Champion's Confidant

On Appearances

"There! All done!" Chloe said, closing her notebook. Her summary for class was finished. She looked to Yamper and Eevee, who sat next to her, smiling.

"Why don't we go ahead and get a snack? I could go for a bottle of tea."

Standing from her spot on the couch, Chloe went down the stairs and into the kitchen for a drink. Eevee and Yamper followed behind her until she got into the kitchen proper, where they raced to see which one could get to the food bowls first. 'I guess they wanna know who'll get fed first...'

Chloe stopped in the doorway to find Goh sitting at the table, chewing on a pocky stick with an intense look on his face, apparently thinking about some difficult thoughts. Next to him was his Grookey, gleefully chomping through a bowl of Pokémon food. He looked up and saw her enter, giving her a friendly wave. "Hey, Chloe."

She waved back. "Hey, Goh." She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of tea from the fridge.

As she did, Goh asked her a question. "Hey, has Ash been acting weird around you recently?"

She nearly dropped the bottle, slick with condensation, from her hands. "W-What? What do you mean...?" Already she felt her heart knocking against her chest. 'Did Ash tell him that we've been meeting? What could he be thinking...'?, she thought. 'I'll just... get Eevee and Yamper maybe a little more than a snack. I don't want Goh to look at my face. He'll think I'm hiding something too... which I kind of am...!' She nervously began opening the cabinets, looking for the Pokémon food.

"He's been acting kinda cagey," he said. "Like there's something going on that I don't know about. Has he been acting like that around you, too?"

Chloe felt her hands shaking as she reached for the bag of Pokémon Food. "N-No, not really. Same Ash as usual, you know?"

She felt her stomach twist as the lie left her lips. 'It's not like I want to tell Goh a lie...' she thought as she grabbed a few berries to mix in with the food. 'But... if Ash wanted to talk to Goh about the stuff he's talked to me about, he'd have told him, right? Ash trusts me to be discerning and trustworthy... I can't tell him Ash and I have been meeting in secret...!'

Goh seemed to accept the fib, something that just made Chloe feel even worse. "I see... I'll have to keep my eyes on him. You'll keep your eyes on him, too, right? And tell me if he's hiding anything?"

"Y-Yeah, sure," she said, finally filling Yamper and Eevee's bowls. "But even if he is keeping something to himself, isn't that fair? Everyone's got their secrets, right?"

Goh shrugged. "I guess, but sometimes it feels like there's a LOT he's keeping from us. Like when we went to Professor Oak's the other day. He never told us that he was such good buddies with Professor Oak's grandson and then this Gary guy comes along and they're all buddy-buddy, you know?"

"Well to be fair, this is the first I'm hearing about this grandson of Professor Oak's," she said, happy to be telling the truth in this conversation for a change. "This is about that Project Mew stuff, right?"

"Yeah, but that's separate," Goh said.

'So much for trying to change the subject,' Chloe thought, sighing. "So Ash hasn't spilled his entire life's story to you. That doesn't mean you guys aren't best friends or anything, does it? I mean, it's not like I tell you everything that Mika says at school."

This line of thinking seemed to placate Goh a bit. "I suppose... but if there's something bothering him, he can't just keep it bottled up, you know?"

'It's not that he's keeping it bottled up... it's that he's letting it out now. Not that I can say that...'

Resolving herself to another lie, she sighed. "I guess not. I'll keep a close eye on him, okay?"