One summer's night away

Sunny holds the twenty-dollar bill in his hands like it’s a foreign object.

The guy behind the counter at FIX-IT shrugs at his obvious confusion, yawning and looking at the clock.

“Take it, it’s yours. You sorted all of those tools, even without being hired, the least I can do is pay you for it.” The man leans on the wooden counter, slouching. Sunny blinks at him, deciding not to question it. The fertilizer he dragged from the back of the store to the counter is already sitting in the wheelbarrow he very wisely decided to bring. There is no way he can carry that monster of a bag, not with his stick-like arms and stamina of a three-year-old. Sunny is touchy about his physical condition, but not stupid.

Coming to FIX-IT had been a more or less spontaneous idea. Nobody was at home when he arrived after school, and he didn’t remember when Mari was supposed to come home today, so he supposed he could make himself scarce for a little while. Basil’s wheelbarrow had still been in their yard behind the house after the other boy had brought a few tools and soil to help Sunny tend to the flowers in their flowerbeds a few days ago. It had been quite a chore to move the thing itself to the store without any of the fertilizer in it, so Sunny is dreading the walk to Basil’s already, but it’s not like he has any right to complain anyway.

For the acquisition of the aforementioned currency, Sunny finds only one explanation: Him getting rid of the awful mess in this place. The shelves of the store hold a broad variety of tools in the front part, and directly after entering, Sunny had felt himself recoiling. Such a mess. Tools everywhere, but not where they belong. He has a hard time making sense of the colorful shelves under normal circumstances, but like this, it’s nearly impossible.

Fertilizer. He had been looking for fertilizer for Basil. The kind the other doesn’t usually buy because it’s kind of expensive, but the one he looks at longingly on occasion. Fertilizer it was.

But even then, even after dragging the bag of fertilizer into the wheelbarrow (and maybe nearly feeling like passing out a few minutes after that) the clearly not correctly sorted tools in the front of the shop had been calling to him. Bothering him.

Sunny hadn’t really thought anything of taking it upon himself to put the tools in their rightful places. It was strangely soothing. Another, rare place in this world where things are as they’re supposed to be. Peace and tranquility. Looking at the shelves doesn’t burn his eyes and stab his brain anymore.

The twenty dollars are not exactly an unwelcome surprise, but he hesitates to pocket them. Is it okay to take the money? The guy had been alright with it. But he probably doesn’t know about Sunny. If he did, there was no way he would hand him money for his troubles.

It would be stupid to waste this opportunity, though. There are still ways to keep the money without being selfish about it. He looks at the bill, humming quietly through his nose, in deep thought. All of the tools, except for the drills, are less than twenty dollars. The question of which one to choose still remains, however.

The tape could be useful, but not on its own. And it isn’t like Sunny can use it on his own, either. Every angle and place to use it from seems complicated if not impossible alone, and there is no way he is going to ask for help with any of this.

The wench is completely useless on its own, as well, so Sunny doesn’t even contemplate it. The same goes for the shovel, which isn’t only hard to use on your own but they also already have one in their backyard. The saw…. Has potential, but after a bit of mulling it over, he decides it’s not the best choice either. A smaller tool would probably be better for his noodle arms, easier to store, and also cheaper. They are slightly above the budget.

The hammer is shiny when he takes it in his hand. Heavy, but he can lift it. He is slightly distracted by the shine of the metal, satisfied with the way the lights reflect off of it. In the end, it doesn’t matter, but he allows himself this small pleasure. What matters is: He can lift it. It’s heavy. It definitely packs a punch, and it’s less than twenty dollars. He takes it off the shelf and places it on the counter.

The guy who just gave him the twenty-dollar bill looks at him a little strangely, his eyebrows high, but Sunny doesn’t mind. He checks it out without further questions, and Sunny decides to put the hammer into his small backpack instead of throwing it into the wheelbarrow next to the fertilizer. Better to be safe than sorry.

The walk to Basil’s house is agonizing, even with the wheelbarrow to help carry the damn sack of fertilizer. Sunny thinks he is dying halfway down the street, sweat rolling down his forehead. Curse flowers and their stupid needs. He very nearly gives up and leaves the whole wheelbarrow behind, but an image of Basil’s face springs up in his mind. Basil would be happy, maybe. He smiles, sometimes, when he waters his plants, sunlight catching in his blond hair. Sunny hasn’t seen Basil smile in a long time.

So he carries on. When he sees the yard of Basil’s house, he is so dizzy he sits down right in front of the door, trying to catch his breath. It’s a stupid idea, maybe. Probably not even worth one drop of sweat. And still, here he is as if he has any right to try and do anything. Maybe leaving the thing in front of the door would be enough…? Basil would surely pick it up later. He hadn’t been in school today, but Sunny is sure he has left the house in the morning. He always does. Maybe he isn’t even home right now. He leans his back against the door for support.

...And falls flat on his back when Basil rips the door open with unexpected force. Sunny hisses when the back of his head hits the floor of the entrance area. Basil is looking at him from above, his mouth ajar, eyes wide. Sunny can see a bandage on his cheek from where he lies, and suddenly his stomach hurts as much as his head does.

“...Sunny? You could have used the doorbell, you know?” Thank you for your snarky wisdom, Basil. He doesn’t make any attempts at getting up, lying halfway in the entrance area and halfway down the stairs in front of the door. Any energy has left him. He is done for today, the battery was depleted, and he would die right here in front of Basil’s door. Maybe he’d make good soil for some of his plants.

Basil sighs, exasperated. “Come on, you can come in if you want to,” he says, and Sunny does want to, but he also wants to lie here. His legs feel like jelly. Basil bends down to grab one of his wrists and pulls his arm up, but when he lets go, Sunny lets it drop back down to the ground like a stone.

“Oh, seriously? Sunny, you can’t be doing that forever. I’m not going to pick you up, you are sixteen, for god’s sake.” For a minute, Basil looks like his younger self, cheeks puffed slightly. Sunny remembers Basil crying over dropping his photo album a few years ago and a familiar fondness settles in his chest. Small, sensitive Basil.

These memories are disturbed by the boy in question, however, when Sunny feels a pair of arms underneath his own, suddenly pulling him up like he weighs nothing. He is on his legs faster than he thinks is legal and Sunny contemplates dropping himself right away, but Basil’s grip is strong. … Not fair. Not fair at all. Sunny swears eternal war to the god that made him at least two heads shorter than his shortest childhood friend. What’s left of his pride is wounded fatally.

“This is the last time, really. You can’t just lie around in random places, that’s dangerous. At least ring the doorbell before you do, so I don’t trip over you…!” Basil stops complaining when he takes his eyes off Sunny and looks to the wheelbarrow still parked in his front yard. “...Oh. You brought it back by yourself?”

Sunny huffs. What a question. He may be a little short and maybe a little too thin, but he can move a wheelbarrow just fine. He nearly died, but Basil doesn’t need to know that and he is slightly stung by the disbelief in his friend's question. You’re welcome, Basil. His face doesn’t betray his anger, but Sunny is starting to regret coming here.

When he is sure he won’t drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes once he lets him go, Basil removes his grip to go over and inspect the wheelbarrow, hoisting the sack of fertilizer in it onto his shoulder with relative ease. Sunny is staring blankly. It’s simply not fair.

“Is that for me? You didn’t have to, but I’m happy. Thanks, Sunny.” Basil turns to him, fertilizer still shouldered. It’s not a real smile like he had hoped, but Basil’s face isn’t scowling for a minute. He supposes that’s a small victory. There is dirt on the bandage on the other boy’s cheek and a bruise right underneath it. Any joy is suddenly gone like he knows he deserves, but never Basil. Something in the back of his mind feels like it wants to come forward, a feeling, a memory, but it’s gone as suddenly as it came.

Basil looks him over like he always does, catching Sunny’s eyes. His free hand touches the bandage on his cheek, and he looks away. “Let’s bring this inside. I have a few plants that will be happy about it,” he says, voice just the tiniest bit wobbly. He ushers Sunny into the house and up the stairs into his room, all the while carrying the fertilizer. Basil is by no means bulky, but his slender figure hides a lot of strength and Sunny is still fascinated and a little jealous at the same time.

Basil’s room is the same as always. Plants in various pots and sizes are all over the room, his bed is made, and a pair of shiny, new gardening shears lies on top of it. Sunny hears it calling faintly.
Books sit on their shelves, most of them untouched. On the small table, Basil’s photo album lies, as if it belongs there. Sunny takes a few steps into the room and simply sits down on the rug on the floor, like he always does, resting his chin on his knees.

Basil puts the fertilizer down on the floor, opening it and getting to work on his plants right away. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, but it’s not really what Sunny wants right now. He stares intensely at Basil’s back. There is a grass stain on his sweater, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

After a few minutes, Basil caves, like Sunny knew he would. “Look, I know why you’re here. I’m fine, okay? I just didn’t feel so good this morning, so I stayed at home. You know me, nervous stomach and all. Don’t worry about me.” He is putting the fertilizer into one of the pots with so much force the plant loses some of its leaves. Sunny distantly feels bad for the plant.

He doesn’t get up from his place on the floor, leaning his head to the side and pressing his cheek into his knees. Sunny doesn’t know when Basil stopped being honest with him anymore. He guesses he deserves it, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still see the truth behind Basil’s poorly constructed lies. He hums quietly to let him know that he is listening.

“And I’m really clumsy. Remember how I used to drop my photo album all the time and kept crying about it? Yeah, well, nothing has changed. I tripped and hit my cheek on the doorframe this morning. Silly, I know. That’s not a crime, is it?”

Sunny doesn’t know if it universally isn’t, but he is pretty sure that in this country tripping and hurting yourself is legal. Hurting others by shoving them sure isn’t, however, as he knows by experience.

High school bullies aren’t exactly put in juvie either, most of the time, as far as he knows. He supposes that’s a lucky coincidence for a few people. He plays with the hem of the shorts of his school uniform. Summer has only started, but the air is warm enough for summer attire already. It’s not like Sunny feels the sun on his skin, anyway.

He feels a hand on his head and he looks up into Basil’s face. This time, there is a smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Sunny is being petted like a cat and while that is a little humiliating, he can’t help but lean into the touch a little. Not fair.
“Don’t think so much. Hey, I don’t like asking, but do you have the homework for tomorrow…?”

It’s a clever distraction, but Sunny did in fact bring it. He unfurls from his position to reach into his backpack for the worksheets, his fingers sliding over the hammer on the bottom. Not now, he thinks, but he is glad Basil didn’t just check his backpack himself.

While Basil lies down on the floor on his stomach to get his homework out of the way, Sunny takes the opportunity to go over to the other boy’s desk to look at the old photo album lying there. There is dust on and around it like it has not been moved in a long time. His fingers leave trails in the dust on the cover when he touches it gently. Sunny looks over to Basil, who doesn’t pay attention, so he opens the album quietly.

Smiling faces greet him. Aubrey and Kel fighting. Mari and Hero laughing. There is a photo of Basil with Mari, making flower crowns. Sunny doesn’t remember that day very clearly.
Some photos have strangely empty places and he touches those with cautious fingers. He jerks in surprise when Basil’s voice comes from behind him without any warning.

“Oh, that’s you on your birthday. You seemed to like the box more than the actual present inside.” Basil sounds amused, standing behind Sunny and looking over his shoulder. His stomach feels vaguely cold. He doesn’t see himself in those pictures. He doesn’t see himself, not next to his friends or alone. Basil seems to see it just fine, but Sunny’s sight is clouded.

He knows that can’t be good, but it’s not like it matters. Instead, he chooses to see the positive side of things: His friends look genuinely happy. They don’t look like anything is missing. Like everything is right in this world. There is a numb pressure somewhere in his chest and he is mad at himself for feeling that way. He’s very bold today, for somebody on borrowed time.

Basil’s house is flooded with sunlight and Polly is cooking something in the kitchen, but Sunny feels like it’s hollow. When leaves, he passes Basil’s Grandma’s room and doesn’t think to look inside. He knows she isn’t feeling very well at the moment and she doesn’t need any more misfortune.

Basil waves to him from the front door when Sunny leaves and he waves back weakly. Basil opens his mouth and closes it again, hesitating, before parting his lips again.
“Hey, Sunny? See you tomorrow, okay?” He says it with uncertainty, his eyes a little too wide, holding onto the doorframe. He looks small despite being taller than Sunny.

The thing about Basil is that his intuition is sometimes downright scary. In the last few years, it’s become a little less accurate (with him being a lot more anxious in general), so Sunny can get away with a lot more than before, but he still has his moments. Sunny blinks at Basil slowly, processing the question, before giving him a thumbs up. He turns away and leaves the yard, not looking back. The hammer is heavy in his backpack.

The way back home seems incredibly long and he wishes he had brought his bike, but he supposes lying down on the sidewalk and spending the night there would inconvenience the people passing by. Not that he had never tried before.

The sun is setting slowly and the park is painted in orange light when he passes it. He pauses a moment to look over it, watching the abandoned swings sway softly. The playground is empty except for a group of people that hang out in a corner a bit further away. They are turned away from Sunny, so he can’t see their faces and he doesn’t particularly care anyway.

An orange and brown cat catches his attention, however. It’s curled into the sand of the big sandbox, between two sandcastles. It purrs when its eyes meet Sunny’s and he can’t resist its call. He is drawn to it, hesitating to touch it. He crouches down in front of it, and it looks at him so trustingly. Like he can’t do wrong. Slowly, carefully, he pets the cat’s soft ears. The cat leans into his touch and he feels the soothing vibration of its purring. For a few minutes, everything is good. Cats are inherently forces of good, spreading joy wherever they go. Sunny wishes he was born one.

The cat doesn’t mind being touched by his hands, which only destroy. He pulls them back like he got burned when he feels cool, smooth wood, metal strings, soft fabric. There are splinters in his fingers, blood under his fingernails. There is iron on his tongue and in his nose.

He snaps out of it when two people pass him by, startling him. He looks up to see shockingly pink hair and a girl with glasses.

Sunny remembers Mari and Aubrey promising to dye each other’s hair years ago. Mari’s had been a dark purple, successfully making their mother cry for a solid two weeks whenever she saw her daughter, but she had dyed her hair back a while ago when she started to apply for college. Aubrey had dyed her hair a bright pink and maintained it to this very day. Sunny sees her at his house often enough, visiting Mari, but he’s still fascinated by the luminosity of the color.

Aubrey and Kim don’t usually pay him any mind. Or maybe they think he isn’t worth any of their time. Aubrey certainly doesn’t. Sunny only remembers angry screams and bitter silence after. He deserves it, so he doesn’t complain, but a traitorous part of himself still mourns, like it has forgotten its place in this world. He just wishes she would take out her anger on him and not on Basil.

But she doesn’t hit him, never, not using the bat she carries around on her back. Sunny has had a lot of dreams about it, waking up in the middle of the night, shivering, sweaty, touching his face to check if he was missing anything. In a very fucked up way, he wishes she would use it, but the fear alone is good enough punishment for now.

She stares at him for a few seconds, meeting his eyes, and Sunny notices the teal contacts. He honestly can’t say if they are a recent development, usually avoiding eye contact with her. Before he can get up, she uses her leg to kick up a wave of sand into his face, taking her leave. The cat disappears with a startled yowl and Sunny yelps.

Sunny is coughing and rubbing sand out of his eyes for a few minutes after that, but otherwise, he is fine. He is fine, as fine as he could be, in perfect health. Some things are just not fair.

He takes his leave as well after that. It’s getting late and Mari should be home by now. His mom would not be home until very late into the evening, so he doesn’t worry about her. His house is quiet from the outside, but he sees Hero’s bike leaning onto the front porch. It’s not unusual, but it makes his stomach churn a little.

When he opens the front door, he is hit with the smell of food. The sizzling of a pan can be heard even in the doorway and Mari is laughing. For a moment, he just stands there, taking it in. He can’t spend the night in the doorway, though, so he takes off his shoes quietly and removes his backpack from his shoulders. He holds onto it like an anchor for a bit, before stepping into the living room.

The door to the kitchen a little further to his left is open. He is wearing socks, so his steps are quiet, but even if they weren’t, he doubts Mari and Hero would have heard him. His sister sits at the kitchen table, a pen in hand, presumably studying. Hero stands in front of the kitchen counter, tending to a few different pans at once. In the back, something is boiling. It definitely smells like food, but Sunny can’t make out what Hero is cooking.

Mari is hiding a smile behind her long fingers, her hair falling into her face. Her eyes are crinkling in the corners, locked onto Hero, who is talking about something Sunny has no context to. He steps in a little further, trying to sneak by the kitchen and escaping upstairs into his room.

It just so happens that Mari lets her gaze wander a bit too far away from Hero and that’s when she sees him.

Sunny can see the way her smile dies, how she lowers her hand. Her eyes are a little too wide and dark. She pierces him with her gaze, silent for a moment before she remembers her manners.

“Hi, Sunny,” she says. Sunny can see how she grips her own trembling wrist beneath the kitchen table, in her lap. Something ugly coils itself into his chest, but she doesn’t know, rolling back her wheelchair a little before coming around the table to approach him. Sunny chances a look at Hero, who is not looking at him but Mari. He has a spatula in hand and he looks like he wants to reach for her, his hand hovering in the air, uncertain. When Hero looks at him, he has a look in his eye Sunny has trouble recognizing. It’s weird how he wants to disappear the second the people he has always looked up to are aware he exists.

Hero opts to greet him awkwardly with the spatula in his hand. “Hey, Sunny. Kel also says hi,” he says, like always. Kel always sends his words with Hero, but despite living next door, Sunny hasn’t seen him in months. Not really, that is. Through his window and in class, maybe. Kel has other friends now and has dreams he wants to pursue. Sunny doesn’t have any plans for tomorrow, or the day after, or any days after that.

Sunny turns his eyes away. Mari is in front of him, touching his upper arm. He can feel the way her fingers shake and it takes a lot of resolve to not shy away from her. She shouldn’t force herself, but she always does. Sunny doesn’t know if he is still able to be grateful or not.

“How was school? Were you out after?”, she asks, still in that unfamiliar tone of voice. Sunny shrugs and her hand slides a bit lower onto his elbow. “Ah, were you at Basil’s place? You have a flower petal on your sleeve.”

He nods, mostly to satisfy her. She has a watery smile on her face and Sunny hates it. “Hero is making food if you want some. He learned a new recipe the other day and we really want to try it,” she says, gesturing to Hero, who also smiles weakly at him.

To be honest, the mere thought of food is enough to make Sunny sick these days. Food tastes like nothing in his mouth, and the texture is unbearable no matter what he tries. If he manages to, he skips meals altogether, but that’s of course not always an option. Sitting down with Mari and Hero to eat is not really that tempting when he thinks about it. The looks, the uncomfortable air, the tastelessness of everything. It’s a good thing Hero didn’t cook for him, but for Mari.

Maybe he can try some of the leftovers later. When he is alone.

He gently shakes his head and Mari tries to grab his hand, but Sunny is faster than her. He steps away a bit, out of her reach, digging his hand into the backpack he is still holding. He shakes his head again. Mari’s face is unreadable to him, her eyes still so wide.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, but it comes out all wrong. The back of his throat is burning. The word plays in his head again and again, until it doesn’t sound like a word anymore. He turns away and flees upstairs. He hears Mari calling his name, but he can’t turn around.

The door to his room is his saving grace. He stumbles inside, nearly dropping the heavy backpack onto his feet. He closes the door behind him and drags the bag with him toward his bed. Sunny falls face-first into the mattress, willing away the fear. Nothing happened. Everything is fine. Mari is…. Well, not worse than she was before. He is fine, even though he doesn’t deserve to be.

He reaches for the backpack, fishing for the hammer and laying it next to himself on the bed. It’s still shiny, still heavy. His mirror image is distorted in the smooth metal, but it’s still himself. He grabs the handle shakily.

It’s a good backup plan. If you swing it hard enough, just once. Just once.

The image he thinks of is disgusting and the crunch he imagines his skull to make makes him want to vomit. Maybe he wouldn’t get to hear it. Maybe he’d suffer for minutes and minutes and eternity. Maybe he wants to.

He sits up, looking around his room. Hiding it together with the steak knife in one of his books on the bookshelves wouldn’t be very clever, just in case somebody would find it. His mom wouldn’t notice one knife missing, he thinks. He’s still paranoid about it, somehow. He doesn’t want her to ban him from all the sharp objects of the house and he doesn’t want to burden Mari with the task of looking after him while at home. No way.

You need the knife to be there. But if it isn’t, you’ll still have the hammer. And if they find that, we’ll find something else. Your bedsheets. Your shoelaces. Mom’s sleeping pills. Mari’s painkillers.

He shakes his head a little. Taking something of Mom’s or Mari’s would only drag them down with him. He wouldn’t. That’s also why cars and trains are a definite no. He wouldn’t burden anybody else with this.

He decides to store the hammer in one of the drawers of his desk for now. Nobody would look through them anytime soon and he can still think of something else if he needs to. A hammer in a desk drawer isn’t necessarily suspicious. It’s good enough for his backup plan, anyway. As long as the knife is safe, he doesn’t need to worry.

He gets ready for bed, even though it’s barely six in the evening. Sunny yearns for the only relief he knows, for the only thing that makes him forget. His bed is soft, comfortable and oh so inviting. He knows he is developing a bad habit by spending every minute he can afford in bed, dreaming away, but it’s not like he doesn’t do that throughout the day as well. He always has his head in the clouds, they say. He prefers it that way.

Not today, he thinks, sinking into his pillow. Basil will probably come to school tomorrow and today is not the day. But maybe tomorrow. Or the day after. Or any day after that. Sunny doesn’t know what he is waiting for, exactly. It doesn’t feel like today, in any case.

When he falls asleep, he opens his eyes to a familiar sight.

Whitespace is as sterile as ever. Sunny is lying on his back for a moment, staring into the endless white. It’s soothing, safe. Nothing ever happens here, empty, impersonal. A pair of black, lifeless eyes move into his vision, along with the most painfully neutral face he has ever seen.

“You have the same face, you know,” Omori says. He is squatting behind Sunny’s head, looking down at him from above. He leans his chin onto one of his hands, his elbow on his knee. “You didn’t do it today.”

Sunny really doesn’t feel like being lectured by somebody who looks like his twelve-year-old self, but it is what it is. He didn’t do it today and he didn’t do it yesterday. It doesn’t feel right, but he knows it’s what he wants. What the others want, even if they don’t know it yet.

“You don’t look much older than me, anyway. Don’t be rude.” Omori continues staring at him. That’s kind of his thing, the staring. Like he wants to dig out Sunny’s soul.
“I mean, it’s not like you have a deadline or anything, but it’s not getting any better, is it? Earlier. With Mari. That’s just going to happen again and again. You’re selfish, Sunny.”

He knows he is. He curls up, and Mewo paws at his face. She meows impatiently and he lifts his arm a little so she can press herself to his chest. Her purring reverberates in his lungs, making him remember that there is nothing inside him after all.

He is just a black hole, taking and taking from the people he loves and never giving anything back, never satisfied. He only takes and destroys. His face feels wet and his throat is burning again. Nothing comes out of his mouth no matter how hard he tries.

He feels Omori pry a hand away from his face, still looking at him. Sunny wants to shrink into the ground, but whitespace won’t swallow him.

“Mari is scared of you. She knows what you can do and she suffers for it. Our sister has to live in the same house as the person who hurt her so badly. That’s really unfair.”

The image of Mari’s face appears in front of his inner eye. She looked so scared, so fragile in that wheelchair. She had stopped laughing the second Sunny appeared. He sucks away all of her joy just by existing, doesn’t he? He can’t blame her. He can only blame himself. She is treading on eggshells whenever he is in the same room, trying not to upset him. Like a rabbit in a corner. Sunny can’t move out, his mother would never let him, not at sixteen. Running away would only end in being caught and brought home a few days later. He doesn’t want to make Mari suffer his company any longer, but he has no way of escaping either.

Sunny wants to vomit, but not even in whitespace there is anything left in his stomach.

“Hero is just tolerating you for Mari’s sake. He’s always been a peacekeeper, but I wonder how long he’ll be able to keep that up. Do you want to make him leave as well? He’s all Mari has left.”

Sunny shakes his head. He doesn’t want Hero to leave Mari. He has taken enough from her.

