The face of chaos glares at me. That's right. Gengar is the worst, a havoc-level Ghost-type. Just being in the same room with one is enough to make my anxiety explode.

But it all makes sense now, that sudden defensiveness. It's all because of that Gengar.

A tingling sensation erupts in my head. Then a sweet voice slithers in, "Thank you."

My neck jerks. "I promise."

The Gengar's lopsided grin shrinks as he raises a brow. His stubby arms now rest on my shoulders.

"D-Don't you dare break our vow, Yan."

I blink. I couldn't have broken that promise, could I? And what was it anyway?

Dust pricks my eyes. That agonising moment lasts for quite a while before it dawns on me that these are tears. I must be so afraid back then, yet now I am calmer, I have control.

My lips quiver like roaring tides and frost wraps my throat. My pupils must be dilating or my vision wouldn't be blurry, all over the place, without something to focus on.

"You don't deserve this fate."

I was... moved to tears? How unlike myself. Now I must bring this secret to my grave before the tabloids get hold of it. Not that I'm anyone famous, I'm sure, but don't we all strive to perfect our image? We are, after all, who we project ourselves to be, and that's why we will never truly know or accept others' opinions of us, even when they stab us with their words and lace us with their tone. We just enjoy searching the wrong places and thinking we have the right answers. Later we are contradicted and we grow sheepish, claim that our answers are decidedly false, that it was all a setup for others to gain confidence and validation. Just like that: image, image, image.

So why did I crumble into an insignificant heap because of a Gengar?

Fear is unnecessary.

So I admit that, and proceed to be afraid in the Lost Tower? I guess I always have that stroke of denial within me.

"We are the same, you and I."

How similar can a Pokémon and a human be? We are two wholly different species! Was I delusional? Or am I just out to criticise who I was, again and again and again?

These questions swarm my head, an Attack Order by the Vespiquen in my mind's hive. They dissipate when I am thrust into a world of fiction. Or at least, a reality I don't know of; else, it is one I refuse to accept, when I once did.

•

The autumn breeze simmers down as it runs in circles, chasing the yellowing leaves that slip down the inky cloak of a man with a moustache and monocle who stands at the cold threshold of Old Chateau. Tipping his crumpled hat, he straightens his arched body as he speaks of a farewell that stinks of foolish fuckery. He stuns his audience with his gilded words and gestures that have long lost their meaning: a wave of lacklustre grace and youth, a nod that precedes the crackle of bones, a blink slower than a Shuckle's pace. Of course, he must scan his delicate eyes across the ones that withhold pain.

"Goodbye, my friend," he repeats to an unsmiling Gengar, as if his previous speech and behaviour aren't emphasis enough. "Goodbye."

The thing with such farewells is that they are positive everything in life will improve here on out. To sever ties is no easy feat, so Gengar believes in his human friend that everything will work out one day, that they will see each other again one day. Deep down, beneath his spiky back, he knows his friend will never return.

But of course, his friend enters the mansion instead. It's not about the human, really, but it's Gengar that fucked up. Curses always hurt all parties one way or another, and living curses are no exception. The heat sink that he is deactivates, and he stops smiling.

His human friend sets the cup of earl grey onto the table in his room. The second room from the right, on the second floor, to be precise. Something about all this "second"s sure is fucking annoying, because Gengar knows he comes second in his friend's heart too. Gengar knows this is his fate, to be a runner-up, to never be the first in someone's life or in anything that truly matters.

He knows this is why his friend decides to leave and never look back, but he plays every fucking moment they share in his head every single day. Gengar has never cursed this much in his life before, so he relishes it whenever he sinks in his past, thinking that curses beget curses, so he must flourish every little detail with the expletive fit for a king as he, making himself to be more narcissistic than he really is.

Scenes resurface and overlap each other, like when his friend was still a child, and Gengar was still a Gastly who never knew limbs were a thing. He was shocked when he grew hands on evolution, developing himself alongside his friend who succumbs to puberty's bewitching growth spurt. They both reached a new stability when his identity as Gengar blossomed just as he made love with a woman he never bothered to introduce, and suddenly had twins in a pram.

Old Chateau remains a mansion rich with bittersweet memories for Gengar, as he once took care of his friend like a surrogate parent, giving him candies and chocolate and playing all sorts of games with him. Gengar helped him with his homework and taught him to rise up against the dastardly bullies, cooked for him when the butler refused to, under his father's orders, dreamt with him and let him confront his fears, encouraged him to grow...

Old Chateau is truly an endless wellspring of emotions.

Time stops walking for a while, stops retracing its muddy footsteps in the household. Soon, there is only a single painting in the room, bereft of any other furniture or soul. The dark purple painting of a sleeping smoke and its hill, and the smoke that comes alive as a Gastly. It's the beginning of things, with an almost parallel end. Both Gastly and Gengar, withered by the loneliness, only want a companion, at the end of the day.

