"Pallet House."
Ash stood outside and looked up at the sign.
It was a large building. Warm light through the windows. The smell of frying food drifting out onto the street — something with garlic and butter that made his stomach remind him that one plate of omurice had been a while ago.
'Did we have this before?' he thought, looking at it.
In his previous life, Pallet Town had been small and quiet. His mother's kitchen. Professor Oak's lab. Not much else. Certainly not a restaurant this size with a painted sign and a lunch rush visible through the glass.
'Different timeline,' he reminded himself. 'Things are different.'
He pushed the door open.
The noise hit him first.
Tables full of customers. Waitstaff moving between them with the practised efficiency of people who had done this long enough to stop thinking about it. The clatter of plates. The overlapping murmur of a dozen conversations. The kitchen behind the service counter producing heat and sound in equal measure.
Ash stood in the entrance and took it all in.
Then his brain caught up to his eyes.
He knew these people.
Not the customers. The staff.
The girl with the bright orange hair weaving between tables with a loaded tray — perfectly balanced, not spilling a drop — was Misty. Older than he remembered her from the start of their journey. Carrying herself differently. But unmistakably Misty.
'Of course,' he thought. 'Of course she's here.'
"Ash!"
She'd spotted him. Her expression shifted immediately from professional focus to something caught between relief and irritation.
"You're late," she said, arriving in front of him without slowing down. "Green said you weren't feeling well but that was an hour ago—"
"Sorry. I lost track of time."
She looked at him. The quick, sharp assessment of someone checking whether you're actually fine or just saying you're fine.
"You look pale," she said.
"I'm okay."
"You look pale and like you've been staring at a wall."
"I was thinking."
"About what?"
'That I died and came back and we're apparently engaged,' he thought.
"Nothing important," he said.
Misty gave him the look. The one he remembered from a hundred campsites and Pokémon Centres across three regions — the look that said I don't believe you but I don't have time right now.
"Customer at table seven needs their order re-taken," she said, already turning. "And your uniform is in the back. Changing room, left door."
Then, from across the restaurant:
"EXCUSE ME. This soup is cold!"
Misty turned toward the voice with a smile so professional it could cut glass.
"One moment, sir!"
She was gone.
Ash watched her go.
'There she is,' he thought, and felt something settle in his chest. Something familiar and right. 'Exactly as I remember.'
He headed for the changing room.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
He opened the left door.
Stopped.
May was in the changing room.
Her back was to him. She was pulling on her work shirt — halfway through the motion, arms raised, the fabric not quite down yet.
Ash's brain processed this information.
Then immediately stopped processing anything.
"Ah—" he started.
May glanced over her shoulder. Saw him. Pulled the shirt down the rest of the way in one smooth motion, completely unbothered.
"Oh, Ash. You made it." She turned around, smoothing the collar of her uniform. "Your clothes are on the bench."
"I — yeah. Sorry. I should have knocked."
"The door doesn't lock anyway." She said it like this was obvious and he should have known. She pointed at the bench. "There. Green already got your size."
Ash crossed the room without looking at her. Picked up the uniform. Focused very hard on the uniform.
"Are you blushing?" May asked.
"No."
"You're absolutely blushing."
"It's warm in here."
May laughed. Not at him exactly — more like at the general situation, which she seemed to find genuinely funny. It was a warm laugh. He'd forgotten how warm her laugh was.
"You're hopeless," she said fondly, and picked up her apron from the hook by the door. "Get changed. It's chaos out there and Misty's about to yell at someone."
She left.
Ash stood in the empty changing room for a moment.
'Engaged,' he thought. 'I am engaged to her. That is a person I am engaged to. Fine. That's fine. Everything is fine.'
He got changed.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
May had not been exaggerating about the chaos.
The lunch rush was in full force. Every table occupied. A queue forming at the door. Misty moving through it all like a current — fast, precise, taking complaints and orders in the same breath without breaking stride.
Ash got assigned to menus and new customers.
It sounded simple.
It was not simple.
New customers kept arriving faster than he could seat them. He bumped into two different waitstaff within the first ten minutes. He took a table's order with great confidence and then realised halfway back to the kitchen that he had written nothing down and was operating entirely on memory — which was fine until table six changed their minds about the soup.
"This is cold," a man at table four told him.
"I'll get that sorted," Ash said.
"I've been waiting twenty minutes for my drink," a woman at table nine said.
"I'll find out where that is," Ash said.
"Young man, you gave me the wrong menu," an elderly gentleman at table two said, holding it up. It was the children's menu.
"I am so sorry," Ash said.
Misty appeared at his shoulder like a very organised ghost.
"Table two gets the regular menu," she said quietly. "Table nine's drink is coming from the kitchen, tell them two minutes. Table four's soup goes back — ask for a replacement, don't apologise twice, once is enough."
"Right," Ash said. "Got it."
"And stop writing orders down after you leave the table. Write them at the table."
"I know, I just—"
"At the table, Ash."
She was gone again.
'She is terrifying,' he thought, with profound respect.
It went on like that for two hours.
