While he was wandering in the city, Matt(8-9 years old at that point) noticed a smeargle putting out graffities on the the cave's wall. He was surprised, since he didn't know who that pokémon belonged to. Arriving near her, he saw that she wasn't hostile in any way. She said she was simply an artist. This was conflicting for the young kid, who thought that most pokémon were nothing more than monsters. Curious, he wanted to know more about her, and decided not to tell anyone about it. He discovered that she was from outside of the city, and that she knew a secret passage to enter the city. Naive, Matt never really thought about the implications this might have, as they were supposed to be guarding every entrance to the underground city(Tradesburg). He decides to meet her every other day to go outside the city(which is forbidden for kids like him) and paint things on trees.
On his 10th birthday, he decided to take some time with the smeargle outside the city and brought a canvas, so that she could paint something beautiful on it. She did so, and finding out that it was his birthday, she decided to give him the painting as a gift. When he came back to his bedroom, Renee was there, catching him red-handed. He lied to her by saying he was just going outside to paint, and not that he was seeing a pokemon from outside the city. Renee wasn't necesarily aware of how dangerous this was, so she didn't think it was a big deal. When he went downstairs, he found out that the book on the table was now his, and decided to read it through and through in the hopes of answering Renee's question: What was the big difference between a human and a pokemon? Matt guessed she wasn't really talking about the obvious difference like their anatomy, because even pokemon had differences between their anatomies, but he was willing to find out about that for himself.
One day like any other, he was out of the city once more with the smeargle, which he had named Palette in homage to the artist mentionned in the book(The Modern Warden), to paint the outside world and remember it once he went back into the underground city. At his age, he wasn't really able to understand much of what the book was about, so he decided to keep it for later in his life. Suddenly, a group of humans stepped in and found him and the smeargle. They told him he would be punished if he told anything about their existence, as they were criminals banished from the city and that he had broken a rule of the city by going out of it. Knowing they had pokemon on them, he decided to battle them in an act of desperation. In this battle, Palette told him to run away before they were about to kill her and she decided to die to protect Matt. He did so, and heard the cries of a dying pokemon: the smeargle he had cherished for so long. Coming back to his house, he remained in his room for a long while, crying. That day, he swore he would never see another pokemon die because of his own actions.
From that point on, he read The Modern Warden, and found out about a group of people called the Wardens, whose goal was to protect and protect the balance between humans and pokemon. He found there something he had guessed after seeing Palette for so long: pokemon weren't meant to be humans' servants. He knew these weren't things people in his community agreed with, so he mostly kept to himself. It was also by reading this book that he found out something he had already guessed in the past: there was something wrong with him. After all, he was the only person in the school who was able to directly talk to a pokemon, without any sort of device. His dad Nathan said it wasn't that big of a deal, but when he asked some of his classmates about it, they mostly mocked him for being able to talk with creatures they thought to be beneath them.
(In ancient times, his family had single-handedly destroyed one of the most prosperous civilization known by men, from what Matt had heard in the history books, hence the reputation his family had obtained)
From that point on, he decided to keep to himself, which made him much more distant as a result. When he reached the age of 17, he had finally completed school there, but his father didn't want him to continue school. Matthew wanted to be a doctor to be able to help as much people as he could. It was a way for him to fulfill the promise he had given to himself after Palette's death. Due to his father's dispproval, he decided to go out and become a trainer, in the hopes that it would give him enough money to pursue his future goals.
When he was about to get into the trainer's headquarters in the city, he was stopped by a ranger named Tristan, who convinced him he could get into the rangers as easily and start training to become a doctor with them. He told him he would have to get to another city commonly named "The Narrows" to become a ranger. He decided to give it a shot and the ranger gave him a earpiece so that he could hear what pokémon were saying. When he was packing at home, Nathan ordered for him to remain here in Tradesburg, which Matt refused to do. Nathan then told him that his family was cursed, which is why her mother left his house soon after his birth, and why he has been shunned by the other members of the community. This curse is what granted them the ability to hear what pokémon were saying, and he told Matt that his status as the youngest member of their family painted him as a target. He told him he was a monster, an abomination, and that this was why people never wanted to be around him. Matthew decided to leave nonetheless, because he was sick of hearing his father tell him what to do with his own life. He brought Renee with him, and left the city using the secret passage he had learned from Palette.