Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the middle of the yard, cast in the glorifying halo of pale moonlight, a lone boy sits nervously tapping his ankles together.

Nights like these should be hot. When the sun’s rays have fallen beneath the horizon, the world can’t shake its residual heat, and he has no idea where to even crawl to escape the dampness of sweat. Instead, this night is eerily cold, with icy gusts cutting through teeth and bone and predicting the arrival of a morning storm.

It’s summer nights like these when Omori should feel his best—yet tonight, not even the perfect weather can lift his spirits.

Taking a final drag from his cigarette, he lets the smoke sit in his lungs as he flicks the finished butt into the pool and watches the water’s surface ripple. The moon’s serene outline doesn’t stand a chance against the strong wind that sends a shiver through his spine and makes him curl his toes in his socks to combat the goosebumps that rise on his skin. 

As he exhales again, he focuses on the heavy rustle of leaves all around him. Neither the noise nor the earthy smell of grass and dew that breaks through the stench of tar distracts him from the presence behind him that burns holes into his back.

He sighs. “What.”

“Mom… Mom doesn’t like it when you throw your trash into the pool.”

Omori groans. He reaches for his pack and pulls out another, wishing he had a new cigarette butt ready to throw into the pool as a statement. He quickly lights it, leaving time to inhale and let the smoke sit for a while.

“Mom doesn’t like anything I do,” Omori replies, smoke under each word.

“That’s not true. Mom loves you.”

There’s no point in gracing such idiocy with an answer, so he doesn’t. Omori’s attempt at being frustrating is successful, and he soon hears an exasperated sigh behind him.

“Have you at least changed your mind?”

“Nope.”

“Nope…?”

Omori lets his answer speak for itself, feeling a sense of indignation smoulder under his heart. His answer couldn’t have been clearer, it’s not his fault if he seeks meaning that isn’t there in it.

Footsteps behind him. He’s not touched or pushed, so he must have changed his mind.

“You know…” comes from closer behind him, having halted. “Everyone really wants you to be there. I do too. I don’t understand why you refuse…”

There’s more desperation in his voice. He didn’t come here to change Omori’s mind or tell him that despite everything, he’s still loved, but to shame him for being oh so horrible and for not cheering on his brother’s big moment.

What’s there to cheer for? He’s a backstabbing bitch. He might as well be dead to Omori.

Fur brushes against his leg. He’s in no mood for it, but if it makes it clear that he’s ignoring Sunny, then he happily picks up Mewo and places her down on his lap, quietly stroking her fur and giving her attention he refuses to divert towards his brother. She pushes her head against him, greedily asking for all the attention he could possibly give her.

It seems that Sunny has given up. With another sigh, he walks into Omori’s vision, into the far corner, and picks up the pool skimmer. He fishes out the cigarette butts that Omori’s been tossing into the water before placing the skimmer back and standing by the side of the pool, hands on his hips as he watches over the turbulent water. 

“I’m gonna put the cover back over the pool,” he says, attempting to make Omori return his eye contact by staring straight at him.

“What, you don’t trust me?” Omori bitterly retorts, eyes fixed on that swaying moon in the ripples.

Sunny groans. Finally getting the message that Omori wants him nowhere near him and that he can fuck right off, he walks off to his side, hopefully disappearing for good. But when his footsteps stop and he quietly stands there lurking behind Omori, he knows that he’s not quite gone yet.

“Do you have any idea what you’re putting us through?”

Omori already made it abundantly clear that he’s not coming, he doesn’t understand why Sunny keeps bothering. He wants to instil shame and guilt. He should know by now that Omori doesn’t care.

Taking another inhale from his cigarette, Omori slouches down further over Mewo, fingers trickling across her supple spine. Sunny seems to get the hint, because his footsteps remove themselves from the pool, and he hears the kitchen door slide open and shut again, announcing his departure.

Finally. Omori came out here to sulk, not to be judged.

He finishes his cigarette, then several more, until five cigarette butts float in the pool water. Mewo has long left his lap, judging him to smell too bad to stay around. He really needs to quit, but it gives him something to do other than marinade in his thoughts.

He pulls a sixth out of his pack but hears the sliding door open again before he can light it. Groaning, he puts the cigarette between his lips and grabs his lighter.

“I thought this was where I’d find you. You never change, Omori!”

There’s a certain degree of cheer in Mari’s voice. She has different intentions coming here than Sunny did. Omori takes the cigarette back out of his mouth and stuffs it back into his pack. He already stinks badly enough, and he knows what Mari thinks about this bad habit of his.

He should answer, but he can’t. He doesn’t know what he’d say.

Mari doesn’t need an answer. She comes around, pace flighty, and sits down next to him on the poolside bench. She crosses her legs and lays her hands over her dress, fingers tapping. Is she nervous too?

“What are we looking at?” she asks, eyes pinned on him with a bright smile.

Omori points ahead, at the pool, the trees, and the moon.

Mari follows his finger, travelling over the broken image illuminated in the water before ascending to the real deal. 

“Leaving on the night of a first quarter moon. I can’t quite remember… Was that a good omen, or a bad one?”

Omori is sure there’s symbolism tied to a quarter moon, the same way there is to every single other phase of the moon. It’s how astro nuts sell the same nonsense every month to gullible idiots.

Mari doesn’t deserve such spiteful thoughts directed at her.

“I think it means good luck,” Omori bullshits.

“Really?” Mari looks back at the moon, a confident smile on her face. “Looks like we’re off to a great start, then. Let’s hope that luck will carry through during the next few months for us two, huh!”

Omori hums in agreement, feeling inadequate to add anything of value to the conversation.

The siblings sit quietly for a few minutes, Mari looking up and Omori looking down, before Mari breaks the silence again.

“Hey, Omori…”

Here it comes.

“You can always talk to me if you need to, you know that, right?”

Don’t get upset. It’s born from good intentions. She’s the only one who’s here with good intentions.

Yet he feels like exploding. He blames Sunny earlier.

“Is there anything you wanted to talk about?” Mari openly asks.

Omori shakes his head. They don’t have time, anyway, and they won’t find a moment when he feels like exposing his thoughts.

“Alright, I see,” Mari says, accepting his dismissal. She swings around her hands in her lap, eyes drifting towards the pool before she lets loose. “There was something I wanted to talk about with you. It’s not about me, don’t worry, I just wanna help you.”

“About the trip?” Omori mumbles.

“About the trip.”

Omori looks at Mari, awaiting her questions.

“You choose whatever makes you feel good, Omori. Something vital will be missing while we’re there, but if it’s what makes you happy, then I’m never going to ask you to do something you don’t wanna do. I couldn’t bear to see you pushed beyond what you’re comfortable with again. But are you sure you want to stay behind? It’s not a shame if you changed your mind!”

He didn’t. They both know he didn’t. It’s a carefully-hidden plea to make him come along regardless, but they both know he can’t.

“I’m good here,” Omori answers, his arms wrapped loosely around himself.

“If it’s what makes you feel best, then you should stay. Oh, but I’ll miss my little brother!” Mari wistfully says as she pulls Omori into a sideways hug.

He lets her grab him real close and even leans into the hug, secretly wanting nothing more than to stay like this forever. At least she cares, and look at how he’s squandering all that love he doesn’t deserve.

She lets go, placing one hand atop the other on her knees as she watches the moon.

“You’re probably tired of hearing us ask, but I just don’t want you to make a choice you’ll regret later. If you stay behind, I want you to do it because that’s what’ll make you happiest, not because you think it’ll get back at them. That’s why you made this choice, right?”

“I just… I can’t deal…”

“I know, I know. You’ll get there someday!” Mari cheerfully encourages.

Omori can’t suppress the grumble in his throat. He looks away, annoyed with himself over being such an ungrateful brat when she immediately understood his reason to stay.

“Ah, I’m just doing what big sisters do, but I can’t help but worry about you, you know? You can take care of yourself, I know! But to stay behind in this big, empty home all by yourself? At a time when you’re not feeling your best?”

She shuffles her hands in her lap, a conflicted smile tugging at her lips. 

“Can you deal with that right now? Will you manage on your own?”

No.

Of course not.

He’d ask Mari to stay behind with him, but he’d be shattering her dream. He has no option but to stay behind, and he has no option but to do it the way he has done everything in the past decade: alone.

But he doesn’t wanna worry her, so he just laughs.

“Mari, please. I’ll manage. I made it this far, didn’t I?”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Mari in turn laughs with a relieved smile. “I knew you had it in you. You’re capable of so much more than you think.”

She extends her hand to ruffle Omori’s hair, and the fake laugh he let out earlier turns into a genuine smile, even a happy hum, if he dares acknowledge it as such.

“Would you promise me something?” she asks as she retracts her hand.

Omori looks at her, prompting her wordlessly.

“Let’s call at least twice a week, and more than that if you need it, okay?” she suggests. “We should talk as often as we can. That way, I can check up on my little brother and learn of all his many plans for the day.” She leans a little closer and whispers the next bit, her hand propped against her smirking mouth. “Mischief included.” 

She winks, eyes sassily hooded.

Plans such as lying in bed all day and rotting away into nothingness, real devious. But the latter comment does pull a little smile out of Omori as he averts his eyes, caught red-handed.

“I wanna make sure that you’re fed and tidy. Overprotective siblings, right? But I know you shut down easily and have a hard time placing calls, so if I’m the one to call you, will you pick up?”

She has such a charming way of putting things that he doesn’t even feel offended over low-key being babied.

“Okay.”

“Thank you. I’m available 24/7 by text, and if you need to talk over the phone, I can practically at any moment slip away to do so. Always remember that! And you know…”

She pats him on the shoulder, a kind smile illuminating her whole face.

“Should you get lonely for even a second, or you regret not coming with us, just call me. It will take no effort at all for me to fly home to come pick you up so we can travel together. We’ll get you a ticket, stat. The Moores would happily come pick up Mewo to watch her. Rod can take care of the house. There are options.”

She already has every solution thought of, every reason Omori could give not to give in should he really want it. Mari has always been meticulous like that.

“Just know that wherever we are and however you may feel, we’re always within no more than a few hours of travel away, okay? It’s never too late to change your mind, and we’ll be welcoming you with open arms if you do.”

“Yeah…” Omori says. 

For her, he might. It ends there. He wishes that she didn’t have to suffer from his selfish choice, but it’s the only choice he has. They both know that he’ll never set a foot outside their gate. Not during the day, very rarely during the night, when the stars align.

“As long as you’re happy, I’m happy!” Mari says with a cheerful clap of her hands. 

She tries so hard. Omori feels guilty that she can’t lift his spirits.

“Mhm…” Omori hums. He sinks his nails into his leg and tries to suppress a groan as he forces himself to speak. “I hope you’ll have a good time out there too.”

“It sure will be an educational trip!” Mari says. This time, she sounds a little nervous. “There’s so much I still have to learn, but I’m sure that with enough rehearsal, it’ll be alright! And I’ll come back home with so many stories to tell my little brother.”

Omori smiles. It’s a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless.

“Mari? Where are you?” comes from the back door.

“Here, mom! At the pool!” Mari yells back.

“We’re ready to leave, are you coming, honey?”

“Just a sec, mom!” She looks behind, over her shoulder. “Darn, looks like it’s time to go.”

She turns back around, facing Omori. He keeps his eyes pinned on the reflected moon, daggers poking through his heart. She only came here to say goodbye. Would any of them have said anything if she hadn’t?

“Hey, you stay strong, alright? For me?”  

She pokes him in the shoulder, having noticed the solemn tone of his expression. 

Omori snorts. “I’m the strongest fucker in this house.”

“And you,” she says with cheer under her voice, elbowing him in the side, “haven’t changed even a bit from the sassy little brother I know and love.”

They exchange laughs that die out into the night. She doesn’t seem like she wants to move on. He doesn’t want her to go.

She catches on, twisting her side and sighing. 

“Oh, but how I will miss you!”

She leans in and wraps her arms around him in a tight hug. A farewell.

The hug lingers. There’s commotion at the sliding door, and it signals that she has to go. She pulls back, putting her hands on his shoulders.

“I know how much of a night owl you are, but promise me you’ll go inside before midnight, alright?” She shivers in exaggeration. “You’ll catch a cold with this wind.”

“Yeah…”

Mari smiles one last time and stands, patting him on the head.

“I’ll send you updates about our flight and let you know when we’ve safely arrived at our place. You better clear some space on your phone, I’m blasting your gallery with photos!”

“Hey, thanks, Mari. Really.”

She exudes warmth, ruffling his hair one last time before letting go.

“And hey. Nothing says that you can’t revisit the past from a positive angle. It’s no mark against you if you don’t, but you are capable of so much. I believe in you!”

“Mhm…” Omori answers without conviction.

He doesn’t remember much of the rest of their parting—he swears at least one other person shows up, but he doesn’t register who. Soon, the house is quiet and empty in a way he has grown to hate over the years, only the wind filling his ears. He wasn’t exactly considered when they came to live out in the middle of nowhere, no matter how much he appreciates that he can escape the gaze of others hidden deep within these countryside forests.

Fear and self-induced loneliness won’t be the biggest of his issues for the next few months.

Sticking his hand into his pocket, he takes out his pack of cigarettes and lighter again. He stays by the side of the pool until the rising sun colours the horizon a dark teal.

Chapter Text

How long has it been exactly? Has he lost count already? 

He lies in bed, staring blankly at the space stickers on his ceiling that give off a faint neon glow in the dark. If nothing else, it gives his mind something to do. He’s content enough to do this for the next few months, but life won’t have it.

His phone has been ringing on his desk. He doesn't need to get up and walk over to know this is Mari. 

Maybe he freezes because he believes that it will make his inaction somehow less scummy while the call goes over to voicemail.

He sits quietly, letting minutes pass by before he's broken from his trance by a ping. Looking at his laptop, Mari stands at the top of his Discord contacts, typing. He's almost afraid to open her messages, in case this is the time when she finally snaps at his thoughtlessness. 

He lets them sit until he can no longer handle the burning in his stomach, and finds a slew of messages.

Mari   Today at 10:43 pm

Hey little bro! Sorry I’m so late to call you! Dinner ran a little late ^^'
Today isn't the day you're picking up either, huh? I have full confidence that you'll get there eventually!
How are you doing today?

A wall of text follows the initial messages.

Ah, shit.

There’s the reason he didn’t open these, and the text underneath fills him with dread. He considers tossing his laptop and going to bed early for a change, but Mari would get worried without a response.

So he looks.

Mari   Today at 10:59 pm

We met our mentor today. Mom was pleased to take his people under her wing, and…

False alarm; nothing sets him off.

Omori only lightly skims the rest of Mari’s detailed message. There seems to be no scolding going on, and as soon as he realises that, his interest wanes. It's not that he doesn't want to get involved, it's that he can't force himself to care. He has long accepted it as the reason why he has no friends. 

He waits a little before he types up an answer, anxious about what he can even say.

Omoboii   Today at 11:53 pm

sry mari :c
im fine thx
glad u did that

Uninspired as hell. The most generic answer anyone could give. Every single one of his responses so far have been like this. She already met him halfway by using his preferred communication platform, and look at how he repays her.

Mari   Today at 11:53 pm

Don't stress, you're doing all you can, and I'm happy I get to tell you about my day ^-^
Did you feed Mewo today?

Ah. Fuck. He forgot.

Omoboii   Today at 11:56 pm

ye

Mari   Today at 11:56 pm

Has Rowan come over to help with groceries yet?

Hah.

Hahahaha.

He hasn’t exactly told Mari yet, but if Omori continues like this, it’ll only be a matter of time. He did it for a reason. A very good, absolutely grounded reason. Yup.

Omoboii   Today at 11:58 pm

no

Mari   Today at 11:59 pm

Give him a call! He said he’d help you out. He’ll get you anything you need from the store, and he’d even help you cook, so you two can spend some quality time together ;) 
Don’t survive on pizza and doner alone, ok? ^^
Let's call tomorrow at noon?

She’s so optimistic, it sometimes makes him ill. She has good intentions, and she has to work with Omori’s uncooperative ass, he has to remember that…

He stares, hoping that the answer will come to him, before he finally adds a little thumbs up emoji to her message, putting aside his laptop. Too many unread messages from too few and the wrong people on an evening when he can’t be bothered to reach out. He doesn’t feel like socialising, and he now feels embarrassed over Mari’s direct comment on him and Rowan.

So he’s left the way he’s spent most of his time since his family left: alone, sulking in bed, and suppressing that feeling in his gut over his choices of the past week.

On a whim, he stands and walks towards the window, staring out at the empty vastness in the hopes that his mind would just match it already. There’s movement in the backyard. Mewo is on the prowl again. He opts to keep all the lights in and around the house out if he can avoid it, leaving the premises dark and undisturbed so that he can better see the stars.

His forehead falls against the window with a thud. He closes his eyes, breath fogging up the glass and condensing on his nose. Mari’s words have been on his mind a lot as of late.

Nothing says that you can’t revisit the past from a positive angle.

What did she mean by that?

Of course he knows what she meant by that, but what did she mean by that? What did she want him to do, honestly? Why isn’t he picking up her calls to ask her what she could possibly want from him?

Same reason he hasn’t done a lot of things in recent years, huh.

And yet, and yet.

Yeah, yeah. There’s enough people nagging him already, can his internal monologue not join them? 

Did she want him to give things another try? It’s not going to happen—the thought of entering the room by the stairs fills him with enough dread to fuel an entire night of terror—so why does he entertain the thought? Why is he genuinely considering it, now that he’s all alone and not a soul in the world would hear him if he–

He almost chokes on his spit.

No. Nope, no, no no no. Noooooo. Not happening. 

He looks up again, trying to spot Mewo in the backyard, but fails to see any movement. She was already hard to spot earlier, with her midnight black fur; she must’ve gone inside again. Even if she caught a mouse, she needs kibble. He promised Mari to give her the highest standard of care, he’d hate himself if he failed.

It’s not so hard taking care of a huge, empty home all by yourself when you’re a nasty slob. There are only two things on his to-do list. One: take care of himself well enough that he doesn’t collapse dead on the floor. Two: take care of Mewo well enough that she thrives.

The first item is negotiable. The second, not so much.

Hurray, a reason to leave his room.

He lingers, deciding that he’ll take his phone with him after all, in case he gets bored during the few minutes he’s downstairs. Pushing against his door, it opens with a creak, giving into the blackened hallway. Years ago, the thought may have scared him, but recently, he has felt nothing staring out into that lonesome abyss, let alone walking through it by himself.

In that dark hallway, his eyes quickly adapt, saved by the stark moonlight that shines into the house. That first quarter moon has quickly evolved into a full moon—though as luck would have it, the full moon seems to be reserved for tomorrow night.

Oh joy, just for him.

Slithering down the stairs, he makes it to the ground floor. The living room is silent save for a soft breathing noise. Omori shines his phone’s flashlight towards the source, finding Mewo fast asleep in her basket, almost indistinguishable from the shadows around her.

Out hunting just minutes ago only to come inside and pass out. How relatable. She’s getting lazy. Unless he saw that neighbouring cat visiting the backyard earlier. He has seen a few unknown cats lurking in the yard lately, usually looking for food during the day, when Mewo’s out cold on the couch and not defending the property from invaders.

They did get Mewo fixed, right…?

Shining his light onto her bowl, it’s half filled. It helps that there are three bowls inside and one outside that she can use whenever she’s hungry. Now it’s in Omori’s hands whether he’ll bother going to the pantry to refill them, or if he’ll assume she’ll make do with what’s left until tomorrow.

A hungry Mewo has the most annoying meow in the world, he’ll hear it if he made the wrong choice by picking to leave them for tomorrow.

Mewo opens her eyes, prickled by the flashlight and letting out an offended meow. Omori quickly turns it off, raising an apologetic hand for the intrusion. She quickly hops out of her basket, and for some reason—curiosity, boredom, lack of direction in his life, he has no clue—he decides to follow her to see what she gets up to anyway during the night.

She pads around the living room and central hallway for a little while, getting up to practically nothing, and just as Omori decides he’s tired of following, he realises where she has led him.

A double door beside the stairs he hasn’t passed through in over a decade.

Were it up to him, he’d walk away now and continue ignoring its existence, the same way he has done every day for the past years when going upstairs. 

But this time, it feels different. The ridges in the doors’ wood are just a little more defined. The light shines off the handles just a little brighter. The silence that emanates from the abandoned quarters thrums inside his ears is just a little louder than the rest of the house. The scratches from when they were twelve and Sunny pushed Omori seem carved just a little deeper into the surface. From between the doors, there seems to shine a faint light that no other place in the house casts.

Nothing says that you can’t revisit the past from a positive angle.

His fingers are tightly clenched into the fabric of his shorts. There’s absolutely no way he’d consider it. He couldn’t.

Fur brushes against his socks. Mewo caught on that he stopped following her, but she can’t capture his full attention this time around.

It’s not the first time. Each time he’s missed a call from Mari in the past days, he has found himself downstairs, staring at those doors until he decided that he wasn’t strong enough to humour Mari’s well-meaning suggestion. He always just… happened to end up here.

Nothing is different tonight. So why is he, on the tips of his toes and without making any noise, inching closer? 

So close to them after so many years, those doors don’t seem so tall anymore. How tiny was he the last time he came here, the last time he acknowledged that there was a room like this in their home? How many years has he wasted?

Fingertips carefully reach out to the door, ghosting over the wood without touching. The mere thought sends shockwaves through his spine, setting his hair on edge. Mewo meows, but he ignores her. Maybe the sound is a good distraction; good enough that his hovering hand accidentally taps against the door and his fingers brush against the soft wood.

He has connected. Like there is no way back. He has seen the inside of this room more than enough since he last came here; there is nothing wrong with taking a look and making sure that everything’s alright around the house.

His hand descends towards the doorknob. The metal cools his hot skin, damp from the droplets of sweat that roll over his digits. They wrap around the knob, not quite twisting or moving it.

C’mon, no one else makes this big of a deal out of this.

The large door creaks as Omori pushes it open. He stays hidden behind the one he kept closed, only peeking in his head just far enough to catch a glimpse of any irregularities that might need fixing.

Cast in gentle sheets of moonlight, the room ahead of him could foolishly be described as idyllic if one were ignorant of its history. Peaceful, warm, tranquillising—as spectral specks of dust unassumingly float through the purple whites of the moonlight that filters into the room through the skylights high above, those are the only way this room should be described. Silent, cold, soothing, the best way that they could have possibly decorated a room like this.

But to Omori, it burns.

It must have been years since he last opted to set foot in here, and it goes exactly the way he always thought it would if he ever had the terrible idea to immerse himself into these horrid memories again. Busy yet so vast and vacant, inhabited by objects old and new. Ones tied to them all. Sections reserved for mom and dad, and for Mari, and for Sunny, now all empty.

All except for one section, pushed away into a corner swallowed by shadows over the years.

In the middle of the room, cast in the glorifying halo of searing lights, a lone boy stands shivering on skinny legs.

It beckons, stealing his attention despite promising not to let himself get caught up in this. 

The wooden curves of its polished surface gleam in the moonlight, smooth and untouched in ages. Browns, whites, and blacks that embody luxury.

An artisanal product.

An object crafted with intent and care.

An old friend waiting for him, begging him to change his mind. 

To be there. 

To come along. 

To be, for once in his life, united instead of pushing everything and everyone away—before reminding him that he has already done something he cannot take back.

As the roar of hands dies down, it’s just him in utter silence, every move watched, heard, devoured flesh and bone whole by a ravenous mass of faceless strangers.

He stands there silently, peeking. Blinking. Hoping that maybe, if he isn’t noticed, he might still walk away unscathed. 

But he doesn’t. 

He makes a mistake. 

He leaves the cover of that door and sets a foot inside, warily eyeing the floor as if it might break open under him and devour him at a moment’s notice, should it choose to be so kind.

‘The newest Hirano prodigy,’ a familiar, foreign voice so distantly proclaims. It says more, but he hasn’t heard the rest. His ears ring and his lips tingle. He regrets having eaten.

For some unknowingly stupid reason, he sets another step. And another.

Each step echoes through that vacant house like a drum, floorboards creaking under his socks as he approaches on the tips of his toes. 

He does his best not to be seen, not to be heard, not to exist in this hazardous space despite the billions of eyes that observe him from the windows, the doors, the cracks between the floorboards and walls, shining a bright white yet going unseen in his strangled state.

His head spins as he sits and nearly sinks through his legs. The world around him blacks out. Why is this happening now?

His breath sits trapped in a knot in his throat. He might just fall.

His hands move into position, numbed fingertips shivering against maple and pernambuco.

A final step, before he can go no further and he stares down breathlessly. 

The distance has been closed. He has run out of excuses. 

Leave. 

Just leave. 

Leave while he can.

There is no way out. This is where he must shine. 

No dust blemishes the artefact in front of him. 

Who would bother to clean it? 

Why is this still here?

Who would care? 

His throat collapses. He breathes to steady his nerves, but the air doesn’t seem to offer him any relief from suffocation.

He lifts his hand, but it stills for him before he can make contact. He has never quite seen someone tremble this hard, not outside of bad acting and pretending to garner sympathy.

Why doesn’t he move?

Slowly, like he's not in control of his body, his hand approaches. 

One finger, placed upon the wood as if it might scorch him should he risk it. Silently, just brushing his fingertips over the surface of an old friend, its texture sending spikes through his heart.

Too small. Too weak. Too imprecise.

The others follow, each like a new lethal contact with a live wire that sends thousands of volts through his heart, his spine, every hair that covers his body.

Too chaotic. Too anxious. Too undisciplined.

Grimacing, his fingers descend, following a natural curve of an object he's so familiar with, one he wasted years of his life on—and like a potent toxin, it seeps dread that absorbs straight through his skin and siphons all blood out of his heart.

Out of tune. Out of rhythm. Out of practice.

His soaked palm joins, following the intricate patterns and the maple casing as if it’s his own skin he hasn’t touched in aeons.

Never-do-well. Temperamental brat. Antisocial shut-in.

Until he feels safe. Until he’s no longer poisoned. 

But such a moment never comes.

Not good enough.

He prematurely drifts. Towards the middle, abandoning safety for the unknown.

Not good enough.

His finger flirts with a string, thick and robust, and the brush of his fingertip over its span sends a deep hum through its hollow body that drains him of all warmth.

Never good enough.

Why is he doing this to himself?

He seeks support by the side of his stage. They are watching, confusion and mortification glinting in their eyes, for they know what is about to happen yet are unable to save him. It is much too late to back out now.

His finger curls behind the string.

The lone boy’s bow strikes the string, and perhaps his only comfort is that his fate was already sealed long before he set foot in this concert hall, long before there would even be a debut.

A hellish thrum thunders through the dead silence of the vacant house, shattering his eardrums with intense sonic discordance that vibrates through his arteries and pierces his eyes. It resonates deep within his heart, distorts the few shards of his soul still left somewhere around his body, and his feet can barely carry his weight. All at once, those million eyes are set upon him, watching, revelling as they see every inch of bare skin, every minor tremble of his digits, every shameful detail of his life—and they break out into a cacophonous censure.

The string’s echo still resounds through the house when Omori has made it up the stairs and slammed his room door shut, falling against the wooden barrier with a hand clutched over his chest and the other clamped over his mouth. 

He barely even registered that his eyes are wet. His throat is closed, and it takes him a choked gasp to break it open and force life-saving air inside. And when he breathes, out comes a pathetic sob that stings his eyes, miserable and raw and unfiltered as his chest shakes and he slides to the floor.

Pulling his legs to his chest, he hides his forehead against his knees, tightly hugging himself in an attempt to regain control over a body that has escaped his grasp. His heart hammers through his neck and he’s at the verge of retching.

He should be able to regain control—fuck, he should, but nothing works. Each attempt drips his fragile mind back into the past, eviscerating it whole from the thousands of shards that skewer him live.

It’s hopeless. 

It’s hopeless. 

It’s utterly hopeless.

There is no revisiting the past—not positively, not happily, not peacefully, not ever. He avoided it for a reason, the source of everything that has gone wrong with him in the past decade, and why why why did he have to be such an idiot?

What’s even the point if he can’t do this? This one simple task Mari gave him? That was too much?

What hope is there for him if this is his limit?

He sits sobbing at his door long beyond when his headache has dehydrated his skull, long past Mewo’s attempts to push open the door and come check up on him, long past the light of day slipping past his arms and stinging in his crusted eyes.

Because that’s all he is.

An extinguished star.

A broken Hirano.

A failed prodigy.

Worthless.

Chapter Text

An attempt was made. It is a failed attempt, but an attempt nonetheless.

The sun is still up by the time his head pounds hard enough that they can probably hear it all the way over in town. His plan to sleep all day and wake up long after midnight is nipped in the bud when he acknowledges that between crying out his eyes all morning and staying in bed for considerably longer than is healthy for a young adult, he needs to get up to drink.

It’s a bad day in Omori’s life when instead of cracking open a can, he walks straight to the bathroom sink and drinks water from his palms. He could do with a tylenol, maybe a sleeping pill. Or ten. They haven’t allowed him to have any of the latter for some odd years now—and then have the audacity to question why his circadian rhythm is non-existent, the cowards.

If he’s at the sink anyway, he might as well wash his face. It’s been a while. Hands lazily thumb across his face, more annoyed at the texture of water than it feels relieving. As he surfaces, he winces at the dreadful reflection that stares back at him from the mirror.

Shaggy hair and grown-out locks. He ignored mom’s offer to cut his hair before they left. 

Peach fuzz stubble dots his lip and jaw. He briefly considers busting out the shaving razor before the pain in his muscles cans the idea. 

Thick black skin folds under bloodshot eyes. He can spot tender, damp remnants of tears still being pressed out from under his eyelids, and raw pores.

Greasy pale skin that hasn’t seen sunlight in years. He can practically taste the salt that covers his yellowed face in a thick layer that no water can rinse off.

Gaunt edges and angular curves. Despite having gained a bit of weight recently, his skin hangs tightly over his bones in his face.

Jeez, he looks like a meth head.

He’d probably feel better if he were on meth opposed to whatever it is he’s up to these days. The only reason why he hasn’t fallen to worse yet is that he hasn’t left his house in years, and the best his provisioners can do him is weed.

He wipes his face and hands dry with a towel before dragging his feet into the hallway again. Ideally, he should crawl back into bed and continue dousing the world, but after ten hours of sleep and another few hours of lying sweating under the covers, the mere thought is almost enough to make him throw up. He needs to stretch his legs to get the cramps out.

By habit, he grabs his phone despite knowing he’s in no state to check it. He slouches down the stairs and saunters over to the living room, where he immediately collapses on the couch. It’s cooler down here than in his room, and it makes his wardrobe choice of Rowan’s old hoodie and his ever-present black socks under shorts a little more bearable in the current summer heat.

Like that, he lies staring at the white ceiling. He forgot to mute his phone; it regularly pings to alert him of a new message, and he definitely heard the dun-dun du-du-du– riff of his ringtone playing somewhere around noon before he resumed his disturbed sleep.

Mari must be real disappointed.

His fingers strain around the phone that rests on his stomach. Why didn’t he answer her call? Why isn’t he calling her back?

And yet, he does not undertake action.

What did he come here to do?

Right. Stretch his legs. Doing well on that front, if he goes by the cramp that’s twisting his calf.

For now, all he has inside him is to stare up at the ceiling and let its white surface reduce his brimming mind to a neutral scape of nothingness. Anything to divert his thoughts from the storm that’s brewing under his heart when nothing will sufficiently distract him.

Seconds. Then minutes. And eventually, as his eyes strain to stay focused on that white ceiling, he realises that the pale surface is beyond the stage of gentle oranges and reds; it’s now painted a deep purple, the cracks and grooves in the stucco barely distinguishable with his deteriorating eyesight.

What time is it? 

His phone has been buzzing and pinging here and there. Craning his head, the living room around him is darker than the ceiling implied. It’s nighttime already.

Is it deep enough into the night yet?

His skin is shrivelling up, his insides are withering from thirst and hunger, and he can barely open his eyes from the ringing in his light head. He hasn’t done a thing today, the least he could do is get up and order a pizza. Or maybe ignoring his mounting needs and fainting is exactly what he needs.

It’s done within the second. Nothing more than muscle memory, really, but it’s a fatal mistake. He grabs his phone off his chest and, before he can realise the error of his ways, glances at the time. 

11:39 pm.

How can a guy who spent the past day comatose pass out within 21 minutes? Run laps around the house? Hold his breath? Scream at the top of his lungs?

He doesn’t feel like doing any of those, though…

Against all odds, he clambers out of the couch and shambles into the kitchen, stopping by the fridge for something chilled to douse his steaming body with. Staring for so long didn’t do his brain any favours, and now he’s feeling lethargic on top of the muscle cramps in his legs and ass.

Yeah, ice tea isn’t strong enough for this shit.

He doesn’t know which bottle he grabs from the cabinet. It’s filled with a deep caramel brown, that’s usually the good stuff, and he has already unscrewed the top and taken a pitifully tiny sip before he’s even passed the archway back to the living room. The liquor burns on his tongue and wreaks havoc on his throat, contorting his face into a bitter wince. He might pass out on time if he puts in good effort.

Stopping to lean on a counter, he tries to take a larger sip. This stuff is always rancid the first few shots, and then, as the bottle empties, he develops a taste for it.

Putting down the bottle again with a groan, his eyes fall outside. There’s a ruckus going on, and with the house being so dark, he can perfectly clearly see the trees going wild in the nocturnal weather. It looks fresh, and it emphasises how hot he feels under the collar of his hoodie.

By all logic, he should down the bottle and hide under his covers. Instead, he finds himself peering at the water of the pool, turbulent in the wind as the full moon reflects in its waves.

