Today's date: August 6, 2019

Announcements to make: None that I can think of.

Milestones: First chapter.

This job...I hate it. I really, really hate it.

It wasn't really a job, even; it was an internship that I was doing through my high school. Of all of the places they could have assigned me, they gave me kitchen duty at the local diner, Cadillac Jack's.

It looked exactly like the diner that was used in the music videos for "Want U Back" by Cher Lloyd and "Fuck You" by CeeLo Green. In fact, that was the point. The diner had been designed to be a perfect replica of those two locations.

Fuck this, I thought. I want to get out of here as soon as I can.

Of course, that would be easier said than done. My shift was supposed to last from 9:00 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon, a grand total of six and a half hours. I did get a thirty-minute lunch break at noon, but that was it. Three uninterrupted hours of work, followed by lunch, and then another three uninterrupted hours of work.

I could barely think of a task more loathsome than washing dishes, wiping down tables after customers had eaten at them, and wiping down the refrigerator doors. They were unpleasant jobs, to be sure, but someone had to do them, so why not me?

At least, that was most likely the reasoning being used when they picked me for this placement.

Right now, I was trying in vain to scrub some scrambled eggs off of a metal container. They were absolutely unyielding, however, and, no matter how hard I tried to do this, I couldn't. They were clinging to the metal like it was an egg magnet.

I had no other high school students with me in the diner; it was just me and the other kitchen staff there. I didn't particularly like not having anyone else to talk to. Had there been others my age there, I'm sure that it would have been just a little more bearable.

As I ran the dishes through the industrial dishwasher, I hummed to myself the song about driving around town with the girl I loved. Quite frankly, the chorus of that song was very effective to sing in order to let off some steam.

Right after putting another rack of dishes through said washer, the most peculiar thing started to happen.

My stomach rumbled, and not in the way that happens when you are nervous or sick to your stomach. Rather, I felt extremely hungry, as though I had skipped lunch that day.

It's worth noting that this happened right after my lunch period, so I should not have been this hungry. There was honestly no explanation for it, none that I could see at the very least. I looked longingly out the window between the kitchen and the dining area, peering at the customers who were still eating their meals.

The thought of having two hot dogs covered in coleslaw thick with carrots and cabbage was extremely tempting, but I tried to focus on the task at hand.

At least in theory, I have no incentive to work here if I don't want to. It's an internship, which means I'm not getting paid for it. I could just quit right now.

Of course, "in theory" doesn't always mean the same thing as "in practice". The fact was that if I quit the internship, my mother would be very disappointed in me. That was one thing about me; I didn't want to disappoint my parents. It's been said that you should respect your elders, and, let me tell you, you'll get a lot further in life if you do.

I bit the metaphorical bullet, trying not to bite my own tongue in the process, and got back to work at this miserable occupation.

Not an occupation, though, just an internship.

All that thought did for me was move me a little closer to the brink of simply quitting. But, for the reasons stated above, I couldn't just do that. I couldn't.

And so I suffered through various kitchen tasks for the next two hours. Whenever it seemed like the stack of dishes was finally completed, more of them would come down the conveyor belt towards me, and I'd have to rinse them off, scrub them with a sponge if necessary, place them on the rack, and run them through the industrial dishwasher. It was a very repetitive task, and I kept glancing at the clock.

I had 120 minutes left at the job, and each tray took me roughly two to three minutes, so I told myself that I only had about fifty trays to complete before I could be done with the day's work. It wasn't a perfect coping mechanism, but I didn't think I was going to come up with anything better.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, my shift was over. I breathed a sigh of relief, wiping a bit of sweat off my forehead with my gloved hands, pushing my hair out of my face. It had been nearly an eternity of washing dishes, but, as it's been said before, some infinities are bigger than other infinities, and this was one of the smaller ones. I was finally free!

"You did a great job today, Lucas" said my supervisor. "You may leave".

I thanked the supervisor, but I wasn't thanking them for complimenting me, but rather for letting me leave. It was an incredibly freeing feeling to be done for the day, even if I'd have to just go back the next day.

I decided not to think about it that way, though. Instead, I looked at it as getting to relax until tomorrow.

After unlocking my car, I got into my vehicle and drove home. I was very grateful that I had a license and didn't have to depend on my parents to drive me everywhere. When you're eighteen years old, that's really not an inconvenience you need in your life, not to mention that it's kind of embarrassing at the same time.

Pulling into my driveway, I saw that my parents' cars were absent from the area surrounding my home. This meant that they were both still at work, and thus I would be alone, at least for a little while.

This was just fine with me, of course. I rather liked being alone, especially after a long day of performing tasks I really didn't like. It might have seemed paradoxical, but I have very little social stamina, so I find talking to others in person physically exhausting. That might seem weird to a lot of you, but it's true.

The back door was locked, but my parents always kept a key taped to the grill on the back porch of the house. That's where I went, grabbing the key and unlocking the side door. I then unlocked the back door to our house so that my parents would be able to get in more easily.

I collapsed on the couch in front of the flat-screen TV in the alcove next to the kitchen. Reaching for the remote, my long arm managed to grab it and turn on the television, which turned right onto Vulpix News, the most popular news network in all of Sinnoh.

"-the Coronet Blizzard has resulted in unsafe driving conditions. The mayor of the resort town of Emaire, Sir Ethan Midnight, has declared a state of emergency over the conditions".

I could barely believe my ears. They were telling me that there was a blizzard raging in the Coronet Range, and not in areas near the mountain summits either. No, these blizzards were taking place where people actually lived.

But it's July! We shouldn't be having blizzards in JULY!

I felt a bunch of chills running down my spine, as well as rumbles through my stomach. Fortunately, now that I was at home, I could actually do something about the rumbles.

Making myself a sandwich, I continued to listen to the news report in the background. And, let me tell you, it was rather sobering.

"Roughly six percent of Coronet City's population is homeless, and they are at particular risk of dying of hypothermia. This is the most severe summer snowstorm since the 1890s, and it has already claimed the lives of...".

I set down the sandwich I'd been making and went back over to where the TV remote was. With the click of a button, the screen flickered, then went completely black. I went back to the counter and continued making myself the sandwich.

When I was done preparing my snack, I sat down at the table to eat the salami and cheese sandwich. It tasted like cardboard.

I really didn't know why, but the thought of a blizzard in Coronet City at this time of year, right when there weren't supposed to be snowstorms at all except in Snowpoint City and the areas around it, made part of my body feel hot.

Said part of my body was not, however, my face. Instead, it was a very specific spot on my chest.

Nothing was there, but it felt almost like a spike were penetrating out of it.

Calm down, Lucas, I told myself. For Arceus's sake, you can be such a hypochondriac sometimes. Why is this time any different?

And then, out of almost nowhere, I felt hungry again. My stomach was rumbling slightly, but I knew that this didn't make any sense either, not after I had just eaten.

I considered calling my mother to ask her what she thought of it, but then I remembered that she'd told me she had an important business meeting today with her colleagues. If I called her, I'd be disrupting the meeting, and that was less than a preferable proposition.

Oh well.

I decided that I'd wait until she got home to tell her about this. It could wait another hour or two, and then we'd get to the bottom of this together. We'd start to figure out exactly why I was feeling this way, and what we could do about it.

With that thought, I gave a satisfied smile to no one in particular, reclined back on the couch, and closed my eyes.