The outside looked sickly warped behind the glass window. Caellum Jennings has an almost debilitating fear of extraneously-sustained movement: but not so much fear as it is just plain dread — fear is what you might feel toward an opened maw, or a sharp object pressed against your neck. Dread is whatever’s making him feel like he’s staring down the length of something steep. His eyes, two dilating polaroids. Two blank zeroes oscillating the jarring shift between the oblique blur of picturesque panorama and the static inertia of a machined motion occluding distance. There was no movement felt on this train. No discomfort, no turbulence. Looking out the window you’d think the world picked itself up on its legs and started moving. Like it had somewhere to be. Somewhere it had to be on time for. What it means to be imparted sight. To suffer immediacy. The incandescing light of the natural world coruscating the myopic tear of retinal infraction. His periphery avails him of nothing save this turgid misbehaving of the stomach. What he’d give for respite. To slip into stasis.

The interior structure of the train is designed so that everyone gets a window seat. A girl he doesn’t know is sitting across from him and she's been rifling through her notebook like someone would a fashion magazine. There is a slight almost-unnoticeable cut in the glass that runs not quite parallel to his shoulder, and the scenery outside that is perspectively level to its height oddly distends around it, like a cracked-screen distortion on a television where the pixels sort of blur. The girl is turning every page by doing the brief thumb lick thing that somehow queerly reminds him of his mother. He’s nearsighted and his glasses are somewhere in his bag. The myopic intimacy of someone being close to him. The image of a world disappearing behind a girl’s body. His body molding its shape against the leather of the seat. Smooth, fine leather. He wants to stay as non-confrontational with the window as his periphery would allow him without having to close his eyes because the thought of someone seeing him try to feign sleep makes him squirm with self-conscious discomfort. He moves his arm to pinch at the inflamed muscle somewhere in the left shoulder area near his neck — the medical name for it escapes him. Every time he makes any abrupt muscular movement the girl’s eyes flicker up instinctually to like, look at him. A microsecond’s length of staring. He thinks that the concave mirrors built into the upper corners of the train make his reflection’s eyes look vaguely insectile and he’s paranoid that the girl might feel the same way. The popping of bubblegum. Multiple sounds of fingers crinkling the insides of trail-mix packaging. The world up on two feet. His left arm gripping a pokéball beneath the joint table separating him and the girl. The rapid flipping of notebook pages. Many and many legs bouncing in pre-examinal anticipation.

He hasn’t slept normally since age twelve. He’s pretty sure he’s done some irreparable damage to something inside him circadian-rhythm-wise, i.e. some part of him that he has no idea about, because is the attention disorder thing a diseased malfunction in the cerebral or what. Grip with a muscled hand the reins of the mind. When he needs to steady his focus he imagines himself before the likeness of something horse-drawn, at the reins and in control. The landscape inside the image resembles that of an unchanging unmoving desert, made inert by nature of its medium, which being captured as something painted on canvas. An artist’s rendition of cathartic motion, to which he is both the foreground and the tool providing the illusion of treading distance: a lone rider, in control and directly forward-moving, receding into the background of an all-consuming sun and static land. He considers reviewing his notes but it doesn’t feel right, like he’s already cast his fate the moment he stepped onto this train, like there was nothing he could do now that would change the outcome of what’s going to happen — it was out of his hands. Nothing he’d read now would stick anyway. He doesn’t have the willpower in him to receive information. There was no quality of adhesion in his brain at the moment, just a weird kind of looseness. The med. stimulants in his cargo pants feel like they’re burning a hole in the material. He’d taken his 30 mg morning adderall not even two hours ago and already feels like he’s crumbing off the tailend of its dose.