The door slides open, and the tiles immediately cool the soles of his feet through his socks. The wind weaves through his hair, evaporating the sweat under his locks as it sweeps under his clothes and gently takes his body heat with it.

Looking down, he spots Mewo’s bowl. Empty and turned upside-down. He taps it with his foot to put it back in its place, and it falls with a loud, empty clang that jolts his shoulders. 

Jeez, Mewo, not just eating a lot lately, but eating so messily. This bowl’s been emptied every day of the past week—and maybe it’s Omori’s fault for refilling it and every other bowl every time it gets empty, but she’s getting fat. He still hasn’t gotten to the bottom of the visiting neighbour cats. Might need a vet check when the others are back to do an echo for kittens, just to be sure.

None of her other bowls have been filled since a few days, either, but he moves on. She’ll get fed when he’s done sulking, she can go another hour without gorging herself with kibble.

And once again, he finds himself at that poolside bench, staring at the dark abyss. There’s familiarity to this. Like the starry ceiling above his bed. Like the darkness under his covers. Like Rowan’s room. Like…

Are those really all the places he feels at home?

He places down the bottle next to the foot of the bench, sticking his hands into the pocket of his hoodie and taking out another few old friends. He quickly lights the cigarette he sticks between his lips and glances at his phone again—11:43 pm—before leaving it face-up on the table next to the bench.

Dread sits low in his gut as he consumes lungfuls of smoke, quickly reaching the end of his cigarette before he grabs another one from his pocket, only interspersed by a growing number of sips from his bottle. His head has already grown lighter; the intended effect is there.

It really is a shitty day when he can’t sleep through this torture.

A little jingle consisting of five rising notes plays from his phone. It’s a sound he has grown to hate over the years. More of a statement about why he still hasn’t replaced this piece of junk phone than anything else.

He takes a drag from his cigarette. It’s always an arms race between which of his insensibilities gets triggered first. If the messages start too early, he gets frustrated by the fake gestures they should’ve shown during the year instead. If they start too late, no one bothered to give a shit about him. No one can win from him, he designed this game so perfectly unreasonably.

A bell pings. 

Wow, look at that. They’re early. 

He nearly bites the butt off his cigarette but decides he’s too listless to light another and instead wrings his hands over the fabric of his shorts.

Another ping, another message. And a third, shortly after, a different tune. More of a ding, one that comes from Discord.

Mari, maybe. Or one of those suckers who stayed behind for him before he started fucking with them, who knows. It’s absolutely not Sunny or mom and dad, nor any of their fake nice friends who claim to care. They’re busy thinking about other things than Omori tonight.

Ding. 

Urgh.

Ping, ding.

God, he should’ve muted his phone. Every year, it’s like this, and every year, he’s too stupid to take necessary precautions. 

He takes another long drag from his cigarette and looks at the starry night sky reflected in the rippling pool, the moon broken by the gently-swaying water. The wind has laid down since he came here. Just for him, huh? 

A riff plays from his phone. Invaders Must Die. An incredible opening to one of the best songs ever written—but tonight, his ringtone just pisses him off more than it already did.

He’s not in a mood to reach for the table and decline the call, so he just lets it ring until it goes over into voicemail. Silence descends back over the backyard, and Omori hopes that he’ll be left in peace this time around. More pings and dings and phone calls have rung than he knows people, they have to be done soon. Why can’t he sulk, huh? Why do they need to pretend they care tonight?

Probably because they do, and because Omori is too much of an ungrateful brat to feel happy with that.

In one long inhale, he finishes his cigarette. The smoke settles in his lungs and sears his throat before he passes it through his nose, annoyed that he can either stop smoking or light a new one. He instead grabs his bottle.

What are they up to anyway?

How does it look, out there on the road? In their fancy suite, with their fancy champagne, and their fancy hot tubs, and their fancy hundreds of friends and fans who’re ecstatic that the most prestigious of the Hirano twins has finally can really party, and their fancy– and their– and…

And whatever else they have there. Not like he’d know, he fucking chose not to go. He’d hate himself if there were yet another place where the crowd’s eyes burned into him.

Well, Omori has a hot tub here too, and he has goons for champagne if the cellar should run out. He’ll even pay for it himself.

But he doesn’t feel like getting up, so he instead groans an octave deeper than the natural tone of his voice and reaches for his cigarette pack, placing one between his lips and lighting it for another quick hit.

Dun-dun du-du-du–

Again, the riff plays from his phone. Whoever’s calling him over and over again must be a sad sack of shit if they wanna talk to another sad sack of shit who’s spending his birthday all alone after midnight. He glances at his phone and sees Rowan’s name appear, and the name alone sends adrenaline shooting through his fingertips. Not a phone call he’d ever consider picking up.

And why not? Is Rowan not good enough?

Anger bubbles in his stomach. He hasn’t forgiven Rowan. He’s probably never going to see that snake again anyway.

Of course he’ll be like this. Of course his ego gets in his way and makes a demon out of the few people who bother to try, but at least he’s self-aware enough to recognise that’s what’s happening.

Should’ve tried harder. Bitch.

Ding.

What do they say about Sunny, anyway?

He takes another swig from his liquor, and another, before he puts his cigarette between his lips again and inhales deeply.

Does he appear in all the stalker magazines, emphasising that he’s a year older and just a tad hotter now? That he’s now a little riper and that all the teenage girls definitely one hundred percent stand a chance with him? Does he get little compatibility quizzes that shatter many, many unsuspecting hearts and give many, many others false hope? Do the fans argue online about the newest controversies about private jets and ethics in big music? Have they figured out yet that their future husband up on that stage is a flaming homosexual with a whole-ass boyfriend clad around his hip to prop up his ego with?

Please. Those magazines drool over pop stars, not classical musicians. He doesn’t have a single fan under the age of fifty. All a bunch of creeps. The younger folks probably think that Sunny is a huge, ugly loser who plays boring music for pretentious old farts.

Yeah. It's hard to imagine just how lame Sunny is right now. No one loves him for real.

Ding. Ding, ding.

Have they, whichever magazines do write about classical musicians, ever written about him? 

About Sunny’s talentless hack of a brother—the one who is three minutes older and who is inexplicably left-handed and four inches shorter and who can’t stand spice—who is once more notably missing from the family’s grand symphonic performances? Have they asked where he is? Have they given him that promised second chance yet?

Ding.

Or are they ignorant to the fact that there’s a fifth Hirano, who has only ever taken the spotlight once and then never again after going out in a trash fire? Is he already as dead to the world as he feels on the inside?

Ding ding ding.

Have they ever written about the worst day of Omori’s life? 

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding ding ding.

Ding.

His eyes prickle. He blames it on the smoke that rises from the other end of his cigarette and the alcohol levels in his blood making him crack.

Dun-dun du-du-du–

WHAT!?

In one motion, Omori rips his phone off the table and throws it overhead. The ringtone it emits fades into the distance as it soars a considerable distance for someone of Omori's strength. The light of its screen vanishes over the hedge and into the forest behind their backyard.

Omori stands panting and fuming, rage dripping off his face in thick drops of sweat. It's way too hot to be getting this upset, but now he has reached his boiling point. He's fucking pissed, alright, and throwing that tormenting little piece of shit away didn't temper his rage in the slightest. If anything, the instant shame over the lack of restraint only emphasises everything that’s wrong with him.

Ripping his cigarette out of his mouth, he tosses it into the water and kicks over the bottle. He grabs his head on both sides and groans, then growls, before he airs his frustration in a long scream.

No, that's not a scream. That's a wail. Twenty-one years old, and he stands sobbing at the side of the pool in the backyard of his family mansion, as if a spoiled brat like him has anything to cry about. 

It's not fair, it's never been fair, and yet here he stands with glass shards skewering his heart and a knot the size of the moon in his throat.

No one cares. No one has ever cared. Not enough to give everything up for him, not even to make small sacrifices to give him a place in their life—and what for? Because he doesn't have any skills in life? Because he’s deeply unpleasant to be around? Because his sarcastic aggression is so tough to handle? Because he’s terrified to even so much as set a foot beyond his backyard when the sun is up? 

That’s it, isn’t it? He's nothing more than a waste of space using up oxygen that could be going to trees or some shit. 

His chest rocks. His fingers tremble as they clamp over his head in an attempt to keep him steady, but he just wobbles from side to side on unstable feet. Through the tears, he can see the edge of the pool nearing before he regains his balance and avoids a tumble into the water.

Would be real tragic if he were to end up in there, wouldn’t it?

Absolutely fucking tragic…

Why him, then?

Why always him and no one else?

He hasn’t done things that differently from everyone else, and yet he’s the only one who’s in such deep shit. He tried, and tried, and tried, over and over and over again, always the same result.

Not good enough.

No matter the method, no matter the effort he put in, always the same result.

Not good enough.

No matter good or bad intentions, no matter the help he sought, always the same result.

Never good enough.

See if they care, then. So what if they come back and find him like that? It’s what they deserve. It’s so beyond deserved for them to find him and claim that this is such a trauma, such a tragedy, that he bedevilled them so nastily, because all Omori knows how to do is to hurt them.

Omori looks at the water, broken through thick tears that flow from his eyes and through his inhibited vision from the volume of alcohol he has in his blood, wiping the snot from his nose and clutching his lips with all his might.

His legs already tremble anyway. He’s too inebriated to walk in a straight line, let alone tell up from down. The lights are out, the water cool, and the pool too deep for him to stand. In this complete darkness, once he’s in, no force in the world could drag him out again. He’s too weak, too apathetic to get out.

One wobbly foot sticks forward and lands, toes brushing over the stone edge of the pool.

They deserve it.

His weight lands onto that foot, barely sufficient to carry his shivering body. The other joins, and he stands at the edge of the water.

The world deserves it.

His toes hang over the ledge, cool and steady. An odd sense of vacancy floods his chest, soothing him unlike anything ever has. Like the most potent drug in the world. Better than alcohol, better than anything he’s ever wanted to try.

He deserves it.

He wouldn’t be missed. It’s alright. Every dagger he’s voluntarily sent into his gut each and every time he reminds himself of who he is has long left him drained of all care, of all emotions there still are to feel—and he finds himself so oddly still, so quietly at peace when moments ago he was panicking.

He deserves it.

Like the moonlight that ripples on the water, like the trees that quietly rustle in the wind, like the animals deep within the forest he finds his centre and breathes, calm and drowned in fuzzy static. It’s not a punishment, but rest. He deserves to rest, doesn’t he?

He deserves it.

His knees wobble as his muscles prepare to give up and go pliant. Go limp and let it be done, then. A quick, painful struggle, and it’ll be over. No fanfare or big gestures, just an action that will spare him of so many years of misery and offer him repose.

He deserves it.

He just wants to rest.

He deserves it.

He deserves it.

He deserves it.

Do it, pussy.

“Mrrp.”

Huh.

He’s panting.

Was he panting before?

He can’t remember. 

He can’t breathe or do anything. 

His lips tingle and his head pounds.

It’s so quiet and dark all around him, the world’s peace like a targeted insult to the war raging within. He stands by the side of the pool with a sense of nothingness smothering his throat, hiding horrors he does not wish to unpack. All that exists in the world is the utter confusion about why he let his lonesome soliloquy be interrupted.

Fur brushes against his leg. Looking down, as if he might tumble if he does, Mewo’s curious eyes look up at him from between his ankles, distorted through slime and tears.

“Mrow?”

He knows that meow. 

She’s hungry. 

He forgot to feed her today.

Mewo will die with him.

Mewo doesn’t deserve to die.

He swallows—and it’s exactly that swallow which pops the tight bubble wrapped around his emotions and makes them come out bursting at the seams, blocking his airways and choking his oesophagus.

In one swift motion, he darts backwards, back to safety.

His hands drip, quivering endlessly. His socks are soaked with sweat, and he barely gets enough air to stand as slime floods his lungs. The moon stands high over the pool, the crickets sing their summer song into the night as the trees’ leaves rustle together, and his lungs burn as he screams an agonising cry into the darkness.

What was he thinking?

What the hell was he thinking?

He turns and clamps his hands over his head.

No, because what was he thinking? Mari doesn’t deserve to find him like that. All the others do, but she doesn’t. 

Besides, it wouldn’t even be his family who’d find him. They’re gone for the foreseeable future.If anything, at this rate, the one to stumble upon him would be Rowan. Omori is a detestable prick who can only hurt people, but he’s not…

Not like this.

It can’t happen like this—when it will be the few people who do care who will find him.

It can’t happen here—when Mewo depends on his survival.

It can’t happen tonight. No matter how much it hurts, it can’t happen tonight.

For what feels like hours, he cries, full-on ugly sobs as he lets it out, all while curious eyes hungrily watch him. And when he’s finally cried all he has in him and there are no more tears to be shed or emotions to be felt, he weakly bends down, picks up Mewo from between his legs, and with his guardian angel safely secured so close to his heart, he stumbles back inside.

Chapter Text

The last few pieces of kibble unenthusiastically crumble out of the now empty bag, joining the pile that overflows from Mewo’s abundantly-filled bowl. A meal fit for a queen, divided all around the house in equally overflowing bowls. It’s definitely his fault that she’s getting fat, but he prefers it over the alternative.

She’s not starving. Not on Omori’s watch.

He picks up the empty bag and makes his way towards the pantry to dispose of it somewhere out of sight. Come to think of it, if he were to simply slice open all the bags of food in storage and fill every plate and bowl they own with water, she’d have enough to make it to the end of his family’s flight of fancy with plenty of food and water to spare. Simple solution to a simple problem.

He frowns as the dying embers of his earlier outburst crackle through his heart

Nah. The flow is gone. His momentum is broken, and he doubts he has the energy to return to the pool. If his reason to not do it is simply “nah”, then his reason to do it must’ve been just as stupid.

Omori knows that it’d have to happen on a whim. Thoughtlessly and emotionally. Irrationally. When he’s too desperate to remember that he has survival instincts, when he’s too drunk to remember why he’d wanna live, and when he’s either too full or too empty to care about the consequences.

All that’s left is a solemn feeling in his chest. Neither pain nor regret, just a background noise of annoyance and shame. Residual fear from eleven years back that resurfaces every once in a while, now coming back to him in full swing. It mixes badly with the alcohol in his veins. He’ll never admit to anyone that he ran to throw up three times in the past five minutes.

He sticks his hand into his pocket, searching for his piece of trash phone to distract himself–

Oh. Oh, right.

Fucking short-sighted dumbass.

Okay, no phone, then. He’s not crawling through the creepy forests that surround the property to retrieve a brick he could easily replace. He doesn’t like the darkness at night, and he doesn’t wanna be seen during the day—it’s a goner.

He groans. Not like he can’t replace it. It was long overdue.

Where’s Mewo anyway? Look how Omori busted his ass, she better come appreciate it and eat all she wants.

Oh well, she’s fed and can find her way towards food whenever she wants it. That’s all he had to do. Most important condition met. Now he can go back to neglecting that second, far less important goal.

He saunters off into the stairwell, too lazy to make much of an effort to climb the stairs. When he arrives at the top, he’s out of breath, and when he makes it to his room for shelter, he collapses in bed, too worn out to do anything but lie there despite having rested so much earlier that he’s still exhausted from it. Old stickers glow in the dark, turning his ceiling into a starry tapestry of its own, and the foreign familiarity of a childhood of ages past helps remove his thoughts from what happened earlier in the night.

Now what?

He could use a hit, but Rowan has his stash, and he’d have to unpack a whole situation he doesn’t wanna unpack if he wants to stand a chance at even talking to him again. If Rowan has any interest in talking to him at all. Odds are he’s more than done with Omori at this point.

If he opened his laptop, all the messages sent to him would stare him in the face and he’d appear online, even if for a brief second as he closes Discord—alerting everyone to the fact that he’s ignoring them. Same with his PC.

Sleep is always an option, but with his mind on fire, he’ll never find rest. If he did, he’d have nightmares. No thanks.

No one watches TV anymore these days.

His stomach twists at the thought of grabbing another bottle of liquor.

Anything else he can think of just pisses him off or sounds too tiresome to get up for. 

Hrm.

Be it embarrassment over the childish reaction or indignation over lost property, that stupid phone is all he can think about. He’d need maybe ten minutes to go grab it, then he can go back inside and rot his mind playing stupid mobile games.

What reasons are there to go retrieve it? Good reasons? 

He’d lose the few contacts he has and is too stubborn to ask anyone to regain. There are a few banger callouts that he wrote in his notes app that he hasn’t sent yet. It would be really embarrassing to explain to mom and dad why he needs funds for a new phone. Maybe he doesn’t want a stalker fan or journo to find it, crack his message history, and have him end up on the frontpage of every gossip news site because he said some things online that weren’t very nice. And he’d break his 771-day Japanese streak if he didn’t go retrieve it… Yeah, tough luck, he already broke that one by sleeping all day.

Really? That’s the best he can come up with?

Nope, not good enough, not going out to get it.

He reaches inside his hoodie pocket to do the only thing he’s in the mood to do, but it seems that he’s lost his lighter somewhere along the way. He tosses his cigarette pack on the floor, crossing his arms over his chest with a nasty groan.

Really, world? Really?

He covers his eyes with his sleeve, toes straining against his socks in frustration. Nothing seems to be going his way today, but at least it’s quiet, for once.

Just when it looks like he’ll pass out, his mind digs into a particular detail about his phone. A gallery which holds what might be the only proof that Omori even had presence on this earth.

He shoots upright, propped up on his elbows as his heart stops in his chest.

Old piece of shit brick of a phone means that just about any picture he has ever snapped is on there, and nowhere else. Pictures of Mewo, pictures with Mari, pictures of things he found interesting in the few places he ever visits, pictures he has saved from around the internet, recordings of band sessions.

Pictures with Rowan.

Urgh. Damn his lack of foresight and his refusal to back anything up…

Oh, fuck it, fine then. He’s getting up and getting it.

He lies in bed until the cramps in his legs have gotten too bad to stay. He has to search for his shoes—when was even the last time he wore these?—and listlessly fastens the velcro. Rummaging through his drawer, he eventually finds that strong flashlight dad insisted he keep around in case there’s an electrical outage, and he supposes that it’s come in handy this once.

As he makes his way down the stairs, anticipation sticks in his gut. He’s still a bit wobbly from the drink he had, but that’s not it.

It’s that he’s never left the front door without anyone on the other side to escort him. 

He stands hesitating, fidgeting with his keys. Another one of those doors he hasn’t passed in a long time; there seem to be a lot of those these days.

When he thinks of those forests outside the gates, of going there alone, all he can imagine is a million eyes staring back at him, watching his every move. Eyes that pry, that mock, that ridicule for no good reason. Eyes that he has not once in his life actually encountered, yet that seem to be awaiting him at any time just beyond that thin veil.

They’re not there. They specifically came to live here to make sure they wouldn’t be there.

Act your age. He’s been outside. He’s been outside alone. He just an hour ago did exactly that. See if he cares about the dark on the night of a full moon. There couldn’t be better odds to leave the house alone if he tried, so he unlocks the door, twists the knob, and lets himself out. 

The wind has picked up in intensity again, harshly throwing his clothes around against his body as soon as he steps outside. The door slams closed behind him, and he has to double-check that the keys are still in his hand before sliding them into his shorts pocket. 

Clicking on his flashlight, he starts on his way. Leaves and debris cover the long walkway to the front of the gate, swept away by the strong, cold winds. He pays nothing any mind, just the light in front of him.

The front gate slides open as he approaches, beyond it an endless void, as the road they live on isn’t equipped with any sort of street lamps. It’s part of why they came to live out here: peace and quiet in the woods, with a night sky that can be seen during clear nights and only the noise they make for miles. Omori might’ve felt better if there were at least the street light to guide him, but he can live with the discomfort that has settled in his chest.

He follows the road along the fence, and before long, it’s his time to turn. The underbrush is rather thick here, in the small street where the trees don’t touch upon their gate and their gardener maintains their bushes, but with careful steps, he can avoid tumbling over. 

All he thinks of is that phone. He doesn’t want to accidentally look off to the side and pareidolia himself into seeing a scary face in the woods. He’s already spooked enough having left the gate.

All that fills his ears are his own footsteps—cracking branches and ruffling foliage—and the occasional gust of wind that makes the surrounding forest come to life. He’s trying to breathe steadily to keep himself calm, and he seems to be doing pretty well thus far. 

He reaches the second corner, and this is where the hard part begins: parsing where his phone might’ve possibly landed while searching the darkness.

He shines his flashlight around in zigzags, closely examining the foliage as he slowly walks on. When he reaches the place where he estimates it should’ve landed, he stops and shines around, seeking any kind of indication of technology. If he’s lucky, maybe someone will send him a text or a message and he’ll at least have an auditory indication of where it might be, maybe light—but as it’s now well past 2 am, it’s unlikely that anyone besides a few Eurofriends is still online.

There’s a small, unnatural blink of light. As he redirects his flashlight to it, a distinctly angular shape and a plastic gleam give away the location of his phone.

Oh, thank fuck. He was starting to feel weird.

Walking closer, he approaches until he stands right by his phone. He clicks off his flashlight and crouches down, grabbing the device from the undergrowth—but drops it again as he startles.

Right there, deep into the forest, two lights flicker on. Perfectly round white car lights, deeply out of place in the pitch-black forest. Maybe they were already on when he arrived and he didn’t see because of his flashlight.

No, he would’ve seen, right?

Omori sits breathing shallowly, fingers clamping over his hoodie as his pulse hammers through his neck. He knows that he should run, but he can only crouch and stare, frozen in terror. Pareidolia doesn’t create bright lights. They don’t illuminate any of the surrounding woods; it’s like they are there to be seen and nothing else.

No one brings their car this far out into the woods who has good intentions, but he hears no engine running—what if the car’s owner hasn’t seen him yet and running tips them off to his presence? He can not outrun an entire car, let alone a stalker who wants him, in a forest, and all the unspoken implications of seeing something like this out here send his head spinning with paranoid fear.

How long have they been watching him? Have they been staking him out? Did they use the opportunity of his missing phone to lure him out here and capture him? How many of them are there? Are they still in the car, or are they behind him already?

Is he about to be kidnapped?

Shouldn’t have ever come for his phone, his survival instincts were right. Fuck his phone, fuck his memories, he could so easily have just gotten a new one, and now he’s going to get kidnapped and ransomed and they’re gonna cut off his fingers and mail them to his family and–

The lights flicker a few times. Omori gasps, trying to steady himself as he crouches as low to the ground as possible. Should he put his phone on silent? Is he making too much noise? The trees are so loud, no one could possibly hear him, right?

The flickering continues, yet no sound comes from the car. He just concludes that the owner doesn’t know he’s there when, out of nowhere, the lights soundlessly rise up into the air.

What…?

Putting his hand over his mouth, Omori tries to stifle the spontaneous ragged breath that heaves from his chest as those lights now tilt down at him from the sky. What kind of vehicle randomly floats up into the air without making a single noise? How could that ever be possible?

Then, those lights tilt sideways under an angle that doesn’t make sense to happen noiselessly, and he realises far too late that the lights in question are much closer than he’d estimated. He finally grasps what it is he is looking at as the lights blink.

Eyes.

Omori stumbles backwards with a shout, still crouched and his phone forgotten in the dirt. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that seeing a pair of eyes in the woods is cursed.

The eyes observe him as he stumbles backwards, and in a cruel twist of fate, his ankle catches onto a bramble and he falls onto his ass. It’s then that he hears the low rumble emanating from whatever’s in front of him, indistinguishable from the darkness of the surrounding trees even exposed in the moonlight—what is that, what is that?

He scrambles to get back to his feet and, without thinking it through, turns and makes a mad dash straight back the way he came. As soon as he runs, branches crack and leaves rustle. He is tackled with so much force that when he opens his eyes again, a heavy migraine sits trapped between them.

He rolls to his back to shield himself from his attacker, but two paws—two enormous talons that couldn’t possibly belong to any person—grab his shoulders and slam him back into the dirt as the eyes hover several feet above him. It’s now that he realises that part of the rustling wind he heard was not the wind, but that deep, rumbling breathing thrumming from this animal, this beast, whatever it is that has captured him.

They’re out in the open now, and Omori can’t determine its shape despite being darker than the starry sky, but he can tell it’s big. Bigger than any animal he knows. It has to be a grizzly—do grizzlies live in this part of the country?—don’t they eat their prey alive?

He begins to struggle and thrash at the thought, madly kicking his legs upwards against the beast and attempting to free his arms, but he’s trapped underneath its powerful claws. None of his attacks faze it, as it is much stronger than he is.

This is it. He’s going to be eaten alive and killed by some huge fucking bear in the woods, and it’s gonna happen on the night he decided he’d live, and fuck, fuck, he’s FUCKED.

He only realises he’s screaming and wailing when after a few moments of being held down, nothing has changed. Kicking and fighting, every single one of Omori’s survival instincts yells at him to free himself, but the creature simply watches—and Omori is starting to catch on as his adrenaline surges and his pitiful energy reserves are running out.

Why hasn’t it done anything yet?

He lies caught in its clutches hyperventilating, but those round eyes only seem to tilt as it twists its head, keeping their distance from him. Like it is observing him.

Does it want something from him?

“L-let me go…” Omori breathily begs above him, as if this animal is going to understand him. “Please, please just… Just let me go, okay? Just… Please…”

Tears stream down his cheeks as the delayed emotional awareness of the horror he’s enduring trickles into his veins, sowing every negative emotion he could feel deep into his heart and the farthest reaches of his body to encourage him to fight, just fight. He’s shivering, arms weak from having pushed against the claws holding him, and he knows he stands no chance.

Then, the creature bends down, bringing its jaws closer. Omori screams for dear life, making another futile attempt to struggle free as he prepares to be eaten alive—but when the pain doesn’t come, he can only whine.

He feels a bump against his chest, migrating around before it ascends to his neck, poking into his cheek and exploring his hair. That noise… Is he being sniffed?

His eyes have adjusted to the darkness a little better, and he can make out a shape, black against the galaxy that illuminates the sky. Fur emerges, fluffy in shape as it lines its gargantuan head and shoulders. As it disconnects its nose from his hair and towers over him again, his blood runs cold when he sees that it bears not a long muzzle with a snout, but a human face.

Whatever this thing is, it is not natural.

It doesn’t look malicious. He recognises these features—neutral features, calm features, so unlike what he would expect of a predator. The face of a person shrouded in shadows, looking down on him with now hooded glowing eyes and something like apathy. 

That means that it doesn’t intend to harm him, right? He’ll be let go after being sniffed, right? It just wanted to examine him and is gonna run back into the woods where it belongs now that its curiosity was sated?

Does the fluffy bear that’s devouring a moose in nature documentaries ever look malicious?

Fuck.

“Jesus, will you just… let me go already? Just… Please? Please, let me go, you don’t wanna hurt me, right? You’re not gonna hurt me, right!?” Omori’s pathetic, aimless pleas echo through the forest, causing the creature to tilt its head again as if in understanding.

It hears him. It can be reasoned with. 

Omori may yet be saved, and the fickle relief that he might walk away from this flickers through his chest.

“Yes! You understand, right?” Omori breathlessly gasps. “You know what I’m saying, right? What–what I’m feeling, and you don’t wanna h-hurt me, right? Ri-ight?”

His sob breaks up the final few words as he fails to keep it in, chest heaving and shocking under the unbearable amount of duress that grips his heart. His calm is spanned thin between that fragile hope that he might be abandoned and the stark awareness that said calm might be his only saving grace; a single unexpected move could snap it and send him into a blind panic again.

They stare each other down for what feels like an eternity, each second like it could be his last before the beast might lurch forward and eviscerate his face. But instead of acting, it watches with calculated premeditation.

“C’mon… C’mooon…” Omori whines in defeat, resuming attempting to push the claws off his shoulders. “What do you want from me? I’m just…”

He swallows. The fact that his plea isn’t changing anything is a bad sign, and he’s starting to lose hope.

“I’m just some guy… I’m not interesting, and I don’t taste good, so just… just…”

His arms go weak again as the enduring stare starts to unsettle him, and he finally gives in to the idea that it’s over for him. He fled, he fought, and it seems that he’s finally freezing in defeated resignation.

But why is this predator doing the same?

That it attacks or runs would be expected, but why sit there staring Omori down? It doesn’t make sense, and the whole encounter is giving him intense creeps as he tries and fails to rationalise this beast’s behaviour. Does it want something else from him?

It shifts. Part of its immense weight lifts off Omori as it looks off to the side, then behind. Is it conflicted?

Omori wants to encourage it to follow through on this line of thought but stays quiet. Anything to muffle his presence, he will take, and he’d never forgive himself if anything he said or did caused it to change its mind again.

One talon lifts, bringing him an awareness of how hard it was to breathe with its weight on his shoulder. It places its claws—its hand, almost human in shape, over its mouth, and he can see something glisten in the moonlight. Then, it huffs; a deep, lion-like sigh that softly rumbles. It sounds miserable as it repeats the huff, before it sets its eyes on Omori again, and his heart freezes in his chest.

“Wait… Wait, no…” he whispers.

It puts its claw back on his shoulder and brings its face to hang right above him, and Omori gasps. Wetness drips onto his cheeks; saliva, most likely, proving that the beast is hungry after all.

“No… No, wait, no!” he shouts in horror, kicking up his legs against its body futilely, “You were leaving! You were leaving!”

Again, the beast hesitates, but its hunger seems to win from its empathy as it opens its mouth. Sharp, wet teeth cast a faint gleam from the moonlight reflected in their surface, revealing above him a set of gigantic canines that instils nerve-wracking dismay into him.

“No, don’t!” he shrieks at the top of his lungs, having lost all reasoning capabilities.

Once more, it hesitates, but it seems that this is the final time it does as it leans down and, at an agonisingly slow pace, descends towards his neck, making its intentions crystal clear.

“No! NO! Don’t kill me, God, PLEASE!!” Omori screams at the top of his lungs, but it’s futile as those fearful teeth brush against his throat, canines and molars alike ghosting over his jugulars and ready to clamp down into what will without a doubt be a slow, painful death.

Across the country, an incomplete family sits drinking and celebrating their son’s 21st birthday over luxury dinner, ignorant that back home, their forgotten son lies sobbing between the jaws of a ravenous beast. Cheerful and festive, it must be nice over there. He wonders what he might’ve done if he were there. What they would’ve gifted him. How they’d have expressed their wishes. What they would’ve said, and what he would’ve answered. 

They’ll never know the truth. They might not even find him if he gets buried, the way bears do with their prey. There’s not a person in the world who has a clue about what’s happening here, who even cares.

If only he’d been elsewhere. Anywhere but here, even if it meant being there.  

If only he’d heeded Mari’s advice and gone with them. 

If only mom and dad had favoured him more. 

If only he’d let Sunny shame him. 

If only his friends hadn’t accepted his refusal to go, if only he’d picked up his instrument again after everything, if only he hadn’t flunked his big moment and locked himself into this path in life.

There had been hope for him. There had always been hope for him, and he never saw it. 

Not until he doomed himself beyond saving.

The teeth put pressure on his throat.

He doesn’t wanna die.

All he can do is sob. Pleas alternate cries of anguish, all trying to do the same thing: reason with a hungry predator that doesn’t understand or care about what murder is. He squeezes his eyes shut and does everything he can to distract from what is about to happen, but his mind can only zero in on his ultimate fate.

Why tonight?

Why tonight?

Why fucking tonight?

Will they find his body?

Will anyone care?

Will it be quick?

Will it hurt?

Will it hurt?

Does it hurt?

Why is he still alive?

He’s wheezing, frozen in fear as his limbs have gone limp and all the fight left him, deaf to the world save for the pulse ravaging his throat. 

He should be dead, and he is not. 

The teeth lie around his throat, exerting a trembling pressure on his flesh, but it hasn’t killed him yet.

Why? 

Is it playing with him? Is it gonna torture him before he dies? He’s seen Mewo do it with mice, is that it? Is he toy prey?

Or is he dead already?

As if catching on to his line of thought, the beast makes a low rumbling noise. Omori’s throat is soaked with saliva, and he can barely swallow down his terror through the knot that suffocates him. But then, the pressure lessens before those teeth retract and it seems to have changed its mind.

He risks cracking open an eye when nothing happens for a few seconds. The beast’s head has risen several feet, distracted as it stares off into the distance.

It is then that, over the ringing in his ears, he hears a sound that does not belong to the forest.

A low-quality riff plays a little distance away from him. An incredible opening to one of the best songs ever written.

Rowan…?

Omori is as stunned by the sound as the creature above him is—but just as soon as it came, it vanishes again as his phone goes silent.

No. No, no, no, no, no, no.

The creature keeps its eyes fixed on the source of the earlier noise despite its current silence, captivated. Its claws lie loosely atop Omori, but he fears that if he wriggles himself free, it will remember he exists and pursue.

But what other choice does he have? It’s bound to lose interest in his silent phone soon and resume its feast. Unless it gets sufficiently distracted.

Call back.

Rowan, call back.

Rowan, for fuck’s sake, please please please call back.

He’s so fucking immensely sorry for being a brat and a rude cunt and for ghosting him and everyone else all week long and for not picking up a single call and he right now needs him to please give him one more chance, to please please not let this be the one time he’s finally done with being disrespected and he gives up on their connection and he just. needs Rowan. to call back.

But he doesn’t.

Because Omori has not once in his life made a connection where he deserved any sort of love or care. He blew it. He’s gonna die and it’s his own damn fault.

The creature loses interest in his phone and puts its weight back on its talons, drawing a whimper out of Omori, gaze lingering on the forest floor where his darkened phone lay ringing a minute earlier before it sets its eyes on Omori again. It briefly ponders before it makes up its mind and leans in again, opening its jaws to prey upon his neck and rip out his internals.

This is it, then. 

There’s no more point in struggling.

Just because he chose not to die earlier doesn’t mean he can escape his fate, damned idiot. It has always been set in stone.

