Chapter Three: The Familiar Ruse

“Hmm? I don’t know, but Miss Junsha and the others all seemed to be heading toward the direction of the Pokémon Center,” Mr. Fujiyama said after a brief pause, then shook his head.

Hiss didn’t press him further. He quickly finished preparing Mr. Fujiyama’s breakfast, handed it over, and watched him leave his food cart by hopping along like a frog. Hiss couldn’t help chuckling to himself; Mr. Fujiyama really did love to work out.

To ask Hiss to leap that far in frog-jumps was asking the impossible. Even two hundred meters would nearly kill him.

“Pokémon Center?” Hiss looked that way. He had no idea what was happening over there, but he knew that if he went, the Junsha girls wouldn’t let him in anyway. So he kept his distance and sat down, buried in his Subject One textbook.

Hiss studied earnestly. That afternoon was the Subject One exam, and he had to use this time to memorize as many points as possible. If he failed, he suspected Miss Junsha would torment him for days.

“I’m furious!” an angry voice snapped, and Hiss looked up to see Xiaoguang.

“Xiaoguang, what’s wrong?” Hiss quickly set the book aside and asked.

He was a bit surprised. Among everyone he knew, Xiaoguang had one of the gentlest temperaments, so Hiss truly did not expect to see her this angry. He couldn’t guess who had managed to provoke her.

“I bought a shopping app on my phone yesterday while I was doing my paper, planning to get a new desk and chair,” Xiaoguang said, her face all puffed up like a stuffed bun.

Hiss noticed dark circles under her eyes, too, and couldn’t help thinking she may have gone loitering around with Mr. Yanning yesterday—though that seemed unlikely.

“So then?” Hiss looked around. It was not yet time for work, so the streets were still quiet; he had no qualms about chatting, and it was better than boredom.

“Then, as soon as I opened it, it said I could try a lottery draw. I drew once and it told me I had won first prize: just reduce five whole and four-tenths Alliance Coins and the newest laptop was free.” Xiaoguang said, still bristling, and Hiss’s face grew strange. Something about it felt familiar.

“Then I did the draw, and in one go I got five Alliance Coins, and then it said I had to invite friends to reduce the remaining four-tenths…” Xiaoguang continued, still talking nonstop, while Hiss’s expression became even stranger.

Well then, Hiss thought, if not for Xiaoguang’s fury, he would have asked which app it was.

And as he expected, the next stage was the same old trick: as soon as she reached the one-cent mark, only a few extra cents appeared. Then came the baited Poké Balls—how many to exchange for a one-cent discount, over and over again, an endless loop.

“Did you ever get to the end?” Hiss asked, curiosity unmistakable.

“No... I spent the whole night on it. In the end, I was only five Great Balls short of finishing the discount,” Xiaoguang said, a bit wounded. She opened her phone and turned the screen toward him.

Hiss glanced at it. The timer had indeed hit zero. She was exactly five Great Balls away from getting the latest laptop for free.

“Mole Shopping,” Hiss sighed with relief. “At least it isn’t that terrifying of a name.” He had half-suspected that some old acquaintance had crossed over with him and copied a scam app from another world. But “Mole” made him think of the bottle he had just picked up.

“Take it easy, Xiaoguang,” Hiss said with a gentle smile. “This kind of thing is basically a scam. I’m sure when you’re one Great Ball short, something else will show up.”
And then he noticed a tiny white question mark, hidden right where the lottery pointer pointed. If Hiss hadn’t had sharp eyes, he would have missed it.

He tapped it with his finger, and a small box popped up.

“Hm... seven digits after the decimal point, and because the phone screen is small, it can’t be displayed for now...” Hiss stared at the prompt, dazed. It was a trap to the bone—twenty or more discount rounds and that laptop would still be out of reach.

After showing him, Xiaoguang stamped off in a huff. She looked like she wasn’t even planning to eat. Hiss sighed helplessly. To encounter this in the Pokémon world made him think the owner of the Mole Company was some truly odd person.

“Hiss, long time no see! Did you miss me?” a girl’s voice rang out.

Hiss turned with delight, and saw a purple-haired girl ride her bicycle up to him, waving with a bright smile.

“Miss Musashi! Long time no see. You finally came back from your business trip?”

She looked very alluring in her long, shawl-like purple hair and black outfit.

“Yes,” Musashi said, parking her bike and stretching like she was done with nothing but travel. “The company sent me out of town, and now I’m finally home.”

Hiss smiled at her. She was, after all, the most endearing villain in the Pokémon world—the Musashi from Team Rocket’s comic side of the outfit, from the Galactic Rocket Squad.

After Hiss crossed into this world, it was during a reception for Sakaki that he first met Musashi. Back then, Kojiro was not at her side, but another partner.

Of course, by Musashi’s own account, that person had been just a colleague. Musashi often claimed she was sent away on business trips to other cities, though Hiss knew better: she was only carrying out Team Rocket’s orders.

He could only wonder whether Musashi had now met her destined teammate, and that Meowth who can speak like a human.

Looking at Musashi’s long, flowing hair and gentle, elegant air, Hiss instinctively covered his face. He wanted desperately to know why she had chosen that bizarre style.

“Promise me, Musashi—next time you style your hair, obey the laws of physics, all right? Otherwise, Mr. Newton himself might rise from his grave.”

“Ah?”