Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Sunny, for the last time, we have to practice before the recital! Do you want dad to be disappointed?”

Sunny was in no mood to practice. Sunny was in no mood to play at the recital. And most of all, Sunny was in no mood to play the violin. So as that voice shouted again for him to leave his room, Sunny saw nothing but red.

Storming out with violin in hand and slamming the door behind him, he heard that voice scoff from behind a wall. He paid it no notice. He was overwhelmed. He was sick of everything. He didn’t care anymore. Turning toward the stairs, he grit his teeth and threw the instrument with all his might, watching it crash down and explode into a million splinters. This, at last, made that voice go silent.

For a moment, Sunny took a breath. His hands shook, his sore and calloused fingers bearing scabs that perpetually threatened to reopen. He stared down at the shattered object, not quite grasping what he had just done, but satisfied in his deed. All the pain, all the heartache, all the not being good enough — it was finally over. But, it was only for a moment.

“Sunny! What did you do?”

There was that voice again. Sunny turned to see Someone standing furious at the end of the hall, getting closer with each step. That voice was yelling. It yelled about how they’d spent months practicing for the recital. It yelled about how long his friends had spent saving up to buy him that violin. But he couldn’t comprehend a word it said. He couldn’t comprehend the sound of quiet footsteps that snuck through its breaths. He couldn’t comprehend why it was angry. All he knew was that he wanted that voice to stop. Why is it putting me through this? Why won’t this just end? My pain... this is your fault. I just don’t care about it anymore. I don’t care! I hate you!

Instinct took over and he tried to run. But that voice was all around him now. It blocked the stairwell. He felt cornered against the wall. The yelling got louder. Why? “Don't you run away! I’m not finished talking!”

He raised his hands as a stranger’s voice echoed through the house.

“Mari, stop!”

There was Something behind her. Arms wrapped around Mari’s waist and she was falling backwards. Sunny automatically reached forward, grabbing the air as she plummeted down the staircase and crashed down atop the broken violin. Suddenly, Sunny awoke to nothing but silence. His arms fell to his side and his vision cleared for long enough to see the blond boy lying on top of his sister.

Basil..?

“Basil? M-Mari…? Are-Are you okay?” Sunny stuttered. He was shivering. He heard Basil moan and watched him get to his feet, but Mari gave no answer. His heart sank into his stomach.

He trembled his way down the staircase and tried to understand. What happened? He struggled with Mari when she stopped him from leaving, she fell down the stairs, and Basil was on top of her. What was Basil doing there? When did he get here? Why did he get up, but Mari didn’t? Sunny wasn’t sure. His shiver worsened.

Reaching the bottom, he glanced at Basil, seeing the look of panic on his face gaping down, before he dropped to his knees beside his sister. “Mari? Mari?” he quavered as he grasped her arm. He used his other hand to sweep bits of wood from her body. She was covered in scratches. When she didn’t answer, he gasped for air and turned his sister on her back. Her eyes were mostly shut. She looked like she was sleeping… so why wouldn’t she wake up?

He hooked his arms under hers and hoisted her up. “Basil, h-help me,” he begged, while Basil trembled just as much as Sunny. Answering with nothing but a whimper, Basil bent down to hold her legs and they were carrying her upstairs. She felt lighter with the help. She just needs to lie down in her bed for a little while, Sunny thought… she just needs some rest.

It was another moment, and they were at the top of the stairs. Sunny’s heart was beating out of his chest, his head felt fuzzy, he was losing his vision. He thought he saw something black and fuzzy moving beside them on the floor, but he didn’t look. He backed through the bedroom door and they made their way to her bed. She’s going to be okay, right? This is just a dream, right?

Sunny laid her down on her bed as gently as he could with Basil’s help, and her head hit her pillow without the slightest bit of stirring or resistance. Mewo’s black fur brushed against Sunny’s legs and she climbed on the other side, staring in confusion at her unconscious owner.

The world around Sunny became a blur. His anguish compounded on itself as he shook her and called her name softly over and over. She never answered. His voice devolved into whimpers as the light from the window — was it morning? — cast itself into the room, draping a shadow over her face. She didn’t react. He sunk his fingers into her arm and started hyperventilating.

He wanted to scream for help, but he couldn’t. He still couldn’t understand what happened! Why was she yelling at him? Why did she get in his way? Why did she fall?! Why wasn’t she waking up?! Why was Basil on top of her?! …Why was Basil even there? Sunny still didn’t know when he got there at all. He thought he saw someone else’s arms around her before she fell…

…was that Basil? Did he grab her? Did he pull her away?

No, no, there was no way that was true. Basil wouldn’t do something like that. Basil was a good person. A good person wouldn’t do something like that. He wouldn’t do anything that hurt Mari. This just wasn’t real. None of this was real. Why wouldn’t he wake up?

“S-Su-Sunny…” Basil whispered from behind him. Sunny slowly turned to look at him over his own arm through blurry vision. Basil was fluttering like a leaf, hands grasping the front of his shirt, and tears falling from wide eyes. He looked like he was going to fall any second, but Sunny made no attempt to get up and catch him.

“It-It was…” Basil sniffled. “It was… an accident…”

Sunny knitted his brows in confusion. Then his eyes widened and tears spilled with horrid realization. Nothing is going to be okay.

Basil’s life was over. Yes, he had survived the fall - but that didn’t change a damn thing. Basil killed Mari. I killed Mari. I killed Sunny’s sister.

And he was selfish enough to not even die alongside her. He was selfish enough to think he deserved to live. And now, Sunny hated him. He hated him with all his heart. Sunny would never forgive him for this. He would never understand, because there was nothing to understand. Basil was a monster. He killed Mari.

It was an accident, he thought. What a joke. What was he even saying? Stuff like this didn’t happen by accident. Basil had intervened on purpose. He had pulled her away on purpose. Losing his balance on the stairs was an accident, right? That didn’t matter. An accident like that only reinforced how worthless he was. As far as anything actually mattered, he killed her on purpose.

I was just trying to protect Sunny, he thought. But that was a lie. A dirty lie. He wasn’t protecting Sunny. He hadn’t been protecting anyone. He killed his best friend’s sister and now Sunny’s life was over. The only person who ever cared enough to understand the worthless bug of a person that he now knew he was. And so, less importantly, Basil’s life was over.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” he apologized, again and again, like it meant something. Sunny didn’t respond — Basil couldn’t even tell if he registered it, his head was buried in his arms. An expression of pure horror and desperation painted itself across the face of the boy who once thought he could call Basil his friend. Basil had never seen that expression on Sunny’s face before. He wished he never had.

Basil slowly approached him, shaking so much that just keeping his balance felt like some sort of twisted miracle. He placed his hands on Sunny’s shoulders, trying to provide an empty comfort - or, more likely, crying for attention he didn’t deserve. Either way, Sunny vacantly glanced up at Basil, his eyes red and cheeks wet in the dark of the room. Basil could barely speak. His throat was tight, his mind was racing, and what little sound came out was soft and choked. “S-Sunny…”

“What are we supposed to do?”

Sunny just hung his head, and they knew. There was no answer. Basil’s voice hitched with a quiet sob and he apologized again. His dozens of apologies now added up to zero.

…

…

So they waited. They waited there by Mari, as seconds, minutes, hours became all the same to them. Sunny laid curled up next to Mari the entire time without a sound, except for his muffled weeping. He kept almost completely still, only moving to intermittently shake Mari, screaming with desperate hope that she would wake up. Maybe that he would wake up. Mewo was curled in a ball against the other side of Mari’s neck, ears pulled back as if she already knew her companion was gone. Light traveled around the room, but never once fell on Mari’s face. Mari didn’t move.

Basil was anxiously pacing all around the bedroom, whispering mindless drivel and occasionally breaking into pathetic cries. Sometimes, he stood still when his breathing became too erratic, or to look at Sunny; he went completely ignored and went back to pacing. His fists wrung at his shirt over his heart and empty stomach and he couldn’t calm his hyperventilating or his throbbing head. He felt like he was going to pass out.

Basil couldn’t come up with a plan. He had no plan of what to do, he had no plan to fix things. In the back of his mind, he also still held onto hope that Mari would wake up. That he would wake up, that this was all just a dream. But he knew that wouldn’t happen. Deep down, he knew Sunny hated him, absolutely hated him. His friends — how selfish could he be to call them his friends after this? — would come by before the recital like they had all planned. They’d find them, they’d find Mari. Sunny would tell them everything, and they’d hate Basil, too. They would all turn on him and leave him completely alone. And he’d deserve it. Basil knew nothing would be the same. He knew nothing was going to be okay.

Basil halted in his tracks and stiffened when he heard a voice shouting downstairs. He couldn’t make out what it said, but he knew exactly whose it was.

Kel.

He heard a higher voice call out with worry, then a deeper, stern one.

Aubrey. Hero.

They must have found the broken violin. Basil found himself backing up, passing Mari’s bed and stopping in front of Sunny’s. Sunny forced himself to sit up, hanging his head and hunching his shoulders. He placed his hands on his lap and Basil could see him grasping his short legs. They both waited with silent dread as they heard their friends’ footsteps clamoring around the first floor, shouting indistinctly. What was clear was that they were worried for Sunny and Mari. That made sense; Basil himself was worried when he found that violin. Except he was on time to stop something from happening. How awfully he failed at that. He should have tried harder.

Eventually, the footsteps made their way up the staircase and there was a harsh knocking at the door that made both boys lock up. Mewo arose with a jolt and dashed under Mari’s bed. Mari didn’t move.

“Mari! Sunny! Are you in there?!” Hero called, his loud voice muffled by the closed door. The boys fearfully didn’t respond, until eventually Hero did. “Please, say something! Are you okay?!”

Basil‘s breathing started to quicken. Sunny let out a strained squeak. The next second, the door slammed open and the three of them ran inside. Hero’s arms were held out, blocking Kel from charging in further while Aubrey clung to the sleeve of his suit. They were concerned, cautious.

They all looked amazing. Kel’s hair was the nicest Basil had ever seen; in fact, Kel in general looked the nicest Basil had ever seen. Was this the first time he’d ever seen Kel dress up? Hero’s embroidered suit looked perfect on him; he was wearing the white rose boutonniere Basil had made him once upon a time. The brothers were wearing orange and blue respective bow ties, matching. Aubrey looked very pretty in her neatly brushed hair, shiny pink dress, black Mary Janes, and… Mari’s blue hair tie.

Back to reality.

“Oh, thank God!” Hero uttered with relief before taking control of the situation. “Sunny, what happened?! Your front door was open! Your violin… it’s on the floor! It’s broken!”

A soft gasp escaped Basil as Sunny slowly stood up with his head facing the floor. Did he leave the front door open? He couldn’t even remember. That was another world now. A world where he still deserved to live. A world where Mari lived.

Kel turned his head, pointing an eyebrow in Basil’s direction. “Basil, when did you get here?”

I’ve been here all day, Basil didn’t want to answer through hushed, shaky puffs.

“Sunny, is Mari okay?” Aubrey asked. Sunny and Basil grew taut as Hero and Kel laid their eyes on Mari. “Why is she lying in bed?”

Basil’s breathing got heavier and new tears built up as Hero rushed to Mari’s side, making Sunny instinctually back away with his hands clung to the hem of his shirt. Basil could see their oldest friend’s expressions clearly; his face was twisted with deep concern and confusion as his eyes landed on his girlfriend’s lifeless complexion. Hero gripped her shoulder and froze. Mari was really cold.

“M-Mari…?” he whispered. He shook her gently to stir her. Mari didn’t move. His distress became more visible as he shook her harder. “Mari, wake up!” he pleaded louder.

“Hero…?” Aubrey whimpered and took a small step forward, but Kel put a hand on her shoulder.

Basil could hear Hero muttering all of Mari’s injuries to himself with growing anxiety: several splinters, torn skin, a large gash across her temple. Basil was sure her ribs were cracked from his body crushing her, too.

“Hero, what’s going on?” Kel asked, clenching his other fist and taking a step in front of Aubrey.

Hero cupped her cheek.

“She’s not breathing,” Hero answered. Basil heard his voice waver.

“Not breathing?!” Aubrey shrieked. Kel gently gripped her arm and let out a soft “what…?”

Basil wanted to say everything, but nothing was all he could manage. His throat was tight. He couldn’t breathe.

“Mari! Wake up!! There’s no more time to rest, the recital starts in an hour…” Hero’s voice trailed off when he slid his hand down to press two fingers to Mari’s neck. Basil heard him whisper, “what the h—” before he touched the other side of her neck with his other hand. He immediately turned pale.

“Her neck is broken,” Hero shuddered. His composure was quickly fading. He began to heave and grasped at the sleeves of her dress to ground himself.

“Huh?” Kel said, sweat beginning to drip down his forehead. “Hero, I don’t understand…”

“Her neck is broken,” Hero repeated louder, more wavering, but it didn’t look like he said it to Kel. He whipped towards Sunny and looked between him and Basil, eyes unblinking. “Her neck is broken!” His voice was unsteady. “What happened here?! Sunny, Basil? Why is she lying here like this?!”

“G-Guys…?” Aubrey stuttered as her eyes started to water.

“Guys, what happened to Mari…?” Kel fretted as he looked between his two friends, begging for an explanation.

This was it. This was the beginning of the end of Basil’s life. They were all terrified. Aubrey was about to cry. Kel couldn’t understand what was happening. Hero very rarely raised his voice, but now he did so with terrified desperation. There was no hint of anger from any of them. That wouldn’t last long. Once they knew the truth, they would all be enraged. They would let him know the depths of their newfound animosity of him for taking away their beloved Mari. His beloved Mari. Sunny’s beloved sister.

Sunny gulped and took a deep, shaky breath. Basil hung his head and tightly shut his eyes, tendrils of darkness slowly wriggling around his body and intensifying his anguish. He couldn’t bear to see the betrayal on their faces. What a coward.

This was it.

Basil opened his mouth. And the tendrils of darkness fell to his feet.

“I killed her.”

Everyone turned to Sunny.

Basil’s life ended again.

Shadows cast across his friends’ expressions of shock and horror.

Nothing was going to be okay.

“Uh… Sunny? Wh-What are you talking about?” Kel asked with a puzzled smile. “You’re kidding, right?”

“It was an accident…” Sunny continued as if he didn’t hear the same question Basil had. “I didn’t want to perform at the recital…” His voice filtered in and out. “She was yelling…just wanted her to stop…”

Basil was stunned into silence. He couldn’t hear what Sunny was saying anymore. He couldn’t see anything but Sunny. What… what was he talking about?! He killed Mari?! Did he actually believe that? Or… or was he just trying to protect Basil? But why?! Why was he throwing his life away for him?! Why would he do that after he just murdered his sister?! This wasn’t happening, was it?

“And Basil was there…” The mention of his name brought his hearing back. “I don’t know when he got there, but… I pushed them both down the stairs. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.” Those last two words came out choked.

No. No no no, that wasn’t what happened at all, I intervened, I pulled her away, you didn’t do anything—

Hero yanked Sunny’s collar and hauled him up on his toes. “What the hell is wrong with you?!” he lashed out as he glowered at the boy. Hero was yelling. He was furious now. Furious at the wrong person. “You pushed her down the stairs because you were angry?! You can’t be serious! Who does that?!”

Basil jolted and turned when he heard a devastated screech. Aubrey was on her knees up against Mari’s bed clutching at her dress and shaking her body. She was wailing, rivers of tears pouring down her face and onto Mari’s pale arm. “No, no!!!”

Hero didn’t stop. “If you were so angry, why didn’t you talk to her about it?! She would’ve listened to you, you should know that!”

Kel was frantically looking between Aubrey breaking down and Hero grabbing Sunny, unable to decide who to help.

Sunny did nothing but silently cry as Hero continued to scream in his face. “I can’t believe this! How could you?! How could you do something so horrible?! This isn’t something you can take back, Sunny!!”

This couldn't be happening, this wasn’t what was supposed to happen, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Basil couldn’t speak. Why couldn’t he speak?!

“You killed Mari!! You killed the only girl I ever loved! She’s dead, she’s fucking dead!!” Hero panted for a few seconds, veins on his forehead bulging, face red, eyes red and constricted, tears rolling. Then he snarled something unimaginable.

“Why wasn’t it you?!”

Basil would’ve finally spoken up if Kel hadn’t run beside Hero and grasped his arm. “Hero, stop!”

Hero gawked at Kel. “What?!”

“What do you mean, what?! Did you hear what you just said?!” Kel managed to pry Hero’s fingers off of Sunny, letting him land back on his feet, before Kel got in front of him to stare his brother down.

“Kel, get out of the way!” Kel, stay there.

“No! You just said Sunny should’ve died instead of Mari! How could you say that?!” Yeah, I should’ve been the one that died instead of Mari.

“He killed my girlfriend!” No, he didn’t.

“That doesn’t mean you should wish he was dead, that’s awful! He said it was an accident, Hero!” That was awful, he should be saying that to me.

“Who cares if it was an accident, Kel, she’s still dead!” He was right, too, it didn’t matter if it was an accident.

“Y-Yeah, but…! It does matter! Even if he did do it, he didn’t do it on purpose; it’s obvious that he regrets it!” Kel glanced over his shoulder at Sunny behind him. “Don’t you, Sunny?!”

Sunny nodded. His chest was hitching with quiet snivels.

“See?!” Kel glared back to Hero. Hero’s fists were tight. “He feels bad enough, so stop yelling! You don’t need to say something like that!”

“Stop yelli— are you hearing yourself—”

“He’s already feeling—”

“Shut up, Kel—”

“Didn’t you listen to what he said—”

“Yeah, I listened, that’s the problem, I listened, he—”

“You don’t get it—”

“I don’t get it?! Mari’s corpse right behind me—”

“Yeah, well, she isn’t innocent here!”

That got Hero to shut up. Basil still didn’t say anything, though. And he didn’t begin to comprehend what Kel said.

“What.” Hero said. “What the hell are you implying?”

Kel gulped at Hero’s dark tone, but he stood his ground. “You heard Sunny! He-He said that he wanted to get away from Mari cause she was yelling at him, but she got in his way! It makes sense that he pushed her away! He just didn’t notice they were still by the stairs—”

Hero shoved him against Sunny, which knocked them both into the wall. “Are you fucking insane?!” he exploded. Sunny held onto Kel’s shoulders and Kel held his arms out to shield him as they both shrunk under Hero’s fuming figure. The blood vessels in his eyes looked like they were about to burst. “Are you really trying to paint Sunny as the victim here?! How?! He’s the one who killed her! There’s no justifying that!”

Suddenly, Hero was pointing at Basil. Basil locked under his finger. “Not only did he kill Mari, he almost killed Basil, too! When he had nothing to do with the fight! He just happened to be there!” Sunny buried his face in Kel’s shoulder and let out an audible sob. No no, Sunny, don’t, don’t cry for me, don’t cry.

“He could be dead, too, and it would be Sunny’s fault! Mari’s dead and it’s Sunny’s fault! So stop defending him!”

“Stop it!”

At last, the room went silent and everyone’s focus turned to Basil. Hero lowered his arm, as did Kel and Sunny. Basil noticed just how many tears were in Hero's eyes for the first time. Kel wasn’t far off, his eyes and body were trembling with fear and adrenaline; he did not understand why this was happening. Aubrey didn’t even look at Basil, her face still buried in Mari’s side and only locking up in some instinctive reaction to the sudden silence. Mari didn’t move.

The misery on Sunny was an expression Basil had never seen him wear before.

As the moment came to an end, words began pouring out of Basil’s mouth faster than he could find them. “I killed her, okay? I killed Mari! I cut into their fight, I pulled her down the stairs and I killed her, I did it! I’m sorry! I’m so, so, so sorry! Just leave Sunny alone, he didn’t do any of this! I don’t want you to hurt him anymore! I don’t want anyone to hurt him anymore! I ruined his life!”

Basil fell to his knees with a thud, tears dripping down his chin as he gasped for air. He spoke to the floor, voice already so lost that his words were almost unintelligible.

“Please… stop yelling at Sunny. Sunny didn’t kill her. Sunny wouldn’t do something like that.”

“I’m the one you should hate.”

Basil looked to Sunny. His face bore an emotion Basil didn’t recognize.

The world should've been real again, but it wasn’t. Sunny just couldn’t process what Basil was saying. Basil… killed Mari? Those words just didn’t make sense in that order. Those words couldn’t happen in that order. They didn’t go together. He… he was there. He saw me do it. He said he knew it was an accident. Was he trying to protect me? Does he think I wanted this? That I wanted our friends to hate the wrong person?

Sunny laid eyes on Hero as he appeared in front of Basil. It was a different moment now. But Sunny’s mind just kept repeating that same question.

Basil… killed Mari?

He couldn’t have done it. Basil’s a good person. He wouldn’t do something like that… right? He wouldn’t…

It had to have been Something behind him.

But Sunny wouldn’t let Something hurt Basil like that.

So then… Something behind him killed Mari. And Sunny let it happen.

So Sunny would take the blame. Because he knew that Basil didn’t do it. That just wasn’t something Basil did. Even if none of this was real. Basil didn’t kill my sister. It was Something behind him. And Sunny did nothing to stop it. It was an accident. I didn’t notice it until it was too late. But how could he not have noticed it? It was all around them now… it was his fault. Please be a dream.

“Basil, are you hurt?” Sunny heard Hero ask calmly. Back in his normal, controlled big brother voice. He was kneeling in front of Basil now, hand on his shoulder. Basil was looking at him; his eyes were tired, his cheeks were wet with tears, his broken flower was askew.

“Huh?” he sniffled as he wiped his nose. “N-No…”

“Okay, good. That’s good.” Hero took a deep breath. “Basil, you don’t have to do that, alright?”

“What…?” Basil frowned and lifted his head higher. He looked at Sunny, then back at Hero. “What do you mean…? I-I don’t have to do what?”

“I mean, you don’t need to lie about what happened.”

Basil’s eyes widened as he sat up straighter. “What?” he exclaimed. “Wh-What makes you think I’m lying? I really killed her!”