Men enter the room to detach the painting from the wall, the Gastly's habitat, and send it off to an exhibition. He complies because he is just as afraid of humans as they are of him, if they knew he was in there.

The immortal painting and its ghost lingers in the dim display stand. The woman who bought them takes her money back from the oily hands of the artist whose apron bears all the colours in the world, save for any shade of black and violet. The Gastly and his painting make yet another trip, to the quiet and distant Celestic Town, and the artist carries it with gritted teeth and perspiring arms into a house, through its broken window.

People come and go. Dawn turns to dusk. The Gastly slips out of the painting and brandishes his tiny fangs, blushing at the masterpiece worth millions. Surveying the house, his gaze immediately lands on the toppled buckets of paint darker than midnight, and as purple as a Rattata's fur, among various other colours. These two colours grab his attention the most because they have grown too familiar, and he wishes to see them again somewhere. Gastly glides to the living room and spies the portraits of happy humans and families and friends before leaving the house through the keyhole. He laughs.

He continues to laugh as he zooms into the fog and halts in front of a grave. He continues to laugh, because all the other sounds he makes are fucking wrong to him. Laughter is the most intimate and magical thing he's heard for a while. He scans the grave and hushes. The eyes that widened now close. He wishes for blood and opens his eyes.

The Gastly dissipates and its every gaseous bit rain onto the soil of the private graveyard near Celestic Town, weeping about the fucking cancer that took his life just before he could reach his peak, and how his future would soon be ransacked and stolen by someone unworthy.

He was right, but he was also left. Perhaps that's why he leaves his new home to reside in a familiar one, his magnum opus, to be one with the smoke on the hill, as if his desire will be met at this idyllic peak he paints for himself.

•

The throb returns to haunt me. I can't tell which is stronger—the throbbing of the head or the heart?

Something about experiencing one's life in reverse chronological order is bittersweet. To have one's achievement robbed by another because of a twist of fate, and to linger forever alongside the immortality of one's work... We always think the ending is the most shocking or dramatic, but we forget the beginning was once the worst plot twist of its ilk. I just hope mine is not this tragic.

Anyhow, the Gengar leers at me. Does he want me to be his companion? Then I must have broken his promise.

"Tell me, and I'll listen."

My voice is at least twice more composed than just now. My words make it seem like some friendly heart-to-heart, make this whole situation seem normal.

"Maybe you'll understand when I tell you my story."

My shadow looms over the Gengar, though I step back.

"Why are you telling me this?" I blink twice. "It seems doable."

"Promise me, Yan," the Gengar says. "Promise me that you will choose to live without regrets. Promise me that you will choose to be yourself through and through and not let others undermine or underestimate you. Be the underdog if you have to, but always know that you can be, and you are, so much more than you think yourself to be."

I gulp and lean against the door. "Y-Yan."

"What's your name?"

Well, if it isn't that question, what else can it be?

Silence explodes between us. Guess I could think about his words, huh? Based on my actions up till now, it's not too unreasonable to say that I am keeping my promise to him. I should continue to. Funny how I have to rely on a Ghost-type to keep my spirits high.

"Thank you for unsealing me."

It must be tough, sealed in a room like this. You'd grow bored. At least loitering in the mansion would be freer.

I uncrumple the last Cleanse Tag in my hand. The Gengar's smile shrinks as he returns into the painting, leaving me to dwell for a bit in the room.

The painting is really detailed, when you look closely, and it's... rather symbolic for him. Maybe... If I could just escape the sky castle, I must come to pay the Gengar a visit. Hopefully, he will be much better, and have a new companion by then.

I sigh and place the tag diagonally across the painting, such that it touches the frame on both ends.

Wait a minute. Shouldn't I be sealing the door?

That means the exorcist wants him to remain attached to his painting forever! What a cursed fate.

I leave the room after a sideway glance at the Gengar who kneels to form the hill, the spikes on its back transforming into smaller trees and hills in the landscape, and his pointy ears, set parallel to each other, seem to merge into the one peak that is the focus of the painting. A position of discomfort, really.

I eventually exit the Old Chateau, but there are still no signs of anyone handling me the instruction to remove the tags.

Till I reach the pearl white fence, that is, where the familiar Pokémon meets my gaze. I can't quite tell if this is part of the stasis or part of my past now. It could well be both.

Hypno just hands me a slip of paper that gives me my cue.

But there's also something else. My hands dig into my hoodie pockets and uncover a note.

It is the address of the Old Chateau.

As it seems, the Hypno led me here and set me up for all this labour. But why?

At this rate, I may just exhaust myself instead. I couldn't have any energy, nor do I want to deal with my past for now.

Thankfully, I return home, back to my sweet bed, and take a good rest.