Omori was meant to die tonight.

Finally, he closes his eyes and goes limp as he prepares for a brief bout of excruciating pain followed by the nothingness he has always craved. Terror still surges through his nerves, but he has made peace with his fate. 

It’s inevitable. There’s no greater, more fitting death for him.

Teeth slide over his throat.

Ripped apart, disembowelled, devoured, and finally buried half-eaten in the forest, where he may never be found.

Hot breath heats his skin, breathed with a deep rumble from the beast’s throat.

Forgotten, abandoned, talentless, never-do-well shut-in brat who never achieved anything that would make his life any more noteworthy than his brutal death.

A warm tongue pushes against his skin, stealing a premature taste.

This was always meant to be Omori Hirano’s fate.

There’s a moment of hesitation before its jaws lock and the pressure increases.

This is fine.

His nerves cry out as the teeth pierce flesh and bruise his arteries, yet he remains quiet.

This is fine.

Dun-dun du-du-du–

Both jolt at the buzzing device a second time. 

For a few moments, nothing happens as every conceivable emotion rushes through Omori’s veins. He knows how this goes by now. The beast is distracted and won’t bite, but the moment is bound to run out before anything can come of it again.

But then, the teeth clamped over his throat once again let go, and against all odds, both of the beast’s talons lift and plant themselves into the underbrush before the creature’s immense weight shifts off his pelvis and legs and he can hear it saunter over to the small dot of light that is his phone’s screen a few feet away from them.

And Omori is dazed. With its back turned on him, he shouldn’t waste a second, but he’s too paralysed to move. 

He’d found his peace. If he runs and gets hunted again, it will be a terrifying ordeal after raising his hopes again. Wouldn’t he rather accept his death with dignity?

No. No, idiot, this is the universe giving him another chance, how could he even consider squandering it?

His legs tingle, and he’s unsure if they can even carry him farther than a few feet after being deprived of blood for so long, but it doesn’t matter—as soon as even a little bit of sensation returns to his limbs, the sound of his ringtone fills his ears and his blood is replenishing his legs again. 

He has to. He has to take his chances.

As if something snaps inside him, he shoots awake and wastes not a moment to roll to his side, push himself upright on shivering arms and legs, and less-than-quietly stumble away from the scene. As he nearly trips and falls, he breaks out into a frenzied dash his legs cannot take as soon as his caution wears off and all he can think of right now is how badly he wants to be back between four sturdy walls.

Chapter Text

Branches cut into his face. 

Thistles rip open his ankles. 

He slams into trees hard enough to nearly break his nose. 

Each time he stumbles, the chafing on his wrists and knees gets worse.

But Omori doesn’t stop running. No matter the wounds carved into his body, no matter the muscle fatigue, no matter how hard his heart pounds in his chest after running for the first time in over a decade. 

Run, run, run—it’s all that’s on his mind as he barrels through the pitch-black forest, expecting that any second now, he can get thrown to the floor again and devoured alive. Every noise makes him divert from his path, every crack under his shoes, every brush from the wind under his hoodie sends a new spike of adrenaline through his veins that makes him push on despite his legs having depleted all energy.

He stumbles onto something hard. Looking up and around him, he has made it to the dark street. Without second thought, he dashes alongside the front fence towards the gate, and Jesus fucking Christ if his gate controller fell out of his shallow shorts pocket, he’s dead.

Nearly slamming into the gate, it opens just fast enough for Omori to squeeze himself through and run up the hill towards the front door. Towards the forest where it happened; the beast could’ve easily climbed the fence and come around to get him, so he’s putting himself in great danger.

His hand shoots into his pocket, and by some miracle, his keys are still in there.

“C’mon…” he frantically whispers as his shaky hand can’t seem to line up the key with the lock. “Come on, come on, come ON, come the FUCK on!”

Grabbing his hand with the other, he manages to still it. The key slips into the lock, and he pushes open the door with the last might he has left, immediately throwing it closed behind him and backing away from it in case he was followed. He clutches his heart, air burning in and out of his lungs as he risks passing out from suffocation, but the adrenaline keeps him from doing so.

Their home is filled to the brim with large, open windows and no proper protections to put over them. That beast could easily break one and skulk inside, and then, he has nowhere to run or hide. Should he risk it, take the car keys, and drive out of here?

No, fucking, no. Lack of driver’s licence and experience aside, he can’t go outside again, ever. All those years of locking himself up turned out to be valid, because he went outside once and look what happened.

A loud bang outside kicks him back into gear. He runs; he doesn’t know where, until he ends up by the stairs and his path is clear. There’s only one place he’s safe at, and he quickly barges into the basement and throws the door closed behind him, falling against it panting.

Is he safe? Is this safe at all? Will this door hold if he barricades himself in? Can it smell him and find him? Will it come down here and eat him?

What was that?

The sheer terror of almost being eaten alive and being hunted all the way into the basement masked it, but the fact that he still has no idea what that creature he encountered was sets his hair on end and nauseates him. No bear is that large and skinny, no wolf is that hesitant. No animal has a face as flat as that, and if he’s going to consider lunacy, then no Bigfoot has ever been depicted the way that creature looked.

The empty food bowl outside. The movement he’d see in the backyard at night when he subconsciously knew Mewo was asleep in the living room. The odd noises he’d sometimes hear outside at night, when the wind was down. There’s an old urban legend that they found a dark cryptid in these woods once, before they built their home here.

Something lives in these woods. It’s maybe 3 am, Omori has no access to a phone to call the police, and something is trying to make its way inside his home. If it’s intelligent, it may figure out how to open the unlocked sliding door in the kitchen.

That creature has been lurking around for a while, waiting to strike. It won’t relent now.

Even if he survives this, no one will believe him. None of this makes sense. He’ll be deemed crazy. His life will never be the same. He can’t leave his house, and he can’t stay inside it. One day, it’ll catch him.

A sob wrenches itself from his throat. He wants to fight it, but it happens involuntarily. He doesn’t even dare flick on the light, wherever that may be, so he just sinks through his legs and sits down on the stairs as he sits in complete darkness with no idea whatever may be down those stairs. He cries into his hands, fruitlessly attempting to stifle the hiccups and wails to stay as quiet and unnoticed as possible.

Why him again? Why was it him again? Why did it–

Mewo.

His heart stops in his chest as the spontaneous thought drowns everything else.

He has no idea where Mewo is.

She could still be out there and at the mercy of that creature.

No, no, no, no, fuck, NO!

He slams his hands into his face, dragging them over his eyes and cheeks as he miserably groans. He’s a coward, he’s a fucking coward, he knows he’s a coward. There’s no force that can get him to leave this basement again, no matter how dark it is—and Mewo is about to pay for his fear.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…

On shaky legs, he stands and puts his ear against the door. It’s silent up there, no more wind or creatures out there. 

Where was she? She’d come begging for food earlier, but after he had his breakdown and took her inside, he lost track of her. He has no way of knowing if she’s had encounters with the creature before that she narrowly escaped from. She could be anywhere. In any room, inside or outside the house, and if he’s unlucky, even outside the gate.

He can’t leave her to that terrifying fate that shook Omori to his core. The thought of going out again to find her nearly has him plummeting down the stairs, but he can’t possibly leave her to her fate.

He wants to stay so badly, but his heart has already decided for him.

The door to the basement slowly opens again. Omori first listens, then peeks an eye between the crack, finding nothing out of place. The fear rings in his ears, almost deafening him amid his wheezing lungs and his hammering heart.

It’s not safe out there, but he has made his decision. 

Softly, he pushes open the door and steps outside. He pushes off his shoes to move as silently as he can. There’s nothing in the hallway. No Mewo, no creature. There could be better starts to this journey.

“Psss…” he quietly whistles. “Pspspspssss… Mewo… Come– come here, girl… I have– have a tre-eat for you…”

His voice shakes. His lips can barely wrap themselves around the words he’s whispering. He realises that his eyes are shot wide and every muscle in his body stands tense, ready to run should anything come from the shadows.

She doesn’t come padding over. An anxious groan comes from his throat. 

A choice needs to be made: where to go first. Every minute counts, and the wrong decision could end him or his dear pet. His digits still sit ice-cold, clung into his socks and shorts, he can’t forget how jumpy he is.

Step by step, he inches closer to the living room. He looks carefully, sweat dripping from his brow with each turn of his head as he observes. The large windows give into the backyard. This place is one of the most dangerous ones he could be at; he cannot see the dark creature except for its white eyes, but it can probably see him perfectly fine.

He backs up, feet now cold. New plan. Upstairs first, where the odds that it’ll look inside are much smaller. 

Each creak of the staircase sends another stake through his heart. He slowly makes it upstairs, staying low as he crouches and makes it through the hallway on his tiptoes. Whatever he does, he cannot turn on a light anywhere right now. It would be a beacon alerting his presence.

His room comes first, and maybe it’s pathetic, but looking for Mewo isn’t the first thing he does there. He opens his closet, sinking to his knees as he pulls a box from under a pile of clothes and opens it. He takes out the handgun Rowan gave him for his 19th birthday and laughs in relief when he can instantly load it. A creature so large won’t be killed by a tiny little gun like that, but the sound and pain may scare it off.

Standing, he turns and makes his susurrations to get Mewo to come out of hiding. She’s such a vocal cat; she has to respond to him if she’s there, and his heart sinks when the room stays quiet. 

Back into the hallway. He keeps his gun in both hands, trembling as the extended fear is making him nauseous. But he has no choice; he leaves with Mewo, or he doesn’t leave at all.

Maybe she’s using the kitty litter tray. He opens the door to the bathroom and looks around, but he can’t spot her. All other doors in the house are still closed, but he takes no risks and goes through mom and dad’s room, Mari’s room, Sunny’s room, the study, and the storage rooms they have upstairs. But no luck. It’s like she vanished.

Omori swallows hard. She must be downstairs. He prays to whichever gods didn’t back the divine council’s decision to set that creature upon him that he’ll find her there.

His descent down the stairs is like a journey into hell. Each step fills him with intense dread for what might jump out at him from the darkness, and the patches of moonlight that shine through the windows only amplify that fear by making his eyes worse adjusted to the dark. His legs barely have the energy left to carry him, yet he keeps going.

The bottom stair creaks. He cringes, almost shooting back up the stairs, but his tight grip on the railing keeps him grounded.

His path diverts. He opens one of two heavy doors, head peeking into the conservatory. Less than a day ago, this had been his personal hell on earth; now, those millions of eyes that watch him from between the floorboards make him feel safe, like they would alert him to any hostile presence.

The moon gently illuminates his abandoned instrument and Mari’s grand piano, but there is no movement. Mewo isn’t here either, and he never thought he’d think it, but he dreads having to leave the safety of the conservatory.

Back into the living room. Back where he’s out in the open.

Wide eyes stare through the hallway into the living room, his gun aimed straight ahead as he scans the windows for any sort of movement. It’s lighter out there than in here, he has the advantage. But when he tries to push his legs to move and continue, nothing happens, like his instincts are inhibiting his brain.

He can stay hidden in the shadows until the sun rises and all that’s left in the house is two corpses, or he can move.

His legs shiver as he steps into the living room. His head whips around, looking for any sign of Mewo without losing sight of the horrors outside. He keeps softly sibilating, though he’s not sure if anyone but him can hear it. Where is she? Please be inside… Please…

Movement to his left. He aims his gun, finger on the trigger as his heart jumps out of his chest, but he’s just in time to lower the weapon when he recognises that this is a tiny, fuzzy little creature.

“Mewo!” he whisper-yells, darting towards her. “Mewo, Mewo, Mewo, c’mere, girl…”

Luckily, she doesn’t let his jumpiness scare her, and he can quickly swoop her up into his arms as she meows in confusion.

He doesn’t linger. As soon as he has her, he sprints towards the kitchen door to lock it, and then, as if the devil himself is on his heels, back towards the hallway and into the basement, throwing the door shut behind him and darting down the stairs’ turn. Now that he’s back to his safe zone, all the emotions he had to suppress to save Mewo come crashing back into him and his nerves break.

In the darkness, he can’t make out where he’s going. Only when he collides with a wall does he know he’s made it beneath the stairs; a little nook where he can stuff himself away until he can reach out for help in the morning.

He turns and slides down, Mewo propped between his arm and his legs. He listens, panicked after running, but can’t hear a thing over his thrumming arteries. 

He’s not out of the woodwork yet.

It’s all a matter of how intelligent that beast is, how strong it might be, and how hungry it is. Determined to eat, it’ll find its way to Omori in no time, and he doesn’t wanna think about the outcome of that situation. He has no choice but to wait and pray that the odds are in his favour, and that the tiny gun he has aimed at the foot of the stairs will be enough to scare it.

So with Mewo in his arms, his gun loaded, and mortal terror shivering his veins, he waits.

Chapter Text

He’s slipping. 

With Mewo’s full weight on his lap, his legs have started to tingle. She at least fell asleep instead of wriggling to get away. Her meows and scratching might have given them away.

His arm is cramping from holding up his gun for so long. Switching between left and right no longer relieves his muscle cramps. He hasn’t done a single intensive physical activity in a decade; his body wasn’t meant for this level of movement—least of all while he’s drunk.

That his bladder is screaming at him to get up is the least of his troubles, but it’s breaking his spirit and making it near-impossible to focus as he allocates more energy to holding it in. He’s considering just going where he sits to get it over with, to hell with how humiliating it would be to endure.

And with his prolonged adrenaline finally reaching its limit, fatigue unlike any he’s ever felt is dragging him down. His survival instincts are keeping him up and aware, and it’s a torture he wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemy. It’s like a boulder the size of an elephant lies on his head, and in this darkness, he has caught his eyes falling shut several times before the panic jolted him wide awake again.

Is it morning yet? It has to be morning, right? He’s been sitting here for so long that his turmoil at the pool feels like it’s years removed from his current predicament.

How will he be able to tell?

He wants to sleep for the next 24 hours. Forget about all of this. Pass out and not feel any emotions. Not now, not ever. If he’s lucky, maybe he’ll forget about what he saw and he can live a semblance of a normal life, but the odds are non-existent. His life in this house is over, he has to face it—and he’ll never be able to explain to anyone why he so desperately wants to leave behind his family’s dream home, the only place he feels remotely safe.

All because of that thing. That beast. That monster that decided to strike at the worst moment.

Parched and starving; cramped and exhausted; and every time his brain risks to calm down, the possibility of movement upstairs shocks him back into action. The loop is so endlessly terrifying that he considers that maybe, he didn’t actually escape from the creature earlier, and this is his personal hell.

Maybe there is no way out. Maybe the only thing he can do is lying right in his hand.

He looks at the gun. There’s a way out, a way that doesn’t require all the terrifying things that are about to happen to go down. The tension in his arm loosens as it diverts from the stairs, and then, he slowly turns it around to lock on a new target until he stares down a hollow barrel.

Click.

What?

He crumples in on himself, pulling Mewo tightly against him and raising his gun in the air again.

Was that real? Is he hearing things now?

A creak follows. The door is being pushed open. His ears are ringing, and he can barely hear anything over the blood rushing through his veins, but he clearly distinguishes the sound of the door over the cacophony in his head.

He runs his hand over his sweaty face, a whimper rolling from his constricted throat. 

He’s dead.

“Hold on… Just hold on, Mewo…” he whispers into Mewo’s fur, but he knows very well that it’s over for them, gun or no gun. Maybe, if he grabs its attention, she can escape. Her life is worth so much more than his.

The stairs creak as a weight slowly settles into each step. The dull noise barely pierces through his mind fog, no matter how hard he tries to focus, and he might just pass out from how fast his worn-out heart is pumping blood through his arteries. That primal drive to survive, that mortal fear that nauseates him to the core—he just hopes that it will be over quick and he can rest.

It’s light now, he notices. His eyes fight against the burning sensation as Mewo rears her head and he lightly shushes her in the hopes she won’t meow. The gun almost slides out of his slippery hand, and his wrist is so shaky that he doesn’t know if he will have the strength to pull the trigger.

He doesn’t want that which is about to happen, but he has no choice. He swallows and gets ready.

Through the blaring lights that assault his weary eyes, he sees movement, but as his finger slides over the trigger, it doesn’t fire—and fuck, why won’t it fire now?

“Whoa… Whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, man! Omori, Jesus, put that away!”

He freezes. There have been some odd noises he heard through the fog, but these?

These are clear words.

He looks up and squints his eyes. Through the dingy lighting that fills the basement, at the base of the stairs, he sees people. 

People he knows.

“HEY! Enough! Put that away! Don’t… Don’t hurt anyone, alright?”

From the cracks in his voice and the specific rolling of r’s and deepened pronunciation of vowels, it’s unmistakable. The details come into focus as he can make out colours. Black and blue hair. Pale faces. Streaks of teal and red.

Florence stands halfway behind Rowan, clinging to his brother’s arm. Rowan has his hand raised in the air, eyes shot wide as he protectively stands in front of Florence and holds him back.

They’re scared. Of him.

“Omori… Please,” Rowan begs. 

The bleak terror on his face and his breathless voice shock Omori, and he jolts as he feels his face soften.

“Are y’with us, bud?” Rowan carefully asks.

Omori nods.

“Is that gun loaded?”

Another nod.

“Okay, okay… Let’s start by aimin’ that gun away from us, okay, pal?” Rowan continues. 

Omori hesitates. He doesn’t know why; he doesn’t know why he keeps that loaded murder weapon aimed at his only friends and doesn’t just lower it. 

They must’ve come here by car, made noise and light. What if that beast is right behind them, attracted by the commotion? 

Did they close the door behind them?

How did they find him?

What time is it?

“Omori… I ain’t kiddin’. Put it away. Now.”

Rowan isn’t asking anymore. He stands nervously frozen in place, too afraid to move in case it sets Omori off. And considering the events of the past weeks, he has no way of knowing Omori’s intentions.

His finger twitches. He realises that it’s still on the trigger, and that he might accidentally shoot. The thought of either of them falling to the ground because he couldn’t control himself wreaks havoc upon his heart, but what if the movement causes him to spasm and pull the trigger? 

That beast could come in any second, and neither of them are prepared for the encounter.

This conversation feels so different from anything that happened in the woods. How much of what he saw was truly there?

It may not be after him at all. There may have been nothing in the forest. Can he risk it? 

He can. If anything shows up, he can raise his gun again and shoot. This action is reversible. Accidentally shooting his loved ones… Not so much.

Slowly, with a heavy tremble in his bones, he moves the gun aside, until it’s pointed at the floor and away from Rowan and Florence. Both sigh in relief as the danger wanes.

“Alright, okay, that’s a step in the right direction,” Rowan says, shoulders deflating. “Now, the gun needs to be unloaded. Do y’remember how to do that?”

Omori nods. 

His fingers go to the safety guard, but he finds that he trembles too much when he tries to click it back, and the piece drifts. The alcohol still burns in his blood, and the residual terror of his encounter maintains the tremors in his limbs.

Why can’t he remember the steps?

“Okay, okay, no, stop!” Rowan instructs with his hands raised. 

He’s a step closer, having abandoned Florence by the foot of the stairs, and the sternness of his voice makes Omori freeze and stare up at him like a doe caught in the headlights. The gun has halfway drifted back towards the two in Omori’s efforts to unload it.

“Maybe don’t touch that, okay? I’ll come over and help you so that we all stay safe, alright? Will you let me come closer, lad?”

Omori has never seen Rowan so restrained. He’s terrified of Omori, and for a good reason.

A small noise slips from Omori’s throat, one he swallows as he tries to compose himself, and he nods as even he is afraid of himself now. 

Rowan nods back. “Steady, alright, love? Finger off the trigger. Don’t move, just hold still an’ we’re golden. Okay?”

He shuffles closer, shoes dragging over the basement floor and hands raised, as if approaching a wounded deer that might jump and kick if startled. Rowan closes the distance, and he barely needs to crouch anymore from how much he leaned down during his approach. As he makes it to Omori’s side, the sweat that dots his face is clearly outlined in the dingy basement light.

Omori only realises how freezing cold he feels when Rowan’s fingers gently cup his hand and heat his skin, like his first brush with the sun after a decade spent in a cave. Rowan takes a hold of Omori’s riskiest finger and lifts it off the gun, then turns the gun away and manipulates the piece until the magazine falls on the floor and the gun clicks. 

The sounds are familiar. Rowan was stringent about learning how to unload it before handing it over to Omori, and he knows that they are safe.

He can see Rowan check, and when he verifies that it’s fully unloaded, he exhales two lungfuls of air he has evidently been holding since he began his approach. He manages to slither his fingers underneath Omori’s, and as he carefully wrestles the gun from his hand, Omori’s eyes are pinned on the part of the stairs he can see from where he sits. Behind where Florence stands at the bend of the stair, where he expects a figure to show up. If it returns, he won’t be quick enough to reload the gun.

“Alright… Okay, whew, that’s good, that’s a good start,” Rowan says to himself.

His hand gently caresses his cheek before Rowan changes his mind and robotically pulls it back, opting to place it on Omori’s shoulder again. He can feel the shame blazing through his heart, the disappointment at having to be seen like this.

“Omori, what… What happened to you, love?” Rowan asks in a voice so vulnerable that it cracks Omori’s heart open.

Omori’s voice sits deep within his throat, as if he might give himself away if he makes a noise now. Mewo starts struggling in his lap, and she quickly hops off to brush against Rowan’s hip. Thankfully, she didn’t move when that gun lay in his shaky hand.

He shakes his head, as it’s the only response he’s capable of.

Rowan is clearly distraught, every rule of triage rapid-firing through his head. He glances behind, to where Florence finally shoots out of his trance and approaches, crouching next to his brother.

Rowan’s other hand grabs Omori’s shoulder, forcing him to look straight at him. “Have you taken anything?”

Omori swallows, then shakes his head. “I… drank,” hoarsely comes from his throat, his voice barely human. Like chalk.

“Okay… What, how much, and when?” Rowan pushes, putting more force on his fingers.

“Um…” Omori rasps. “Whisky. Maybe… a fourth of a bottle? At midnight…”

Rowan thinks for a moment. “Okay, that’s… not ideal, but we can fix that. Anything else? Pills? Drugs? Anything… that doesn’t belong in the human body?”

“I didn’t try to kill myself,” Omori whispers, pulling his legs closer to himself to fill the void Mewo left behind and attempting to brush off Rowan’s hands by twisting his torso to the side.

Rowan refuses to relent, only tightening his grip and keeping Omori from escaping. “Y’look like hell, mate. I know that a hospital visit is the last thing you need right now, but are you sure that it’s just alcohol?”

The mention of the hospital puts Omori into a new frenzy. He nods his head, scared eyes peering into Rowan’s, which soften as he sees the genuine intent.

“Alright, nothing else, I trust you. But then… How’d you end up down here, man? I mean… a gun? In the basement, in the dark, with the cat with you? What were you aimin’ at, ken?” Rowan asks.

“Did someone break into the house?” Florence adds. His voice is lighter than usual.

“No… No, it’s…” Omori starts, but he stops to bite his lips. 

He stares back at the stairs. If he tells them the truth, he won’t get to stay here. Here, where he doesn’t want to stay. Here, where he can never leave. Not even Rowan may protect him from the outside world when he’s getting attacked by things that shouldn’t exist, not that he has any reason to stick out his neck for Omori anymore.

So he simply swallows his whimper, crumpling in on himself.

“Look, pal, we’ll, uh…” Rowan looks to his side, to Florence. “Just to be sure, we’ll call the police–”

“No!” Omori yells as he shoots forward.

“If you can’t tell us what happened, what am I to do?” Lowering his voice, Rowan leans in closer. “Omori, if there’s someone in the house right now, we ain’t safe either. I gotta know what caused this, and I’m so, so sorry, I know how horrible the idea is to you, but if you can’t tell me what happened, I’ll want the police to make sure it’s safe to stay here, aye? Do we gotta evacuate?”

“No one inside,” Omori caves. His head falls forward against his knees. “I got… I got drunk and threw my phone over the fence. And when I went to get it…”

Gargantuan claws cut off the blood flow to his arms.

Perfectly round lights in the forest.

Low grumbles in the wind.

Pitch-black fur.

A beast with a human face.

Hot saliva drips on his cheeks.

Razor-sharp canines clench over his throat.

Omori has to clamp his hand over his mouth so as not to throw up from the memories flooding his mind again after having repressed the incident for so long.

“There was a… a bear.”

“A bear?” Rowan asks.

Omori nods.

“A black bear?” Florence follows.

Another nod.

The brothers make eye contact, Omori can see as he peeks beyond his knees to assess their reaction to the… Is it a lie? He was completely wasted and emotionally drained, what are the odds that it was really just a black bear and not some man-creature?

“Rowan, those are the ones who if they attack, they kill unless you beat them up badly enough. This is serious,” Florence says with concern.

Rowan leans in closer, stealing Omori’s breath as he feels even more smothered. “Okay, a bear… And when you saw it, you ran back inside?”

Omori shakes his head. His fingers are clawing wounds into his arms. Rowan’s eyes drift, and he moves his hands over Omori’s sleeves until they have slid underneath Omori’s fingers, forcing him to let go and unclench a few other muscles the memory tensed up.

“Omori… Are you injured?” Rowan tenderly asks.

“Dunno…”

Omori’s eyes prickle. He realises too late that he’s trembling, and the floodgates open. 

Rowan only hesitates slightly before he wraps his arms around Omori, pulling him into a comforting hug that Florence joins, and Omori hates everything about this—hates how vulnerable he is, hates that he has to lie, hates that he has them worried, hates that this is what has cast a ceasefire over his and Rowan’s cold war.

But right now, all he can do, all he wants to do, is bury his face into Rowan’s neck, cry in his friends’ arms, and let it all out, let himself feel safe and protected, even if it’s just in this isolated moment. He wants to stay like this more than anything, so when he feels Rowan create distance between them to look him in the eyes and Florence follow, it’s like being dragged into the woods all over again.

“Stay with us, alright? If you’re bleeding, panicking’s gonna make it worse,” he reasons.

Omori nods. He’s clueless about any injuries. He’s bound to have some bruises here and there, and where the teeth punctured his neck, he must have bled—but he cannot for the life of him discern whether or not he’s still bleeding.

“I’m fine… I promise I’m fine,” Omori mumbles.

“No, you’re not. Not at all. Look at you, love… You can’t sleep this one off and pretend it didn’t happen, ken? You’re scunnered, you’re shaken, and you look like shit. You don’t have to tell us what happened, but y’need help.”

Rowan’s eyes soften. Omori’s instinctively scrunch up as he pushes some tears out from under his eyelids.

“Flor and I will help you back upstairs. We’ll see how bad the wounds are, patch you up, get you clean. You look parched, man. You’re probably starving, too. We’ll get you anything you need if you’re healthy enough to stay home. This place is solid, no bear’s coming in, and I’m pretty sure Peppino’s is still open for delivery.”

One of Rowan’s hands lowers, taking Omori’s rigid hands that lay bunched up over his chest. Omori so badly wants to protest—to ask him how the hell he thinks that’s appropriate after what happened—but he can’t. The comfort that floods his system is like a tranquilliser soothing him to sleep after a bad nightmare. 

Rowan seems to notice and uncurls Omori’s fingers, replacing them with his own. “We won’t abandon you, man. We’re staying with you as long as you need, even when you sleep. And if you can’t sleep here, then come sleep over at our place. Sun won’t be up for a couple of hours, we can drive you while it’s dark.”

“No… Not during the day,” Omori weakly protests.

“You’re sleeping from sunrise to sunset with the state you’re in, it won’t count as ‘during the day’ if you’re passed out,” Florence says.

Omori groans, because he’s right. If he can fall asleep, he’ll only be conscious while outside the house during the night. It doesn’t sit well in his gut, but he’s given up the fight. 

He wants out.

“Can I stay over at your place?” Omori mumbles.

“‘Course, buddy, ‘course,” Rowan says with a reassuring pat to the shoulder and a sympathetic smile tugging at one corner of his lips. “Can y’stand, rockstar?”

“Mhm…”

The brothers make some space, giving Omori breathing room. He lets his legs fall to the side, easing the cramping in his thighs and ankles. He shimmies forward, back disconnecting from the wall. He’s beyond sore, he doesn’t know how he’ll stand.

Rowan and Florence both crouch and offer him a hand. Working in tandem without saying a word, they each pull an arm over their shoulder, and, without waiting for Omori’s approval, lift him up until he’s standing on shivering legs. He grunts as something pulls in his stomach, and Rowan’s eyes shoot downwards in search of any signs of damage.

“Am fine… Am fine, Jesus, I’m not geriatric…” Omori complains.

“Man, you just got mauled by a bear, shut the fuck up,” Rowan crassly retorts, and the casual nature of the response offers Omori some confidence that the awkwardness that has surrounded them this entire time can be temporarily set aside.

For now, at least, he can let himself be taken care of.

Chapter Text

How long will this neutrality between them last?

Sure, they are amicable now—but how long before Omori is confirmed to be safe and Rowan beats his ass up over his choices? How long until that conversation Omori is not even remotely equipped to handle right now?

When he tries to worry, he finds that he lacks the energy to do so. He’s too tired to even think of anything that lies beyond those stairs.

As the brothers talk about how they’ll do this, Omori dreads the idea of going up there and being out in the open again. His survival instincts gnaw at his legs as he remembers what could be waiting for him up there, but his gasp goes unnoticed, as does his weak thrashing.

He digs his heels into the damp basement floor as Rowan and Florence carry him along, but they don’t seem to notice as they effortlessly carry him with them. Mewo pads behind them as they reach the foot of the stairs, and Florence goes first, carrying most of Omori’s weight despite Omori’s best efforts to put some weight on his legs. It’s like pins skewer his calves each time even a little bit of his body weight falls on his feet.

Omori’s heart hammers in his neck when they make it to the top of the stairs. His eyes dart around the lit hallway, notably the only room in the house that seems to have its lights on—and his focus falls on the living room windows, now reflecting the hallway lights and obscuring what may lie outside. Mewo dashes into the living room, agitated from spending so long in the basement.

“Don’t worry, love, this place is bear-free. No big guy’s gonna be able to climb that fence, and even if he could, he can’t come inside,” Rowan coos to reassure him. “And if he does, yanno Flower’s got the meanest hook in the Pacific Northwest, and he’s beatin’ the shit outta that motherfucker until he scampers on off back where he came from.”

Trying to swallow the unease in his throat, Omori nods. 

“You look even worse in the light,” Florence comments as he guides the three into the living room.

Hasn’t he always looked terrible, anyway? How bad can it be?

Being moved around really presses into his belly, and he pulls his legs together when the discomfort pierces his consciousness.

“Wait… Wait…” Omori protests.

“It’s okay, Omori, it’s safe,” Rowan says, but Omori shakes his head.

“Prick, can you take me to the bathroom? I haven’t…” Omori specifies.

The brothers stop.

“Oh… Aye, sure,” Rowan says.

Their diversion takes them away from the living room again, but there’s no doubt that they will wait for him there and draw attention. Omori can’t shake the deep paranoia that he has just doomed his best friends to the agonising death he just averted himself. 

He’s too tired to let the guilt truly consume him the way it should.

Even the slight creak of the downstairs bathroom door makes Omori jolt. Rowan and Florence lead him to the toilet, where he shakily sits down and exhales.

“If you need any help here… Fuck, circumstances are really dire, I can help you out if you can’t–”

“Can you leave?” Omori interrupts Rowan. The offer is by all means touching, but he’s not a little kid who needs help pissing.

“Alright. C’mon, Flower,” Rowan says with raised hands before he and Florence leave, closing the door behind them.

Omori should work on getting his shorts off, but he instead slides off the toilet as soon as the door is closed and retches into the bowl until all that comes out anymore is a bitter acid that burns his nose on the way out. He coughs and wheezes for far too long after he’s done, letting himself slouch motionless across the toilet before finally wiping his mouth. He miraculously finds his way back to the bowl and throws off his shorts, so disgusted by the vile taste in his throat that it’s all he can think of.

Sitting still and tensing all muscles kept him focused, but now that he’s no longer a tangled mess of cramping contractions, it should be easy to let go. And yet, his body refuses to relax. Everything is still knitted together from throwing up and holding himself together for so long.

“Urgh, are you kidding me…” Omori whispers to himself as he doubles over. As if this situation weren’t humiliating enough already, now his body won’t even do this very simple task of carrying out its basic biological functions for him.

He remains doubled over, almost falling asleep from his extensive exhaustion. He’s not out of the woodwork yet. Until he has taken up refuge in Rowan and Florence’s home, he’s not safe yet.

What if it follows them?

Omori’s eyes shoot wide open, mouth pulling tight. 

How do those amateur horror stories tend to go? Guy gets away from a creature in the woods only to find it staring at him from between a crowd while he looks outside on his tram ride and on the way to college? These things always find a way to stalk their victims, and no one ever believes them until it is far too late.

But Omori never leaves his home. There won’t be a crowd or a tram ride or a college for the creature to follow him to.

Yeah, because the creature won’t think to stalk him in the place where it tried to eat him. Smart fucking thought exercise.

He shakily swallows. He breathes in and out, attempting to get his lower body to just relax—if not because it feels terrible, then because he just wants to crawl into a bed. When that doesn’t work, he moves his hand to the general area of his bladder over his abdomen and presses, and that’s what finally overcomes his tensed muscles. Just in time, he was starting to near having to throw up again from sheer internal pressure.

His shoulders lower as that unbearable pain inside his abdomen vanishes, leaving an emptiness inside him—the first relieving sensation he has experienced since he set foot outside the fence.

He uses a few pieces of toilet paper and then dresses himself again, risking using the toilet to lift himself up. Unsteady as his legs may be, he seems to be capable of standing, so he flushes and stumbles over to the sink to avoid staring in the mirror.