“Hey, hey,” Hero soothed and gripped his other shoulder. “I get it, Basil, I do.” He sighed. “I know you can’t believe what happened. I understand that you tried to intervene in their fight, but you pulled Mari away and you both fell? That sounds like you’re just trying to protect Sunny.”

“N-No, no I’m not, Hero!” Basil got louder and he grabbed Hero’s arms. “I mean, yes, I’m trying to protect him, but-but not like that! He really didn’t do it! I cut into their fight cause I saw Mari yelling at Sunny and I’ve never seen her that mad at him before and I-I wanted her to stop—”

“Basil—”

“So I cut in and pulled her away from him, but I ended up taking her down the stairs and I landed on top of her! I’m telling the truth, Hero, guys, you have to listen to me, I’m telling the truth, I killed her!”

Basil sounded hysterical. He whipped his head in his direction and bore his eyes into someone in front of him. “You believe me, don’t you, Kel?!”

Kel. Kel wouldn’t believe him. Kel knew what they all were and weren’t capable of more than anyone. He knew Basil wasn’t capable of hurting Mari. Sunny could feel himself gripping his tan friend’s arm waiting for an answer. He thought he saw Kel running his other hand through his hair.

“I-I, uh…” Kel stuttered. Hero gave them a threatening look. “Basil… You wouldn’t… you couldn’t do that…”

“But Sunny could?!” Basil argued. No anger, no contempt, just desperation.

“He… he did it… on accident…” Sunny felt a sweaty hand clutch his.

Basil was apparently finished with him because he diverted his attention to the bed where his sister lied. “Aubrey! You know Sunny wouldn’t do something like that, don’t you! You know that!” Hero was looking back at Basil, trying to get his attention.

Aubrey. Aubrey’s known Basil longer than the rest of them. She knew how gentle and kind he really was better than any of them. She knew he could never hurt Mari. She was kneeling right next to her, hanging onto her. Refusing to let her go. She didn’t answer.

“Basil—”

Basil looked back at Hero and implored, “Hero, please, you can’t blame Sunny, he didn’t do anything—”

“Basil, Basil!” Hero snapped as he put a hand on the back of Basil’s neck. Basil stopped talking and responded with a gasped sob. “Basil, breathe. Okay?” Basil made an attempt to steady his breathing, even if they all came out as shudders and whines still escaped him.

“Stop trying to take the blame. You almost—” Hero swallowed and sighed. “You almost died. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

No, he didn’t. Basil shook his head and tried to object, but Hero stopped him again because Hero was right. Basil didn’t do anything wrong. Like Hero said, Basil almost died. Something almost killed him.

“He-Hero…?” a soft voice wept. Hero, Kel, and Sunny turned in the direction of the voice. Basil kept his head down. Aubrey wiped her face with her wrists and looked at him with puffy eyes. “Wha-What are we gonna do with… with Mari?”

There was a long stretch of silence. Sunny bit his tongue in an attempt to wake up one last time, but it was no use. He was still here. Hero closed his eyes, took one more deep breath to steady himself, wiped his face, and got on his feet. “Kel, help me take Basil and Aubrey downstairs, we need to get them out of here,” he coached his brother as he bent down and held onto Basil’s elbows to get him up.

“What about—”

“Now, Kel!” Hero’s tone left no room for argument and Kel quickly made his way to Aubrey, making him let go of Sunny’s hand. Sunny already missed the comforting sensation.

In an instant, Kel got Aubrey up and was holding her hand in his own; he was always good at looking after her. Sunny barely paid any attention to her at all until now. She looked beautiful. And she was still sniveling. She didn’t deserve to feel like this. What did she think of him and Basil now? Who did she believe?

Kel looked over at Sunny. He was crying; Sunny’s never seen Kel cry like that before. He opened his mouth to say something, but dropped his gaze to the ground and said nothing. It seemed like he didn’t want to leave, but in the end, he bit his lip and took himself and Aubrey out of the room.

Sunny scurried up against the wall and hung his head when Hero passed him, his hands on Basil’s shoulders to guide him out. Hero’s face was tight; he looked like he made it a point to avoid even sparing a glimpse at Sunny.

Sunny kept his head down, but as they reached the doorway, in the corner of his eye, he saw Basil stop. Sunny hesitated and looked up; Basil was peering over his shoulder. His eyes were narrowed and full of needless regret. Neither said a word to each other before Hero pushed Basil out of the room.

Sunny was left alone with Mari.

He robotically dragged himself to her bed and stared at his sister’s body. The moonlight shining through the window engulfed her as she laid perfectly still.

He suddenly realized none of this was a dream. All of this was real.

He turned around and slid to the ground, leaning back against the bed. Once again, he brought his knees to his chest and buried his face in his arms. He could faintly feel the moonlight on him and the softness of Mewo’s fur against his head, but he paid them no mind. Nothing is going to be okay…

Everything around him appeared dark. The shadows slithered around him. Nothing that’s happened made any sense, even if it was all real.

Mari was dead. Aubrey was crying. Kel was crying. Hero and Kel yelled at each other. Mari was dead. Something behind Basil killed Mari and almost killed Basil. Basil was trying to take the blame. Mari is dead.

Nothing is going to be okay… nothing is going to be okay…

Sunny’s head started to feel fuzzy and he shut his eyes tight.

Basil didn’t kill Mari.

He sunk into a crevice of his mind. After a minute, he opened his eyes.

Sunny was in an empty white room.

Chapter Text

Kel couldn’t sleep.

Kel couldn’t sleep.

Kel couldn’t sleep.

His eyes were wide open, fixated on the ceiling in the darkness, arms strewn over the blankets. His hand absentmindedly scratched Hector, who was snoozing right up against him with his head on Kel’s chest. The breathing helped remind him where he was.

Kel turned to look at Hero’s bed on the other side of the room. The only sign that his brother was there was the unmoving lump of blankets surrounded by pillows. He stared back up at the ceiling, brows furrowed, eyes failing to stay closed for even a few seconds.

He still couldn’t fall asleep. There were too many thoughts keeping him awake.

Mari was dead.

Mari died.

Right before the recital? Everyone was getting ready for that the whole day. Hero went out and bought a whole new suit for the night; Mom even got them matching shirts and bowties to wear. He and Aubrey were at the hairdresser with their dads at the same time and that’s all she and him talked about, they were so pumped up. Hero and Aubrey literally talked to Mari the night before! Both of them said she was so excited!

And in that time… Mari… died.

Mari… Mari was killed…?

And she was killed… by Sunny?

That’s what Sunny said. He said he accidentally pushed her down the stairs in the heat of the moment, because he was mad. That didn’t make sense, though. Sunny? Mad at Mari? Because Mari yelled at Sunny? That made even less sense. Why would Mari yell at Sunny? Because he threw his violin and broke it? What did he do that for? Sunny explained what happened and why, but Kel didn’t understand any of it at all.

Kel just couldn’t believe him. Mari was Sunny’s sister! He wouldn’t really hurt his sister!

Mari was killed… by Sunny?

Hero believed him. And for that, he blamed Sunny for Mari’s death. He’d never seen Hero anywhere close to that angry before.

Hero asked why Sunny didn’t die instead.

Kel grit his teeth. It didn’t matter what happened. How could Hero say something like that? That was awful. Sunny was Kel’s age, and Hero said he should’ve died. Sunny was Kel’s friend, and Hero said he should’ve died. How could he?

Why did Hero scream at Kel? He was just trying to get Hero to calm down. He was going crazy. Trying to paint Sunny as the victim? No, he was just saying Sunny had the right to push Mari away if she was making him upset… oh, maybe that was making Sunny look like a victim. Well, he kinda was! Wasn’t he? Obviously, Mari was the victim, but… Sunny didn’t mean to. That, Kel was sure of, Sunny didn’t mean to!

…Did that mean Kel really did believe Sunny killed Mari?

But then… what did Basil mean?

Basil said that he killed Mari.

Hero said that he was just trying to protect Sunny, and that was kinda true. His confession didn’t sound very convincing. Which was pretty weird, now that Kel thought about it. For all his shyness, Basil knew how to say exactly what was on his mind clearly, which made everything he would say so believable. He never questioned what Basil said.

But that confession… just didn't sound right. Basil killed Mari? He pulled her down the stairs to get him away from Sunny? It wasn't right, he had to be lying, he had no proof that he did it!

…Then again, Sunny also had no proof that he did it. Actually, his confession was just as convincing as Basil’s. And Kel couldn’t believe Sunny could kill Mari, either.

Didn’t that mean… Basil could have done it?

…No.

No, it just wasn’t true. Both of them had to be lying. Mari must’ve died in some other way and they were making their confessions up for some reason. Maybe she fell down the stairs by herself. There had to be any other kind of explanation because Sunny and Basil would never kill her. They were all friends! Even if it happened on accident, none of his friends could be a killer!

Kel turned to Hero’s bed again. He still saw the lump of blankets that indicated he was there. Or was that not him under there? It could be a pile of pillows. Oh wait, there was a tuft of hair sticking out. He was there. His brother was there.

Hero…

Hero had the wrong idea. Kel knew it. He needed to show Hero how badly he had the wrong idea so he could apologize to Sunny. So Hero could stop being angry. So Kel could stop being angry. He wasn’t that angry, really, but he still wanted the little bit he felt to be gone. That, and the fear, and the guilt, and the doubt. Kel wanted it all gone. He had to find a way to make things right again so all this could go away and everything could go back to the way they were before. So they could all be happy again. He needed to be there for his friends.

He would be there for his friends, and his brother. He had to be.

…

It was 5:50.

There was no school today. Even if there was, Hero wouldn’t have gone. Kel heard him crying himself to sleep. Any other time, Kel would’ve done whatever he could to cheer his brother up, to encourage him. But tonight, Kel understood — there was nothing to be said. Not tonight.

Kel grabbed the first clothes he could find in the dark and threw them on, not wanting to wake Hero. He gave up on going to bed. Sleep wasn’t important right now. Kel needed to understand.

Just as he went to grab his shoes, he heard Hector whine and felt him pawing at his leg. I must’ve woke him up when I got out of bed, he guiltily thought. He crouched down to pet Hector softly, and he pushed his head right against his palm. Hector knew they were sad. He’d lied with Hero as he fell asleep (the only time Kel had ever seen Hero let Hector onto his bed), and made his way to Kel after that. He’d been quiet since they got home late last night. Hector was never quiet.

Kel wondered for a second if Hector understood why they were sad.

He hoped he didn’t.

Hector followed Kel into the living room as he put on his shoes. As he realized Kel was leaving, the good boy wandered over to his puppy bed, curling up with the remains of a stuffed toy that, once upon a time, wasn’t in two pieces. The bed was too small for him. He didn’t mind.

Kel looked over at Hector, watching him with deep, soulful eyes only a pet could have, and realized that he understood.

He almost grabbed a coat as he opened the front door and realized just how cold it was, but he decided against it. He didn’t mind the cold. He quietly swerved around the door, peeking back inside one last time before shutting it as softly as he could.

It was 5:53.

I really should’ve grabbed a coat.

…Or at least something other than shorts. It just had to be the first really cold morning of the year. Kel wasn’t sure how much of it was that, how much of it was him being tired, and how much of it was… everything else. But even though Basil’s house was just down the street, with the wind it felt like it was miles away. The cold was biting.

The sun was just starting to rise from under the ground, painting the sky a vivid blue and red while everything else around still looked dark. It was just like it looked when they—

…It was different now, though. Now it was sunrise. Kel felt a fog in his brain lift that he didn’t even know was there. The stars, or the few that were left, faded from the sky as Kel walked down the road. The cold was rough, but it braced him. He felt like this would be harder without it. Because now, he could think.

He could think about Basil. His confession. He just couldn’t have been telling the truth. He had to be protecting Sunny, right? But that meant Sunny…

Would Basil lie to his friends like that? Deep down, Kel knew.

He would visit Sunny later, too, he decided.

He could think about Aubrey. How he’d never seen her so devastated before, never heard her cry so loud. She got sick on the way to her house, too. Kel wondered what she thought happened after listening to both their confessions. She never gave them her own answer. She only cried.

He could think about Hero. What he said to Sunny. Kel didn’t think he could forgive Hero for that. He couldn’t ignore it or look past it. Sunny was Hero’s friend. You don’t say those sorts of things to friends. No matter what they did. Kel felt his anger rising at his brother.

But then he remembered Hero sobbing in his bed last night. Crying out to someone who wasn’t there anymore like it hit him all at once. Losing someone so special to him so unfairly. How could Kel feel like that..? He pushed that anger down.

He could think about Mari.

…Kel remembered that he didn’t like thinking too much as he approached Basil’s house. The sun peeked over the road, casting light over his face and the door in front of him. He was here. There was only one thing to do.

Kel drew in a deep breath, and knocked on the door. He would understand.

He was snapped out of the daze he never knew he was in when a concerned old lady with a cane answered the door. You’re not Basil! was his first thought as the cold wind ran through his body, before he quickly came to his senses. Oh, it’s… Basil’s grandma. Right.

Maybe I really needed that sleep.

“Heyyy, Ms. Rathbone. Um, is Basil home?”

“Oh, hello, Kel! This must be the earliest I’ve ever seen you awake,” she greeted with a small smile. Though, even to Kel, it looked tired and forced.

Kel chuckled nervously as he scratched the back of his head. “Heh, yeah, this is new for me.”

“Well, I hope you’ve been getting your rest.” After she said that, her face went back to her previous concerned expression. “Yes, Basil is home, but… first, come inside, Kel. You must be freezing to walk in this weather without a coat, you crazy child.” She beckoned him inside and he followed her, closing the door behind him. He heard her giggle with affection when he released a satisfied exhale. Yeah, he much preferred this; it was toasty in here. Probably because of the heater he could hear running and the coffee pot he could see on top of the stove from where he stood. Ms. Rathbone stopped in place right in the middle of the house and turned to him with a hand on her cheek.

“You might’ve arrived at just the right time, Kel. I’ve been worried sick about Basil all night,” she said. That made Kel’s worry spike. “When he got back home last night, he wouldn’t look in my direction, even when I spoke to him. He hasn’t left his room since then or said a word to me. He didn’t even come out to eat dinner. I want him to have his privacy, of course, but… I’ve never seen my Basil like this.”

Oh man, that definitely didn’t sound good. Basil not talking to his grandma? Considering he was at the scene, that sounded like it made sense, but that didn’t lessen any of Kel’s fear. He was right to come over.

“I hate to ask you, Kel, but do you know anything about what happened last night?” Her question made Kel tense up. “You two were supposed to go see your friends play at a concert, right?”

Kel gulped. Basil didn’t tell his grandma what happened? Geez, of course he didn’t. Not when the cause could be really terrible. It just wasn’t like Basil to keep anything from her is all. Kel didn’t know what the cause was yet, but he believed Ms. Rathbone deserved to know the only real thing they knew.

“Um… before the recital, we uh… when we and our other friends went to see Sunny and Mari, we found out—” He choked on his cry before he swallowed it back down.

“Found out… what?”

He rapidly shook his head. He couldn’t afford to cry now. “We found out, um, that Mari… Mari died…”

Ms. Rathbone let out a tiny gasp and cupped her hand over her mouth, the weariness disappearing from her face for just a moment. “Oh my God…” she responded. Reasonable. “Right before the recital?”

Kel nodded. “Yeah.”

She exhaled and put her hand over her heart. “That’s… that’s horrible. How? How on Earth did she… and so suddenly?”

Kel bit his lip. He couldn’t answer that yet. Not when they really didn’t know. “We don’t know yet… we just found her b— …we found her when we got there.”

Mrs. Rathbone stepped closer and tenderly cupped his cheek. “Poor dears… that must’ve been terrifying.”

Kel leaned into her hand. “It-It was… Basil didn’t look good when he left, so I, uh, I wanted to check on him.”

“Of course, Kel.” Ms. Rathbone turned around and began leading Kel to Basil’s room.

The air smelled of many different flowers decorated throughout the house and fresh brewing coffee. He couldn’t understand how Ms. Rathbone could get up so early, but to each their own. He was just glad she was there to answer the door. If he was noticing anything now, though, she did look exhausted. Has she been up all night since Basil got home? That didn’t sound like something an old lady like her should be doing. But that only told him she was just as worried about her grandson as he was. She was always so nice. He wanted her to hold his cheek again.

“Though… just be careful, dear,” she gently warned as he approached Basil’s bedroom. He turned to her. “As I mentioned, I haven’t heard a word from Basil since last night. I’m… not too sure he’s eager to talk right now, is all. So, if he does answer, please be gentle with him, alright?”

Kel nodded with a smile, and Ms. Rathbone hurried out of the hallway gripping her cane by the middle — probably to get her coffee before it turned into sludge as Hero and his dad were ought to let happen by accident a lot.

Hero… no, nope. Focus on Basil right now. Just Basil.

Kel took another deep breath, and rapped another knock on another door.

“Heyyy… Basil?”

No response.

Kel steadied himself as the weight of what he was doing suddenly hit him. “Um… are you in there? It’s… it’s your friend, Kel.”

No response.

“I, uh… I wanted to talk to you about yesterday. And, uh, about what happened with… Her.”

No response.

Kel took another deep breath, and his voice took on a more serious tone.

“Basil, I need to talk about what you said last night. What you saw… and how you said you… you said Sunny didn’t do it. Because it’s all I can think about, and… and I don’t know what to believe anymore—”

Suddenly, the door opened. In front of Kel was the most anxious boy he’d ever seen in his life. Except for last night, he thought — but Kel didn’t like thinking about the expressions he saw last night.

“H-hi, Kel…”

The boys stared at each other in silence for what felt like an eternity. Kel had a million questions in his head that he wanted to ask Basil — but now that he was standing right in front of him, they were all trying to come out at once. Basil himself was shaking, and somehow looked less rested than Kel was. Neither of the boys made eye contact. Surprisingly, it was Basil who broke the silence, turning to Kel with intensity in his eyes. The dark circles only served to contrast them more from his face.

“If… if you want to c-come in, we can talk. About… S-Sunny.”

Kel raised an eyebrow at Basil’s phrasing, then both, then neither as he composed himself. He would finally get the answers he was looking for. Stepping through Basil’s door and closing it behind him, he took a moment to look around the room — a room he just realized he’d never been in before.

Unsurprisingly, pretty ceramic pots, vases, and planters lined every corner of the room, with flowers and plants inside them. They looked healthy and well maintained. A sunlamp hung from the ceiling in the back of the room, shedding light on a fern. Basil’s camera sat by his bed. It all looked very… breakable.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never been in here.

“Y-you can sit on my bed, if you want…” Basil shivered, breaking the silence. “And… you can ask me anything you need to. I promise to tell you the truth.” He rushed out those last words like they'd been rehearsed.

“Alright…” Kel said before he sat on the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. After a moment of staring down at Basil’s white slippers, Kel looked up at him. He looked like he really wanted to talk, but couldn’t figure out where to start. Kel got that, at least. He was still trying to organize his questions in his head so they don’t come spilling out all at once and making this whole conversation confusing. Plus, he was the one who came here with the questions and Basil offered to answer them. He needed to take the lead right now.

Kel took a deep breath.

“Basil… you… how did— hold on… why— no, not that. Did-did you rea— wait, I mean— did Sunny—”

“Sunny didn’t do it, Kel.”

Kel blinked, and the world skipped a beat. After he came back to reality, he looked back at Basil with raised brows, expecting some hint of his usual deflection. Instead, Basil looked straight at him. Basil looked straight at Kel with confident, tired eyes that he never wore.

“Wait, huh?”

“Sunny didn’t kill Mari. I killed her, Kel.”

Kel’s throat hurt and he felt like he was falling. He felt like he wasn’t there. “Woah, hold on! Uh, back up for a sec.” Kel decided he had to catch Basil out. He had to be lying. He just had to be. Kel would forgive him for that. He racked his brain for something, anything, to ask. He automatically gripped the blanket he was sitting on, and a thought came to mind.

“So, uh… why were you there? At Sunny’s house? Before us, I mean.” We were all supposed to show up at 5:30, Kel remembered. Why was Basil already there? And for so long, it sounds like?

“Well, I… I wanted to say hi to Sunny before his recital! And, um…” Basil looked away for the first time in a minute, considering whether to say something. “…I wanted to wish him luck, is all! You know how he gets with a lot of people around… I wanted to make sure he was comfortable before you guys… g-got there…”

Basil sunk into himself as he finished, looking nervous again like he did when Kel first showed up. Kel tilted his head; he could tell he was hiding something. Basil was a bad liar.

“IIIs there another reason you were there so early?” Kel coaxed. He mentally hit himself as Basil started shaking, wondering if he’d pushed him too far.

“Well, um… I-I…” Basil then took a careful deep breath, and that confidence came back to his eyes as he gripped his shorts tight. “No… I said I’d tell you the truth. Sunny… a few days ago, when he came over to my house, I… s-saw his fingers bleeding.”

Kel shot up. “They were what? Was it from— no, he would’ve—” Kel cut himself off, though his troubled expression remained.

Basil wrung his hands together. “He, um… he seemed lost. It was sort of like… when he daydreams in class. And so… I don’t even know how much he knew he was saying. B-but… he told me that he was scared. About the recital. He told me that he d-didn’t want to practice every day anymore. But he said he had to. Because… b-because he said he wasn’t good enough.”

“What?! Sunny’s awesome at the violin! We’ve seen him practice before, I could never play like that!” Kel struggled not to raise his voice. Well, raise it beyond his already-loud normal volume. But what he just heard was just so wrong.

“H-he said… he said Mari thought he wasn’t good enough…” Basil clenched his own hands tight. For one dazed second, Kel clenched his fists and felt his eyes bulge, before Basil interjected by waving his hands.

“Sh-she didn’t tell him that!” He sighed roughly. “B-but… he said she was never happy with his practice. And she… kept making him practice more. He was scared to tell her how he felt, though, b-because he was scared we’d be mad at him if he didn’t play at the recital, and so he told me… he told me not to tell anyone! But I couldn’t just let him keep practicing every day after I knew that, not on the day of the recital! How could she make him feel that way? He was working so hard, and he was so, so tired, so I—”

Kel put his hands up to cut Basil off. “Slow down! I can hardly keep track…” Basil panted slowly and Kel couldn’t help but chuckle a little. Basil’d been talking a mile a minute — he usually did that when he was panicking.

