Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sunny Suzuki was twenty-two years old and a published author – and looking back, he had no idea how he’d gotten to this point.

All he knew was that he was now sat in a large, crowded library, surrounded by colourful children’s books of varying shapes and sizes all lining the vibrant walls, and was watching as a lady he didn’t know narrated his story to a group of wonderous, enthralled children. They gazed at the pages in awe as the lady turned each one, the illustrations leaping off the page and into all the kids’ sparkling eyes, listening in awe to the spellbinding tales of Omori and his best friends. The kids exclaimed and giggled in all the right places as the fantastical friend-group explored a vast and unusual world, full of planets and forests and picnics and underwater cities, and made friends with all the funny little creatures that lived there.

Sunny listened from the corner of the room, eyes trained on the open page that was being shown around to the giddy, babbling audience, and found himself feeling the strangest feeling he’d ever felt in his life. He couldn’t put his finger on it: it wasn’t sadness or grief, he knew those feelings intimately, and could certainly tell when he was feeling them. But he also wasn’t exactly nostalgic or prideful about his work either. And it wasn’t that age-old empty numbness either – he was definitely feeling something.

“And so, the four friends ventured onward, through the creepy, crawly forest,” the lady continued, voice dropping to a dramatic whisper as her gaze swept over her little audience. “Bugs scuttled through the long, winding weeds at their feet, and dangled from their sticky webs in the looming, pink and purple trees. Omori felt afraid, but bravely marched forward anyway. Basil was counting on them.”

One of the little girls in the group sat cross-legged on the floor stuck her hand up in the air, wiggling her fingers about with an air of impatient urgency. The lady paused and looked down at her with a kind smile.

“Yes?”

“Isn’t basil the leafy stuff your mom puts on your dinner?” she asked, head cocked to the side. A few of her friends all nodded curiously, and all of a sudden, fifteen wide, staring pairs of eyes were all trained on Sunny.

Sunny blinked, trying to quickly drag himself from his thoughts. He glanced at the lady with his book in a silent plea for help, but she was also looking equally as intrigued, smiling at him encouragingly. Sunny cleared his throat a little, tongue getting all dry as it always did whenever faced with talking in public. Still, he bravely marched forward anyway.

“It’s a funny name,” Sunny managed, as collectedly as he could manage. “I picked it because I thought it went well with Basil’s love for flowers and plants.”

The little girl whose hand had shot up nodded contentedly, then whipped her head around to ogle back at the lady and the book. The fourteen other ogling gazes followed suit, and the lady read on.

Sunny released a long, quiet breath until his lungs were empty, letting himself untense his shoulders. For the millionth time since his dumb little passion-project had picked up some popularity, he was really regretting not choosing different names for his ‘characters’.

“ ‘Eek!’ Hero cried, hopping away from a big, stretchy web and waving his arms all over the place. His little brother imitated him teasingly from behind, which made Aubrey laugh. Then, she shook her head importantly and placed her hands on her hips.” The lady turned the page, showing off the full-page illustration of the next scene.

Sunny remembered drawing that one – it had taken a long time to figure out all the precise details of Pyrefly forest, and the trees kept looking off. Turns out, not returning to your unhealthy, vivid state of imaginative denial in six years fogged up a lot of the memories of it. It had taken a whole two days of trying and erasing and trying and erasing before any of those damn leaves looked right.

“ ‘Stop messing around, Kel!” Aubrey ordered, brushing off a bright pink leaf that had fluttered down and landed on her shoulder. ‘We need to stay focused. We need to keep looking!’ ”

Sunny felt his phone buzz in his pocket and carefully reached inside to grab it, cautious not to bring too much attention to himself in case it sparked any disapproving looks from the horde of parents standing guard in the entrance to the kids’ section. Glancing subtly at the screen, he saw it was a notification from his mom. He was about to open it when the lady called his name.

Sunny startled and looked up at that sickly sweet smile.

“Another question for you, Mr Shibata,” she sung, nodding at a little boy sat at the back of the group. He fiddled nervously with his hands in his lap and couldn’t seem to bring himself to look up and hold eye-contact with anyone as he spoke.