The sun shines in spidered gleams of breaking-through rays of light. The big digital clock above the mechanically folding door connecting to the other would-be train car reads 7:38 a.m. He wants to reach for another adderall but he doesn't have anything smaller than 30 mg tablets and he doesn’t know if he should take another one this soon. Modern electric trains are segmentally welded together and seamlessly ballasted onto the railway so there’s this distinct feeling of gliding that makes it feel like you’re not at all actually in motion. The destabilizing sensation of a movement vacant of vibrations and turbulence: unnerving in a way that feels wrong, like something that shouldn’t be possible. He imagines what a train would be like without any dividing doors, just one long snake-like corridor that goes and goes. The thought of the outside world blipping into a passing reel of indistinct images nauseates him in a way that he can’t ever really find the words to describe. In a way it’s like watching the synchronous pervasion of a universe being ontologically spent, and he, last of Earth, was alone chosen to bear witness. Just trying to put it together in words makes his thoracic area swell with a cold pressure. His shoulder muscle is so inflamed it feels like it needs to be stabbed. Making the most miniscule movement means that the girl’s eyes will flicker up to him but he needs to dull the pain somehow: get it to just a dull ache. The muscle is swollen in a way that he wants to beat on his shoulder area with something strong. He’s going to time relieving his shoulder muscle only to when the clouds bloat over the sun’s light because of this now-certain feeling that the light reflected off of him would make the yellow of his eyes look more insectile and that the girl’s gaze would inevitably flicker up to see him there, seated conspicuously across from her, wildly moving his unusually long neck around and looking terrifyingly mantis-like, yellow eyes gleaming like something distinctly inhuman.

The popping of bubblegum and the crinkle sound of trail-mix wrappers. The girl across from him has a tongue that is all the way blue from the blue-raspberry flavored lollipop that he somehow hasn’t been able to hear the usual salivary mouth-swishes of. Her tongue is lapping the circumference of the ball-candy without making a single salivary sound. He finds this to be alluring in a way he doesn’t feel at all inclined to try and understand. The digital clock feels somehow slowed and he wonders briefly if there’s a problem with it. It’s 7:45 a.m. and the entrance exams start at 9:00 a.m. on the dot. Suddenly thundershock comes to mind. Suddenly what kind of pokémon she might have is jumping around in his head, like whether or not she has an Electric-type ‘mon. It wasn't necessarily the blonde hair but it wasn't necessarily not the blonde hair. Sometimes there was just a certain kind of feel to someone. The girl across from him reminds him of the move thundershock, and he finds that the blue-hair-strand-dye-thing the girl has going on is perfectly aesthetically pleasing. Ground-types are wholly non conductive. Levitate as an ability is less telekinetic than it is actually magnetic-based, as in whatever form of magnetism that functions non-ferrously, as in total headache-inducing nonsense that better not be on the entrance exams. The technical sciencey stuff sometimes makes the image of a retail job infinitely more appealing, dreams-of-his-future-wise. Some things just don’t compute in his brain and this has never failed in making him feel inadequate. The train’s seamless gliding along the railway produces this kind of detached, vacant whirring of steel barely not touching — if two things not making contact were to have a sound at all. The image of magnets and magnetism threatens another headache. He starts to picture one of those graphs where two infinite lines get closer and closer to each other but aren’t mathematically allowed to ever touch. His right hand tightens over the pocket that carries the 30 mg tablets of adderall and his left hand is now feeling at his heart rate. He’s wondering what kind of a name would fit someone like her. Something Kalosan. Something pretty but very slightly aggressive. Chloe. Celine. Camelia. If it gets like just ten percent slower he’s going to take another one.

The window looming over the edge of the eye’s periphery like a capital-g Goddamned henge. The general feeling of doom. The want to make conversation with a girl but not being able to. The sinking feeling of melting into leather. The sound of trail-mix wrappers, crinkling. Sometimes you forget how to breathe and you start becoming conscious of it, of how to breathe and of every inhale and exhale. He’s now breathing exclusively through his nose. There’s that translucent, weirdly distant silhouette of yourself in commercial-grade windows that you can’t ever seem to get rid of, squinted eyes or no. He moves his right hand’s fingers to garrote the skin directly beneath the line of his jaw. The image of himself unfleshedly occurring inside the spooling reel of the world itself is heart-poundedly haunting. His muscles tense in the distinct reflexive motion of prey. It’s 7:49 a.m. and it feels like he’s swallowed another heartbeat. Something peculiar about high-threshold perspiration, and not being able to sweat regularly, and like maybe he’s not properly secreting glandular waste as effectively as he should be, biologically; like what if there’s just sickeningly insane levels of subcutaneous plaque deposits just sitting there, never being secreted. The sunlight dims. He massages his left shoulder area. The girl’s eyes flicker back and forth.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

