Arashi Rai, an ordinary twenty-five-year-old corporate drone, was slumped in his computer chair in a rented apartment, watching the final battle of Pokémon Journeys on his monitor.
"Go, Pikachu! Thunderbolt—!!!"
On the screen, that familiar yellow figure unleashed an unprecedented blaze of dazzling electricity, tearing through the last line of defense of the opponent's Gigantamax Charizard. The commentators were hoarse from screaming, and the stands surged like a tsunami.
Leon's half-kneel, the referee's flag, and… Ash's face—finally shifting from stunned disbelief to wild joy, tears glittering in his eyes.
"He won… he finally won…" Arashi Rai murmured. His finger unconsciously paused the video. The image froze on Ash and Pikachu hugging tightly, confetti raining down behind them, and the roar of "Champion!" shaking the air.
A complicated emotion he couldn't put into words churned in his chest.
There was excitement—because that idiot who had accompanied his entire youth had finally reached the top of the world. There was relief, as if he'd seen a distant, beautiful dream of his own come true. But more than anything, there was a bottomless regret—an ache that simply wouldn't settle.
"Twenty-five years… from that idiot kid in Pallet Town who overslept, to becoming the world champion today…" Rai leaned back, staring up at the old yellowed lampshade on the ceiling, his thoughts drifting far into the past. "How much did he miss along the way? How many did he release? How many regrets did he leave behind?"
He thought of the Butterfree that had been released for love. He thought of the stubborn, powerful Primeape that had been sent away. He thought of the Lapras he'd met again and again yet never managed to bring along, despite everything, because it had to protect its pod. He thought of the Goodra from the wetlands, the Greninja that cut down trees, the clingy Poipole… He thought of too much—far, far too much.
Ash's journey had been hot-blooded and pure, but in the eyes of an old viewer like Rai who had watched it all the way through, it was also packed with endless "what if back then…" frustrations that refused to die.
"If back then he'd been more flexible with tactics… If back then he'd known more about training and raising Pokémon… If back then he hadn't released those partners… maybe this championship wouldn't have had to wait until twenty-five years later, huh?" He sighed. The hunger gnawing at his stomach dragged him back to reality.
Outside the window, the sky had already darkened, and the streetlights were turning on one by one. Only then did he remember that he'd been so busy chasing the finale that he'd even forgotten to eat dinner.
"Forget it. No point thinking about it. It's someone else's story in the end." Rai shook his head, turned off the video, stood up, threw on a jacket, grabbed his phone and keys, and headed out to the little shop downstairs he visited all the time to get something to eat.
The night air was cool. Neon flickered across the city, and traffic flowed without pause. He walked along the sidewalk, head down, scrolling through trending topics and forum threads about Ash's championship win. Everyone was the same as him—full of emotion and nostalgia—screens flooded with comments about "my youth is over."
He was happy for Ash, but that regret only a long-time fan could feel still squatted in his heart, refusing to leave.
"If I could do it over… and I became Ash… heh, what am I even dreaming?" He laughed at his own cringe thought and shook his head.
Then, as he crossed an intersection and was about to reach the small stir-fry place glowing warmly on the other side, something went wrong—violently.
A car that had lost control suddenly surged up onto the sidewalk. Its blinding high beams were like the pupils of a beast, swallowing his entire field of view in an instant. Tires shrieked against the pavement with a razor-sharp scream that nearly tore his eardrums apart.
Rai's mind went blank. His body didn't have time to react at all. A massive impact slammed into his side, and the world in his perception twisted, shattered, spun upside down.
His phone flew from his hand, tracing a helpless arc through the air. The screen was still lit—showing that championship screenshot of Ash hugging Pikachu.
The agony lasted only a heartbeat. Then consciousness receded like the tide, vanishing fast.
"So… this is it for me?"
"So unwilling… I still… haven't seen the next… Pokémon game…"
"Ash… Pikachu…"
His final thought was that frozen image of the champion—and an endless pile of regrets.
To be continued…