“Um. Why is Hero still scared of the spiders if Omori isn’t anymore?” he mumbled, so quiet Sunny could hardly make out the words. But he could, just about, and he tried for a small smile at the little boy. He waited for a second, thinking about an appropriate answer, before opening his mouth.

“I think it takes some people longer to get over their fears than others.”

“Quite true!” the lady agreed, nodding fervently. “Think about it, children… who here is afraid of heights?”

About a third of the kids put their hands up, some meek as they sheepishly admitted defeat, and some that just seemed excited to be involved. The lady snapped the book closed with a flourish and leaned forward over her knees, eyes sparkling with a challenge. The kids seemed to lean in with her, entranced smiles splitting across chubby, rosy cheeks.

“Alrighty! Now, how many of you truthfully feel you could have climbed that huge ladder up into Otherworld like Omori and his friends did?”

Two of the hands dropped away from the crowd. The lady beamed as she stood up, propping the book up on the shelf behind her, surrounded by all those paper placards reading loose variations of ‘best-selling children’s story!’ and ‘Saturday morning story-time special!’.

“That was brave of you two to admit.” Sunny watched as the lady sat back down on her chair. Did she ever stop smiling? Working with kids must be exhausting. “But now you can see – while some of you may find it easier to work through a fear if its to help a friend in need, others may find it a little harder. And that’s okay, too!”

The lady turned to Sunny, gesturing to him warmly. Again, all those eyes latched on to him, and he felt all-too out of place amongst all these magical, pastel fairy-tales and scribbled, paper butterflies surrounding him in a tornado of childish whimsy; something he was pretty sure he had completely lost quite a while ago now.

“I think that’s what one of the biggest messages of Mr Shibata’s wonderful book really is. Coming to terms with your fears in your own time.”

Ha. She had no idea.

“Anyway! I think that’s enough for today.”

“Awww…” a rowdy little boy whined, dragging the sound out and drumming his knuckles on the carpet. He’d been interrupting and fidgeting and showing off to his friends the whole reading so far. “But I want to hear more.”

“Well, Jeremy, you will have to come back next week. Thank you, everyone!”

“Thank you,” Sunny agreed, nodding politely at parents as they smiled at him appreciatively. One by one, the children took hold of their parents’ hands and skipped form the room, some still babbling exhilarated about Omori and his adventures, some seeming content to just smile their way out of the room. He imagined that those quieter children – like that little boy who had asked about Hero – were a lot like he was when he was little, before everything had happened back in Faraway.

He still couldn’t place his finger on what he was feeling. It was sort of heavy, but not necessarily in a bad way. It felt like a different kind of weight. Like he was doing something important. Or wrong. Or right in a way that he hadn’t felt before.

In other words, he still had no idea.

“I want to thank you again, Mr Shibata,” the narrator lady was saying. Sunny snapped form his thoughts once more and turned to her, internally berating himself for still not knowing her name. This was the second week he’d sat in on these things, and he kept forgetting to ask her. “You really do have a way with story-telling, especially in such a way that the little ones can follow.”

Sunny nodded with a smile, wanting to open his mouth to thank her, but he could see that she was already raring to go on herself.

“I am so grateful that you’ve come along to these readings. It means a lot to this little library – and the parents too, I’m sure.”

“It’s no problem,” Sunny said, though honestly he didn’t know what good he really did. He just sat awkwardly in the corner, dressed in too many blacks and whites and greys for the occasion, and occasionally fumbled his way through a half-assed answer to an oddly eager question. He still wasn’t used to so many eyes and ears being all over what was essentially just a physical version of his old brain – it was jarring.

“Well, I hope to see you next week?” the lady said, hands behind her back as she swayed hopefully back and forth on her feet. “And… perhaps you’d be up for coming out for lunch with a couple of us here at the library afterwards. We tend to meet up after the early close on Saturdays.”