“Aubrey hates you for hurting Mari as you deserve. I think she’d be a lot happier without having to see your face all the time when she visits her. You know that’s the truth.”

He does and he wants to sink into the floor even more. Mewo licks his chin, but he doesn’t feel the comfort of the gesture.

“Kel doesn’t even bother with showing up anymore. He seems dense, but he is the only clever person around in all honesty. Who wants to have a fucked up friend group when you can have new ones? Better ones? That’s just life, Sunny.”

There is a sob and it takes him a second to realize it’s his own. It sounds foreign, so far away. Omori’s voice is loud and clear even in his ringing ears.

“And Basil is the worst of all of them. He lies to you every single day. He gets bullied for sticking with you when he knows he shouldn’t. He can’t let go of the past because you’re still there. Do you want that for him?”

No, he doesn't. He wants Basil to move on. To find new friends, ones who don’t hurt him. Who don’t call him a creep for the photos he likes taking, or call him names because he likes taking care of flowers. Who don’t keep kicking him when he is already on the ground.

Omori lets go of his hand, sighing. Sunny risks looking at him through tearful eyes, but his face doesn’t reflect any of his emotions at all. “I’d do it if you gave me control, you know.”

He freezes. No, not yet. Not now. He can do this himself. This is the least he can do.
“Okay, okay. Fine. Have it your way.” Omori doesn’t sound very thrilled. Sunny can feel the bitterness behind his words. Omori wants to be trusted, he knows, but it’s hard for him sometimes.

“I’ve been thinking, though. Want to listen?” Sunny nods. Omori reaches for a napkin and wipes Sunny’s face. He wants to feel annoyed, but he doesn’t find the energy for it. He still doesn’t like that Omori knows his thoughts so well, while the other can keep all the secrets he wants to.

“Only the ones you don’t want to know. Now, as I said. I’ve been thinking.” Omori throws the tissue away, pinching Sunny’s cheek instead. “You say it doesn’t feel right and I think I know why.”

That catches Sunny’s interest. He waits for Omori to continue, after swatting his hand away from his cheek. “Leaving like this. It doesn’t feel right. What would make it feel right, though? I think you know better than me.”

What would make it feel right? Leaving like this, right now, feels wrong, because… He imagines a world without him in it. It’s good. But he is a black hole and he has left a lot of voids in other people’s lives. He has taken so much and he will take all of these things with him when he goes to hell.

“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been thinking, too.” Omori pokes him again. “So, maybe it would help to… Fix some things before we go.”

Nothing is easy to fix, but the thought feels good. He thinks he would be able to leave easily if things were somewhat okay. He wants his friends to be together again. He wants Mari to smile. If he left now, he would make their lives better by being gone - but he wouldn’t be able to give them back what he took from them.

“You can’t give back everything, but maybe just enough. We can wait one more summer and you can make things right. Sound good?” Omori has the ghost of a smile on his face. Sunny finds himself agreeing. One more summer. That should be okay, even though it’s selfish.

The younger boy gets up, looking towards the door to headspace. He offers a hand to Sunny and he takes it. Omori, not unlike Basil, is surprisingly powerful when he wants to be. He is being pulled up by one arm, nearly throwing off Mewo, and he stumbles into the other boy's embrace. Omori is shorter than him, but he is sturdy all the same.

“I was telling the truth earlier. But it’s okay to take a break,” Omori mumbles, and Sunny is dangerously close to forgetting why he distrusts the other sometimes. It’s not Mari’s warmth, or Kel’s excited chatter, or being checked over for scratches by Hero. It’s not Aubrey’s simple affection or Basil’s soothing words. But it’s safe.

He can’t hurt Omori with anything he does. And Omori is fine with looking after him, even though it’s a job with a miserable payout.

One last summer, he thinks. Tomorrow, he’ll start to prepare. His friends and his sister will be happy after one more, last summer.

When Sunny lets himself be absorbed by Omori’s dreams, he doesn’t feel anything, and it's a relief.

PE is probably Sunny’s least favorite subject. Neither the exhaustion nor the way his clothes cling to his sweaty body appeal to him, but it is mostly the fact that people expect him to move and truly enjoy himself while at it that dumbfounds him the most.

Mari used to lecture him about the ‘importance of healthy exercise’ whenever she found him lying around limply in all sorts of (not always convenient) places. She was mostly the reason Sunny had let himself be dragged around by Kel back in the day. The other boy was always full of energy, positively vibrating in his seat next to Sunny whenever Hero made him sit on his bum for a few minutes. Over time, Sunny had come to enjoy Kel’s energy even though he had to catch his breath just watching him for a few minutes. It was refreshing. Sort of. His judgment might have been clouded by fondness.

Nowadays Sunny can’t even begin to understand why people would subject themselves willingly to torture the like of a game of dodgeball. Even if he doesn't exactly play with the most enthusiasm, to begin with, sidestepping the ball at most, when he thinks the throw would hit him too hard or in places he’d prefer to stay intact. He looks wistfully towards the benches on the other end of the playing field. He only needs to get hit once. Sunny makes an effort to stand still as much as possible.

The boys on the opposite team are a collection of the classes' most popular kids and the ones who usually do well enough in sports in general. Kel is one of the players on the opposite team. His former friend is a force of nature, laughing brightly, always roping others into whatever he wants to do, and never shy to simply walk up to people. He has done more running on the field in the last twenty minutes than Sunny assumes he has ever done in his whole life altogether.

Sunny had overheard Hero some time ago saying Kel wants to try for a sports scholarship in the future. He sees Kel a lot at the basketball courts of Faraway Park when he passes by it after school to get home. The other boy is always practicing there, going for throw after throw or playing a few games with friends.

It’s not like he is completely blind, however. Even after four years and only superficial greetings between them, Sunny sees the way Kel looks at him sometimes - his brows slightly furrowed, his jaw tense. He doesn’t exactly know what to make of it and more often than not he just turns away his eyes, unsure of what to do. Sunny feels the strange need to curl up into a tight ball when he sees Kel staring, like a hedgehog protecting its soft belly. It used to be reassuring, knowing his friend was just doing his best to understand him, but these days Sunny can’t bear the thought of Kel looking and seeing, truly seeing him.

Kel is giving him that look right now. He keeps up with the game just fine, and if he wanted to, he could knock Sunny out of it in less than a second, but he and his teammates are primarily focused on hitting everyone but him. They hit the classmate standing right next to Sunny harshly, even though he is standing completely still. Maybe they don’t see him as a threat, and they would be right. It’s giving Sunny ample time to squirm under Kel’s gaze. He looks back at him through the dark, black strands of his fringe, turning away his eyes after a bit.

It’s then that Kel does something that’s both completely in character and unexpected at the same time - him catching the ball that’s directed at him is only part of it. There is an unfamiliar smile on his face and he is still looking at Sunny. He’s still looking and Sunny is scared of what Kel sees. He wants to turn on his heel and run. He’s so occupied that he doesn’t hear Kel calling his name fast enough - and when Kel directs the next throw at him, Sunny is seeing stars.

Oh.

It’s dark for a few seconds. It takes him a few seconds longer to realize he is sitting on his butt all of a sudden, in the middle of the playing field. The floor is turning slowly. Sunny sits there for a bit before he supposes he should get up again, but when he tries to, a hand on his shoulder is keeping him right where he is.

Kel is right in front of his nose, with a wild look on his face. Sunny is blinking owlishly. When did he get so close? Is the judgemental stare from afar suddenly not good enough anymore? Sunny tries frowning, but somehow his face isn’t cooperating. Kel is talking, but it sounds muffled. He is gesturing towards one of their classmates behind him, suddenly looking… Annoyed, most likely. Sunny wonders what he did to make it that way.

Kel is lifting his arm to press the fabric of his sleeve in Sunny’s face way too roughly. Sunny lets out a miserable, pained groan he doesn’t know the origin of. When Kel takes away the (sweaty) cloth, the white sleeve is stained a bright red.

Ah.

Sunny lifts his hand to touch his nose, and when he looks at his fingers, they’re just as red as Kel’s sleeve. Suddenly, his whole face hurts. The blood getting in his mouth and throat is uncomfortably hot and tastes awful.

“Are you okay? Say someth-”, Kel interrupts himself, “Give me a sign at least! Seriously!”

Kel is still right in front of his face and Sunny is beginning to worry for him. He is looking kind of pale. He gives the other boy a more or less confident thumbs up to make him feel a little better and Kel makes another, very weird face and a strangled noise.
Oh… Kel is unhappy. He bites the inside of his cheek, looking away. He made Kel unhappy again. He can’t even get hurt right.

He doesn’t dare to pat him on the shoulder, but he kind of wants to. It’s not like Sunny likes Kel any less than before… everything, even though the other has every reason to dislike him. He retreats his hand to wipe some of the blood from his nose, but it’s a futile attempt. All it does is get his hands even dirtier.

He shouldn’t have looked at his hands. They are suddenly shaking for reasons he can’t remember right now. It looks familiar. He takes big gulps of air to quell the cold fear in his stomach. Thankfully, the pain is distant, but he is breathing through his mouth and the iron scent is overwhelming. It reminds him of… There are…. His hands? They are red.

His head is empty from one second to the other.

Don’t go there.

Kel has his hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He is handing Sunny a towel he probably got from one of their classmates. When he only looks at it, Kel guides his hands and the towel to his face, just gently enough not to suffocate him in the process.

Too many witnesses, Sunny supposes. Then again, Kel isn’t the type of person to hurt others easily, but Sunny knows like nobody else how to make the people around him miserable. Hitting him with a ball right in his face is kind of mean, but he’s not complaining. Violence is a language he thinks he understands.

“I’m really sorry, Sunny! Man, I could have sworn I didn’t throw it that hard… My bad. Sorry, that was a dumb idea.”

He has no idea what Kel is talking about. “You able to walk? The teacher says to go see the nurse. Come on, I’ll walk you there.”
He is lifted by the arm in a matter of a second, just as quickly as he fell on his butt in the first place. He gets a little dizzy, but Kel has an arm around him. Huh. This feels familiar.

The walk to the nurse’s office is strange, to say the least. It’s hard to get a read on Kel, listening to him fret even when they are alone in the long corridor of the school. He still has an arm around Sunny’s shoulders. Maybe he cares about what the other students would say? It’s not like Kel can maim him in the broad daylight just like that. School rules probably don’t allow that sort of thing. Then again, they are alone for the moment, so Sunny doesn’t know what Kel is gaining from being nice to him right after nearly breaking his nose.

It’s been about four years since Kel has spoken this much to him. It’s surreal. Sunny can’t help but stare at him all the way there.

He still has that look in his eyes. Even more so than before.

The nurse ends up cleaning his face with a cotton swab, checking his nose bridge for damage, and stuffing gauze into both of his nostrils. Another gauze pad goes underneath his nose, which she fixates there with some medical tape. When she is satisfied with that, she finishes off her masterpiece by putting a bright pink Hello-Kitty band-aid onto his nose bridge. She pats his shoulder and tells him to wear it with pride. He shrugs. It’s a cat, after all.

Sunny is ordered to sit on the bed in the nurse's office for a while until the bleeding stops, a bag of ice pressed to the back of his nape. Kel pulls him forward a bit by the wrist when he tries to lean back a little.

“Hey, don't, you'll swallow your blood and get sick,” Kel says and it's not exactly unkind. As if a curtain is being pulled back, Sunny notices how much taller Kel is than him. His hand looks huge around his wrist. Or maybe he is just pitifully small. And since when is Kel the responsible one? He thinks Hero would have a stroke.

“Don't make a face, it's Hero-wisdom. No questioning that.” Ah, Hero-wisdom. When they were still small and their older siblings could do no wrong. Kel used to be shorter than him by a centimeter. The flow of time is always cruel.

He is not sure what kind of face he is supposed to make, though. He has gauze stuffed up his nose.

He expects Kel to leave after dropping him off in the nurse’s care, but he doesn't. He does in fact leave for a few minutes, but he returns shortly after with a cold can of soda and a chocolate candy bar he most likely pulled out of one of the vending machines outside. He presses both items into Sunny’s hands insistently, and because he doesn’t move until he tightens his grip around them, Sunny opens the candy bar and takes a small bite. His nose hurts when he chews.

Kel pulls up a chair, sitting down in front of Sunny. There is the complicated face again and it makes Sunny want to hide. Sometimes he looks at people only to find their faces blurry.

Kel isn’t happy with him, probably. He sets aside the can and touches his pink band-aid somewhat self-consciously. He wants to make Kel happy but he doesn't know what to do. He is right in front of him and Sunny is already failing.

“I’m sorry. I really thought you were going to catch that.” Kel is scratching the back of his neck, looking to the side. He is scrunching his nose a little.

Apologizing to Sunny is probably not easy for him and he understands. Sunny feels bad for making Kel think he has to apologize for anything. Never. For nothing, not ever. He wonders what Kel would do if he knew he had an expiration date. Would he still apologize for something so silly? Maybe he would have thrown the ball even harder. You have to make the most of what time you have, after all.

He’s not sure how to respond to that, so he just shakes his head. He isn't dizzy anymore, but his nose throbs unpleasantly.

Kel is looking at him again. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, apparently searching for words.

“Sunny, I want you to be honest.” Kel’s hand is around his wrist again, dangerously close to his hand. Sunny jerks back a bit, but it's futile. Don't ask him anything. There are answers he isn't able to give.

Do you have anything to say for yourself? Do you think this is funny? How can you look into the mirror every morning?

He doesn’t.

Kel opens his mouth again, but somebody opens the door with a bang. Basil stands in the entrance, breathing heavily, his hair a mess. Sunny stares at him with big eyes and Kel turns to face him. He lets go of Sunny’s wrist, so he uses his chance to wave to Basil weakly. Sunny thinks he looks angry. Everyone is angry today.

“What happened? Are you okay?”, Basil asks, storming into the room. He is next to Sunny in no time, looking at his face. Sunny gives him a thumbs up.

Basil clenches his jaw and shakes his head.

He turns stiffly to Kel. Sunny notices how tightly he is holding onto the strap of his school bag with one hand.

“What did you do? One of your friends said you knocked him out! Are you serious, Kel?”

Basil is so tense Sunny can feel him trembling even from his place on the bed. Kel looks to the side, an apologetic grin on his face.

“It was an accident, Basil, calm down. I apologized. Look, he is all cleaned up and getting some food into him. Isn't that right, Sunny?”

Sunny is in the middle of chewing, so he only hums in affirmation. Maybe it's not a good time to feel that way, but he hasn’t seen Basil and Kel talk in a long time, which makes him happy, he thinks. The taste of the food in his mouth is not exactly good, but for once, it's not downright repulsive. He is only eating it to do Kel a favor, but it is strangely okay.

Basil is still angry. Sunny doesn't really follow the conversation, watching the other rant more than he hears him. He knows Basil worries, that he thinks it's his responsibility to look after him. Sunny reaches to tug on the strap of Basil’s backpack, fiddling with it and feeling the soothingly rough texture. He doesn’t touch Basil’s skin, but he distantly feels the warmth anyhow. He lets go a little shakily.

Right now he is just taking in the rare fact that Basil and Kel are talking. It's not the friendly banter of days long gone, but they are talking. Basil is not in the same class as Kel and Sunny, so the two of them see each other even less than Sunny and Kel do. He wonders when and why they stopped talking to each other. He suspects it might be his fault.

Basil refuses to accept that Sunny is not a good person. Kel and the others can’t forget that fact.

He zones back into the conversation to catch Basil asking how anyone would be as stupid as playing dodgeball with anything but the soft, light balls that don’t hurt anyone. He is pinching his nose bridge, sighing sharply. “Like, you know, sensible people would!”, he grits out between clenched teeth.

“You can’t throw the things very well and to play with the normal ones is so much more fun, maybe? Sunny was enjoying himself,” Kel says, holding his hands up in front of himself and looking to him for help. “Tell him, Sunny.”

Sunny is still chewing. He’s nearly finished with his whole candy bar. He is enjoying himself right now, in the company of two of his friends, so he nods. He looks at them to see if that is the right answer.

Both Kel and Basil look back. Kel is smiling, not grinning as he does most of the time. Basil’s face is still kind of tense, but his eyes are soft.

Huh.

He’s not sure if he should indulge himself in anything remotely happy, but the corners of his mouth twitch upwards of their own accord.

The wrapper of the candy bar crinkles in his hands. Even if Kel is probably only glad he got away with getting back at Sunny for being the awful person he is. Even if Basil isn’t in the right mind to judge because Sunny somehow deceived him into believing that there isn’t just a hollow cruelness in his heart.

Even if.

Talking to each other seems to have them in better spirits than before, the bickering aside, which is his fault anyway. Sunny thinks they look happier. If Kel and Basil would have each other to rely on it would be great. Sunny would love that. They always had very different energies, but they used to get along really well.

They are speaking to each other for the first time in nearly four years and all it took was Sunny ruining Kel’s gym clothes with blood. It sounds plausible.

In this moment, for the first time in a very long while, he wants something. There is a mental image of his former friends, together, on a picnic blanket. His sister is laughing.

He is nowhere to be seen. The earth has swallowed him. All of his malice has seeped away, buried beneath a bed of flowers.

They are free. Basil is free of carrying Sunny’s burdens. Kel doesn’t have to look for better friends just because of his very own mistake. Aubrey can enjoy time with her first friends and her older sister-figure without his shadow looming over them. Hero doesn’t have to worry himself sick about Mari anymore, because Mari is free: The monster in her house is gone. He won’t ever hurt her again.

When the school bell rings, their time together is cut short. Basil and Kel escort him outside the nurse’s office, walking right next to him.

“Take these with you, in case the bleeding starts again,” Basil says while stuffing a few paper tissues from his bag into Sunny’s pockets. “Are you sure you can get to class alone? Want me to come with you? I can be a little late for my class, no problem...” The blond is wringing his hands, his gaze shifting between the floor, Sunny and Kel.

Sunny shakes his head at the suggestion, adjusting his backpack. Basil is missing enough school as it is. He still has a bandage on his cheek and the bruising is taking on a sickly green color.

“Actually, Basil, I thought you could join me for a minute. It won’t take too long, promise,” Kel interrupts the other boy, putting a heavy hand on his shoulder. He is still smiling. They share a look for a minute, before Basil tears his eyes away to look at Sunny and shrugs Kel’s hand off of him.

“...Fine. Okay.” Basil’s voice is barely above a whisper. “Sunny, get home safe after class. Get some rest! Don’t take off the gauze too soon. Tell your teacher when you feel dizzy! And Mari when you get home! Don’t forget,” he adds in a stronger tone. Sunny has no doubt Basil would escort him home after school if he could, but the other boy has a few more classes than him today.

Wait a second.

Sunny blinks slowly, scratching his cheek. Okay. Maybe they want to catch up? Yeah. Basil is just a little shy. Kel wants to catch up with the other boy without having Sunny ruin the mood. That makes sense. Using their break for that is a good idea. He nearly smiles at the thought of his two former friends getting closer again. This is a start.

He gives them both a thumbs up and a wave before leaving them alone in the hallway, making his way to the changing room of their gym to get his clothes so he can change out of his sweaty and bloody sports uniform.

When he sees Kel again in math class, he doesn’t make eye contact with the taller boy for the rest of the day.

Later, the image of his former friends is on his mind all the way home. He sees them in every window, on every bench, on the swings of Faraway Park. When he approaches them, they vanish like smoke into the air. His ears ring with the distant laughter of kids long gone.

Something grows in his chest, but red hands suffocate it before anything, good or bad, can take root.

If his eyes turn a little hollow, nobody sees it.

The truth is this: All of his friends deserve to be happy.

He comes home to a full house once again.

It’s not really a problem. Their kitchen alone is big enough to house their whole family if needed. However, no space is big enough if you’re trying to stay out of somebody’s way. The world has a strange tendency to shrink considerably whenever one is trying to do so.

Aubrey and Mari have always been close, and as such, she is a common visitor at their home. Sunny isn’t surprised to see the two of them in the living room, Mari in her wheelchair and Aubrey on the sofa, watching TV.

He tries shuffling past them without them noticing, but Mari whips her head around to him the second he enters the room. He is starting to suspect she might have some kind of superpower. Exceptional hearing. Detecting danger, maybe.

“Sunny, welcome home!”, his sister says, making Aubrey look over the back of the sofa at him. “Are… Are you okay? What happened to your face?”

Sunny shrugs. He starts pulling on the medical tape on his face, but Mari is already on her way to him. Always trying to appease him. Like keeping a lion tame, he thinks dryly.

Even sitting in a wheelchair, she can still reach his face. He lets Mari touch him, flinching only slightly before her fingers meet his cheeks. She is turning his face this and that way, her brows low. “What did you do? Did you get in a fight?”

He shrugs. He doesn’t know if Kel would actually want to fight him. Or if the confrontation would even be considered a fight, seeing how Sunny would go down in one hit.

Mari’s grip on his face tightens slightly. Her fingers are trembling. Sunny knows fear when he sees it. Her dark eyes are so wide they reflect the light coming through the window. He turns his face away, shaking off her hands. He shouldn’t have let her push herself. She shouldn’t have to get near when it’s so hard for her.

She only ever looks miserable in his presence.

“Ah, let’s get that stuff off your face. Let me get the first aid kit just in case! You sit down on the sofa, okay?” Mari is surprisingly fast in her wheelchair, already halfway out of the room when he turns to stop her.

He attempts to follow her, but Aubrey’s voice startles him. “She said to sit down, you dumbass.”

Aubrey points to the other end of the old family sofa. Sunny doesn’t move, too occupied with staring at her. Aubrey moves as if she wants to get up, and Sunny has enough experience with her way of convincing someone uncooperative that he hurries to sit down on the furthest corner of the sofa. He honestly doesn’t know why the universe keeps doing this to him today.

He could save everyone the trouble and remove the bandages himself, but when he lifts his hand to touch them, Aubrey positively hisses at him, making him jump in his seat. “Don’t touch that! Can you wait for a minute or what? She is already on her way.”

Sunny shrinks onto himself a little, dropping his hand. He side-eyes her, taking in how she clenches the tv-remote so tightly. She is chewing on a piece of gum.

For a few seconds, the only sound is coming from the traffic outside, Aubrey having muted the tv when he came in. The afternoon sun gets low, bathing the room in soft light. He doesn’t really know where to look, pressing his knees together tightly. The blank wall in front of him looks like a safe choice. He hears her let out a sharp breath through her nose.

“You getting bullied?” She takes her phone out of her pocket while she says it. Her tone is even.

Sunny shakes his head. He doesn’t dare remark on how it’s funny that she asks. Basil would surely get a laugh out of that one.

She is typing something on the screen, still chewing. She peeks at him several times, always looking away when Sunny looks back at her. “I’ll know if you lie to me. I’ll kick your ass.”

Sunny distinctly remembers every single nail in her bat. Maybe she doesn’t want him to stress Mari out even more than he already does just by existing. He has read enough stories in his life about the quiet kid turning violent through bullying. In the past, he’d been hurt by the obvious distrust these reports had inspired in his peers. Today, he doesn’t trust himself.

Aubrey seems to be done talking to him, and Mari once again has excellent timing. She returns with the first aid kit in her lap, rolling up to him. When she stops, her knees are nearly touching his. Sunny can’t retreat further into the sofa, his back already pressed against the cushions.

“Let me look at that,” she says, her voice soft. He is making it kind of hard for Mari to reach him and Aubrey is already sending him death threats with her eyes, so he leans forward a little. He is sixteen and still shorter than Mari. She is sitting a little higher on her wheelchair than he is on the sofa, so he has to tip back his head a bit when she starts removing the bandages.

Her fingers are cool on his skin. She removes the bandages slowly, carefully. The gauze is a rusty, brown color. Mari pats his nose with a clean cotton pad to see if there is any fresh blood, but there isn’t. Kel probably didn’t try to kill him earlier.

Mari traces her fingertips over his Hello-Kitty-themed band-aid. She tries to pull up a smile, but it dies quickly. “Are you sure you’re okay? I mean, your nose should be fine by now, but… I’m here if you want to talk about it. Aubrey is, too!” Aubrey grunts in response, not taking her eyes off her phone. He tries to shake his head, but Mari is still holding his cheeks, so he shrugs.