Basil rubbed his arm as he dropped his head. “Sorry… b-but… that’s why I was there so early. I was hoping… he could come over and he wouldn’t have to practice. But, I… I was too late for that.”

Kel let his hands fall and took deep breaths, trying to unpack all of that. It was a lot. Especially knowing what happened now, it was a lot. But… Basil was confident in all of it, Kel noticed.

Basil was a bad liar.

But… he could do that to protect a friend, right? That was different. Basil was a bad liar, but he could do it if it was to protect Sunny.

Right?

“Uh, wait,” Kel said. “If Sunny was telling you all this… wouldn’t that be a reason why he did do it?”

“Kel, he didn’t. He didn’t do it. I did it.” There was that confidence again. Basil’s furrowed demeanor sold it, too. Kel cleared his throat. There had to be a hole somewhere, right? He just had to find it.

A light bulb.

“Basil, Sunny’s staircase is only wide enough for one person! If you pulled Mari down the stairs, you would’ve fallen, too! Sunny said you did… b-but you told us yourself, you weren’t hurt—”

Basil pulled up his sleeve, revealing the skin on his shoulder was grazed away. A lot of skin; it made Kel’s empty stomach flip. Basil pulled up a leg of his shorts to reveal a bruised knee. Kel also noticed a lighter scrape further down his arm. Somehow, he didn’t notice it. It was dark in Sunny’s room, he thought. And two more scars. Could… could scrapes heal that fast? Why did they look untreated?

The light bulb shattered.

“A-are you happy now? I didn’t want you to be w-worried about me… not after what I did. Not when Mari… a-and Sunny…” Basil sniffled and looked down at his feet, gripping his legs even tighter.

Kel couldn’t focus on the words. This… this couldn’t be real. Basil didn’t do it. Basil couldn’t have done it. He… he must’ve just been scared. Scared of what would happen to Sunny. Scared his friends would hate him. But… it was an accident! He couldn’t be blamed for an accident!

Kel was desperate. Kel was afraid.

“Basil…”

Basil looked up at Kel, who did his best to smile. There was something in Basil's eyes that broke his focus. It was just for a second, though.

“Basil, you don’t have to protect Sunny. And… you don’t need to lie about something like this to do that! B-because… I forgive him, Basil! Alright? I’m not mad at Sunny, and I’m sure—”

Basil’s pupils filled his eyes and he grabbed Kel’s shoulders. His breathing was so shaky…

“You… you really don’t believe me.”

Kel glanced to the side, sweat dripping from his face. “Uh… I—”

“Why… why won’t you…!”

Basil screamed. He screamed like his throat was ripping apart as tears poured from his clenched eyes. His fingers were white from bracing himself onto Kel.

Crap.

“Why won’t you believe me?”
“Why won’t you believe me?”
“Why won’t you believe me?”
“Why won’t you believe me?”

Basil said the same thing over and over with a voice shaky and hoarse beyond what seemed human as he struggled not to keep screaming. His squinting eyes were already red from his tears. He shook Kel, though it was hard to tell if it was on purpose or if it was just from his tremors. Kel opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Kel, I-I thought you would believe me! You were the only one who thought about it last night! B-but, you don’t! Nobody believes me! Not you, or Hero, or Aubrey! Everyone is blaming Sunny, everyone is saying Sunny killed Mari, that he’s a murderer! And it’s all my fault! I didn’t say anything! I should have said something, I-I should’ve told the truth, but I didn’t, because… because…”

Basil couldn’t finish that sentence before he fell into Kel, sobbing on his shoulder. Kel, only by instinct, wrapped his arms around his friends to comfort him. He couldn’t remember where he was anymore. He couldn’t understand what was happening.

He just couldn’t understand.

“Please… please… don’t blame Sunny. I’m… I’m a monster, Kel! I’m an evil, evil person… and I ruined Sunny’s life. I ruined everything.”

“Nothing is going to be okay…”

Kel realized he was crying too. He didn’t know what to believe. He didn’t understand. And he understood that he didn’t understand. But he knew that Basil was sad. And he knew that he was sad. And he knew that he couldn’t try to smile right now. And he knew that nothing was okay. And so, they sat together, and they cried.

They cried for each other,
for their friends,
and for Mari.

…

It was 7:45.

Kel wiped his eyes, reality coming back to him as he remembered where he was again: sitting on Basil’s bed. He just ran out of tears. Basil sat beside him on the bed, still crying softly, but a far cry from the wailing sobs from earlier. Basil had enough tears to last him a lifetime. Kel never said it, but… he really wished he had Basil’s ability to express how he felt.

Neither of them looked at each other, not wanting to know what the other was thinking. After a few minutes, though, Kel talked into the air — even though his voice was more raspy than he expected.

“Basil… things don’t make sense right now. And… I feel like they aren’t gonna make sense for a really long time. Things are never gonna be the same again.”

A pause.

“And… I gotta admit. I don’t think I can believe you. I… I just can’t believe you’d do something like this. I can’t believe you’d hurt Mari.”

He heard Basil shift. He didn’t look.

“But I can’t believe Sunny would do something like this either. He loved Mari.”

Kel stood up, still facing forward into nothing.

“Basil… no matter what happens. And no matter what happened yesterday. I’m not gonna let us fall apart. And I’m not gonna let anyone hate anyone.” He gulped. “…I’m… really mad at Hero, Basil. And… a part of me wants to be angry at Sunny. To be angry at you.”

Kel took a breath, putting on a smile for nobody.

“But… that’s not gonna fix what happened. So I want you to know. If, somehow, you really did do this…”

“I forgive you.”

The crying stopped. Silence hung in the air. That was good, right?

Kel really hoped that was good.

He walked over to the door, hand on the knob. “Just… do your best to stay strong for us too, alright? We gotta stay strong for each other, you know!”

As he opened the door, Kel finally looked back at Basil and the smile ran away from his face.

His face was completely blank. His eyes were lost. Kel thought back to how Sunny looked last night as he left the room. It was the same face. Only a tiny bit more tense. And thinking about that, he had nothing else to say. So, he walked out, shut the door, and left the house without a word.

And he hoped Basil would be okay.

It was 8:15.

Kel opened the door to his shared room, feeling uncomfortably exhausted compared to the uncomfortable restlessness of last night. Hector hopped off his bed and jumped in circles around Kel as he walked in, following him back inside. Rubbing his drooping eyes with the palm of his hand, Kel gently closed the door and made his way to change into different clothes. Warmer clothes.

Well, that was… not as successful as he had hoped. Not at all. Really, he was even more confused than he was before that visit.

Basil didn’t change his story. In fact, Kel had never seen him so… what was the word…? Adamant. Every question or point Kel had, Basil still laid the blame on himself. Not one denial came up. Kel was desperately hoping that wouldn’t happen, but he guessed that was just a false hope. In the end, Basil’s side of the story stayed the same: he killed Mari, not Sunny.

Kel sat on his bed and laid his head in his hands with a tired moan.

And… Basil got… angry. Kel could barely remember a time where Basil got angry at all, but this morning, he was full on screaming at Kel when he couldn’t believe him. When Kel practically called him a liar. Granted, he was allowed to get mad about that. Kel shouldn’t have called Basil a liar, whether he was telling the truth or not. He was so desperate for someone to listen to him and Kel was the first person he turned to. To listen to him, to understand him, to believe in him. But when he actually gave Basil a chance to be heard, Kel didn’t listen. He’d been suffering and Kel only made it worse. Basil didn’t even say ‘bye’ when he left. Did he still see Kel as a friend? He hoped so.

Kel scratched between Hector’s ears when he begged him to, but kept his own head down. He stared at the sunbeams shining through the bottom of the window curtains.

He didn’t want to go home after that. Even though he was super sleepy and felt like he was going to collapse on the sidewalk any minute, the thought of going home sent shivers down his spine. And not just because it was cold out without his jacket. But he knew that if he stayed out too long, Mom and probably Dad would scold him. And he couldn’t leave Hero alone, no matter what kind of feelings were churning in his gut. Plus, he hadn’t had breakfast yet.

Before he did, though, he needed to visit Sunny. To make sure he was okay, to hear his side of the story. But when Kel knocked on the front door, there was no answer, from Sunny or his parents. He decided to wait for a few minutes since it was early in the morning on a weekend day.

In his wait, he put his ear up to the door when he swore he could hear the faint sound of… piano music? He put in every weary effort to concentrate on the sound. He didn’t recognize that song. Was Sunny awake? Was he playing that song? If he was playing the piano, Mari’s piano… oh man, he was definitely in a very bad place right now. Kel impatiently paced on the doorstep, knocking and pounding with his knuckles dozens of times just in case anyone still there, still alive, would answer the dang door.

Sunny, we need to talk… I know you’re awake, I can hear the music! Seriously, I need to hear your side of the story, I don’t know what to think of everything anymore, please just open the door already!

No one answered. The music didn’t stop. That really worried him.

Kel sighed heavily and thought of everything Basil said to him. No matter how much he tried not to, all he did was think.

…Maybe…

Kel lifted his dense head and peered into the dimness at the other side of the room.

Just maybe… what if…

Kel sighed again and with Hector following him, lumbered to his brother’s bed. It was then he noticed, to his surprise, Hero actually moved in the time he was gone: he was laying on his back, bed covers off his head and shoulders. He was bundled in a throw blanket, as one arm hung over his chest. His eyes were closed.

“Hey, Hero…”

One eye squinted open. “Where were you?” he suddenly whispered.

Kel felt a shock of electricity strike through him. Hero woke up before I got back?? “Um… huh?”

Hero then opened both of his eyes and his eyebrows furrowed. His eyes were red and glossy. Did he cry after he woke up? Or was that from last night?

“You heard me, Kel.” He sat up enough to look up at Kel, but not enough that made it look like he was going to leave the bed. His voice sounded husky. “You weren’t home when I woke up, and it’s only eight in the morning. When did you leave?”

Kel rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, um… like… six.”

“You left before sunrise?? Damn it, Kel, you can’t do that, not after—!” Hero cut himself off and pinched the bridge of his nose. He huffed. “I was worried.”

“O-Oh… ‘M sorry about that, Hero.” Damn it, Kel didn’t need to worry his brother now of all times. Especially after what happened last night. If you were so worried, why didn’t you come looking for me?

“I just… I-I couldn’t sleep at all,” he explained as he sat on Hero’s bed and did his best to keep his head from nodding. Hero shifted on his back and Kel thought he saw his eyebrows perk up. “And I just… needed to get out, walk around n’ stuff. I wasn’t feeling good.”

Kel thought about it, and he decided not to tell Hero he talked to Basil. He’d be able to figure out what they talked about and ask him about it. He didn’t need to hear about it now. Especially about the stuff Basil told him… about Mari…

“Hm…” Hero looked down in contemplation and sighed. “Well… don’t do that again, okay?” He laid back down, his back turned to Kel. “Not without leaving a note or something at least. Mom and Dad would’ve freaked out if they saw you gone.”

“Sure…” Kel’s eyes shifted towards Hector leaning against his leg. Alright, mental note: be more careful when you sneak out again.

“Hey, um, Hero… since yer up… can we… can we talk?”

Geez, why was Kel so nervous? He shouldn’t have been nervous talking to his brother of all people. He never had been. It was probably because of their fight. Maybe Kel was afraid that Hero was still (wrongfully) mad at him. Was it wrong for Hero to be mad at him? He didn’t like it, either way. But Kel wasn’t going to acknowledge the frustration towards Hero either. For what he said. For how he didn’t take it back. For shoving Kel and Sunny against the wall because Kel said his words wrong like always. Nope, not going to dwell on it.

“It’s too early in the morning to talk, Kel.”

Besides, that anger wasn’t the most important thing right now. “Please? ‘M-’M worried about you, too, y’know…”

Crud, his words were starting to run together. He needed to voice his thoughts to Hero before he passed out against his will.

“Mmh? Why?”

Kel looked at Hero with wrinkled brows. “I mean, you look like you were crying wh’n I was out. And you haven’ moved an inch. D’you plan on gettin’ up for breakfast or anythin’?”

Hero scoffed. “No. I think I’m allowed to have one bed ridden day, Kel.”

“S-Sorry, sorry!” Kel backpedaled. He turned away again and wrapped his arms around himself. “‘Bu-I’m… I’m scared, Hero. The entire time I was out, I’ve b’n doin’ nothin’ but thinking and…” Kel heard Hero’s questioning hum and the words left him before he had a chance to stop them.

“What if Basil’s telling the truth?”

Silence stretched for what felt like a minute before Hero spoke again. “…What.”

“What if he… what if he really did it?”

Kel wasn’t looking, but he heard the harsh ruffles of the sheets when Hero sat up very quickly. Kel could feel the pointed glare burning a hole in the side of his head. “Wait, do… you— do you think Basil really killed Mari?”

“N-No, I don’t. I’m just saying—”

“That’s what it sounded like you said!”

“Will you let me finish?!”

Kel snapped his head toward Hero as he raised his voice. Hero leaned back in shock. Kel immediately deflated and swallowed a lump in his throat; he’d never shouted at Hero like that before. Not with real anger. But Hero hadn’t been letting him finish his sentences lately and it was getting on his nerves. He took a deep breath when Hero looked like he wouldn’t interrupt him again.

“I’m just saying… like I said, I was thinking all last night and this morning and… Basil had just as much of a chance to kill her as Sunny. I mean, he was there when we got there and if he was there the whole day…”

“We know he was, he didn’t get there in time.”

Kel knew Basil did, but he bit his tongue before he said it. “And… And he looked just as freaked out as Sunny.”

“Well, of course he was, he saw Mari get killed.”

“But he would look that freaked out if he killed her himself. Sunny did and you think he killed her.”

“Geez, okay, then what… why would…” In the corner of his eyes, Kel saw Hero lean forward. “Why would Sunny confess at all if he wasn’t the one that did it?”

“M-Maybe—” Crap, Kel’s words were starting to crumble. “He probably only thinks he did it—”

“Thinks he did it? Kel, what kind o—” Kel turned his head to see Hero breathing heavily. Then he growled, “God, what kind of bullshit is that..?!”

Kel opened his mouth, but Hero kept going.

“You’re making shit up now…!” Hero threw the covers off, forcing Kel to his feet as he took a couple steps back. Hero gave a shaky smile that made him look like he was on the verge of losing it. “I don’t want to believe it either, alright?! That he would do something like that to her…?! I mean, we were friends. He was her brother!”

“Hero—”

“I would never think he was capable of even hurting her.” Hero swung his legs over the side of the bed. “So hearing his murder confession… after seeing all her injuries… It-It hurt! Of course it was an accident, and he didn’t even try to hide it or anything…” His face fell to a frown. “But that doesn’t matter. He still admitted to it, motive and all.” He dropped his head and gripped his hair tight. “There’s no reason for him to do that unless he killed her.”

“Even so, you…” Hero scowled at his little brother. “…you can’t take what really happened, so you’re just making up excuses for him again!”

Kel yelped when Hero suddenly grabbed a pillow and hurled it at him, sending him stumbling back against the wall. “Hero, no, it’s not that—”

Hero stood up straight, fists clenched. “Sunny’s your best friend, so you can easily push the blame onto someone else, huh?!”

“Hey, wh-what the hell?! Basil’s my friend, too—”

“Then why the fuck do you keep saying he killed her?!” Hero loomed over Kel in a threatening stance. “Did you forget he was pushed down the stairs, too?!”

“Wha— of course not!!”

“So what is your problem?! You’re not even considering Sunny did it!!”

Kel was feeling that anger and frustration he was trying so hard to push down rising fast. He didn’t have time to stop it. He took enough steps forward to force Hero a couple steps backwards. Hero stumbled against his bed. “What, do you think I didn’t when I saw what we found? I was there, too, Hero! I saw everything, I heard Sunny’s confession!”

“So how can—”

“I heard it and-and I didn’t want to believe it, yeah! But I still had no choice to, didn’t I?!” Kel gasped and sniffled; he felt hot tears spring up. “I mean, you’re right, there’d be no reason for him to say it if he didn’t do it! But after Basil confessed to it, too, out of nowhere…?! I just— you need to question it!”

“There’s nothing to question, he was just trying to protect Sunny!”

“Or he really killed her and he didn’t say it fast enough! You know how Basil gets when he’s nervous! And he was really out of it and really quiet, so he didn—”

“Oh my God, there you go again! You keep circling back—”

“No, you’re just not listening—”

“That’s the problem, I am listening! All I’m hearing is you letting Sunny off the hook for killing his own sister! And he— you just—”

“Hero, there’s so much about this none of us understand, we really have to consider he didn't do it!”

“How?! How can you really believe that Basil is a killer?!”

“How can you believe that Sunny is a killer?!”

“…”

Nothing. Other than the leaves rustling in the wind outside, it was quiet. The brothers glared each other down. Both of them were trembling with tears running down their faces. Kel’s shoulders were hunched and his fists were clenched so tight, he could feel his nails digging into his palms. Hero was stunned; his lips opened and closed like a fish’s, like he wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what he wanted to say for once.

He didn’t get a chance to say anything before the door burst open, the light from the hallway filtering in, and their Mom and Dad ran into their room.

“Hero, Kel!” Dad exclaimed while their mom flicked the light switch. “What’s going on?”

Hero and Kel were panting, exhausted.

“Boys, what is the matter with you?!” Mom scolded as she looked at them with puckered brows. “It’s not even 9 AM and you two are yelling at each other out of the blue?! We heard you from the other end of the house! You should know better than this! Especially you, Kel!”

Kel didn’t respond. His throat was starting to feel dry.

Dad put a hand on her shoulder. “Hold on, let’s hear them out.” He gave them a stern look. “Kel, Hero, what are you screaming about? I know you bicker all the time, but this isn’t like either of you.”

Hero opened his mouth again, but when he tried to talk, he groaned and held his throat. His must’ve been dry, too. They were yelling super loud. All of a sudden, though, his chest started heaving and he put a hand to his face. His knees buckled and Mom and Dad rushed over to catch him in a hug and calm him down as Hero broke down into tears. They led Hero back to his bed and laid him down. Hero didn’t stop crying when Dad pulled the covers back over him and Mom kissed him on his forehead.

“I know, sweetie, I know… you must still be feeling awful…” Mom soothed. Hero cried harder. Yep, she was still worried about Hero after last night.

“You don’t have to get up, okay? We’ll talk about it later,” Dad advised before he patted his head and they started to walk out. They stopped when they spotted Kel standing next to the open door, gripping his arms and tears sticking to his face.

Mom sighed. “Look after your brother, alright? He’s going through a really tough time right now. Don’t go yelling at him again.”

Kel responded with only a slight nod. Dad patted him on the shoulder and they walked out the room, Mom flicking the light switch again and Dad closing the door behind them.

Heh heh… they thought I started the fight…

Kel wiped his face and dragged himself to his own bed. He saw Hector laying on the ground at the foot of it, ears down and tail between his legs. Aw man, all that screaming must’ve scared him, the poor boy. Kel sat criss cross next to him and started petting him everywhere as an apology. From the way he was already nestling into his lap on his back, he guessed he was forgiven instantly.

Kel could hear Hero still sobbing into his pillow, but Kel had his back turned to him. He knew Hero did, too. He didn’t care right now and he felt awful for that.

He needed to get out. After he ate breakfast, which his stomach reminded him he sorely needed, he would go out and shoot hoops in the park, get lunch at Gino’s, go into Hobbeez, just find whatever the hell he could do to distract himself.

He would visit his friends, too. He still hadn’t gotten an answer from Sunny and he needed to see how Aubrey was doing. He needed to be there for them. He wouldn’t let them hate each other. He wouldn’t let them fall apart.

…Hero was already starting to fall apart, though.

Kel wondered what Hero was going to say before Mom and Dad ran into the room. But it looked like he couldn’t say anything. And yeah, he really couldn’t. Kel made a good point; how could Hero keep berating him for just considering the possibility that Basil killed Mari when he so easily believed that Sunny killed her? Sunny was Mari’s brother, and he and Basil were both kids. He had no right to do that. He should get that both… neither of them could have done it.

Hero was being a hypocrite. Kel wasn’t.

Peeved beyond belief, Kel drew in a breath through his mouth, which immediately broke into a coughing fit. Geez, his throat hurt a lot. He really needed a glass of water after that.

Getting up with a groan, which only strengthened his coughing further, he left the room with Hector by his side.

Damn it, Hero.

how could you?

Chapter Text

Sunny lay below an empty lightbulb in an empty white room with a square black border. He cast no shadow on the floor below him.

Everything was going to be okay.

…

Sunny’s friends would forgive him. It would take a long time, and they would never forget what he did. They would never forget what they lost.

Sunny would never forget, either.

But Sunny trusted that his friends would forgive him. Because they loved him, and he loved his friends.

Kel would be the first to forgive him. Kel never held anything against his friends, and he wasn’t one for grudges. He was always there for his friends. And even if he could be a bit careless at times, Sunny knew he had a good heart and a resilient nature. More than anything, he just wanted everyone to be happy. He was always someone Sunny could count on to lift his spirits.

Tonight, Kel had been the only one to defend Sunny when Hero yelled at him. Of course, on the inside, he was probably more confused than he let on. Maybe even in denial. But still, he didn’t blame him. He knew it was an accident. Sunny knew that Kel would forgive him. Kel loved Sunny.

Aubrey would forgive him, too, with time. Aubrey was someone who stuck by her friends no matter what life threw at them. She always acted true to her feelings. And even though she sometimes had trouble admitting how much she cared, her actions showed otherwise. She always tried her best to do the right thing.

Sunny had never seen Aubrey as inconsolable as she was tonight. Sunny knew Aubrey saw Mari as a big sister, and from how Mari talked about her, Sunny knew she felt the same way. So, losing Mari hurt more to her than anything she could ever feel about Sunny. It would still take a long time for their friendship to heal, when it was all over. But eventually, Sunny knew that Aubrey would forgive him. Aubrey loved Sunny.