Why? Is he scared a dark face with white eyes will pop up?

Yeah, he is, what’s so weird about that? Mirror demons are creepy.

He risks a look, and indeed finds a dark face staring back at him—his own.

Jesus, he really does look worse than he did a couple of hours ago. Messy hair, yellowed, sweaty skin, his eyes look even deader than they did before yet with a deep sense of dread now twisting his visage into a thousand-yard stare—it’s giving Adam at the end of SAW.

He groans. Putting his hands in the collar of his hoodie, he pulls it down and tilts away his head to look at his throat. He can’t find immediate bruises, and the place where he swears he felt teeth piercing his skin is notably clean. It hurts to press on, but that’s it. It’s like nothing ever took place, and he anxiously sighs at that thought. Will he be believed at all if they find no immediate wounds?

A knock on the door jolts him out of his thoughts. “Omo?”

Omori grips the edge of the sink with both hands, trembling. “Yeah, just a sec,” he shakily answers.

Looks like he’s about to find out.

He limps out of the bathroom. The look he receives from Rowan is one of deep concern, but he refuses the hand that’s offered to him, using what little energy he has left to nudge it away.

“Right, so… Flower and I ain’t haulin’ you up the stairs again. Living room fine?” he asks.

“I guess,” Omori croaks. He might tumble over in fatigue, he wants this over with as soon as possible, fear be damned. If it is waiting for him behind the living room windows, then so be it. Maybe it’ll kill him and let him rest.

He stumbles into the living room and finds Florence on one of the couches, waiting with an opened first aid kit and a bottle of water on the table. Omori sits down next to him, a new type of anxiety sitting low in his belly. That of having to come up with an explanation if he’s found to be spotless.

“I’ll just do some basic triage. We can go into more detail tomorrow, if we can establish you’re in no immediate danger. Cool?” Florence asks.

Omori nods.

“Hey, while you’re doing that, I’m gonna give Mari a call,” Rowan says.

“Don’t!” Omori cries before he can think it through. 

Rowan is surprised by the reaction, as is Florence.

“She… should know what’s going on, she’ll probably be worried.”

Panic surges through Omori’s chest. He’d completely forgotten about everyone else. She can’t know, she’ll be disturbed and break off her dream just to come take care of an ungrateful brat, she can’t.

“I’ll… I’ll call her and explain, I promise, I just… I can’t handle this on top of everything else, please…”

“C’mon, lad… This is too big to keep quiet, I can’t not tell her that something happened. I promised her I’d take care of you,” Rowan gently says.

Omori grabs Rowan’s arm, his tight grip making him suck in air.

“Don’t, you useless piece of shit, you don’t have the right,” he hisses, and were he not so languid, he’d have punched him.

Rowan forcefully pulls back his arm, backing out of reach. “Whoa, hey, what the hell… What’s wrong with you, prick?” he rasps, voice raised in anger for the first time since he arrived. 

This is it, then: the moment Omori has been expecting. The one that always comes. The one where his attitude angers those around him and it’s abundantly clear he doesn’t deserve their care. The one where they disavow him and leave.

Despite being in the early stages of having an anger outburst triggered, Rowan simply stands, glaring at Omori before wiping his face with both hands.

“All right. You’re turning into a real cunt, and that ain’t alright. You’re cranky from exhaustion, I get it, but y’need to back the fuck down, and that clearly ain’t gonna happen. Flower, can you fetch my calm pills from the car?” he asks.

Omori’s eyes widen at the unexpected turn. “Hey, wait!” he calls out.

“Are those safe?” Florence asks, ignoring Omori entirely.

“Aye. Usually, I wouldn’t trust him with that kinda medication, but right now… Look at him, man. He’s about to scare himself into a heart attack. We need that tension relieved asap.”

Florence stands up, to Omori’s dismay. He holds up his palm and Rowan digs into his jeans pocket and deposits his key into it before Florence walks off.

“Don’t go…” Omori whispers, heart beating through his head. He’s going to be sick.

“Love, it’s okay. He knows bears better than any of us.”

But that’s not a bear out there. That’s a creature whose behaviour not even Florence can begin to understand. No wildlife knowledge will protect him.

Omori fails to stop him, and he soon hears the front door open and the beep of a car unlocking. It’s as if it’s happening all over again as the door must have been left ajar, and any moment, a horrifying scream could come echoing through the hallways.

It’s so late that Omori lacks proper reaction to it anymore.

He’s left alone in the living room with Rowan, who stands leaning against the side of a couch with his arms crossed over his chest while staring Omori down. Omori does his best to ignore him. This is a prime moment for interrogation, he’s not in the mood for this.

Mewo hops onto the couch, nuzzling against Omori. She crawls on his lap, and while his arms are too weak for it, he pets his fingers into her fur to divert his attention from Rowan.

“Did you take your blood meds?” Rowan finally asks.

“Don’t call Mari…” Omori grumbles.

“Look. I won’t,” Rowan yields. “But you tell her what happened first thing in the morning, alright? Or whenever y’wake up. No excuses.”

Omori’s fingers sink deeper into Mewo’s fur. “Hrm… Yeah…” 

“Great. Thanks. Now, blood meds?”

“Mhm. Took ‘em.”

“Right,” Rowan naively follows. “I know this is a risk, but y’re not alright, and I’m scared for your heart. The alcohol seems to have largely passed through your system, and I’ll take full responsibility for this if anything does go wrong, but y’gotta take a step back, ken? So… Will you please take those calming pills?”

Omori shrugs in acceptance.

“Good. Great. Anything to get you back down to earth, alright?”

Omori grumbles. Rowan needs to shut up already; his head is pounding and he’s making it worse.

Florence returns, somehow unharmed. He places a box of pills and the car keys into Rowan’s hands before sitting down on the couch next to Omori again, picking up the water bottle from the table.

“Here, love.”  

Rowan extends the clip to him, pushing out a small white pill into his open hand.

Probably xanax. Great idea to give to a drunk guy with low blood pressure, but a pharmaceutical student definitely understands the risk of what he’s doing. Maybe if Rowan kills him with unwise medication use, Omori gets to have the last laugh from hell.

Florence pushes the water bottle into his hands, supporting it in case he needs help before Omori snatches it away. He watches almost entranced as Omori swallows the pill and takes a few sips, washing an absolutely vile taste of leftover vomit out of his mouth. Then, he offers him another pill, and a third. Painkillers, most likely. Or his blood pressure medication that neither believes he took. 

More pills for the heap, who cares. Omori swallows those too before his stomach has decided that’s enough.

“Ready?” Florence asks.

“Mmmm…”

Taking the bottle and setting it down, Florence begins his examination by grabbing Omori’s head and looking at his face from all sides, turning it by the neck a few times in the process, extra careful to avoid adding to a possible concussion or something. Lifting Omori’s head, he studies his neck, all the while Rowan stands beside them, arms crossed as he watches.

“That looks clean. That’s good. Basic triage, then! Did you get hit on the head at any point before, during, or after the bear?” Florence asks.

“Bear…?” Omori hazily asks in return.

“Y’know, the bear that attacked and mauled you?” Rowan says with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh… Oh, yeah… The bear…” Omori stammers. 

The coverup is as far removed from now as the rest of the world is, and his eyes nervously glance at the window behind Florence, but he sees nothing.

“Uh, I’m not sure. I fell when it jumped on top of me, and I may have hit my head.”

Rowan’s eyes widen in worry. Omori ignores it.

“Turn around, Omori?” Florence asks.

Omori picks up Mewo from his lap, then shuffles and turns before setting her down again. Florence’s fingers comb through his hair, no doubt searching for any head wounds or bleeds. At this point, Omori wants him to find something. Determine that he hit his head and had a bleed in his brain that caused him to see scary things that weren’t there, and that he’s actually completely fine with a few days of rest.

Eh, who’s he kidding. Brain bleed means instant hospital. The tension that sends through his stomach is enough to nearly send him into a panic again.

“See anything?” Rowan asks.

“Nup. His hair’s all dry, and I see no wounds on his scalp.”

Rowan puts his hand over his heart. “Oh, thank God…”

“Can you tell me your name, what day it is, and where we are?” Florence follows up.

It takes Omori a few moments to process that it’s a question aimed at him. “Uh… Yeah. I’m Omori.”

“Last name?”

“Hirano. It’s… Uh, it’s the day of my birthday… I don’t know what day, but it’s the 20th of July of 2017, around… like… um, 5 am? And we’re at my home. Downstairs, in the living room.”

“How did you get here?”

Omori shrugs. “You dragged me out of the basement. Then I went to piss and you took me here.”

“Great. And who is this ‘you’ you talk about?”

“You know. You two. Uh… Rowan Finley and Florence Delaney.”

“And on your lap?”

Omori looks down. Mewo looks up.

“Mewo. We… We found her in this forest as a kitten. When we were constructing the house.”

“Okay, good!” Florence claps his hands together, causing Omori to jolt. “You’re already a lot more lucid than you were earlier. I don’t think you’re concussed, but we’ll have to check again tomorrow.”

“Hurray,” Omori flatly hums.

“Just to check, what do you remember from before the bump?”

How did he get there? He never leaves the confines of his home, least of all alone to go creep in a scary forest. He can’t think of a good reason why he would.

Wait. He can.

“My phone… It got lost in the forest. When I found it, I saw the creature– the bear. And I stumbled back. Then, I ran, and it leapt on top of me, and I must’ve hit my head.”

“And after?”

“I turned around to defend myself.”

“Hmm,” Florence hums. “I doubt that the bear would’ve waited for you to come to before continuing its attack, so you probably didn’t pass out. That’s good!”

“Omori…” Rowan sympathetically says. “It was that bad?”

Omori simply shrugs. A silence falls over them; tension between him and Rowan that Florence is caught smack-dab in the middle of.

Florence taps Omori on the shoulder to break the moment. “Love, take off your hoodie.”

It takes a bit of wrestling in his dazed state, during which Mewo flees from his lap and takes refuge on the couch’s armrest, but he manages to pull his hoodie off. The back is all dirty from writhing in the forest. He feels exceptionally naked with just his tank top and two pairs of eyes scrutinising every part of his body.

Florence’s hands go for his upper arms. Omori’s eyes follow, and thick bruises and shallow wounds line the transition from shoulder to bicep. It looks bad on his pale skin, but there is no outright gore. Clear proof that he was crushed.

“Oh, that ain’t pretty. Let’s clean that before it gets infected, eh?” Florence says as he reaches for the first aid kit and prepares a gauze with disinfectant. 

Rowan steps closer, taking Omori’s left hand and guiding it to his right bicep. Lo and behold, the bruises appear exactly where his hands would have hugged his body. The small, red half-moon indents are exactly the size of his bitten nails, and suddenly, it no longer feels like compelling evidence that a huge beast stood on top of him.

“I had to pry your hands off your arms when I found you. You were digging your nails into your skin, probably had been for hours,” Rowan says, rubbing over the area so as to lighten the pain that Omori is now starkly aware of. “It’s okay. No shame. You didn’t realise you were doing it.”

Omori has nothing to say. He bows his head as Florence disinfects the small wounds, heavy pressure building inside his jaws. 

They don’t believe him anymore. Self-inflicted wounds aside, he’s spotless. 

It has already begun.

Florence finishes cleaning his wounds. He continues with Omori’s arms, finding scratches on his palms and wrists from falling into the underbrush and slamming into trees. After a quick flexibility test that rules out any fractures, they similarly get cleaned and disinfected; same for his bruised knees and the few scrapes on his cheeks. The longer he sits there, the more his head spins as the medication is suppressing his nervous system and his awareness starts to slip.

Omori thinks they’re about done when he notices that Florence has taken off his tank top, an action he didn’t take note of when it took place. He averts his eyes as Florence examines his stomach and sides, his unease exacerbated by the silence that hangs over the empty house. Rowan’s lovely calm pill has begun taking the upper hand, and it’s a fight to stay conscious.

“Your back’s doing pretty badly,” Florence concludes. “Lots of bruises, but no cuts. I already gave you something that’ll help with that, and we have a cream for that at home. Comfortable taking that off so I can check for chest and spine injury?” 

His fingers tap the strap of Omori’s binder, but Omori immediately pulls away and shakes his head.

“Oh, c’mon. How long have you been wearing it, Omori?” Rowan pitches in.

“A few hours,” Omori lies.

“You usually wake up around the afternoon, don’t bullshit me.”

Omori only groans deeply in response. He doesn’t need a lecture. He doesn’t have the mental capacity to be exposed for the sake of his ribs right now.

“Love,” Rowan desperately whines. “You’re already injured enough as it is. Now’s not the time to keep it on way longer than you should. How about I go fetch you a fresh pair of baggy pyjamas so you’re ready to go straight to bed once we arrive at our place an’ y’can take off that smelly thing for a few hours?”

“Mmm…” is all Omori is capable of anymore. His fight is gone. He’s not even sure if that’s what Rowan said.

He realises the undergarment is off and his upper body is being studied after the fact. Rowan and Florence’s words wash over Omori, going unprocessed, and Omori stares ahead. Mewo is gone.

Moments are starting to disappear, he realises when he’s walking outside his house. He should be terrified of being here so openly, moving so slowly, but he operates on autopilot as Rowan and Florence assist him into the backseat and click him in.

He opens his eyes, and everything is soft and quiet. He’s lying down, and as he takes note of his senses, these are not his bedsheets, those are not his clothes, and that is not his wall.

He rolls over in an attempt to orient himself and finds himself not in the dark, but in a room filtered in gentle purples. A tapestry of violet galaxies, lilac planets, and white stars gently travels across the walls and ceiling, casting the dark posters and furniture in a calming pastel sheen. Light, yet somehow so dark. Easy enough on his eyes that it does not hurt him.

It’s just a cheap projector, yet it may be the most comforting gesture Rowan could’ve extended to him. Omori is lucid enough to see that he has been brought to Rowan’s room, not Basil’s. 

Sheltered in Rowan’s sanctum, laid in Rowan’s bed, and wrapped in Rowan’s bedsheets. 

He takes a deep breath, and the familiar smell floods him with a sense of safety despite being alone. Nothing’s coming for him here, where he lies between a lost love’s sheets under a blanket of eternal stars that he made shine just for him. This warm, welcoming home, where he can always seek refuge no matter which mistakes he has made.

Omori has not forgiven him, but he nonetheless lets himself melt into the mattress and accepts that for tonight, he lacks the energy to not appreciate Rowan’s help. His eyes fall closed, swaddled in a sense of peace that finally lays the nightmare that has kept him up these past hours to rest.

He’s in Rowan’s bed. There is no safer home in the world than Rowan’s bed.

Chapter Text

His face throbs. 

His head pounds. 

His back cries out for him to change positions.

As he breathes, even the muscles between his ribs seem to be bruised.

Omori has woken up in better circumstances.

He attempts to stay asleep for a little longer, but it’s an uphill battle as he’s as well-rested as a guy like him could get. Groaning, he presses his palms into his eyeballs hard, rubbing the sleep out of his weary eyes in vain. He could easily pass out again within moments and sleep a full night despite having just concluded that he’s rested all there is to rest. 

Eyes closed, he reaches next to his bed to find his phone—only to discover that his phone isn't there. Nothing is; his nightstand is replaced by a hard wall that he painfully cracks his fingers against. 

What the…?

His eyes shoot open, burning against the soft purples on this unknown ceiling. He's disoriented until he realises that he knows this room layout. 

This is Rowan's room. 

How did he end up in Rowan's room? 

He searches yesterday for any clues as to what could have possibly led to this mistake, but only finds vague terror in place. 

How much did he drink last night?

A sense of temporary awareness returns to him. Of course he drank. Today is his birthday. And somewhere in that fog of drunken stupor and repressed blues, his phone comes to mind. 

Urgh. Did that piece of shit really end up getting lost? But where…

The woods? 

flat face white eyes sharp teeth

Omori's heart plummets into his chest as he tightly pulls the sheets around him and cowers against the wall. It had to be a vile nightmare, but the sheer panic it instils into Omori's head makes him doubt that hypothesis. 

Is that why he's here? Rowan somehow caught wind of his… visions, whatever they may have depicted, and came to get him? Or was Omori so scared that he swallowed his pride and called him asking for help? 

His head hurts too much to think about it. 

He fully exhales, falling limp in bed as he tries to get his breathing under control. He just wants to sleep again, to find his peace again, and he uses an old technique to calm down, letting his eyes fall onto the stars that gently migrate across the ceiling and walls. His attention is soon caught, however, by footsteps outside his door, and his lungs stop working as he goes fully limp.

A soft voice is speaking. He knows it’s Rowan’s voice, but he can’t tell what he’s saying. Then, the door opens.

Small taps approach across the hardwood floor, and with a soft thud, a weight jumps onto the bed and sits itself down atop his chest. How badly he wants to reach out and pet Mewo right now, but Omori doesn’t want Rowan to know he’s awake. Whichever demon he encountered last night, his collapsed relationship is far more terrifying.

“Hey.”

Hrmmm.

“Omori.”

Go away.

“Ken, it’s pretty obvious when you’re awake.”

Fuck. 

Omori maintains the façade, holding his breath.

“You make soft noises when you sleep,” Rowan continues. He sets a step inside the room. His old door creaks as he pushes it open farther. “And y’tend to sleep curled up on your side, not stretched out on your back.”

Egh. Who else is gonna know that kind of stuff but Rowan?

Omori yields and cracks open an eye that irritatedly glares at his intruder. They exchange tense eye contact. He expects Rowan to bitch to him about whatever he did to get him to get outta bed and come pick up Omori’s ungrateful ass in the middle of the night, but he stays quiet. Just keeps his arms crossed across his chest as he watches, conflicted.

These are the moments Omori wishes would just pass by. Say it, then. Call him filth. Insult him. Degrade him for being a shitty ex-boyfriend.

But he just stands, watching.

Omori gets tired of it and pulls his hands above the sheets, weaving his fingers between Mewo’s fur and scratching her behind her ears. She loafs down on top of him, purring loudly, and Omori feels a point of pride showing her affection he never will show Rowan again.

“Uh… Since we didn’t really get the chance to do this earlier, happy birthday,” Rowan says to break the tense silence between them.

It hits more as an insult than a wish.

“You hungry?”  

Shrugging, Omori opts to stay quiet. He has nothing to say. They’re not on speaking terms.

“We have stuff for your favourite. I can ask gran to make it and bring it up here if you feel too lethargic to come downstairs, but we’re gonna need to assess your head eventually.”

Do it, then. Omori doesn’t care.

Rowan lingers, hoping for a response, but he knew what he was dealing with when he picked Omori to fall for. Born an ungrateful bitch, and nearly died an ungrateful bitch. Probably will die an ungrateful bitch whenever the time is there.

He walks out, leaving the door half-open. With him gone, the daylight more visibly shines from the hallway, casting a faint gleam into Rowan’s room. 

It’s the middle of the day. 

Omori is out of his house in the middle of the day. 

He opts to pet Mewo a little faster to not think about the implications of this outcome, but those rays of sunlight seem to taunt him, burn him from over at the door, where their blinding tendrils lap at the shadows that keep him safe. His ribs constrict themselves around his lungs, and he gets by on short breaths as his pulse wrings the life out of his veins.

He wants to go home. He wants to go home so badly.

Rowan returns with a plate and a glass of water. He enters his room and pushes his door closed with his hips, keeping the lights out in understanding of what Omori needs right now. Approaching, Omori wants to cower, but he stays still as Rowan slides aside his ashtray and places the plate and the glass on his nightstand.

Eggs and bacon. A nice and greasy breakfast that could easily bribe Omori, but he chooses not to let it impact him.

Crouching, Rowan’s eyes get awfully close to Omori’s, who averts his gaze in reflex to peer into Mewo’s purple fur. He waits a few moments, sighing yet not getting the hint and leaving.

“You’ve been out for ten hours, yanno?” 

Omori has no idea what time that makes it right now.

“Omori, I’m worried. That bear might’ve done a number on you, and you were too tired to eat or drink when we came to get you. So please, just eat a few bites?”

“Bear?” Omori wheezes in a tiny voice.

“Ah…”

Rowan wipes his face, fingers lingering on his beard. 

“It’s okay if y’don’t remember. Yesterday flat out was shit. But… you did get attacked by a bear, and we found you in a state of pure panic afterwards.”

A bear?

That would explain why Rowan believed him. Why he’s so kind, why he’s not scrutinising Omori for what he has seen. But he knows very well that that was no bear. Was that the best lie he could come up with?

“Ah, shit, you don’t remember, eh?” Rowan continues, his eyebrows knitted in worry. “That ain’t great… But it may not necessarily be head damage. Might come back as you wake up a little more.”

Once more, Omori has nothing to say.

“Would you at least lemme help you eat?”

He supposes that the pit in his stomach and the intense hunger that drains all the energy from his limbs deserve addressing. If only to get Rowan to leave.

So Omori nods.

Standing, Rowan picks up Mewo—his fingers briefly scrape over Omori’s torso, and he doesn’t know what to do with the shivers that sends down his spine—and he haphazardly tosses her to his couch, where she comfortably rolls onto her back and stretches her little paws out. He bends forward, taking a hold of a corner of his bedsheets and peeling them back.

The first thing Omori notices as the warmth of the blanket leaves him and he’s exposed to the cool air of Rowan’s room is that he’s wearing long sleeves. The second thing he notices is that his feet are bare, and that his thighs are not. And finally, as he instinctively clamps his arms over his chest, he notices that the sleeping shirt is the only clothing piece he wears over his chest.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Rowan says, sensing the betrayal that shoots through Omori’s heart right now. “You were hurt, you were tired, you’d probably been wearing your socks and binder way longer than you should’ve. Flower and I, y’know we’re skinny sons of bitches. Nothing in our wardrobe would’ve fit you. We grabbed one of your brother’s pyjamas and took off those muddy clothes you were wearing. But gran gave ‘em a nice wash, so they’re fresh and ready for you to wear again as soon as you’ve showered!”

Rowan softly smiles; a futile attempt at clearing the bad mood that has overtaken Omori. 

Prick. He literally faints without those socks. Who does he think he is, really.

Still, the hunger that devours Omori’s focus is hard to argue with. He begrudgingly pulls his legs closer, propping himself up with a hand while rubbing the crusts out of his eyes with the other. 

The switch from horizontal to vertical reveals just how beaten-up he feels. His skull pounds, like a nerve in his brain has swollen and is about to rupture. He can’t remember the last time his muscles have felt so sore that he wondered if it’s not his bones that ache, if it’s ever been this bad. The purples of the room meld with black, and the projector’s stars aren’t the only ones that swirl around Omori’s head.

A steady arm loops itself behind his back, and the mattress’ weight shifts. Rowan supports Omori, keeping him upright to acclimatise to his new verticality. He vaguely remembers having lied about having taken his blood pressure meds, and he already regrets it.

“Easy, man. Just breathe and let it all circulate,” Rowan encourages. 

Omori supposes he could. He’s not given much time, as Rowan holds a familiar little pill before Omori’s face. 

“It ain’t gettin’ better until y’take this.”

Groaning, Omori opens his mouth and lets Rowan stick the pill inside. Then, he brings the glass of water to Omori’s mouth. The pill goes down easily, and the rest of the glass’ contents follow with zero resistance. He feels like a desert, his organs crumbling into his abdomen each time he moves around.

Rowan sits him back down in bed, leaving Omori to slouch against the wall, but he doesn’t stand, opting to stay seated next to his pillow. The pounding in his head lessens, and his vision of the ceiling above becomes clearer as the meds get the chance to raise his blood pressure back to a normal level. Rowan must’ve noticed, as he lays the back of his hand against Omori’s cheek.

“Aye, colour’s comin’ back. Let’s get breakfast inside you before it’s cold, aight?” Rowan gently coos.

Omori lets Rowan help him up again, turning his legs to sit on the bed instead. The floor is so cold without his socks on. They’re the first thing he’s claiming when he’s allowed out of here.

The way Rowan holds Omori’s plate and feeds him pieces of bacon and egg could almost be called charming, had Omori not ruined it by completely ignoring his existence and pretending an invisible force is instead feeding him. The fatty meat and greasy protein flood his taste buds so nicely, but they have barely filled him by the time the plate is empty.

Rowan puts it back on his nightstand, but he doesn’t get up. Instead, he remains seated by Omori’s side, so close to him that their hips touch, eyes cast upon the stars around them as he seems to be waiting for something.

He can wait a long time, at this rate.

“Sooo… How we feelin’?” he cuts to the chase.

Omori shrugs.

“You don’t seem so panicked anymore. Y’were out of it yesterday, man. For a good reason, but it was scary to see.”  

Rowan glances at Omori sideways.

“Shit, man, I thought you might have a heart attack and croak.”

The corners of Omori’s lips pull taut.

“But… You’re better now, right? No longer in fight or flight mode?”

He wants to run; get up and claw his way out of this room. Kick in the front door and walk back home, if that’s what’s needed to get out of here, even if the prying eyes of a million people must burn the fragile skin off his muscles.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he does the only thing that feels natural: lets gravity do the work, tipping him over just slightly. Allowing him to slouch, Rowan’s way. Let his body rest against him as he admits to himself that perhaps, he doesn’t want to go through this alone.

And Rowan freezes.

All that warmth, all that care, all that gentleness—and when Omori finally shows a sign of reciprocation, he freezes.

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But Omori can’t hold himself back from nuzzling closer against Rowan.

And Rowan does nothing back.

Omori’s breathing speeds up. He clenches his fists into his pyjama pants, leaving his head lulled against his friend but receiving nothing in return.

He can hear Rowan’s pulse hammering through his body from here, so close to his chest. A wild heartbeat that wishes to escape from its physical confines, that he knows is fighting against the decision he’s made.

In a last desperate move, Omori turns his head into Rowan’s collarbone. He imagines all the things Rowan has done to him before, the things he could be doing, the affection that has defined so much of their relationship. Rowan has to.

But he doesn’t.

Because Rowan remains frozen in place.

Two boys sit in bed, one huddled up against the other, together yet so utterly, undeniably alone.

Chapter Text

No matter how awkward it has gotten, the moment Rowan stands and leaves Omori sitting by himself, he already feels cold and lonely.

Rowan leaves in silence, keeping the door ajar. Omori doesn’t know what to do. Whether he should follow someone who has clearly shut himself off emotionally after he’d been rejected himself or stay in bed and watch those stars, relics of a distant past he cannot revisit.

Mewo brushes her head against his leg. The fact that they took her along means that they had no clue how long Omori would stay with them.

Already too fucking long, is how long. He needs to go home, he’s obviously fine.

Petting Mewo, Omori stays seated for as long as he can until she decides she’s had enough and hops away. Omori supposes that he might as well follow her and see what has become of the world during his decade-long absence.

Standing, he finds that even balancing his weight on his feet is a whole task. His thighs and spine cry out at him in pain from his struggles last night, whichever form they may have taken. He’s shivering. He wants to go back, but he can’t stay here. 

On weak legs, step by step, he approaches the door. Any other day, it marks safety, but today, his hand hovers over the knob as he can’t decide what he’ll do.

The door opens inwards, and Omori jumps back. In the frame stands Florence.

“Oh, hai, Omori! You’re finally up?” he joyfully asks, and while his chipper tone might on better days annoy him, today, he appreciates that it’s him and not Rowan.

Omori simply nods, fidgeting with his fingers over his pyjamas.

“Great! C’mon, let’s finish up that medical exam now that you’re all better, eh?” he nearly chants, darting forward and grabbing Omori’s wrist.

The sudden movement, for some reason, makes Omori want to run and jump out of the window, but as the approach ends and he’s being pulled into the light, that odd resurgence of fight-or-flight is replaced by a strong desire to hide himself away when his body is so bare and the parts he’s so used to covering up lack any semblance of protection from prying eyes.

Florence doesn’t seem to notice, or he has chosen that it doesn’t matter, because he merrily pulls Omori along down the stairs and leads him into the living room. This place has only gotten greener, its once brown internal decoration flourishing with a spectrum of colours from the many lively plants and joyful embellishments that fill the place. 

Omori has seen them before, but never in daylight. Never illuminated so well, despite the drawn curtains that spare him from being seen by the outside world.

A bowl of kitty food and a carrier stand close to one another. How they managed to catch Mewo after such a stressful evening, Omori doesn’t know, but they managed to take her along. She’s safer here than she would be in that lonesome house in the woods.

Florence plops him down into the couch, leaving Omori there shivering like a bunny dragged along a mile between a wolf’s jaws.

Moments are disappearing again, because he can recall Florence brewing the tea he pushes into his hands, but there’s no time between having entered the living room and feeling the heat in his hands. His breathing has notably sped up, and the journey down the stairs isn’t the culprit.

There’s nothing that should have him this on edge, yet he’s succumbing to emotions that he comes to understand mirror those he felt last night.

Was it that bad? 

A vague sense of doom keeps him awake, like something might come crashing through those windows any second. His neck throbs, and the phantom sensation of teeth runs through his nerves as he brushes his fingers over his skin.

When is he going to address that looming darkness that is making him want to crawl down into a bunker? 

“Little pinprick, don’t startle!”

Florence’s warning doesn’t stop Omori from pulling away when something pinches his arm, crawling all the way to the other end of the couch in under a second as he stares at Florence with wide eyes and half his tea spilled over him. He’s holding a syringe.

Is he drugging Omori?

“Oh, too sudden?” Florence asks. “Maybe. But you need this. And the other one. Tetanus and rabies. Wouldn’t want you to live through a bear attack only to die of a lil’ illness!”

Where did he get these…?

“Ah, no, no, don’t worry! You’re not allergic. I know your medical file.”

Omori doesn’t get the chance to question why he does as Florence invades his personal space again and takes hold of his upper arm, placing the syringe against it. He squeezes his eyes shut as the vaccine floods his flesh, but the needle is soon removed again.

Risking a peek, he watches as Florence prepares the second one, and again, he pulls away before he’s injected. This one makes his muscle twitch against the needle, and he hisses.

“There we go,” Florence announces. “That’s five years of immunity for you, and a free voucher for a repeat shot next week. Now they can’t say that I didn’t do everything in my power to get you healthy! And now you don’t need to see a doctor, because you seem to be there again, aren’t you?”

He pokes Omori in the sternum. Omori merely slowly blinks.

“Ah, in one of your famous no speaking moods?”

Omori shrugs.

“That’s okay. Stand!”

Florence leads, taking the tea and setting it on the coffee table before pulling Omori off the couch. His hands in Florence’s, he pulls him back upstairs, to their little bathroom. He sits Omori down on a footstool and grabs a kit of tools, crouching in front of him.

He shines a small flashlight into his eyes, and Omori wants to look away but has his head pinned in place, forcing him to look. Florence seems satisfied, a smile shining across his freckled face.

“Are you confused or just not speaking, Omori? Oh, I can’t tell. Why don’t you write me something small while I disinfect your wounds from last night?”

He quickly leaves before returning. On the sink, he places a small notebook with a pink flowery pen. 

Omori doesn’t feel like carrying out extra homework, but he takes the notebook anyway and looks up at Florence.

“Tell me who you are. Simple! Or give me a little story. Make it make sense, and show me you can knit together a cohesive narrative,” he instructs as he kneels, pulling up one of Omori’s pyjama pant legs. 

It’s easier to ignore the prickling of disinfectant as it trickles onto his scrapes and bruises when his mind is elsewhere, so he focuses. How does one go about proving he didn’t suffer brain damage when he’s creatively bankrupt and doesn’t know himself well enough to litter a few throwaway lines onto the paper?

He figures that he might as well try. He writes a few lines, then waits for Florence to finish with his knees and elbows.

Florence stands, yoinking the notebook from the sink. 

“All right, let’s see.”

He clears his throat.

“‘I’m not concussed’,” he narrates, “or confused. My head hurts like shit, but so does everything else. I just don’t wanna speak to anyone right now. Rowan is a fucking bitch.’ Whew. Not exactly what I asked for, but functionally, it confirms what I wanted it to!”

“Who the hell’s the bitch here, bitch?”

Omori jerks his head towards the door, where Rowan stands leaning against the frame with his arms loosely crossed over his chest. 

“Oh, hai, Rowan. Here to help?”

“Aye, suppose. This bitch stinks, why haven’t you tossed him into the shower yet?” Rowan answers with snark under his tongue. Omori’s earlier actions seem to have ruined his forgiving mood.

“Aw, I’ll need to reapply the disinfectant to his wounds. Are you really sure he needs–”

“Aye.”

Florence hums in deference to his older brother. He puts his hands on Omori’s shoulders, jostling him around a little.

“Oh, Omori. They don’t understand natural musk like we do, but it probably is better if we wash all the grime off you and you get to better assess where you’ve gotten hurt. How about a nice hot shower to wash it all away and emerge a brand new chipper lad?”

Eh. Omori doesn’t feel like he’s in the mood, but he lacks the energy to protest. He nods, and Florence claps his hands together.

“Great!” he optimistically hums. “You know where everything is, don’t you? Why don’t you make yourself at home and take a long shower? Gran said dinner’s gonna be ready in two hours, that gives you plenty of time.”

Omori simply stares up at him. 

Rowan groans, throwing back his head in chagrin. “Don’t forget you promised to call Mari,” he reminds Omori before turning on his heel and leaving. 

Florence follows, taking the little notebook and pen with him and giving Omori a wink, then leaving the bathroom too and closing the door behind him.

Staring ahead, Omori looks at the sunken features of his reflection for the nth time in the past 24 hours. He hasn’t thought about his family at all since he woke up here. Truth be told, it’s likely the first time in the past weeks that he has even gone an extended period of time without mulling them over in one way or another.

What’s he supposed to tell Mari? She’ll be worried and want to come visit him right away, he realises he has considered before. No option.

Besides, with what phone? His is bricked in the woods. No chance.