The idea made his skin crawl a little, but he nodded anyway. He hoped it came across as a polite ‘sure!’ Even though, it reality, it was more of an uneasy ‘probably not, but thanks for the offer.’

Before Sunny could go through the uncomfortable process of asking her name without the fact that he’d blanked on it offending her too much, she had glided from the room, humming a tune to herself. She almost seemed like a kids’ cartoon character, with all that endless joy and exaggerated happiness. Sunny wondered if writing  and reading children’s books would one day do that to him too, before letting himself snigger at the mere thought and getting his phone out of his pocket again to check that message.

Mom: Hey, sweetheart! Just checking in, how is the reading? Is it just amazing to see all of those happy faces listening to your hard work? I’ve just sat down at the café across the road from the library if you want to pop in and say hello. Love you! Xox

Sunny slipped his phone back into his pocket and made for the exit. He winced at the sight of pouring rain outside, regretting his poor decision-making skills when it came to bringing umbrellas on rainy outings in spring.

The café was busy, but not too bad. The quaint interior was decorated with rustic looking, wooden planks adorned with hanging plants that draped delicately over the edges of their painted pots. Tables were dotted here and there, all full of people talking idly in the calm, universally accepted peace of the building, and the counter was full of an array of fresh, intricately baked little pastries and cakes. Sunny wasn’t hungry, but he’d be lying if he said the glorious smells didn’t make his mouth water, just a bit.

His mom sat across from him, looking out of the window at the raindrops racing down the glass with a satisfied air around her, sipping her coffee. She wore a thin, light green cardigan that hung loosely off her shoulders, and her bouncy, auburn hair was streaked with hints of silvery grey. She looked a little tired, but just as pleased with life as she always seemed to be.

The two of them had moved out of Faraway town and into the neighbouring city nearing six years ago now. Somehow, the constant, blaring bustle of the city seemed practically silent compared to their tiny hometown, where dark and dreary memories haunted every lazy day and the weight of distant friends’ laughter served only as a cruel taunt.

But here in the city, though none was forgotten, it felt fresh. And fresh, apparently, meant quiet; not even Sunny and his mother had a lot to say to each other, especially not anymore. But that was okay. Sunny was grateful for the comfortably unremarkable relationship he did have with his mother, especially after everything that had happened. He was lucky to even have a relationship with her at all. He was sure the truth would destroy her completely – but his mom was good like that.

She was strong, despite what all the teachers at his old schools would say about neglect and ‘shirked responsibility of care’. She hadn’t run away back then. She had been fighting for a better life, for the both of them. So Sunny didn’t mind if little café dates or silent movie nights with his mom were draped with an unspoken quiet. If anything, he enjoyed it.

“I’m just so proud of you. You know that, don’t you?” his mom said abruptly, interrupting said unspoken quiet that had settled once Sunny had come in and sat down across from her a few minutes ago. Sunny nodded, resisting the urge to look down and pick at his fingers like a bashful teenager.

His mom looked to him and reached across to place a hand on his with a gentle smile. “You’ve come so far these last few years – and to think that you’re attending readings of your own best-selling story book now! I don’t think I would ever have believed it, back then.”

“Thanks, mom,” Sunny said softly, looking down at their hands. Her fingers squeezed his gently, before retreating to wrap around her mug. She fixed him with a knowing, concerned stare that had him pre-emptively repressing a deep sigh, knowing what was coming.

“And as impressive as it all is,” she started slowly, leaning back. Her forehead was crinkled with worry lines that suddenly made her look at least a decade older. “You need to tell me if it gets too much, okay?”

“I know.”

“We can’t have you pushing yourself over the edge.”

“Yes, Mom. I know,” he droned, jaw set tight but trying not to sound too exhausted of this all too frequent reminder. He knew she was only looking out for him, really.

“Okay, just making sure.” She released a long breath that made her curly fringe flutter above her brow. “I love you, hon.”

Sunny nodded with a tight smile. He really didn’t have a clue how he had gotten to this point.

Chapter Text

Sunny had been seventeen when he’d first told anyone about Headspace.

