“He’s coming,” Vileplume alerted his sister.

“Okay, it's fine. I’m ready,” Bellossom said, seemingly trying to convince herself.

Adrian was definitely different when he returned. He was spending more time around them, but he just seemed uneasy. Tonight, she was going to find out why, and if there was anything they could do. Bellossom was truly convinced that he might be close to dropping his barrier around them.

If there was any pokemon in the guild he showed any trust towards, it was Bellossom. For that reason, she'd be talking to him alone.

Bellossom took a deep breath. This would all work out in the end. It had to.

The umbreon walked through the door as Vileplume said he would. He scanned the room before finding Bellossom. She'd forgotten how intimidating those crimson eyes could be when they were staring directly at her. The tattered, red cloak only added to the dark aura that he carried into the room.

Adrian approached the table slowly and sat down in front of her. He was trying to sit orderly, like it was an official meeting. Bellossom could read between the lines, though. He didn't hold eye contact with her for long, and his rings glowed softly. He was trying to mask nervousness.

An uncomfortable silence hung in the air. She expected him to at least say hello. It looked like she would have to start things.

She greeted him with a smile. “Hi Adrian.”

“Why did you want me here?” He asked.

Straight to the point, it seemed. Adrian did always hate formalities.

“I just thought it would be nice to talk to you myself,” she told him. “Away from the rest of the team. I know they can be a little… aggravating to you.”

“Putting it lightly,” Adrian responded. The rings glowed brighter, and his gaze drifted away for a moment.

He was already getting distracted by his negative thoughts. It was making her wonder if this was really a good idea. He did show up, at least. Bellossom would just have to play it safe and make sure he didn't stray too far.

“I hope I don’t bother you, too,” she said.

That seemed to rein him back in. “You're… No, you don't. You're different. You don't lecture me.”

Bellossom chuckled, some of her anxiety lifted. It was reassuring to hear directly that she didn't bother him. Maybe things would go smoother than she though.

“Well, thank you. I don't really want to overstep my boundaries. I know you have your reasons for the things you do.”

“What things?” He replied. He was getting defensive.

“Oh, just like… the way you keep your distance,” she explained. “You're a bit hostile at times, and I know there are… Well, like I said, you have reasons.”

“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” Adrian asked.

“Oh, well—”

“Be straight with me.”

He stared her in the eyes now. She held her breath for a moment before letting out a heavy exhale. “Yes. I’m still worried about you.”

“Figures…”

“Adrian, I have every right to be,” Bellossom argued. “You just got back, you evolved again, and I can tell your sleep is messed up again. I know now that you trust me, though. Enough to trigger that evolution.”

He dismissed the idea the same way he’d been doing all week. “I don't get hugs as a drunk Eevee often.”

“Well, whether it was just drunk emotions or not, it meant something to you at that moment. I won't suggest anything else if you don't want me to.”

It was very, very important not to cross boundaries with him. Best to just let him say whatever he wants for the time being. He’d acknowledge the truth internally and hopefully improve from there. Hopefully.

There was another period of silence between the two. Bellossom didn’t know how to follow any of that up, and Adrian wasn’t the one asking questions. What was she supposed to say to him, though? She didn’t want to ask anything too personal.

The umbreon got impatient, though. “You brought me here to question me. Don’t waste my time.”

“Well, truth be told, I don’t know what to ask,” Bellossom said pretty bluntly. “I know there are things I just can’t bring up. You won’t be honest, or you’ll refuse to answer… or you’ll just leave.”

Being direct with him was always a coin toss. It was a pretty easy way to make him shut down a discussion, but at the same time, he didn’t respond to subtlety that well. Especially when he recognized it.

It seemed, in this one instance, Adrian was willing to do something. He bounced some ideas around in his head before getting up and leaving the table. For a second, Bellossom thought she’d already driven him away. He didn’t go for the door, though.

He returned to the table carrying two glasses. A Full Moon, made with dark gummi soda, a bit of mead, and vanilla cream, and a Paradise Cocktail, a mix of Mist Continent beer and ground-up reviver seeds, which they grew in farms in Paradise. It was a popular place for travelers and tourists to visit, but most homes in the nearby Post Town were too expensive. Partly because of how popular the area had become.

Bellossom thought at first that he was bringing them both drinks, but instead of giving it to her, he drank the whole pint, alongside his own drink. It terrified Bellossom. The combined alcohol content could probably kill the average umbreon, but somehow Adrian pushed through it.

When he was fully finished, he had to balance himself by grabbing the table. He stared at Bellossom. His red eyes were bloodshot, his pupils constricted. The rings on his body were dim, his ears twitched, and his head was bobbing back and forth.
His speech was still somewhat coherent, though pretty slurred. “Sorry. They wouldn’t give me two for myself. ‘It’s a liability,’ they said.”