He stands, holding himself against the sink. He knows this bathroom like the back of his hand, has taken plenty of showers here. He wearily strips Sunny’s old pyjamas off him—thank fuck he gets to shed these clothes—and walks over to the old shower cabin, where he turns on the water and waits for it to heat up before stepping under.

At first, the hot water burns not only in the scrapes and chafed wounds in his skin, but also against the rest of his body as he has set the water to be too hot. As he acclimatises, he quickly gets used to the heat and appreciates it for what it is, cowering his head against the wall under the showerhead to protect his face as the rest of his body gets pelted by boiling drops and he relaxes.

Has Sunny also had this rude awakening, late in the day, with a pounding head and legs he can’t quite reliably walk on? Is he once again stealing Omori’s thunder, doing the exact thing he has except reaping a far better outcome? 

They must have quite the day planned for him. Parties, lunch, dinner, gifts, praise.

Love.

Omori would be lucky if they thought of him today.

white eyes sharp teeth muddy claws

He squeezes closed his eyes, clamping his hands over his face to suppress the sudden urge to scream. He can’t go without addressing this. If he ignores this, it will happen again, and the ordeal sits so fresh in his heart that he decides that he doesn’t wish to go through such emotions again anytime soon.

Rowan may not be capable of showing him any sort of warmth right now, but when Omori’s health is concerned, he might listen. Maybe Omori can manipulate him into talking so sweetly to him again.

Or he’ll beat him into a pulp for crying wolf.

Omori deflates. For now, he focuses on the physical. He should shower more often, it honestly feels nice, but he can’t bear the steps that lead to standing underneath this divine hot water. He stares down at himself, seeing his skin bare for the first time since the supposed attack, and sighs at the extent of the damage. Wounds seen on someone who would’ve stumbled through a forest in shorts, but no signs of mauling.

He pushes himself off the wall and looks around the soap rack. He settles on one of Rowan’s twenty hair products, whatever it may do. The word shampoo is printed somewhere on the bottle, it should do. He haphazardly washes his hair and lathers up his body, and when he’s done, he stays standing for far longer than is necessary.

Finally sufficiently shrivelled up like a prune, his legs have started shivering too badly, and he calls it quits. The bathroom is chilly, but the towels they have here are large and soft. Omori wraps himself in one, not bothering to dry himself off.

Between an oversized towel worn as a full-body cloak and Sunny’s cringe-ass Spaceboy pyjamas, the choice is quickly made. He opens the bathroom door and peeks his head outside. 

There, against the wall by the door, Rowan sits looking at his phone, unbothered until he takes note of Omori’s emergence. He perks up, a bundle of clothes in familiar black and white next to him, and stands. Omori considers hiding in the bathroom and using privacy as an excuse to avoid socialising, but Rowan stands in front of him too soon.

“Right, so… Figured you might want your clothes, so…”

He extends them Omori’s way. Omori hesitantly takes them. Tank top. Shorts. Underwear. Socks.

No hoodie. Rowan must have reclaimed his property. Omori’s heart sinks, and he wants to punch Rowan for being so cold about it—but with his hands full, he decides he’ll spare him his wrath this one time.

Looking back into the bathroom, a thick cloud of fog hangs over in the small room despite the open window. He’ll get soaked if he dresses there. Better to do it somewhere dry. Rowan’s room, perhaps. Or Basil’s, which Omori has absolutely zero emotional ties with.

“Just a thought, don’t mean anything, of course,” Rowan says. “You look like you’ve seen better days. You’re a lil’ rough around the edges, with the stubble and the hair that didn’t get brushed in a while. I wanna help out any way I can. How about you sit down easy and lemme take care of those for you?”

Omori looks at him blankly. He’s too tired to protest, and he’s not in the mood to induce another bout of anger in Rowan. He walks back into the bathroom and places down his clothes on the sink’s solid surface, then sits back down on the footstool, pulling his towel extra close over his shoulders.

“Thanks, love,” Rowan says out of habit. Omori isn’t sure if he realises he used the old term of endearment. 

He follows, opening a drawer and taking out a soft hairbrush and a spraycan. Placing one hand in Omori’s neck, he uses the other to spray some nice-smelling liquid onto his hair before massaging it into his locks and scalp. Then, he starts brushing the tangles out of Omori’s hair. 

That “shampoo” and spray may have helped, but it’s no easy task. Omori hisses and groans whenever the hairbrush catches onto a lock, and it takes quite a bit of effort to fully brush through his hair. He’s apparently there for the full option, because next, Rowan grabs a towel and uses it to dry his locks, then retrieves the hair dryer from the drawer, untangles and plugs in the cable, and begins blowdrying Omori’s hair.

Omori melts in the heat, under the gentle massage of fingertips through his scalp as Rowan attempts to get some volume in that block of grease they call Omori’s hair. 

He risks a glance in the mirror. Rowan is strongly focused on his task, not noticing that Omori is watching him, but he finds himself unable to look away while he’s at work so diligently. 

It doesn’t take long for Omori’s hair to dry, and after a final brush, Rowan smirks proudly at his handiwork. He grabs another spraycan from the cabinet and sprays it over Omori’s hair.

“Look at that, good as new. Don’t y’think that you look so much better with clean hair?”

Omori groans.

Unplugging and rolling up the hair dryer again, Rowan bumps his knee against Omori’s back. “Oi, your stubble’s gotten pretty long. Growing a beard, or is this just neglect?”

Shrugging, Omori honestly doesn’t know the answer. He’s not deep enough into his treatment yet that he can grow a proper beard. 

In all honesty, he’d kill to get facial hair like Rowan’s. Thin and orderly, but handsome when groomed into a small little chin beard and some stray hairs over his ears and jawline. Instead, Omori’s genes gave him ugly stubble he hates seeing. Worse than dad. 

Rowan is the most handsome person he knows. Omori looks more like a potato than he does a man. No hair’s gonna fix his unfortunate mug.

“Need a shave?” Rowan asks.

Omori nods.

Rowan gets out everything he needs. He rubs the shaving cream between his hands and carefully slathers Omori’s jaw and upper lip in the ensuing foam. Then, he picks up the shaving razor and gets to work.

Razor-sharp blades so close to his vitals and arteries.

Like black teeth clamped over his neck and saliva dripped onto his face.

One wrong move could end up very badly for Omori, and perhaps that is why he does what he does next when Rowan is nearly done with him.

“How mad are you at me right now?” Omori quietly asks, words muffled by the towel he pulls a little higher over his mouth.

“Man, I dunno… A seven?” Rowan answers as he finishes up with Omori’s jaw and moves on to his upper lip.

He shaves on in silence, until Omori just has to open his mouth again.

“Wanna make that a ten?”

Rowan stops. He needs a moment to process these words, what Omori’s saying, before his look of confusion turns to an indignant scowl, not lowering the shaving razor as he continues, though a little more briskly. 

“The hell you mean, asshole, you gonna break my heart again? Because you already did a pretty fuckin’ terrific job a few weeks ago, ken.”

Omori knows it wasn’t the most diplomatic way to open up about this, but with this reaction, he buries his nose against the hand under the towel, pulling his legs closer to the chair and fully exhaling. Bad idea. Better not to and pretend it never happened.

“No. No, you can’t drop that on me and go quiet, c’mon,” Rowan complains. 

He sounds irritated but is restraining himself. He’s no longer shaving, instead holding the razor loosely against Omori’s jaw.

“The hell you mean with ‘wanna make it a ten’? What could that possibly mean? You gonna start a fight with me in my own damn house?”

“No…” Omori whispers.

“Then what? What’s gonna upset me, huh?”

Omori wrings his hands over the towel. He already decided he’d do this.

“There wasn’t a bear.”

“Eh?” Rowan asks with a delay.

“It wasn’t a bear,” Omori repeats with slightly better wording.

Rowan stands frozen, head slightly tilted to better process what Omori is telling him. He’s left speechless, and Omori believes that he might actually pull that razor across his neck next.

The worst will now follow.

“Okay… No bear. So who attacked you, then?” he follows up, far too reasonably.

Omori bites on his lower lip. “… A demon.”

“A demon.”

“I don’t fucking know, you go ask it what it is if you don’t like that description…” Omori hisses, averting his eyes from the mirror, where Rowan’s scrutinising eyes bore holes into him.

Putting down the razor at last, Rowan allows Omori to breathe a sigh of relief.

“Yeah, uh, no. You’re gonna have to be a hell of a lot more specific, rockstar, because I know y’didn’t get a visit from Satan last night. The hell you mean, a demon? Like, a goat? Those can be nasty lads when they’re angry. You got rammed by a goat, that it?”

“No, not a goat,” Omori whispers. “It was… I dunno, at least ten feet tall. Completely black. Blacker than any fur could be.”

Teeth in his neck.

“It had white eyes, like car lights.”

Pressure.

“And huge claws.”

Hot breath on his face.

“It didn’t have a muzzle. Its face was flat. Like a person.”

A heavy weight on his limbs.

His lungs freeze.

“And it wasn’t like an animal. It was…”

The deep, digital sound of a baseline kicking in from between the undergrowth.

“I dunno what it was. But it wasn’t normal. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I can’t tell you what it was. But it was big, and it tried to kill me.”

He purposefully keeps his eyes pinned on the sink. He’s disappointed that Rowan put down the razor already. It would solve a lot of Omori’s issues right now.

Hands lean on his shoulders and converge over his collarbones, holding him far too gently for the revelation that he just made. Maybe he will wrap his fingers around Omori’s neck and finish the job for having such a manipulative asshole on his hands. At the very least, he might be kicked to the curb for making Rowan and Florence take care of him over nothing.

It’s what he deserves, even if he doesn’t want it.

“Oh, love, why the tale with the bear, then?” Rowan very softly coos instead, like he’s not trying to suppress unbridled rage.

Omori shakes his head. “You would’ve thought I was crazy and taken me away to a hospital.”

“I wouldn’t. Y’know I wouldn’t. Only if your life were in danger if you didn’t get immediate medical help. But this? Omori…”

He tightens his arms around Omori’s torso, pulling him into what might be interpreted as a hug if one were desperately touch-starved enough.

“Some… guy, I dunno, attacked you outside your house? We already called the police to send over someone to assess the area for bear danger, but this is something completely different. Someone was skulking around your property. Who knows what he could’ve done to you? Who knows what he… actually did to you, and you don’t remember or don’t feel confident enough to say.”

“It was not a guy.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause those traits–”

“You don’t believe me,” Omori snarls.

“I believe y’were shitfaced drunk, disoriented, scared outta your mind, and in a bad emotional state. Car light eyes? Love, you just saw a car parked in the woods. And some guy was there, running you over with it…”

He lifts a hand to his mouth. 

“I’m gonna be sick. This is serious. You can’t go home, not like this. You’re definitely getting Basil’s room until he’s back. Or mine, if you prefer that.”

This is hopeless. Omori shakes Rowan’s hand off him and stands, storming out of the bathroom despite his face still being half-covered in shaving foam. Fuck this, fuck Rowan, fuck everyone; he didn’t tell him just to be disbelieved, and this is exactly why he can’t stand to be around him these days.

“Oi, wait!” Rowan shouts behind Omori as he takes the only natural route while wiping his face with the towel. “C’mon, man, don’t do me like that. I’m just worried, what do y’want me to do, not give a flying fuck? Stop being a cunt about it!”

Omori meets his dead end in Rowan’s room, stalling still in the middle. He’s not sure what he hoped to achieve coming here, but he can’t storm onto the streets naked in a towel.

“Take me home,” he demands.

“No. Not with some freak roamin’ in the woods.”

Turning around, Omori snaps onto Rowan, throwing his hand back in frustration.

“There’s no freak! I know what I saw, and it was a beast! What guy is ten feet tall!? You’re not worried even a little bit that I believe that I saw some huge fucking creature in the woods? It doesn’t concern you that that’s how I interpreted it!?”

“You were–”

“Why don’t you ever take me seriously!?”

Omori’s voice isn’t used to reaching this volume. It cracks as he shouts, and as he stands there panting, he realises that his eyes are wet. He wants to evaporate, he doesn’t want to deal with this mess, he doesn’t want to be patronised for something that didn’t happen and have his account of last night disregarded entirely because it’s too fantastical. He just wants to be believed; for once in his life have his feelings taken seriously.

Rowan doesn’t look angry, just shocked. He stands with Omori, frozen in place, and a long silence spans between them as Omori tries and fails to keep his tears at bay.

Finally, Rowan’s shoulders sink.

“So… A demon,” he yields. “If it wasn’t a bear attack, then what did the… the demon do to you?”

“Dunno, it… I dunno, just stared at me for a little while. I tried to run, and it jumped me. It tried to eat me a few times, but it hesitated. The only reason it didn’t was that my phone rang a few times, and it got distracted.”

“Well, the phone thing lines up. I called you a few times around 2 am.”

First proof that what happened really happened.

“Yeah…” Omori breathes.

“And you ran?”

“I ran. And I hid.”

“You aimed your gun at us because you thought we were demons?”

“Gun?” Omori asks. “I… had my gun?” 

It hits him over the head, even worse knowing that he aimed a deadly weapon at his two best friends, and the memory of his determination to shoot whatever entered the basement sends dread into his heart. 

Just how differently could yesterday have gone?

“‘Look, it’s… I’ve confiscated it, it’s in a safe place now. Should’ve never gotten you that. God, the edgy teens we were, eh? Thought it’d make us look so cool…”

The final words come out with a humorous hum, and a tentative smile tugs at one corner of Rowan’s lips.

Omori feels sick. He wobbles, and he stumbles over to Rowan’s bed before sitting down on it, pulling his towel tightly over his body.

Fuck-up. Good for nothing brat. How was he ever going to live on if he’d shot a person? If he'd shot Rowan?

Rowan once again sends mixed signals when he sits down next to Omori, not touching but not so far out of reach that it’d be impossible. He folds his hands over his lap, fidgeting around as he’s evidently unsure where to take it further. Omori has cornered him, and now, he’s leaning a little too far into the other side.

“I’m not wounded.”

“Eh?”

“I don’t have any wounds,” Omori repeats. 

“Knees, elbows.”

“Besides wounds from stumbling around in the forest. No bite marks. No lacerations. No bruises from being sat on.”

Omori looks at Rowan, eyes begging for him to just relieve him from the humiliation of having to practically drag it out of Rowan because he refuses to say it himself.

“You… y’think the demon wasn’t real?”

Biting his lip, Omori hesitates before he shakes his head.

“No, you don’t think it’s real, or no, I’m wrong?”

“It’s…” Omori starts, before he sharply inhales to keep himself together.

His nails rake into his shoulders through the towel. He can’t do this, but he can’t go home and sleep a single other night in his bed if he doesn’t make peace with what he saw. There’s no other way, why won’t he accept this once that he needs this help?

“… I think there’s something wrong with my head.”

“Well, have you seen or heard other things recently?” Rowan follows up. “Sounds that were out of place, movement that wasn’t supposed to be there? Even small things? Because, yanno… When Basil developed his first symptoms, it didn’t take long before it got much worse.”

Omori wants to answer that he heard and saw nothing, but that’s wrong. The weird noises during the night that he’s never heard before, the creatures crawling through the backyard that he can’t sufficiently explain away.

He nods.

“I sometimes hear bangs and weird howls. And I think I’ve seen some cats in the backyard that I can’t track, but… I can’t say for sure,” Omori answers.

Rowan sighs deeply through his teeth. The frustration doesn’t seem to be aimed at Omori, but rather at the tough predicament he’s in. He’s seen firsthand what these types of delusions can do to an underdiagnosed person, and he’s not dragging Omori to a hospital.

“I really don’t think you can handle this alone anymore,” Rowan says.

“No hospital.”

“Nup, no hospital. Basil’s therapist makes visits to patients’ homes too. I can give her a call and ask her if she can make an assessment. I really don’t think it’s a good idea to let this go untreated when you half scared yourself into a heart attack and almost shot someone. What’s the next episode gonna bring?”

“But she’s… she’s a stranger,” Omori tries. His chest contorts at the mere thought.

“We met after the incident. Am I a stranger? Is Flor?” Rowan challenges.

“Well… No…” 

“If you learned to trust us, then can’t y’learn to trust her as well?”

He doesn’t know. He’s honestly tired of all this, but he understands that unless he gets help, this will happen again. There’s no knowing which shape his visions will take on next if this goes untreated.

So Omori yields and nods.

Rowan exhales, smiling and patting Omori on the shoulder. “We’re not taking you back to that creepy house either, all right? Not until police have combed the area, just to be sure. You get to stay here a little longer. Until you feel better. We’ll go grab your laptop and toothbrush and get you anything you need to get comfortable again.”

It doesn’t sit right with Omori, but it seems to be his only option.

He needs to destress. He’ll die of heartburn otherwise.

“Okay.”

“All right. Good,” Rowan says, standing. “So… I take it I can’t tell anyone about this revelation. They might need a lil’ more time to process that you’re seeing things, if they should know at all. To the rest, it’s just a bear attack for the time being. Right?”

“Yeah…”

“Gotcha loud and clear. While I place that call, why don’t you go wash the shaving cream off your face and get dressed? Surely more comfortable than walking around in a towel for the rest of the day.”

Omori can’t suppress a small smirk. Stupid Rowan and his stupid commentary. He even feels confident enough to wink before walking out. 

He doesn’t believe that things will be alright again after everything he’s felt, but there’s no denying that the care Rowan gives him despite being upset with him takes a load off his shoulders. 

Maybe there is hope for Omori yet.

Chapter Text

Spending time away from home isn’t as daunting as Omori initially thought it’d be. Rowan’s home is woefully tiny, and Omori has quickly seen just about every corner of it when the threat vanishes and it gets a little boring to be there all alone.

When he opens his laptop again and dopamine floods his brain after being cut off for so long, the aftermath of everything becomes evident. Countless unread discord messages. Mari, Florence, Rowan, servers that have tagged him asking where the hell he is. He marks them all as read without reading through them, the guilt too bad to even consider seeing what he has done to the people he harmed. And worst of all, he doesn’t answer Mari.

As per his usual habit, he opens his Duolingo. He absolutely didn’t do his Japanese lessons yesterday, and his streak will be gone. So when the site loads and the number appears intact, he can’t help but scratch his head.

In the evening, he’s surprised with an impromptu birthday party. They hung up flags and balloons, their grandma baked a cake, and they even gifted him a few albums he doesn’t own yet. Rowan’s choice, he can tell by the picks. It’s surreal that Rowan even cared to do so much after everything.

Omori never gets Rowan, or anyone, birthday gifts.

While he’s too exhausted to be fully there in the moment and he doesn’t deserve it, it feels nice to receive a celebration he thought only Sunny would’ve gotten.

Night falls fast, and he doesn’t close an eye despite being beyond exhausted. Basil’s bed smells weird. Nothing like how Rowan or his bed smell. It’s too soft, his room is too lively, and most importantly, Omori hasn’t spent the night anywhere that wasn’t his house or Rowan’s room in ages. How is he supposed to sleep in such an unfamiliar environment when his mind keeps telling him that claws could break through the window at any second and snatch him into the night, never to be seen again?

Eventually, he passes out from sheer fatigue and stays in bed until well past the afternoon.

“It’s not conventional, nor is it entirely responsible. But I’ve done all the cross-referencing I could. No risky interactions, minimal known side effects of mixing with your other meds, and the dosages can stay the same. Until Basil’s therapist can see you… why won’t you try it?”

Omori sits in bed with his knees pulled up to his chest. After the drugstore and a half he is, Rowan wants to add even more to the cocktail that courses through his bloodstream? 

“Will it work fast?” he asks.

“Fairly fast, aye. It’ll feel a lil’ shitty at first, but you’ll get used to it real quick. And if things go south—which they won’t—I’ll take full responsibility. But we can’t have another scare like that again.”

“I’ll get fat.”

“You don’t know that. And even if you did, so what?” Rowan pokes him in the belly. “Better than being an ana bitch, trust me.”

It doesn’t exactly look attractive, but Omori has no choice. He needs the peace of mind if he wants to recover from these random bouts of anxiety that hit him over the head now and again thinking that it might happen again. This is one of those rare moments when he’s not paralysed by apathy, he can’t let himself decline.

“Fine,” he yields. “How much and when?”

“One a day, that should do. Hopefully, that’ll be enough, but it’s a good starter dosage to see if it’ll have any effects at all. We’ll keep a close look on you, all right?”

“Just give it to me already,” Omori groans.

Rowan complies, pushing a pill from its strip. It’s Basil’s extensive stash of schizo meds, no one will notice a few missing strips.

Omori quickly swallows it. Bitter. Why do they always make these things bitter? 

“We done?” he asks when he’s washed it down with enough water to fuel his system for the next three days.

“In theory.”

“Fuck you mean?”

“I mean,” Rowan says, rolling his folded hands in his lap, “that there’s something optional left on the list, and then we’re done.”

“What?”

“You haven’t gotten your shots since you broke up with me,” Rowan calmly says.

And Omori has been trying to spend the past weeks not worrying himself about it. In a way, it feels wrong to accept it now. It was a gift shared between lovers, not just a random gesture aimed at a guy that Rowan is seven out of ten mad at. On the other hand, the implied suggestion soothes Omori.

“You still sharing?”

“Didn’t con my doc into giving me more than I need only not to use the excess, man. Just take it. Don’t be annoying about it, I don’t want you to lose progress.”

Sighing, Omori flattens his legs and rolls up his left shorts leg.

Given permission, Rowan sits down on the bed and gets close to Omori’s thigh. He disinfects it with a wipe before he runs his thumb underneath the usual injection site and readies his syringe.

“Your leg hair’s gotten denser,” Rowan off-handedly comments.

“Shut up, no it hasn’t.”

“Y’just don’t see it ‘cause you see it every day. But it has. Don’t give up yet, you haven't stopped changing.”

Rowan makes the injection, taking his time. Omori no longer flinches at these—at the very least, when they are properly announced and he doesn’t receive sneak vaccinations—and so he sits looking at the ceiling.

When Rowan is done, he finishes with another round of disinfectant and a bandaid. He takes the liberty to pull Omori’s shorts back into place before he cleans up his medication kit. 

With his back turned on Omori, Omori glances down at the part of his legs visible between his socks and his shorts, and notes that the dark hair that litters his legs stands outlined just a little thicker against his pale skin.

The nights come a little easier to Omori. That doesn’t weigh up anything against the fact that he wants to scratch his skin off.

When he doesn’t spend entire twelve-hour periods asleep, he instead paces back and forth endlessly, fed up with being locked up in such a small house despite so little time having passed by here. Despite being used to locking himself away in small spaces, smaller than the house he has at his disposal.

He wants to throw open the front door and run, before he inadvertently crashes and sleeps another night and a half away. He wants to rip his nasal cavity from his eye sockets and squeeze it all to mush. He wants to do the unthinkable and call Mari, scream into his phone about how unbearable his suffering has become and to come free him from this prison his tormentor has locked him into. 

It’s normal, is what Rowan has told him. Completely ordinary for the first weeks.

Normal, normal. Omori doesn’t want normal, he wants what he’s used to. This isn’t bearable at all, but Rowan declines all requests to take him home.

Of all the things he has felt in the past decade, perhaps being both exhausted and hyperactive is the worst one yet. Yet he presses on. Because nothing is more tiresome than the forest encounter that keeps waking him up, thrashing and kicking and soaked in cold sweat in the middle of the night.

“Got something for you,” Rowan announces from the door.

Omori doesn’t look up from the fishing grind he’s engaging in on his laptop. One of the only games he can run on this rickety system. 

Rowan enters and sits down on his bed, holding up a familiar brown hoodie.

“Gran did her best patching it up, and I got most of the stains out with a few washes and some extreme measures. I think my fingerprints have been chemically burnt off my fingers…”

This time, Omori looks up. It’s indeed Rowan’s old hoodie that Omori has worn down to the seams. The fact that they managed to get it clean is a miracle.

“It’s yours.”

“I gave it to you for a reason, Omori. Just keep it.”

Omori doesn’t feel like fighting, so he accepts the hoodie and slips it on. Only Mari has been allowed to wash it for him, and it’s been a while since she last did. The textile feels soft on his skin.

“Thanks,” he quietly hums.

“No biggie.”

Rowan, instead of leaving, makes himself at home, comfortably laying on his back and leaning his head against the wall. It’s evident he’s not leaving.

“How did you…” Omori hums.

“Hm?”

He logs out and closes his laptop, putting it aside. Pulling his knees up to his chest, he seats himself against the wall and buries his nose between his knees.

“How’d you know I needed help?”

“Eh?” Rowan asks, but then, he catches on to what Omori’s asking about. “I mean, you weren’t answering your messages. That you’d ignore mine, fine—but Flower’s and Mari’s? That was too suspicious. And yeah, I am in contact with Mari. She asked me to take care of you, I ain’t failin’ her, but she doesn’t know. By the way, nice work not calling her after I asked you to.”

Omori groans.

“But I guess the biggest tell,” Rowan continues, “is that no matter what happens, you’d never stop taking your Japanese lessons. And when I saw that y’hadn’t completed your lesson on the 19th a few minutes to midnight… I dunno, man, I got worried.”

“You spied on me?” Omori asks incredulously. 

“Yep,” Rowan shamelessly admits. “And you might be here, safe and sound, because of it. Change your password if you want me to stop checking in on you.”

Chagrin is Omori’s first reaction, but he calms himself down when another thought occurs to him.

“… You completed the lesson for me?”

Rowan nods. “Always goin’ on about your sacred streak. Having a shitty day shouldn’t take it from you, and I’m not petty enough to make you lose it when I could’ve fixed it. You’re not exactly stable enough to take such a loss.”

Omori is already opening his laptop and navigating to Duolingo. On the 19th of July, he got exactly one answer correct, and it dragged down his score significantly. Rowan answered mostly variations of 'idk’ to the free translation questions, with one ‘wtf u want from me’ thrown in. The one correct answer is a lucky guess connecting two terms.

“What?” Rowan asks. “I don’t speak Japanese, ken, how was I supposed to do it right? Besides, I was kinda fighting against a tight deadline.”

Omori wants to feel indignant, but instead, there is a strange appreciation for Rowan bothering to keep up something quite important to someone who hurt him. 

Omori doesn’t end up changing his password. 

The novelty of being in a known house at an unknown time quickly wears off. The sunlight that shines through the hallway fazes Omori less and less the longer he spends here, but he still keeps the shutters closed and Basil’s bedroom dark.

Despite having rarely seen Omori during the time he and Rowan have been friends, Rowan’s grandma is still accommodating. He didn’t expect her to be such a kind, almost rowdy woman in her sense of humour and her choice of words, and he’s less intimidated by the prospect of spending a few days in her home. She cooks, and Omori even offers to help, as much as any fresh ingredient he touches has disintegrated into dust in the past.

He eats vegetables and fruit. He shaves every day. He sometimes washes his hands after going to the bathroom, and always before eating. He showers semi-regularly. He disinfects his wounds as they scab over and applies cream to his discolouring bruises. No one forces him to do these things, yet they happen anyway.

Just one thing he can’t do. Mari sends him messages. He promises to speak tomorrow. It’s never tomorrow.

What he can’t deny anymore is just how little Rowan eats. He always finds some excuse to bounce on dinner, and when he’s there, his portions are laughably small and he vanishes for a while afterwards.

Omori isn’t stupid. He’s felt how bony his hugs have gotten in the past half year. His choice likely only exacerbated the severity.

He feels terribly guilty, and he doesn’t address it.

As Omori saunters into the living room one afternoon with the sleep still in his eyes and his hair wildly sticking out on all sides, he stumbles upon a commotion he didn’t expect.

The usual three are four. Rowan, Florence, their grandmother, and some stranger. 

He almost darts back into the hallway in the split second it takes his blurry eyes to recognise that it’s not some rando, but regular old Basil who has finally come back from his vacation of being one of Sunny’s groupies.

“Oh hey, Omori, you’re up!” Florence greets, and three other heads turn his way as well, giving him the urge to run out of there. “We just picked up Basil from the airport.”

“Omori?” Basil asks. He stares him down like he’s looking at a ghost, and in his situation, he might as well be. “It’s the middle of the day, what are you doing here?”

“Nothing much, just stayin’ here a lil’ while because he doesn’t wanna be home alone for so long. Ain’t that right, bud?” Rowan explains as he stands, walks over to Omori, and greets him with a bump against the shoulder.

“Aw, that’s great! I’m glad you get to stay with us for a little while,” Basil says with a wide smile that doesn’t hint at any sarcasm. “We don’t see you that much, this is nice!” 

Omori groans but decides he won’t be antagonistic today.

That is, at least, until Basil’s smile turns a little too ecstatic and he realises too late that he has picked up his camera and snapped a shot of Omori and Rowan. 

Nearly failing to suppress the urge to hiss and bite Basil, Omori instead turns on his heel as Basil and Florence coo over the photograph and goes back upstairs, not feeling up for socialising with so many people at once and being ridiculed for looking the way he does.

He locks himself away in Basil’s room for about half an hour before he’s starkly reminded of the fact that both words in ‘Basil’s room’ are relevant.

“Oh, you’re sleeping in my bed? That’s alright, I’ve slept on the couch before,” Basil says with an accepting little laugh as he puts down his suitcase.

Omori blinks at him, shrugging as he continues petting Mewo on his lap.

Basil kneels before his suitcase and opens it. “Rowan told me you haven’t been feeling all that great lately. I really hope that you’ll feel a little better here with us. It sounds like my brothers have been taking good care of you, and you know I’m always there if you need any help!”

He’s so chipper that the brightness in his voice almost makes Omori shield his eyes. He always found that Basil and Mari were similar, and there’s something comforting about her care being reflected in his actions in a way Florence and Rowan don’t mirror. But he barely knows Basil. He’s just as dangerous as all of Sunny’s other friends.

Standing, Basil picks up a stack of clothes and opens his closet to sort his clean clothes back into their rightful place.

“Oh, I almost forgot! You have warm greetings and happy birthday wishes from your family. Which I just realised I haven’t said yet, hah… So, belated happy birthday!”

Basil peeks over his shoulder to smile at him. Omori blankly stares back, and Basil resumes sorting out his clothes.

“I thought that maybe, everyone could gather and have a little birthday party for you, but I know that you don’t like such things, so I’ll believe Rowan and Flower when they say you had a nice one already. I hope you had a better one than Sunny did, at least, but I suppose that’s not really so hard, hehe…”

He walks back to his suitcase and realises that Omori is watching him with a puzzled look. He stops and focuses everything on Omori again.

“Ah, you didn’t know?”

Omori shakes his head.

“Sunny got food poisoning a day before his birthday,” Basil says with a reminiscent smile. “He spent a few days throwing up and lying in bed, so we had to cancel our dinner until he felt better. But don’t worry! We did end up having a small celebration on the last day of our stay. We couldn’t eat out because his stomach was still a little sensitive, so your mom made him a steak, and we had a small party at home.”

So Sunny’s birthday sucked.

No luxury parties, irresponsible alcohol consumption, and glamorous entourage—he lay in bed all day and spent his waking hours with his face stuffed in a bucket. Arguably, had the entire creature situation not happened, he might have had an even worse birthday than Omori did.

All that angst for nothing. It’s no news to Omori that he has a tendency to waste his emotions on matters that don’t deserve so much turmoil, but this one slaps him in the face.

“It would’ve been nice if you’d been there too,” Basil continues as he kneels by his suitcase and rummages through his belongings. “But I understand why you couldn’t be there. So it’s nice to see you again!”

It seems he’s done as he walks back and forth between his closet and the suitcase and he then proceeds to separate out his laundry. 

Omori relaxes against the wall and anticipates his departure, satisfied with having been offered use of his bed without any struggle, when Basil gathers his basket of laundry but instead stops by his bed, putting it down.

“Hey, I know it’s none of my business, but… Have you called Mari yet?”

Omori blinks, turning his head in mild agitation at the invasion of privacy.

“Well, it’s just, she talked about you a lot, and about how she wished that you’d give her a call. She’s not worried or anything, but she misses you and wants to hear from you again. You should call her!”

Omori’s glare makes his response clear enough. 

“Speaking of!” Basil just keeps going. “She asked me to tell Rowan to tell you to check her bedroom dresser for a red shoebox, but since you’re here, I guess I can tell you in person. She got you a gift too, but you didn’t respond when she told you, heh.”

Mari got him something?

That must’ve been part of the messages Omori didn’t read. Thanks, Basil. Now he feels extra shitty.

He jolts against the wall when Basil extends something his way. An intricate thick paper bag with golden patterns on it, and he warily takes it. Mewo peeks up her head and curiously sniffs the bag as Omori places it on the bed.

“Sunny and I thought we’d get you something as well, and the others decided to pitch in, so here you go! I hope you like it,” he beams down on Omori, leaving him a little overwhelmed at the sudden waterfall of gifts and kindness.

Looking into the bag, he spots the typical blue matte box with golden text printed on top. This couldn’t have been cheap by any means—imported all the way from Belgium and already being on the pricier side—but the box of Leonidas pralines makes his mouth water. Next to it sit a pack of high-quality beef jerky and a bag of mochi with a bow around it, and a bottle of wine finishes the arrangement of gifts.

A card sits lodged between the goods. He strategically decides to keep it for later.

Omori can vaguely place which of Sunny’s nameless friends picked out which gifts. He tries to suppress the red that creeps into his cheeks over the thought that they spent so much time discussing him, so he just stares into the bag wordlessly.

Basil waits a few more moments as he fidgets with his hands before he gets too unsettled.

“Okay! Well, you can make yourself at home in my room for as long as you need. Welcome to our place!”

He waits another moment to see if Omori will miraculously turn verbal again, but having dated Omori’s brother for a sufficient amount of time, he quickly catches on that he’s not going to speak and leaves again, leaving Omori to sit alone and think over what he just learned.