He’d been living in a relatively small apartment in the city with his mom for just under a year, and he hadn’t really been in the best state. He’d told his friends the truth, and eventually his mom, too. And as freeing as it felt to finally come to terms with his horrible mistakes and come clean to the people that mattered most to him, it had come at a hefty cost.

Aubrey and Hero didn’t speak to him after they’d left Basil’s hospital room that ironically shining, pleasant day. They didn’t message him or visit before he went away a few days later. Not even Kel did, initially – though he had messaged him around a month into Sunny’s fresh start to ask if he was settling in okay. Sunny hadn’t known how to respond, so he hadn’t. Kel didn’t message again after that.

He was trying to get better, he honestly was. Even on days where he felt like his legs were about to fall off and his arms would hardly move and his head throbbed and he threw up every morsel he dared put on his sandpaper tongue, he never once let himself slip too deeply into his whirlpool of a mind. After all the effort to accept the past and make change, he refused to fall back into old habits – no matter how comfy and appealing those habits may have felt on dark, cold days.

He still wasn’t going to school, but he’d started taking online classes. He didn’t really speak to anyone besides his mom, and he didn’t go outside all that much.

In the end, around the nine-month mark of his new life, Sunny had begun slipping faster than he knew how to control. Inky black nightmares had returned to haunt his restless, rare moments of sleep, and every day it was getting harder to leave his threadbare blankets. It wasn’t long before he’d found himself in White Space once more, achingly numb and hollow as he stared futilely at the endless ceiling for the first time in almost a year. He didn’t bother looking around him at the laptop and tissues and sketchbook he knew were probably there. Couldn’t even bring himself to check if Mewo was curled up, watching him with those large, saucepan eyes. He just let himself wallow in his own failure to keep himself sane, until he eventually… did what he had to do to wake up again.

And that morning, he had done something he should have years ago: he went to his mom and asked for help.

Within the month, his mom had managed to book him some therapy sessions. Sunny was, quite frankly, terrified at the idea. Spilling his guts to some random lady with glasses and a notepad as he lay on a floral couch and wept about his emotions sounded like literal hell, and the idea of his therapist knowing about his strange mind and internally judging him for it made him feel even worse. He knew he wasn’t okay, but he didn’t want someone else to acknowledge it that deeply. It felt like a betrayal to his own sense of self-awareness.

But his mom had broken down to him one night, after he’d thrown up his dinner for the fourth time that week and stopped speaking altogether.

“Please, sweetheart,” she had sobbed, knees buckling under her weight and face all twisted with grief and desperation. Tears streaked down her cheeks in waning ribbons, and all he could do was watch as she slowly sunk to the floor. It was the first time he’d seen her cry since Mari’s funeral.

“Please. Sunny— I don’t know how to help you anymore.”

The next day, he’d gone to his first session.

He remembered vividly the smell of the room when he’d stepped through the door to Dr Barret’s office; something smelled strongly of wood and leather, and a tinge of copper. Sunny would come to associate the strange combination of smells with the strange man himself, but he still never could tell where that slightly metallic scent came from.

The room was small, but not claustrophobic. There wasn’t a melodramatic couch for him to drape himself across like in movies, but rather a simple armchair with a small, green cushion. The walls were plain, pale blue and white, and Dr Barret sat on a matching armchair across from Sunny’s. It all felt… odd, to say the least. Sitting there, fiddling and twisting his fingers until his knuckles popped as he remained, stiff as a board, in complete silence. A selfish part of him hoped Dr Barret would look at the mute kid in his humble office and give up hope. Maybe call his mother and say ‘sorry, nothing we can do, good luck finding a fix for this one’.

But he hadn’t done that. Dr Barret, in his broad frame and brown waistcoat - looking a little like he’d just stepped out of the 1800s with that thick moustache and those shiny Oxford Shoes -  had just sat there and matched him. Didn’t utter one word. He just pulled out a small coffee table, placed it between them, and put down a notepad on the surface. Then, he’d reached in his breast pocket for a pen (because he had a breast pocket for some reason), and begun writing.

