[i]This girl is kinda strange...[/i] The thought flashed through Matthew's mind as she held the sandwich out before him.
"I really can't accept that." He mumbled quietly, still taking a seat on the bench "I mean, I already took a potion that you paid for, I can't really take your food too." He truly appreciated the gesture, but even though the girl didn't seem to mind that Matthew had used her potion, he couldn't bring himself to take anything else from her. As she told her story of the time in the forest, Matthew's mind was racing as he began to put the pieces together. Medicine, he didn't think to buy any potions of his own, or antidotes or anything else for that matter. That was the most basic thing, any Pokemon trainer would know to do that. And, to make matters worse, he realized that the Kakuna that he had encountered must have been the same one the girl had ran from, meaning that she had narrowly escaped an encounter with the Beedrill herself. It was his pointless curiosity that had brought on his Pokemon's bad luck.

"Hope is fine now. She's resting in here." Matthew sighed, tapping the Pokeball on his belt gently as he slumped on the bench, his eyes unable to meet hers, fixated entirely on his own shoes. "But..." Matthew searched his still spinning mind for the right words. As he did so, he noticed Whirlygig land on a nearby bottle of water that Matthew could only assume belonged to the girl. He could see her Budew bouncing around the grass joyfully, a Pokemon who probably believed in its trainer. "After you ran past us, I really wanted to know... What you were running from," Matthew spoke after a short pause "I mean, I thought it'd be a tough Pokemon or something, I wanted to take it on and catch it, to make myself stronger... But there was this Beedrill, a huge one. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen. This Beedrill, it went straight for Hope and I..." Another wave of worthlessness washed over Matthew and he felt himself having to force back tears, his voice getting caught in his throat "I froze. I couldn't help her. The Beedrill would have wiped out Hope if this Pidgeotto hadn't swooped in and saved her. That's when I had to use your potion to save her, and I was lucky Whirlygig over there was able to lead me out of the forest in time to get Hope to a Pokemon center."

Matthew let his words hover in the air. Every inch of him wanted to run away, to call Emily and go home and give up on this Trainer dream of his, to go back to his crappy life in Kalos where the only people he could disappoint were his parents and himself. He wasn't used to the responsibility that came with training Pokemon, he had no idea what he was doing here. He had no idea why he was even telling this girl he didn't know what had happened to him and his Pokemon. Finally, he stopped looking at his shoes and glanced up at the Pokemon gym that he was sitting in front of. As he did, he pictured Emily when she was younger, first arriving here with her Pokemon and walking through the doors to fight the leader. He wondered how she had felt when she got here, whether or not she believed in herself as a trainer. From what he knew of Emily, there was no way she would have stumbled through the forest as uselessly as he had.

"Crap, I'm sorry to lay this all on you." Matthew muttered, pulling himself to his feet. He had had about as much as he could take. It was time for him to make his way to the Pokemon center, there were phones there he could use to call his family and then they could probably arrange a flight or ferry ride back to Kalos. This dream was stupid and it was time for Matthew to put an end to his own stupidity and get back to the real world. He wondered, in that moment, how his parents would react. They would probably act all relieved as they picked him up, so glad that their little runaway had made it back, safe and sound, before screaming bloody murder at him when they got home. They would remind him that nothing he ever did ended well, and Hope would probably be given to another, better suited trainer.

"Thanks. Y'know, for the potion, for listening and for the sandwich, even though I never took it, it was nice of you to offer." He sighed "But I don't think I'm cut out for this training stuff after all. Time for me to head home. It was nice to meet you..." All of a sudden, Matthew laughed to himself "Jesus, I'm bad with people, not just Pokemon. I never asked for your name." He extended his hand "My name's Matthew. Matthew Dancer. Not that it really matters anyway, after today, I doubt we'll meet again." For the first time since meeting her, Matthew Dancer did two things. First of all, he looked at her face and secondly, he smiled. The two were not connected in anyway, sure she was pretty and all, but Matthew was smiling for a different reason. This girl, whatever her name was, was one of the nicest people Matthew had met. As Matthew planned out his journey home in his head, he smiled as he realized that for all the bad stuff that had happened on this journey, at least he had the genuine pleasure of meeting her.