From time to time, Omori hears Rowan playing his bass guitar in his room.

The aux has been turned down to the lowest setting, but Omori still hears. He lies in bed in the dark, listening to the low notes and the melancholic melodies Rowan listlessly strums out. Nothing like the usual passionate and energetic playing he exhibits during practice.

Omori’s relationship with music has changed. When picking a ringtone for the new phone Rowan picked up for him after his shift at his vacation job at the pharmacy, he considered Invaders Must Die. Upon selecting the song and hearing its bassline kick in, he almost bricked the phone when he threw it to the other side of the room. 

Still a great song, but like so many things, it’s another joy ripped out of Omori’s hands by factors out of his control. He listens to music less, lamenting when it didn’t give him the same stress the music from his childhood now inflicts upon him.

On more than one occasion, Omori finds himself down in the garage. 

A tarp has been thrown over the drumset. Rowan’s bass remains stored in his room after sessions, and Florence’s guitar likely is somewhere upstairs as well, so that leaves just the drums and the mic there.

Dust wafts off the tarp when Omori removes it. The cymbals still shine bright, the drums still resonate pure when he thrums his fingers across the surface. The seat still holds a slightly-worn set of drumsticks that haven’t been used in a while.

Omori could, but he chooses not to. The incident at home still sits too fresh in his mind, and he can’t risk giving himself another close call.

He throws the tarp back over the drumset and leaves the garage.

“You don’t take allergy meds, do you?” Rowan asks when he barges into Omori’s room one evening.

“Hm?”

“Benadryl. Y’know? Against itches?”

“I’m not allergic…?” Omori hesitantly answers.

“Maybe recreationally?”

“Why would I take allergy meds recreationally?”

“Hm. Right, right.”

Rowan lingers, then tiptoes over to the desk and plops himself down on its chair, leaning forward on his knees with his fingers splayed over one another.

“So, your demon guy. Did he wear a hat or anything of the sort?”

Omori blinks slowly at the odd line of interrogation. “What…?”

“You know. A hat. Rimmed, black, visibly-outlined.”

“It’s a demon, why would it have a hat?”

“Just asking.”

“It obviously didn’t wear a hat,” Omori exasperatedly answers. “It was a big beast. I think it was naked or something. You know, as animals tend to be?”

Rowan swings his hands about his lap. “Right, right, right.”

From over at his bed, Omori wonders if he should close his laptop or if Rowan just burst in with an odd question. It seems he stays poised up on that chair, though, and Omori doesn’t break his interrogating stare.

“So… The demon,” Rowan starts. “Big bulky beast. Hungry, too. Appeared at a time in your life when you were feeling like absolute shit. If you want a proper psych eval, you’ll have to wait for a professional, but it got me thinkin’, yanno?”

His palms disconnect and he turns them up, as if cupping something large in front of him.

“Do you think the beast is maybe a metaphor?”

“What for?”

“Anything. Inner turmoil, mostly. The things keepin’ you up at night, and the thing that kept you up that night. Probably the thing that triggered enough distress for some kinda coping mechanism, I dunno. Ain’t intense stress a trigger for psychotic disorders? Maybe it’s your brain tellin’ you something.”

“Why would my brain create a metaphor like that?” Omori asks with incredible annoyance under his tone.

“Look, brains are weird, and their chem even weirder. That’s why you’re seeing a therapist soon. But think about it. Big guy appears and tries to eat you. Puts a hefty weight atop you, too. What’s something that eats folks alive and weighs on them?”

Biting his lip, Omori can see where this is going. He breaks eye contact at last, unwilling to keep this topic going, and eventually lies down on his back to stare at the ceiling.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s how any of that brain stuff works,” he tensely rasps.

“Maybe, I dunno. But it occurred to me. Thought you should know.”

Good. Now he knows. 

Leave.

“Another thought occurred to me,” Rowan instead pitches unprompted.

Omori lets his silence speak for itself.

“So, y’need acute care. As soon as possible. But Basil’s therapist is busy and may take months before she can even do the preliminary work,” Rowan states the obvious. “Kinda stupid of both of us, but why didn’t we think of just asking Hero to do an assessment?”

“No.”

“We wouldn’t have to keep guessing about what’s the most–”

“No.”

“–likely source of your visions, and I wouldn’t have to keep giving you drugs without a prescription or any idea if it’s actually treating anything you have. And you’d–”

“No.”

“–have someone to confide in, and let me finish what I’m saying before you shoot it down, bitch.”

“You done?” Omori asks without conviction.

“Kinda?”

“No.”

Rowan sits straighter in his desk chair. “And why not, eh? Weren’t you okay with him?”

“I tolerate him dating my sister, that doesn’t mean I want him fingering my mind figuring out all the ways in which it’s fucked. Besides, he’d just tell Mari about it. I don’t want her to feel like shit because I felt weird.”

“Almost died,” Rowan retorts.

“Don’t care,” Omori off-handedly grumbles.

He turns on his side, back towards Rowan, to show he’s done. 

Rowan sighs deeply, and it’s evident that Omori has once again gotten under his skin.

“Won’t you at least consider it? I’m trying to help. Just don’t want you to kill yourself before help arrives, ken.”

“Wow, so altruistic.”

“Urgh. No need to be rude about it, y’know y’need this kinda help.”

“Have you gone to see a dietician yet?” Omori snarks.

Crossing his arms, Rowan turns away uneasily. 

“Why would I need to see a dietician?”

The I’m not fat almost drips from Rowan’s defiant eyes, but he keeps himself in check. If Rowan gets to live in denial, then so can Omori. Fair’s fair.

Rowan gets the hint and finally gets up, leaving Omori to lie by himself. 

Hero isn’t brought up again.

It could take months before Basil’s therapist will be available. Basil said he’d put in a good word for him and try to get her to visit him as soon as possible, but Omori knows how the system works. 

Even if she were to visit and assess him, he’s not sure he’d speak a word to her. He might not even speak to Hero.

Seeing a therapist felt right when Rowan suggested it. Now that he’s spent a while away from home and he’s finally been getting less restless from his medication, he’s not so sure if it would help at all. He hasn’t struggled with his symptoms ever since he started his medication. He has a way to combat his issues, and who’s to say it will ever come back?

Rowan won’t be happy if he admits to this, so he won’t.

He’s well used to the medication now, and it’s had a different, unexpected effect on him altogether: the idea of the outside world doesn’t make him nearly as anxious as it usually would.

He sometimes sneaks off to the window in the upstairs hallway and risks a peek. There’s so much more to see in the suburbs than there is around their house in the woods, and sometimes, Omori catches a glimpse of a passerby on the small stretch of sidewalk he can see before he ducks below the windowsill and sprints back to his room.

When he passes by the front door, he has caught himself looking through the windows on either side to see what’s out there. He’s already gone seconds afterwards each and every time, of course, but he ordinarily wouldn’t have even considered such a step.

Even when Basil invites his friends over and the pink one stares at Omori like he’s a cryptid that freshly crawled out of its hollow, his first instinct isn’t to run and hide under the covers anymore, even if he nonetheless avoids any social gatherings.

He’s getting better, isn’t he?

What’s the point of staying?

The tensions between him and Rowan have eased, but they still haven’t talked about what happened. At this rate, they never will. At this rate, they will never get back together, and Omori doesn’t know how to feel about that.

Does he want Rowan to get on his knees and beg to be taken back, clawing his fingers into the textile of Omori’s shorts and being reduced to a grovelling mess as he acknowledges that he’s lower than dirt? Yes.

Does he have the guts to say this? No.

And so it’s better if he went home again and got to sulk in silence. Basil’s slept on the couch long enough, for the one time Omori can muster empathy for someone else.

He’s alone with Rowan and Florence when he manages to make his request.

“I think I should go home.”

Florence looks up from his crocheting. Rowan’s reaction is delayed, but he eyes Omori, too.

“Why?” Rowan asks.

“Just do.”

“You have everything you need here. You get fed and get your clothes washed. What’s back at home that you don’t have here?”

“I just wanna go home, Rowan. I’m sick of being here.”

“Just say you’re sick of bein’ around me,” Rowan arrogantly—correctly—assumes.

Omori groans, growling under his breath.

“Not everything is about you.”

“And I ain’t takin’ you home. If you have another attack while you’re there, there’s nothing we can do to help you. I’d rather monitor you here closely so you won’t have to go to the hospital.”

It’s a threat. A thinly-veiled one, at that.

“Hold on, Rowan, I think we should hear him out,” Florence contests. “How’ve you been lately, Omori? Have you seen or heard anything unusual?”

As much as Omori expected to see teeth in the closet and bright white lights outside the window, he didn’t. No rustling, no banging, no cats or creatures in the backyard or on the streets, nothing. He’s been calmer than he has ever been.

“No. The incident in the woods was the last time,” he answers.

Rowan sighs uneasily. “But we can’t know. It’s just the first few weeks. What if we let him go and he ends up in a dangerous situation again, eh?”

“Then he just calls us. Right?”

The brothers both look at Omori, who, in turn, turns his head away.

“Yeah, I’ll call.”

“See?” Florence backs Omori up.

“The way he did last time, right?”

“Last time, his phone was somewhere in the middle of the woods, and he specifically went to retrieve it to use it again before everything happened.”

“I suppose,” Rowan yields, but he doesn’t seem happy about it. “Still…”

“If I don’t go home, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to feel at ease at home again,” Omori argues. “Don’t let me become dependent on people being around. I just wanna get used to sleeping in my own bed and being home alone again, okay?”

Rowan blinks. The scepticism has been wiped off his face by this apparently convincing argument, and Omori feels a sliver of hope that he might have been effective at reasoning his way back home. 

He leans back, exhaling loudly.

“Police didn’t find anything. Not even your phone. Your home’s safe, but your mind might not be. Are you sure that that’s a good idea, rockstar?”

“I just wanna go home,” Omori persists. 

A long silence spans between the three. Rowan is the one to break it, speaking softly, like he might startle Omori if he’s too forceful.

“Just… If we’re gonna consider it, then gimme time to think it over,” Rowan concludes.

Omori doesn’t want more time to think. He wants to go home and learn how to live again before sitting locked up in this cheap brick box saps the will to live out of him again. But as much as he wants to break out, arguing with his warden has never proven to be successful.

“Fine. But I just wanna go home. I just… really wanna go home,” Omori quietly hums.

He doesn’t get to go home tonight.

Chapter Text

In the pitch-black darkness of the upstairs hallway, cast in the faint glow of the one streetlamp that reaches the side of the house, Omori sits curled up in his own little corner. 

He’s taken to staring out the window at night, watching that small strip of sidewalk for movement. Looking into the yard between Rowan’s house and the next. Always searching for white eyes and black fur, but never finding them.

Someone walks into view, but within the second, they have vanished behind the neighbour’s house. 

Omori no longer jolts when he sees strangers. No one can see him, hidden away behind that window as he sits comfortably seated in the armchair set beneath it. He’s comfortable here when he fails to fall asleep, and for the past week, this has been his ritual. Gives him hope that maybe, he’s alright, and maybe, he can get out of here again on his own two feet.

Someone comes up the stairs. Omori didn’t hear anyone go down, before he remembers that he never heard Rowan come back up when he left early in the evening.

He stops a few paces away from his armchair. Omori doesn’t avert his eyes from the street.

“Hey,” Rowan whispers.

Silence. 

Rowan shuffles around on his feet.

“Flows told me you’ve been drinking this when he makes it. Didn’t know you were a tea person,” he says with a small laugh under his hushed words.

Omori peeks behind. Rowan extends a cup his way, and after a brief period of hesitation, Omori accepts it and places it on the end table next to his armchair before turning his eyes on the strip of street again.

Hesitating, Rowan opts to sit down on the floor, back against the wall, before he sips from the tea he made himself. Omori would prefer if he went away or explained why he’s bothering him.

But he doesn’t.

They sit there long enough that Omori’s tea has grown cold. He doesn’t touch it. He’s not in the mood. He instead remains focused on what lies beyond this house, building his tolerance for the terrifying dark and the outside world now that it lies abandoned and he doesn’t risk–

“You hurt me, Omori.”

It’s been hours since Rowan joined Omori. The words are spoken into the hallway, like a ghost might have whispered them into his ear and left it up to interpretation whether or not this is another vision he cannot quite place.

Omori doesn’t want to confront it. He realises too late that he stiffened when the words reached him, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to have this conversation.

“Hey. Did you hear me?” Rowan asks.

Of course he did. Between the buzz of electronics and the quiet of night, those words break through the dusty air like air horns.

“You hurt me,” Rowan repeats.

He didn’t mean to.

No, he did. He wanted Rowan to suffer. He wanted him to feel a fraction of the emotions Omori had been going through, he wanted him to understand the terrible pain he’d caused, he wanted–

Who cares. What he wants is never good, or all that serious.

Omori wants to lay his hand on his face and squeeze, but he instead remains tensely locked in his position, knees pulled tightly against his chest as he focuses on the one loose brick that sticks out the side of the neighbours' house.

“You can come live here with us. We’ll give you a bed, a shower, we’ll cook for you. We’ll do anything to take care of you, so long as you’re all right again, so long as you’re healthy and safe. As many times as you need it, because you’re hurt and vulnerable, and that ain’t your fault. Sure. No issue at all, and every single one of us will do it a thousand times over again. But what do I get in return?”

What then, Rowan?

“Silence,” Rowan hisses. “Radio silence. Not even the drop of a pin. Like there’s nothing to address. Like you didn’t break my heart for some reason I still haven’t figured out yet. Like I’m just… some guy. You’ve been here for three weeks, and you’ve ignored every one of my appeals to talk, missed every opportunity you had to do it.”

Omori has never been a talker. Rowan knows.

If he wants a better friend, he should search for someone who isn’t Omori. He knew what he settled for from the start.

“I’m tired of waiting. Talk to me. I’m explicitly asking you to talk to me. Tough part’s over, we’re having a conversation. Tell me whatever shitty things you think of me, insult me, tell me to go die, but at fucking least tell me why you dumped me and cut me off.”

The answer is simple, isn’t it?

Why not?

The factual answer, the true reason why Omori sent that message in the dead of night, is even more laughably simple: Omori no longer knows why he did what he did. 

The memory has long evaporated from his mind—probably something utterly stupid and miniscule that no healthy person would ever react so heavily to—leaving him with just the repercussions. The mess he couldn’t clean up, because he doesn’t know where to even start. The joy of being hated—because if he is hated, then at least, he doesn’t need to live with the uncertainty of what people think of him.

The whole reason why he is an antisocial douchebag who can’t make any real friends. He’s well-aware of who he is, and that makes him slightly better than all the other sad sacks of shit.

“Not telling me, eh?” Rowan silently concludes. 

His voice is starting to break. 

Soon, anger will follow. It always has, eventually.

“Fine. I’ll talk. Wanna know why I’m hurt? Found you in your basement waving a gun in our faces. Were you gonna shoot us or yourself? Who fucking knows. You sure haven’t told us shit about it, and I’m done trying to read your mind.”

What’s the point of this? Why did he come here?

“Do you have any idea how terrifying it was to realise you could’ve been dead? And that you weren’t in control of yourself that night, fine—but you just had three weeks to talk about it. Three weeks to bring it up by your own initiative. Maybe, I dunno, apologise? Ask if I’m fine after seeing that? Check up on Flor? But you didn’t.”

Rowan breathes angrily between his words. As silence descends over the house again, he sits against the wall panting, doing what he can to suppress an anger attack and prevent himself from ruining what he worked so hard for.

Omori wants to push him. Make him break and yell, lose all progress, turn into a beast and prove that Omori still has an impact on the world.

“Got nothing to say, asshole?” Rowan snarls under his whisper.

Nothing at all.

It’s better if Omori received no voice, for if he were to speak now, he might lose the tight grip over his emotions and reveal a vulnerable side of him he is not prepared to bare to anyone. Then Rowan’s anger might turn to compassion.

Anything but compassion.

“Great. Just great,” Rowan huffs. 

There’s light movement in the corner of Omori’s eyes. He ignores it and has never been more focused on a single other thing than he is on that loose brick right now, head tingling in anticipation of a blow.

“You know what? Maybe you don’t have anything to say, but I do,” Rowan finally cuts to the chase. 

The adrenaline sits packaged in Omori’s heart, waiting for the hammer to come down on him, for all he has worked towards in the past month to finally pay off, combust into that brief blaze of utter satisfactory grief as he finally gets what’s coming to him.

Rowan growls his breath through his teeth. 

“‘Boyfriends’. What a fucking joke! You just want a bitch on your arm so y’can say someone’s bending to your will, ‘cause that’s all you care about. Manipulating everyone around you to do your bidding, pushing them away until they’re at the tips of your fingers, and then reelin’ ‘em right back in. That’s your MO, ain’t it? Push and push and play until you’ve had your fill, then make sure they won’t leave your ass. Be so pitiful they have no choice but to feel bad for you.”

Never in his life has Omori felt wound more tightly around his emotions than now. Hormones seep into his spine, dripfeeding him with what he wants, what he loathes, what he has thrown away everything in his life for just to experience it for even a second longer.

“‘Love’,” Rowan sarcastically spits. “Love. Love, love. Love. Love,” he repeats again and again, in different intonations each time. He snorts a laugh. “Right, so tell me how I’m supposed to love you when you offer absolutely nothing to love, eh?”

What?

“Tell me, ‘love’. Why do I always gotta be the one showing I care? I have to drag you outta bed, I have to plan dates, I have to text you first because otherwise we stop communicating for weeks, sometimes months on end, and I have to do everything in this relationship. Everything!”

No.

“And if I stop, then you vanish from my life, because you never reach out to me the way I do to you. Do you even think about me when I ain’t around? Or am I just a dispenser of drugs and sex?”

Shut up.

“You don’t put even a fraction of the energy I do into this relationship. You can’t even thank me for cleaning up after you and letting you stay in my goddamned house for weeks, no compensation asked! And when I suggest actual solutions, you won’t even hear me out, you just shoo me.”

Shut up.

“I missed work for you so often I risk getting fired. I got up for you at 3 in the fuckin’ morning to come get you after a psychotic episode. I kicked my brother outta his own room so you got to sleep comfortably, I asked gran to cook the food you love so you’d feel at home out here, I even risked my damned career for you—because we both know that givin’ you drugs I stole from my brother without prescription’s gonna get me kicked from college!”

Shut up.

“So what’s there to love, eh?” Rowan huffs mockingly, condescendingly. “Why should I give you another chance when it’ll be the same every time unless you dedicate yourself to doing better? When you’re literally impossible to love?”

Rowan’s lips wrap themselves around those final words so sharply, spitting every last grievance at Omori in the hopes that his venom will pierce through his skin and paralyse his heart.

And it does.

How it does. 

Each word spoken, each insult, each stark denouncement of everything Omori has ever been and ever will be, everything their relationship has ever stood for—slashes deep into Omori’s core, unleashing with it burst after burst of sweet, sweet adrenaline that leaves him panting as harshly as Rowan is when the utter satisfaction of his twisted success pelts him unhindered. Until he is denounced and discarded entirely, and those words are what finally electrify his spine, fill him to the brim with such an overload of excitement that he has to claw his fingers into his arms to keep himself from jolting out of his armchair. He could laugh, he could scream, he could tense every muscle in his body until they snap and all that is left of him is a pile of flesh cackling madly at his honourless accomplishment. They could jab heroin straight up his spine, and it would pale in comparison.

Omori has been set ablaze, arteries raging with a surge of emotions he only so rarely gets to experience, head roaring each word back at him and pouring fuel into his soul to keep that short-lived flame in his chest alive for just a little longer.

And then, as quickly as it came, all that anger, all that bliss, all that spite, that cruelty, that dominance, that rapturous ecstacy—evaporates into thin air, and he is left with the broken pieces of his relationship in his hands, heart and head so empty that it tears and claws at him in comparison to the rich fullness he experienced mere moments ago.

Everything he did it for, everything he pushed things so far for, gone in an instant, knowing full well that if he could relive that split second of his life that just passed, he would do it all over again—build for years, and let it all go at its peak. That he is already clawing at the fresh corpse to return what he felt no more than a second ago.

Because that is who he is.

That is who Omori Hirano is.

There is nothing else left to say. Rowan’s analysis is a complete account.

So Omori says nothing, and sits quietly by the window, caught between the neighbours’ house’s loose brick and the unbridled rage that drips off Rowan’s heart.

“We… talked,” Rowan finally, after several eternities of quiet spent panting and sniffling, says, deep shivers infiltrating the words he can barely speak anymore through the tears that have finally broken out. “About what… what you asked for.”

Doesn’t matter.

“There’s a way to help. To– to do it safely. Might not feel comfortable with it anymore, but… fuck…”

No longer matters.

“Phase it in. Flor and I—or fuck it, I dunno, I guess just Flor stays with you the first nights, and if that goes well… It’s all up to you however you continue. You can go home, and you won’t have to deal with me anymore, if y’want me outta your life so badly.”

Stopped mattering ages ago.

“Fuck if I know it’s a bad idea, but you wanna go home, so go home. Stay there all by yourself. Feel better.”

There is no home to return to.

Left in its place, Omori stands in the smouldering ashes of a place he just incinerated in a man-made blaze of his own design. As has been the end result of everything he has ever cared for.

It always ends in ashes and burns. It’s why Omori belongs at the bottom of a pool.

The moment doesn’t pass. As the emotions settle in his gut and the depleting dopamine in his veins quickly gets replaced with a deep pit in his stomach and food being pushed back into his oesophagus, he just hopes that Rowan will leave.

But he won’t. He stands around, blindsided.

A door gently opens, announced by the soft creak despite best efforts to open it quietly. 

“Oh, you two are still awake?”

Omori doesn’t avert his eyes from the brick as Florence’s soft footsteps approach, stopping a few feet away from them.

“Nup. Going to bed,” Rowan whispers back, already turning on his feet and leaving. 

“Oh. What were you talking about? You were making a lot of noise… I hope you didn’t wake up Basil or grandma.”

Rowan doesn’t answer. He opens the door to his room, then closes behind. Omori hears the echo of his heels thudding on the floor before that familiar creak of his bed announces that he wasn’t kidding.

he should face Florence, but he doesn’t.

“Omori, aren’t you going to bed too? I know you like to burn the midnight oil, but it’s getting a little late,” Florence says, no doubt with a smile that’s too kind for a loveless bastard like Omori.

Omori makes no mistakes. Florence is kind, not naive. Not blind. He saw that Rowan stood in that hallway crying, that Omori is shivering from how tightly he is wrapping his arms around his legs in an attempt to stay still.

He shakes his head. Barely.

“Aw, tea’s gotten cold. How about I go reheat your cup for you? Maybe you should come downstairs and sit somewhere a little more comfortable! We can boot up a movie and cuddle over some leftover pizza,” Florence tries. 

A weak attempt to get Omori away from where he clearly had a bad attack and get him to talk.

Again, Omori shakes his head.

“You sure? It’s no effort for me!” Florence chipperly whispers. “You look like you could use it. Won’t you come along?”

A third time, Omori shakes no.

Florence is clearly out of his comfort zone and struggles to pinpoint what Omori might find helpful, ignorant to the fact that Omori is beyond anyone’s help. He hesitates behind him before he, too, gives up and puts a hand on Omori’s shoulder.

“Well, should you feel like talking or sharing a drink, don’t hesitate to knock on my door, ‘kay?”

Omori doesn’t respond to the offer. He’s spent, unsure if he can ever talk in his life again.

So he won’t. It’s better when he stays quiet, anyway.

“Right! Good night, Omori. Try to get some sleep in tonight.”

Florence returns to his room, and the hallway turns quiet again save for the sound of droning arteries and shivering bones.

Alone, Omori sits staring at that loose brick that sticks out of the neighbours’ house, desperately sifting his hands the ashes of a friendship burnt to its foundations in search of the afterglow of that burst of blistering heat, too drunk on lust to accept that they have already turned cold.

Chapter Text

Omori does what he usually does during car rides: stare at the dashboard before him and try not to let his eyes fall on whatever may lie outside the windows. Pick at his fingers. Ignore the chatter inside the car.

He’s allowed to sit in front. Florence drives, and Basil asked to come along, so he sits in the back. By some twisted miracle, Rowan still insisted on coming along, having taken the seat behind Omori with Mewo’s carrier on his lap for steadiness.

It was a choice between leaving late at night and waking up long before sunset; none of the brothers were particularly stoked about having to arrange all of Omori’s stuff past midnight to ensure it’d be fully dark and the world deserted by the time they got in the car.

So they drive, four together, through that world of which Omori has only gotten mystical glimpses through skinny windows and small patches visible between the neighbours’ house and the frame of the upstairs window. That world which Omori thought he was ready to face, yet he now can’t speed through swiftly enough.

They may run into some folks in the streets out and about so early in the morning, or they may encounter empty streets. Omori only looks when they reach that long road without any streetlights.

He feels courageous enough to cast his eyes on the forest. 

The forest stares back through him.

He resumes staring down the dashboard.

As they pull up to his home and the familiar gate slowly rolls open, he can’t help but to survey the strip of road along the fence. 

He barely even remembers running past here on his way back. All that remains are the scrapes on his knees that have nearly healed and the unbearable terror of being prey pursued. And beyond that gate lies the modern castle where he lay in wait like bait for an entity fabricated by his mind entirely. Piercing nature like a menacing fortress that doesn’t belong—a prison Omori voluntarily holed himself up inside and let his trauma incubate in the heat of his trembling bones.

Can he even return? He didn’t think this far ahead. He frankly doesn’t want to think about any of this.

So he doesn’t.

He doesn’t think when they drive up the driveway. 

He doesn’t think when he stands on the porch watching the three brothers pick up what little belongings they took along for him. 

He doesn’t think when they assure him that they surveyed his house before coming here. 

He doesn’t think when he re-enters the familiar he was so abruptly ripped away from. 

He doesn’t think when they go to the living room, but he splits away at the stairs.

And he doesn’t think when he lies down in bed and his maddening pulse thrums through his skull as he tries to still the earth-shattering shiver in his limbs.

It feels too familiar, trying to stay in bed until he no longer can. 

He believes it’s noon when he loses the battle and has to roll out from under the freshly-washed covers. The house is dead silent. He wonders if he didn’t imagine the past weeks, and if he hasn’t been all by himself the entire time.

Rowan gave him exactly what he wanted, after all. It can’t have been real. 

Not that he can tell anymore.

Omori wants to stay here. Drink from the sink and open his laptop. He has everything he needs up here, and if he gets hungry enough, one of the fools downstairs might bring him a consolation prize on a plate when they realise he’s not there. If they’re there, somewhere. If they didn’t pack their stuff and leave. If he didn’t imagine them.

Is that what he wants for himself? For his life? When he just fought so hard and felt ready to do things differently? Is that why he spent weeks building up the courage to sit by that window and stare into the real world?

That’s a decision he made before he did things exactly the same he always has. He’s back to square one.

Fuck it. Rowan’s fucking him over when this is all over anyway. This might be the last time he sees any of these people, he might as well show them the person they’re abandoning when they walk out of this house so that they feel extra shitty about it.

Omori shuffles into the living room, where he finds his three supposed guardian angels gathered outside around the patio, backs turned on him.

Basil has taken up residence on the biggest bench, Mewo snoozing on his lap as his hands weave through her fur. Florence lounges next to him, back leaning against Basil’s side as he’s comfortably nestled into the cushions he placed against his older brother. Only Rowan sits alone in a lounge chair, legs wide as he hunches over with his hands folded between. 

No one notices Omori’s quiet approach in that dark house as they sit in the gentle sunlight. Omori has felt it through the window back in town, once—in the form of a thin line on his arm, diluted by thick glass. He’d forgotten how warm it was, how nice it must be out there in the fresh summer breeze.

There, where he cannot follow them. 

They probably just came with him to enjoy the luxury of their house and take a dip in the pool. A party Omori hasn’t been invited to. People have the audacity to call Omori slimy, but others ain’t any better.

His eyes fall on the coffee table. A weathered brochure lies open. Offensive greens and reds announce that they have snatched Peppino’s menu from the kitchen drawer. Florence’s loopy handwriting noted down a meat lovers pizza, a four seasons, and a pasta pesto.

They must have ordered without him.

Omori exhales through his nose, eyelids sinking low. He quietly sits down on the couch and watches through the glass door as his friends sit out there, in a world so close to the one he has grown conjoined to, yet just out of reach. 

Basil and Florence are leading the conversation, occasionally laughing together. It’s the only noise that can penetrate the thick windows, otherwise leaving the living room quiet. Rowan’s mouth doesn’t open once, only pulling on the corners when the other two laugh. He seems to have been silenced since the events two days ago.

That makes them kindred spirits.

He can’t tell what they’re talking about. The glass is too thick. Him, perhaps. Rowan is close with his brothers. There is no universe in which he hasn’t told them that there was no bear and that Omori’s nothing but a coward with a heart of tar. About what that argument was about the other night. 

Once they notice him, they might strike. Tell him coldly that the gig’s up, they know he’s faking it all and he doesn’t need their help anymore. Leave him by himself. Leave him to his demons, the way he made so abundantly clear he deserves.

So he sits and observes from the dark. Until maybe half an hour later, when he realises that Rowan’s eyes are pinned straight onto him, darting away when Omori takes notice.

Florence looks behind, and Basil follows. It takes the two a few moments to register that Omori is sitting there, before Florence smiles widely and stands. He slides open the back window, and Mewo, who has hopped off Basil’s lap, comes sprinting inside and crashes into Omori’s leg.

He steels himself, digging his fingernails into his palms. Mewo brushes against his socks and circles around his legs in search of affection. How tragic that Omori doesn’t have it in him to pet her right now.

“Oh, hai, Omori!” Florence, as per usual, greets as he walks into the living room.

Basil follows. Rowan keeps his eyes pinned on the pool, pretending that he’s not currently sitting all by himself.

“Omori! Good afternoon, did you sleep well?” Basil asks. 

He smiles as if he has any clue about who Omori is, and as if they weren’t probably just shittalking him moments before Rowan noticed he was peeping.

Omori wants to flee but stays. 

“C’mon, Omori, you gotta look and tell us what you want,” Florence says as he walks over to the table and picks up the menu.

Omori hesitates before he follows.

“You don’t gotta order anything, but I know gran’s cooking is a little leaner than you’re used to, so we figured we’d order some pizzas to enjoy together for the first day!” Florence cheerfully explains as he pushes the menu into Omori’s hands.

Omori sheepishly looks down on it. The thick paper crinkles under his fingers, distorting the already-aged and definitely-outdated menu. It’s no tough choice; only one option doesn’t overload his senses with flavours and textures.

He points at the first pizza on the menu, the margherita.

“Cheese?” Florence asks.

Omori nods.

“Cheese it is! Hungry yet, or would you rather eat tonight?”

Omori shrugs.

“If I call now,” Basil says as he takes his phone from his pocket, “pizza should arrive within the next few hours. That should be right in time for a late lunch!”

He doesn’t know why they’re wasting time telling him these things he doesn’t care about. Basil goes back outside to go over the list and arrange them some grub. If they think Omori’s paying for that after he had to spend money on his new phone, they can forget it.

It’s just him and Florence left, who happily smiles at Omori.

“So?” he asks. “How was your first nap in your own bed? I’m sure it feels great to be back in your safe space. We made everything squeaky clean for you to make sure you’d have the greatest homecoming. All nice and fresh!”

His chipper voice rings in Omori’s ears and pounds against his skull. Omori simply shrugs, feeling deflated as ever.

“Ah, it’ll come. You just gotta keep doing it, and you’ll be alright again in no time. And in the meantime, make sure you keep that can of Mace we got you in your pocket when you go outside again! Shout, make yourself big, swing your arms, roar if you gotta—that’ll scare ‘em away. And whatever you do, don’t turn your back on ‘em and don’t run away. Go slowly!”

It’s impossible to tell if Florence is telling a lie to keep concealed what Rowan told him or if he’s genuine. Regardless, Omori probably shouldn’t carry any weapons on him for a little while 

Florence claps his hands together. “So! Gran needs one of us at home for the afternoon to take care of her, so Rowan’s gonna leave after lunch. Base and I thought it’d be fun to have a lil’ downstairs sleepover, just the three of us! What do y’think?”

No thanks. Omori has no idea what noises his body makes when he sleeps, he doesn’t need to humiliate himself in front of them further.

He apparently doesn’t convey this well enough, because Florence takes his hand with an excited smile. 

“Great! Ah, it’s gonna be so much fun!” he cheerfully chants as he dances around him.

He’s too nice for Omori to crush his palm, so he lets him swing him around a little until he nearly sinks through his legs.

“Oops! Ah, you’re still a lil’ shaken, aren’t you? Sorry ‘bout that!” Florence apologises.

He leads Omori to the couch and sits them both down before Omori can tumble to the floor. 

Mewo hops onto his lap, tail lightly flicking as she looks up at him full of expectations. He can’t resist a little pet into her supple skin as his blood settles back into his head and his vision gains more colour. It’s one of those brutally hot days, and while the air conditioning inside keeps the temperatures liveable, the open sliding door lets in gusts of heat. Like standing before an oven. 

Omori has no clue how those three could bear sitting outside together. He’s already half dying with Mewo’s fat ass heating up his lap and is considering taking off his socks.

Basil returns to the window with three fingers held up. “Thirty minutes,” he says, muffled through the thin opening left between the door and the frame before closing it fully to keep the heat out and the electricity bill low. 

Florence gives him a thumbs up, and Basil seems to enjoy the outside too much to come back into the cool living room, instead opting to sit back down with Rowan. As much as Florence looks like he wants to join, he hesitates.

“Just an offer, of course. You don’t gotta do anything with it. But it’s so nice and sunny outside. I think some sunlight will do you well!” he hesitantly suggests.