Ash was not a bad worker. He was, however, someone who had spent the last decade outdoors navigating crises on instinct — not someone who had spent it carrying plates and managing customer expectations. The gap between those two skill sets turned out to be large and full of small disasters.
He spilled nothing. He was proud of this.
He did accidentally take a customer's finished plate before they were done with it, direct a family to a table that was already reserved, and get briefly cornered by a man who wanted to complain about the font on the menu. He handled all of these with the patience of someone who had once talked down a legendary Pokémon in the middle of a thunderstorm and could therefore handle a font complaint.
By the time the rush began to thin, his feet hurt and his notepad was full of increasingly desperate shorthand.
He found an empty chair in the corner and sat down.
Heavily.
The chair creaked but held.
'Okay,' he thought. 'Mewtwo was easier than this.'
"Finally gave up?" May appeared beside him, still somehow looking like she had energy left. She pulled out the chair across from him and sat down with her chin in her hand, watching him with open amusement.
"I didn't give up," Ash said. "I'm regrouping."
"You're slumped over a chair in the corner."
"Strategically."
She laughed again.
Misty arrived a moment later, dropping into the third chair with the controlled collapse of someone who had been on their feet for four hours and was allowing themselves exactly this much rest.
"Now you know," Misty said, looking at him.
"You do this every day?"
"Every lunch and dinner."
Ash looked at them both. Really looked — at the ease they moved through this place with, the way they knew every table and every customer type and exactly when to push back and when to let something go.
'They've been doing this for a while,' he thought. 'This isn't new for them.'
"Sorry I was late," he said. "And sorry I was useless."
"You weren't useless," May said. "You were just slow."
"And you gave an old man the children's menu," Misty added.
"He seemed like he'd enjoy the pictures."
Misty pressed her lips together. Not quite a smile. Close though.
"Next time," she said, "you're on kitchen side. Less customer interaction."
"Is that a punishment or a promotion?"
"Depends on how you feel about washing dishes."
Ash considered this.
"I'll take it," he said.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
The restaurant was quieting down — tables emptying, the kitchen noise dropping from a roar to a hum — when a voice came from behind the service counter.
"Ash."
He turned.
A woman in a chef's uniform stepped out from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a clean cloth. Hair neatly tied back. Sunglasses tucked into her breast pocket. The kind of calm that came from having been in charge of something busy for long enough that busy no longer rattled you.
Serena.
She looked at him the way she always looked at things — carefully. Like she was reading something just behind what was visible.
"You look tired," she said.
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that." She came over. Sat beside him. "Green said you weren't yourself this morning."
"Green worries too much."
"Green never worries enough," Serena said evenly. "When she worries, it means something."
Ash looked at her.
'She notices things,' he thought. 'She always noticed things.'
"I'm okay," he said, quieter this time. More honest. "It was just a strange morning. I'm better now."
Serena held his gaze for a moment.
Then nodded. Accepting it. Not because she believed it entirely — he could tell she didn't — but because she'd decided not to push.
"There's food in the kitchen when you're ready," she said. "Proper food, not the staff snacks. Sit down and eat something."
She stood up, smoothed her uniform, and went back to the kitchen.
Ash watched her go.
'That's four,' he thought. 'Misty, May, Serena. Green at home. That's four.'
The letter had said certain individuals.
'How many more,' he wondered, 'is certain?'
Dawn appeared from the back carrying a stack of clean plates, saw him sitting there, and pointed at him.
"You. Kitchen. Food. Now." She said it like a schedule. Then kept walking.
'Five,' he thought.
He got up and went to find something to eat.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
He was halfway through a bowl of rice and vegetables when his mother found him.
"Ash."
He looked up.
Delia Ketchum stood in the kitchen doorway. Chef's apron. Hair slightly escaped from its tie. The warm, specific expression of a mother who has spotted her child in a corner eating quietly and has decided this is the most important thing happening right now.
"Mom," he said.
She crossed the kitchen in three steps and pulled him into a hug.
He went still for a moment.
Then hugged back.
She smelled like the kitchen — butter and herbs and something sweet — and underneath that the specific, unchanging smell of home that he hadn't realised he'd missed until right now.
'I died,' he thought, quietly, into her shoulder. 'And I came back. And she's here.'
"Good work today," she said, pulling back and holding his face in both hands the way she always had. Looking at him. "You did well."
"I gave someone the children's menu."
"He liked the pictures," she said firmly. "I saw him."
Ash laughed. It came out more tired than he meant it to but she smiled at it anyway.
"Are you feeling better?" she asked.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I am."
She studied him for one more moment — the look that saw more than he said, that had always seen more than he said — and then let go.
"Eat," she said. "Then go home and rest. Green will worry."
"Green doesn't worry."
"Green worries constantly. She just does it quietly so no one makes a fuss about it." She was already moving back toward the kitchen. "Finish your bowl."
Ash looked down at his food.
Then back at the restaurant — at Misty resetting tables, May counting the day's receipts, Dawn stacking chairs with mechanical efficiency, Serena's voice from the kitchen giving instructions in that calm, even tone.
He ate his bowl.