There’s that general almost angst of him wanting to break the silence that he’s painfully sure the girl can feel, sitting across from him. An oozing of like, desperation to make small talk. To quell the pre-exam butterflies. The new green-apple flavored lollipop she’s working mechanically quiet at has clashed with the blue of her tongue to create a not-at-all-weird near-teal color that fascinates him because he can’t from his distance across the table find one area of undyed tongue. Perfect circumferential motion. The bottom right areas of the pages in her notebook now have thumbprint stamps of bluish-green from all the thumb-lick flipping. Being as anal as one possibly could be concerning oral hygiene makes it even weirder that he finds himself so willingly able to stomach the thought of sharing this girl’s already-sucked-on lollipop. Eager, even. Suddenly he feels an oral-fixation kind of need to have something in his mouth to like, gnaw on. Images of mandibular clamor. The fear of looking and seeming insectile. A robotically feminine voice on the intercom sounds with an ETA announcement of approx. fifteen minutes. The girl's right leg is jumping up and down in a way that makes it feel like she’s going to get up and leave any second. Like she can feel his stare and is ignoring it, her eyes adhesively glued to her thumbprint-stamped notebook, cramming pre-examinal knowledge like her life depends on it — breaking ocular adhesion only to watch the vaguely insectoid creature in front of her writhe in muscular discomfort.

Consider why ‘Flying’ isn’t simply termed ‘Wind’. Consider the implication of Normal-type in relation to every other type save Fighting; and how this relationship ties into Incompatibility Theory. Norman’s The Power Of Inert Non-Power asserts a subtle nullification type diffusing in Normal type-energy that supposes the existence of a Conditional Incompatibility Theory. Explain the flock tendencies of the Flying-type pokémon Taillow. Consider pokémon whose identities are inextricably tied to items — most notably Kadabra’s spoons and Farfetch’d’s leek: describe the relationship between them. The passengers on this train consist mostly of teenagers and young adults which makes the static, clinical silence uncomfortably strange. There is a ricocheting quality to every idle sound because of the no-talking silence that gets more and more lightning-like to his ears, edging to borderline unbearable. If he sparked up a conversation with the girl in front of him the entire train would be able to hear it. The thought of her after all this time regarding him in full for the first time feels like it would be incredibly awkward and not at all fun for him. It’s that weird schoolboyish nostalgia feeling of going on field trips that makes the silence in this train full of students so contradictingly jarring and strange, like something unnaturally out of place. What do you even say to break the ice at this point, is what he’s algorithmically computing in his head. He imagines an exam question along the lines of: Consider a scenario in which you are in forced proximity with an attractive woman: how do you engage her without seeming limpishly predatory and squeamish and frog-like, etc.; bonus points if the conversation starter doesn’t include the subject of pokémon. Somehow it's more than a little bit cold inside of the train. Consider Psychic-types in relation to the human mind: explain the consequences of ‘empathy’ as a linguistic function. Explain the functionality of the pokémon ability Mold Breaker, and how it might relate to Norman’s Conditional Incompatibility Theory. Explain the phenomenon of ‘energy diffusion zones’ in high level pokémon battles, and the mechanics behind using them to your advantage.

He watches the digital clock’s hour number change from a seven to an eight, meaning roughly five more minutes left, give or take a minute or two. He wonders briefly how a railway train could have inexact time measurements ETA-wise. It occurs to him that Blonde With Freckles could have a Water-type pokémon instead of an Electric-type ‘mon and the idea of it all strikes him as rather droll. Agnes would be too aggressive. Beatrice feels jagged on the tongue. Jeanne doesn’t seem obvious but there’s an irradiating element to it that borders on lurid. Alice. Clara. Consider the phenomenon of the pokémon move thunder and describe how the actualization of its activation differs from standard Electric-type moves. Explain the phenomenon behind the activation of Fire-type moves that forgo the standard process of combustion. In the strictest of terms, explain Stone’s Totality of Steel Theory. Something about going through the entire train ride without having once talked to the girl directly in front of him or even learning her name bothers him in an almost hysterical bleak-vision-of-the-future kind of way.

