Knowledge

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"I – I –" The girl is sobbing and hiccupping. She is thirteen or fourteen, standing on the floor of the pokecenter before a Nurse Joy. There is a pokebelt around her skinny waist that holds three pokeballs, two friendballs and one lureball. The muscles in her arms are tense, her shoulders hunched forward. Her face is twisted, devastated, heartbroken – her tears cannot travel down her cheeks easily and slide around instead, making thin trails down the sides of her face. She doesn't raise her hands to hide this. She just stands, defenseless. "I – I –"

The Nurse Joy is not comforting her. She is just standing. She is silent.

"I – I – I thought it was just –" She cries harder, her breath coming in gasps that shake her entire body. "At school –" And she cries.

"I thought I knew how," she says, and her voice is hoarse and shaking, a weak whisper. "I'd taken the class. I thought I –" And she breaks off again and cries. "I thought it was simple."

The Nurse Joy is silent.

"I thought it was just a cold," the girl says. Tears meet at her chin and are shaken off by the sobs that make her shudder. "I thought I knew how."

The Nurse Joy is silent.

"I thought I could take care of it," the girl says, and there she stops and continues to cry. "I – I –"

"It would have taken five minutes to cure," the Nurse Joy says, her voice simple, matter of fact. And she turns and walks away.

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