Sunny doesn’t meet her eyes, but she softly strokes the pads of her thumbs over his cheekbones. It’s a nostalgic gesture. The feeling takes him back to better days, to back when his big sister used to console him whenever he cried rivers too big for a boy his size. Mari had kissed his forehead back then, stroking his cheeks until the tears had dried. At sixteen years old, he’d probably die of embarrassment would she repeat that, but her hands are… Nice. He feels his shoulders going slack a little and he leans into her touch for a second.

When he opens his eyes, she looks concerned. He stares into her eyes for a second too long.

Looking up at her like this stirs a memory. It sneaks up on him, just like that. Suddenly, her face is bathed in red light. Her eyes are so black they resemble endless voids. She is distant but so close. He wants to get away, but he is trapped. The only way out of here is through her.

The only way. It’s the only way. If he shoves her aside a little -

He rips himself free of her grip by shoving her hands away from his face with the back of his hand. Mari jerks away, eyes wide in surprise, so he uses the opportunity to get off the sofa and flee upstairs. Where she can’t reach him. Where he can’t reach her. He made her that way.

He slams the door behind him, but he can still hear Mari calling him, her voice hurt. Aubrey is talking somewhat loudly, but he doesn’t understand what she is saying.

That should teach you to cuddle up to her like that after what you’ve done.

He slides down the door to the floor, sitting there like the guilt has finally dissolved all of his bones and gasping for air.

Sunny doesn’t remember that day. He doesn’t. Not a single thing. When he tries to, he’s only met with a blank space. It’s like reading a book somebody has torn random pages out of. A puzzle with pieces that don't fit together. Sometimes he thinks he remembers only to see the curtain fall in front of his eyes when he can't take the sight of it. But if there is one thing he has more than enough of, it’s his creativity.

He wonders if he'd done it on purpose. If he’d felt sick joy at seeing Mari fall. If he’d enjoyed the crunch of her breaking bones in his ears. Had he let her blood seep through his fingers like sand? Would he have called her an ambulance if Basil hadn’t? Had he just grabbed her to fling her down the stairs when she hadn’t expected it? How long had he waited for an opportunity like that? Had he truly been so full of unjustified resentment and so empty of a single shred of empathy?

He’s just sick. He's so horribly sick. He doesn’t deserve to live.

He hears someone knock on his door, but all he can say is that he's sorry.

The knife and the hammer are looking at him even though he doesn't see them.

He crawls onto his bed, curled into a ball, and doesn't dare to move for the rest of the day.

Omori pulls him under by the back of his collar.

"You are pathetic. You're such a pain. The biggest baby I have ever seen." Sunny is lying on his back, his head in Omori's lap. He pulls up his hands to bury his face in them, hiding.

"Do you think it's your place to feel bad? How do you think Mari feels?"

Sunny doesn't think at all. That's the problem.

Omori has his hands in his hair. He rakes his fingers through it. He follows down his temples, down his cheeks, to his throat. Sunny doesn't know if it's protective or a reminder.

"You have to stop wallowing in your self-pity already. There's no time for that. You made no progress at all today," Omori drawls in his usual apathetic tone.

Omori must be frustrated with him. He's so capable, while Sunny is not. He overcomes every challenge Headspace throws at him even while carrying Sunny on his back. All he has to do is point a knife at his troubles.

"Let me help. Give me a minute and it's over."

They've had this conversation before. If Omori could have his way, Sunny wouldn't be here right now. He'd be buried behind the church as he deserves. But Sunny can't leave like that, he can't trust Omori that way. He admires him for his strength, but he fears his ferocity. He fears the knife only when it's not pointed at him.

The younger boy sighs deeply. Sunny feels the way he shifts beneath him, his fingers tightening slightly around his throat. Omori is tired of waiting. He's generous enough to give Sunny one last summer, but he won't watch him waste it.

"When you wake up, don't make me regret this."

Suddenly, there is a knife. Its steel mirrors Sunny's wide-eyed expression, so clean, so sharp. Omori lifts it in one swift motion.

He wakes up bathed in sweat when the other stabs him. A crumpled piece of paper is in his hand, wrapped around something solid, with a messy scrawl on it.

A key glistens in the moonlight.

Don’t forget it’s in the toy box.

When Mari plays the piano, she takes off her humanity like a mantle, Sunny thinks.

He sits next to her on the seat before the black, shiny instrument, shoulders touching. He can feel every shift in her posture, can see every finger on the keys. She has her hair tucked behind her ear, face tight, gaze focused.

When Mari sits in front of the black and white keys, she shakes off everything else. She is in her world, only sharing well-loved tones with the people around her and little else. Her clothes have no wrinkles. Her hair is brushed neatly. Her back is straight. Bright, warm sunlight falls through the open window behind the long, white curtains of the piano room, the breeze making them sway lazily. The warm summer gust touches her hair with gentle, invisible fingers.

There is not a single flaw, no space for failure. That's the way she has always been, striving for perfection in the face of her limitations.

She looks lonely, all by herself at the piano - a lone performer on a solitary stage. Sunny wants to hug her, but he would hinder her from playing. There is nothing he can do since his knowledge of the instrument is limited at best. He knows how to play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a song Mari had taught him with great joy, but that's it.

When she plays, she is perfect. A painting on the wall. When she plays, she is so far away.

Mari is mature for her age, at least that's what the adults around them say. She is barely thirteen but so responsible, so reliable, never one step astray. School is a walk in the park. Music flows through her veins. She looks after her little brother more than her mother does, who is taking advantage of her willingness to help without a second thought.

Mari is a marble statue on a pedestal so high Sunny can barely see her.

Still, Sunny loves her so much it hurts. It hurts when she smiles and says she's fine, when she throws crumpled school notes into the bin with ancient anger, when she plays and plays and is so far away. When after everything, she looks in the mirror and says, "That's not good enough."

When the clouds are so dark he can’t see her face.

He wants to make it better, somehow.

So he sits with her in the piano room as much as he can. If she has to work herself to the bone, she at the very least doesn’t have to do it alone. He’s not sure if he is actually helping but the sentiment is there. She is warm next to him, her gaze fixed on the sheet music solely.

It’s been hours and she finally takes a break. She has a frown on her face, contemplating the sheet music as if she didn’t just spend hours staring at it. Sunny bumps his head against her shoulder and rubs his cheek against her.

That makes her look at him. He looks up with big eyes and Mari is smiling. She puts her arm around his small shoulders, pulling him close. It’s warm and very safe. Very Mari.

When he looks at the shiny, black surface of the piano, he can see his reflection on there, devoid of all color. ‘Omori’ stands out in white letters.

“That’s enough practice for today, isn’t it?”, she laughs, rubbing his arm affectionately. He has a feeling she is saying it more for him and less for herself, but the outcome is the same so he is happy nonetheless.

He nods and hums his agreement into her shoulder. Mari is laughing quietly, the way she does when the heavy clouds around her go away.

“You were very patient today. Thanks for keeping me company,” she adds.

Sunny is very patient indeed. Before Mari took up the piano, she spent a lot more time with Sunny and their friends. They’d had so many picnics, so many adventures in the forest or the park. The sleepovers and the time spent watching Saturday morning TV together. All of them huddled together in pillow forts. The kind of laughter that made every and all kind of sorrow seem insignificant in the face of such warmth.

It’s not like these things don’t happen anymore, but because of Mari’s busy schedule, they occur a lot less than before. Sunny misses them, his chest aching hollowly. He misses Mari in the same manner, even when he is sitting right next to her.

She ruffles his hair and Sunny makes a face, but since Mari likes doing this a lot, he allows it. They sit in front of the piano a little longer, just leaning against one another, enjoying each other’s company.

There is a question Sunny needs to get off his chest.

“Mari, why?”

It’s a quiet mumble, but she jumps slightly nonetheless. Mari looks at him, concerned. She brushes Sunny’s fringe out of his face, turning in her seat to look at him better. It takes her a bit before she finds her words.

“What do you mean, why? Is something wrong?”

Actually, yes. Sunny is ten years old and his sister prefers the company of a piano over his. The scope of his problems at this point in his life suggests that this is an emergency of unknown proportions. He pouts at her, lips slightly pursed. He sat here for hours, glued to her side, but she doesn’t seem to understand.

“Mari,” he repeats. She is his big sister. She can figure it out.

Mari keeps her composure for a respectable few seconds before the laughs start escaping her. She looks so gleeful, specs of sunlight on her scrunched-up face, Sunny can’t stay mad at her, even though he very much tries. His big sister is laughing at his demise. The world is cruel.

She pulls him into another hug. “You’re cute. Why are you so cute?”, Mari laughs, squeezing the life out of him. Sunny groans in misery. He paws at her face to make her let go, but she has the embrace of a grizzly bear. Her knee might be bad, but her arms certainly aren’t.

“Not cute,” he insists, squirming. He tries ducking out of her embrace, but it’s no use. Mari is still laughing, resting her chin on his head.

“Ah, are you too big now for your big sister’s love? I think I’m going to cry, Sunny.” She is teasing him. Mari has an unfortunate fondness for teasing the people she loves and playing pranks on them. She might be the idol of her school, but that doesn’t mean she never gets in trouble for tormenting her peers with harmless pranks. Hero is still traumatized by the bug incident Mari pulled on him. Sunny didn’t know that the bugs they were collecting together would end up in Hero’s school desk the next morning. Oops.

“Mari,” he says again, voice strained. She loosens her grip on him a bit, moving her hands to his shoulders. Her grin is so big Sunny can imagine it touching her ears soon. She brushes his hair out of his face again. He just thinks that he wants her to be happy always and forever.

Mari won’t cut her piano practice short, he knows this. The hours spent sitting next to her are not exactly bad or boring, but it still feels distant. Like there is a barrier he can’t overcome, or like there is something about her he can’t understand no matter how hard he tries. He doesn’t know what’s so great about music practice, but he likes listening to her play.

He wants to connect to her the same way she connects to him when nobody else understands. When the words don’t come, or when he’s too shy to look others in the eye. While he should have outgrown his behavior already, she still takes his hand, leading with confidence, always protecting him.

Sunny isn’t the most expressive kid, not like Kel or Aubrey, or Basil, so he resorts to other gestures to show his affection. He loves putting little gifts into others’ pockets when they don’t expect it, or the way other people light up when he does them every small favor he can.

He gives gentle head bumps, holds onto sleeves, sits close. Basil has an extensive collection of random flowers Sunny keeps picking and pressing between heavy books with Mari’s and Hero’s help. He stuffs the candy in his lunchbox or beloved comic books into Kel’s backpack whenever he gets the chance. He constantly makes Mari sew together little ribbons out of every pretty fabric he gets his hands on so he can tie them into Aubrey’s hair. Mari and Hero are drowning in the pictures he draws for them by now, of them, of the things he remembers fondly. Mari has plastered countless of his drawings of Mewo on the door of their fridge.

He feels like this time, it’s not enough. He’s been lying in bed thinking about solutions lately, not finding any sleep.

Sunny holds onto the arms Mari still has on his shoulders. He avoids her gaze. He’s not sure about how to ask her, or if she’ll like or dislike the idea. He has decided to take a chance, however.

“... Can I join?”

Mari blinks at him a few times. She might understand Sunny really well under the usual circumstances, but now she looks lost, her head slightly tilted. “Join? You mean join me playing the piano?”

Sunny shakes his head, but then again that’s kind of right, so he nods. Mari looks even more lost. “Join you. Not at the piano, though. … Violin. Maybe.”

Learning how to play the piano had been his first thought, but he’s afraid to intrude on the one thing she is proud of the most. So, after a lot of thinking, he has concluded that it should be the violin. Something he can accompany her with. Something that mixes with her sound nicely, that’s not the same but still fits. Like siblings do.

He likes the way the violin sounds, how the wood feels, the way it vibrates on his shoulder when he drags the bow over its strings. Sunny had been taking violin classes before but had lost interest when everything else had become so busy and his fingers hurt from pressing on the metal strings. Maybe it’s time to resume his classes. He wants to play together.

When he tells her as much, her face lights up even more.

“That sounds wonderful! I’ll ask mom about the violin classes, okay? I’m so happy you want to continue, Sunny!”

He can’t help but return her smile. His worry over upsetting her melts away like snow in the sun. It warms him up from the inside, her excitement contagious. She looks genuinely happy, so he is too. He remembers her being kind of disappointed when Sunny had put away the bow and violin a while ago.

Sunny watches in fascination as her smile turns into a familiar smirk. He looks up at her with big eyes, his smile forming into a slightly open-mouthed confusion. ...Uh-oh. He knows that one.

“So, Sunny… Is this how it is now? Keeping secrets from me? You should have told me sooner…” She lifts her hands, forming claws, wriggling her fingers threateningly. Sunny is up and off the piano bench in less than a second, crossing his arms in front of his chest protectively.

“Mari….”, he mumbles, wary. Her grin only grows.

“I guess I’ll have to tickle all of these secrets out of you, then. You’ve brought this onto yourself, little brother. You’ve grown up way too fast.”

She is standing up slowly, and Sunny bolts. A few minutes later, the sound of strangled laughter reverberates through the house. He remembers admitting one of his and Kel’s forbidden nightly trips to HOBBEEZ over her relentless tickling. Sorry, Kel.

Years later, after everything is said and done, he’ll think about how every big tragedy is rooted in love. How it’s love that makes one hurt others, over and over again. How, if he hadn’t loved her, he would never have hurt her, either. One must know that the greatest love nurtures the darkest depths inside one’s heart. So he buries the memory within a toy box, beneath bloody sheet music and broken pieces of wood.

Sunny’s backpack has no reason to feel as heavy as it does, but heaving it up so he can put it on the seat next to him feels like he’s carrying stones.

The bus he sits in is old, the windows cracked and the cushions of the seats threadbare if one would want to describe them kindly, but he doesn’t really take that in. He’s too relieved he has managed to purchase a ticket from the intimidating bus driver without being questioned too much. Faraway is a small village and people still look out for each other, so when he boards the vehicle he knows people are watching. Mari might know even before he makes it home, but by then it would be too late, anyway. He’ll think of what to tell her later.

She doesn’t need to know, not yet. Sunny feels like it would be too soon, too sudden. So he goes by himself, carrying the weight of the world in one little black backpack. The small button stuck to its front (a gift from Aubrey, many years ago) shows the face of a cat and doesn’t betray the bag’s content. It could be anything, everything insignificant.

The bus ride is about half an hour-long, so it’s not like he’s going off to disappear off the edge of the earth. Not today, anyhow.

Maybe it’s the way his stomach swirls with cool acid, or the way his hands are freezing but sweaty nonetheless, but when he arrives at his destination, he can’t remember the bus ride, none of the scenery, none of the other people in it. He gets off with shaking knees, the backpack heavy.

Okay. He pulls on one of the drawstrings of his sweatshirt, trying to remember which way he needs to go. It shouldn’t be too far away, right in the middle of the city. He knows how to get there, his memory strikingly accurate whenever he has access to it. Mari had taken him in the past whenever he needed to get… When he needed to get it fixed in some way or another. It happened. He’d been young and not always careful with it, much to Mari’s dismay.

Today, it’s going to need a lot more than a small fix. More than a new string or a new screw somewhere. Sunny honestly doesn’t even know if it’s possible to save at all, but he’s willing to try, at the very least. He has nothing to lose, so he starts walking.

The city, in comparison to Faraway, is huge and busy. The streets he follows down are so packed with people he feels even more insignificant than he usually does, but it’s not a bad feeling. He could do all sorts of things and nobody would notice. He can exist and feel nobody’s eyes on him. A speck of dust on the stone walkways.

The small shop he is looking for sits in the middle of a busy street, its wooden doors heavy. When Sunny enters, a small bell chimes and the first thing he notices is the sheer amount of instruments inside. They are displayed with love, but the way they stare back at him makes him want to leave backwards through the doors again.

The shop’s owner is an elderly man with a beard so long and thick Sunny can’t really make out his face, but he stumbles his way over there anyway. The old man chuckles, seemingly amused.

“Hey there, son. How can I help you?”

Ah, the part Sunny dreaded all along. He doesn’t know how to tell the man what he wants in words, swallowing nervously. The man only looks at him with patience only years of experience can bestow, so Sunny reaches for the backpack shakily. It would be so much easier with Mari by his side, but he can’t ask this of her.

He takes out another bag made out of cloth and places it on the counter. The content clinks together quietly, but to him, it’s unbearably loud. The shopkeeper raises an eyebrow but goes on to open the bag anyway.

The violin’s body is broken into shards of wood, its strings hanging limply. There are darker spots on the wood where Sunny tried to wipe away some of the old blood more or less successfully. It’s a dreadful sight and Sunny can’t stare at it for too long without feeling sick, without smelling iron, without hearing the chilling crunch of breaking bones.

The old man takes up one of the pieces, turning it over with a small hum. Sunny watches him place it back on the counter with nervous eyes.

“That looks really bad. I’m sorry, but I think you would be better off buying a new violin,” he says after a moment, “The costs would be much lower.”

It’s not like buying another violin hasn’t crossed Sunny’s mind. But it’s not about the money, or actually being able to play it. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be able to bear its weight on his shoulder again, but that’s not what this is about.

He takes a deep breath and clears his throat. He shoves the remains of his violin towards the man insistently, hoping to convey what he wants. “Please,” he mumbles, but even such simple words sound distorted and drain him like a blood-letting.

The man sighs, stroking his (admittedly impressive) beard. He considers the violin again for a few moments. Sunny can feel his hands shake while he tries to get a grip on the counter.

“If it absolutely must be this one, you’re looking at a huge sum of money, kid. We are talking about 800 dollars at the very least. Are you sure you want to spend that much on it? It looks a little small for you on top of everything….”

He knows. But he thinks about the faces of his friends when Mari told them about the broken violin. The betrayal. The disbelief in the face of his violent outburst. He can’t forget how he has taken a token of their love, something they had worked so hard to get for him, and thrown it down the stairs. A poisonous part of him whispers just like Mari.

The liquid anger in his stomach has long since turned to stone so cold he thinks he’ll never fit a whole meal inside him ever again.

In the end, the shopkeeper is kind enough to put the violin back into the cloth bag for him and tells him to come back with the money if he really wants it fixed. At the very least, it’s not impossible to save. He thinks Mari would be happy to see it back in one piece. He can’t fix her, or himself, but maybe this one thing is not beyond salvaging.

He was scared and maybe a little angry when the key to the toy box suddenly appeared in his hand two nights ago. Even more so when, after more than four years, the door to the storage room in their house reappeared with astounding normalcy. Like it had always been there. Like it didn’t hold tears and blood and broken bones for all these years.

The toy box sat in the storage room, dark and heavy, and Sunny’s hands were shaking so much he was having trouble fitting the key inside the keyhole. When he opened it, the sight of the violin was scorching, sickening. He was unable to bear the smell, the sight, to touch any of the fragments. A few of Mari’s dark strands of hair were still entangled in the mess. Distantly, he imagined how those bloody strands of hair could easily have been the only corporal thing he would have had left of her - had he killed her. Had fate been in a worse mood that day.

It’s concerning how muddled the memory of finding the toy box and dragging it to his room is, like he was watching through a veil, his body moving on its own while he picked the parts of the violin off of bloody sheet music. How distant the fear and pain felt while wiping away what blood was left on the wood. How, when the sight became too much, it was like looking at shadows in the moonlight. Muddled, fuzzy, hardly recognizable. He feels like the impact is only delayed, shoved behind a well-used barrier.

He’s not keen to find out what else hides just beyond the reach of his immediate consciousness and maybe, hopefully, he’d be dead before he’d get the chance to.

One summer is not a lot of time and 800 dollars is a large sum for a student like Sunny, but he thinks he has seen several advertisements for part-time jobs in Faraway. If he takes on more than one on a few days a week, he can still make it. He can sell most of his belongings to speed up the process. It’s not like he’ll need them where he is going and he can start giving back.

He can give them back what they gave him before he leaves. In the grand scheme of things, a violin is only a violin, but he hopes they understand what he wants to say. When they can’t cut their fingers on the sharp wood anymore, he wants them to know how much he still loves them, even though he won’t be there to say it. It’s better that way.

The violin was the start of everything miserable, and now it would be the end of it.

It’s hollow comfort, but he takes it. When he leans against the windows of the bus on the ride home, the remains of the violin feel just a little lighter than before.

When he arrives in Faraway, it’s already noon. He had left the house quietly in the morning so he wouldn’t wake Mari, thinking he might make it back before she would notice him missing. Even though she is probably happy he is nowhere near her, she takes her duties seriously. Looking after Sunny is still one of them. He knows how much she doesn’t want to disappoint the eyes still fixed on her, their mother, the people in the neighborhood. Sunny suddenly disappearing from the house on a Saturday morning probably doesn’t help. Sorry, Mari. But it’s not like it’s a big deal.

He supposes he should make his way home. Do his homework, maybe, so the teachers don’t call his mother again, and in lieu of reaching her, contact Mari. She has enough on her plate. …. After homework, maybe he’ll go to bed. He doesn’t want to bother Basil, and he’s tired anyway.

Those are all fine plans, but once again, the world has other schemes in play. He is passing OTHERMART when two figures stumble in front of his feet, shoving him over, making him trip and fall flat on his face. He’s so stunned he can only think it’s lucky he didn’t fall on the violin, but the concrete isn’t very comfortable.

The two other figures groan. One is much bigger than the other. Sunny can make out a blue hoodie and a red flannel shirt. He turns around to sit on his butt, shaking his haze away like a wet dog. It seems he is in the way of others wherever he goes.

The two figures turn out to be Kim and Vance, both still trying to collect themselves off the floor. Vance is up first, helping up his sister, who is comically small in comparison. Going by what he knows about her, it’s better not to mention this, however. Sunny feels a fragile kinship with her over the struggle of short people, but he doesn’t know how she would take that.

Kim, after being helped up by Vance, is dusting off her clothes and stomping her brown boots. “Rats… Looks like there won’t be any candy today, either....” She is grumbling, shoving her hands into the front pocket of her sweater roughly. Sunny deems this a good opportunity to quietly slink away, getting up with a bit of difficulty, but Kim turns her eyes on him.

“You!” She points her finger on his chest. His sternum hurts where she pokes him with her index finger. “Don’t just trip people over! You can’t just lumber around like that, nerd.”

Sunny blinks at her. He would like to mention that Kim and Vance were the ones getting kicked out of OTHERMART directly in front of his feet, but it’s not like it’s worth starting a fight over it. He’s truly an inconvenience, anyway.

He bows his head slightly in apology.

Kim doesn’t take it the way he thought she would, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. Sunny just looks at her with big eyes.

“Ugh! That’s not… Stand up for yourself a little! That’s not how you defend yourself, you idiot. Get yourself together, really!” Sunny still doesn’t know what to do, just looking at the fist on his shirt. He expects a punch or something of that nature, but she lets go of him suddenly, making him nearly fall backwards.

“Vance, let’s make him pay!” Oooh. Oh. That’s gonna hurt. He can already feel it. Kim has a short temper, as everyone knows. Even from the sidelines, he experienced it more than once. Aubrey and she are similar in that aspect.

Vance just grunts his agreement and Sunny screws his eyes shut. Maybe it’ll be quick. Maybe they’ll hit him so hard he’ll hit his head on the sidewalk in an unlucky way so he won’t get up ever again. It’s not like it matters much, but he can’t shut off the fear in his stomach.

“Make sure to make him get the taffy, too,” Vance tells his sister, confusing Sunny enough to make him squint at them. ...Taffy? Like… The candy?

“Okay, listen, nerd. Today is your lucky day since we’re feeling generous. We might just let you get off if you go and get us some candy. And don’t be stingy, got that? Don’t forget to get the taffy or I’ll smack you.” Kim is back to poking him in the chest. He rubs the spot dazedly. … They want candy. Well. That’s easier than he expected it to be and to be honest, he does kind of owe them. He owes everyone at least something, he supposes.

He shrugs, turning to make his way into OTHERMART. When he turns back to look at Kim and Vance, they wave him away urgently. It seems like they really mean it. Well.

OTHERMART is as colorful and busy as ever, shelves stacked with all kinds of products. It’s overwhelming, the lights so bright and the people so loud. Sunny isn’t here very often, not doing a lot of shopping himself. Mari is usually the one to stock their fridge, but he doesn’t know when he last looked into it in search of food. Hero and Mari cook a lot in their kitchen, supposedly also shopping together. Mari can’t carry the grocery bags very well on her own, after all.