Hero would need more time, but Sunny trusted that he would forgive him someday. No matter how overwhelmed he was or how much he was trying to juggle, Hero always cared about his friends’ wellbeing. He had always been someone they could rely on. He was wise, capable, loving, and he always put others above himself. He always made himself available to Sunny, even to a fault.

Tonight, Hero had been more furious than Sunny had ever seen him. Enough to grab him and yell in his face, ask why he wasn’t the one that died. Sunny understood why, though. Hero was heartbroken, he was distraught — and it was Sunny’s fault. Even if he didn’t mean it, Sunny couldn’t take back what he did. But, somehow, Sunny still knew that Hero would forgive him. Hero loved Sunny.

And Basil—

…

No.

Sunny’s friends never found him and Basil in that room.

They never found Mari lying dead in her bed with a broken neck.

Hero never yelled at Sunny. He never yelled at Kel. Aubrey never bawled over Mari’s body.

They never knew Sunny was a killer, and Basil never confessed.

They would all be playing forever.

…

Streams of black began to drip into the empty lightbulb in the empty white room. Sunny cast a faint shadow on the floor below him.

Everything was going to be okay.

…

Sunny and Basil would fix this. They would wake up Mari. And if they couldn’t wake her up…

They would make sure their friends would never know what they did.

Basil would protect Sunny, because Basil always understood. Even when nobody else understood them, Sunny and Basil understood each other more than anyone else. Basil would understand that it was an accident. He would understand that Sunny didn’t mean to do it. And Basil would do everything he could to make sure Sunny didn’t get hurt.

Basil would come up with a plan to make it seem like none of this ever happened. A plan to make sure that he and Sunny never got hurt. That they never got in trouble. Basil was smart, he was good at stuff like that. Even though he always seemed like he’d be the first to crack under pressure, when it came to protecting his friends, he had always been good at pushing all of that down and doing what he needed to do.

Sunny would tell Basil what he heard last night.

Basil would help Sunny carry Mari to the backyard.

Basil would make it look like she cracked first.

Basil would carry the toy box. He’d hold the jump rope. He’d tie her to the branch, and he’d push the box away. Basil would protect Sunny, and they’d never get in trouble. They’d go to Basil’s house, and they’d act like nothing was wrong until they went home that night. When they found her again, Basil would tell everyone what Sunny told him — he wouldn’t make Sunny remember that again. Nobody would ever question it. Everyone knew Sunny and Basil would never do this.

They wouldn’t look. They’d forget this day ever happened, and their friends would never know. They’d be okay.

They’d all be okay.

…

No.

Basil would never do something like that.

Basil wouldn’t let himself or his friends suffer like that just to protect Sunny.

Basil’s mind wouldn’t be twisted enough to come up with an idea like that.

Even if it was, Basil would never have any reason to protect Sunny.

Because Basil… Basil was the one who killed—

No.

Sunny fell into the dark shadow he cast on the floor below him as the lightbulb was obscured by black.

Sunny stood in an empty black room, facing his best friend. Basil gripped Sunny’s right hand in his own. His left hand faded into the darkness behind him.

His eyes…

Instinctively, Sunny tried to pull away. He didn’t like it here. He didn’t like Basil here. He was afraid. But Basil wouldn’t let go. His grip was so tight… he just wouldn’t let go…

Red began to pour from their hands. Sunny couldn’t tell if it was Basil’s blood, his own, or—

“Sunny… I love you.”

Basil spoke without emotion. His eyes stared into Sunny’s soul as he found himself unable to speak.

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

Sunny pulled harder, trying to escape, but Basil wouldn’t budge. Whatever was pulling him back into the shadows was tugging just as hard as Sunny did. He saw pain flash in Basil’s eyes.

“Sunny… I love you.”

Sunny began to cry. He didn’t like seeing Basil in pain like this. But something deep within him told him that he had to leave. If he didn’t…

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

Sunny sobbed, and struggled to escape. Tears fell from Basil’s eyes even as that intense expression remained on his face. He was in agony.

“Sunny… I love you.”

No.

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

No.

“Sunny… I love you.”

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

“Sunny… I love you.”

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

“Sunny… I killed Mari.”

…

“Sunny… I’m sorry—”

Sunny pulled away, and tore Basil in half.

A Stranger lay below nothing in an empty black room.

He has been here for as long as he can remember.

Yet, just for a moment… he had seen a world outside of him. And in doing so, he was split in half — one lost, one obscured.

…Or, was this the world outside, and the other world forgotten?

Someone familiar lay beside him.

Sunny lay beside a Stranger in an empty black room.

There is Nothing here.

Nothing was going to be okay.

…

Sunny and Mari would play at the recital. It would be so quick, only a few minutes in a pool of a half dozen other performances.

Maybe Mari would be proud of him — she probably would. He’d worked so hard, and even if she wasn’t proud of how he played, he knew she was proud of that. He’d never seen her as scared as she was a few days ago, after one of their practices. Sunny begged her to take the day off that morning. He was so stressed out. His head hurt, and his hands were aching. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

When his hands hurt more and more, and when Sunny saw his fingers bleeding, he just couldn’t play anymore. He ran away, and stayed at someone else’s house. But when he finally went home that night, Mari was there waiting for him. She cried and hugged him tight, and told him how proud she was of the work he’d put in. How much better he was than when he started, and how much of an accomplishment that was. How scared and ashamed of herself she was when he ran away. She promised that it would be the last time they had to practice before the recital. Mari loved Sunny.

That was the third time in his life Sunny saw Mari cry.

But, maybe she wouldn’t be proud of him. He knew how nervous Mari was after that. She spent almost every moment she could at her piano. And even though she was supportive when Sunny was in the room, he heard her snapping at Mom when he wasn’t. And then, this morning, she broke her promise. She told Sunny they needed to practice again. And she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Maybe he wouldn’t be enough.

Maybe Dad would be proud of Mari — he probably wouldn’t. Sunny was awake when she cried in her sleep last night. When she asked Dad why she was never good enough for him. When she told Dad she loved Hero, and that she’d give her life to stay with him. When she told him Sunny was practicing as much as he could, and that she didn’t want to keep pushing him because he was doing his best. Then, she cried harder, and she woke herself up.

That was the last time Sunny saw Mari cry.

He thought of something worrying, and he pushed it down.

But, maybe Dad would be proud of her. Dad had been looking forward to the recital ever since they signed up. It was one of the only times Sunny had seen him so invested in what they were doing. And even though Mari would never let him sit in on their practices — she wanted it to be a surprise — he always said that he was confident they’d be perfect.

No matter what, though, it would be over. Sunny would play the song, just like he practiced, and it would be over. He’d never have to practice again. He’d never have to touch his violin again. In a few days, it would just be a memory.

Everything was going to be okay.

Why couldn’t Sunny let Everything be okay?

…

No.

There was no recital.

Sunny’s fingers never bled from practicing for so long.

Mari never pushed Sunny like that. She wouldn’t do that.

Sunny was never worried. Sunny was never stressed.

Sunny was never going to push her back.

Sunny loved Mari.

Sunny lay below a black lightbulb in a white room with a black border.

The lightbulb was no longer empty.

The room was no longer empty.

A boy stared at Sunny as he lay on the floor.

Sunny stared back.

He was leaning over him, arms wrapped around his knees.

He was monochrome, skin blended in grey.

His expression was blank, curious.

There was no light in his eyes.


They had the same face.


The boy didn’t say anything to Sunny.

Sunny didn’t say anything to the boy. He was too lost.

He was too tired.

Too tired to ask anything.

To think anything.

To feel anything.

He was too tired. Too lost.

The boy leaned down until his hair was brushing against Sunny’s cheek.

His head obscured the black lightbulb.

Sunny and the boy silently bore into each others’ gazes until eventually, Sunny closed his eyes and fell asleep.

And it all became an instant.

Sunny opened his eyes. He lay below a ceiling fan in a familiar bedroom, as sunlight fell across his face. And he was afraid.

He was afraid because he didn’t remember how he got here. How he ended up in bed. Where Mari was. Where his friends were.

He was afraid because he didn’t understand where he had just been. What was that place? What had he been doing a minute ago?

…Who was that boy?

Sunny sat up in bed, only to lurch forward, feeling weaker than he expected. He was nauseous. There was a pain in his stomach and he clutched it. His lips were dry. They felt like they’d split at the slightest touch. How long had he been asleep? Where were Mom and Dad?

He couldn’t stop shaking. He just couldn’t stop.

…What happened last night?

The sky was dark, and Sunny was lying in bed. He felt his wet hands under the blanket. Cautious, he pulled his arms out from under the covers, fighting against his chills and jitters that begged him to keep them under. Sunny was cold and his hands were red. Sunny realized the room wasn’t empty.

There was Something there.
“Her blood is on your hands.”

The hands clutched Sunny’s stomach, and it burned.
Sunny was cold.

“But you never asked if this blood was also your own. If these hands were your own.”

The hands pulled Sunny down into his bed, and he fell into blackness.

The eye watched as

he

fell.

He couldn’t stop the tremors. They hurt. Every muscle in his body ached unbearably.

   Hands .
  Hands .
 Hands .
Hands . Pulled Sunny in two directions. He felt himself being torn in half.
  Eyes .
 Eyes .
Eyes . All around him stared into his soul, and they saw who he really was.

“Or… if they belong to a stranger, and you merely stole them.”

Sunny was cold. He was so cold. And he fell, and fell, and fell into the wind.
He blew in every direction, and landed as he fell further, as he felt colder.
He fell, and landed, and fell, until he was stuck.

Hands crawled toward him.

They crawled on his fingers, as he felt hundreds of itches wriggling and squirming around his hands.

A pinprick, and fire radiated into his veins. His fingers were swelling. His hands were swelling as he began to feel himself pulled inside out. They crawled on his arms, and pinpricks bore millions of holes into them. His arms were swelling. He tried to move, to scratch and to swat, but he was stuck. Dry and sticky fibers clung to his back as if he were velcro. Hands crawled onto his chest, and toward his neck, Eyes staring from every direction as melting fire overcame him and his body became unrecognizable, swarmed by a mass of hands.

“You’ve forgotten that night, haven’t you?”

Sunny felt himself wrapped up in the fibers, blood leaving his body and surrounding him as he became dry. He felt a single hand, crawling towards his throat, then a pinprick.

His throat was swelling.

The threads dissolved as Sunny found himself empty, his water filling the space and staining every ounce of him in red as he became weak. He struggled and flailed, contorting his body in all directions in a desperate attempt to escape, but he didn’t have the strength. His body was in decay. Every attempt to move hurt. He could only hurt himself more and more and he writhed.

Sunny’s throat closed, and he couldn’t breathe.

“You have now. But you will not forget forever.”

Eyes watched from above, taunting him as he sank. Hands teased him, reaching out only to withdraw as he reached back, as though pulled away by an unseen force. The pressure around him became more and more intense, as he felt himself sucked toward the sense of dread below.

Red surrounded Sunny, and he couldn’t move, and he thrashed wildly in all directions.

Red surrounded Sunny, and he couldn’t breathe, and he gasped as his lungs burned and filled with fluid.

Black engulfed Sunny, and he wasn’t.

“Sunny…”

“You promised yourself that long ago.”
Knowing eyes bore into Sunny from the black and ice ran into his veins. Sunny was here, so he sat down and straightened his back. His dry hands found themselves drawn to the keys.

And, as though he had known it all his life, he found that he knew which song to play. 24 notes, a repeating pattern, a steady rhythm. Again, and again.

“Take a deep breath… don't be afraid. It's not as scary as you think.”

Even though his brain knew what to play, and even though the tempo was slow, his fingers struggled to keep up. But as he played and played, the curtains blowing in the wind behind the piano’s lid, they learned the song, too. Until the drums played in tempo from the next room. Until his fingers played in tune, and until they didn’t shake anymore.

24 notes.

“Remember, Sunny... All you need to do is calm down…”

And he keeps playing.
And everything is in time.
And everything is in tune.
And he’s forgotten again.

And he keeps playing.
And everything is in time.
And everything is in tune.
And he’s forgotten again.

And he keeps playing.
And everything is in time.
And everything is in tune.
And he’s forgotten again.

Sunny looked up from his hands, from the keys, to himself behind the word ‘OMORI’ etched across the center of the piano.

Dead inside.

Shadows slowly morphed his reflection.

His… vest? turned into a black tank top.

His skin turned white, his hair remained black.

Black and white…

Monochrome.

Sunny’s eyes widened as his miserable image found itself manifesting into someone else’s. A blank face remained, dark eyes unmoving.

“…”

Sunny stared at that face

and he finally recognized it.

It’s that boy. That boy from the white room, with the lightbulb and the border, staring down at him with his own face… How was he here, why was he…? Who…?

The boy’s expression was different from his own. It was blank, but knowing. Nothing more.

Sunny stared at the boy.

The boy stared back.

“I can protect you.”

…Huh?

Protect me… from… what…?

Who are you?

Why do I… want to hear more…?

“You can’t handle the Truth.”
“You can’t handle that he took her from you.”

Truth…?

Took… from me…? He… her…?

What truth?

Who took what from me…? No one took anyone from me…

“You were betrayed.”

…Betrayed?

That’s impossible…

Who would do that…? I don’t know… I don’t know…

“He betrayed her.”
“He betrayed you.”

No one betrayed us…!

“He took her from you.”

No!

He wouldn’t do… that to her…me. He knows I love her, so he wouldn’t take her, or anything from me…! He-He loves her, too…! He didn’t do anything, so she’s okay! Okay…?!

She’s okay, so he didn’t do anything!

“You can’t handle that he betrayed you both.”
“You can’t handle the Truth.”

Stop. I won’t listen any more…

“You don’t want these feelings.”

I don’t want to listen to this anymore!!!
“I know.”

“I can make you strong.”
“I can help you escape.”

Escape…?

“I can make sure you see her again.”

What do you mean…?

I… I can see her? So she is okay?

“She’ll be okay. And you’ll always get to see her. You’ll see her and your friends’ smiles again. You can play with them forever.”

…I

I want to see her… I want to see her smile; I’ve always liked her smile. I want to hug her. I need to see her again. I want to see my friends again. I want to play games with them. I want them to be together, I want them to be happy.

I want to always keep her safe.

“…”

I want to be with them forever. I don’t want to be alone.

“I’ll make sure everything is going to be okay.”
“I’ll bear the burden of the Truth.”
“I will protect you.”

Sunny looked at the boy with apathetic shock.

Betrayed…

Betrayed…

Betrayal…

Betrayal…

That’s who you are.

Sunny nodded.

The boy’s expression in the word ‘OMORI’ became stronger.

Omori was strong.

Sunny reached out his hand, and he was subsumed.

Welcome to White Space. You have been living here for as long as you can remember.

A black lightbulb was hanging from the ceiling, wherever it was.

Omori looked into it. It was pitch black. He couldn’t see a thing.

Good. That meant everything was okay.

Omori stared up at the lightbulb in his home. He sniffled.

It isn’t warm in here.

…

Omori blew his nose into a white tissue and tossed it outside the black border. It disappeared.

The black tissue box was for wiping his sorrows away.

There was no real reason for him to have sorrows. He had friends and a sister. Friends and a sister that he could visit whenever he wanted. Friends and a sister that he could spend time with for as long as he wanted. He could see his friends and his dear sister smiling, together. That made him happy. There was nothing that made him sad. Everything was okay.

Omori glanced again at the lightbulb.

But he kept the tissue box. Just in case.

Omori looked around his home.

It’s empty in here.

…

Day ???
“Today, I spent time in White
Space. Everything was okay.”

Omori finished tapping on the pitch black keys of his pitch black laptop. After he finished his journal entry, he clicked out of the log and stared at the white brick wall screen. That was a good entry.

Omori stared at the screen.

Tomorrow, he would write about how he visited his friends and everything was okay. He would play games with them, he would look through a photo album with them, he would have a picnic with them on a picnic blanket as big as the border of his home. He would see their smiles again. He would see his dear sister again.

Omori logged off. The heat from the laptop warmed his lap. It felt nice.

Omori glanced at the black lightbulb.

He looked around his home.

It’s still empty in here.

…

Omori had an empty sketchbook open on the first page in his lap. This should keep him busy whenever he wasn’t with his friends and sister. If he got bored in here.

Omori stared at the white blank page. What should he draw first?

Hm…

A pack of white, black, and red colored pencils lay beside him. Omori couldn’t think of exactly what to draw. So he picked up a red colored pencil and let his hand move on instinct. He hoped it was good.

Maybe good enough to tell his friends and sister about it.

Suddenly, Omori was finished. He was holding a black colored pencil. Intrigued, he looked at the page.

Omori’s jaw hung slightly open.

He didn’t know what to think of this. What did this sketch mean? What part of his subconscious did it come from? Whose head was this? There were no other details in it. It was so simple.

Omori stared at the sketch.

He didn’t like it.

He closed the sketchbook and placed it in the corner. He put the colored pencils away and put them on top of the sketchbook. He didn’t feel like drawing anymore.

He stood up. He felt like doing something else.

He walked past the laptop and stepped over the border.

Omori stood in front of a white door. It casted a faint shadow in front of him.

He wanted to spend time with his friends.

As he reached for the door, White Space suddenly trembled under the weight of a loud sound, causing Omori to lose his footing. The sound continued even after White Space stopped shaking. Knocking.

He heard a clutter. Something fell nearby.

His hand hovered over the doorknob as he stared at the white door. He could tell this wasn’t the one that was being knocked against.

He looked around, then to his right. There was nothing beyond the border.

Omori walked past the items and outside the border to where he heard the clutter; the pounding didn’t stop.

He looked down and spotted a shiny knife. He picked it up.

It was a shiny new knife. He could see his reflection in the blade.

The pounding persisted.

He walked back into the middle of the border.

He finally realized what that pounding was. He’s heard it before. It’s gotten loud enough to reach here.

Omori looked back at the white door.

It was okay. He just needed to stop that sound and then he could go visit his friends and see their smiles.

He ran a finger along the blade.

Then he could go visit her.

Omori held the knife up and plunged it into his stomach.

Everything is going to be okay.

Chapter Text

Kel stood on Sunny’s doorstep and knocked incessantly for the… sixth time? Seventh time? Nah, way more than that.

“Helllooooo, Sunny~! Are you there? It’s Kel again! Will you open the door already?”

No answer.

Kel hissed and rubbed his bruised knuckles, clutching the plastic bag in his other hand. Okay, he was knocking too hard. He stretched his fingers to relieve the pressure. His knuckles were really starting to hurt recently from all the pounding on the door he’s been doing. It was becoming harder and harder to ignore. He was even clutching his hand in pain last night. Hopefully Hero didn’t notice. Kel couldn’t risk being questioned about it… or Hero not caring.

Kel exhaled and closed his fist. Eh, whatever. He was sure he didn’t notice. And he could deal with this.

Still no answer.

He knocked again, gently this time. “Listen, I know you can hear me, Sunny. I don’t hear the piano this time, so that couldn’t possibly be drowning me out.”

No answer.

“And I mean, I’m not really the quietest one in the group either. Aubrey whines about it all the time.”

No answer.

Kel whimpered through gritted teeth. He was getting more jittery by the minute. But if he was going to understand what happened, he needed to be persistent. And with no one knowing what he was up to and not bothering to try and stop him, that was easy, really. He just needed to keep going. Sunny would have to answer the door eventually.

So he would visit him until he did.

Kel tapped his knuckles on the door and kept them there. He gazed at his feet and swallowed a lump in his throat. He didn’t feel good about visiting Sunny today. But he just couldn’t ignore something this important. To understand exactly what happened to Mari, to be there for Sunny, for everyone to feel better again, he needed to find the answer he was looking for as soon as possible. He really needed to.

After he got it, he would… make up for visiting Sunny today.

Still no frickin’ answer!

“Sunny, I…” Kel sighed. “I dunno if you aren’t answering because you feel guilty or… if you think that I believe you really did it. Eh, those are kinda the same thing, but it doesn’t matter right now! I just want to hear your side of the story so I can understand what happened!”

Why was Kel saying that? That didn’t get Sunny to open the door before.

“I just can’t stop thinking for once, alright?! Everything you said, everything Basil said… none of it makes any sense! I already visited Basil to ask him what really happened, but what he said made everything make even less sense! I’ve never seen him so sure of something in my life, he’s so sure he did it! So if you just explain what you really think happened, maybe a clearer answer will pop up! And… I’m just super worried about you! So please, answer me already!”

…No answer. Kel dropped his head against the door and tears threatened to surface. Guess Sunny wasn’t up for talking today, either. That made sense, really. Looked like Kel still wouldn’t succeed today. This was all for nothing, then. Great. He’ll really need to make up for—

Kel heard a click and a creak. He blinked his tears away and saw a small gap, a pair of black socks peeking through.

He lifted his head. Sunny was staring back at him with the most empty eyes he’d ever seen. He said nothing.

“Sunny!”

Kel couldn’t help but grin wide enough for his face to hurt. Finally, he answered him!! Sunny didn’t say anything and his face looked like it had no living soul behind it, but that was okay for now! He opened the door!

“I can’t believe it, Sunny! I’m so happy to see you’re up and at it!” Sunny stared back, saying nothing. Kel closed one eye as he rubbed the back of his head. “Err, like I said, I was… super worried. I mean, it’s been a week since Mari died, so…”

Sunny’s eyes widened in surprise. Kel was hoping for him to say something, but his face fell back to that dead expression and he said nothing. Okay, not the best choice of words there.

“And I feel like you already know this, or should know this, but I’ve visited you tons of times this week, too. And this is the first time you’re opening the door, so uh… that’s why I’m really happy right now!”

Sunny said nothing.

“I, uh, have to sneak out every time I come here. I’m… scared of what Hero would do if he found out.”

Sunny cringed. Yeah, that was a sensible reaction to that. But he still said nothing.

Kel perked up. “Oh! And I brought some snacks and drinks!” He presented the plastic bag, filled with pretzels, candies, a bottle of Orange Joe, and a bottle of grape soda. “Just in case you wanna snack on something while we… y’know, chat. If you want.”

Sunny said nothing.