“Why did you do that?!” Bellossom cried.

“I don’t want to remember any of this tomorrow,” Adrian explained. “It’ll probably make me more honest, too. Like you said, I’d probably lie or dodge a lot of questions. I imagine my worse judgement will stop that from happening.”

Bellossom covered her face and groaned. “I don’t like the idea that you consider honesty a bad thing.”

“With me, it usually is. We’re gonna ignore that tonight, though. Same condition I was in with the abra I was talking to, and that was almost productive. So go ahead. Ask whatever you want. I’ll answer anything.”

Something about this felt really wrong. If this was the only way to get information, though, she’d have to work with it. However unreliable it may be. How far was he really willing to go?

Bellossom decided to start with something relatively safe, but still something he’d refused to talk about. “What were you doing while you were gone?”

“You want to waste time on that?” Adrian asked. “I did say ‘anything,’ I guess. It’s just not interesting. I spent a couple weeks in the wild by myself, spent some time with an eevee family, got mixed up with a circus crew for a day, and nearly died twice.”

“Twice?!” Bellossom was stunned, though Adrian was very casual about it. “I heard about the outlaw. What was the other thing?”

“Wild fearow dropped me from the sky,” Adrian answered. “The eevees let me stay with them cause I helped their kid. Didn’t seem like a fair tradeoff given how much food I drained from them, but whatever. Their choice.”

“Is that really all?” Bellossom questioned. “Nothing else? Nothing about the eevee family? Nothing about the circus?”

“Well, the circus was shit. They opened it up with a puppet show from an octillery. I don’t remember what it was about, though. It’s a little foggy to me right now.”

It was pretty clear this line of questioning wasn’t gonna go much further. He did offer some new information, though. A wasted umbreon didn’t spare details, as long as he remembered them at least.

Now that she’d tested the waters, she felt confident asking something a bit more serious. “What happened in that video we saw?”
Adrian pounded the table, startling Bellossom. His eyes shut, his rings glowed bright, and a wicked smile formed on his face. “That’s more like it! Oh, I am totally gonna regret this night.”

“Well… are you gonna answer?”

“I said ‘anything,’” Adrian repeated. “That was definitely one of the worst weeks of my life. What cosmic force decided I needed to see that again? It's a pretty cruel one. FUCK whatever brought me here!”

He was riding off the adrenaline from the anger. Drinking was able to bring that out in him pretty easily.

“So… what the fuck started it? I don’t actually remember. I just know my dad and I were pissed off at each other when Christmas break started. Supposed to be a happy holiday, just like it is here, but it never was with my family. There was that one year Dad got arrested on Christmas Eve for assaulting an officer. A cousin stole my presents and sold them at a pawn shop for weed. My great uncle busted my grandmother’s car windows and fired a few shots in the air once. Do you guys actually know what guns are?”

“Um… not really?” Bellossom heard humans mention them offhand a few times. Why they’d be brought to a Christmas gathering was beyond her. Adrian’s rant was quickly driving him off-topic, though. She tried to steer things back on track. “What was special about the one in the camera, though? You said it was one of the worst weeks of your life.”

“Oh, that was the one where I ran away from home,” Adrian responded. “I remember my dad and I both said we hated each other. He said he didn’t want me in his life, wished I was never born, then went out drinking like he usually did. I took that as a sign that I should leave, so I ran for the hills alone with no plans of coming back.”

“Like you did a few months ago?” Bellossom asked.

“Yup!”

His sudden disappearance seemed to make a little more sense now. Like he was repeating past behavior out of instinct. He still had that big smile on his face, though. Something about it was just so uncanny. It was really scaring Bellossom. This didn’t seem like something to be happy about.

“Adrian, are you okay? You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.”

“Too late now,” he laughed. “We didn’t even get to the part where I almost died.”

Bellossom really was starting to regret asking this question.

“So I got pretty far. I was sleeping in trees, hiding from strangers in bushes. Made it into the mountains. I don’t really know what my long-term plans were. I brought a bunch of snacks with me, but by that point I’d run out. So I was hungry, resting in a little cave to get out of the snow. Turns out that cave was the den of a bunch of fucking coyotes, and they really weren’t happy to see me.”

“Coyotes?”

“Wild animals,” Adrian said. “Look like dog pokemon. They form packs. Usually not that big a threat, but I was like… fuck, I don’t know how old I was actually. But I was easy prey for them, so they started tearing into me.”

“But you survived?”

“Obviously. They had a search party scouring the area, but it wasn’t them who found me. By some wild fucking chance, my father found me before them.”

Adrian started snickering remembering this part of the story. He shut his eyes tight. Bellossom couldn’t understand what was so funny about any of this.