Maybe that’s not a good thought right now.

He turns right, entering the candy store. It’s a flurry of colorful candy, the scent overbearing. Sunny vaguely feels sick. What looks so appealing in Headspace makes his stomach churn on sight when he is stuck in real, uncomfortable life. He doesn’t have much time to stew over it, however, as an employee of the store catches his attention with a joyful greeting.

“Welcome! We hope our candy makes you smile!” she chimes in well-practiced confidence. Her whole appearance screams ‘cute’ at Sunny, from the twin buns to her pink attire. He doesn’t know if that makes him feel any better.

“Curtsey! How often do I have to tell you?! It’s SMILEY, not SMILE!” They both jump at Miss Candice’s outburst. Curtsey shakes it off very fast, however, mumbling something under her breath. Sunny resolves to grab some candy as fast as he can.

Miss Candice is somebody Sunny can’t bring himself to like. It’s not like he is any better than her, but at the very least, Sunny doesn’t hide the fact that he is rotten inside. She hides her teeth behind cute pigtails and tons of sickly sweet candy. A grown woman drowning in pink and lace. It’s not his place to judge, but that doesn’t mean he has to like her any better.

Sunny takes a careful look inside his wallet. After his little journey today, only ten dollars look back at him pitifully. He shrugs, getting to work. He chooses a few types of candy, some of which he has seen sticking out of Vance’s pocket earlier. He takes care not to forget the taffy. When he checks out the bag of candy at the counter, he is left with a few even sadder coins.

You really need a job, you slob.

Well, there is nothing he can do about it now. He slinks out of OTHERMART with a bag of candy in his hands, so at the very least, he is good enough for that. Kim and Vance are still there, keeping themselves busy with throwing stones into the wishing fountain. He’s very sure that’s not what you’re supposed to throw in there.

They catch him before he has to make himself known, rushing towards him at a speed that makes him want to recoil. Kim rips the bag out of his hands, a wide grin on her face.

“Yes! Finally, after this hell of a week!” Kim looks into the bag, rummaging through it with force. “Oh, you really got the taffy. Didn’t think you actually listened, you look like the lights are on but nobody's home, you know.”

A simple thank you would have sufficed. Or nothing at all, since it’s Sunny’s fault, anyway. He shrugs, turning to leave. Mari probably has noticed his absence by now since she usually stays home on Saturdays to study even more than she does on normal days.

“Hey, wait a second. You’re Sunny, right?” Kim’s voice is still so loud. He turns to face her again. “Wanna sit by the wishing fountain for a bit? Aubrey talks a lot about you.”

Sunny doesn’t want to know what exactly Aubrey has to tell the two about him since he is very sure it’s nothing positive. Maybe how he destroyed her group of friends. Or Mari’s future. How he’s too much of a coward to look her in the eye these days.

He doesn’t get to stew over these thoughts, however, as Kim is already pulling him towards the wishing fountain when he realizes what’s going on. She pushes him to sit on the edge of it, his feet dangling in the air awkwardly. Kim sits down next to him, Vance on her other side. They are already munching away on the candy when he turns to look at them.

Kim shoves a piece of taffy in his face, not taking it away until he grabs it from her. Sunny begins to wonder when people started forcing food on him, looking at the candy in misery. It occurs to him that he didn’t eat anything for breakfast, so it might be clever to boost his blood sugar a little. He unwraps the taffy and when he puts it into his mouth, it’s nearly bearable.

“Good, right? A shame the stuff is so expensive. The Candy Lady is seriously asking for theft with these prices,” Kim says, and Vance nods, arms crossed and eyes closed as if in deep thought.

Sunny isn’t sure if there is any way to excuse their shoplifting, but he nods in agreement anyway. Kim adjusts her red-rimmed glasses with a small pleased smile on her face. It’s fascinating how the two of them can go through half a bag of candy in the time it takes Sunny to eat the one taffy that was forced on him.

“So,” Kim starts, “Aubrey left to go over to your house earlier. Said she wanted to visit your sister.”

It’s a good thing Sunny is out of the house, then.

“Don’t look at me like that, I think it’s good she still has Mari in her life. Shit really fucked her up a few years ago, you know. I mean, we’re the better friends, obviously, but still. The more people she has, the better.”

Sunny is staring at the floor below him, wishing it would just swallow him whole. He knows he hurt Aubrey. He deserves to hear it every day. It still makes him want to curl up into a ball, however.

“I mean, you would know, I guess. Mari’s your sister, after all.” Kim pauses to dig through the bag of candy again. “But to be honest, I think Aubrey’s having a hard time lately. She doesn’t want to talk about it, but as her best friend, I just know these things. So. Thank you for being there for her. I guess. You guys probably talk a lot, with her spending so much time over at your place.”

Oh. Oh no. Sunny doesn’t know how to tell her she has the completely wrong idea. Well, partially wrong, at the very least - Mari is always there for Aubrey, and always will be. Sunny hasn’t spoken to her in months. He fiddles with the drawstring of his sweatshirt, examining the fabric with artificial interest.

It goes on like this for a while. Kim and Vance are surprisingly good company, never mentioning Sunny’s quiet nature, just letting him listen and requesting a nod or a shake of his head from time to time. Kim is rowdy, punching his arm with vigor when she feels like he is spacing out. Vance just seems happy to be here with his sister, honestly, something Sunny wishes he could relate to. Mari would tolerate him with a strained smile, and he wouldn’t be able to watch her squirm for longer than a few minutes.

The time goes by with unexpected speed, Kim sharing stories upon stories about Aubrey, still in the false belief Sunny and Aubrey are on speaking terms. It’s selfish, maybe, but he absorbs those little things about her like a sponge, fondly imagining them. And he can. In the end, Aubrey is still Aubrey - impatient but kind, headstrong but always standing by what she believes in, loyal against all odds. The revelation that she and the rest of the hooligans are making an effort to make life better around Faraway sounds so like her that he doesn’t question it even once.

Kim looks happy just talking about her, her smile reaching her eyes in a way that makes her positively glow. Her glasses are reflecting the sun’s bright light and Sunny thinks he can feel its warmth on his back. When she isn’t busy punching Sunny in the arm, she is making grand gestures to back up her claims. He thinks it’s comforting that Kim will be there for Aubrey no matter what.

He finds that after everything, he still has the audacity to miss Aubrey. Like all of his former friends, she has left a void inside him he doesn’t know how to fill. Hearing others talk about her is better than nothing, but it doesn’t compare to the real thing. He wants Kim to keep talking as much as he wants her to stop so he can take a minute to numb himself to the ache again.

It’s just when he thinks he seriously needs a break that the object of Kim’s admiration appears in Sunny’s vision. Aubrey is coming up to them, her steps wide and determined. He doesn’t have a chance to hop off his seat fast enough, trapped there once again like a scared rabbit. Every bit of warmth has drained away as if scared off by his fear of imminent doom.

It’s one thing to hear about Aubrey, to reminisce fondly, and another entirely to be the object of her undivided attention. His back is stiff as a board. If Kim notices, she doesn’t show it, waving her friend over eagerly.

Aubrey is in front of them in no time, her pink hair tousled by the early summer breeze. She is a little out of breath, having walked up to them with urgency.

“Hey, Aubrey,” Kim greets, but Aubrey is busy giving Sunny a poisonous look he is sure he deserves but doesn’t know the most recent occasion for. He shrinks in his seat a little.

“Care to explain yourself?”, Aubrey asks, her voice strained. One of her brows is twitching in agitation. Kim seems to pick up the mood, hurrying to explain the situation.

“He’s just sitting with us. The Candy Lady kicked us out of her store again. Seriously, Aubrey, everything is fine,” Kim tries to soothe her. It only serves to make her angrier, somehow. Aubrey grabs him by the arm, not as forcefully as he knows she could, making him look at her.

“You disappear from home without telling anyone and when I find you, you’re wasting space somewhere in town, without a care in the world? Do you know how worried Mari is? You don’t even have your phone with you! Seriously, Sunny, is there a brain in that thick skull of yours?”

She is angry. Sunny once again finds it hard to really look at her, but even he can see that. Her grip is tight, her lips thinned down to a line. He thinks even Kel would shrink away from that look. He admits not taking his phone with him was a dumb idea, but it had been a spur of the moment. Just a sliver of carelessness. Just him toying with the thought of not coming back today, while knowing all too well that he couldn’t leave just yet.

“I even had to go over to Basil’s to ask if you were around today at all, only to hear you didn’t show your face there either! I think some part of my brain shriveled up and died for every second I had to spend talking to him!”

Sunny mumbles a quiet “sorry” into the shoulder of the arm Aubrey is currently keeping hostage. He’s leaning away from her so desperately he is close to falling into the wishing fountain.

She pulls him forward with so much strength he is suddenly standing again. When he looks at her, her face is hard to read. She has the scrunched-up face of someone who wants to maim in anger, but there is something else in her eyes. She turns her gaze away when she notices him staring.

"I'm taking this numbskull back home… Mari won't believe he is fine until she sees him in one piece…. Good work keeping an eye on him, I guess."

Kim grins at Aubrey, patting her shoulder. "No problem. He's surprisingly easy to look after."

He's right here… And not a stray cat. He doesn't even know why it's such a huge deal. He can step out of the house whenever he wants to. Aubrey grabs him around the wrist, pulling him along. She might look tough, but Sunny still sees the way she softens when she looks at her friends.

"Let's meet up tomorrow. I think I need a week-long vacation after today," Aubrey says, waving goodbye to Kim and Vance. They voice their agreement, but Sunny is too fixated on Aubrey's pink mop of hair to notice completely.

She turns and starts walking at a brisk pace Sunny has trouble keeping up with. She is taller than him, taller than Basil, too. He has trouble making out the motive on the back of her jacket because he is fighting for air halfway back home.

He paws at her jacket to get her to slow down when he thinks his knees are going to give out beneath him. She stops, nearly making him crash into her in the process. She doesn’t let go of him, but she turns around to see what he wants. An unidentifiable emotion washes over her face like a wave.

“You okay?” she asks, in that tone that is so unmistakably Aubrey it makes a lump in his throat appear. He waves his free hand at her in a way he hopes conveys his need for a break or a slower pace. He’s still trying to catch his breath.

The streets around them are quiet, only the rustling of the trees and the faraway sound of car engines in the air. The sun shines behind her, casting her face in shadow. She bites her lip, chewing on it. Sunny thinks it might be the frustration finally catching up with her.

“Sorry, Sunny. I know you… I know. I’m sorry. I lost my patience even though I said I wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

He has no idea what she is talking about. All of his thoughts fall out of his brain at once. He expected her to be angry, but she loosens her grip on him just slightly, resuming the walk home at a gentler pace. He doesn’t know what she means.

He feels as if he has hurt her, in ways more far-reaching than hurting Mari and destroying the violin. When he starts fishing for memories, they evade him like water through his fingers. He can touch them, but there’s no grip. Once again, something keeps him from looking for too long.

The rest of the walk home is spent in silence, the yard of his home showing up slowly. Aubrey doesn’t get the chance to knock before the door swings open. Hero is staring at them for a few seconds before he slumps a little, like bricks of tension are falling off his shoulders all at once.

“Thank goodness, I think Mari is this close to calling the police,” he says, with a tone of relief and resignation alike, ushering both Sunny and Aubrey into the living room. Sunny thinks it’s probably only Hero worrying for his sister, but when he takes in Mari’s slumped-over form in her wheelchair, the assumption feels silly.

This time, it’s Sunny walking over to her, tempted to touch her shoulder, but he doesn’t. Instead, he comes to a halt in front of her, awkward silence like cotton in his throat. She looks up to him, her tense face lighting up the second she sees him.

Ah. Well, it would probably not be easy to explain to their mother how Sunny had disappeared from right underneath Mari’s nose. He takes the tense smile on her face as relief, knowing she doesn’t have to find an excuse for that. She is tasked with looking after something she doesn’t want near her most of the time, so Sunny thinks the others should cut her some slack.

“You’re back!”, she says, as if that was ever in question. Well, maybe it was. But not today. Not today and probably not tomorrow. “You were just gone this morning, and your phone was ringing upstairs when I tried to call you, and nobody had seen you around the neighborhood all day… And then one of our neighbors mentioned how he thought he had seen you take the bus this morning, but he wasn’t sure about that either.”

She pulls him down to her for a hug. He doesn’t know how to escape without touching her, frozen in the embrace. She smells like floral perfume, her touch warm. When she releases him, he can only blink at her in confusion. What’s the big deal? So he was out for today. He is in the house a lot, shut into his room, but he does leave from time to time. He leaves for school, for fresh air, to look after Basil once in a while. Sunny shakes his head, not understanding what Mari is even on about.

She looks him over, patting down his arms as if checking for damage. She is satisfied with whatever she finds, it seems, releasing a breath. “Sorry. You’re back and that’s all that counts.”

Hero walks up behind her, putting a hand on Mari’s shoulder. He smiles at Sunny, but the expression is blurry to him at best. “See, he’s fine. Aubrey found him sitting with Kim and Vance at the wishing fountain.” He looks at Sunny expectantly. “You want something to eat, Sunny? We made some egg sandwiches earlier. You look exhausted.”

He’s not hungry but he is suddenly aware of how his sweaty shirt clings to him beneath the sweatshirt, how shaky his hands are. His backpack is even heavier with the violin than it was with the iron hammer a few days ago. He feels drained, now that Hero mentions it. He shakes his head, but Mari already has him on his sleeve with one hand, turning her wheelchair with the other, so he is suddenly sitting in the kitchen with a huge sandwich in front of his face.

Hero, Mari, and, to his surprise, Aubrey are looking at him from the other places on the table. Mari is right next to him, pushing the plate closer to him insistently, so he takes a small bite. It looks like Hero’s cooking, warm and familiar, but its homely taste is lost on Sunny.

“I called Polly a few minutes ago to let Basil know that Sunny is fine. Kel also knows. So all is well that ends well, right?” Hero is rubbing Mari’s back like he always does when she isn’t perfectly happy. Sunny remembers him always doing his best to keep his friends happy - the food, the head pats, the breaking up of fights mostly between Aubrey and Kel. Sunny feels bad that Hero’s smile doesn’t reach him at all. He doesn’t know why the other still tries, anyway. Maybe to keep Mari happy.

“Thank god. Those two idiots are so annoying,” Aubrey mumbles, “And fucking hypocrites while we’re at it.”

“Aubrey…” Mari has that look on her face that means ‘I’m not angry, just disappointed’, a look everybody fears and admires in equal measure, her brows low and her lips slightly pursed.

“I mean it,” Aubrey says with bitter finality.

Sunny tunes the others out in favor of concentrating on his battle with his huge sandwich. The meal has every thinkable advantage over him and he thinks it knows that. He makes it through maybe a fourth of it before he is feeling sick, so he shoves the plate away. You win today, sandwich. You win today.

Mari doesn’t seem too happy about the wasted food, taking the plate from him with a tense look on her face. He’s sorry. Maybe he should have forced himself and hoped for the best. Maybe it would have stayed down. It’s Hero’s cooking, after all. He shrinks under Mari’s gaze, but she only ruffles his hair a little.

Once again, he feels like he is making her do so many things she shouldn’t have to. He’s briefly angry at his mum. Making Mari look after the brother that put her in a wheelchair has a sick kind of humor to it.

The sandwich, or rather the few bites of it, is heavy in his stomach. His eyes are suddenly heavy, too. It’s the first time today he realizes how tense he is, how that anxious energy keeps hollowing out his bone marrow. How carrying around the violin felt like carrying a sack of stones all day instead of wood. He shouldn’t complain, but he can’t deny it any longer, either.

The three of them release him from their clutches when his eyes fall shut all on their own, Sunny nearly falling face-first onto the table in sleepy drowsiness. He barely manages to hide the violin back in the toy box before he crawls into bed, the splintered wood taking its place next to the hammer and knife. The toy box is lockable, and it isn’t suspicious on its own. It finds a new place beneath his bed, once again hidden in dark shadows. The key is hidden between random things in one of his desk drawers.

The remaining daylight admits defeat against the little horrors in his room, but Sunny is numb to the fact. It’s not supposed to be nice, or safe. He doesn’t deserve to feel that way. Thinking otherwise is just plain escapism.

“I think… I think he’s getting a little better, lately,” Mari says. She can feel the corners of her mouth twitch into a semblance of a smile. “He was gone this morning but he found his way home all by his own. And Aubrey said he was with two of her friends. He wasn’t scared or lost. You know how he is. I think that’s a good sign.”

Hero is looking at her from the other side of the kitchen table, chewing on his lip for a second. He avoids her eyes, breathing calmly before he faces her again. It’s only Mari and Hero in the room. Aubrey had left to go home a few minutes ago, apparently exhausted as well.

“Mari,” he says. And she knows. She knows what he wants to say. But she is grasping every little straw she can find, no matter what.

“No,” she says, “I really think it’s good, this time. I have a good feeling, Hero.”

Her boyfriend has a pained look in his eye, searching for her hand beneath the table. He takes it, squeezing it a little. He is safe, warm, sturdy. Mari loves him for it more than she can describe.

“Mari, you know that’s… That’s what he does. What he’s been doing for the last four years.”

Mari doesn’t know if the hot feeling is anger or stabbing sadness. She purses her lips again, squeezing his hand even tighter. “That doesn’t mean it has to be the same this time,” she sounds so much more accusing than she intended to, “Don’t you want him to get better?”

He blinks at her with wildly wide eyes, as if her words pierced him right in the heart. She feels bad the second the words leave her mouth. “I’m sorry, that was… That wasn’t okay. I’m sorry, Hero.”

“No, it’s alright. Of course I want him to get better. Of course I do.” He shakes his head at her. His smile is a little strained. “But I also want you to be careful. You never take it well when he… When it doesn’t work out the way you think it will. You have your own problems on top of everything and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Of course she has her own problems, but she can deal with them just fine. Mari takes them on one by one. She has Hero on her side and Aubrey looking after her more than she wants to admit. She knows Hero is only looking out for her, but she is a big sister before everything else. If Sunny can’t leave things behind, neither can Mari.

There is no way she wouldn’t be hurt when Sunny is still like this. When it looks like he’s getting better only for him to spiral right back to the beginning. When she thinks he has the smallest smile on his face one day only to find him in the kitchen at night on the other, shaking like a leaf, not recognizing her even when she shakes him and asks what is wrong. When he only has horror in his eyes so profound it hurts when he looks at her face, repeating that he’s sorry until his voice gives out. When the morning after that, he is completely empty. No words. No smiles. No tears. She doesn’t think he remembers, either.

It was unbearable the first time and just as painful the second time, and every other time after that. It’s not like she doesn’t resent the pain, or that she doesn’t sometimes wish it could just be gone, that she could be free of this. But that would mean leaving Sunny behind on his own.

That isn’t an option. Never.

So she wants to be there for Sunny. To be there for him now, when she wasn’t there for him when he needed it before everything. When she had closed her eyes willingly to his pain so she could still believe that everything was okay.

There had been a rude awakening. She is done wallowing in self-pity. Mari was always a believer in the fact that to get what she wants, she has to work for it. It isn’t anybody’s fault things are the way they are, or rather, there is no use in trying to blame anyone.

It’s new territory for her, having to be patient. She is the type to take action, in her academic career, with the piano, with her friends. But there is no clear path of action here but to be patient with Sunny.

It’s only her own skewed perception when she sees his eyes so hollow, his arms so thin. When she thinks there are dark shadows wrapped around his throat. It’s her own fault for being disappointed and worried when he doesn’t speak at all for months. When she thinks he isn’t entirely there. When she wakes up at night, shaken by nightmares. It’s her own fault for being that way.

So she’ll believe in Sunny. When he is ready, she’ll be there for him. When, as everybody else has said, he is finally ready for a change within himself, she’ll be the first to take his hand.

Watching spring turn into summer, she is sure that change is coming, nearly tasting it in the air. The thing about change is, forever and always, that it’s consistent. The other thing is this: the nature of such a change is always unpredictable.

Sunny has the decency not to question how he deserves the current situation, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t confused anyway.

He knows that hiccups sometimes happen - especially when he feels so bad he doesn’t want to burden even Omori with his presence that day - and it isn’t the first time he finds himself without the other boy in Headspace. He just slips through the other’s fingers like that when they cross the line between White Space and Headspace and gets lost. It happens. It’s not a huge deal.

Well, usually it isn’t. It isn’t so bad when he just drops into the woods and lets himself be buried beneath territorial bunnies. They don’t really do a lot besides growling and piling on top of him until he thinks he might suffocate soon. However, Omori finds him before it comes to that without fail every time, so he is never really perturbed.

The occupants of Headspace are a peculiar mix of Sunny’s imagination and the unpredictable nature of dreams. He doesn’t control them or write scripts for their behavior; most of the time, he doesn’t even think of them consciously until they suddenly appear the next time he visits. Omori very often mutters beneath his breath that his job would be a whole lot easier if his friends and foes were controllable like that.

Alas, they’re not. Sunny is often left to wonder what kind of stimuli inspired his brain for the next frivolous situation Omori and his friends find themselves in. He would feel guilty if the other didn’t enjoy cutting things to pieces with his knife so much.

However, Sunny’s current problem probably isn’t going to be solved by the cut of a knife alone, he thinks miserably.

He is currently occupied with finding a place to hide in Sweetheart’s colossal castle, avoiding Sprout Moles all the while.

Sunny is used to Sweetheart’s antics. He has watched her through Omori’s eyes more often than he’d like, agreeing with the other that she is more obnoxious than anything else. Unfortunately, Hero is often the victim of her affections, and he pities both his friend and Captain Spaceboy for every minute they had to spend with her.

He has no clue whatsoever why his brain has cooked up a scenario in which it drops him directly into her bedroom, interrupting her in what she called a ‘crucial poetry writing session for her eagerly waiting fans’.

Maybe he is, plainly, a masochist.

The only thing he knows is that, in her quest for love, she somehow determined him a suitable marriage candidate.

He knows why he left her to Omori in the past. It’s horrible.

It’s probably the age, he supposes. Actually, now that he thinks about it, Sweetheart doesn’t have a vast pool of male candidates to pick from that are close in age to her. Or not… Well, Sprout Moles. Considering these factors, he does kind of understand why she would react to him that way.

Still, he is probably the worst person to ask for a thing like marriage. Oh god. Where is Hero when Sunny needs him? He has no doubt his friend could distract Sweetheart with a single, dazzling smile.

But Hero isn’t here, and neither is Omori. So Sunny makes his way through the main foyer, carefully avoiding the patrolling guards. When one comes dangerously close, his only option is to slip into the door on the end of the long corridor, so ridiculously pink his eyes hurt, revealing what looks like a huge kitchen.

The chefs are working on a cake, as he gathers when they scream something about missing ingredients for icing - it gives him the opportunity he needs to sneak past them into the next room.

He is relieved and absolutely dumbfounded when he finds Mari sitting on a picnic blanket in one of the rooms behind the kitchens. She waves at him like nothing is out of place, surrounded by pink walls and chandeliers and portraits of Sweetheart’s obnoxious face. She has a picnic basket with her, and a big thermos which he assumes contains tea.

He sits down next to her shakily.

“Oh! Sunny! It’s great you’re alright,” she greets him, her voice way too cheerful for a situation like this.

“Hmmh,” Sunny croaks. He won’t feel his legs anymore in a few minutes if he keeps sitting on his knees like that, but he is so tense he can’t get comfortable.

“Want some strawberries? I stole them from the kitchen. I don’t think they’ll miss them, hehe.”

He shakes his head, staring at the door in a mix of horror and the slowly settling acceptance of his fate. He is trapped in this castle, and there are only so many rooms they could look in for him. Mari’s presence won’t save him.

“I saw the others in front of the castle gates earlier. I was wondering why my little brother was even more cliff-faced than usual,” she says amicably. When he looks at her, she is smiling at him. There is no fear, no tense distance. She is just happy to be here.

This is Omori’s big sister, not Sunny’s. His misery hasn’t touched her yet.

“You know, it would be great to have another picnic together. You’re with us so rarely! Here, won’t you have some tea at least? Bringing it in here wasn’t easy.”