Okay, Kel was starting to feel really awkward now. Which was completely wrong in and of itself. He never felt awkward around his friends; he could always find some kind of conversation to have or game to play when interacting with them, and even if he said something stupid, he never lost his cool. He was completely used to Sunny’s quietness, too. He’d learned to let him respond when he could, or to let Basil or Mari tell them what Sunny was thinking.

Right now, though, there was… nothing fun about this. And Sunny’s silence wasn’t helping. That was probably why he felt so awkward.

Sunny walked back inside without a word. Kel didn’t follow him. He didn’t know why. Probably because he felt so uncomfortable, he didn’t know the right thing to really do. “Um—”

He snapped out of his worries with a yelp when Sunny suddenly grabbed his free hand and pulled him inside.

“Oh, uh… okay,” Kel said before he closed the door with his foot. Didn’t know what to think of that, really. Sunny didn’t say anything. He just walked away from him and threw himself on the couch, lying silently on his back. Kel shuffled his feet and followed him around the couch while taking a good look around the house. It was pretty much the same as it always was, but there were a lot of open cardboard boxes lying around; a lot of them looked to be full. The sight of them made Kel frown.

Those boxes are full of Mari’s stuff, aren’t they?

Putting the bag on the coffee table, Kel turned his attention to Sunny for a brief second, before his now-restless mind turned it everywhere. “So… I’m gonna be honest with you, Sunny. As much as I needed you to let me in, I didn’t expect you to, so I have no idea where to start. And I have too many questions to really figure it out.”

Sunny didn’t say anything. Looked like it was gonna be the same as Basil. Kel needed to be the one to start asking the questions because Sunny had the answers. This time, though, Kel really needed to think about what to ask first. He couldn’t stumble this time. And the right one might get Sunny talking. Thinking… thinking… thinking…

Kel took a deep breath and turned back to Sunny. “Can you—”

Kel choked on his question when he noticed Sunny’s arms and legs. They looked scuffed up. But that wasn’t the worst part…!

“Sunny!” he shouted, kneeling down and placing his hand right below Sunny’s knee. “Your knees, your elbows… why are you covered in blood?!”

Sunny didn’t answer. He just stared flatly at Kel through his peripheral vision. Dang it, Sunny, this wasn’t even my first question, but I sure as hell have a lot more now!

Kel poked his knee; Sunny didn’t hiss or anything, but Kel swore he saw his knee flinch. It had to hurt. The blood wasn’t fresh, though. It was dry and caked onto his skin. That meant whatever happened, it didn’t happen today. And Sunny never took care of them!

“Crap… I gotta find bandages or something! Stay right there!”

As if he would move, he grumbled to himself as he dashed through the back doorway and up the stairs two steps at a time to the bathroom. Ignoring the hauntingly familiar sensation, he stumbled against the door, pushed it open, and searched the cabinets beneath the sink. That stuff was under here, right? It’s where we keep our first aid stuff in our house, I think!

His hunch actually paid off when he saw a first aid kit all the way in the back. Huffing in relief, he grabbed it and rushed back downstairs two steps at a time back to the couch. He pushed his plastic bag of snacks aside, and placed the first aid kit down.

“Alright, alright,” he mumbled to himself as he threw open the kit to examine its contents. Bandages, gauze pads, gauze wraps, rubbing alcohol, special tape, the whole shebang. Kel wasn’t very good at taking care of injuries, but he had no choice but to improvise. He wasn’t going to just leave Sunny covered in dry blood.

The dry blood. He should probably clean that off, right?

He took another few seconds to grab a cup of water and a couple paper towels. That was enough for his knees and elbows, right? The blood trailed a tiny bit down his legs, too. Aw man, why did he never pay attention to what Hero did when he took care of his injuries? Eh, it would be okay. Cleaning the blood and bandaging the cuts should be enough.

Kel worked as quickly as he could, cleaning as much of the blood off as possible with the water and paper towels he had. He first tried to cover up Sunny’s knee with a gauze pad, but he didn’t know how it would stay on. Tossing the now-bloody pad to the side, he opted for the gauze wraps, hastily wrapping them around Sunny’s knees and elbows and tightening them in place. Sunny didn’t move or react the entire time. Kel even checked if he was still breathing, just in case.

Putting the medical stuff back into the kit, he pushed it to the edge of the table — keeping it there just in case Sunny needed it again — and admired his handiwork. The gauze wraps were a little uneven and there were still some red smears poking out from under them, left behind when he ran out of paper towels and water, but he thought it wasn’t bad for his first patch up job. Hopefully, Sunny was feeling better now.

“Alright, buddy, that should do it!” Kel proudly approved with his hands on his hips. “Touching those cuts probably messed them up, so I’m gonna let you rest a little bit before we start talking, alright? Just in case your arms and legs need it. Cause, um, I have questions about those, too, now.”

Sunny didn’t answer them.

“Okay, well… I’ll leave you to it!”

After a few moments, Kel realized he didn’t know what he planned to do with himself while Sunny rested. Looking around, the open boxes still had him curious if they were really filled with Mari’s stuff. But it felt wrong, wanting to snoop around Sunny’s house. Sure, he’d been over so many times, but he was taught to always be respectful of other peoples’ things. Mari always scolded him whenever he got too nosy about something seemingly secret on the bookshelf or in her desk or under Sunny’s bed.

Mari…

Before he knew it, Kel started wandering around the house, taking a good look at everything inside the boxes. He didn’t really know why. Maybe he was trying to force himself to understand that Mari was really gone. Maybe it was just weird grief stuff. He didn’t really know. But looking in the boxes, he saw that he was right. There were pink bedding and sheets (but no pillow?), toiletries, college prep books, school supplies, a planner filled with an uncomfortably detailed schedule (he hurriedly passed over the “MINE AND SUNNY’S RECITAL!!!” on the last date with writing.) Eventually, the boxes became too much for Kel and he tore his attention away from them to focus on anything else.

There was no sign of Sunny’s parents around. Not surprising.

…Now that he thought about it—

Kel stepped through the doorway leading to the hall and stopped. He hadn’t looked before, because he was rushing — but now, he couldn’t help the chill traveling through him as fifteen wooden steps loomed above him. This was where Mari died, wasn’t it? She fell down the stairs. Sunny and Basil couldn’t save her. He looked at the floor right in front of his feet. This was where they found the violin, smashed in a million pieces. He swore he could still see some bits of wood on the ground that they must have missed when they cleaned it up. Did they throw it away? Sunny definitely couldn’t play it like that. Why was the violin broken? Oh, probably because Mari fell on it! But why was the violin there in the first place?

Kel didn’t like it here.

Play…

Kel turned right and hurried into the piano room. He was thinking about looking at the piano that he’d been hearing all week, wondering if they were going to get rid of it or keep it as a keepsake of her. He remembered the days he spent sitting on a stool and listening to them perform, but all those thoughts ground to a halt when he saw someone occupying the seat.

“Mewo!”

Kel sped in front of the piano seat and knelt down. There was Mari’s adorable black kitten curled in a fuzzy ball, ears down, tail hanging off the seat, and eyes too watery. The sight broke Kel’s heart. Poor Mewo… she must’ve been suffering, losing her mommy all of a sudden like that.

Why was she lying here all alone, though? She should’ve been cuddling with Sunny, right? Those two had a strong bond. Every time Kel came over to watch cartoons or play video games or hang out in the treehouse or watch Mari play the piano, he’d catch Mewo at home in Sunny’s lap, or on his shoulder, or the two of them dozing off together. Sometimes it even made Mari jealous; it was always funny seeing her pout because her own cat would rather be with her brother than with her.

But ever since she passed, were Mewo and Sunny completely separated from each other? This wasn’t right.

Well, Kel couldn’t possibly leave her like this. Standing back up, he picked her up and cradled her like a baby against his chest. Mewo laid her head against Kel’s heart. “I know, Mewo, I know…” Kel soothed as he pet her chest. “I can’t imagine how hurt you gotta be… don’t worry, it’ll be okay…” Her breaths shook against his own. He hoped his words were reaching her.

Kel moved his hand to pet her belly, but perked up in alarm when he felt her stomach grumble.

“Mewo, are you hungry?”

Mewo let out the quietest, saddest mew. She looked thinner in her lower half. Oh geez, she must’ve been in so much grief that she hasn’t been eating at all!

“Okay,” Kel said as he legged it out of the piano room and toward the kitchen. “Okay, I’m gonna feed you real quick, Mewo, then I’ll ask Sunny what happened. You can even be my moral support, to help get him talking.”

He wondered… Did she watch Mari fall down the stairs? Did that add to her grief? The idea made his heart clench.

Kel gave a cursory glance at Sunny before he walked into the kitchen; he hadn’t moved an inch, and he didn’t even glance back. His bandages still looked fine, at least. Keeping Mewo snug against his chest with one arm, Kel searched each cupboard for the cat food.

“Heh, you’d think since I’ve been over here so many times I practically live here, that I’d know where the food was, huh? Then again, I forget where a lot of stuff is in my own house… finding that first aid kit was dumb luck. You, uh, wanna point to the right one, kitty?”

Mewo didn’t answer his question. Nevermind, then. This was an annoying problem of his, he hated to admit. Any time he was sure the bag was in one cupboard, he was always wrong, and Mewo was starving more and more.

Finally, he eventually found the cat food in the cupboard all the way on the left and grabbed it. “Woah!” he exclaimed as he hefted it down onto the counter, nearly breaking his arm in the process. “Geez, that’s so heavy! Why’s it so big? Do you really eat all this, for a kitten your size? I don’t think Hector eats this much!”

That only made him think of Mari, buying the biggest bag of food for her kitten, just to make sure she was always well fed and pampered to the max. She always did her best to look after all of them.

Seeing this much food also made Kel worry more about Mewo not eating at all last week, if she had this big of an appetite.

Going to open the bag, Kel hummed in confusion. It was still sealed, so it hadn’t been opened yet. That felt weird… there was only one bag in the cupboard he found it in, and there were no other ones in the other cupboards; plus, any smart pet owner always kept their pet food together. And yet this one was brand new.

She… she is being fed, right?

After a few seconds, Kel shrugged it off; they probably just threw out an empty bag yesterday and hadn’t opened this one yet. But… it was still clear that, again, she hadn’t been eaten…

“C’mon, Kel, you’re getting distracted!” he scolded himself out loud as he filled Mewo’s food bowl up, opting to do it by hand since there was no way he was pouring this bag. “There’s a perfectly good answer for that and it isn’t important right now. She just needs to eat.” He then placed Mewo in front of the bowl, put all his might into lifting the bag back into the cupboard, and sat on his knees next to her to make sure she actually ate. He didn’t think she would unless he gave her some encouragement. Plus, she needed to be with someone right now, and as far as he could tell Sunny still hadn’t moved.

“Go on, girl,” Kel gently enticed. “I can tell you haven’t eaten in days. It’ll be good for you, okay? Eat up!”

Mewo sat with no hint of movement, bowing her head above the full bowl with the most miserable look Kel had ever seen on a cat.

“C’mooon…!” he coaxed with more desperation in his voice. If he stared too long at that depressed face, he wouldn’t be able to look at her without crying himself — and he couldn’t afford that. Kel started stroking her back, seeing if the touch would be enough motivation. “I know it must be hard, Mewo… Hero’s barely eaten in the past week, too. At least, he hasn’t eaten with me. At all, really.”

Kel moved to sit cross legged and continued to pet her. “Actually, we’ve been… avoiding each other as much as we could. We got in this big fight the morning after we found Mari… and it was just… so unfair!” Kel sniffled. “He’s so convinced that Sunny killed her… that when I asked him if Basil could’ve done it — just as a possibility — he blew up at me. Couldn’t believe that I would think that about Basil, that I was pinning what happened on him to defend Sunny! But like… he’s doing the same thing, isn’t he? He doesn’t even think about it. When he usually always thinks things through!” Kel looked at Mewo. “You know him really well, isn’t that weird?”

Mewo didn’t answer or move. Kel sighed and repositioned himself again, leaning back against the counter. He looked toward the ceiling and instinctively continued petting her.

“Mom and Dad think I started that fight, too. But it was Hero who started it. Hero never starts fights…” Kel shrugged. “But yeah, after that, we haven’t talked to each other at all in a week. Like, not even a word. That’s never happened with us before… But Hero clearly doesn’t wanna talk to me after what I said. He won’t even look at me when we walk past each other or when we’re both in our room. As if everything bad that’s happened was my fault somehow.” Kel paused for a moment. “And every time I’ve felt like saying something to him, I just couldn’t. I wanna talk to him, but I’m so mad, madder than I’ve ever been at him… and I’m so scared of us getting into another fight. Hell, I can see one on the horizon already…” Kel chuckled with no humor. “Dunno how I’m gonna deal with that.”

Mewo let out a quiet mew, catching his attention.

“Oh—” He cleared his throat. “But, um, yeah, I think he knows how you’re feeling, Mewo. Not eating because you miss her so much. But, y’know, I really think he’s just not eating around me. A couple days ago, I got up at night to grab a cup of water, but I caught Hero in the kitchen already, snacking on some cookies all by himself. I noticed… they were the cookies he and Mari made together from scratch. The last batch they made together. We still have a whole jar of ‘em. When I watched him eat, I noticed he was crying, too, and he whispered her name. I might be totally wrong, but… I think eating them must’ve reminded him of her. Since they always baked and cooked together.” He didn’t notice Mewo’s ears raise. “Not that I blame him; eating’s been reminding me of her, too. I always loved the food she made for our picnics. One time in the summer, she made us these amazing candy apples! I still remember the taste of the caramel to this day, they were perfect!” Kel stopped himself, then laughed nervously, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry, Mewo, I’m blabbering too much. You shouldn’t have to listen to—”

Kel was cut off by the sound of a crunch. When he turned his head, he was overjoyed to see Mewo had finally, finally started nibbling on the kibble. “Woohoo!” Kel whooped as he pumped a fist in the air. “Yesss! You’re eating! Good job, Mewo!” Mewo briefly stopped to swallow. “Hey, remember, you have to eat the whole bowl! Take your time if you need to, but that bowl needs to be empty.”

He spent the next few minutes encouraging her to keep going, until she ate every bit of it up. It honestly took way longer than he wanted it to and he was bouncing on his knees every second that passed by. But once she emptied the bowl, Kel clapped and picked her up again, holding her in the air as he spun in a circle and hugging her against his chest. “You did so good, girl! I knew you could do it! Do you feel any better?”

Mewo leaned her head against his chest. She honestly still looked really sad, but she at least looked more alive than she did half an hour ago.

“Alright, you ready to go to Sunny? I think he’d really appreciate you being with him while we talk about this. It’s probably gonna be really rough for him.” Kel’s decision to keep her in his arms during the conversation would be good for both of them, he knew it. She looked like she really needed attention. And with the only person who’s been with her was Sunny, maybe she needed someone more positive to give that to her.

Mewo looked up at him with soulful eyes. Kel nodded.

“Well!” Kel slapped on his toothy Kel grin. “Let’s go!”

Striding back into the living room, Kel approached Sunny, who was still laying on the couch.

In the excitement of him opening the door, and in the panic of seeing him bleeding, Kel hadn’t realized before just how tired and weak Sunny really looked. His face was pale, dark and sunken, messy hair draped limply over it just above the eyes. His lips and hands were dry and cracked, hands shaking like they’d been tensed up for a long time. When he’d been walking earlier, his steps were uneven and shaky. He was mostly still now, but every once in a while, a tremor fired through him like he was freezing — only to stop after a second or two like nothing ever happened.

Most worrying, though, was how little he’d been responding to anything Kel said. Half the time, it seemed like he didn’t even hear him. Kel wondered if Sunny was having trouble seeing or hearing, but he quickly realized that was stupid. Probably.

“Hey, Sunny, I fed Mewo! She looked super hungry. She must… really miss Mari.”

Sunny didn’t register.

Mewo purred as Kel set her down on the couch beside Sunny.

“Um… Sunny, have you been eating?”

Sunny’s eyes opened, and he stared through Kel. Honestly, Kel couldn’t even tell if it was really in response to what he said, but he kept talking like it was.

“When’s the last time you ate, Sunny?”

After a few seconds, Sunny shrugged. Kel pushed down a look of worry, and started talking before it could come back.

“Oh c’mon, don’t tell me I gotta feed you too!”

Sunny stood up and started walking toward Kel without a moment of hesitation, making Kel jump at the sudden movement. “Wait, uh, I didn’t really—” Kel began, but by the time he could get it all out, Sunny was already headed toward the kitchen. “I… I was joking…”

Apparently I wasn’t.

Giving in, he picked up Mewo and followed his trembling friend into the kitchen and toward the fridge, expecting him to get something to eat. Instead, Sunny just walked to the middle of the room and stopped, staring expectantly. Mewo looked confused, wondering why it was already mealtime again. Kel waited for something to happen. Nothing did.

“Do you want me to get you something? I can’t really cook, but… I mean… I have the snacks I brought back in the living room!”

Sunny shook his head.

“You want something here, huh?”

Sunny nodded.

Kel let Mewo down and walked toward the cupboards, only for Sunny to run in his way with energy Kel didn’t think he had. Kel jumped, almost barreling right into him. He was confident doing that would knock Sunny over in his current state.

“Aah! So, not the cupboards. So… you want something in the fridge?”

Sunny nodded again.

Kel backed over to the fridge, peeking inside and finding nothing he could imagine someone eating cold. “Sunny, I told you I can’t cook, you know that’s more of Hero’s thing—” Kel cut himself off and quietly groaned, surprised at how uncomfortable he was after giving his brother an accidental compliment. Sunny kept staring at him expectantly, like he was hoping Kel would read his mind. “Uh… let’s see,” Kel said, looking through the fridge for anything he could make edible.

As his hand passed over a plate covered in foil, he heard Sunny vocalize for the first time since he arrived. He peeled off the foil to find a raw steak. He didn’t think you were supposed to keep steak like that, but he didn’t mention it for now. “Sunny, uh… I don’t know how to cook this.”

Sunny scrambled away, stopping on a dime in front of the microwave. He pointed at it, gesturing again to convey his interest.

“You… you want me to microwave it?”

Sunny nodded frantically.

“Can you even microwave— eh, if it means you’ll eat something, what the heck.”

Kel tossed the foil into the trash — leaving it hanging off the side of the barrel — and put the plate down on the turntable. He thought about it for a few seconds before pressing the ‘6’ on the panel as Chef Mike sprang to life.

Sunny looked at Kel with blank bemusement.

“Huh, what did I—?” Kel wondered what was wrong. “Too long?”

Sunny puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.

“You want it in longer?”

Nod.

Kel pressed the +1 minute button on the panel. And again… and again. Finally, on the fourth press, Sunny nodded again, apparently satisfied with the ten-minute cooking time.

“My favorite,” Sunny said, speaking for the first time since Kel arrived. Kel jumped at the sound of his voice.

And so, the two stood awkwardly in the kitchen for the next ten minutes, not making a sound, as the slab of meat spun in a circle and turned gray. After a few minutes, Sunny sat down and rested his eyes. His breathing began to steady, his shoulders rising and falling in a steady rhythm as his eyes closed…

Kel raised a brow. “Sunny, did you fall asleep?—”

A loud beep rang out through the room, and Sunny’s eyes opened with a start as both boys jolted. After flailing around for a moment, he fell onto his back, and just lied there, staring up at the ceiling without a visible thought. He sorta looked confused as to where he was. They both blinked.

“Steak’s done!” Kel shouted, popping open the door and grabbing the plate, before proceeding to nearly burn his hand as he whisked it over to the counter with some falsetto yelps. The plate clanked loudly against the marble and Kel cringed, the slab of meat holding its ground while juices sloshed across the plate. Mewo — who had somehow gotten up onto one of the tall chairs behind the counter — leapt at the sudden noise. Some juice spilled onto the counter.

“Err… all in a day’s work for Chef Kel! The greatest microwave steak of all time!” Kel bragged, punctuated by an awkward toothy grin. Even Kel couldn’t deny that the steak looked a bit… dead. How does one kill a steak? 10 minutes in the microwave, apparently.

Sunny grabbed a fork and a knife and sat beside Mewo at the counter, face back to its usual dead expression (nearly as dead as the steak). He stared into the slab of meat. He seemed to be pondering its existence. Kel waited expectantly, until he realized that Sunny probably wasn’t moving.

“Sorry if it didn’t come out like you wanted.” Kel looked embarrassed. It wasn’t technically his fault — Sunny was the one who asked him to microwave it for 10 minutes — but somehow he still felt responsible for releasing this horror into the world. He could never take back what he’d done.

Sunny kept staring at the steak. After what felt like an eternity, he looked up… and held out his fork and knife toward Kel.

“I gotta be honest, Sunny, I don’t follow.” Somehow Kel looked even more embarrassed. Despite how close they were, he’d always been the worst at reading Sunny out of all his friends. Now that they were alone together, it was coming back to bite him.

Sunny vocalized again, gesturing with his knife and fork.

“You… you want me to cut it for you?”

Sunny nodded.

“Sure, I can do that!” Kel grinned, happy that he finally figured it out. Taking the knife and fork, he cut the dead steak into small pieces — probably smaller than necessary, but he didn’t trust Sunny to chew his food when he was like this — and offered the knife and fork back to Sunny.

Sunny put his arms down by his side, and stared expectantly at Kel.

“Um… you want me to…”

Kel was puzzled.

“You want me to feed you?” he finally finished, quirking an eyebrow.

Sunny eyed Kel judgmentally, and Kel snorted with relief.

“Okay, good. I’m… I’m not gonna do that,” he chuckled, looking more awkward than he had all visit. Sunny being Sunny, he stared blankly. “You can take these now!”

Sunny shook his head.

“So… you don’t want me to feed you, but you also don’t wanna eat. I’m outta ideas.”

Sunny raised his arm, pointed at the steak, and then pointed at Kel. And it was at that moment Kel realized that the world was cruel.

“You… you want me to eat it first.”

Nod.

“Oh. Okay.”

He took the fork from Sunny’s hand.

Kel would do anything for his friends… but some burdens, even he struggled to bear.

This would be one of those burdens.

