Chapter 4

“Is this…?” Jinji begins to ask, in disbelief over what he sees. He paces about for a moment, trying to make sense of the situation.

Eventually, Alessandro breaks the tension, asking in his young, naive way the question that everyone is thinking, but nobody dares to ask.

“What’s going on?”

His attention returned to the Ghosts, Jinji speaks quietly and carefully. “I think… we’re looking into… another realm.”

“Another realm?” The question comes from Celeste, a Misdreavus. “But how?”

“I don’t understand it either,” Jinji sighs, then takes a seat on the nearby log. Without prompting, the other Ghosts quickly gather around Jinji, eager to hear his thoughts.

“My understanding of the various Realms was that they’re basically like bubbles. Every universe, every perception of reality, is its own bubble, floating through the ether. And every so often, the bubbles touch and collide — and suddenly, the realms become connected, and one can even travel between them. Sometimes, these interactions are as regular as clockwork — the bubbles act more like planets orbiting a sun, always following a predictable path.”

“Such is the nature of this Realm and the one we call the Mortal Realm. Our two realities orbit in opposing directions, but on the same length of cycle. This oddity means that, once a year, our two realms collide, and we become able to pass to and from our realm into the land of the living. The collision always seems to coincide with ‘October’ in the mortal realm. This is why, around Halloween, we have the freedom to go out haunting the humans and Pokémon; and the Ghosts who didn’t return last year can come back, bringing with them any newly-departed souls. But the connection is brief… temporary. Come mid-November, our realms are once again separated, and any links between our realms are severed. Yet…”

Jinji shakes his head, clearly in disbelief in what he sees. His voice starts to rise up, his failure to comprehend bubbling into a seething rage.

“This defies all logic! This… thing… shouldn’t exist!”

Suddenly, all at once, Jinji is calm. At that moment, he has an epiphany.

What he says next makes every Ghost gasp.

“If I’m right, I need to know how this happened. And there’s only one way to do that. Through the source.”