopped sharing its warmth.

Mizuki hurried down the busy street, grateful for the rush of wind that flew past her legs as she broke out into a full-fledged run. The hotel was far behind her as she came up on the city's edge, her eyes shining as they were cheerfully greeted by abundant palmtrees, their green, leafy fingers extending to the sky as if trying to snag a few fluffy clouds.