…

Kel handed Sunny the fork and fled up to the bathroom, hastily rummaging through the shelves for anything he could use to wash out his mouth. In his rush, he slammed his knee into the cabinet he forgot to close earlier, eliciting an “Ow!”. He kicked it shut and grabbed what he needed. Unloading toothpaste onto his tongue, he wondered if ‘more than use is swallowed’ still applied if he used half the tube at once. Deciding not to risk it, and after taking a minute or two to process the horror he’d just endured, he returned to the kitchen where he found Sunny calmly finishing his meal. Kel marveled at Sunny’s strength, hoping to one day get on his level. But, that day would not be today. He gave him two thumbs-up as he took his last bite, putting on a brave face. “Good job, Sunny! I didn’t think you’d eat it all…”

Sunny being Sunny, he stared blankly at his plate, wondering where the food went. Well… honestly, he wasn’t being as Sunny as usual. But that was okay! Kel grinned awkwardly for a few more moments, before suddenly remembering what brought him here in the first place. He stood there slowly combing his fingers through his hair, not sure of how to approach the topic after everything that just transpired. He silently wished Sunny would just pick up on it like Basil did. Knowing him, though, he probably wouldn’t be as gracious — at least, not out loud.

Kel really didn’t like feeling awkward.

“So, uh… Sunny?”

Sunny didn’t answer. Kel put on the friendliest smile he could, clapping to get his attention.

“Helloooo? Earth to Sunny? You in there, dude?”

After a few seconds, Sunny looked up at Kel with eyes that were just as tired as before. Kel swallowed his disappointment that the food didn’t do as much as he hoped. But at least Sunny wasn’t shaking anymore. Kel stepped toward the counter, smiling over at him — when Sunny sat down, they were the same height!

“Hey, uh… okay. So I’m really not good at this kinda thing, but I came here because I wanted to talk about what happened a week ago. And I need you to be honest with me, alright?”

Sunny tilted his head, and Kel adopted the best serious face he could.

“I need you to tell me what happened before we got to your house that night.”

Sunny tilted his head further, causing his whole body to skew to the side a bit. Kel suppressed a smile.

“Sunny, I know it’s still probably really hard to think about, but… I really think we gotta talk about this stuff, alright? So—”

Finally, Sunny opened his mouth.

“What stuff?”

Kel stared at him, incredulous. What did he mean by that? Did Sunny really not know what he was talking about? It was all Kel could think about since that night. He thought if anything, Sunny would’ve been even worse off. Then again, considering how he found him…

“Sunny, can you tell me what happened a week ago?”

Sunny seemed to think for a good 10 seconds, before a concerned look appeared on his face for a brief moment. His lip trembled, and he squinted so slightly that Kel didn’t know if he actually saw it. Then he bit it down and shook his head, expression gone from his face.

“You mean, you… you just don’t remember?”

“Nothing to remember.” Sunny’s voice was airy and hoarse, but he spoke with conviction. Kel didn’t know what to make of it.

“I… Sunny. This is really hard for me to just say outright, you know?”

Sunny looked at Kel like he had two heads.

“We… we need to talk about what happened to Mari, okay?”

“…”

Sunny didn’t answer, and the room remained silent for what seemed like an eternity. Kel didn’t know whether to take it as a yes, as a no, or as an “I don’t know.” Somehow, the third option scared him the most.

“I need to know how she died, Sunny. Alright?”

Sunny didn’t answer. His expression darkened, his cold, sharp stare now stabbed through Kel. But he still didn’t say anything!

“Sunny… I know. I know, all of this has to have been harder on you than it was on me. No matter if you did it or not, she was your sister, Sunny! You loved her, I know you did! Even if she made you—”

Kel sucked in a breath through his teeth. He was losing control.

“And… we all loved her! And I just gotta know what happened to her! I can’t stop thinking about it, Sunny! So just stop being difficult! Just say something for once! Because your whole quiet thing is really starting to annoy me now, alright? Just tell the truth!”

Mewo leapt from the chair and ran off into the living room as Kel raised his voice and slammed his hands on the counter. Sunny didn’t look like Sunny anymore; eyes blown wide open, lips quivering, entire body trembling. Kel stopped himself, but it was too late. For once, those eyes were present — and Kel wished they weren’t.

“Sunny! Are you alright? I… I’m sorry, Sunny! I know it’s selfish, but I can’t understand it! I can’t understand anything! And I can’t believe Basil, but I can’t believe you, either, and… I-I’m so confused!”

Kel’s composure fell apart as he fell into Sunny. His eyes watered, but he forced himself not to cry, even though he really wanted to. He hated when his friends saw him sad like this. With Basil, it was different — he was always open and sensitive about his feelings, so it just felt normal with him somehow. But Kel never wanted to be like this in front of Sunny. Especially when he was selfish enough to think his grief for Mari was more important than Sunny’s — her own brother’s. Especially when he had the gall to come here today.

Sunny didn’t move. Not even to hug him.

“No, I can’t cry over this. It wasn’t… she wasn’t my sister.” Kel sat up and wiped his face with his wrist, putting on a smile so he didn’t feel awkward anymore. He looked up at Sunny, who was still shaking. His eyes were no longer present, staring through Kel like he wasn’t even in the room. He put his hand on Sunny’s shoulder.

Kel would not cry this time.

“You probably just aren’t ready yet. So… I should be more worried about you! How’ve ya been, Sunny?” Kel flashed his best Kel grin at his friend, then reeled it back a little bit when his brain caught up to his mouth. Sunny’s eyes tracked over to his, and he tilted his head. Progress!

“Somewhere else.”

…And a hundred more questions.

“You’ve been going out? Is that why you haven’t been answering the door?” Kel’s brows furrowed at the idea. “I know we used to sneak out at night together, but… I didn’t think you’d do it on your own. Especially not now!” Then again, Kel wasn’t the type to sneak out on his own, either. Look how that turned out, he thought bitterly.

“No.”

“Oh… wait, huh?”

“Not outside.”

Gears turned in Kel’s head for a few moments, before his eyes lit up and he chortled. “Wait, you mean you’ve been somewhere else in the house?”

Sunny nodded.

“Every time I’ve come over here, I’ve been hearing piano music coming from inside! You’ve been playing it, right?”

Sunny nodded again, slower than last time.

“I didn’t think you ever played the piano after you started your violin lessons! I know you had a hard time getting your fingers on the right keys, heh…” Kel rubbed the back of his head. “But… it sounded really good when I heard it! I might’ve stopped knocking to listen to it… what song was that?” Kel began humming a familiar song, though his voice made it a little less familiar than it would’ve been otherwise.

“White Space.”

“White Space? I’ve never heard of that one. Was it in one of M—... one of the songbooks, or?”

“From White Space. Where I-… I was…”

Sunny’s body began convulsing violently as he fell off the chair, inches away from hitting his head if Kel lurched back to catch him. He slipped out of Kel’s arms onto his side, twitching on the floor for a few moments before going still. It took a few more seconds for Kel to process what had happened.

“Woah, Sunny!” Kel rushed over to his friend’s side, kneeling beside his face. Sunny looked up at him, eyes rapidly moving unfocused and expression confused. “What happened?! Are you alright?” Sunny’s eyes finally coordinated after a few more moments, locking with Kel’s.

“Your eyes…” Sunny rasped.

“Uh- Huh? What about them?”

Sunny reached out and wiped one of Kel’s eyes with the palm of his hand. Kel winced at how raw and dry it felt. “Crying…”

A breath, and another. Dang it… why couldn’t I just keep myself together? Stupid… stupid! “Yeah, I’m… I’m sorry for getting like that! Making sure you’re okay is what’s important, right?”

“Why were you?”

Why was he… crying? Did Sunny forget what they were talking about? Did he forget what happened ten seconds ago? Kel did his best not to look spooked by that, but he wasn’t sure how well he pulled it off. It looked like he was having a seizure! Not wanting Sunny to almost crack his head on the floor again, Kel offered his shoulder, which Sunny accepted.

Hoisting him up, the boys headed back to the living room, and Kel let Sunny down onto the couch beside Mewo. At least she seemed to have calmed down. Kel tightened two of the gauze wraps that he noticed went loose after he hit the floor, then looked at him one more time. He still looked tired, but a lot of the tension from earlier was gone. It looked like he was minutes away from falling asleep.

Something deep in his gut told Kel that he shouldn’t pry further today.

“Um… alright. I’m gonna head home, Sunny. I wanna get there before anyone gets back. But… I’m gonna be back, alright? And when you’re ready, you can talk to me! Your old friend Kel is always around to listen!”

‘Old friend Kel?’ he questioned himself. It really had been a long time since they did stuff together. Even before the past week, Sunny was so busy practicing for the recital that they just never had a good chance to hang out. Maybe if I started knocking back then, this never would’ve happened, Kel mournfully pondered. Then he quickly pushed it down, committing to never having that thought again.

Kel got out of his head to realize Sunny’s eyes were closed. “Alright, I’m gonna head out. Take good care of Mewo, alright?” Like he had to remind him. Mewo was ostensibly Mari’s cat, but ever since she moved in, Sunny was crazy about her. He couldn’t help that she was grieving. At least they had each other to get through it.

Dang, pets are so awesome

“See ya.” He said his goodbye with one last look back, before heading outside and closing the door behind him. He already knew it would be a long time before he could process what just happened.

Sunny faintly heard the click of the front door closing. He faintly felt the pawing of something at his neck. He heard a mew. He paid no attention to any of it. He felt a weight on his chest that he couldn’t budge. Slowly, he found it harder to draw in air, and his breathing became more shallow.

Kel was crying… he’d never seen Kel cry, but he saw him cry. Why was he…? Because…

Sunny squeezed his eyes shut and little whimpers escaped his open mouth.

He swore he heard his own voice speak, but it was farther away than ever before; he didn’t know what he said. Whatever it was, it was making his entire head pulse painfully. What did he say to Kel?

He grasped his head with both hands, the tips of his fingers pressing hard against his skull.

Kel rambled on a lot, but Sunny couldn’t comprehend any of it. He said he was confused… about what happened to Mari. What… happened to Mari? Mari…

Sunny’s stomach started gurgling, making his whimpers grow louder. His surroundings were drowning in static.

Kel said he couldn’t believe what happened to Mari. He couldn’t believe Sunny… he couldn’t believe Sunny what?

Sunny swallowed down the bile rising in his throat.

Kel said that he couldn’t believe Basil did… couldn’t believe Basil did what?

Tears sprung from his eyes and he let out a strained cry.

He couldn’t believe Basil would…! That Basil was so sure he…!

Sunny screamed.

Welcome to Black Space.

Omori lay below an empty string in a black room with a square white border.

“…”

He sat up. Inside the white border right beside him was a pitch black key. Omori picked it up. He’s never used this before. But he already knew what door he would assign this to open.

In one corner of the border was an open gray picnic basket… she was already cementing herself in every corner of his worlds. Good. He needed her. In the opposite corner was a tissue box for wiping his sorrows away. He didn’t need them. He wasn’t sad. He was angry.

Because he knew why he was here. He shouldn’t have been able to find this place. Not this easily.

Because Sunny told Kel — flesh and blood Kel — about White Space.

That Kel made Sunny relive what happened to Mari.

He made Sunny remember who was responsible.

“…”

Omori stood up, key in hand. He walked past the picnic basket and stepped over the border, thinking of his new destination. He stopped abruptly when the white-eyed shadow walked in front of him without warning. Omori’s blank eyes followed the Stranger, forced into wandering endlessly, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. He couldn’t have anything to do. If he did, something bad would happen.

The Stranger stopped walking and stared at Omori. Omori stared back.

“You are here again, Sunny,” it said. Omori’s eyes widened for a split second. “To what do I owe the occasion? Did you recall?”

“…”

“…When you hid the truth, when you became nothing, you split me in half. I selfishly wondered how you could decide to seal me away. But I have no right to question such a thing, do I?”

Omori’s hand clutched the key.

“Sunny… I’m so sorry.”

Omori whipped his head away and walked forward a few steps. He slowly filled with dread and enmity. He refused to listen to the Stranger anymore. He didn’t want to listen to it in the first place. Someone’s words of remorse now bored into his head, quiet as they may have been. He ignored them as he did before. They were no better than the Stranger’s words.

Omori closed his eyes, concentrated his strong mentality, then opened them again. There was a black door in front of him, emitting a red light. As he put the key in to unlock it, Omori knew he needed to figure out how to protect this place.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

…

Omori stood in a room. He was surrounded by darkness. The only signs that gave away he was in a room was a sliding glass door emitting the red light and a forbidden lamp with a lampshade and no lightbulb caught in the red light. The rest of the room was pitch black inside; Omori couldn’t see a thing.

Good. This room was filled with terrible things. What was in this room could never be illuminated.

Omori wasn’t even supposed to be here.

He stood in the darkness and stared at the sliding glass door. He could hear those quiet words, indecipherable, on the other side trying to get into the room. There was something out there. It was calling him. It was calling someone else.

Omori wasn’t supposed to be here.

He stepped toward the door. Then he heard the deafening clicking of a lock before the door slid open by itself, the brightness of the red light and distorted screeching forcing Omori a couple steps back.

He stood still in a blank. What was on the other side?

Omori stepped through the door.

…

Omori stood a dimension of red. It was endless, no walls or boundaries in sight. The grainy red and black floor seemed like a different part of the dimension entirely; it was always moving, but Omori wasn’t carried with it. Unrecognizable music played from somewhere he didn’t know, just like in Headspace. Every aspect wore this dimension’s purpose.

Omori moved forward. He could feel it, the space’s objective seeping more into his subconscious. He just needed to head deep, and everything would be okay again.

But that seemed far too simple. Omori could already tell.

He looked around and grit his teeth. Around his feet, he began to spot scattered patches of sunflowers materializing from the floor, but not really. Grey, drooping, wilted… covered in drops of blood. Not his blood. He knew whose blood it was. Why it coated sunflowers. Why the sunflowers were dead.

He made her bleed.

Omori hurried further. More dead sunflowers encroached in his space, around his steps. It was as if they were bending to his very presence. The farther he walked, the more those quiet words of malice crept into his mind… whispering truths… lies… betrayals.

Obstacles.

‘But… I’m gonna be back, alright?’

He knew it.

This Red Space alone would not be enough to repress the memories of the Truth from his original self. Not if his original friend was going to come by and remind him of it over and over again. Not if his original self was going to let him; he didn’t say ‘no’ to his original friend’s self-invitation.

He needed to hide the Black Space away in any way he could. If he alone needed help to silence the noise… he would manifest entities into his different worlds. Great creatures to leave in charge, to cover the Truth in their own methods, and he their commander. Two — no, three should be sufficient. Scattered all over his worlds. Who could they be, he wondered…

Omori crushed a sunflower and stem in his path beneath his foot. He didn’t understand their purpose; the sight of them made him sick.

And he needed to compound his worlds above the Black Space, seal it, so that the creatures may keep it that way with their combined might. While Omori kept the most important job of all: carry the burden of his original self’s betrayal and make him forget where it came from.

Omori stopped walking when he reached a staircase. Of course there was a staircase. He looked up. He could barely make out an ending at the top and he noticed several gaps between steps. Inconvenient.

He eyed the decaying, blood soaked sunflowers around him. He blinked, lifted his hand, and held it out. With little mental effort, the sunflowers slowly, but surely, started growing out of the conveying ground. The rustlings and crunches of their movements were muted, even as they slithered near his hand. When they tried to creep between his fingers, he narrowed his eyes at them, and that pushed them away; yet, they were not carried with the ground. They moved not according to it, but to Omori’s very being.

These pestilent uproots could be of use to him, after all.

Omori stared up the staircase.

‘And when you’re ready, you can talk to me!’

Omori placed his foot on the bottom step, and began to ascend. The sunflowers followed behind him.

Time to abate the darkness.

Kel closed the front door, stuffed his cold hands in the pockets of his hoodie, and headed back home.

And he thought his talk with Basil was confusing. That talk with Sunny just now wasn’t confusing… he felt like he got a negative amount of answers. It wasn’t even really a talk. Sunny himself was even worse off. He was like a zombie. He barely responded to anything Kel said; his eyes never looked so empty; he ate a microwaved steak. He was hurt. He was even hurt physically. And he didn’t care.

And the stuff he did say was scary.

Did he… seriously not remember what happened a week ago? Was he blocking it out because it was too much? Kel had never seen him convulse like that, either. That was way too concerning. That could’ve been a seizure, right? He knew Sunny wasn’t taking care of himself at all because of his grief. Or… not grief because again, he apparently didn’t remember what happened? Why would he not take care of himself then?

Kel felt his nose and forehead wrinkle as he frowned further. Actually, why weren’t Sunny’s parents making sure he was taken care of? And Mewo? He was their only kid now, they should pay extra attention to him! Or… or did they know what happened, and blame him for Mari’s death — just like Hero?

A wave of nausea rose in Kel’s throat so suddenly, he choked as he barely managed to swallow it back down. Oh God… was that why Sunny stayed home… why he was able to open the door… why he wasn’t playing the piano this morning? No…

And what was that White Space song… place… thing Sunny was talking about?

Kel shook his head and forced out a puff of air as he arrived at his front door. If there was one thing he didn’t get out of Sunny, it was any ounce of denial. He never said he didn’t kill Mari. He didn’t even mention her… or Basil. Kel dug his nails into his palm. Damn it…!

He couldn’t do anything about all these questions and conclusions now. He would get to them another time. But everything that happened today cemented Kel’s decision to keep sneaking out and visiting. Visiting Sunny. Visiting everyone. Sunny needed to be taken care of. And Mewo, too. He had to be there for them. He had to smile for them. He had to do it until they could do it for each other again.

He sighed and put his hand on the knob. Sunny…

He stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“Kel.”

Kel stopped dead in his tracks at the vicious tone of his brother’s voice, as he watched him get up from the couch and stomp a couple feet in front of him. He could feel sweat dripping down his forehead already. Crap… they were home already! He was waiting for me!

Hero was still dressed in his nearly completely black suit, save for his dark gray formal shirt, and the white flower thing pinned to his jacket’s collar… the same one he was going to wear at her recital. Of course he wore that today. Of course he didn’t change even after he got home. His eyes were super red, just like the day after they found her, but they were somehow more intense this time. Obviously he would’ve been crying, but Kel knew he was beyond pissed, too.

“What the hell’s going on, Kel?? Disappearing all of a sudden like that!” he scowled. “Our parents are out looking for you right now! And you just come back home all fine like it was a normal day at the park?!”

They were looking for him? This was already worse than Kel thought it would be.

“Where were you?! Me, Aubrey, our parents, Mari’s parents… none of us saw you at the funeral!”

Kel gulped and tears welled up as he grasped his hoodie’s collar and the tie underneath. I know… I know, but I needed to see him… I needed to get answers, I needed to understand, but… I still don’t. I got nothing at all. It was awful, and I missed my chance to say goodbye. I’m sorry.

I’m sorry, Mari.

Hero glared daggers at him, chest heaving, clenched fists trembling at his sides. Hero stepped forward. Kel stepped back.

“Where were you?”

Chapter Text

The light shone through the crack in the blinds and reflected off the dusty air. The light told Aubrey that the sun was finally setting.

Her nose and eyes were red, and her face was stained with tears. She lay in bed bundled under the covers, arms around Mr. Plantegg as the two stared vacantly at the ceiling. She did the same way she had been for the past day and a half — as far as she could count. The last time she wasn’t, it was to use the bathroom and grab a glass of water. The time before that was the last time she was forced to eat “breakfast”, and the time before that she didn’t like to remember.

Of course, all of that ignored the other time she just got back from a few hours ago, that she already decided she also didn’t like to remember. So other than that, it had been the past day and a half.

She sneezed and sniffled from the dust in the air and rolled onto her side, curling around her stuffed eggplant and pressing her face into his. Tangled hair fell over him like an old blanket. As much as she didn’t like to remember, she couldn’t get her mind off them.

Mari…

Mari lying, on her bed, in her room… not moving… dead. When they were so excited to watch her and Sunny play at their first recital… Aubrey got her hair done just like Mari’s, Mari gave Aubrey her pretty blue hair tie to wear with her adorable dress, they were all going to sit in the front row and show Mari and Sunny all their support… they were going to be amazing. But then, for some reason, the front door was wide open… the violin was broken on the ground… they found her…

Then Sunny confessed to… k-killing her… and-and Basil confessed to killing her…

Aubrey was shivering.

Mari lying on a bed of beautiful flowers, protected under the glass of her beautiful casket… hands folded, eyes closed, unmoving. Knowing that when she was in her grave and buried under the ground, Aubrey was never going to see her again… she was never going to see her smile again, or talk to her again, or hear her peaceful humming and her encouraging compliments again, or lie in the safety of her arms again, or feel her running a brush through her hair again… they were never going to dye their hair pink and purple together…

Aubrey was never going to have her big sister in her life ever again……

Tears began to soak into Mr. Plantegg.

Usually, when people yelled, she was good at not shaking or crying. Better than she used to be. She still got teary-eyed, but she could hold them in until she locked herself in her room and felt safe enough to let them fall. But that was when she was used to the people yelling — and this time, she definitely wasn’t.

Aubrey was used to Kel yelling… they yelled at each other almost every day about stupid things that they’d immediately forget about five minutes later. Kel in general had a loud voice, yelling was practically his default, whether he was happy or being annoying. But that night… that night he sounded so upset when he was yelling at Hero… the fact he was yelling at Hero at all was not normal. She had never heard his voice be so uneven, either. She even thought he sounded scared, when Kel was never scared of anything. It made her miserable, when Kel yelled like that.

Aubrey wasn’t used to Hero yelling… She’d never heard him yell like that before, like he did in Mari and Sunny’s room. He was always so calm and reasonable; even when he scolded her and Kel for always getting into stupid fights, he always heard both sides and tried to resolve things peacefully. He never even raised his voice. But that night… he was screaming at Sunny — nobody was allowed to scream at Sunny — and he was screaming at Kel. He was screaming so loud, it made her ears ring. She didn’t want him yelling at her. And at the funeral… she’d never seen him like that before. She never heard him say anything like the horrible things he said today. It made her miserable, when Hero yelled.