Omori is shaking his head before the end of the request. It’s not for him, Florence should know that by now.

“Ah well, worth a try. There’s always another day for you to go out again! Just get used to being here again for now,” Florence says with a compassionate smile. 

He quickly catches on that Omori isn’t responding, but instead of leaving, he stays on the couch next to Omori. Caught in this moment of downtime, he slouches over and puts his head on Omori’s shoulder; a display of that physicality he shares with practically anyone he gets the chance to sit around with. 

It’s nice, admittedly. Rowan has refused any sort of physical closeness since the breakup. This might be all Omori can get anymore.

Maybe he should con Florence into dating him. It might last a little while before Omori inevitably pisses him off, too.

He realises he has dozed off when the doorbell pulls him out again, fuzzy and disoriented. Florence jumps up, skipping to the front door and returning a few minutes later with three pizza boxes and a plastic bag.

They eat at the living room table in solidarity with Omori’s inability to go outside. Peppino’s pizzas have gotten worse in recent years, but that doesn’t stop Omori from devouring his as his body desperately craves fat and salt after such a long fast sampling the brothers’ semi-vegan mostly-healthy buffet.

Rowan’s phone keeps buzzing. Silence that thing already. It gets so bad that he stops prodding his fork around in his pasta, takes it with a groan, and gets up.

“Boss is bitching my ear off, I gotta take this one,” he haphazardly bulls before he opens the sliding door and closes it behind him, walking into the backyard with his phone against his ear.

Basil and Florence exchange an uneasy glance. Omori decides he won’t mix himself into this issue and focuses on not getting any pizza stains on the white parts of his shorts. Soon, the sound of chewing is all that fills the living room again as no one wants to acknowledge the tough reality.

A good fifteen minutes later, Rowan slides the door back open.

“Uh, he’s not so happy about my absence later…” he groans, running his hand over his sweaty forehead as he pockets his phone. ”Look, lads, sorry, but if I wanna keep my job, I’m gonna have to bounce and explain myself. Gonna take the car, sorry. If you need to go out, Kel n’ Hero should be home, they might be able to play taxi. Or borrow one of Omori’s family’s cars. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He walks past the table, but Florence stops him.

“Won’t you finish your pasta first? It’s that bad?” he innocently asks.

“Ah… How about you pack it up and put it in the fridge? I’ll finish it later, promise,” Rowan says from the hallway. There’s no stopping him, and without further commotion, the front door opens and closes again, leaving Omori with just Basil and Florence.

Basil is the one to break the silence left behind by Rowan’s departure.

“I really thought he’d stay this time…”

“His excuses have been getting flimsier,” Florence adds, tapping his fingers on the cardboard box of his pizza with unease.

The conversation doesn’t go any further, leaving the three of them with their pizza.

Would it be insensitive to ask if he can eat Rowan’s pasta?

Yeah, absolutely. It’ll end up in the trash anyway, but he might just turn the remaining two brothers against him if he dares acknowledge it. So the tinfoil tray remains untouched until long after it has gone cold.

Omori’s role in the construction of the living room pillow fort is to sit inside and watch until Basil and Florence have finished draping the final blanket over their little enclave. 

The two have always had a softer idea of fun than Rowan and Omori have, especially Basil. They pick Home On The Range to watch. The worst Disney movie. 

Figures.

Omori sits deep inside the pillow fort, shrouded in darkness as Basil and Florence lie on their front hugging a few pillows, faces cast in the light of the TV and the oranges that shine through the windows. He’s not exactly lively, sitting hugging his legs and occasionally petting Mewo as she comes to visit before she darts off again. He’s kept the cat flap locked. Just in case.

As the sun sets and the darkness enshrouds the land, he can’t help but keep scanning the backyard for any movement at all. The medication has been effective, Rowan deemed it as such, but that still doesn’t leave him feeling fully confident.

He’s been back only when it’s been light, after all. Who knows what will happen once it gets dark?

Basil is an early sleeper. He goes first. Florence is more adaptive, but as Omori lies down with them and only pretends to be asleep—and he makes sure to curl up and hum soft noises this time around—that is enough to fool him into joining them into dreamland.

When the coast is clear, Omori digs himself out of the pile of boys he finds himself buried beneath and quietly retreats to his room.

He doesn’t close an eye until the sky outside his window colours a deep purple. It’s somewhere late in the afternoon when he awakens from his slumber, soaked in hot sweat as he panics over the wall being on the wrong side and not enough greens filling his room.

It’s time, he thinks. He quietly makes his way into Mari’s room and quickly spots the red shoebox Basil mentioned. It almost feels like stealing.

He takes it back to his room and braces himself as he opens it and finds several items inside.

First, on top, there’s an intricate monochrome card with beautiful geometric graphic design details that can’t have been cheap. Second, a homemade CD-ROM, its transparent casing scribbled with black marker that reads ‘for Omori <3’. Third, a wrapped rectangular object.

He takes the card.

‘To my dear little brother, I say hello, and a happy birthday!’ it opens. ‘I can still remember that little potato sitting on the carpet desperately trying to learn how to stand on his own two feet just so he could beat his twin bro to it. Now look where you are! 21 years old, and I couldn’t be prouder ^-^’

Proud of what?

Don’t get pissy at a card, Omori.

‘I’d do anything to be there with you right now to celebrate! Once in a lifetime opportunity or not, I already know I’ll miss you dearly on our trip. But that’s why as soon as we are back, you’re getting pampered! Don’t think you’ll escape my wrath <3

Rest assured, little brother—this is not the only gift that is coming your way, but I wanted to give you something a little more personal. First, a portal into the past. And second—Hero helped me in my search, but ultimately, this is a gift I have handpicked just for you. I expect no miracles out of you. Go through it at your own pace. All I ask is that you at least consider it, and that we can discuss it when we get back.’

What…?

‘I wish you the happiest birthday you could have! Share this day with your friends. Present this IOU note to me when I am back, and I will cash you out a thousand hugs. For now, let this letter be my substitute for the love shower you’re in for.

Love, Mari.’

Something pumps around his heart, putting him in a knell. He puts down the card and looks into the box, spotting the white-wrapped gift he already caught in the corner of his eyes when he took the card.

He tears open the paper and finds within his hands a book.

The World Beyond the Front Door: an Agoraphobia Self-Help Guide.

His ashen skin pales. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but he had an inkling that this would be the subject of her gift. Mari has been trying so incredibly hard to get Omori out of the house, rolling that boulder up the hill for over a decade with persistence Omori can only admire from afar.

The book won’t help him, he already knows. He shouldn’t even open it. But if Mari got it for him, maybe reading the first pages won’t hurt.

Chapter Text

Nine pages.

He doesn’t get farther into the book than nine pages before he can’t see through his tears anymore and he has to stop.

It’s too hot to get this personal with him. Mulling over the parts he read, the character study so intimate that he may just sue the author for stalking and illegal surveillance of Omori’s life, he decides that he’s not up for this and he slams the book shut, barely controlling himself from throwing it away before a voice in his head tells him off for disrespecting Mari’s gift and he instead drops it on his nightstand.

He’d rather not think about it. He’d really rather not think about it. So he does what he has become a champion in and lets all the information he absorbed sink into the depths of his subconscious, hopefully never to be seen again.

He finds Basil and Florence downstairs, one with his laptop open and the other peacefully knitting whatever it is that one can knit appropriate for the middle of a summer heat wave. Rowan is notably still absent.

Their chipper greetings have to be forced at this point. No one wants to greet someone day in and day out and be met with continued silence. They don’t mention that he vanished or how disappointed they are, they just leave him be.

Rowan returns to the house somewhere along the evening. He doesn’t mention any job. 

“Ah, shit, not tonight. Back’s killin’ me. I’ll take up the couch. God, I’m gettin’ old, ain’t I?” he offhandedly laughs when he is invited into their cosy pillow fort.

Basil is the one to leave to take care of their grandma that evening. Omori clings closely to Florence for their activity of some way-too-complex board game dad loves. As Omori makes his nocturnal escape, his eyes lock with Rowan’s—but their interaction ends there, and he can make it safely back to his room for some peace.

He can’t stop thinking about it. About what he read, and how the book touched him. 

Every time he wants to grab it, it’s like a fiery barrier protects it, and he tosses and turns trying not to think of it. He ends up reading a few more pages, a measly seven, before he goes through his room in search of bugs as he can’t shake the feeling that this book was written about him. Then another twelve before he throws it against the wall. And another twenty before he’s reached his boiling point and he needs to stop to avoid going into a panic attack and tearing out the pages.

Omori dozes off after midnight and as such wakes up not so long after he hears Basil ringing the doorbell and get let in to overstay his welcome a little longer alongside the other parasites.

Dawn of the final day, as they say.

There’s no more signs of Rowan’s pasta as Omori rummages through the fridge in search of something edible. Wherever and whenever he may have discarded it leaves Omori cold, if it weren’t so dauntingly obvious that he stayed up the night before to trash it. He just wants his milk and cereal.

Florence stays for as long as he feasibly can. 4pm seems to be the cutoff point at which their grandma needs assistance. She looked to be pretty mobile and independent, cooking several times a day when Omori was over. They must go back so she’s not alone.

Omori has no excuses to cling onto Florence and keep him around for the night. 

When he leaves, all that remains is a silent home. Omori barely knows Basil, and he’s even less interested in getting to know him. That leaves him with no allies to counteract Rowan’s deep stare that burns holes through Omori’s soul whenever he catches a sideways glance of him.

It’s an early evening for Omori when he holes up in his room and leaves Basil and Rowan by themselves downstairs. He reads until the sky lights up again.

The day they leave him looks nothing like that day Mari did.

They flock to him like he’s a toddler who scraped his knee and who is now a big boy for standing again. It sickens him, and he wants nothing more than to be alone again.

So when Florence gives him a last hug, Basil assures him that he can call any of them the second he feels uneasy or lonely, and Rowan stands a distance away keeping his silence—he should be glad that it’s all over, that they are out of his sanctum again. Instead, he stands in the darkness of the living room, eyes cast on the backyard as the evening shadows lengthen over the grass, stone, and water and the sunset approaches. 

It’s meaningless. It should be meaningless. It makes no sense why, for an hour now, he has stood there looking, not even touching his phone that occasionally buzzes on the living room table.

Like he’s back in that hallway armchair, peering beyond that loose brick sticking out of the neighbours’ house watching for passersby. Men in suits, mothers and their children, dogs, raccoons, bikes. Things he has only seen in movies and art in years past. 

Except no one in their right might would ever think to pass by this faraway fortress.

Omori is once again all by himself. The way he has always been, and the way he will always continue to be. 

The book Mari gave him is finished. Despite his trouble reading physical media, he has devoured it over the past days like a man possessed, and maybe it’s the first time he’s ever felt understood, ever felt truly seen by a world that turned its back on him years ago and told him that he needs to suck it up and stop being a pussy. Burnt by a million eyes, there was one pair that sympathised with him.

And all the while, he remains reluctant to set even a step outside those doors for as long as the sun is up. Since the incident with the metaphorical beast, that may have extended to the night. He’s been effectively locked up in a prison constructed by everyone around him who supposedly loves him, tied to an endless stash of medication that will unspool his unfathomably tangled brain and a book that wants to help him overcome himself—yet not enough, never enough to make him swallow his dread and make the first step.

What would Mari think?

He’s been avoiding her for a month. She must know what’s going on. What an interpersonal failure her little brother is. Why she’d be right to pick a favourite in Sunny, if she ever admitted to that when Omori has suspected it for years. Why she should stop caring about someone who hasn’t respected her enough to call her back even once.

Once again, nothing will change, and it will continue to not change until the end of his days. That’s simply the fate that they have doomed him to when they tried to elevate a failed musician onto a stage in front of a million eyes and they failed to protect him from the world.

Doomed to sit alone in this quiet house, loathing and longing.

Is that what he worked so hard building tolerance in those weeks away from home for? Is that what he read that book for?

The first step may be the smallest, but it’s also the biggest step an agoraphobia sufferer may ever set in their life.

It’s all about finding a reason to trust the outside world. Finding safety in the unknown, and understanding that everything they fear, while as real as the body they inhabit, is in the end merely a survival mechanism to help him avoid being eaten by the scary bear in the woods.

His forehead falls on the warm glass, eyes cast on the world outside his window. On the gentle wind that weaves through the grass and the trees beyond their domain, calmly swaying anything pliable enough to yield to its gentle motions.

Two brothers run through a tall field of long-dried grass, hand in hand as their giggles echo over rolling plains and crisp meadows, not a care in the world for where their dash might take them.

On the pool’s water that reflects a perfectly clear sky as it flirts with yellow, broken by ripples and waves that give the large mirror its imperfections. 

Plunging into the lake sends shivers through his skin, but it offers perfect shelter and cool from the unrelenting sun that has burnt his neck on the way here. Mari splashes water onto him, and he shields himself as he laughs.

On the patio; where his friends have sat laughing and sharing a good time together; where a colourful butterfly sits on the bench and sits flapping its wings to cool itself down.

Dad made sandwiches. Mari packed them into a picnic basket, luring the boys out of the lake with a mouth-watering setup of bread, fruits, and snacks strewn about a blanket draped beneath the shade of the trees that surround the lake. Mom makes photos with her camera. Sunny makes him laugh without saying a word.

On the darkness deep within the forest staring back at him.

An ear-piercing unnatural shriek, like a bow shredding a string, pulls the family out of their idyllic moment. Mom and dad exchange a worried glance, and he cowers against Sunny, but they’re not in time to react before something big and dark emerges from the bush and goes straight for–

Omori bangs his head against the window hard and puts his elbows against the glass, covering his forehead as he claws into his scalp.

That’s not what happened.

That beast, that manifestation of his worst traits and fears, is digging deep into even his memories, tainting them with details that never happened and unhappy endings that he would have preferred over what would’ve otherwise become of his life.

It doesn’t have the right. No one has the right to take those few happy moments he shared before they came here and deny him the right to reminisce peacefully.

Is that what he’s happy with? Overwritten memories and ruined bonds?

One step. The smallest one, and the hardest one.

He looks up again. The window transmits the heat wave well despite being cast in double glass. Nothing about the yard has changed. It is still that same yard he has gotten so thoroughly familiar with, only shown in light he has not tasted in a long time.

Omori might be a fool for thinking it, but the past weeks have given him this unusual sense of hope he hasn’t felt in a very long time. That things might be okay again. That this is the first step in a long sequence of choices that will help him out of his isolation. That he might one day step outside and taste the sunlight again.

That he can do this alone, and he doesn’t need to be humiliated with outside help.

He disconnects from the window, air shivering against his ribs, and considers it. Truly considers it, to the point where he realises he’s holding his breath and has to let go again to avoid tumbling.

The hand he sticks out is unsteady, trembling in the cooled living room air as it reaches for the handle. His fingers tightly wrap themselves around the mechanism, and he uses it as a crutch to keep himself standing upright.

He’s never going to get better unless he makes that first step.

Lightning bolts dart through his limbs. It wasn’t this bad a minute ago. It wasn’t even bad a minute ago. It shouldn’t be that tough, that daunting—but when he peers up, his breath chokes out of his throat.

He’s never going to prove his independence unless he makes that first step.

The cold void stares back into him, laughs at him, makes a mockery of everything he stands for as eyes dot the scenery, waiting to see him fail, to catch a glimpse of that terribly entertaining brat mistaken for a prodigy. Waiting to see him fall.

He’s never going to make any meaningful connections unless he makes that first step.

But it’s not just them. It’s everyone he knows, everyone he might ever know. Waiting out there for him, long having closed up the spot for him after being left waiting for too long, but maybe they will make space if he shows up.

He’s never going to live unless he makes that first step.

Pressure builds in his shoulder. His muscles overcome the static friction of the handle, and his hand starts to move. Pushing on and on, sweat dotting his face as the handle turns. Until it points up, and the door has been unlocked.

His toes curl. He swallows. 

It’s about time he did something about this, isn’t it?

His hand lifts and moves to the opposite side of the handle. Looking up, he sees himself staring back, pupils tiny and eyelids lifted as his reflection places him amid the scenery he hasn’t touched in a decade.

It’s been so long.

Come outside.

He pushes. The door slides far more easily than he’d thought, leaving a gap just large enough for him to fit through. 

The evening heat immediately grips him. It’s so different from the summer heat during the night. Stronger. More radiant. Like the sun’s rays are carried to him on the winds that brush through his hair, weaving and wading in an appeal to lure him out.

Omori is cold. The feeling has drained from his fingers, face pale as he can only breathe in but not out again.

He’s all there, all ready to go. It’s no one else’s fault; no one is there to keep him from walking forth and taking that first step. 

There are no demons or eyes. Despite the million pins that skewer his skin, the sharp teeth that press on his throat and keep him from breathing at all—there has never been anything out there but the force he uses to keep himself inside that house.

It’s just him. It’s always been him.

One step. He can be free if he sets one step.

His foot lifts. His sock drags over the floor, toes meeting with the metal sliding rails that press over his sole as he inches farther and farther towards the outside. No force in the world could pry his fingers off the door’s handle, and he has to hold onto the wall to keep himself steady.

They’ll see. They’ll see him.

Then let them see him.

They’ll laugh. They’ll laugh at him.

Then let them laugh at him.

They’ll talk. They’ll talk about him.

Then let them fucking talk about him. 

He’s done.

His weight unexpectedly falls on his foot, and he pushes it forward and onto the tiles beyond so as not to fall. The shift in weight gives him the motion he needs, and he allows his body to lean on his forward foot. And finally, the one still inside follows, unsteadily planting itself against the other.

Omori breathes out.

The summer’s breeze wraps around him, enveloping him in a blanket of acute warmth that counteracts the cool of the sweat that evaporates off his skin. The dry smell of warm stone hangs in the air, pervading the scent of pines that he is used to out here and instantly revealing its source despite being so ancient. Birds chirp now that they are not in hiding under the cover of night, the sound pure in his ears compared to the filtered version that has only reached him through glass.

The tension sits strong in his chest, fists balled against his sides, and he only notices that his eyes are wrung closed when he makes a concerted effort to let go of it all. He remembers all that he has read about, all that they suggested to combat anxiety. His shoulders lower, and as his eyes open, the breath gently slides from his lungs.

Omori has gone outside during the day.

For a moment, he just stands there taking it all in, not just watching what is happening out there, but feeling it fully, rustling over his skin and through his hair, resonating within his bones and into his tensed muscles.

It never was this bad. His stomach sits clenched in his abdomen and his blood pressure stands in front of a major dip, yet it’s not the horrific hell that he’d envisioned would break loose if he’d ever tried to leave the house again without the cover of night to shield him from being detected.

And he likes it.

Finds it exciting, even.

His head spins, and the butterflies in his heart make this the most exhilarating choice he’s ever made. He stares into the unknown, each step uncertain, but the sheer relief of having finally come here, having finally had the strength to heal by himself, has him walking on clouds.

What more is out there? How much can he push this success until he gets burnt? Where else will today take him?

An unsteady foot lifts off the tiles and lands an inch farther. The other follows, several inches beyond the first. And he shuffles out between the patio furniture and closer to that rim of sunlight cast on the warm stone. Until his toe breaches the threshold and stands illuminated by a dying sun.

It’s so warm. Warmer than there in the shadows.

In a quick and determined stride, Omori leaves the darkness, pale skin fully cast in the sunlight. Like a stove, except far more relaxing. Exactly the way he has forgotten the sun to feel, all those years ago, when he last let himself stand engulfed in its overwhelming rays and allowed himself to burn up in the natural world he has gravely missed.

They’re full and happy. Most of their picnic has been finished, and they’re sharing tales of their day. Of the cricket mom found and showed off before it hopped back into the fields. No mention of what’s coming up, how far they will travel from everything Omori has grown to know in pursuit of a career that’s taken off—just this lone moment.

And he closes his eyes.

The sun is starting to set over the meadows, colouring the lake a rusty orange as its waters beckon for them to return. He almost does. 

Last time he stood here, so close to those waters, it was in utter misery. Now, he has overcome an impassable barrier, set himself on a path that could potentially lead to some good.

He could stay here forever. Build a cabin out here, far away from all the rest of the world and stuff himself away in a place where he feels happy. 

But life does not work that way. The picnic is cleaned up, the boys are towelled off and dressed, and the mood shifts.

Be it the medication or just the sheer luck of random chance, he has finally made it somewhere he thought he was doomed to remain banished from for the rest of his lonesome days.

The world beckons. Tomorrow, they leave for the Pacific Northwest. With school and practice, they may not have the time to come back here. This special little place might be taken from him for good. Nothing about it is fair.

There is hope for him yet.

And Omori smiles. He breathes in a shaky lungful of air and lets out a soft laugh. This once in his life, he’s victorious. He’s made his first step, one of so many yet to follow. Who knows what else may come?

One day, he might accompany Mari out of the house and watch her play.

One day, he might reconcile with Sunny and become proper brothers again.

One day, he might trust mom and dad enough to let them take him to the places he loved.

One day, he might see the terrific strength Florence possesses as he supports him at a match.

One day, he might swallow his pride and say the right words to Rowan, and things will be alright with him again, the way it always should’ve been.

And all because he stared out of the window of Rowan’s house and hit his rock bottom denying himself the right to speak. 

Maybe what was needed for Omori to get better was exactly to lose that home he so loved, to reach new lows, new depths to his patheticness that would force him out of his shaded hollow. To be dragged out into the woods and let his psyche beat him within an inch of his life so that he could heal properly from all the damage he’s sustained this time around. 

His chest heaves as he can’t stop laughing, gently overshadowed by nature’s daytime sounds. It’s been long since he cried, but if there ever were an occasion, now is it.

There is hope. He puts his arms around his torso. Hope has never passed him by.

As he stands by the pool, the rustle of the trees and grass around him takes a turn he’s not used to. Cracks he heard through his euphoria, and an odd sweep that he can’t place the way he could place all these ancient sounds from his childhood. And then, when he stills and his shoulders raise, he hears a dark rumble.

As his eyes shoot open again, the last thing he sees before he slams into the unforgiving hard glass door behind him is a white-eyed void.

Chapter Text

In the weeks leading up to Omori’s return home, despite their tensions, Rowan has at least tried to help Omori get to the bottom of why his brain decided to do what it did on the evening he turned twenty-one.

“I’m just the med guy,” he’d said. “I know the pathways, and I know where the chemicals go. For the rest, you’re gonna need a doc. But I still find it suspicious. Even if it ain’t, maybe that’s the right way to look at it.”

Omori had merely grumbled. The theory sounded as stupid as it did the day Rowan suggested it, yet the more thought he gave it, the more it started to make sense. He has always loved stories that were viscerally blatant in the imagery they wanted to link to the protagonist’s mental state. Maybe this was merely his turn to be the world’s most uninteresting interesting main character.

It took Rowan some insistence, but eventually, Omori gave in. He started going with it. Listening to Rowan’s outlandish theories and ideas on how to fix this, and letting him sell to him a plausible explanation for what he saw.

Not a bear, nor a demon. Simply a metaphor constructed by an exhausted brain.

Omori clutches the front of his shirt as that metaphor stares him in the face, its white eyes boring deep into his skull while its hulking frame towers several feet over him. He has slammed so hard into the glass sliding door that his head and shoulders hurt. 

While in the back of his aching head, there sits a modicum of rational sense that yells at him to run inside, lock the door, and hole up in the basement again, he effectively stands frozen in place as that warm sunlight from moments ago evaporates and his body temperature plummets. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t breathe, he doesn’t blink—he can only stare up at the beast, so unnaturally dark that even the sunset fails to illuminate a single speck of its body.

Right now, it merely sits a few feet away from him, its long torso hunched over to meet him near eye level as it seems to have sat down. As Omori’s teeth grind and his lungs deflate, it tilts its head sideways, like a curious dog would.

In survival, there are three ways one can respond. Fight, flight, and freeze. Sometimes fuck, depending on the biologist you ask. Omori read about it in the section about why anxiety disorders occur in the first place, and which strategies to utilise to counter each response.

Right now, he sits in a suppressed mental state to maintain his freeze reaction before the panic sets in. He can think rationally. He can solve this.

Why now? Why show up now?

As his dry eyes risk a blink, the creature’s head almost tilts upside down. 

The day he sets his first step outside in the sunlight is the day that he sees his creature again. Doesn’t that validate everything Rowan has said? Even as his breathing starts to rag through his throat and he hangs tense against the window, he’s starting to believe that if he resolves this here and now, shows this beast that he’s not afraid, he can vanquish it once for all and avoid this bout of psychosis once more turning violent.

What is he doing? Go inside, idiot. He can mull this over once he feels safe. He has spanned himself too thin and overworked his psyche; he needs to calm down and make this metaphor go away.

He balances on his other foot, and that is his mistake. Freeze turns to flight, and instead of safely inching along the surface of the glass, he turns his back on the beast and makes for the open gap in the door. He’s no more than a pace away, yet the relief of making it inside is whisked away when he feels a gargantuan set of fingers wrapping around his waist from both sides and pulling him back outside.

Screaming for his life, he’s thrown into a disoriented daze as something slams into his stomach, and suddenly he’s rocking back and forth as he gets dragged from the house and he sees a long tail and a pair of hind legs in front of him. 

He claws his fingernails into its fleshy back, met with fur and skin. The metaphor has slung him over its shoulder, securing him with one of its hands as it darts through the backyard. Omori kicks and screeches, but in an adrenaline-fuelled leap, they are over the tall fence and hedge and he sees his house getting smaller and smaller as the beast runs between the trees.

Omori sinks his teeth deep into the beast’s shoulder, hoping to be released. He scratches it so viciously that he draws black blood, kicks his socks against its chest but is only met with bone and lean muscle, yells and begs—but he’s only dragged deeper and deeper into the forest.

Then, the beast turns and puts him down. His surroundings darken as he darts backwards and finds himself bumping into a wall of dirt. He’s been put in some sort of hole. A nest, a den, whatever it is—and the beast looks like this place is just big enough to fit inside.

His hands slide into his shorts pockets, but he realises in shock that his can of Mace still stands on the kitchen counter, untouched since Florence put it there. The one time he might need it, and he’s been too useless to take it with him.

He’s gonna die he’s gonna be eaten he’s never gonna be found he’s–

Shout, make yourself big, swing your arms, roar if you gotta—that’ll scare ‘em away.

No, he can’t give up yet, he refuses.

It’s utterly hopeless, but that doesn’t stop Omori from raising himself up by his legs and spreading his arms as wide as he can. 

“Rah…” he weakly says, no more than a breath under his tongue.

The beast’s head tilts again, remaining seated in the opening of the den a few feet away from Omori. Like last time, it doesn’t charge.

“Rah!” Omori huffs out this time. “Rawww! RAH! Grrr!” 

No, fuck. This isn’t roaring, this is a Lady Gaga song.

He throws around his hands, acting like a raging ape would.

“Get away! GET AWAY! Leave! Get out of here! GET OUT! GO! RAAAAHHHHHHH!”

The small space echoes his hoarse shouts, desperate and unhinged as his panic truly kicks in and he understands that if he doesn’t succeed here, he will not make it out of this den alive.

As he shouts over and over, the beast simply watches, tilting its head every once in a while. When Omori throws his hands at it to scare it, it recoils, but subsequent attempts fail as it quickly understands his tricks and remains seated, unimpressed. Waiting for its prey to exhaust itself so that it gets an easy meal.

“You don’t want this!” Omori spews, a desperate laugh under the words. “You don’t even want this! You hesitated last time too! So why do this?”

The beast looks down. It might start with his legs, and Omori pushes himself back against the wall as far as he can.

He’s out of gas.

“Don’t… Don’t, don’t, please don’t!”

The beast extends its big hand, and Omori sticks out his own to keep it away.

“No! NO! No, no, no, no!” he screams as he smacks the hand away over and over, but it’s futile. 

It reaches somewhere for the ground, and Omori kicks it as hard as he can. His socks barely stand a chance against the sinewy fingers, his toes already bruised and cracked from trying to kick its bony chest while it took him here.

Once more, it extends its hand towards Omori, and he crumples into a pile as he lets out a shriek—the final breath he can handle before his voice sizzles out into a wheeze and turns into a sobbing mess. He lacks the strength to ward it off, and its gnarly hand sits pushed against his chest with no hope of pushing it away when the muscles in its arm alone possess more power than Omori does in his entire body.

Something hard falls into his lap, and the hand unexpectedly retracts again, placed down in the leaves next to the other as the beast resumes watching Omori.

Dazed, Omori can only stare at its glowing white eyes, shivering as he tries not to let his sobbing breaths turn into hyperventilation. Something sways in front of the opening of the den. That long, fluffy tail he saw while he was being dragged off. It’s swaying from side to side, and he sincerely prays that this beast’s body language resembles that of a dog more than that of a cat.

Like last time, it seems to do nothing. Just sits there, occasionally cocking its head down in a way that sends a wave of cold sweat through Omori’s pores.

Does it want him to pick up what it dropped in his lap?

Omori risks it. One hand that sits propped alongside the dirt walls in order to make himself taller very slowly, very carefully goes down to his lap. He’d already inferred what this could be from the shape and the weight, but he didn’t want to accept it. Now that it lies in his hand, it’s undeniable that the beast gave him his old phone back.

Why?

Is this some kind of joke?

The device feels heavy in his hand as he holds it up near his chest, and the beast jolts, sitting down and swaying its tail harder.

Did it…

Did it kidnap Omori just to give him back his phone?

Well fucking thanks, he got it. Now let him go. Please, please, please let him go already, there’s no more point to letting him stay here as it gets darker and darker.

“Um… Thanks?” Omori mumbles, too blindsided by the unusual behaviour being exhibited by what is without a doubt an apex predator for it to make sense.

Or an absurd metaphor.

Maybe that’s it. That’s how he gets out of this.

He collects all the courage he has, clutches his phone close to his chest as his leg muscles tense up and he shakily gets up to his feet. The beast’s eyes follow him, and maybe this is the worst mistake of his life, but Omori sets a step forward. His body weight shifts to his farthest foot, and he goes forward again.

But instead of taking a step to the side and letting him go his merry way, the beast seems to follow Omori. He tries to go closer to the side of the den, but the beast follows him, blocking his path wherever he goes.

Fuck. Omori swallows, the sweat dotted thick on his skin, as it dawns on him the type of risk he is taking, all due to a disproven theory.

Not a metaphor not a metaphor this is not a metaphor this is–

The beast cocks its head again, sending Omori crashing against the back dirt wall in fear again and pushing himself up against it like it will help him crawl through the roof of this den. It’s solid; no leaves or vines, just dirt. 

No attack follows. Its eyes stay pinned on Omori’s hand.

Does it want something from him?

From his phone?

Omori looks down at it, swallowing. He frantically pushes every button on the device, but it’s lifeless. It’s been out in the woods for weeks, possibly having gotten wet. On a good day, the battery lasts two days. He can’t even snap a photo of the beast so that whoever finds his phone will know what he died of and Rowan can feel extra shitty about putting the idea of a metaphor into Omori’s head while stuffing him with drugs that don’t help and that kept him from running away when he could.

Even if it had power—even just a few percent—it wouldn’t be enough to appease the beast and have enough time to run. But if it had any juice left, any at all, at the very least Omori could take pictures of the demon. Maybe, if his phone were to be found, they’d at least know what killed him. They’d believe him. Mari might get closure.

Looking up again, he desperately searches the beast for clues—but with its pitch-black body, it’s nearly impossible to read its body language, let alone any expression on that allegedly human face he currently can’t make out.

Again, the beast cocks its head. Omori guesses and extends his phone back towards it, but instead of accepting it back, its eyes simply narrow, as if exasperated.

A deep noise emanates from its hulking frame, fitting for such a large creature. At first Omori tries to listen for any words it may try to say, if it’s capable of that at all, before he notices that there is a rhythm to its grunts.

Seven hums. Two high, one slightly lower, a third lower, and three deep ones.

An opening riff he’d recognise anywhere, through any medium. Even hummed from a beast’s throat.

One he can’t currently play because his phone’s battery is deader than he is about to be and his new phone has been forgotten somewhere on the living room coffee table.

His mouth hangs open as he thinks. Once again, the beast tries to hum the melody, clearly struggling with keeping a consistent rhythm in it and holding the right tones as if its voice is foreign to itself—but there’s no denying it. 

It heard Omori’s ringtone and wants to hear the song again.

“But I… I…” Omori stammers, mouth wobbling as his eyes fill with tears. “It’s… I can’t! I can’t do it, it’s not… it doesn’t work, I swear I wanna do it—I swear I’d do it if it worked!”

The beast’s wagging slows down, but Omori can barely see it through his blurry vision. He wipes his eyes in an attempt not to look weak before a beast that may pounce at any moment. Last time, something triggered it to eventually attack Omori—and he may not be able to run, but he’s already cornered. Annoyed with his refusal to comply, it may choose to devour him instead.

In one shocking motion, the beast moves, and Omori, whether instinctively or out of sheer foolish naivité, does something he didn’t expect he’d do.

He hums. Seven notes; two high, one slightly lower, another even lower, and three the lowest. Then the next set of notes. And the next. Despite his hoarse voice, he does the only thing that enters his mind and hums the opening of his ringtone. Barely in key, his rhythm lost as he tries to keep humming through his panicked panting.

It’s as if the beast enters a daze. Whatever it was moving towards, it has now frozen in place, loosely blinking at Omori as if in confusion about what he’s doing. It sits straight, tail draped around it, before it unwraps from his body and starts to flick behind it.

Is it working? Is this what it wants?

It wants Omori to sing? 

Then Omori will sing. Between Rowan, Florence, and him, Omori is the worst singer, but if this is what convinces the beast that he has merit beyond being a tasty snack, then he sings like his life depends on it.