She pushes a warm cup with sweet-smelling tea in it into his hands. The warmth seeps into his cold fingers, impossible to turn away. He holds onto it with a firm grip.

Mari smiles at him, reaching out to pat him on the shoulder. Sunny is one year older than her here in Headspace, but she still acts like a big sister to him on the rare occasion she sees him. Some days, it’s a great source of comfort - on others, he can’t bear her kindness. He isn’t sure what he thinks about it today.

His shaking makes it hard to drink from the cup.

“Want to help me prepare some food for the others? I think they won’t take long to get here, and I don’t want to be unprepared.”

The way she takes his hands and guides him through the meal preparations is painfully familiar, her touch gentle, her voice soothing and clear. When he puts some jam on a piece of toast, his hand is only slightly shaky. Mari praises him for the crookedly prepared pieces of toast as if he did anything worth mentioning.

“They’ll love them,” she says, a soft coo in her tone, her eyes reflecting the castle’s lights above. She puts the food onto plates with so much care Sunny nearly forgets where he is. “Seeing their happy faces is worth everything, don’t you agree?”

The cup of tea she handed to him earlier is already getting cold. Seeing them happy is worth everything, anything he can give. Omori’s friends are satisfied with picnics, with adventure, with simply being together. Sunny’s former friends in Faraway are not as easy to please.

When he looks into his teacup, a single, black eye is staring back at him. He knows how to make them happy. The answer is only the length of a knife’s blade away.

And still, he does this. He lets himself be comforted by Omori’s friends like there is any way to avoid the painful truth. Sunny feels the burn of tears in the back of his throat, his hands shaking again. He doesn’t deserve any comfort whatsoever.

Mari gently pries the cup out of his hands, her fingers grazing over his hands carefully. He flinches slightly, but she is firm in her grip.

“Don’t make them sad, Sunny,” she says, still holding onto his hands. The room suddenly feels so much smaller, the lights too bright. He shakes his head. He doesn’t want to make them sad anymore.

Mari smiles at him patiently, like there is something he doesn’t understand. Finally, she shakes her head gently, letting go of his hands and setting the teacup onto the picnic blanket.

“I never had the chance to tell you this, but I want you to know-”

The door opens with a deafening bang, making Sunny nearly jump out of his skin.

“Kel is here to the rescue!! You can stop crying now, Sunny!”

“Stop screaming, you idiot! Do you want another army of Sprout Moles to show up?!”

“Aubrey, please don’t hit Kel with that body pillow….”

Sunny and Mari turn around to see where the commotion is coming from, but a mop of black hair suddenly blocks Sunny’s vision. Before he can react, Omori pushes himself between Sunny’s arms like a spoiled cat, separating Sunny and Mari from each other. Sunny is so surprised he can’t do anything but hold onto the other in a gentle hug.

Omori’s neutral mask mixes with a sour expression. Sunny notices how he clings onto his knife with one hand, the other clutched tightly into his shirt.

“Hey, everyone! Sunny and I made you some snacks, so sit down!” Mari is as cheerful as ever, waving to Kel, Aubrey and Hero on the other end of the room. Her eyes meet Omori’s when he side-eyes her for a few seconds, his gaze stern, but the moment passes when he stares at Sunny instead. Weird.

Kel is stuffing his face with food the second Mari suggests it, an exasperated Aubrey and an exhausted Hero in tow, who sit down on the picnic blanket. Omori is still burning a hole into Sunny’s face with his eyes.

“It’s good to see you in one piece, Sunny. Omori said you were missing, and the Sprout Moles were going on about marriage and Sweetheart again…” Hero smiles at him apologetically. “Glad you escaped her clutches, too.”

“Imagine marrying a crazy donut lady,” Kel says, his mouth so full it’s hard to understand him. “I think I prefer the dungeons.”

“That’s because you wouldn’t know romance even if it bit you in the butt,” Aubrey huffs, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Well, forcing somebody to marry you isn’t very romantic in the first place,” Mari adds, offering Aubrey a cup of tea. “Poor Sunny looked like he’d seen a ghost.”

Omori is busy checking him over for any damage, a scowl on his face. Sunny knows the smaller boy doesn’t like it when he just disappears like this, but it’s not like he can control it. So he shrugs in apology, letting Omori do as he pleases.

When his counterpart is done with his investigation, he makes Sunny sit on his butt so he can sit between his legs, his back to him, stuffing a piece of toast with jam into his mouth. Sunny has to rest his chin on Omori’s head so he can still see the others around him.

“Marrying Sunny isn’t allowed,” Omori mutters between bites.

“Marrying Sunny wouldn’t be so bad,” Aubrey giggles, her tone airy. Sunny knows that’s just how this version of her is, still enchanted by the apparent magic of a happy ever after, so he doesn’t take it personally. “He is soft and never talks back to anyone. But I wouldn’t ever give up what we have, Omori! Sunny is like a big brother.”

Omori is unimpressed, his face wholly neutral and missing the point entirely. “Marrying Sunny isn’t allowed,” he repeats, his tone carefully even. Aubrey visibly deflates, and Sunny feels bad for her. It really is an unfortunate crush.

Hero pats Aubrey on the back, trying to comfort her. “Omori is still a little upset, Aubrey, don’t worry. You know how he thinks he can feel Sunny’s distress from miles away. I think he lost ten years of his lifespan just now.”

“Aw, little brother, there was no need to be worried in the first place! Your big sister won’t let Sweetheart take any of her boys.” Mari grins like a Cheshire cat. “Even though I know Hero thought about it for a second at the very least…”

Hero looks at Mari with big eyes and a mouth open so wide that Sunny worries he forgot how to breathe. Mari feigns sadness for a few moments before soft giggles escape her, making Hero pout slightly.

“I would never,” he says with a worried wobble in his voice.

Mari is fully laughing now, pulling Hero into a tight hug. It’s nice, Sunny thinks - even in this hell of a castle, it’s nice. Aubrey and Kel arguing about nothing is pleasant. Hero and Mari laughing like nothing worries them is lovely. The only one missing is Basil.

“He stayed behind,” Omori says, “Said he wanted to make you a flower crown for when you return.”

Sunny hums in response. That sounds like him, always supporting others from the sidelines. He wishes Basil would give himself more credit. He is wonderful in so many ways.

Sunny doesn’t show his face around Omori’s friends very often, and when he does, it’s usually like this - on accident, when things go wrong. But still, they accepted him without any questions, seeing him as somebody close to Omori. They’re not really his friends, and Mari is not really his sister, but it gives him some needed distance. For the nights when he just wants to dissolve into the purple sky of Headspace, separated into stardust, impossible to trace.

Omori holds onto one of Sunny’s arms, leaning against him. He knows he influences the other’s mood a lot, his melancholy making Omori gloomy on the better days and downright miserable on the bad ones, so it’s good he isn’t being carried in the younger boy’s heart today.

It’s a selfish thought, but the ache of missing his friends sits deep, so he entertains the idea of having a picnic in Faraway with them. In their old hiding spot, in the shade of the trees, only tiny sunspots reaching their faces and the warm summer breeze in their hair. He still remembers how the grass felt between his fingers, how good it felt to be together simply for the pleasure of it, how delicious a simple cookie can be when baked with love. He hasn’t had any of those in a long time.

“You could ask them,” Omori mumbles, his voice lost in the antics of his friends. Sunny contemplates the simple suggestion for a second. It doesn’t sound so bad. He thinks he could make it work, even.

If he asked Mari for it, she would surely do it (out of fear or her own will doesn’t change the outcome), and if Mari came, so would Hero. Likewise, Hero could ask Kel for Sunny, and Aubrey would be there for Mari as well. It would be a little trickier to convince Basil, but the blond boy eventually caves and gives into Sunny’s demands every time, so he has no doubt he would come.

They would be together, even if only for a few hours. They miss each other, and it would be an opportunity for them to catch up. If they had each other, maybe they wouldn’t even notice Sunny missing, now or after everything.

He would be a passing ache, a thing of the past. If nobody came to leave him any flowers, he would be happy about it.

When they are in White Space again, Omori has him by the wrist, knife in hand.

“I’ll be with you until the end,” the shorter boy says.

Red stains the white floor.

Delivering Pizza for Gino’s is simply impossible.

Sunny thinks himself plenty capable of reading, but whatever the Pizza Guy thinks he’s doing, it’s not writing. The notes he has been given are close to useless, the scribble on them so hard to read he thinks he’s going to get a headache just trying.

Still, Sunny has taken the job, so he must fulfill his duty to earn sweet, sweet money. After all, his violin isn’t going to repair itself, and maybe it’s just karma it’s still the root of his suffering, even with a carton of hot pizza in his hands.

Deciphering the hieroglyphs on the note is one thing; delivering the pizza is another. When he stands in front of the house he suspects is the right one, he rings the doorbell, but nothing happens aside from quiet shuffling inside.

Oh man. He rings the doorbell again, but nobody opens up.

He supposes he should take the advice he has been given and actually… Make himself known. The Pizza Guy mentioned earlier that their regulars liked an enthusiastic entrance, whatever that is supposed to mean.

“... Pizza delivery?” Sunny calls softly. The shuffling inside gets a little more prominent. Maybe that wasn’t enough? He dreads this already. Maybe he has chosen the wrong job… But it’s too late to back up now.

He takes a deep breath. Well. If it really has to be that way.

He rings the doorbell again, yelling “PIZZA DELIVERY!” in a volume he didn’t think himself capable of. He nearly drops the pizza when the door swings open, the customer taking it with great enthusiasm. His throat already hurts, but it gets the job done.

Sunny has to make two more deliveries, one another pizza and the other a box of sandwiches. Ordering sandwiches from a pizza place seems odd to him, but it is on the menu, and he isn’t going to discriminate. His job is the delivery only, not taste consultation.

The next pizza plays out roughly the same - minutes of agony trying to find out where the hell to deliver it to and screaming his lungs out to get the attention of the receiver - and Sunny is already ready to drop on the sidewalk and never leave his house ever again. Screw this. He’ll quit. This is torture.

… He would, at least, quit if it weren’t for the traitorous spark of responsibility he feels for actually getting the food delivered. Pizza Guy was kind enough to hire him practically on the spot - giving him a uniform so loud and a bike in similar colors on top of the promise to make it worth his time. His enthusiasm is kind of admirable, really. It reminds him of Kel a little, never giving up even if all odds are against him.

Maybe he is overthinking this.

The last package contains a few sandwiches. It’s a ridiculous amount of food, but that might just be Sunny’s skewed point of view, who thinks half of a toast in the morning is too much and requires at least a day of torturous attempts to stomach that little piece of bread alone.

He reads the instructions on the note Pizza Guy has written. It takes him about ten minutes until he thinks he might know what it says. Finally, Sunny makes out following words:

Yellow house, blue rug, orange door.

Hmm. That sounds familiar, but still, he checks out the neighborhood for a matching location. In the end, his suspicions turn out to be accurate, and he finds himself looking at Kel’s house with a certain sense of dread. Hector is sleeping in his dog house peacefully, unaware of Sunny’s predicament.

Again, it’s not like Sunny dislikes Kel. His bone-crushing hugs were a little scary at the time, but nowadays, when a fit of anxiety catches Sunny in its claws, he wishes for one of them often enough, if only to ground him. Back then, it felt like Kel could squeeze all of Sunny’s malice out of him, all of the fear, all of the useless worries.

Maybe it was also that Sunny had severe concerns about the air not reaching his lungs, but those are minor details he is willing to overlook.
When he goes to ring the doorbell, his hands shake a little. He wipes his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans, waiting anxiously for somebody to open the door.

It takes a minute, and doubt is growing in the back of his mind. When Sunny draws a deep breath to call for the house’s occupants, the door swings open before he gets to do so.

Kel looks at him, wide-eyed, his mouth slightly agape.

“...Sandwich delivery?” Sunny wheezes when the air leaves his lungs. It’s a lot softer than he hoped it would be, but Kel beams at him nonetheless.

“Oh man!! Sunny! You don’t know what kind of catastrophe you’re preventing right now!”

Kel pulls him into the house before he can protest and takes the bag of sandwiches from him while he’s at it. Under normal circumstances, that would be the end of his task, but Kel is Kel and traps the people around him in whatever kind of scheme he has in mind right now; escape not an option from the start.

Kel’s and Hero’s room is broken into two halves by the way chaos stops short of Hero’s side alone. Kel is fond of collecting various trinkets and plasters his walls with posters and photos without any mercy. Most of it is basketball-themed, with faces on them Sunny doesn’t recognize. His bed is messy, laundry scattered on the floor, some of it even hanging off the basketball hoop hanging on the wall. The shelves are stuffed full of action figures and various other colorful keepsakes.

When Sunny takes a second to look them over, he notices the Captain Spaceboy figure he gifted Kel on his birthday years ago, still in pristine condition, displayed lovingly between the other figures. A pet rock sits next to it, and Sunny remembers the many hours they spent playing. Behind both items, the comic books Sunny used to stuff into Kel’s backpack are stored neatly.

Huh. Kel must still really like Captain Spaceboy, then.

Hero’s side of the room is as pristine as Sunny remembers it being. Just with a lot more trophies around. And lots of books for college. There are many pictures on the wall above his desk - various ones of Mari, some of them together, some of their whole group of friends. Sunny still can’t see his own face in any of the pictures.

Hero is slumped over his desk, his face flat on the wood of it. He groans in misery when Kel goes to shake him roughly.

“Hero, Sunny’s here to save you from your gloominess! No idea how he knew you needed help, though.”

Hero turns to look at Sunny, who raises a hand in greeting with only minimal shaking. The older boy seems surprised for a second before a small laugh escapes him.

“Looks like Sunny has taken on a part-time job, Kel.”

Hero takes one of the sandwiches offered to him. He chews with a very pleased look on his face, humming contently.

“Oh, that sounds right. Well, it’s a lucky coincidence Sunny delivered your sandwiches! Now it’s double the surprise, hehe.”

Kel is grinning from ear to ear, going over to Sunny to squeeze him into a side hug.

“Nice colors on that uniform, dude.”

Sunny thinks he can feel his cheeks warming up. The uniform wasn’t his idea; he just has to wear it. He coughs, uncomfortable and a little miffed, but Kel is simply laughing at him, squeezing him a little harder.

“Don’t tease him. For all I know, a certain somebody could use a job as well.”

Kel gawks at the statement. He leans on Sunny in fake dismay, his cheek resting on Sunny’s head. He is once more aware of how small he is next to his childhood friend. Sunny looks to the side, wounded. His pride is hurt and bruised enough.

“I’m training! I don’t have time for jobs! And most of them are super dull anyway. I don’t know how Sunny does it.”

Years of pent-up guilt and a deadline.

Hero grins at his brother, but Sunny still sees the dark shadows underneath his eyes. It seems he still is in the habit of overworking himself, a trait he shares with Mari. They’re a scary couple, the two of them. Sunny supposes they could make a living off of selling the trophies they get in the future. It’s a miracle how the people around them don’t end up having inferiority complexes.

He is pulled back into the moment by Kel shaking him, so he looks up to his former friend, eyes wide in confusion.

“Ah, you’re probably still on the job! Sorry for dragging you along like that. I was just excited. Let’s walk you back to Gino’s!”

“I’ll pass for now since my professor will kill me if I don’t get this done today, but I’m sure you two will have fun without me.”

Kel is pouting a little, sending Hero a stern look, but he snaps out of it before Sunny can protest. They owe him nothing. He has taken enough of their time by simply being here in the first place.

“Your loss, Mister Student of the Year.”

They’re walking back to Gino’s a moment later, Kel wheeling Sunny’s bike along for him. It’s strangely comfortable. Kel has a certain kind of magic around him that soothes people into a sense of security. Even though he still looks at Sunny like that whenever their eyes meet.

It’s not any easier to meet that gaze now than it was a few days ago, but Kel smiles at him all the same. Sunny feels like he has troubled Kel enough for a lifetime, but the other insists on walking him back with gentle but firm determination.

It’s very like him. The warmth makes the ache of missing him even worse.

“Gotta admire you for how hard you work for college, Sunny! Having Mari for a big sister probably makes you that way, heh. I feel ya.”

Sunny looks at him, puzzled to hell and back. College?

Kel seems to pick up on his confusion, reaching over the bike to shake Sunny by the shoulder amicably.

“Don’t think you can hide it, no shame in starting late with saving up for it. I’m betting everything on that scholarship, but Hero keeps nagging me about it.”

Kel thinks he’s… Going to college. Kel believes he’s saving up money for college. Sunny doesn’t want to get old enough even to consider it. Kel still has time, but Sunny doesn’t. There is no future for college and student loans in Sunny’s case.

His former friend takes Sunny’s startled silence as an affirmation, however.

“Time really flies, huh? Hey, how about we hang out a little more before we split up for college and everything.” Kel smiles at him in the way that makes Sunny want to hide again. “I know it’s… Not your fault you can’t always be around, but we can still make the most of it.”

It’s a surprising suggestion. Sunny looks away, needing to process it. There is a lot to unpack here, and he doesn’t understand half of it. Of course it’s his fault, everything is. He doesn’t know what Kel is gaining from pretending it isn’t. Maybe it’s a cruel joke. Maybe Kel only wanted to come to get Sunny alone, not like in school where everyone is looking. Maybe he wants Sunny to know what Mari feels like, what Hero feels like every time he looks at her.

The fear feels useless in the face of his numbered days, but it’s still there.

“Oh, there we are. Anyway, I think we should hang out more! Know what, I’m gonna get you after school tomorrow. No excuses!”

Kel is grinning, shoving the bike into Sunny’s hands with force. Sunny tries to clear his throat.

“...Work. Tomorrow.”

Kel tilts his head, a smile still on his face and eyes friendly. Sunny doesn’t know how to take it.

“Look at you, all busy. Still no excuse, though! I can tag along. Are you here at Gino’s again tomorrow?”

“Ah… Um. Tutoring.” Sunny can feel a bead of sweat trickling down his jaw.

Kel is laughing, gleeful for some reason. He ruffles Sunny’s hair roughly, making him squirm underneath the weight.

“Wow. Well, I guess you are smart, so that makes sense. I’m glad you’re leaving your comfort zone.” Kel gives him a fond look. “But I don’t think they’d mind two tutors for the price of one! And you’ll have moral support.”

Sunny can’t argue. It’s fruitless to argue with Kel anyway, and the thought of not going alone is kind of comforting. He is perplexed, but a content feeling takes root in his heart. He is acutely aware of how much he misses Kel. Maybe… A day or two wouldn’t be so bad. He can use this. Maybe he can get Kel and Basil to hang out again as well. The two of them seemed to get along at school well enough.

So he nods, still unsure. Kel beams at him so brightly he rivals Sunny’s namesake, giving him another side-hug.

“Great! Really. It’s great,” Kel says, voice shaky all of a sudden. When Sunny looks up at him, he can see his smile slip a little, a shadow over his eyes. “I’m… I’m really glad you’re doing better, Sunny.”

Before Sunny can question it, the other lets go of him, nearly shoving him over in his haste.

“Well, I don’t want to keep you! Get that paycheck! And don’t forget I’m going to get you after school tomorrow, yeah?”

Sunny waves back weakly to Kel, who leaves so suddenly, his back turned. He is alone on Faraway Plaza, the afternoon sun slowly retreating. The summer breeze is strangely warm, but Sunny feels disconnected. Like he can’t understand the people around him no matter how hard he tries. Seeing Kel leave so suddenly leaves a dull ache in his chest, and Sunny keeps staring after him for a little while.

He wishes Kel wouldn’t force himself like this. He knows the other is sometimes too kind for his own sake, but Sunny is too selfish to turn him away. If he can keep small fragments of that kindness and take it to where he’ll be going, he thinks he’s going to be okay even beneath cold, hard soil.

In the end, he is twenty dollars closer to the end of summer.

When he gets home, Mari is at the door before he can even take off his shoes, tugging at his arm insistently.

“Mom isn’t going to come home tonight, but you have to come and see what I made you for dinner! Hero showed me a few days ago, and it’s perfect if I say so myself.” Mari has the air of a very proud older sibling around her, so Sunny can’t get himself to break her heart by turning her down, even though the thought of food alone is too much.

He doesn’t want to be ungrateful on top of being horrible overall.

So, when she sits him down on the kitchen table and presents him with a plate with a massive steak on it, he fights the urge to flee the second he sees it. There are vegetables on the side, sorted by color like she used to do for him when he was younger, and he refused to touch broccoli with a stick if he could. These days, everything is equally awful.

She puts her wheelchair next to his chair, leaning close. He can smell her perfume, see the way her hair falls into her face. Mari looks at him with a smile on her lips, gesturing for him to try the steak expectantly.

“It’s your favorite, and we haven’t had steak in a while. I made it just the way you like it, so don’t make a face,” she chuckles, rubbing circles into his back. He wonders if she can feel the cold sweat through his shirt. “I need to get some food into you while you’re feeling good.”

Again with the cryptic talk. He doesn’t dare to feel annoyed, but it’s in the back of his throat. The last time he felt frustrated, it didn’t end well.

Just eat the food.

He takes up the fork and knife and starts cutting away at the steak. When he puts a piece into his mouth, it’s surprisingly… Okay. It’s not like he remembers it, but also not repulsing. The smell is bearable. He can see the love Mari put into making the meal, and that may just be the magic in question.

He looks at her, still chewing, and gives her a thumbs up. Her expression is so bright Sunny nearly feels bad for it. She leans in for a hug, which he doesn’t flinch away from, at the very least, but it’s still a mystery to him why she is so happy about him shoving some food into his face. He shrugs, continuing to eat.

“I knew you’d like it. That’s just big-sister-intuition. Hero owes me five bucks.” Mari looks smug, cupping her chin like a cartoon villain with a grin, unaware of Sunny’s pointed look.

He is only a few bites in before he can feel himself getting full, but to be honest, he doesn’t feel like stopping now. Mari is looking at him so expectantly, so happy, and he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to eat without wanting to bite off his tongue next.

He is aware of his hunger for the first time in ages.

Mari leaves him to his meal to wash some of the dishes in the sink, and he keeps fighting on valiantly. But Sunny isn’t a fighter. He’s good at curling up and hoping for the best, but he can’t hit back to save his life. So the outcome of this little battle was predetermined even before it started.

When he finishes eating, the steak gone, the room around him is spinning and distorting like the air above hot asphalt in the summer heat. He can feel cold sweat on his forehead, and suddenly, a big wave of nausea is rolling over him.

He leans over the table, a miserable sigh escaping him. Maybe, if he stays like this, it will stay down… Only this once. He wipes the sweat off his forehead with shaky fingers. Another cold wave of nausea has him groaning quietly.

Mari looks at him from the sink, dropping the plate in her hand into the water. She is next to him in a flash, brushing his fringe out of his face.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?” Mari’s voice trembles in thinly veiled fear, and Sunny just shakes his head. He knows what’s going to happen, but he refuses to give in this easily. Mari made this with love.

Mari’s cookies… Have much more love baked into them. I could eat them forever.

When he gets up from his chair, he is dizzy. His sister grabs him by the arm, her cool fingers soothing on his warm skin.

“You can use my bathroom. Don’t go up the stairs like that,” she says, making Sunny feel sick with something else besides the sheer amount of food he just shoved down his throat.

It ends like this: Sunny’s head down the toilet bowl of Mari’s bathroom. He doesn’t know if his eyes just tear up in pure exhaustion and misery or if his heart is bleeding through his eyes, but his face is wet when he touches it. He coughs, and his throat burns so badly it makes him bend over the porcelain again.

Mari is next to him, rubbing his back in soothing circles, talking to him. Sunny doesn’t understand even one word. Everything is fuzzy and too bright and too loud.

He rests his head on his arm when Mari leaves the bathroom, presumably to get something. For a moment, he is just breathing heavily through his mouth, ready to turn into a puddle and disappear into the shower drain.

When he turns his head to the side, he has a perfect look into Mari’s bathroom cabinet. One of the cabinet doors is open, with several boxes of medication in it.

He doesn’t know why, but he shuffles over to look at them.

Sunny looks at the pills in fascination, slowly turning them over in his hands. He can’t recognize all of it, some names simply beyond his understanding, but there is a considerable amount of painkillers in there. It makes his hands shake even more than before. He places them back, shoving them into the back of the closet as far as he can. He made her like this.