Aubrey wasn’t used to Basil yelling… He was so soft spoken, so quiet. He never tried to cause any trouble. Even if there was a time he needed to yell, he usually let her or Hero or Mari come to his defense while he waited for all the problems to be over. She always did that for him before they met the others because he didn’t like to yell. And that night… he screamed about being the cause of the problems. And his voice sounded so scratchy and painful, too. When Hero tried to comfort him, Basil didn’t stop screaming to him that he was the one who did it, not Sunny. She didn’t know what to say. And the funeral… oh… oh God, Basil… she was so worried. It made her miserable, when Basil yelled.

Sunny didn’t yell at all… He didn’t scream his confession, he just said it with tears in his eyes. She didn’t hear Sunny talk a lot, but when she did, he talked in short sentences. And he always sounded so shy and cute, since he didn’t like talking. But he also answered clearly. She could never think of someone so quiet and thoughtful as Sunny yelling for a long time, and he didn’t… but…

Aubrey choked on a sob.

Sunny… Basil… she just… didn’t know who to believe.

She was useless. Why couldn’t she make it better?

She never could’ve imagined—

Knock, knock, knock.

Aubrey realized she was thinking about the last time she got out of bed again. She had to stop doing that. She listlessly turned over and spit a frizzy strand of hair out of her mouth. Then again, it wasn’t like she could blame herself. Her front door never got knocks. Her parents didn’t have any friends close enough to visit. She always left home on her own so none of her friends would have to pick her up, and she always visited her friends’ houses so they stayed away from hers. So her mom and dad didn’t get upset. Who could possibly be visiting now?

“Yo, Aubrey, are you in there?”

Aubrey stopped shivering and became ice. That voice…!

More knocks. Loud ones.

Why…? Why now? Out of all of them, why did it have to be him? She needed to make sure her dad didn’t answer the door. So, she sprang out of her bed, stumbling as her vision shifted red and the world spun for a moment. Catching herself and her breath, she pushed her unkempt hair out of her face, and hid Mr. Plantegg under the covers.

Aubrey raced as quietly as she could to the living room and stopped on a dime. She glanced breathlessly around the doorway, careful not to be seen, and tension left her body as she confirmed Mom wasn’t watching her dramas. Releasing a sigh of relief, she hopped over some bits of trash and made it to the front door.

Hand on the knob, she paused. She was shaking again. She didn’t want to be shaking in front of him. Why did she care about that? Why was he here? Taking a soft, deep breath, Aubrey silently opened the door, and peeked through the crack at the kid on the other side.

Kel’s eyes widened and his fist waved in the air, stuck in the process of knocking again as though she hadn’t opened the door.

“Aubrey! Hey!” he greeted as a wide, relieved grin grew across his face. He seemed… so happy to see her. It was so weird.

Was Kel so stupid that he really thought he could show up unannounced, when she hadn’t seen him at all in the past week? After he wasn’t even at Mari’s funeral today??

Aubrey swung the door open and threw her arms around Kel with a ferocity that almost knocked him on his butt. He groaned under his breath; she didn’t blame him. When was the last time Aubrey hugged Kel? When had she ever hugged Kel?? Aubrey felt him hesitate, and he wrapped his arms around her back. His baggy hoodie sleeves gave her the first sense of warmth she hadn’t felt from any person since that night. Whether it was a response to her sudden embrace or an attempt to comfort her, she didn’t know. She didn’t care. Right now, she didn’t care about any of it.

Despite all those things she thought about scolding Kel for right now, he still took the time to visit her. Even if it took longer than she wanted — than she hoped — he thought about her and wanted to see her. He was happy to see her.

Aubrey realized she’d been hugging Kel for a long time, so she slowly pulled back, wiping her eyes clean of the tears that somehow managed to slip out. When she finally looked up at him, he was still bug-eyed and speechless.

“You gonna say something, idiot?” She had to save some face in front of him.

Kel finally snapped out of his weird trance, blinking rapidly and clearing his throat. “Oh! Um, I just, err, came by to see how you were doing after everything. And uh…” Kel paused and looked at his feet. What was up with him? How could Kel of all people be at a loss for words? Kel never thought this much about what he was saying.

Was he actually trying to think before he spoke? Kel, having some self-awareness? He must be in a really bad place right now… Aubrey frowned. Oh. Maybe she shouldn’t be having those kinds of thoughts right now. It was… mean.

“And I wanted to spend some time with you,” Kel admitted, making Aubrey perk up in shock. “Just ‘cause I hadn’t visited you yet! I wanted to come by earlier, but I got… caught up with something else. But I really did! I even called your house a couple times, but nobody picked up, so…”

Aubrey’s breath caught in her throat as she balled the front of her nightgown into her fist. That was Kel?! She heard the phone ring, but she didn’t bother to get up and answer it. She was still just… dealing with so much. She didn’t think that any of her friends would take the time to call her after what happened that night. But Kel did…? Thank God neither of her parents answered it. She really couldn’t think any bad thoughts about Kel right now.

Rubbing his head, Kel winced suddenly, biting his lip. He steadied himself almost instantly with that familiar Kel smile. “So. You want to?”

“Yes!” Aubrey answered immediately, and shoved her hand over her mouth when she realized what she’d done. She looked over her shoulder into the house, saw the living room was empty, and turned back to Kel. “But let’s go somewhere else.”

Kel raised an eyebrow. “Huh? Why?”

“Trust me, it’d be better if it wasn’t here.”

“Aubrey, no offense, but you look like a wreck, are you sure you wanna—”

“Please, Kel!” Aubrey begged as she grabbed hold of his arms, ignoring the grimace on his face… and the fact that she was pleading to Kel. “Let’s just go to the fountain by the plaza or the playground— no, the old hangout spot! No one will see us there!”

Kel hung his head, suddenly looking forlorn. “No… I don’t wanna go to the hangout spot now. It’d be too much.”

Aubrey didn’t respond to that. Now that she said it out loud, he was right. Just the thought of being there threatened to break open the dam to a new wave of tears, a dam she was determined to protect for as long as she was with Kel.

“And besides,” he continued. “When I was knocking, I realized that none of us have ever been inside your house before! I’m just curious! I mean, you’ve never invited us over!”

“Yeah, and I never will! So just listen to me for once!”

“Seriously, Aubrey? I just wanna talk. And after… everything, I don’t want to risk anyone hearing what I wanna talk about. So stop being so stubborn!”

Before Aubrey could argue more, Kel pushed her hands aside, maneuvered around her, and stepped inside the house. Crap! Moving without hesitation, Aubrey quietly shut the door and proceeded to shove Kel toward her bedroom, hushing his groans and complaints. She thought he saw her looking around the trashed living room, but she silently prayed that he was just reacting to her sudden forcefulness.

Finally, they were in her room. Giving Kel a final push inside, Aubrey slammed the door, immediately wincing at her loud mistake. Her breaths were heavy. Stumbling around, she grabbed the swivel chair from the middle of her room, lodging it under the doorknob. It dawned on her that the chair would probably just roll out of the way if the door opened, but she had nothing else to block the door with and the panic made it hard to think.

She shook uncontrollably, gasping for air.

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Aubrey took deep breaths. She collapsed onto her bed, reaching under her blanket and hugging Mr. Plantegg tight as she tried willing herself to calm down. Her veins felt like they were on fire. Kel apparently took the time to gawk around her room.

“Huh,” he said as he meandered around. “Your room is… emptier than I imagined it being.”

Aubrey scoffed. “What does that mean?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. I kinda imagined you having a buncha cutesy posters so adorable that I’d wanna puke. Or huge shelves of comic books, you never pass up on buying one when we go to Hobbeez and we always get them for your birthdays. Or even more stuffed animals than Sunny. Like, bunny stuffies.” The mention of his name made Aubrey clutch Mr. Plantegg closer as she tried to push any negative feelings down.

Kel’s nose scrunched up before he let out a gross, wet sneeze and wiped the end of his sleeve across his face; he wasn’t going to hug her again. “It’s real dusty, too. How do you sleep in here?” He then looked up at the wall behind her and smiled. “The CAPT. SPACEBOY poster’s pretty cool, though. I have the same one.”

Against her feelings, Aubrey snickered. “Yeah, cause you bought the same issue.”

“Because you wouldn’t let me borrow your copy when you got it!”

“Of course I wouldn’t, there’s a hundred different ways it could get destroyed with your grubby hands!”

“Hey, my copy’s still intact! It just has an Orange Joe stain that leaked through a few pages!”

“Wow, I’m surprised.”

Aubrey and Kel found themselves chortling at each other’s usual bickering. And Aubrey liked it. She loosened her clutch on Mr. Plantegg just a little bit. For a few moments, things between them were normal. Everything was normal. She felt comfortable. They stopped and looked at each other, and remembered why they were here. Aubrey glanced away. Kel winced, squinting an eye as he rubbed his head.

Aubrey hugged Mr. Plantegg tight again. It wasn’t normal for Kel to be in her house, let alone her bedroom. And it wasn’t normal for them to be laughing when they fought; hell, that was lighter than most of their arguments. And they really shouldn’t have been laughing when… when…

Kel caught sight of something that apparently interested him. “Hey, what’s in those?”

Aubrey noticed him approaching the two open cardboard boxes at the foot of her bed and reached forward to stop him, but it was too late. He froze when he realized what was inside.

“Wait, are those Ma—”

“Yes, don’t touch them!” Aubrey’s hushed voice ordered.

“When did you get these?”

“At the funeral, where else would I have gotten them?”

Kel hissed in shock as he backed away and turned toward Aubrey. Mentioning the funeral must’ve hit a nerve, and it should’ve. Aubrey felt bad that it should’ve. She wasn’t over the feelings she had when he was at the door and she still didn’t want to scold him about it. But if he was there, he would’ve known that she got those boxes at the funeral.

After the funeral was underway, after she saw her big sister for the final time, after what happened at the funeral made her feel worse than when she got there, after she trudged behind her apathetic parents to the car with her head hung low, she was quickly approached by Mari and Sunny’s mom carrying a cardboard box with a non-taped lid. She was trying to hold herself together, but Aubrey could see her hands tremble as she carried it. She said in a heartbreakingly brittle voice that she wanted Aubrey to have them.

Aubrey opened the lid, looked inside, and saw all those cute clothes. Her accessories, her cardigans, her dresses, everything she’s ever seen Mari wear. Her eyes shot to Mari’s favorite dress — the one that also happened to be Aubrey’s favorite dress. Their mom said that there was another box filled with Mari’s cute clothes in her car that she’d grab after giving her this one. She told her that Mari always planned on giving them to Aubrey when she grew out of them. That she knew her little sister would want them, and they would look so much cuter on her. And Mari and Sunny’s mom wanted to honor that wish.

Aubrey’s lips quivered. She hugged the box as hard as she could, only letting up when she got scared she was going to crush it. She swore she could feel the scornful gaze of her own mom judging her for getting even more clothes that needed to be washed and her dad giving her a worried glance, but she didn’t care. These… these would be all she had left of her…

Aubrey was snapped out of her thoughts by Kel’s excited gasp. She spotted him looking into her pet’s pen.

“I didn’t know you had a bunny, Aubrey!” he exclaimed with sparkling eyes.

“Keep it down!” she hissed, then sighed. “Yeah, her name is Bun-Bun. I got her a few weeks ago.”

“She’s so cute!” he squeaked out as he reached in to scratch her.

“Well, of course she is. I picked her out myself.” Aubrey felt a pang in her chest. “I mean, thanks.”

“Can I hold her?”

“Eh?” The very question knocked Aubrey for a loop. “No, you can’t. She doesn’t like being held by anyone but me.”

“Oh… gotcha.” Kel tried to shrug it off, but Aubrey could sense his disappointment. Which made sense; who wouldn’t want to pick up the cutest bunny in the world? And it just occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t be so hard on him for asking that. He’d never owned a bunny before, so he wouldn’t know that bunnies don’t like being held except by owners they really trust, and even then, Bun-Bun was a special case. It took Aubrey a couple weeks to get to the point where Bun-Bun would let her hug her, and she could only do it for a couple minutes at a time. But Kel didn’t know that, so it wasn’t that bad to ask that.

And if Aubrey thought about it, Kel kinda looked like he needed her…

“You can cuddle on the ground if you want,” Aubrey conceded. Kel looked back at her with puerile glee. “She needs to get out of her pen for awhile anyways. Just put her on the ground and sit next to her. And pet her gently. I would let you give her a treat as a peace offering, but she just ate earlier.”

Kel grinned his toothy Kel grin that relaxed Aubrey once more. “Gotcha!”

He reached in before Aubrey stopped him again. “Ey ey! You have to use hand sanitizer first. It’s next to the TV.”

Kel grumbled under his breath as he shambled over to the table in the back of the room. He could complain all he wanted, but he wouldn’t let his hands dirty Bun-Bun’s perfect snow white fur that she brushed before she left today. As he pumped sanitizer into his hands, Aubrey noticed his eyes were squinting. It wasn’t bright in her room. He looked like… he was in pain. He looked like that earlier a few times, too. Was that why he groaned when she hugged him? Was he hurt??

“Why is your corkboard empty?” Kel’s question knocked Aubrey out of her head.

“Huh?”

“Your corkboard looks so boring,” he said as he wiped his hands clean. “You should pin, like, pictures ‘n drawings ‘n stuff to it. It’d be more… you.”

“Oh. Yeah… yeah, I probably should.” Aubrey tossed her concern aside. Maybe she was just seeing things in Kel that weren’t there.

Kel bent over Bun-Bun’s pen and reached inside to pick her up, but suddenly, he stopped and narrowed his eyes at Aubrey. “She’s not gonna do anything to me when I pick her up, right? Like, you didn’t train her to bite me or anythin’, did you?”

Aubrey slapped her hands to her cheeks in feigned shock. “Oh no, you foiled my plan,” she whined, making Kel bark out a laugh. Aubrey smiled. “She won’t do anything mean. But she isn’t used to other people, so don’t be surprised if she doesn’t snuggle you back.”

Nodding, Kel reached in again, picking up the little floofer and setting her on the floor with surprising gentleness. Catching the eye of Aubrey, she immediately formed into a loaf. Kel started to lower himself, hissing and grunting with eyes shut tight as his arms and knees shook. He finally managed to hit the floor with a sharp sigh.

A pained sigh.

Kel sat next to Bun-Bun criss cross, acting as if just the simple act of sitting wasn’t an ordeal, and softly caressed the top of her head with his fingers. To Aubrey’s surprise, Bun-Bun melted into Kel’s hand right away, pulling her ears back together and pushing her head right up against his palm, as though she could sense Kel wasn’t going to do anything stupid. Kel kept petting her, occasionally pausing on her back with a strange look of worry.

“What’s wrong?” Aubrey asked, which seemed to snap Kel out of the clouds, and he plastered on a big grin.

“Yeah, I’m fine!” he chirped. I… didn’t ask a yes or no question. He looked back down at Bun-Bun, whose eyes began to droop. “She’s so soft. And she’s really calm.” Kel gave Aubrey an insufferable smirk. “She’s not a people person, my butt.”

“Well, I didn’t know what to expect! She doesn’t like anyone but me, not even my parents!” Aubrey shot back as she crossed her arms over Mr. Plantegg.

Kel laughed, and the sound calmed Aubrey down again. This was the calmest she’d been in what felt like a long time. And she couldn’t believe Kel of all people was the one to do it. That Kel was the one to come over and invite himself inside. That Kel would want to give his time to her. She would have to educate him on bunnies, though, it seemed.

Aubrey looked down at herself. Then again, Kel was probably the most likely to do it. He was the one who walked her home that night and only he saw her throw up over her front yard, so he might wonder if she was feeling better. And with the state her other friends were in, she couldn’t imagine them giving up their time to see her. With Hero so angry that he couldn’t think straight about anything but his newfound anger at everything, Sunny not showing up at the funeral because he… and Basil…

Basil…

“I really should pin pictures to my corkboard, shouldn’t I?” Aubrey decided softly, making Kel turn to her. Aubrey looked back with a sad smile. “They’d probably help a lot with everything happening. Basil could have extra photos that aren’t in his photo album, don’t you think? He took pictures so often, there’s no way all of them could fit in there.”

Instead of responding with a laugh and carrying on the conversation like she expected him to, Kel suddenly broke eye contact, and fell silent. Aubrey looked at him with concern. Kel could always carry on a conversation, whether it was appropriate to or not. He couldn’t stand his surroundings being completely quiet, so he’d always fill the air with some kind of noise if it meant he didn’t have to deal with the silence. But now, he was making no attempt to make any comment about their friend and his hobby.

Now that Aubrey thought about it, though, that was even weirder because Kel didn’t know—

“Actually… speaking of Basil,” Kel said suddenly, making Aubrey perk up. Kel gulped and looked down at Bun-Bun snoozing against his hand. He looked like he was thinking about his words again. So weird for Kel. “I, uh, actually wanted to talk about him.”

“Huh? What about Basil?” Aubrey inquired. There was… a lot to talk about when it came to him, really. Did he know…?

“Well, not just Basil,” Kel added, nervously twiddling with his hoodie’s drawstring. “I wanted to talk about Sunny, too.” He paused. “And… and Mari.”

Aubrey’s jaw dropped. As she caught it, she audibly gulped. “Why do you want to talk about Mari?” What could he possibly have to say about her? And talking about those three together…

“Well… it’s…” Kel sighed irritably. “Gosh, I dunno where to start with this. There’s so much that happened this week, it’s hard to pick what to talk about first.” He leaned his chin against his free hand, and let out an involuntary whimper.

Aubrey couldn’t ignore it anymore. She was certain. “Hey, what’s up with you? You’ve been hissing and groaning ever since you got here. And you’re moving slower than normal.”

Kel looked like a deer in headlights as his eyes darted across the room. “Oh! That’s, uh—” He slapped on a pained grin. Not his grin. “That’s nothing for you to worry about, Aubrey! I’m peachy!”

His grin wobbled and immediately fell. Aubrey tilted her head. Geez, he couldn’t keep up his act for more than a few seconds. What was up with him?

“W-Well…” Kel said with defeat. “Before I came over… me and, uh…” He gulped. “Me and Hero got in a fight.”

Aubrey blinked in surprise. “You… and Hero got in a fight?”

That was surprising, if only a little bit. Yeah, Hero was super mad and yelled at Kel the night they found her, and Kel yelled right back at him, which was already weird. And she knew Hero was still mad when she saw him at the funeral. But it was still surprising to hear Hero of all people getting into a fight. And with Kel, of all people.

“Yeah, it was… Not good,” he replied. “‘M, uh… still hurt.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Kel raised a brow. “Okay?”

“You’ll feel better soon, right? So there’s no point talking about it.” Kel let out a puff of air, seemingly relieved he didn’t have to talk about the fight with his brother that hurt him. Aubrey gave him a good stern expression. “Why do you want to talk about Mari?”

“Oh! Oh yeah.” Kel rapidly scanned the room as he pet her bunny. Aubrey stared at him, deadpan. Did he forget what he apparently came here for already? He took a deep breath and sat up straighter, but kept his hand on Bun-Bun, like he was using her for support. Aubrey could understand that. She used her for support, too, whenever she hid away in her room. Bun-Bun was a happy, warm little fuzzball that made everything around Aubrey disappear when she watched her hop and twist around the room or when she nuzzled cozily in her lap. What was it Mari called it… grounding?

Kel cleared his throat and Aubrey was ready to listen. “So. The day after Mari… y’know.”

“Died,” Aubrey said bluntly. “Just say the day after Mari died.”

Kel was too stunned to speak for a moment. “Uh, yeah. Well, the day after, I… went to visit Basil.”

Aubrey perked up. “What?? You visited Basil? How was he?” Was he anything like he was at the funeral?

“Uh, bad,” Kel deadpanned, as if it was a dumb question. Which, no, it wasn’t. “He wasn’t leaving his room at all. His grandma said that he wouldn’t talk to her or even look at her when he got home. Which isn’t like Basil at all…”

He was right about that, at least.

“It took him a long time to open the door when I knocked. He only came out when I said I wanted to talk about Sunny and if he really did it…”

Silence.

“And? Did you?” Aubrey prodded. He couldn’t say that and just stop there.

“Well, yeah, we did. And it…” Another pause. Too much pausing. “And our talk didn’t really go well. He was on edge. And he told me about some really weird stuff about Sunny and… and Mari.”

That made Aubrey tilt her head. Weird stuff about Sunny and Mari? Weird how?

“And because of that, I’ve been trying to visit Sunny all week.” He was trying all week? “I kept knocking on his door every day, but for so long, he didn’t answer.”

At that moment, Kel took his hand away from Bun-Bun and rubbed a hand over his closed knuckles. Aubrey noticed how scuffed they were — on both of his hands. All just from knocking? Is that possible? Did it hurt when he was knocking on her door?

“He did answer, eventually, when I said something about Basil. And he… he was doing really bad.”

“Wait, when did he answer?” Aubrey wondered.

Kel immediately avoided eye contact as a drop of sweat rolled down his temple, as if the answer would get him in trouble. That only confirmed Aubrey’s suspicion. Because there was only one time he would see Sunny that would get him in trouble. He eventually gave in with a sigh and pet Bun-Bun’s back again. “The… day of the funeral.”

Aubrey clutched Mr. Plantegg’s head and glared at Kel. She knew it.

“But-But that’s another thing I wanted to talk about!” he suddenly stuttered. That had Aubrey confused. So he was planning on confessing that?

“He let me inside and he was really worse off. He was really pale and tired… and his elbows and knees were bleeding and I don’t know why—”

“He was bleeding??” Aubrey gasped.

“Yeah! A-And he didn’t tell me why. He wouldn’t say anything. And he wasn’t taking care of Mewo and clearly not eating, but…” Kel narrowed his eyes in what looked like confusion. Not pain this time. “In the entire week, I’ve been hearing Sunny… I’ve been hearing him play the piano.”

What? “The piano? Mari’s piano?”

“What other piano is there?” Kel said sarcastically.

“Shut up, I just don’t get it! Why would Sunny be playing her piano, he never got the hang of it.”

Kel dropped his head and put his hand around Bun-Bun’s body. Aubrey closed her mouth tight, also keeping an eye on his hand to make sure he didn’t move her bunny. Did he know why Sunny was…?

