Ash made it approximately four minutes down the road before the bicycle hit him.
He didn't hear it coming. He was too busy mentally rehearsing what he was going to say to Professor Oak — something dignified, he'd decided, something that didn't sound like I am jealous of my eight-year-old fiancées and their Pokémon and I need one immediately — when the impact arrived from behind and sent him skidding across the road on his elbows.
"Ow— ow— OW—"
He sat up. Looked at his elbows. Looked at the road. Looked up.
May was standing over him with her bicycle, one hand on the handlebar, one foot on the ground, wearing the expression of someone who has just done something and is deciding how much of it was your fault.
"You," she said, "ran out without your clothes."
Ash opened his mouth.
Then he looked down.
He was still wearing the waiter uniform.
The white waiter uniform. With the small Pallet House logo on the breast pocket. That he had been wearing through two hours of a lunch rush and was now also wearing while lying on the road outside Pallet Town with grass stains on the knees.
'I AM STILL WEARING THE UNIFORM,' his brain supplied, loudly and too late.
"May—"
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to get grass stains out of white cotton?" She had produced his regular clothes from somewhere and held them out. Her face was doing the thing where it looked calm and was not calm. "Take these."
"I'm outside."
"I'm aware."
"I can't change outside."
May looked at him. Then looked at the Pokéball on her belt. Then looked back at him with the patient expression of someone who has already solved this problem.
"Graveler," she said, and released her Alolan Graveler in a flash of light.
The Pokémon landed with a solid thud, its rocky body crackling faintly with electricity. It looked at May. Looked at Ash on the ground. Looked back at May.
"Can you make him a changing room?" she said.
Graveler looked at the surrounding rocks and loose stones with the calm assessment of a professional. Then began moving them into a small enclosed space with efficient, rumbling competence.
"There," May said. "Go."
Ash took his clothes and went.
The rock shelter smelled like dust and electricity. He changed quickly — hoodie, black trousers, back to himself — and folded the uniform with the care of someone who had just received a lecture about white cotton.
He came back out.
May inspected him. Nodded once. Recalled Graveler.
"Better," she said.
"Thanks," Ash said.
"Don't thank me. Thank the fact that I decided to come after you instead of letting Misty find out you left in the work clothes."
'That's a fair point,' he thought.
"I'm going to Oak's lab," he said.
"I know. Why?"
"Just to visit."
May looked at him with the narrow, patient gaze of someone who has known him long enough to know just to visit was not a complete sentence.
"You have your scheming face on," she said.
"I don't have a scheming face."
"It's the same as your determined face but slightly guiltier."
Ash said nothing.
May studied him for another moment. Then something shifted in her expression — the particular shift of someone who has decided that instead of interrogating a mystery, she'll simply come along and observe it firsthand.
"I'm coming with you," she said.
"You don't have to—"
"Did I ask?" she said sweetly. The sweetness had an edge to it. The specific edge from the changing room — the one that said I have information about you that you would prefer I keep to myself.
He remembered very clearly what information that was.
"No," he said. "You didn't."
"Good." She gestured at her bicycle. "You're pedalling."
"Why am I pedalling?"
"Because my legs are tired from catching up to you. And because you owe me for the uniform."
"The uniform is fine."
"The uniform has grass stains."
"I can barely see them—"
"You're pedalling, Ash."
He pedalled.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
May sat on the back with her arms around his waist and her hair moving in the wind, and did not say anything the rest of the way to the lab.
This was somehow more unnerving than if she'd kept talking.
'Don't think about it,' Ash told himself, focusing on the road. 'Focus on Oak. Focus on the plan. Don't think about—'
"You're pedalling slower," May observed from directly behind his ear.
"I'm pacing myself."
"You were going faster before."
"I was in a hurry before."
"You're still in a hurry. I can tell."
'Don't think about anything,' Ash revised. 'Think about the road.'
He thought about the road.
It helped, moderately.
⁕ ⁕ ⁕
Professor Oak's lab sat at the top of the hill the way it always had — the same sprawling building, the same wooden gate, the same greenery surrounding it like the land had decided to grow specifically toward this place.
Ash had stood at this gate a hundred times in his previous life without really looking at it. It had always just been there — the beginning of things, the place you went before everything started.
Now he stood in front of it and felt the familiar pull of it differently. Not as a starting line. As something to come back to.
He reached for the doorbell.
His hand was, very slightly, not entirely steady.
"Ash," May said from behind him.
"Yeah."
"Are you going to ring it or stand there looking at it?"
He rang it.
The ding-dong echoed inside. Footsteps. The click of a lock.
The door opened.
It wasn't Professor Oak.
It was a young woman — warm eyes, easy smile, the kind of unhurried manner that came from being comfortable in a place for a long time. She looked at them both and her smile widened when it reached Ash.
"Oh, Ash! Good morning!" She glanced at May. "May, you came too. Come in, both of you."
Ash blinked.
'Daisy,' his memory supplied. 'Professor Oak's granddaughter. Gary's older sister.'
And — he found the rest of the memory a half-second later — his.
'Of course,' he thought. 'Of course she's also—'
"You alright?" Daisy asked, looking at him with a slight tilt of her head.
"Fine," he said. "Morning, Daisy. Is Grandpa in the lab?"
"Where else would he be?" She stepped back to let them in. "He's been in there since five this morning. Something about migration data. He hasn't eaten properly." She paused. "Well. He's eating ramen. But that's not properly."
"Ramen at this hour?" May said, stepping inside.
"Ramen at every hour," Daisy said. "I've stopped fighting it."
She led them down the hallway toward the lab door — and Ash, who had been walking at a responsible pace, saw the door at the end of the hall and stopped being responsible.
He went faster.
"Ash, don't run in the—" Daisy started.
He was already through the door.
"—house," she finished, to the space he'd vacated.
May looked at the empty doorway. Then at Daisy. Then back at the empty doorway.
"He does this," May said.
"I know," Daisy said. "I grew up with Gary. I'm used to it."
They followed him in.