He’s hummed this song many times before, but it always sounded off. Invaders Must Die is a tough song to match by voice, and as he reaches the more digital parts of the song, he wonders how long the creature would tolerate his hoarse, chalky voice as it’s already starting to give out. It would’ve only heard his ringtone, right? So he doesn’t need to sing the entire song.

On the off chance that it understands language, he doesn’t need to repeat the sentence ‘invaders must die’ to it over and over in what could reasonably be considered a threat. 

The question is how long his voice will hold, and how long it will take before he has appeased this beast. If ever. He will run out eventually. If not because of his voice, then because of fatigue and hunger.

Please let the beast be reasonable and let him go after doing what it asked of him.

As Omori loops the song when the high parts get too much on his vocal cords, the beast remains in place but bends through its arms. It collapses with a loud thud. 

Omori shrieks before he resumes singing and humming. Despite the violent tumble into the den, the beast seems to have it all under control as it rolls itself up into a ball, its happy tail wrapped around its body while its face lies propped on its hands, eyes wearily pinned on Omori.

And Omori sings. Sings the same forty-ish seconds of the same song over and over, his voice reducing in volume with each iteration, as the beast’s eyes blink longer and longer.

He must have sung for an hour when the creature’s eyes remain closed for an extended period of time. Long enough that when Omori cautiously tests the waters and lowers the volume of his voice, it doesn’t seem to react anymore. It’s well beyond sunset now, and the forest is purple, but he can see its chest gently rising and falling.

This might be the only opening he’s got. It could wake up any second if he leaves and pursue him, but anywhere is safer than this den.

Rolled up into a ball, the creature has left a part of its den free. If he can just slip past…

Omori keeps up his singing, his voice already half gone from so much activity. There’s a reason why Rowan sings, and he doesn’t understand how he can stand hours of screaming into a mic without losing his voice. 

His vocal cords shiver as he tries to stand, his back pressed all the way against the muddy walls of the den. The beast might hear that his voice comes from a different angle, but he’s terrified of going quiet and potentially dissatisfying it. He has no choice.

On his tiptoes, he makes his way against the wall, every part of his body pressed tightly against the wall. His socks crackle into the leaves in a way he doesn’t like, but he keeps going. Inch by inch, his view of the beast changes, first facing it from the front, then skirting by its side, and finally he gets a view of its back, each nondescript yet outlined against the browns of its nest.

And with a final step, he stands on the opposite side, where the den dips into the ground and forms a little nook.

Just one ledge removed from freedom.

Omori swallows. He keeps singing, keeps on repeating that song that has long run its course, as he pushes back his leg. His heel runs over the ledge, testing the waters to see how high he has to climb to get out of there. He finds that the ledge cuts off into the forest floor around his knee.

That’s a lift he can’t underestimate.

He grabs on tightly to the inner walls and turns his pelvis. His fingers find roots, and when he tests them, they don’t seem to budge from where they sit tightly embedded in the dirt. The muscles in his thighs tighten, and he lifts his right foot off the leaves with a hellishly loud noise. 

Leg in mid-air, he stops, watching the beast. Its large chest rises slowly, and it emits a soft rumbling snore. 

Omori carefully plants his leg on the ledge to his side, and he finds that it’s not as wet as he thought. His weight gradually shifts to his right leg until it carries him.

In one slow lift, he manages to hoist himself out of the nest and back into the forest. The sun barely filters between the trees anymore, and the evening breeze deafens him, causing him to stop singing—but he’s out. He’s in the open, he’s away from that hole, and holy fuck, he’s never been happier to be outside than he currently is.

On the tips of his toes, he sneaks away from the nest in the direction he believes his house to be, and starts the long way back, praying that he beast will remain asleep for the coming hours.

Chapter Text

Omori knows that if he wants to get out of this forest alive, he can’t exert the little stamina he possesses. 

Attractive as it may seem to break out into a dash, he knows very well that he’d last a good fifteen seconds before he’d run out of breath and move at a snail’s pace for the rest of the trek back. Even walking saps all the energy out of him. This forest lacks any and all signs of trails; it hasn’t seen human activity in many years. Not since they moved in there and disincentivised hikers from exploring these regions. Especially not after dad got police involved several times and the Hiranos became known to hikers as a problem family.

Maybe they should’ve trespassed. Maybe they would’ve found a mountain of a creature prowling around and kidnapping people to make them play music, and Omori didn’t have to be its victim today. Ever thought about that? Of course not.

Now he’s stuck in a situation where it could awaken at any moment, and he’s not so sure if since their first meeting, it has sated its appetite.

His socks sink into the muddy leaves, occasionally stepping into a thick branch or a thorny vine and making him whimper. This would’ve been far easier if he’d had any shoes on, but it’s just him, his shorts, his tank top, and his socks. No hoodie, no footwear, and he didn’t even pick up his old phone again after dropping it in the den.

Each minute he progresses, each step he sets in the underbrush, each crackle of branches and leaves under his feet drives his pulse up. He must’ve walked for over half an hour when he hears a crack break through the foliage, far from where he is.

His head whips around, the way it has so many times since he started. This time around, though, in the purple twilight that hangs low over the forest, he spots a good fifty feet away from him a pair of white eyes cutting through the fog.

Omori’s first instinct is to run. Turn on his heel and dash through the forest. However, Florence’s advice pops into his head, and he puffs up his chest and spreads his arm wide. Never run. Never show your back. Never show fear.

When did the creature wake up? How long has it been following him? 

From the looks of it, it’s simply skulking behind him, hunting Omori the way humans would hunt their prey in the olden days. Conserving its energy until Omori has run out, seemingly not understanding that it can easily outrun him, if he’s to judge by the fact that only a minute of sprinting has dragged Omori out so far into the forest.

Omori refuses to turn his back on this thing. He poignantly remembers reading about a man who was maimed by a tiger because it saw his back, supporting Florence’s advice to always face the beast. That won’t be him.

The creature has stopped since it realised Omori spotted it. He puts back his foot, and it stands again. Testing his way backwards, he notices that the beast on purpose seems to keep its distance. If it possesses any sort of intelligence, he hopes that it means him no harm and it just wants more music.

C’mon, he has to be close. He doesn’t want to stay out here much longer as it’s getting well dark by now. 

When peeking over his shoulder, he finally sees a light in the distance. He’s beyond exhausted from the extended backwards journey, but he stands a chance. The creature wouldn’t be so cruel to let him walk home only to pounce him at the last moment, right? 

It must take another ten minutes before he finally leaves the darkness of the forest and he bumps into the fence. His heart skips a beat as the metal bars push into his back, but it’s quickly replaced by relief—and it’s only then that he realises that he has another issue on his hands.

He doesn’t have his keys with him. He has no way to open the front gate.

Ah.

Omori almost laughs at the realisation. His pulse has been hammering through his neck for so long, but this seems to be the point where his survival instincts are finally trumped by the sheer hopelessness he felt that one night he was attacked a few feet away from this very spot.

The beast has won. Omori has nowhere to go, and it can catch up.

And that seems to be exactly what it does. After waiting for a moment, it finally sneaks closer, steadily skulking along on its hands and feet like a persistence hunter. All Omori asks for as his blood pressure plummets is that it happens swiftly and painlessly, and that his blood trail may lead them back to its den where they may find DNA evidence of this odd creature.

Closer and closer. Omori crumples to the floor, cowering against the fence as he waits, arms crossed over his chest and soaked palms holding his head in an attempt to calm himself.

It reaches biting distance. Omori is too tired to think of his fate, go through that same grief he did weeks ago once more, and simply accepts his fate as he sits shivering in the groomed underbrush and falls back into his old freeze reaction.

Do it already. Just make it quick.

As the creature stands in front of him, instead of going for Omori, it deviates from its path. Omori watches in terror as it puts its hands on the seven-foot fence, then leaps upwards before hopping over. 

Where the hell is it going?

Is this Omori’s chance to make it to the street and walk back to town? 

Two white eyes peek over the fence again, looking down on Omori, and he makes himself as small as he can. Then, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, the beast reaches over the fence and extends its claws towards him. Omori tries to stand to run, but it manages to snatch him before he’s even gotten any footing, and he screams and thrashes as it drags him into the air—only to lift him over the fence and let him go again once his kicking feet are steadily planted in the grass.

Huh?

What just happened…?

He looks up at the beast, eyes bloodshot as he stands hunched over and hugging his panting frame. The beast gets back down from its hind legs, sitting down next to him and looking at him with hooded eyes.

They’re in the backyard. The closest to home he has been since he got dragged off. He really, truly wants to run right now, but he knows just how much danger he’d put himself in, and–

The beast presses his phone into his chest again. Omori screeches, just about suppressing his instincts to run before he takes it with shivering hands, noting that it’s wet. Of course. Its hands were occupied, after all, and now it’s covered in beast slobber.

Again, it hums the opening notes of Invaders Must Die.

“Inside…” Omori mumbles, eyes jumping from his phone up to the beast. “I have it inside. I promise, it’s inside! You wanna hear it, right?”

The creature perks up, eyes attentively pinned on Omori with a hint of recognition within them, and it almost gives Omori hope that he might make it back in one piece.

“I’ll give you what you want! Just wait, okay?” Omori continues before he starts humming the notes again.

He only hesitates for a moment before he glances behind him. The way to the open sliding door is clear, and once he gets inside, this entire ordeal is over. He just can’t lose sight of the beast, no matter what he–

His heel slides over the rim of the pool, and his heart skips a beat. With the creature right in front of him, it would take just one push, one little misstep, and Omori could’ve fallen into the pool and drowned after having just survived all that. He shoots forward a pace, his limbs cold, before he turns back to the beast. His sudden movement didn’t activate its hunting instincts, and he realises just how little he understands about the creature.

Between the two, he opts to look at the pool for just a moment to pass by safely without losing his balance. And in that moment he’s distracted, a small dot of black zooms through the corner of his eyes.

The beast perks up, tail high up in the air, and chases. 

“NO!”

In an action one could only call stupid, as it turns and dashes after Mewo, Omori tightly grabs its tail with both hands and gets yanked along with it. By some miracle, it stops, looking back over its shoulder at Omori, who’s still clutching his fingers into its tail for dear life as he regains his balance and plants his feet wide.

“Leave her alone! Don’t you dare eat her!” he yells at the top of his lungs.

Mewo hisses from the other side. Its eyes briefly glance her way, but it seems more interested in Omori, in the sheer audacity he’s showing by stopping a beast that weighs more than a car by grabbing it by the tail.

Omori uses the moment to let go and pass by the beast’s side, quickly picking up Mewo as her fur stands upright and she fights against his grip to protect her owner from danger.

The beast pushes its face forward, but Omori won’t have it.

“Hey, hey! HEY! If you touch her, I’ll… I’ll kill you!” he threatens. His voice is nearly gone, cracking in the middle of his threat.

Still, after tilting its head, the creature leans in. Omori swiftly turns his back on it, holding onto Mewo as tightly as he can despite her using all the strength she has to extend her head past Omori’s neck and scratching his shoulder to damage the creature. As Omori grits his teeth together and walks away with her, the beast keeps pushing its nose against his shoulder, and he can hear it sniffing rather than growling or biting—until Mewo lands a scratch on its nose and it jumps up into the air, staying behind as it rubs its aching skin with both paws with its tail between its legs.

A perfect opportunity. Around the pool, and up to the sliding door, Omori’s salvation lies right there. Each step pulls a harrowing thrum out of his heart, pulsating against his lungs in a bid to help him survive as the worst-case scenario repeats itself in his head over and over.

His final stride is a leap—but through some unlikely circumstances, Omori has passed through the open sliding door. Phantom claws wrap themselves around his waist, and he throws the glass door shut and haphazardly pushes the handle downward to lock it. 

He drops Mewo to the floor and almost sinks through his knees in relief. The beast still sits rubbing its nose, until it catches his sight again and follows him all the way up to the door. Then, it simply stands there, having to lower its head to look inside as it seems to expect something from him. It didn’t pounce him this time around, and it let him get to safety. Mewo may have saved his life. Please please please let that mean that it really is just a music lover with bad social etiquettes.

Omori snaps out of his daze and jumps into action. His phone is on the coffee table. He hurries over to retrieve it, then runs to the TV and turns around the speakers to face the windows as the beast walks alongside him on the outside. He needs to search before his cold, shivering fingers find it, but finally, he sticks the aux into his phone and scrolls through his music app.

That hellish melody he’s been humming for far too long starts playing, causing Mewo to jump and flee into the hallway. He turns up the volume to the maximum, and the bass tones vibrate straight through his chest.

Looking outside, he can see that the creature’s tail is whipping around wildly before it sits down, excitedly peering inside. The music picks up, turning louder as it transitions into its bridge. It blinks, then swings along to the rhythm of the music in what could very well be interpreted as a dance. An awkward sway, as if it’s aware that it sits at the centre of attention.

Omori has found an inexhaustible way to pacify the creature. At least until it decides that it’s gotten tired of this song and focuses on padding the ribs that poke far out of its skin.

His blood pressure drops, and he stumbles backwards, falling into the couch as his vision near-blacks out. His socks are disgustingly muddy and moist, but the very idea of pulling them off now turns his stomach inside-out. The mess can be cleaned later, so he slouches over the couch and breathes, doing whatever he can to stay conscious.

Now what?

He wants to go lay in bed and forget about all this. Crawl into the basement and starve, maybe. There’s no feasible way out of this that wouldn’t lead to consequences that’d have Omori never closing an eye again.

What little can he even do anymore?

Option one: he calls Rowan and begs for help. Rowan comes over and gets mauled, and nothing is solved.

Option two: he calls the police. The police come over and enter his home and get mauled, and nothing is solved.

Option three: he does nothing. The music keeps playing, and eventually, the beast may fuck off right back into the woods or get hungry and come inside looking for its next meal. And on the off chance that it stays around and listens for three days straight, eventually, Rowan and Florence will come check up on him and get mauled, and nothing is solved.

There’s nothing he can do. Nothing will lead to him remaining innocent and free of claiming responsibility for any deaths that this creature may cause, and that is if the creature is even real.

Looking outside, it no longer is interested in Omori, instead curiously looking around the property as its gargantuan body lightly sways around, almost as if it’s too shy to burst out into a full-blown dance and instead opts for a more socially acceptable swing. When its eyes lock with Omori’s, it quickly looks away into the treeline.

It looks as real as it did the night Omori first encountered it, but that also ended in no physical proof of its existence in the first place. If this—this all, this entire shitshow that’s gonna keep Omori awake for many nights to come—even has any merit to it, and if the sheer terror of being all alone again didn’t make him see this beast.

No, he can prove this. He can literally prove this. 

He snatches his phone from the TV’s cupboard and opens his camera, but as soon as it loads, the music stops. Looking outside, the beast gets pulled out of its trance and stares Omori down.

Omori rushes back to his music app and spams the play button until the end of the song resumes playing. Only when the music blasts through the speakers and it seems that the beast is calmed again does the delayed tingling in his feet almost send him crashing to the floor.

He puts down his phone and runs into the hallway, up the stairs, and into his room, letting Mewo inside and closing the door behind him to keep her safe. He doesn’t care about what he’ll dirty when he drags his muddy feet into the bed. Opening his laptop, he opens the camera app he hasn’t used in years and opens his curtain to a crack to look outside his window.

Below, he can see the creature quietly vibing to the music as the next song has started playing. 

Fuck. Omori is lucky that it appreciates varied music, or it might’ve come after him after its favourite song ended.

He presses record and turns his screen towards the backyard. It reflects in his window, so he turns the screen and keyboard lights all the way down and just films in the dark. Prays that in this late dusk, it will capture the pitch-black beast. The odds are slim, but anything that can prove to him in the morning that what he saw was real is good enough.

After a few minutes of filming, he ends the recording and goes to view it. And to no one’s surprise, he just filmed a dark backyard with the occasional movement that wouldn’t fool a toddler.

It’s happening again. The way it did when Rowan and Florence found him. The ridicule he’ll face, the way no one will believe him for even a second despite having found his old phone again and his feet being blistered from the long walk through the forest and the the drool on his phone and Mewo’s scratches that bleed into his shoulder.

So is the beast real or not? Omori’s gonna have to decide if he wants death by teeth or by ridicule.

Hasn’t he chosen the former for the majority of his life now?

He replays the fragment again and again. Touches it up in whichever programs he can find; turns up the contrast, the brightness, the saturation, the levels—anything he can think of. But he simply can’t reveal the beast on camera to look like more than a convenient smudge on the lens.

Without proof and with it camping around his place as Omori lacks the courage to call anyone, he’s a sitting duck.

The breath he exhales stutters. He looks at his weak hands and notices that underneath his fingernails sits a dark, mushy residue. Once again, indistinguishable from forest mud, but if he can just…

He grabs a tissue from his bedside nightstand and carefully cleans the guck from under his fingernails. It has dried and become crusty, like coagulated blood. If nothing else, if this is all he has, then at least, someone can run tests on this substance and determine once and for all whether he’d scratched into the hide of a terrifying beast, or if he just spent the past hours clawing at a muddy forest floor.

Finally, he closes his laptop, resigned. He peeks over his windowsill, to where he can still make out the beast’s dark skin against the soft blue-grey tiles of the tiles that make up the patio. It seems to have finally worn itself out, circling around before curling up into a ball the way it did when Omori sang for it in its den. But he knows very well by now that it shouldn’t be underestimated. 

All night long, he keeps an eye on it as a random selection of music plays through the speakers. He’s lucky that the sun rises early, because he realises sometime when purple and orange filter through his window that he dozed off, against all odds.

He shoots upright and peers outside. His eyes are blurry, but when he pulls open one curtain to get a glimpse of what lies outside, he sees that down there, the beast is still curled up in a ball, taking deep, slow breaths that further betray its size.

It’s still there, even after he slept?

Does that mean it’s actually real?

Omori really doesn’t wanna do this, but now is his chance. He gets out of bed and sneaks into the silent hallway on the tips of his toes. He curses those creaking stairs as he goes down, but he finally makes it to the living room and gets a close-up view of the demon.

As the daylight intensifies and the orange glow turns white, it’s almost unbelievable. Despite everything, the creature sits outlined against the much brighter surroundings. Like someone took a brush and painted over Omori’s sight with that one black pigment those two painters keep fighting about. Unnaturally dark. Reflecting not a single strand of light, absorbing everything that touches it. Not even the dirt that must cover it seems to break the light.

Being so black against the greys and greens around it, Omori has to be able to capture some footage.

He sneaks over to where his phone lies and picks it up from the speakers, only to realise that the living room is awfully quiet. It has been since he entered, since he woke up. And when he tries to open his phone, it’s evidently clear that it ran out of battery somewhere throughout the night.

Fuck.

Looking up, Omori notices something else he didn’t before. From between that black void, two white dots are staring back at him.

Fuck fuck fuuuuuuck.

With trembling hands, he quickly clicks open the radio system’s CD player and tries not to drop the album he grabs from the stack. The one Rowan bought him for his birthday, not that he’s picky in any sense of the word right now. He manages to pop the disc inside and close the tray, and a few seconds later, a new song in a familiar genre starts playing as drums and an electric guitar thrum together in electrifying patterns.

The beast simply stares back at him from behind its crossed arms. If he didn’t know any better, he’d almost call it exasperated, the way its eyes sit half-lidded and it doesn’t put in an effort to raise its head.

Is the music bothering it? 

Maybe he shouldn’t have woken it up further by playing this.

Omori turns the volume down, enough so that it might hear the music and be pacified yet soft enough that it might awaken peacefully. Maybe, if he’s kind to it and doesn’t show himself to be too much of a threat, it’ll end up being good to him in return. After all, it had every chance to eat him last night but chose to forego an easy meal in favour of getting to hear a song. 

As fatigue keeps the creature down, Omori takes advantage of the situation to walk over to the kitchen counters and grab the first phone charger he can find, pocketing Florence's can of Mace while he's at it. He plugs it in close to the speakers, where the beast might opt to stay, and prays that his phone charges fast.

If he’s so paralysed by indecision, then the least he can do is record his experiences.

As he watches and waits, he laments that his first experience with this new music could've been under calmer circumstances. Together with Rowan, maybe, as he’d without a doubt talk Omori’s ears off about what makes Rush possibly the greatest band to exist and why Omori didn’t make a mistake allowing himself to become familiar with their discography. 

Omori might have even agreed under better circumstances, but those white eyes that won’t leave him drown out the warm tones captured in the songs and keep him frigid under what should be harsh summer temperatures.

His phone finally reacts to his finger spamming the on button, and its jovial jingle rings over the music player. Omori doesn’t wait for it to load and forces his camera open so fast it crashes twice. Then, when he gets it open, he aims it at the beast and presses the record button.

As if on cue, the creature blinks a few times before pushing its body upright by its arms, slowly, and standing, bowing its chest low to the floor while it stretches its spine and its tail follows in its trajectory as it curls onto his back. He watches stunned as the beast then stretches its back legs out behind itself before it falls back on its hindquarters to sit and stare at Omori, head lightly bobbing to the music. 

It stares, and it continues to stare as he films, until he has captured about two minutes of footage and ends his recording. He quickly scrolls on over to his gallery and replays the video he made, hands so sweaty that his phone almost slips out and eyes wide against the bright screen.

There, right on camera, as the video he recorded plays out in full HD, he has captured tangible proof that this demon is indeed real.

Chapter Text

Rowan can inhale Omori’s entire dick and balls because he was more than wrong.

The metaphor of Omori’s oh-so-troubled brain. The biggest signifier of the endless well of things that are wrong with him. The whole reason he’s been swallowing an extra dose of medication every day. 

Nope, just a big-ass creature in the woods that has no business being real. Not what Omori had ever expected to run into, but it’s the reality at hand. His footage doesn’t lie. Delusions can do many things, but they can’t perfectly replicate visual hallucinations in the real world on a screen the exact same way he saw them.

Wait, can they? 

Omori looks at the video that’s playing on his screen. He doesn’t know, actually. As badly as he wants to send this to Rowan to rub in his face how wrong he was, if he ends up sending a video of his backyard with nothing in it, he’d look like a fool.

No, he needs an objective look on his video. He needs validation that someone else sees exactly what he sees.

He throws a glance at the creature outside his window, which has already started slouching again. It doesn’t seem all too feisty today. Maybe it caught itself some prey to feast on between Omori’s last departure from his house and now, but that means that its hunger might be growing again. If he waits too long to act, it might invade and come after him.

The thought sends Omori padding out of the living room with his technology. He holes up inside his room, throwing open his laptop and plugging in his phone. The file is quickly copied and thrown onto three different file hosting services to make sure he won’t lose the video. His Youtube upload is simple: unedited footage of the creature that will probably get copyright claimed before he can even get any answers.

creature in my backyard

Description: creature that followed me from the woods to my house in oregon. tried to eat me twice but stops attacking when it hears music. anyone know what it is and how to keep it from eating me?

Whatever. This will get maybe two native views, he doesn’t need to optimise this. 

No, what really matters is what follows next. He needs to find an expert in this field; someone who can figure out its behaviour and what Omori should and should not do—and he knows exactly where he’s going to go looking for one.

His muscle memory leads him. 4 in the URL bar, enter, /x/. Start a new thread and stay anonymous. He opens his video and seeks out the most poignant frame, one where the creature stares right into the camera and is easily identifiable even to the leisurely scroller, and attaches it to his thread.

He types the first thing that comes to mind.

Subject: what the dog doin

Comment: help

Staring at his soon-to-be-posted thread, something doesn’t sit right with Omori. 

Maybe his usual shitposting won’t help him in this predicament. He needs to sketch his situation and let people understand why he even needs help.

Clearing the textboxes, he starts again.

Subject: escaping from creature

Comment: creature in image has been stalking me for weeks. im currently inside and its staring at me through the windows, but it seems to like music enough not to eat me. it tried to eat me twice already but the last time it gave me back my phone after stealing it the first time

can anyone tell me what creature that is and how i can get rid of it? no police, im in oregon btw

It just doesn’t mesh with him. He can do better than this, he knows he can.

He keeps the subject but clears the body text again and takes a deep breath. There has to be a better way to convey his story. He writes enough to know he can do better than this, so he tries again, this time determined to write something that will resonate.

>be me
>21
>tguy but dont care
>live in the middle of nowhere oregon
>fuck up when im 10
>tldr but develop agoraphobia because of my own fault
>havent left the house since
>12
>brother brings his annoying friends over
>brings cute guy whos kinda a normalfag but also a tguy
>14 but dont care
>bond over both wanting to be guys
>pls be gay
>one day get kissed by him
>kindafeelsnice.jpg
>start dating
>becomes only person i trust
>get more isolated
>only hang out with him anymore
>only time i ever leave the house is when i go to his place
>trust him with my life
>has to be my soulmate
>ngltmakeshimhottereveryday.png
>family gets more successful at family business
>become depressed
>vicious cycle
>kinda wanna die
>attempt a few times but never serious
>weeks before 21st bday
>he says something that pisses me off
>mfw i dont remember what
>dump his ass and ghost him
>he gets mad but doesn’t stalk me
>doesn’t try to get me out of house
>doesn’t even try to call me
>wtf
>at least try
>family leaves me for months
>home alone
>decide to kill self on bday
>pussy out because cat needs food
>threw phone into woods when angry
>feelsbadman
>go get it
>attacked by demon
>big shadow beast man the size of a truck with white eyes
>nearly eats me alive
>phone rings
>ex calling because hes worried
>demon is distracted
>run
>too scared shitless to think about wtf that was
>ex and his bro find me and take me to their home
>gives me schizo meds
>weird shit stops showing up
>think everythings ok
>have huge fight where he tells me im a burden and unlovable but idc i guess
>go home
>demon instantly kidnaps me again
>gives me back my phone
>asks me to play ringtone
>battery is dead
>momsspaghetti.gif
>sing it
>doesnt instantly kill me but might if i stop
>lure it back home
>play music from speakers
>its pacified
>now chilling outside my door enjoying the tunes
>wont go back to the woods
>might get hungry again soon
>cant call friends itll just eat them
>cant call cops bc agoraphobia
>cant leave bc agoraphobia
>its staring at me through the window

vid of the demon. im running out of time how do i gtfo of this shitshow alive without leaving the house or getting any police or friends involved? does anyone know what that is?

It’s perfect.

Succinct, gripping yet to the point, and just the right balance of serious and entertaining. He doesn’t hesitate to post his thread and refreshes the page every few seconds, anxious for an answer. Anything that confirms what he saw and that gets him out of here.

He must’ve refreshed the page a hundred times when the first reply appears underneath his thread.

Men aren’t real

Yeah, not sure what he expected. 

He’s formulating a death threat in his head when he leisurely refreshes the page and another reply has popped up.

Does she have an onlyfans?

Hey. Why did he do this and expect to receive any useful responses? 

As much as he wants to go all-in on these assholes, he can’t afford to change the topic of his thread from anon who needs help to anon who is having a massive meltdown and who needs to be knocked down a peg, so he behaves and keeps his responses in the back of his mind for later.

Nothing new comes in for a few minutes. He slightly pulls apart his curtains, just enough to peek through, and finds that the creature has laid down on its side, breathing slow, deep breaths. 

Maybe it will die and the problem will solve itself.

No, that’s not a solution. It will start rotting. People will see and call the cops, and then, his house will become the centre of a national investigation and he might be locked up in Area 52 for being involved in a paranormal event the government wants to sweep under the rug.

C’mon, the people on here notoriously have the annoying problem-solving type of autism. Please pull through.

He refreshes again and finds another reply.

Nice rig. A little janky, but with a little practice you can get rid of the artifacts that give it away. The camera tracking is done really well. Even if you really live in Oregon, it might be cliché to set a creature feature ARG in Oregon, so reconsider if you want that baggage. Blender? 

That confirms it, then.

The creature in his video is real. One could argue that this thread is also a complex hallucination, but if he goes that route, then he has to assume that everything is. Rowan could not have come after him that night and taken him home. His family could not have left the state at all. He could very well not have a home and a family, instead lying in a pile of garbage in an alleyway dreaming of this life he doesn’t have.

No, this is too internally consistent. It’s real, the situation is real, the creature is real, and he has not a damn clue what to do with it. 

His next refresh yields him three more replies. 

bro typing like he’s trying to identify a bird he found in the yard, get outta there asap

feed it cat food, might go away and not eat you maybe?

Look up aspergers because you clearly have it

Oh, shut the fuck up. Omori is growing more agitated with the minute. He wants to punch something, but making any type of noise is probably a bad idea.

Looking outside the window again, he freezes when he makes eye contact with the creature, whose head is already turned his way from where it lies on the ground. Its tail briefly lifts off the ground and sways side to side, but Omori doesn’t want anything to do with it. He promptly pulls closed his curtains and moves to the floor, away from that window.

The cat food lead might be something, but there’s no way to get the food into the creature’s hands without opening any doors or windows. The risk is too great, as good as the idea is. As a last resort, maybe he can leave it by the front door, and the creature might smell it in the air and come feed.

If this is like stray cats, it would be a terrible mistake to feed it. But there may be no other choice.

He grows more antsy as he awaits further replies and suggestions. There are a few comments rife with an amount of hate he’s simply not addressing or acknowledging, and he keeps in mind that he has to focus if he wants to get through this. 

One of the new replies turns his stomach.

The fact that you had to make up a paranormal story to talk about this shows how fucked you are, anon. This thread belongs on /adv/ or /lgbt/. You clearly need to talk about what happened between you two and none of the degens on /x/ are gonna be able to give you good advice on how to handle this.

Nah actually get off 4chan now. If you really think there’s something stalking you you need to talk to someone IRL. Call your family. If you already tried to kill yourself, I don’t think anything’s gonna keep them from going home to make sure you’re ok. Get professional help. Talk to your ex and probably apologize to him because you sound like a shitty boyfriend. If you love him as much as you say you do you’re gonna need to be better to him, and you’ll probably feel a lot better if you stop being a piece of shit to everyone around you.

Who the fuck does anon think he is?

This was posted on the Paranormal board and not the Advice or the LGBT board for a reason. He doesn’t need relationship advice, he needs a way out of this fucking situation. 

His fingers strain over his laptop. He almost lifts it off his lap and throws it to the wall, but he can’t be breaking more of his technology. What he does with his life and his friends is no one’s business, least of all some cunt on 4chan who thinks he knows what’s best for everyone. And being forced to think about his role in his relationship with Rowan has him panting, teeth gritted over the tension of his sweaty face.

There’s a tap on his window.

His chest throbs, his lips tingle, he’s heaving and panting—yet he clamps his hand over his mouth and sits completely still.

His luck has run out.

Refreshing again and again, he dejectedly whines into his hand.

Call your normalfag friend

He can’t.

you say no police, but they’re the only people who can help if they get the military involved. call the popo, anon

He can’t.

Tap. Tap.

Like that guy said, you should probably call your family

He can’t. 

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Have you considered just going outside?

He can’t.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

I know a lot about Oregon mythos and cryptozoology. What county are you in?

He can’t–

Huh?

It’s been a while since the last reply that wasn’t either a death threat, calling him an idiotic charlatan, a trolling attempt, or something that threw him deeper into his panic. He’s begging to get doxxed, but he can’t pass this one up.

>>
douglas

He refreshes and refreshes, collapsing in on himself every time he hears another set of taps on the window. After one particularly long set, he looks behind him and sees two vague white dots that shine through the curtains’ thin fabric.

Of course it had to be tall enough to reach the window. If it wanted to, it could probably climb on top of the roof and collapse its way inside the house. 

Hatred. Spam. Stupid jokes that don’t land. His anon may have run away at this point.

When an hour has passed, when Omori has given up hope and once again accepted he’d be done for, his anon finally comes back with a detailed post.

>> (OP)
You might be dealing with a Douglas Devil. Image is the only picture we have of it.

While Omori did spot the image, he initially disregarded it due to being the crispiest, most compressed mess of black on grey he’s ever seen. 

Something’s on the floor, pitch-black except for a white eye that can’t be larger than three pixels in the image, staring at the photographer with intense rage legible even in this format. The mostly-shapeless vaguely-humanoid creature lies in what he deciphers as leaves, and the surroundings are slathered in smudges of red. 

If one were to try to photograph the creature with a terrible camera, this is what one would probably get.

Had to dig deep to find any sort of info about this thing. Sounds like your typical gvt cover-up, but I managed to find some old magazine articles and a (yes, that’s singular) thread about it.

TL;DR, back in 2003, a couple of hunters found a creature running around the woods. They managed to track it down and shoot it. Not clear what happened to it afterwards or if it was still alive, but one of the hunters leaked the details years later, and that’s where the photo comes from. He described it as a lanky humanoid with features of both beast and man. Unnaturally black, like it absorbed all light that touched its skin. Tough luck though. Man passed away last year, so he’s no longer a lead.

The specimen they shot was a female, and it was highly aggressive. It killed several of the people he was with. Might have been territorial, because it attacked them as soon as they approached its nest and wouldn’t have stopped until all of them were dead. You may have run into its vengeful mate, maybe even its cub. Would be a miracle if a cub survived without its mother, but who knows?

Whatever you do, do NOT go outside and engage. These creatures are very dangerous, and you very well could die. You don't want to find out just how sharp those claws and teeth are from up close.

Get in contact with cryptid hunters. Personally, I’m inclined to go with Francis Evans and his team. His rates are pretty low for the industry standard, and you won’t find better service anywhere. You can probably get him to be there within the next three hours for as little as $10k, and you’ll be famous for proving the existence of a long-theorized cryptid. That sounds like a lot, but he’ll put his life on the line to save yours. No money in the world could ever be enough for such a service, in my humble opinion.

There’s a phone number, forums, and a link to his Discord on his website. I highly suggest joining and getting more info there as soon as possible. 

Don’t wait. Don’t go outside. Get somewhere safe and call Francis Evans. It’ll save your life.