The blipping reel of The World Itself. His right hand is death-gripping the material of his pants and his heartbeat feels invested. There’s a meter beside the digital clock above the door that displays the train’s speed and it reads 296 kph. They’re cutting into distance like they’re on a tour. Like they’re saying Excuse us we’re just passing through. We’ll be out of your hair in a second or two. What the planet would look like from outer space gleams into his periphery. You’re outsiders looking in, here. His body is moving at sub 300 kph speeds and he can’t feel a thing. The seducing swell of bodily defenestration. What it means to travel the world as a tourist. His sight taking in sight. The bearing of vision as a thinking creature. Pokémon as sub-verbal domestic animal-organisms. Learned co-dependence. There’s millions of places he hasn’t seen and millions of pokémon. There’s millions of humans and he wants to be one of them. To try his hand at being.

The train stops moving. The digital clock reads 8:06 a.m. The artificial woman voice on the intercom says Welcome to Castelia and please wait for the doors to open before getting up to unboard. His efforts at lifting up his body are dizzy and uncoordinated. A passive body that was just moving at sub 300 kph speeds. The girl is packing up her notebook and red gel pen that went wholly unused into her handbag and she crams the several lollipop wrappers splayed about on the table into her coat-jacket pocket. The readying-to-depart crowd of students begin to make audible fraternizations as though a ban were lifted and but the blonde girl who reminds him of thundershock is hastily taking the notebook out of her bag again to once again skim through its contents while she can. Every page has this drenched quality of being doused in neon-grade highlighter that makes it look like she’s opening up a screen. He finally decides that if she had wanted to talk to him she would have, and the will to say that it was good sharing a ride with her and good luck on the boards and I hope to see you again at school helplessly evaporates.

He supposes that every would-be student has to somehow manage their way to the academy and expects a like, crowd of teenagers to sort of flock in one direction but everyone and even Miss Thundershock mysteriously just disperses into the morning-time passersby of city-dwelling commuters. He cringes at having mentally referred to her with such a lame sobriquet because it reminds him of how he couldn’t even manage to learn her name and suddenly the cloudy and dim morning-time city ambience horrifies him in flashing visions of a bleak future in days lived out just like this one where he’s alone amidst a sea of bodies at the foot of a coldly impersonal landscape whose buildings extend so high he has to strain his neck so incredibly upward to see where they end. He can see an old-fashioned-looking clock tower with a huge non-digital clock. It seems like it’s the only building made of brick in the entire city and it sticks out like a sore thumb. It feels really assuring to have his feet touching pavement again. There’s an entire world of difference between regular, modestly-populated cities and giant metropolitan ones whose population rivals that of a small country. There’s this nose-wrinkling kind of stuffiness that makes it feel like you've ascended an entire mountain’s length in altitude. The atmosphere looks strangely tinted even at 8:16 a.m. People tend to look ahead in a sort of vacant way where they’re not looking at anything when walking. The empty gaze of a morning commuter. Somehow every adult in a business suit either has a cup of coffee they never drink from or a cigarette or both. Usually there’s some kind of map with a You Are Here arrow that would be very helpful because he has no idea where to go or how he’s even going to get to where he needs to be before 9:00 a.m. and he wishes he had come an hour earlier. Buildings and roads and lights and eyes that are just slightly more than whelmed. The not-very-certain and unstaying eyes of a tourist. The tractual feel of a 30 mg adderall tunneling down his throat. Something about his blinking feels rhythmic. Tapped into something automatic. He feels like he’s swallowed the third-person image of himself and he’s walking in tandem with him. He’s introducing him to his arms and his legs. Like it’s a novel thing, that he can really move his feet and curl his fingers and tense his muscles. He has a mouth that talks and eyes that function in relative immediacy. His is a mind slotted into something predestined. He has a giant pelt of sensory organ called skin and it wraps his body like something dim. All the world is a blackness that jackets the sensation of our nerves. He stands before a sky. He doesn’t know if his inflamed muscle stopped throbbing or if his body just forgot about it. Somehow the sun has become completely eclipsed in the span of five minutes and it feels like it’s going to rain. The academy’s location on the city map feels like it took a personal interest in being placed as far away from him as possible. The You Are Here arrow is red and looks vaguely aggressive. It’s 8:18 a.m. and the city looks infinite and digitized.