One of the boxes catches his attention. It’s an unassuming white color, and when he opens it, it’s still full. The instruction leaflet crinkles when he opens it with trembling hands. Reading it is kind of hard for Sunny right now, but after going over the same line a few times, he realizes they’re sleeping pills.

You could do it now. Just because they’re her’s, doesn’t mean you can’t use them. She’ll get over it when she realizes how much better it is when we’re gone. We don’t need to wait all summer. Everyone will get over it. She’d let you go to bed without assuming anything, and you would dream forever.

Sunny can’t even keep the food down Mari makes him. He can’t repay this one little thing. How is he supposed to change anything? The pills fall into the palm of his hand, accompanied by a satisfying little ‘pop’ every time another is freed from the packaging. It’s not… He doesn’t know what he wants with them, but soon, he has trouble holding all of them at once.

The bathroom tiles beneath his knees are cold, the lights icy. His eyes and throat are still burning. There are no windows in the bathroom, and Sunny is scared of the mirror above the sink. He can hear himself breathing. His hand doesn’t feel like his own, as cold as if winter had already gotten a hold of him even in the warmth of summer.

He nearly drops all of them, flinching violently when a hand grabs his wrist shakily.

Mari looks at him with wide, dark eyes.

A moment goes by in which they both simply look at each other. Mari’s hold around Sunny's wrist is tight, scared of letting go. She shakes him until the pills fall onto the clean, white floor.

“What are you… What are you doing with these?” she asks, and in the back of her mind, she knows it's a stupid question. She hopes for everything else. For something.

Sunny looks at her like a deer caught in the headlights for a moment, eyes wide and frozen in place. Mari fears he is going to pass out on her, his breathing way too fast. She knows that look. She shakes him again, this time with even more urgency.

"Oh hell no! Sunny, don't you dare back out of this one!" She clenches her teeth in a mix of desperation and frustrating anger. “Don't you dare!"

She would later really hate herself for her outburst, reminiscent of her little bursts of rage from years ago, but at this moment, she is freaking out, and if he doesn't answer her now, he never will.

However, just when she thinks she has lost him, Sunny shakes himself out of his stupor. Something seems to click, his face carefully neutral. She can't see what hides behind his eyes. The change is so fast she nearly misses it.

"What's going on? Are you insane? You can't just-" she is looking for words - "Those are dangerous, Sunny!"

She will admit that Sunny has a very pronounced poker face, but he is also prone to panic. Especially when she has him cornered, confronting him as directly as possible, but there is no trace of fear in his features. It’s odd. It’s scary every time.

"I feel sick," he says, once he seems to have realigned himself, his tone even, "I thought they would help."

Mari thinks this is the most he has spoken to her in months. She has to stop herself from flinching when he answers her. He is calm, smooth like marble. Nothing about him betrays any type of feeling, one way or the other. Like it's normal. Like it's normal to shove a whole box of sleeping pills down your throat one fine evening.

"Those are for sleeping," she says shakily after a pause. "And you don't take the whole box at once."

He hums thoughtfully at that. She can still see the sweat on his brow, the dark shadows beneath his eyes. Dried tear streaks are still visible on his cheeks; his fringe stuck to his forehead. He looks miserable, to make it short, but he also looks like he has nothing to do with it.

"Sorry," he mutters. “Thought you take more the sicker you are.”

Mari can only blink at him. His eyes are so dark, not even reflecting the cold lights from above. Sunny’s face is as still as a statue’s. He holds eye contact without shying back.

"I think I'm going to be sick again," he mumbles after bearing Mari's stares for a few moments longer, completely unconcerned. Then, like it's business as usual, he bends over the toilet again, clearing his stomach of everything that's left in it. She rubs his back again, desperate to be of any help, but she can't even help him get up in her wheelchair. It's like watching a bad movie and not being able to switch the channels.

It seems like all of his emotions went down the drain along with the steak, and Mari is scared.

Maybe he is exhausted. She only wanted to make him happy, had expected him to nibble at the food at most - when he had actually finished the meal, she had been ecstatic. And he had been well these past few days, going outside, getting a part-time job, no nightly episodes. No hallucinations that left him shaking all day.

Maybe she is overreacting. Sunny isn't very open even on his best days, and she is the only one managing the medication in this house. So maybe he really didn't know. Usually, when his eyes dull down like this, it’s harmless.

Looking for something to make him feel better seems like a logical step when she thinks about it. And the sicker you are, the more medicine you might need. It makes sense.

She knows her excuses are thin and fragile at best, but to accuse him of all sorts of horrible things would be too much, even though she won't forget the way he looked at the pills for a long time. With eyes so wide and bathed in sweat and shaking like a leaf -

Sunny is feeling sick. That's what he said.

When he is done and slumped over as if all energy has left him, she is petting his hair with careful hands. He leans into the touch a little, not flinching away like he usually does.

"Next time, tell me when you think you need medication. I'll get you what you need from the closet, okay? You scared me. You could have made yourself even sicker than you already are."

He turns his head to look at her, face still smooth. Finally, he closes his eyes, sighing heavily. She can't tell if it is annoyance or exhaustion.

"Okay," he says. Mari takes in the way his voice has changed over the last few years. She hears him speak so rarely. When he does, it's quiet at best and distorted by desperation and fear at worst. But maybe this is a good sign? That he is this verbal with her?

He had never been a chatterbox, a painfully shy child, but he had laughed and pouted and told her about his favorite TV show. He had cooed at Mewo when he petted her. Had hummed along with her when they were sitting in front of the piano together.

She wonders when him being more open turned into a bad thing. She feels terrible for even considering it. She is overreacting.

Suddenly, he gets himself off the floor, swaying only slightly. He wipes the tears off his cheeks with the back of his hands and brushes his fringe out of his face as if to collect himself. Mari can only stare at him. Sunny turns to look at the radio clock on the side of the sink and acknowledges the time with a quiet hum. Mari wants to say something to stop him from looking into the only mirror of the house, but when he does, he only looks for a moment, unbothered, and rinses his mouth with water from the tap. When he turns to leave the bathroom, she reaches for him again.

“Where are you going?”

“Bed,” he answers her. “Shower.”

The thought of him sleeping upstairs on his own makes her squirm in her seat. She takes hold of his sleeve, searching his eyes. She still can’t see him in them.

“You should sleep on the sofa tonight,” she says, her tone pleading, “I can’t help you when you go up the stairs. Use my bathroom, okay? Just for tonight. Please.”

“I’m okay. Was only eating too fast,” he says, toneless. “And I need some things from my room.”

She looks at him, grip on the fabric of his shirt tightening. He is scaring her. It’s like meeting somebody in a nightmare - it’s them, but something about them is horribly wrong, like missing an eye or blood beneath their fingernails and on their collar. No matter how often this happens, it’s still scaring her. The bathroom lights flicker above, casting his face in cold shadow.

In the end, he relents, and she watches him go up the stairs like a hawk.

Mari waits for him in front of the stairs until he comes back down with a change of clothes to sleep in and a toothbrush. It took him a little longer than expected, and he wasn’t exactly quiet with his rustling upstairs. There is no way for her to check, but she decides it’s nothing. She has a few pillows and a spare blanket he can use.

Sunny sits down in the kitchen while she returns to the bathroom to collect her medicine from the cabinets - not because she doesn’t trust him, Mari tells herself. On the contrary, she loves him, and he would never. He wouldn’t.

When she comes back into the kitchen to check on him, he has the knife she gave him to cut his steak in his right hand, turning it over, observing the shiny blade with a fond look. He twists the knife around by the handle with practiced ease. For a second, she thinks he’ll put it in his pocket, but he puts it back down next to the plate when he notices her, expression strangely mournful.

“The bathroom is ready, if you want to use it,” she offers. “Call me if you get dizzy or sick again, okay?”

Sunny gets up, picking up his belongings. He passes her on the way to the bathroom with a pointed look, only muttering a small ‘thanks’.

Mari calls Hero when she hears the shower running.

“Mari?” Hero sounds concerned, and she remembers how hard he studies these days. She must be interrupting him, but she really, really needs to hear his voice right now.

“I think I’m overreacting,” she says instead of a simple hello.

“What’s going on? Do you need me to come over?”

“No, no… I… I’m just.” A pause. “Sunny threw up the steak.”

There is another small pause on the other end of the line. She can hear the gears in Hero’s head turn. It would make her laugh in any other situation.

“I’m sorry, Mari. I know you wanted him to enjoy it.”

“He did, at least I think he did. He wolfed down the whole thing in one go.” She realizes how stupid she sounds. “You owe me five bucks.”

It’s ridiculous. A nervous laugh leaves her. It’s one thing to stew over her own thoughts, but giving them a voice always puts them in perspective. Especially with Hero, who keeps his composure whenever she can’t.

“Maybe it was just too much at once,” he tries to soothe her. “You know how long it takes him to eat a plain piece of toast on a good day.”

“Yeah. I know.”

There is silence between them once again. The shower is still running. She has to tell him now, but her throat is tight.

“I think… He has… There were pills. In the cabinet. And I...I believe him when he says he didn’t… That he doesn’t…”

Hero is breathing steadily on the other end of the line. It grounds her, if only a little bit.

“Mari, I don’t think I fully get it, but if you think it’s getting worse, you know where to call-”

“I’m not making him go back there.”

She bites her lip, staring a hole into the kitchen table. She promised. They can do this on their own.

“Mari…”

“I’m overreacting. You said it yourself. He does this sometimes. He was talking earlier, and he tried eating the food, and it’s my fault for thinking that making him eat so much at once is a good idea. Maybe throwing up really messed with his head for a minute.”

“... Listen. Why don’t you run this by your therapist in a few days? Tell her what’s going on. Nothing else, okay? Just this. Get a second opinion.”

Hero is trying to calm her down, and she loves him for it, she really does, but the earlier suggestion still stings. Still, this is about Sunny. And she doesn’t want to snap at Hero when he is only trying his best, even though she is difficult sometimes just for the sake of it.

“...You’re right. Sorry. He’s acting weird again, and it stresses me out.”

“Want me to take a look at things tomorrow?”

“Please,” she says, so grateful it hurts. Mari doesn’t like doing this, but it wouldn’t be the first time. Or the last, probably.

"Okay. But if he is acting, well, weird again, you can at least be sure he'll be okay for now. He never does anything bad like this. No rough nights, either."

Mari has to admit that this is true. Whatever that state of mind that possesses him when his eyes dull down into black pitches is, it’s oddly… Good at taking care of himself. He brushes his teeth without prompting. He changes his bedsheets. He puts bandages on tiny cuts. He will even eat something small, usually, before simply going to bed and sleeping until morning. Sometimes, he spends hours on his computer.

When she enters the living room to check on Sunny, he stares at her, following her every movement. The look in his lifeless eyes is challenging and hard to bear. But it’s not the first time he has been like this. She can do this, just until the morning. It's her fault for pushing him so far.

"I wanted to play blackjack upstairs," he says, and if his voice wasn't so flat she'd think it was meant as a complaint. He is bundled up on the sofa in the blanket she gave him, hair still damp from the shower.

"You can play tomorrow...?"

He seems to mull this over, scratching a fingernail over the fabric of the sofa. Still, he rests his head on the armrest.

“Dunno,” he says, after a while. Four years ago, Sunny had really taken a liking to the blackjack game that came along with his then-new computer, but he’d been twelve years old then and impressed by the tiniest things. He makes it sound like he can’t sit down to play anytime he wants. She thinks he’s still trying to make her forget about the bathroom incident, so she shrugs it off.

"Uhm. Okay. Anyway, I'm right next door, and I don't have to get up early tomorrow, so you can come to me if you need to. Or want to. I'm there."

Sunny curls up on the sofa like a cat, completely buried in the blanket. She notices he even remembered to bring down his alarm clock.

"Do you feel well enough for school tomorrow?"

Sunny hums his agreement. He turns around to face the back of the sofa.

"Goodnight," he mumbles.

"Goodnight. Love you."

He is already asleep before she can finish that sentence.

Mari doesn't get a wink of sleep that night, even though everything stays quiet.

Kel has Basil right where he wants him.

He’s not oblivious to the look of contempt Basil shoots him, one side of his face illuminated by the morning light falling through the window next to him. The classroom is empty, the laughter of students from the schoolyard only reaching them faintly.

Kel swallows around the unease in his throat. This is only Basil. His friend, even though he sometimes wonders if that’s still true. He won’t get another opportunity like this anytime soon. He silently thanks Sunny for sacrificing his nose earlier.

“What do you want? We don’t have to do this behind Sunny’s back.”

“I tried talking to you before, but you won’t let me. Especially when he’s there.”

Basil’s face is scrunched into a sour expression. The blond boy sits down on one of the empty desks, taking off his backpack.

“I don’t know what you want,” Basil mutters, “There is nothing to talk about. Everything is fine.”

Kel tries and fails not to snort at that. But he’s not here to talk down to Basil. That’s never what he wants. If anything, he wants the other to open up to him.

“I just… I want to know what’s going on, Basil. You and Aubrey keep fighting, you never come over anymore, not even to Sunny’s house, and Sunny is-”

“Sunny is fine.”

“Sunny hasn’t been fine since Mari fell down the stairs.”

Kel feels uncomfortable in this new role - he knows how to lift the mood and make others smile, but he was never interested in being responsible before. But he considers himself a good friend who loves the people around him. Sometimes, love is speaking up against your most precious friends, Hero once said.

Basil gives him a watery look; his lips pressed together so tightly Kel thinks he’ll never speak up again. But he does because he can’t not take the bait.

“Sunny is doing fine. Better than before. He’s okay.”

Basil probably wants to reassure himself more than anyone else, and Kel has to stop himself from getting annoyed. It’s not easy to look at the blond boy like this, bandages on his face, scared to speak about what they both know is true.

“Basil, I don’t think he remembers. He looks at me like he’s never seen me before.”

“So what? That’s fine. He always remembers after a while. It's just one of his phases again.”

That’s not the point he wanted to make. He doesn’t have to tell the other. Basil avoids his eyes, looking like the boy he was four years ago despite his considerable growth spurt since then. He rubs his hands together nervously, hunched over on his place on the desk.

“I mean, he does,” Kel tries, “You’re right. I’m not trying to blame you, Basil. I’m just worried, okay?”

“Oh, isn’t that new. I thought you were too busy with everything else.”

Kel wants to reach out for Basil, but he isn’t sure if that’s clever. Basil has a point, after all. It’s not like he can lecture the other when he tries to distract himself from the situation so badly himself. When he could have done more.

But what do you do when something horrible happens? What can you do when nothing makes it better? You either sink or swim.

“Look, I know I messed up. We were just kids. Hell, we still are, okay? We’re just kids.” Kel hates the way his voice trembles. “What happened was fucked up.”

Basil shoots him a hard look.

“It wasn’t Sunny’s fault.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you think so! And that’s not true. Sunny wouldn’t do that, okay? He wouldn’t. Sunny is our friend.”

Kel wants to agree. He wants to agree from the bottom of his heart. But they all know what happened, and the truth doesn’t care for their personal feelings about the matter. Kel is acutely aware of how hard he is clenching his fingers around the edge of the table next to him. His fingers hurt when he loosens his grip a little.

“I’m not trying to… I’m not attacking Sunny,” Kel tries to reassure him, “But what happened was still fucked up. Pretending like it wasn’t hasn’t helped Sunny in the last few years. Mari-”

“Mari shouldn’t have pushed him so hard. It’s her own fault she fell down the stairs. Sunny was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Basil sniffs miserably. “If Sunny has to leave, it’s her fault. I won’t let him go.”

Kel needs a moment after that.

“That’s horrible, Basil.” He means it. He loves Basil, but he means it.

“It’s the truth. I know you all don’t care, but I do. So you can go back to your new friends, okay? Get yourself that scholarship and move far, far away! Aubrey can stick with her new friends, too.” There are angry tears in Basil’s eyes. “She can stick with Mari for all I care. But I won’t let her blame Sunny for this.”

There is a heavy weight in Kel’s stomach.

“Mari got hurt too,” Kel says, feeling weak. “Everyone was hurt.”

“Mari is the big sister. She should have known better. She should have listened, only once.” Basil digs his fingers into the pants of his school uniform. “And when she had one chance to protect him, she didn’t.”

There is a long pause after that. Kel doesn’t know what to say, but he knows what Basil is doing - he has known the other for too long not to. He takes a deep breath.

“Sunny wouldn’t want this.”

It’s another nail in the coffin.

Kel knows by the way Basil tenses up and gasps for air in a pained sob.

“Well, it’s not like I can ask him what he wants!”

Basil grabs his backpack, hiding his tears behind his sleeve. When he leaves the classroom, he slams the door so hard Kel can feel the impact even from the other side.

Tutoring Joy, as Sunny learns, isn’t so bad.

She is a happy young lady, and she behaves her whole lesson long. Sunny’s job is primarily to make sure she does her language homework, which is easy to do even when he doesn’t speak to her.

Kel is snoring loudly on her bed.

So much for moral support. It’s not really like Kel does a bad job, though. His snoring fills the silence when Sunny can’t, which eases a lot of his tension.

Joy is nice, and she takes Sunny's advice in stride, dutifully correcting herself when she makes a mistake.

"I was a little scared my tutor would be scary," she admits by the end of their lesson, "But you're nice. Thank you for being so patient, Mr. Tutor!"

It's not like Sunny ever feels young, exactly, but being called 'Mr. Tutor' makes him feel old in a completely new kind of way. Joy hands him a very blue, very shiny seashell before he gets to wake up Kel. She says it's for good luck. He knows those things are popular, especially with the girls these days, so he pockets it.

He looks over to Kel. He feels like he owes Joy an apology, but before he gets to that, she simply says: "I kind of admire him for just doing what he wants. My big brother is like that, too. He plays guitar at the plaza every day even though dad thinks he should get a real job."

She looks at him, smiling.

"I wish I was a little braver, too. Maybe next time, I'll just go out to play no matter what anyone says! A little rebellion never hurt anyone."

Sunny is very sure he shouldn't encourage that kind of behavior in a girl less than ten years old, but he relates to her shy personality, so he still gives her a thumbs up. Her smile brightens up even more.

He has to shake Kel for several minutes until the other boy finally wakes up, but in the end, they are on their way home.

“Sorry for falling asleep,” Kel says, an apologetic grin on his face, “Language class makes me tired just listening to it.”

Sunny raises an eyebrow, but Kel is already distracted by the sweeter things in life: the park and its basketball field. The park is quiet today, but some kids in orange jerseys go for a few throws by the basketball hoops. Sunny follows Kel’s longing gaze. Ah.

Well, he can’t relate to that, but he understands that being with him instead of the others must be a drag. Kel usually practices every day after school, even after the basketball club activities, but today he didn’t get to do that because of Sunny.

Sunny points towards the other kids, looking at Kel. He hereby releases the other from his clutches, no drawbacks included. Even Kel must realize he doesn’t owe Sunny anything, and to be honest, he feels terrible about taking as much as he has already.

Kel looks at him, eyebrows high, before the expression morphs into a grin.

“Yeah, those are some of my friends. But we can hang out any day, so that’s fine.” Kel cups his chin in uncharacteristic thoughtfulness. “I did tell you I want us to hang out, after all.”

Kel is stubborn, and Sunny really has no energy today, but the other did come along for his tutoring lesson like he promised. He knows it’s supposed to be some kind of friendly gesture (for whatever reason) but Kel shouldn’t have to suffer because of him. So Sunny walks towards the park’s swings, sitting down.

Kel looks at him, mouth a little slack.

Sunny makes a shooing gesture towards him, pointing at Kel’s friends. He’s not sure if he can meet so many people today, but he can give the other some space for socializing anyway.

Kel follows him to the swings, coming to a halt in front of Sunny.

“You won’t move unless I greet them, huh? Seriously, it’s okay.”

Sunny grips the chains of the swing, turning his head away. He’ll get up after Kel gets some time with his friends, and he will not negotiate.

Kel barks out a laugh that makes Sunny jump in his seat. A hand ruffles through his hair, making him look like he just got out of bed.

“Okay, okay, I gotcha. But I’ll be back in a minute, so don’t get too comfortable! And don’t leave. I’ll be sad if you do.”

That’s a threat Sunny doesn’t want to challenge, so he stays put when Kel jogs over to his group of friends, looking after him for a bit. Kel keeps glancing over his back to him, so Sunny turns his gaze away. He is fine where he is.

The swings sit right in the middle of the big sandpit of the park, so he has a good view over it. Some shovels and a bucket lay in the sand, abandoned. Sunny isn’t surprised when he sees Bun and Nose running by him, laughing.

It’s not scary this time. Bun and Nose are harmless, building sandcastles together, so he has no reason to panic. Bangs, Brows and Happy sit on top of the slide a little further back. They’re not doing anything bad.

He kind of expected something like this already. When he got up this morning, finding himself on the sofa instead of his bed, he felt utterly exhausted, his head fuzzy and swimming. Mari usually has her reasons for putting him on the couch, though.

Sometimes a tiny piece of toast would help, but it didn’t this time. And since he had promised Joy’s father to help her out with her language class and Kel had made it clear he would be waiting for him, staying home had not been an option.

On days like these, reality is a little hard to grasp - Sunny finds himself grabbing teacups that aren’t there or seeing the smiles of friends long grown up, sometimes passing entire hours just by blinking once or twice. Headspace bleeds into his waking hours, sneaking up on him and taking him by surprise. But there had been less fortunate timing for this than today. Kel is busy and nothing bad is happening. It’s not Something, or the whispers, or the red hands.

Somebody lets themselves plop into the swing next to him carelessly. When he turns to look, Aubrey is trying very hard not to look at him, finding great interest in checking out the chain of her swing.

“You look like a ghost,” she mutters, her tone faintly indignant. Sunny thinks she wants to say he should stop bothering her with the sight, so he gets up, just to be pushed down into the sandpit onto his butt. Aubrey snorts, sitting down next to him.

“I didn’t say you could leave,” she says, pulling her knees towards her. “That idiot Kel got roped into a full-on game over there. Fat chance of getting home anytime soon.”

Sunny looks at her, uncertain. When he looks over to the basketball field, Kel is indeed in the middle of a match. Well.

The sand is warm from the afternoon sun, so it’s not a bad place to sit. He expects Aubrey to leave, but she crosses her arms over her knees, looking over the playground with a distant look in her eye. For a second, he has to hold himself back from giving her a gentle headbutt to her shoulder.

“Since he is a shitty friend, I guess I can keep you company. The others are busy today anyway.”

He wonders why she doesn’t go home then, but he realizes that’s a stupid question. He remembers hour upon hour spent on the swing next to Aubrey, solely as an excuse not to go home. Tears on his shirt. The sun setting behind Faraway. Uncertain goodbyes.

“...Mari?” His own voice is scratchy, after having woken up with a burning throat this morning.

“Busy,” Aubrey replies evenly. “She has to do that college stuff sometime, you know.”

Sunny scratches his arm, avoiding her gaze. Mari has a hard time keeping up sometimes, with everything else she has to look after. Including himself. He knows. Sunny hums quietly instead of responding. He thinks he can hear Nose crying in the distance.

Aubrey is threading her fingers through her long, pink hair, her nose scrunched and wincing. For a second, he can see Basil braiding her hair like he used to, all gentle hands and smiles. Their laughter is long gone.

He reaches for her without thinking, but he stops himself at the last moment, cold sweat on his back. He nearly touched her.

The girl next to him shoots him an unreadable look, quirking an eyebrow.

“I know it’s a mess, don’t look at me like that,” she says, looking away after a minute. “You know I can’t braid hair for shit, Sunny. I don’t need your attitude.”

He shakes his head frantically. He upset her. He has upset her enough for a lifetime, and she has every reason to be cross with him. Her bat is nowhere in sight, but he can feel the scratch of every nail if he thinks about it hard enough. He wonders if she knows what it does to him when she hits trees with it playfully, when she swings it around in a threat. If she knows he has buried this under layer after layer of Black Space, it occasionally resurfacing when the nights are cruel, Omori being the only one to show a shred of mercy when he pulls him up after what feels like hours.

“You know, if you have the energy to judge me, you could help me out instead.” She side-eyes him, a pout on her face. “I know Basil taught you how to do it.”