“Well, at first, I thought it was because he really, really missed Mari, cause I heard it the entire week and he was playing this really nice song pretty good… but…” Kel took a deep, shaky breath. Was it out of pain again… or was he trying to contain his feelings?

Kel continued. “But when I asked him for his side of the story, he asked me what I was talking about. Like he didn’t remember what happened.” He shook his head rapidly. “And that’s so weird, isn’t it? Why would he play because he missed Mari if he didn’t remember what happened?”

“I mean…” Aubrey hesitated. “He probably does remember what happened. But it just hurts so much that he tries to forget it.”

“That’s what I thought, too, but then there’s Sunny and Mari’s parents.”

“Their parents?”

“Yeah. They weren’t home, obviously. They were at the funeral.”

“Well, duh.”

“And that was the first time Sunny answered the door. And… that was the first time I didn’t hear the piano playing when I visited the other times.”

Aubrey raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh…?”

“And-and he was still home! I know I knocked on his door, but I didn’t actually expect him to actually be home! Not when his own sister’s funeral was…!”

Aubrey was getting more and more uneasy the longer he talked. What did this have to do with Sunny and Mari’s parents? If there was a point he was driving at, she’d really like him to say it already. And… “I mean, why would Sunny be at Mari’s funeral? Everyone thinks he’s the one who…”

Kel stared nervously. Aubrey couldn’t say it. Even though she berated him for it earlier, now she was the one who couldn’t say what happened to Mari. Because she didn’t know if she could really believe it. She didn’t know if she could believe that Sunny would do something like that.

“Everyone… including their parents, huh?” Kel said.

“What?”

“Their parents probably think he did it, too.”

Aubrey struggled to find a way to respond. “W-What do you mean? What else would they think if—”

“And they’re forcing him to stay in the house!”

Aubrey didn’t reply.

“They think he did it and they’re forcing him to stay home from the funeral, and they’re forcing him not to leave the house! They clearly aren’t taking care of him because he was starving and bleeding when I got there! They aren’t taking care of Mewo, either!”

Mewo?

“And they’re forcing him to play the piano! Day in and day out, I’ve heard him playing it without stopping once, and the one time he isn’t, they aren’t there—”

“Kel, you’re getting too loud—”

“They blame him for her death and because of that, they’re completely torturing him! He doesn’t de-MMPH—”

When Aubrey realized where she was again, she was standing above Kel, bending down with her hand on his mouth. Kel seemed bewildered, and she didn’t understand why. She told him he was being too loud! Bun-Bun blinked her eyes open, got out of her loaf, and gave Aubrey’s other hand holding Mr. Plantegg a gentle lick. Aubrey eyed her and immediately deflated before she moved Mr. Plantegg to hold under her arm and softly scratched her bunny’s snout. Bun-Bun closed her eyes in content.

“Keep it down…!” Aubrey hissed and took her hand of Kel’s mouth. He exhaled and nodded.

“Right…”

Aubrey reluctantly backed up, sat back down on her bed, and pulled Mr. Plantegg back to her chest. Kel seemed to be taking his time to breathe and pet Bun-Bun, who closed her eyes again. Aubrey had never heard Kel so freaked out like that before. Why was he so freaked out?

“But… yeah. That just…”

Aubrey only hummed in response. “Yeah, all that’s…” She didn’t want to talk about that. “So what does that stuff have to do with Mari?”

Kel lifted his head and raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“You said Basil said weird stuff about Sunny and Mari. And that’s why you visited Sunny.”

“Oh! Uh, right…” He said while rubbing the back of his head. What, did he forget that he talked about that or something? “I mean, I was going to visit Sunny anyways, but… Well, the stuff Basil said was more about Mari… and how she was treating Sunny.”

Aubrey tilted her head with a “Hm?”

“Basil said that he didn’t want to say anything, but apparently, she made him practice all the time. That she was never happy with his playing that she made him practice the violin so much that his fingers were bleeding!” Kel’s voice was cracking. He was really upset.

“Oh no…” Aubrey gasped with sympathy, putting her hand over her mouth. “He must’ve been in a ton of trouble to get punished like that.”

Kel shook his head. “He wasn’t…” He shot up to look at Aubrey. “Wait, what?”

Oh. Oh, crap…

Aubrey scoffed. She dropped her head to the side and threw on a hopefully convincing smile. “Oh, nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She looked back at him. “So why did that happen?”

Kel looked at her like she had two heads. “Aubrey, he… he wasn’t being punished.”

“Um…”

“Apparently, Mari… well, Sunny thought that Mari thought he wasn’t good enough to play at the recital. That’s what Basil said…”

What? But Sunny was amazing at the violin! Mari wouldn’t think that he wasn’t good enough! They saw that at all the practices they were allowed to watch. She’d recognize how great he is! That didn’t sound like her. “Oh…”

Kel didn’t talk for a few seconds, looking at her as if he expected her to respond. “Um…” Aubrey drawled. “I mean, that doesn’t sound like her, but… if he didn’t want to play, then…”

“What? I— Aubrey, what are you saying? What she was doing… wasn’t okay!”

“…Huh?”

Kel frowned and shook his head in some kind of disbelief. “What she was doing to him wasn’t okay. Just because he wasn’t feeling good about the recital, because he didn’t want to perform? It wouldn’t be okay for her to punish him just because he didn’t want to play! And that’s not even what she was doing, anyway! That isn’t okay… Especially not… like that!”

That being…

What was he saying? But, that was…

What he was describing was pretty much just the same as… same as…

Aubrey slowly lowered her head and her hair fell over her eyes.

“O-Oh…”

Kel looked to have diverted his attention to something not important. “Aubrey? What’s—”

“I mean, never mind. Forget I said anything.” She didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

Kel got up faster than he sat down and tried to approach her. No. “Aubrey, you can—”

She didn’t want to talk about this anymore.

“It doesn’t matter, Kel!” Aubrey was on her feet, dropping Mr. Plantegg on the ground. “God, you’re so annoying! Why can’t you just… why are you telling me this stuff about Mari anyway?! You’re making her sound like the bad guy here!”

“What? No, that’s not—”

“Telling me that she was treating Sunny bad?! No, she wouldn’t do that! Not Mari! Y- Hero was right, you’re painting her as the evil one when she was the one that was killed! Why?! You — do you hate her that much?!”

Kel looked like he was gonna keel over. He opened his mouth, but she wouldn’t let him talk.

“You didn’t! You didn’t understand her at all! You didn’t love her like I love her! If you did, then you’d get that she did everything she did because she loved Sunny! And he killed her!”

“She loved him and he killed her!”

All in a moment, Aubrey collapsed to her knees on the dirty ground, sobbing as her wrists fruitlessly wiped away the tears. She could see Bun-Bun standing up and taking a few steps toward her. She saw Kel’s feet in front of her, too, but there was no movement. He made no noise. Nothing to indicate he was going to comfort her. Why would Aubrey think he would? …Why did she want him to?

Aubrey saw Kel’s hands pick up her bunny, his feet step over to her pen, and gently place her back inside. Without another word, his feet sped to the other side of the room, the wheels of the swivel chair rolled away from its spot, and he shut the door, leaving Aubrey to cry all alone. She thought she heard an older man’s voice yell out to him before another door slammed.

Oh, no… please, no…

The next moment, her bedroom door swung open again, this time a pair of dark dress shoes entering her vision.

“Aubrey!” her dad yelled, before shrinking to a threatening whisper. “What’s going on? I just saw a boy run out of your bedroom! Wasn’t he that Kel kid I met last week?!”

Aubrey didn’t answer. She was still heaving with tears.

His voice got scary. “Tell me what he was doing in your room! You know he isn’t allowed here! Do you know what your mother would think if she found out a boy was hanging out in your room? That you were doing who-knows-what together?! What is wrong with you?!”

“I-I’m—” she blubbered, but she didn’t make an effort to actually be understood. “I-I’m sor-sorry…” And she broke back down, wrapping her arms around her waist and letting the tears drop to the floor.

Dad didn’t yell again, like usual. He just let out a heavy sigh. “No, I-I’m sorry, I can’t be…” He dropped his gaze toward Mr. Plantegg on the ground. “Did he do something to you?”

“N-No…” She didn’t think Kel did something to her. Did he? He did do something, but…

“Then what happened?”

“…”

After what felt like forever, Dad sighed and stepped out of the room. “I-I’ll keep this from your mother. She didn’t seem to notice him…”

Aubrey nodded without a word and Dad clicked the door into place. Immediately, she dove into Mr. Plantegg right against Bun-Bun’s pen, and pushed her wet face into her plushie to muffle her neverending sobs.

Why was this happening to her? She just lost her big sister and role model. She went to her funeral today! How was it possible to feel even worse than she did before? Kel… what was Kel trying to do? Did he really just come here to talk Mari down? And Sunny? Did Sunny really do so bad that Mari would do something like that? Is that why he killed her? But he said it was an accident. It was an accident, but he killed her.

And Basil… Kel barely mentioned Basil. He only mentioned that he talked to him, but then he only talked about Sunny. He didn’t tell her anything about how Basil was doing. He must’ve been doing awful. But she didn’t know all of it.

For some reason, Aubrey had a feeling that Kel didn’t say everything he wanted to say. No, he definitely didn’t say everything he wanted to say. There was a lot more. But he left before he could. Because she was screaming at him. That was her fault, wasn’t it? It was all her fault.

Aubrey sniffled and turned around to look at Bun-Bun staring up at her in her pen. She looked… sad. Ears drooped on both sides of her head, eyes squinted, hunched over. That was her very sad pose. Kel was so kind to her. He pet her so gently and gave her space and she warmed up to him so quickly. But he had to stop petting her because Aubrey practically forced him to leave. Bun-Bun was sad because Kel wasn’t petting her anymore and she had to go back into her pen. She hated being in her pen for a long time.

And she couldn’t even take her out to cuddle her on the floor, when she really really wanted to. What if Dad came back and saw her out at this hour?

Aubrey couldn’t do anything. She didn’t do anything to help or comfort anyone. She found herself laying on her side, back up against the pen, and making no effort to move the rest of the night. She let herself use Mr. Plantegg as a pillow. He soaked up her tears until sunrise.

Everyone hated her.

Creeeeaaak~

The screech of her locker opening made Aubrey cringe. It was much louder than usual. Everything was so loud today. She didn’t pay attention to anything in her first classes. Didn’t even remember how many she took so far. Just laid her head in her arms while random muffled voices talked all around her. She didn’t care about what they said; they weren’t any of the voices of her friends. …Friends?

She looked in the small mirror on the inside of her locker door. The yellow hair tie and yellow-themed polka dot dress didn’t look very cute on her. Her hair wasn’t styled at all and the hair tie was barely visible, her baggy eyes were empty, she was too tired, she didn’t care. The dress didn’t look cute on her.

It looked cuter on Mari.

Then again, it wasn’t like she was trying to look cute today… she didn’t even really want to come to school today… but her dad made her get up… and…

As she opened her backpack, voices started filtering in.

“Could he really do that…? I mean, he’s her brother!”
“Mari was always so happy, though. And Sunny never seemed like it.”
“Yeah, he was always quiet and didn’t respond to much… who knows what was going on in his head all this time.”

Aubrey turned her head back to see three of her classmates from last period she couldn’t remember the names of talking about something they shouldn’t be talking about.

“You think he killed her on purpose? Why?”
“Who knows?”

Aubrey clutched her backpack and turned to two different students.

“The two of them were going to play in that recital together. Maybe he didn’t want to?”
“But that’s insane! To kill her just because he didn’t want to play an instrument?”
“To be honest, he always seemed like a creep.”

Aubrey looked at two other students when they spit something downright rotten.

“Maybe he was provoked?”
“Provoked? What do you mean?”
“She did something bad to him and he killed her in self defense. She gave him a reason to.”
“Don’t say stupid things like that!”

Aubrey threw her stupid school books inside the locker and slammed the door with a bang! before making her way to the playground. She could feel their eyes on her.

“What’s her problem?”
“Oh wait… They were friends, weren’t they?”
“Crap. Imagine learning your friend killed another one of your other friends…”

Aubrey could still hear them talking, but she filtered them out as she sulked through the double doors and onto the back steps of the playground. She stood there numbly observing other students going about their day; walking around the lot, sitting on the benches, playing on the courts, talking to each other… probably gossiping with each other. Nothing tragic happened to them, so they could still live their lives.

She instinctively found herself standing on her toes, scanning her eyes across the basketball court, wondering if she would spot Kel…

Oh! Aubrey’s shoulders hunched in excitement when she spotted him shooting hoops and talking with a few other kids, though it didn’t look like Kel was talking too much. He seemed focused on his playing. But Aubrey was just happy to see him here…!

“…”

Aubrey’s smile fell. Her shoulders sunk as she sighed and dropped her feet. She didn’t know why she thought about waving to him to get his attention… or why she thought he’d wanna talk to her. She completely screwed things up yesterday.

And if he found out what happened between her and Basil when she visited him before school… Kel would definitely not want to talk to her.

Aubrey plodded toward an empty table and dropped her backpack on the seat. She fell forward, not caring that it hurt, and rested her head in her arms with a silent sigh. She didn’t pack any lunch. She didn’t feel like eating whatever scraps were left around the house. It wasn’t like she was putting together particularly filling lunches for herself before the incident. Her annoying grumbling stomach reminded her that she didn’t eat anything yesterday either. So what? What was the point?

She just laid down alone with her thoughts.

Her thoughts of Kel’s visit yesterday.

Her thoughts of her visit to Basil’s house before school.

Oh God. How could she have messed up that bad? What was wrong with her?

Why couldn’t she help him?

She always knew how to talk with Basil. They knew each other since they were really little, before she even met their other friends. He was always shy, sensitive, and cheery, but curled in on himself whenever he was super nervous and scared. So when he was, she knew to always to be extra honest and supportive, but not come off too strong, and to always listen until he stopped talking.

But… today, none of her support seemed to comfort him. She couldn’t think of a way to help him… now that she thought about it, did she really listen to what he said? She heard every word, but… Mari once told her that there was more to listening than just hearing the words they said… did Aubrey not hear Basil enough?

No… she definitely didn’t. In all their years of friendship, Aubrey had never seen Basil anywhere close to like that before. And whatever she did, it made things worse.

She made things worse.

How could she?

“Hey.”

Hm? Aubrey raised her head up to the source of the noise with squinted eyes. A girl with red glasses was standing there, hands in her blue hoodie’s pockets. Aubrey knew this was one of her classmates, but she couldn’t remember her name. She was useless for that, too.

“Aubrey, right?” the girl asked. She remembered Aubrey’s name, though. How nice. She didn’t respond.

“I, uh, kinda wanted to make sure you were okay,” the girl continued, a glint of sweat visible on her brow. Aubrey scrunched her eyebrows. “I saw you running away. I, uh… heard what people were saying about your pals. The murder.”

Aubrey turned away from the girl and laid her head back down. This was exactly what she was trying to avoid. More rumors.

“And, y’know, I hope you’re ignoring what they’re saying. They’re way outta line.”

Aubrey lifted her head back up, eyes more open.

“I mean,” the girl explained in a surprisingly critical voice as she sat down next to Aubrey. “Talking about a classmate killing someone when they don’t know anything? It’s creepy as hell. And it was his sister that he killed, right? That makes it creepier.”

Aubrey was listening now. Even if it felt wrong to call the incident “creepy” instead of “miserable.”

“People shouldn’t be talking about classmates like that. It’s just a really shitty thing that happened. I’m sorry your friend died that way.”

“…Thanks, um…” Aubrey mumbled. Huh. She felt herself getting less upset.

“Kim,” the girl said. Kim! That was it.

“Right,” Aubrey mumbled.

“…Sooo, where are your other pals?” she suddenly asked.

And Aubrey’s slightly better feeling was dissipated once again. She bit her lip and slammed her head back down to hide her building tears. She was so tired of crying. “…They’re not here right now.”

“Oh. That seems… weird. Shouldn’t you be together at a time like this?”

Aubrey tried to scoff, but it came out choked. Why would they be? How could Kel want to be near her after she yelled at him, when he was pouring his heart out for the first time in their lives? How could Hero want to be near her when he was so angry that he couldn’t pay attention to her at the funeral? How could Basil want to be near her after what happened before school today? How could Sunny want to be near her when… when…

“Woah, hey, I’m sorry!” Kim retracted with her hands up. “I get it, friends can be pretty weird.”

“You have no idea,” Aubrey muffled. ‘Weird’ was an understatement at the moment.

Kim snickered. “Yeah, my friends are a buncha weirdos.” She shut one eye. “Well, I mean, the kids I hang out with sometimes. I dunno if I’d call them friends.”

Kim then went on to list the kids she hung out with sometimes and why they were so weird: Charlie, who was aloof but tagged along with their antics for reasons unknown; Mikhael, whose family prided themselves on their bakery at Othermart, but he wanted nothing to do with them; Angel, who enjoyed picking random fights with people to prove he was strong because he was terrified of his older sister… that one hit a little too close to home.

“My bro Vance hangs out with us, too. He’s the most normal of them, besides his addiction to taffy. I think he just sticks around to make sure we don’t do anything stupid. He’s definitely saved Angel from fights with people that would’ve snapped him like a twig,” Kim gushed as she readjusted her glasses. Despite how she tried to brush them off, Kim was smiling big when she talked about that group. She clearly liked them, despite not spending much time with them.

“…Why are you telling me this?” Aubrey asked out of the minimal curiosity she had.

“I dunno,” Kim admitted with a shoulder shrug. “Seemed like you needed it.”

That was… sweet. They hardly ever talked to each other, and Kim thought Aubrey needed someone to talk to after the incident. That, or she pitied her. Aubrey couldn’t tell. But it was still sweet that she cared enough to do that. Hearing what Kim said, though, she couldn’t call them “friends” if they didn’t do literally everything together every day of the week. She couldn’t call them that like Aubrey could call her friends that before everything was destroyed. Even so…

“Heh,” Aubrey chuckled with no humor behind it. “That all seems pretty normal compared to my friends.”

“Oh yeah? What are they like?”

Aubrey didn’t respond.

“Is… this about what Sunny did?”

“It’s more than that!” Aubrey suddenly shouted, but immediately clapped her hands over her mouth. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. She gulped and took her hands off her mouth. “It’s none of your business.”

Kim unhunched her shoulders and sneered crookedly at herself. “You’re right, it’s not.”

Aubrey sniffled and wiped her nose. “I just… miss Mari a lot.”

Kim stared at her.

“Sunny… I want to be angry at him. I want to hate him! But I feel terrible for that, because I don’t want to believe he did it! I don’t know if I can! Sunny… Sunny wouldn’t do something that horrible to Mari! He loved her more than anything! I know he did! But…”

He just sounded so sure. And… and Kel was right, Basil sounded sure, too! Aubrey didn’t believe him at first, Basil couldn’t do something that horrible, either, but… when she saw Basil this morning… she didn’t know what to think anymore. She didn’t know what to think about any of them.

“Everything’s broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

She tightened her fist and her mouth moved of its own volition.

“Why did it have to happen? Why did everything get so messed up? Why didn’t Mari think Sunny was good enough? Couldn’t she see that he was trying his best? He was doing everything he could! Was there nothing he could do to be good enough? Was he just broken?”

Aubrey’s fist shook the table, eliciting a jump from Kim. Aubrey forced a strained gasp, before realizing she didn’t have the energy to cry anymore. So, she just wiped her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“It doesn’t matter anyway… like I said, they’re not here,” she lamented.

“Yikes… Sounds like you maybe just need to get your mind off things for a little while,” Kim advised.

“…Yeah… Maybe…” Aubrey then inhaled a sharp gasp when she realized what she said and turned to Kim, who leaned back in surprise. “D-Don’t tell anyone what I said…!”

Kim motioned zipping her mouth. “Lips are sealed! Promise.”

Aubrey turned away and the two girls sat in silence, surrounded by the sounds of rustling leaves and unintelligible gossip. Aubrey could feel Kim staring at her nervously, maybe wanting to find some way to comfort her. To be honest, Aubrey didn’t feel like she could be comforted right now. She didn’t even know why she mulled about all that to Kim. It wasn’t like she knew her, or would even know what all of that meant. She shouldn’t have been that honest about her friends’ low points with someone who didn’t understand. Aubrey should’ve been saying all this to Kel, or to Hero. She really wanted to! But she couldn’t… not to them… Everything was ruined.

“Hey, you know it’s lunch time, right?” Kim asked all of a sudden. Aubrey turned and looked at her with a quirked brow.

“Um… yeah?” she answered.

“Well, it doesn’t look like you’ve eaten anything.”

Brilliant observation.

“I’m not hungry,” Aubrey claimed, but her grumbling stomach gave her away. Kim rolled her eyes at her and laughed.

“Yeah, clearly.”

“W-Well, I didn’t feel like making anything.”

Not there was anything to make, anyways.

“Hmmm…” Kim put her hand to her chin in thought. “How about I take you to Gino’s. Me and Vance can buy you a slice!”

“Pizza? I dunno,” Aubrey hesitated. It didn’t sound that appetizing after days of barely eating.

“Or a sandwich, whatever you want. But everyone’s gotta eat,” Kim insisted.

“But I… I dunno if I feel like it…” Kim’s smile fell at Aubrey’s hesitancy. She really didn’t feel like eating. “Besides, my dad won’t like it if he found out I snuck away—”

“Pssh, oh please, don’t worry about that!” Kim interrupted joyfully. “Vance and I do this all the time. Maybe I can get my group to tag along, too! It’s clear that you’re starvin’, so come on!” Kim got up and extended her hand with a big grin. “No one will even care!”

Aubrey stared at her, and found energy inside herself she didn’t know she had. She still wasn’t sure. She didn’t know if she could actually get her mind off her friends, how they’re reacting to everything…

How they’re treating each other…

But it seemed like Kim wasn’t budging. Might as well give in and let her do what she wanted. If only to get her to stop poking at her. And besides, she was right…

Aubrey smiled sadly, and took Kim’s hand.

“Sure… maybe just a slice…”

No one will even care…