Seeing Jess put herself between himself and the other girl and then invite him to join them until they got out of the forest, Charlie quickly spared the two other girls in the group a slight, nervous glance before nodding and following Jess as she went. He closed up his map and tucked it back into his pocket, making a mental note to have a word with Jean when he got back to Lumiose; Santalune Forest wasn’t exactly the most dangerous place in the world, but getting stuck for hours in a place filled with wild Pokemon wasn’t exactly that appealing an idea to him when that stupid rock wasn’t even here in the first place. The stupid jerk. 

However, as he mentally cursed his airheaded Kalosian friend, Jess spoke up again; mentioning something about a Pokemon Professor and being asked to go to Snowbelle; instantly, the gears in Charlie’s head started to crank and turn.
“Pokemon Professor… You mean Professor Apple, right?” Charlie began, at first sounding somewhat unsure but then rising up into something of an amazed, impressed tone; “You’re actually working for an actual researcher? Do you have a Pokedex?” 

Meanwhile, the Gastly watched gleefully as the Zubat began to flutter and dance around it, and followed quickly on his trail as he returned to the group and his trainer; from what the Gastly could see, its trainer seemed to have fallen in with them after his initial little mishap. 

One quick scan over the group later, and Gastly disappeared in a puff of smoke; barely even a second later, it appeared behind Bailey and Miu as they trailed behind Charlie and Jess, observing the two as they walked along with their Pokemon. If the Poliwag’s antics towards her trainer were any indication, the little tadpole seemed to be a fellow troublemaker; albeit one with a somewhat faulty sense of humour if her reaction to itself earlier served as indication of anything. The Duskull, meanwhile, was a harder nut to crack; the other Ghost-type just seemed to glide along quietly, only sparing a sideways glance to the Poliwag’s antics as it went. The Gastly would check in on him later, if anything. 

It would see about the humans later; for now, it just disappeared in another silent puff of smoke as he re-appeared nearby to Charlie and Jess, hissing to let its trainer know he was there.

“Oh, there you are, Phil,” Charlie said to the little ball of gas as he heard it and turned around to look at the Gastly, “Was wondering where you went off to, buddy.”

Seeing the Gastly just grin at him, Charlie shook his head and turned back to Jess; unsure whether she’d processed his question, he opened his mouth to ask again-

Before he was cut off by a sudden commotion from behind him. He turned, and saw the blue-haired girl he’d approached earlier barge her way over towards him.
He froze slightly- the way she said ‘excuse me’ to him suggested to him in his state of nervousness that she had some kind of issue with him like that other girl had seemed to- but as she actually started to speak properly, he relaxed and let the tension drain out of him. 

“Well, just that there’s another forest - it’s after Snowbelle City.” The girl said, as she pointed to a location on her map; and Charlie noted with a sense of dawning realization that she was pointing towards a patch of green just a few miles distance along the eastern road leading out of Santalune and down to the next town over that way, “Winding Woods? We’ll be going through there too for the professor. So I guess if you can’t find it here, it might be there?”

Again, Charlie froze. Paused. Contemplated. 
And then he groaned in realization. Jean hadn’t been lying; the stupid jerk had just given him some very unspecific directions. 

“... Alright yeah, I see what I did,” he said, groaning and banging his fist lightly against his forehead in frustration, before thinking over the girl’s implied offer; “... I guess I could? I mean, if you, uh- don’t mind and all. Gotta call home, make sure no-one’s wondering where I am, but- yeah, thanks,” He replied to the girl, seemingly flustered and a fair bit sheepish over his own mistake as he gave his somewhat muddled answer.