Sunny blinks at her blankly, watching her scoot over to him. She settles down in front of his knees, back towards him. He fights the urge to get some space between them, to flee in a panic. She looks at him over her shoulder, giving him a hard look.

“You there? All good?”

He nods mechanically.

“Then get to work instead of looking like somebody stole your last cookie.”

She is still as demanding as she used to be, and it's a fond memory.

Sunny shifts his position to sit on his knees instead. The air is warm today, and he doesn’t hear any crying anymore. In the background, he can hear Kel laughing. The wind carries a leaf towards them, and it catches in Aubrey’s hair, sunspots reflecting off the pink color.

It’s just her hair. The hair should be okay, he hopes.

They don’t have a hairbrush, but Sunny remembers Basil threading his fingers through Aubrey’s unruly locks in quiet moments. He has a memory of himself tying a new bow into long, black strands. Her hair is pink now, and unlike Mari’s, it’s not tangled in bloody pieces of wood.

He reaches for her with shaking fingers, jerking his hand down on accident when he makes contact. Aubrey grunts but doesn’t acknowledge his blunder in any other way. He decides to start by untying the turquoise handkerchief she wears. Sunny recognizes it as an old gift - Aubrey had been looking at it through the window of a store on their way home from school every day for a while, a little more than four years ago.

He remembers being scolded by his mother for spending all of his money on a piece of fabric, but Aubrey’s ecstatic face had been worth it.

The fabric is thin in the places where it ties into a knot, the sun having stolen the color’s radiance over the years. He knows she probably can’t afford another one and distantly empathizes with her for having to wear the one he got her, especially when he had turned her smile into tears only a few months later.

Maybe he should get her a new one and ask Mari to give it to her. He could afford to cut into his savings for the violin at least a little.

The handkerchief finds a spot to rest in his lap. Aubrey’s hair is smooth to the touch, even with the tangles in it. Carefully, he threads his fingers through.

Untangling the little knots is surprisingly soothing once his hands stop shaking. When he relaxes his jaw, his teeth hurt, but the tension slowly falls away. He thinks it’s strange how she lets him get so close, but the familiarity spreads like a hot sip of tea in his cold stomach.

It’s nice. It’s simple but so nice.

Sunny jolts when he feels a warm weight hitting his back.

When he twists around halfway to see what it is, he is met by Kel’s brown mop of hair. The other boy has plopped down in the sand behind Sunny, back meeting his, leaning into him warmly. The pressure is grounding.

“You two having fun without me?”

Aubrey growls, but doesn’t move. Instead, she leans back a little, pressing against his knees and halfway into his lap.

“I swear I will kill you if you ruin this, Kel.”

Kel laughs. Sunny feels the shaking of laughter against his back, and he notices that Kel is probably a little sweaty, but he doesn’t mind.

It’s good to be alive, just for this moment, he thinks.

He continues detangling Aubrey’s hair until he’s satisfied. Then, he digs deep into ancient muscle memory and starts a braid, just like Basil taught him. The strands glide through his hands smoothly, even though he supposes her hair should be wholly fried after dying it pink repeatedly. Mari used to sigh about hair care for all of her purple-hair-phase.

He wishes the others were here, too. But this is already too good to be true, so he takes that wish and tucks it away. Maybe another day. Maybe it’s already too late for that, anyway. The thought of a picnic comes to mind again.

They sit together in comfortable silence even after Sunny is done (having misused Aubrey’s handkerchief as a hair tie), which he thinks is odd, especially for Kel and Aubrey, and when he looks around, the playground is empty. Nobody is whispering to him in distorted voices, the past is far away, and when the tension flows away in tiny breaths, he is only left with bone-deep exhaustion. But it’s good. It’s wonderful.

Sunny is effectively trapped between the two, but he doesn’t feel like running.

The sun is already setting when they split up, Aubrey going down a little further down the street, hair still in that braid, and Kel waving goodbye when they reach his home. He is his next-door neighbor, after all.

When he enters his home, Mari and Hero sit in the living room, their faces tense. The familiar weight settles right back into his stomach as if it’s returning home.

“We didn’t want to do that when you can’t be here to see it,” Hero says, looking at him with a smile on his face that doesn’t reach his eyes. “We just want to make sure, okay? It’s not that we don’t trust you.”

They are fools for trusting him but Sunny won’t be the one to say it.

He should have known when he left this morning. She had been too quiet, after a night on the couch nonetheless. He doesn’t know what to do, and Mari just turns her gaze away when he looks at her.

Is she scared of him hurting others? Would she think he is preparing to get her when she isn’t expecting it? They don’t say it. They say they worry.

They are liars. What do you think the toy box looks like? What will they think when they see the contents?

That he looks like he’s preparing for another crime. It looks like he wants to make sure somebody will be as dead as possible. In a way, that’s the truth.

He can’t tell them the truth, but the alternative is horrible as well. Even though he deserves the distrust. He has proven that he is violent in the past, so he understands. Mari is right to sleep with one eye open, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less.

“We’ll go upstairs together, okay? I promise everything will be alright, Sunny.” Hero has a hand on his back, ushering him towards the steps. “Same as every time. Mari just wants to make sure.”

Sunny looks at his sister one last time, and she shrinks in her wheelchair. He doesn’t know what Hero is talking about, and she isn’t helping him. He feels like he’s twelve again. Fear pools in his stomach.

“...Mari?” She flinches when he calls for her, even though his voice is soft.

“I’m sorry, Sunny. But after yesterday, I… I just want to know.”

After yesterday? Because he got sick and passed out after wolfing down that steak? He doesn’t understand. When he looks at Hero, eyes wide, the other pats him on the back in a way that is probably meant to be reassuring. It doesn’t reach Sunny.

They go up the stairs together, Hero following behind Sunny to make sure he actually goes. The staircase feels endless, the way too narrow, what was once his safe haven now a place of dread. Hero opens the door to his room after giving him another look.

The room is bathed in the warm evening sun, his bedding still messy. It’s otherwise completely barren except for the few pieces of furniture Sunny actually uses. A computer sits on his desk, with a black keyboard attached to it. His homework is strewn across the rest of the desk and the chair in front of it. The door to the closet is carefully closed.

“I’m going to take a look, okay? I’m only going to look as much as I need to. No unnecessary snooping, promise.” Hero rubs his back once, twice, before stepping into the room. He takes a deep breath and readjusts his smile. Sunny can see how tense his back is.

Maybe, if he wasn't so fucked up, he'd laugh about this. Poor Hero having to search a teenage boy's room, well aware of the many things one might find there. But this is not that kind of reality.

Sunny clenches his fists so hard his fingernails break skin.

Hero gets to work like he has done this before, looking into his closet and some of the drawers. Sunny feels sick, his breathing fast. He doesn’t know what to say. What to tell them when they find it.

Hoping Hero won’t find the key is fruitless - he pockets that one when he finds it in his desk drawer.

Hero pulls the toy box out from beneath his bed, shaking it gently. Something wooden clinks inside it, and Sunny’s stomach lurches dangerously.

He’s going to open it. Hero’s not an idiot.

He doesn’t know what to say. He wants to call for help, but he knows nobody will come. Nobody will believe him because Sunny is quiet, he is keeping secrets, he nearly killed his own sister out of petty anger, Sunny is keeping a huge knife and a hammer and a creepy bloody violin inside his room -

Relax.

He tries. He breathes through his nose with great difficulty.

When Hero puts in the key, opening the box, Sunny can’t stop the whimper that escapes him. He gets close, even though there is nothing he can do; even if he grabs it and throws it out of the window, the damage is already done.

“Hero,” Sunny’s throat closes up dangerously. He wants to say that it’s not for Mari. Not the knife, not the hammer. Not any of the violin shards, sharp and already soiled.

Hero stares into the box, frozen.

Sunny follows his gaze, feeling like there is not enough air in the room for both of them.

In the box, only the violin stares back at them, in all its gruesome beauty.

Silence falls over the room, and Sunny feels strangely detached. Like he is only a bystander, watching with horrified eyes. Hero releases a shuddering breath, making Sunny jump.

“You… Still have that thing?” Hero looks up at him from his place on the wooden floor; the box still clutched tightly. “Oh, Sunny…”

He just blinks at the other. The violin is still painful to look at, but the way Hero looks at him isn’t any better. He is so overwhelmed he nearly doesn’t notice the older boy wrapping his arms around him.

“You don’t have to keep it if it hurts. Mari and I thought you threw it away long ago.” Hero’s voice is muffled against the side of Sunny’s head, half-swallowed by his hair. “It’s okay to throw it out.”

Sunny doesn’t have the brain capacity to get angry, too occupied with everything else, but the suggestion makes him want to summon anger from the deepest parts of his soul. The violin is broken. It’s horrible. There is blood and misery all over it. For years, he didn't know if it still existed.

But Mari and everyone else got it for him. Now that it's back, he won’t throw it away, no matter how many times he cuts himself on the sharp wood.

He shakes his head, and Hero let’s go of him, a shaky smile on his lips.

“...Okay. I’ll put it back where I found it.”

And he does. Hero closes the toy box again, even locking it with the key, and puts it back beneath his bed.

Otherwise, Sunny’s room isn’t fascinating to look through. All of his stuffed toys are shoved into his closet, their comfort a luxury Sunny doesn’t deserve. He doesn’t have many clothes, and Hero just pats them down a little.

Hero seems satisfied with the results, turning to Sunny with an easier smile.

“I’ll have a look through your bathroom, just to make sure. You know how Mari is.”

Sunny doesn’t follow Hero out of the room. The relief of the other not finding the knife and hammer is overshadowed by one question: Where are they?

Don’t panic. Check the floor tile.

One single floor tile in Sunny’s room is loose enough to pull it up, something he discovered many years ago when he and Mari still shared a room. Hero doesn’t know about it, he supposes. Mari would, but she isn’t here.

He can hear the other rustling in the bathroom, so Sunny takes the risk of lifting the floor tile very carefully, squatting in front of it.

In the dark little space, the knife and hammer glisten. He puts the floor tile back in place with shaky hands.

When Hero returns from his brief look through Sunny’s bathroom, they go back downstairs together. Mari is waiting in the living room, sitting so straight it looks uncomfortable. Sunny doesn’t blame her.

“All clear,” Hero says, patting Sunny on the shoulder. “It’s not like we really thought otherwise…”

Mari deflates in noticeable relief. “Thank god,” she sighs. Maybe she had nightmares similar to the ones Sunny has - murky and dark and a painful red - that triggered her mistrust. He can’t imagine what she feels like, being in the opposite role of his. Sunny was the one who willingly risked her life. Mari has to live in the house with the cursed stairs and the brother who did this to her. Understandably, she would want to keep him away from dangerous things, minimizing the risk of him hurting her or others even worse than before.

Sunny understands.

He lets Mari hug him like she usually does when she is distressed, tight and trembling. He leans into her just for a bit, soaking in her warmth. He shouldn’t, but he is exhausted and emotionally worn thin, to what feels like is his limit.

“I’m sorry, Sunny. I love you. You know I just worry.”

When the warmth starts to burn, he steps out of her embrace. She needs the space, probably. He looks out of the glass doors leading to their garden.

“Did you water your flowers yet, Sunny? Basil would be sad if they died because you slacked off,” Hero says when he follows his gaze, his tone light. “Besides, as long as the flowers live, he’ll at least visit the garden, even if he doesn’t come into the house anymore.”

He didn’t water them yet, so Sunny makes his way outside. Mari and Hero want to be alone, anyway, which is why he doesn’t feel bad for leaving so abruptly. They both don’t have much privacy between them, with Kel and Sunny being there most of the time. This being an opportunity to stomach the sudden breach of the privacy of his own room might also be a part of it. He isn’t angry, but part of him is strangely upset.

He doesn’t want to hurt Mari, he thinks while watering the flowers. There are white tulips, a few lilies of the valley and some sunflowers just to the side of them. A while ago, Sunny had brought in a few roses as well, but so far, the bush is small. Basil sometimes comes by to look at it reluctantly, showing him when and where to cut it, what water to use, which fertilizer is right. Even if he doesn’t like being here, Basil is loyal enough to show up still.

He doesn’t want to hurt Mari any more than he already has. She looks tired today, dark shadows beneath her eyes. A glance inside the house shows her talking to Hero, holding the other’s hand. Tomorrow, he’ll ask her to help him with a picnic, maybe. Maybe the others will come. He doesn’t even have to sit with them - just having them sit together on the picnic blanket would be enough. Maybe.

After the flowers are thoroughly watered, Sunny puts the watering can away. The garden looks peaceful, the opposite of what it used to be. When his friends still came here, it was all trampled grass, strewn around toys, shoes and backpacks thrown into a huge pile. It’s pristine now. Untouched.

His gaze passes the big tree in the back of the garden. Its old branches used to be his favorite, strong enough to support even more than one person. It didn’t lose any of its sturdiness over the years, a gentle guardian even after all this time.

There is a red jumping rope tied around its trunk.

Sunny and Basil put it there one day after playing, supposedly so they didn’t have to look for it next time.

Next time had never come, stolen away by Sunny’s mistakes.

But the rope is still there. When Sunny looks at it, it’s still so red, the rope’s material still smooth. He tugs at the knot, and it falls away easily.

If everything fails, the tree is still here.

Sunny picks up the jump rope and puts it right next to his watering can. Mari never messes with his gardening stuff, saying it is an excellent, productive hobby for him to have, so he knows she won’t find it there.

And even if. It’s just a jump rope.

The knife is safe for now. The hammer is safe for now. But this? This is just a child’s toy.

Sunny is so relieved he has to stop himself from falling flat on his butt. No matter what happens, no matter how many times Hero or Mari or anyone else will pry him for evidence, this little piece is safe.

Mari waves at him when their eyes meet through the window, a nervous smile on her face.

For the first time in a long while, he feels like smiling back.

There is cookie dough in his hair, and it’s a nightmare to get out.

Mari laughs at his demise in what he feels is very unfair glee since Sunny can’t even tell her off for it. She is trying to help him, after all, and he is the reason why she has a hard time leaning over the kitchen counter to roll out the dough in the first place.

So the roll-out-duty falls to him. The dough sticks stubbornly to the rolling pin, and when he follows Mari’s advice to put more flour on it, he ends up with a massive amount of it in his face, mouth, and hair. He nearly chokes.

Sunny is not having fun. Mari, on the other hand, is having the time of her life.

“Don’t be so impatient,” she says after she collects herself a little, “You can’t throw the flour onto the dough like that. Here, take a handful and put it on there gently. …. Yes, like this.”

Mari’s hair is tied into two buns, so she doesn’t get it into the dough, but she has to brush her fringe out of her face nonetheless, so she ends up with the same white streaks in her hair as Sunny. They match the absolute chaos around them now. Their mother would die from a heart attack were she here to see this, but she isn’t.

Mari watches him roll out the dough with a little more success, smiling at him. She pats his back between his shoulder blades, getting even more flour onto his clothes.

“You want to cut out the cookies close to one another, so you get enough of them. Otherwise, you’ll have to roll out that dough even more times. And knowing the others, the cookies are just a quick little snack anyway. Kel will inhale them faster than you can bake them.”

Sunny doesn’t exactly have his facial expressions under control when he contemplates this, and Mari can’t keep the giggles in. She pats his cheek in an attempt to comfort him, still laughing.

“But it’s the message that matters, not the cookies! So don’t look at me like that and work hard, Sunny!”

Well. That is true. Sunny still thinks it’s a tragedy all of his hard work will be gone in a matter of minutes, but he carries on under Mari’s instructions.

The cookies are just a little gift. Something to sweeten the deal, make his friends even entertain the thought of joining him for a picnic. Mari was ecstatic when he had asked her what she thought about it yesterday, assuring him that he had her full support. She even offered to bully Hero into helping her and Sunny cook for it. He thought it was strangely nostalgic to see her get so excited by the thought of a picnic alone, but it’s good she likes the idea so much. Even though she has to share a picnic blanket with him, she doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

It’s nice to see her happy. It’s been a while since everyone was together like this, so he is happy, in a careful way, too. Sunny wants to be excited, but he knows it will only hurt more if he lowers his defenses only to be rejected. Not that he wouldn’t understand, but… Mari likes calling him ‘the baby of the group’ for more than the fact that he is simply the youngest. She insists that he is cliff-faced most of the time but very sensitive for the most part. He doesn’t know if he would call it sensitive, but he can agree that his heart isn’t very sturdy.

Not that he deserves to complain about anything, but Sunny still curls up and shivers when it hurts too much.

So he hopes today won't be a total disaster. He would have to make entirely new plans if that were the case. At the same time, he really thinks the others want to get closer to each other again, too, so that should work in his favor.

Sunny and Mari cut out cookies for the next few minutes. She is patient, which is surprising to him, but he doesn't want to question it. He still remembers yelling and bleeding fingers and salty tears, but right now, it's just them against the cookie dough. It feels nice. Sunny's shoulders ache when they lose a bit of their tension.

“That looks great. I think they can go in the oven now,“ Mari says, arranging the cookies on their baking tray. Some of them are a little uneven, mainly the ones Sunny has cut out, but she doesn't mention it.

“Good job for your first batch! I'm looking forward to the future ones, hehe,“ she says instead, a smug grin on her face that could only mean she wanted to be paid back for her troubles in an unending supply of cookies. Or rather, until summer is over, but he doesn't say that.

The praise is lovely. Mari is trying very hard today, and even if it is undeserved, Sunny always loves being praised by her. If his big sister says it's good, it must be. So he tries to smile at her.

Mari smiles back, flour in her hair and on her cheek. Her smile is radiant, and she pulls him into a hug when he is done putting the baking tray into the oven. Her wheelchair digs into his leg a little.

“It's going to be great, okay? They'll come. Nobody can resist your baby-face.“

He is offended for a moment, but if his face is cute, it might be helpful at the very least, even though he isn't twelve anymore. It‘s a little scary how Mari knows his fears before he can voice them, but that is probably just big-sibling intuition.

And if the others agree to this, it’s not because of Sunny asking, anyway.

He thinks of himself as a messenger. He will deliver those cookies and ask if they want to come so they can hang out again, together as they should be. It shouldn't be that hard. They already made the cookies, and anything Mari makes tastes good since she pours a lot of love into it. Hero might technically be the better cook, but Mari has her own way of making everything taste delicious.

That is, at least, how he remembers it. When the first batch is done, and Mari shoves a still-warm cookie into his mouth, it doesn’t taste horrible. His former friends will like them, he thinks, chewing on the crunchy yet soft cookie. He knows his sense of taste is skewed, so the fact that he can swallow it without feeling sick means Mari worked her magic again.

Once they have cooled down enough, Mari helps him put the cookies in small little bags. She puts a few cat-stickers on all of them. Sunny doesn't know what that’s supposed to do, but the cats are cute nonetheless. Aubrey would like them.

She puts them in his backpack for him. It kind of reminds him of his time in elementary school, when Mari used to check his bag for him every morning since their mom never really had the time to do so. Mari always got really mad at him for forgetting books or homework. She doesn't look after him that way anymore since he's going to be seventeen this year, but she still gets mad at him for being forgetful.

She likes things tidy and perfect. Unfortunately, Sunny's airhead occasionally gets in the way of this.

“All ready,” Mari announces, pushing the bag into his hands. “Don't worry. It's not as scary as you think it is!”

Sunny has a few serious concerns regarding this, but he takes the bag anyway. He takes a deep breath. This is necessary. He needs to stop relying on others for everything. He can do this little thing for them, even though he isn't sure how to ask them. It will be fine.

After he changes out of his dirty clothes, Mari shoves him out of the door with a cheer. Sunny looks back toward the house when he steps out, but he supposes he should get off Mari's back for a while, anyway. He has no excuses to procrastinate.

Hero and Kel's house is the closest, so he decides to start there. They're also the easiest to ask. Hero loves Mari, so wherever she goes, he would go as well. And Kel might feel like coming for Hero’s and Mari’s food.

Still, his hands shake a little when he rings the doorbell.

It’s not Kel opening the door this time, however. Kel’s and Hero’s mother still looks exactly like Sunny remembers her - very kind and open but still demanding respect. She used to be the first person he thought of when thinking about a motherly figure, strangely enough, even though he knew his own mother would be slightly hurt.

“Sunny! What a wonderful surprise! Kel and Hero are in their room. They told me you started coming over again! The house is a mess, however...”

Her voice is loud, and Sunny can’t even object when she pulls him into the house by the arm. It still smells familiar inside, and toys are strewn all over the floor and various furniture. Sunny nearly slips on a building block lying on the floor, but her grip is so tight he’s never at any risk of falling in the first place.

“Technically, Kel is grounded, but you come over so rarely, and I can’t punish you for something he did,” she says, dragging him to the dining room. “I’ll call them down for you in a second, sweetheart. I’ll fix you some snacks first. You look like you need them, and Hero hasn’t been down even once today, but I‘m sure he‘ll take a break from his studies to see you.“

She doesn’t even wait for Sunny’s response, already vanishing into the kitchen. The house smells like something is cooking on the stove, and there are the eyes of Kel’s and Hero’s numerous ancestors on him. The pictures are all over the walls, most of them smiling warmly, a trait that runs in the family. They’re all very handsome, he thinks. In Sunny’s house, there are pictures as well. All of them are very formal, however.

She returns with a plate of sandwiches and a few pieces of various fruits. She puts it on the table before she wraps one arm around Sunny, similar to how Kel likes to - warm, tight, but safe nonetheless. She squeezes him and lets him go shortly after.

“You’re a handsome young man, Sunny, but you’ll never grow if you don’t eat enough. Boys your age need a lot of fuel. God knows Kel can eat more than I can cook. If I’m lucky, a few sandwiches will tide him over until dinner.”

She makes him sit down on one of the chairs. He really has no chance of denying her.

“I’ll get them for you. Help yourself to anything you like!”

Sunny stays put patiently in the dining room while she goes to get her sons. He once again notices all of the toys on the floor. Those can’t all be Hector’s. Hector surely doesn’t play with building blocks or toy cars or use any of the pacifiers littered on the floor. Hector is a smart dog, but he sincerely doubts that.

He isn't sure if not taking anything from the plate is considered rude, and if so, it would be better to wait until Hero and Kel are here. There are a few apple slices that look harmless. She even put a few lemon slices onto the plate. He's sure she put them there for putting them into the ice tea on the table, but she used to cut up a lemon for them even when no tea was involved, since Sunny has to admit that he likes… Or rather, liked eating the lemon slices just by themselves. Kel used to shudder just watching him.

When he puts the lemon in his mouth, it tingles pleasantly.

“Dude, I still don‘t get how you can like that stuff! Orange is so much better in every way,” Kel says, pout very evident even though Sunny can't see it because the other has his face directly next to his ear. Sunny is so startled he nearly drops the lemon.

“Oh, sorry. Forgot how jumpy you are.” Kel puts a hand on his shoulder, shaking him amicably, just gently enough not to shove him off his chair. “Hero and Sally are coming; since she is awake, she'll want to be with everyone.”

Sally. Sunny‘s thoughts are going in circles. Sally is… Kel's little sister. She is the one littering all the toys on the floor. He should be scared he completely forgot about her even for a second, but he doesn't have time for that when Hero joins them, Sally on his arm.

“Look, Sally! It‘s your favorite big brother Sunny!” He has no idea what Hero is talking about. He has no idea why he suddenly has a baby in his arms, either.

“I thought I was the favorite big brother…”, Kel says, clutching the front of his shirt in mock pain.

Hero just laughs, patting Kel on the back.

Sally looks sleepy for a second before happily pawing at his face and the collar of his shirt. She is babbling, which makes about as much sense to him as everything else does.

“She missed you a lot. It's only been a month or two, but she grows so fast. So every day you miss is kind of a huge deal… But she still knows it's you.”

“Of course she does. Sally is the most talented little sibling ever - sorry, Sunny. Don't take it personally.”

Sunny looks at Kel, who seems to mistake his stare as hurt pride, scratching his head with a crooked smile. Sunny is just confused, and he feels like asking any questions would disturb whatever friendliness the two brothers have left for him.

“I mean, you're still Mari's most talented younger sibling! That's saying something. But there is just no winning against Sally.”

There is a slight pause.