“He sure wasn’t happy with me. I don’t even know why he brought me back. I was in the hospital for about a week, and it cost us a lot of money. He never let me forget that. Never celebrated my birthday or gave me shit for Christmas again. If he found out I’d left the house without his permission, which was rarely given, he would beat the fuck out of me. It only stopped when we both got older and I was able to fight back.”

The way he told the story made it sound like, to him, it was all just a joke. Bellossom didn’t see it that way though. “Adrian, I’m really sorry all of that happened. That’s terrible.”

The umbreon looked back at her. “Is it really? If none of that happened, I’d be a much different person.”

“That shouldn’t happen to kids,” Bellossom said. “Reliving that experience has to hurt.”

“Nothing hurts anymore,” Adrian responded. “I don’t feel anything now. I wake up every morning shambling around like a husk of a human being. I respond to basic stimuli with whatever feels natural, and I don’t question it. Seems to work out fine, too. There haven’t been any negative consequences for me.”

Bellossom was slowly starting to understand what was going on with him. “That’s what makes you so compulsive. You don’t think anything matters.”

I know nothing matters.”

“But that’s not true,” Bellossom countered. “I mean… You get physically injured. You get in trouble at the guild.”

“But does anything actually happen because of it?” Adrian asked. “I’ve not been kicked out or killed yet.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes!” Adrian answered. “Let something happen. Anything! The only times I feel anything anymore are when I’m close to situations like that.”

“Don’t say that! There are ways to feel happy without getting yourself killed.”

“Who says I should be happy? The world around me clearly disagrees.”

Bellossom just couldn’t keep up with any of it. He was well beyond any form of reason like this. This was the person hiding underneath all his anger and apathy? What was she supposed to say about any of this? She couldn’t figure that out, so she didn’t say anything. A very unpeaceful silence filled the air between them as Adrian capped off his rant.

He was breathing pretty heavily, his smile was starting to fade, and his rings were dimming again. He’d tired himself out with all of that. His eyes drifted back down to the table. Whatever mania had driven that behavior was buried again. Bellossom hoped she’d never see it again.

Eventually, Adrian pulled together enough energy to talk again. “I hate all of this. I never asked for my life to be like this. I don’t like being this way, you know?”

“You don’t have to be,” Bellossom responded.

“It’s all I know. I’m not like any human in the guild or any pokemon in this world. I can’t see the good in anything. Every guild member I meet, I want to see in flames. I see the joy in all their faces and pray it all disappears. They might get a hint of what my world looks like if that happened.”

“I’m sorry…”

Adrian looked up at her. There was fire in his eyes now. “Is that all you can tell me? That you’re fucking sorry?”

Bellossom started to tear up. She wanted to tell him something to help him. All she could muster was, “I don’t know what else to say.”

Adrian scoffed. “Thanks. You’re about as helpful as the spic.”

“The what?”

“That worthless counselor.”

“Did you ever tell him what you told me?” Bellossom asked.

Adrian thought about it for a minute. “Maybe I have. Every time Lliam makes me see him, I make sure I’m fucked up like I am now.”

“What does he tell you?”

“I don’t know; I don’t listen to him.”

From Bellossom’s perspective, this half-crazed rant was the closest he’d ever gotten to trying to improve himself. It seemed like he just wanted someone to tell him what to do. Like someone else could just come in and fix him.

She was solving a couple mysteries, but it gave her a lot of new questions. What to do next? How could she help him? Was it even possible?

All those were things she’d have to figure out herself later. She still had Adrian in front of her, apparently willing to answer any question. She decided to ask one more question.

“What happened with your mom?”

Adrian’s ears perked up. He looked at her with a blank expression, but he didn’t say anything. Didn’t make a sound.

It was a little worrying to Bellossom. “Um… you just talk about your dad a lot. You only talked about her once. I know something happened to her when you were young, but do you actually remember anything about her? Was she nicer to you?”

Adrian still didn’t answer. He kept staring. Not at her, though. His eyes seemed empty. It was like he wasn’t there anymore.

She waited a minute, but he stayed in that weird trance. “Adrian? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

He snapped out of it. Shook his head, trying to clear it of something. Before Bellossom could question him any further, he pushed himself off the table and left the inn.

Bellossom looked around. She saw someone walking towards the upstairs. She stopped the pokemon and asked it to find Vileplume. When that pokemon left, she planted her face into the table.

Did she do the right thing? Would this conversation lead to anything, or would he just forget all about this? What was she supposed to do? Counseling wasn’t working; the only way he could talk openly about it was in a condition where he was barely aware of what he was saying. He’d surely just pretend it didn’t happen the next day if she talked to him about it.

Suddenly, she heard a familiar voice. “Hiya Bell! Where's Viley at?”

She jumped for a moment before she realized who it was. A light smile appeared on her face.

“Oh, hi Enny.”

Edit

Pub: 30 Nov 2025 12:05 UTC

Edit: 10 Dec 2025 05:48 UTC

Views: 25