#yemmet

That being said, there were definitely things in which he had a fairly high level of confidence. Now that he was back, he was confident that soba was a favorite food of his. He was confident that Chandelure was his first and best pokémon partner. He was confident that he loved to wear black and that it wasn't just a fluke he happened to arrive in Hisui that way. Nimbasa City was his home, certainly, and completely losing the feeling of being homesick proved that.

As a more current and pressing example, he was fairly certain that Emmet never used to stare quite so intently at him.

At first, he thought it a mirror of his own longing, for he also graced Emmet with lingering glances as they went about their day to day life together. He wished only to carve Emmet's expressions, motions and habits back into his memory, deeper than even before, so that he could never lose them again. Emmet was also quite cute, which only further encouraged Ingo to look his way.

But he understood now why some people had said his own stares had been unnerving. The expression was so far removed from all the other expressions that Emmet had given him upon his return. It held wariness, distrust, and hesitation. Sometimes, he would catch Emmet staring and even after being noticed, his twin would often let the stare linger until Ingo said something to break the silence. In those moments, those almost as if glowing reflective silver eyes would pin him in place, slowly raking over his face and body. Perhaps he was looking for something, but in those moments, Emmet felt far away in a place Ingo wasn't sure he could reach.

There were patterns to this behavior, though Ingo was still trying to figure out exactly why it manifested specifically as those patterns.

Firstly, it happened whenever Ingo got up without waking Emmet, doubly so if he took it upon himself to make breakfast. That was easy enough to figure out; Emmet feared that once again he had disappeared. Ingo wasn't exactly certain why him making breakfast exacerbated it instead of comforting Emmet when he heard the sounds from the kitchen. But it was mostly easy to remedy - if Ingo woke up before Emmet, he either went back to sleep or held his twin until they were both awake.

Secondly, there were times where Emmet would start to trail behind him on their walk home. When Emmet stopped varied, but he must have been measuring somehow, as Ingo would usually end up stopping under a streetlight, fully illuminated and casting a shadow. This was when Emmet responded the quickest to Ingo calling out to him, and more immediately returning to his good cheer. Ingo wasn't sure how to combat this other than to try and notice sooner that Emmet was starting to slow down. Perhaps he could risk holding Emmet's hand in public.

The third most frequent pattern was the one that Ingo couldn't find a solution to. Sometimes, the train schedule would allow their separate trains to stop next to each other. When Ingo first noticed this, it brightened his day and he resolved to always make eye contact with Emmet whenever it happened. He learned the timing of the stops, and made sure to always be watching out the correct window. Stopped at the main terminal, where they first got on, Emmet would always wave cheerfully, smile like the sun. But if they passed or stopped in any other place, Emmet just watched him, regardless of what gesture Ingo gave him.

If Ingo hadn't experienced that intent stare at other times, in other places, he might have thought it was the work of a zorua or other such trickster pokémon. In a moment of weakness, during a night where Emmet had stared at him from the train and on their walk home, Ingo had doubted that he'd returned home at all. The thought crossed his mind that maybe this homecoming had been the illusions of a particularly furious zoroark drawing him into a blizzard with something he desperately wished for.

But that idea melted away when Emmet returned to normal once they got home, happily making dinner with him, and then cuddling on the couch. It had still given him enough emotional whiplash to begin pondering the whole occurrence, but he stopped worrying that it was all a trick. Emmet was Emmet, and as best Ingo could figure, he wasn't doing any of this on purpose. They'd had a talk the first time Emmet had acted off, but it had resolved with the idea that Emmet had stressed himself out so heavily during Ingo's absence that this was his body readjusting.

Maybe, this time, Ingo had to come to the conversation with all that he'd witnessed from Emmet. Maybe, he had to approach it like a pokémon battle, with strategy meant to break down the defenses of his opponent and get to the heart of the problem.