“I'm… Mari's only younger sibling,” Sunny says before he can stop himself. Both Kel and Hero stare at him for a few seconds before they simply laugh. Sunny feels heat rise into his cheeks, so he averts his gaze to look at Sally instead. She tries to grab one of his strands of hair, but her arms are too short, so she makes do with grabbing Sunny's cheek.

That was stupid, wasn't it?

“I get what you want to say, Kel, but let's just agree that we have two very talented younger siblings,” Hero says once he has gathered himself enough to stop laughing at Sunny's demise. “You wouldn‘t want me to start picking favorites either, would you?”

Kel sits down next to Sunny and Sally, giving both a gentle poke at their cheeks.

“Doesn't really matter in the end, since you're the favorite child anyway, Hero.”

“Nonsense,” Hero says, “I'm just good at… Making Mom notice the good things more than the bad ones. And I don't break windows with my basketball all the time.”

“It's not all the time…”

“Enough times for mom to ground you,” Hero notes, and Kel pouts in his direction, sticking out his tongue at his big brother.

“Sally and Sunny agree that it's totally unfair,” Kel says, putting his arm over Sunny's shoulders.

“Speaking of it, what are you here for? Not that we don‘t like you coming over, but…” Hero stiffens, not finishing that sentence.

Sunny shifts in his seat. The danger with both Kel and Hero is that they make you feel warm and welcome, no matter who you are. He shouldn't forget his place.

It's a little difficult to reach into his backpack with only one arm and without dropping Sally -

You really shouldn't be trusted with anyone's siblings, younger or older.

But he manages to fish out two bags of cookies and places them on the table.

Kel is on them a second later.

“Oooh, you‘re bringing over snacks? Sunny, you're a lifesaver. I don't think mom's measly sandwiches can save me from starving…”

The sound of eager crunching fills the room. Hero reaches for the cookies, a soft smile on his face.

“It's nice you want to share, Sunny. Thanks.”

That's not really what he came here for, but there is no way around actually saying it.

“I- I wanted to ask…”

Hero and Kel look at him again, the latter even stopping his chewing. Sunny feels like somebody put a rope around his throat. His face is heating up again, but his hands feel clammy. It's stupid. He shouldn’t be here. They're nice enough to let him into the house in the first place.

The words are stuck in his throat, and Sunny is helpless.

“Take your time,” Hero says gently. Kel is smiling at him, crumbs on his cheeks.

It takes Sunny a while, but they're patient. Sally is gurgling at him in uninterrupted glee.

“A picnic?”, Sunny croaks, unsure. The questioning looks he receives remind him that he needs to say the whole sentence. “Do you… Would you. Come to a picnic. With Mari? With. Um. With everyone.”

He wants the ground to swallow him. Maybe he should put down Sally before he lets nature reclaim him. He’ll never open his mouth again.

But Hero and Kel don't laugh. Instead, they just look at him, at each other, not mentioning that Sunny can't even ask them properly for their company on a picnic blanket.

“Everyone? You gonna ask Basil and Aubrey to come?” Kel has a look on his face that Sunny finds hard to decipher. Maybe he just doesn’t want to come…?

“If Sunny wants them there, he can ask them,” Hero says, tone stern. “They’re our friends, too.”

“I know, I know! That’s not… I just think…” Kel looks at Sunny like he’s looking for help, but Sunny is entirely useless. He blinks blankly at Kel. “Well… I guess, as long as Sunny is there.”

“Then it’s decided. Just tell us when you want to meet up, Sunny.” Hero shoots Kel a look Sunny can’t really read, but his face is mild when he looks at him.

They’re careful around you.

They are. Sunny doesn’t want to dwell on it for too long.

Kel is grabbing Sally, gently shoving her into Hero‘s arms.

“Now that the lame stuff is out of the way, you gotta look after Sally, Hero, since I have to kidnap Sunny for a good old gaming session.” Kel is proud, his chest puffed out and grinning. “I still have to beat his high score.”

“…I don’t think you‘re allowed to play right now,” Hero says dryly.

“I‘m not, but Sunny is, and Mom doesn’t have to know if you don’t tell her,“ Kel retorts.

Sunny finds himself in front of Kel‘s console a little later, controller in hand, the other right next to him. Maybe Kel just wants to avoid his mother’s wrath somehow, using Sunny for that end, but he doesn’t mind.

Kel opens the game for him.

“I think you left off here last time. …. Ah, there it is.”

The other pulls up a save file with Sunny‘s name on it. The date says it was last used about two months ago.

His fingers are cold. He doesn‘t remember visiting Kel‘s house in the last four years. Maybe Kel used it in his stead? But wouldn‘t it be weird to use Sunny‘s old save file? … How old is ‘Revenge of the Sprout Moles III’ anyway? Sunny only remembers the first one. Kel had said something about this still being relatively new.

The game loads and Sunny thinks he might have seen this before, but it’s a very fuzzy memory.

“What‘s up? You need help, dude?”

Kel is apparently confused about Sunny‘s hesitation. Sunny shakes his head.

It doesn‘t matter now. Kel will think you‘re weird if you don’t do anything.

Sunny does what he does best: He doesn‘t do anything about his worries. Instead, he puts them away in neat little packages and hopes they’ll decompose before he can get a closer look at them. It helps. The fear seeps away for now.

He starts playing, hoping it’ll distract Kel from his slip-up. He tries to concentrate on the fact that he is in Kel‘s room right now, no matter when or how often he might have been here before in the last few years.

Kel‘s room is still messy, but it’s as comfortable as he remembers to just sit together on the floor.

He shouldn‘t get comfortable, he thinks, while Kel leans against his shoulder after a while of playing, shooting him a few careful looks from time to time but still seemingly satisfied with what he sees.

Sunny shouldn‘t get comfortable. He knows. He keeps it in the back of his mind.

He remembers that even when both Hero and Kel hug him tightly before letting him leave an hour or so later. Sally tugs on his hair to make up for the fact she can‘t hug him yet, and their mother makes Sunny promise to come over for dinner with Mari sometime soon.

Sunny is exhausted, but the visit left him a little more hopeful for the other visits he wants to make today, anyway.

When he leaves the house, he still feels warm.

Sunny loves Basil a whole lot.

What he doesn’t love, however, is the other’s penchant for secrecy. Basil used to tell him everything, but these days, Sunny feels like a bully every time he so much as looks at the other too sharply. Basil is already sweating in his presence, and it’s been a few minutes at most.

Sunny admits showing up unannounced in Basil’s garden isn’t very polite, probably, but it’s not like he isn’t allowed there. At least he thinks so. Basil sometimes shows him how his flowers are doing, and he nearly looks happy when he does.

Basil is currently clipping his grandmother’s roses with his new gardening shears. A very morbid part of Sunny’s mind entertains the thought of them being big enough for his neck, watching one of the clipped-off roses hit the ground, but it’s just a thought. The other would never. Basil isn’t like him. His hands are still clean except for the occasional speck of dirt and earth.

Sunny tugs on the back of Basil’s shirt to get his attention. The other stiffens a bit before turning to him, forcing a smile.

“I’m sorry Sunny. I’ll be done in a moment, okay? Just let me… You know.” Basil laughs, and it’s a weirdly hacked-off sound, never meeting Sunny’s gaze. “I mean. You understand.”

He’s making Basil feel bad again, but he has no idea what he’s doing wrong this time.

“Basil,” Sunny tries. The other doesn’t look at him.

“Why don’t you sit on the bench until I’m done? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

Sunny bites the inside of his cheek, but he complies. Basil turns to his roses with shaking hands again - Sunny is by no means an expert, but he thinks he is cutting off some of the still healthy buds as well. Maybe it’s better to let the other breathe a little. Basil has a hard enough time putting up with him as is.

He starts fishing for a bag of cookies in his backpack when he sits down on the bench. Maybe this is fine. Sunny needs a few seconds to think about how he wants to ask Basil anyway. If he asks, is he making Basil do something he doesn’t want?

You could set him on fire, and he’d thank you.

That’s not a good train of thought. Sunny isn’t allowed to even think about it. His nightmares are enough, showing him just how far he could go. How far he would go.

Basil sits down next to him a little later, slightly more collected. He pulls off his gardening gloves, putting them on the bench.

“So, um, it‘s good to see you,” Basil says, way too fast. Sunny just stares at him. It’s not like he wants to let the other squirm under his gaze for too long, but something is bothering Basil, and he wants to know what. He’s not great at reading others, but he’s known Basil for a long time now.

“I-…. I just promised my grandma I‘d bring her a few roses from the garden later. So I. You know. She’s okay though-”

“Basil,” Sunny interrupts. The other is way too fast, and he can hear the way his voice wavers when he lies.

“Okay, she is um, she isn’t doing so great. But it’ll pass, eventually. I’m just a little worried.” Basil pushes a strand of his hair behind his ear. “About everything, I guess.”

Sunny isn’t sure if Basil even wants his company, but he bonks his head against the other‘s shoulder anyway. He hopes it reaches Basil.

Basil jerks a little in surprise but doesn’t pull away otherwise. Instead, he looks at Sunny with wide eyes, a weak smile on his face.

“Are you… Really listening?”

Sunny just tilts his head to the side at that. Of course he does.

Basil looks relieved for reasons Sunny doesn’t know, his shoulders sagging and a breath escaping him.

“I‘m… I‘m so happy you’re here. I mean! I always… It doesn’t matter to me…! But when it’s not you, I don’t know what to do.”

Sunny just hums his confusion. It’s always him, isn’t it? The bad and the worse. It’s always just him.

“Ah, I guess that’s not a good way of saying it. But you’re a good person, Sunny, not… Not whoever… Who did… “

Basil is going quiet, and Sunny doesn’t know what to say or do. Something tells him he doesn’t want to know. Something tells him he should. Basil’s gaze is far away, and he rubs his eyes as if exhausted. The other takes a shaky breath.

In the end, he presses the cookies into Basil‘s hands.

His friend looks at him with wide eyes before staring at the cookies, slowly examining the little package.

“Are those for me?” Basil asks, his voice still thin, but there is a little color in his cheeks again. “Thank you, Sunny.”

Once again, Sunny has to ask. It’s stupid to assume his friends would know what he wants by looking at him or the cookies. Nobody knows. Sunny wishes he didn’t know himself, either.

He contemplates just asking, but his throat is tight, and Basil still looks ghostly pale. Sunny has never been good at expressing himself through words, but they made it work anyhow. He remembers the drag of his fingertips over Basil’s palms, over his back. How the other boy told him he’d always understand this way, no matter how loud the world was or how shaky and jumbled Sunny’s words became.

It’s just the tip of his finger.

Sunny takes the cookies out of Basil’s hands and carefully turns the other’s palm upwards, resting his hand on his knee. Basil stares at him for a second before turning that stare at his hand. Sunny hears the confused murmur in Basil’s throat, but the other doesn’t interrupt him.

Sunny’s hands are clammy, cold, probably unpleasant to touch, but Basil doesn’t seem to mind when he carefully traces the shapes of letters onto his palm. Just the tip of his finger. Just Basil’s hand. There is no pain, no sharp intake of air. He lets go of a deep breath.

When Sunny looks at Basil’s face again, he is met with vast, very blue eyes. Basil’s lip trembles for a second.

He thinks it might be a genuine smile, this time, even though it’s tiny.

“I-... I’m a little rusty,” Basil admits, “But… You want to have a picnic?”

Sunny nods. Once again, he feels a little stupid for not being able to simply ask. Maybe he should have written a small letter. Someone with an actual brain would have done that, probably.

Basil laughs, and Sunny stares at the wood of the bench instead. He has to admit that his clumsy attempts are laughable, so he isn’t even offended.

“You don’t have to ask for something like that,” Basil says. “I’ll come if you want me there.”

There is a small detail Basil should know, he thinks. So he traces another word onto Basil’s palm.

The other is silent for a moment.

“...Everyone?”

Sunny looks at him again, but Basil doesn’t meet his eyes. The bruise on his jaw is nearly gone now, only a faint shadow on his skin. He wants to know if it’s really her, wants to know if it’s really Basil - if they do this to each other. He wants to know why they do it. Sunny can’t bring himself to ask when he is the one who listened to violence’s shrewd whispers first.

When he blinks, the bruise is gone.

The silence stretches on for a bit longer. Basil doesn’t want to come. Sunny is arrogant for thinking he would, given how he knows the other has a hard time spending time with him at all. Basil never turns him down, but Sunny can’t help but feel like his friend is biting his tongue every time he says yes.
He’s a fool. He’ll watch you lead him to slaughter, and he won’t believe it even when his head is already rolling on the ground.

“I can ask Polly if she would help me make a few snacks,” Basil says, nearly whispers.

Sunny’s stomach feels strange, sloshing from side to side when Basil leans over to hug him. The bag of cookies crinkles between them, forgotten. The other boy tightens his hold on him even more, squeezing a groan out of Sunny’s lungs. Basil definitely lifts way too many sacks of soil and fertilizer around.

It’s so strange to be a little happy after all this time. Smelling the flowers around them is strange. Seeing the sun is strange. Feeling Basil’s arms around him and not needing to escape is strange. The silence instead of the whispers, the air, the warmth, the faraway sound of a radio, the fabric of Basil’s shirt-

It would be so easy to get comfortable.

He leaves without the cookies. The warmth lasts the whole way to Aubrey’s house.

Aubrey isn’t sure if she should strangle Sunny on the spot or hug him. Maybe both, at once.

They’re standing in front of her front door, which she slams shut behind her. He flinches and nearly drops his backpack in the process, seemingly trying to fish something out of it.

“I told you not to -” she interrupts herself - “You know what, forget it. Let’s go somewhere else.”

She grabs Sunny by his wrist, dragging him along. He could have waited for her to come over or something, but apparently, whatever he wants can’t wait. Aubrey expected it to be Kim or somebody else from the gang, not Sunny, sweating and fumbling with a backpack.

She doesn’t really know where she wants to go, but since the direction she chose is the general way to the church, sitting on one of the benches in front of it is maybe not such a bad idea. It’s late, the sun is already starting to set, so there won’t be many visitors. If any, at all. Aubrey is alone at the church often enough to know the flow of it.

Sunny is panting slightly by the time they reach the building. His face is unreadable, still the same stony neutral as always, but the way he wipes his forehead tells her enough to know he is probably cursing her for actually making him walk. Some exercise wouldn’t kill him.

He sits down on one of the benches as soon as they reach them. Aubrey snorts quietly, following him but coming to a halt in front of him.

“We could go and sit inside, you know,” she tells him, without any bite behind it. Sunny side-eyes one of the statues standing next to the entrance, swallowing. He looks at her again and shrugs.

There is a small flame of anger when he doesn’t say what he thinks. She pushes it down. It’s no use getting angry at him, not now.

She sits down next to him, elbows on her knees. She leaves a little space for him to breathe.

“So, what do you want?” It comes out a little more aggressive than she intended it to be. He blinks at her, shrinking a little.

“I wanted to get out, anyway. I mean, I promised Mari to take school more seriously, but being stuck at home all day just sucks.”

He still looks at her like a deer in the headlights, but after a moment, he seems to collect himself, rummaging through his backpack again. Aubrey watches him, distantly glad he is doing something, anything at all, instead of just sitting there, frozen. It’s an improvement. Maybe.

Sunny pulls out a little plastic bag, pressing it into her hands insistently. The cookies inside are a little crooked but self-made, still. On the bag itself, a few cat stickers are scattered. She looks at him, eyebrows raised.

He tries to clear his throat, cheeks slightly pink.

“Mari,” he says, pointing at the cat stickers. As if she didn’t know Sunny would proudly put cats on every freaking thing he owns. The cat pin she got him a long time ago is still on the front of his backpack, slightly faded by time. But it’s still there.

“Sure,” she says, a grin tugging on the corners of her mouth. “But really, bothering me at home for a few cookies? I could have picked them up from your house tomorrow or whenever.”

Sunny is slightly shifting in his seat, avoiding eye contact. Okay, maybe that was a little mean. It’s not like she doesn’t want to see him - not always, anyway - but she would die before letting him inside the house.

She wants to say something to break the silence, but surprisingly, Sunny tries first.

“A picnic,” he mumbles, partially into his hand and partially to her, “With everyone.”

“.... A picnic,” she repeats after a moment, voice flat. He nods, still not looking at her. Aubrey is honestly not sure what to say. It’s not like she doesn’t like picnics. It’s not like she doesn’t miss sitting together; the only worry on her mind the possibility of Kel inhaling everything edible before anybody else gets the chance to. It’s really not like that.

But she also remembers the fighting. Everyone turning away. It’s something she can’t forgive so easily.

The way Sunny looks at her, careful like he is taming an animal, only makes it worse.

“I don’t know,” she says, but she grabs Sunny by the arm to stop him from getting up. He is really looking at her now, and if she didn’t know him so well, she’d think this doesn’t affect him at all. But he is tense beneath her grip, ready to bolt. “Let me think about it for a second, okay?”

Mari is constantly scolding her for being brash, so she will take her time to think this once.

Aubrey decides to open the bag of cookies. The first one she takes out, she shoves into Sunny’s hand; the next, she stuffs directly into her own face. It tastes a lot like home. The last time Mari made any of these was years ago, she thinks, savoring the taste.

Sitting together like this feels familiar, too. Before everything, Aubrey loved just sitting with Sunny. It didn’t matter where, or when, or why.

Meeting Mari and Sunny is one of the few things Aubrey is deeply grateful for, even though it has been the cause for a lot of grief as well. But Mari is like a big sister to her, listening and giving advice, offering her a place to stay when she can’t stand being at home. She is inspiring, in a wheelchair or not, possessed of a grace Aubrey can never hope to replicate. Aubrey loves her, and the thought of never meeting her in exchange for never having to suffer doesn’t even cross her mind.

And Sunny. Sunny isn’t Mari, not as outgoing or graceful or a high achiever like her - but he is just as important.

The accident four years ago took her whole family from her. After Mari went to the hospital and Sunny wasn’t allowed home for so long, everything fell apart. Sunny and Mari had introduced Kel and Hero to her, and when she brought Basil into the group, she thought it was perfect. The sting of her father leaving or her mother’s behavior wasn’t as sharp when she was with them.

She didn’t expect to be left alone this way.

“I just think… After how they acted, you forgive them too easily,” Aubrey says after a while. “I know that’s just how you are.”

Aubrey still feels the embers of her grudge flicker. Sunny is just looking at her, but he relaxes a little. She watches him nibble on the corner of his cookie. Aubrey wants to shove it down his throat, the whole bag actually - he is too thin, nearly see-through. Like he could vanish any minute. The thought makes her want to shake him until he promises that he won’t.

Sunny mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like an apology.

“Don’t,” she growls, and he doesn’t apologize again.

She bites into the next cookie, chewing with a scowl on her face.

Aubrey is angry a lot these days, and she has been mad for a long time. She used to be really mad at Sunny, too.

It was stupid, she knows. But Aubrey doesn’t understand, and she never will if he doesn’t talk to her. If she could, she would pry him open by force, but she has to admit, begrudgingly, that she loves him too much for that. The truth isn’t worth breaking him open with claws and bloody hands.

After Mari’s accident, she had screamed at him until her voice gave out, and he had just let her.

But she wants to understand. She remembers Sunny so clearly, eight years old, shy and quiet, with warm hands, open arms, and safe. Sunny by the swings with her, for hours on end, listening patiently. Sunny petting her head, tying ribbons in her hair, letting her cuddle up to him when the world felt lonely and big and so cold.

She had loved all of her friends, of course. But with Sunny, it had been so easy. Aubrey remembers her old fear of ending up alone, unloved and forgotten and buried underneath her mother’s terrible mess - but Sunny had managed to make her feel loved every second of every day.

Mari is amazing, she really is, and Aubrey loves her to death. But while Mari is everything she ever wished for in a big sister, she can be impatient. She still is, throwing herself into work or the piano with everything she has. Aubrey admires that about her, but Mari closes herself off from the world while she does so, unavailable to anyone but her aspirations.

The Sunny she remembers was, unlike Mari, a patient soul. His smiles were rare and small, but Aubrey and Basil were both hellbent on getting one of them on camera. She still has the photograph stuck on the wall above her desk. She remembers falling asleep, between him and Basil, in one of their pillow forts in Mari’s and Sunny’s room. Sunny holding her hand even though Kel was screaming about cooties whenever he saw her. Him complimenting her new pink raincoat. How Sunny got the violin for Christmas, happy and warm.

That’s the Sunny she misses the most.

Mari told her to be patient with him, careful even, but she can’t stop herself from scooching over even closer to him, hip to hip. She is a little taller than him, so she slumps down a bit to put her head on his shoulder like she used to when they were younger.

He tenses up beneath her but relaxes after a few seconds. Aubrey doesn’t care about what the rest of the town might think when they see them, or even what Sunny feels about this - just a little, maybe. He lets her do as she pleases, anyway.

“Can I punch Basil when I see him?”

Sunny nearly chokes on the small piece of cookie in his mouth.

“Can I at least punch Kel? Come on.”

Sunny seems to contemplate this, a thoughtful hum vibrating in his chest. Aubrey feels it against her cheek, through his shoulder.

“If you let me punch Kel, I’ll come, so don’t be stingy.”

He snorts just a little, but Aubrey still hears it. Suddenly, she misses him terribly.

“You just know that I’ll come anyway to your stupid picnic, you jerk.”

Maybe she can’t forgive the others so easily. Most likely not. But perhaps it won’t be so bad. Mari will be there, along with Hero. And Sunny came to see her on his own. He’s not pushing her away, and it might just be enough.

She can punch Kel and Basil when Sunny isn’t looking, she thinks.

Omori wins, as usual.

Sunny puts down his cards, throwing them onto the pile between them. Sometimes he thinks Omori is cheating, even though the other says he doesn’t. He wonders why Omori loves playing cards so much - he nearly always wins, so there is no real competition.

The other boy picks the cards off the floor, putting them on the side neatly. It seems like he is satisfied after what feels like hours, but Sunny welcomes the slow pace. He doesn’t know if he could keep up with big adventures tonight, and Omori offered to stay in White Space without Sunny suggesting it.

Omori pushes Mewo to Sunny’s chest before sitting down next to him and pressing close.

“I’m sorry,” he says, tone as flat as always, but Sunny knows he is sincere. He lifts his arm a little so the other can slip beneath it into something like a hug.

He is still a little upset, admittedly, but he understands Omori’s reasoning. The other broke his promise only to protect him when he couldn’t protect himself.

“You just slipped away when she yelled at you, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Sunny acknowledges this with a small hum. Mewo is purring in his lap, and Omori sighs when he pets his head. The first time Omori took over his body without warning, Sunny went through a whole week of panic. It’s still scary when it happens now, but he knows those instances always have their reasons.

Omori wants to be trusted, and even though he is very stern and serious for a twelve-year-old, he loves being praised. Sunny knows just which buttons to press to make him happy or sad, but he refrains from doing that. He is already glowing in a faint, yellow outline when Sunny thanks him for watching out for him.

“Wasn’t fun, anyway,” Omori mumbles.

He can imagine that. Mari can be rigorous in her questioning. She means well, but Sunny can’t deal with her questions. The answers aren’t easy to find.

They sit together like this in comfortable silence. Sunny wanted to be cross with him for a little while longer, but Omori knows that he can’t hold a grudge for very long, the lucky bastard.

“Didn’t even get to play any Black Jack,” the shorter boy laments. Well, seeing as he woke up on the couch last time, this makes sense. There was no way Mari would let him sleep in his own room after his slip-up.

He has to be more careful. Omori can’t always cover for him just because he’s an idiot sometimes.

Sunny sends the other a thought that very clearly states that he isn’t angry. Omori presses a little closer, nearly shoving off Mewo in the process.

“I won’t let them hurt you,” the smaller boy says, and it would be comforting if he didn’t have a knife in his hand. Mewo jumps off his lap when the other raises it, blade glistening sharply. Suddenly, Omori’s jaw is bloodstained, but Sunny doesn’t get to wipe any of it away before he wakes up, bathed in sweat.

(I'm sorry this hasn't been updated in more than a year. It's not abandoned even if it looks like it. Life is incredibly busy right now but I nearly beat chapter 7 into submission. Thank you for reading so far and indulging me in my love for making my favorite characters suffer. I'm in no way a professional writer or know much about the subject at all so I'm glad people found reading worthwhile. See you soon.)