Sunny had watched, rigid, as Dr Barret proceeded to practically ignore Sunny’s existence. He was thoroughly perplexed and a little strung up on the fact that this was so completely different from what he’d expected. Trying to subtly catch a glimpse at the guy’s list proved unhelpful, as it seemed to just be an ordinary, weekly shopping list. Milk, eggs, sugar, blueberries, baking soda, margarine – the list went on. His fingers were wide and square around the thin pen he brandished, and his hand-writing was lean and loopy.

Sunny’s head was spinning. It had been nearly ten minutes now, which may not have sounded long but had felt like an eternity and a half.

Two minutes had Sunny shifting in his seat, violently unnerved and twitchy. Four minutes saw him furrowing his brow in tight knots, so confused he felt almost frustrated. Six, and his mind was beginning to meander down the empty space between his shopping list, trying to fill in the gaps. Eight, and he was pretty sure Dr Barret was planning to bake a cake.

Whatever magic mind-manipulation Barret’s bizarre methodology seemed to target, Sunny was mildly ashamed to admit that he’d fallen victim to it; just over ten minutes in and Sunny had gestured for the pen in Barret’s large, slightly hairy hand, and scribbled a small ‘what’s the cake for?’ underneath his list.

Dr Barret looked up at him, expression blank but not apathetic. He simply answered: “My daughter’s birthday.” He tore out the page, pocketed it after folding it into neat squares, then pushed the notepad back toward Sunny.

“You think very deeply,” he had said out of nowhere. Sunny blinked, unable to figure out what this guy’s game plan was, or what was even going through his head. “Why do you think that is?”

And with that, Sunny’s plan to keep his thoughts in his head was thrown out of the small, drafty window he found himself gazing absently out of as he spoke. It was like the words had been sucked out of him: he’d never been so quick to speak with someone. He’d never been disarmed quite so effectively. The more and more he thought about it, Sunny had no idea how that had worked, and never really intended to ask Dr Barret about it. He didn’t want to know.

But somehow, within a month, Sunny was talking about Faraway and Mari and Headspace and his friends and his health. It was in one of these sessions that Dr Barret had suggested something that sounded ludicrous at the time. Maybe it still did, in some ways.

“I don’t want you to keep a diary,” Barret started slowly, considering his words before they left his mouth. He leaned forward, eyes on the floor, deep in thought. Sunny had waited intently for his suggestion. “But I want you to try writing a story. About your mind back in Faraway Town.”

Sunny was about to shake his head, when Dr Barret caught his eye in a way that felt weighted. Important in a way that Sunny wasn’t supposed to fully comprehend just yet. “Your imagination was childish. You’re a creative person. I believe creating a story out of the world you built yourself into will help you dissociate yourself from this Omori.”

It was jarring, hearing someone else refer to Omori like that. He never thought anyone would know about him. Dr Barret leaned back in his chair. His tone was blunt and factual, but not unkind. “There is a little bit of you still living there. In Headspace. I want you to try and write yourself out of that story, and shed a child-like, positive light on the good parts of that world that you’re still to aggrieved to see.”

His mom had asked how his session was on the drive home. Sunny genuinely had no idea how to respond, mind whirring in a way that – for once – wasn’t all that bad.

Basil: hey sunny !! how are you doing

The notification pinged Sunny’s phone while he was sat at home, at his desk. He’d been aimlessly doodling away in his notebook for the past twenty minutes, procrastinating getting to work with his online college course. He felt tired and glum, which wasn’t uncommon. But still, he’d tried to get himself up and moving, determined not to allow his body and mind to rot in bed all day. He had therapy later too, which gave him a reason to shower (the spray of cold water had managed to perk him up a fraction – courtesy of Dr Barret and the guy’s recommendation of cold showers for ‘grounding your head for the day, so your dreams can feel a little airier’).

And now, here was Basil to hopefully make his morning a little more worthwhile. If not, Sunny might have just felt all the worse for even hauling himself out of bed at all; he could never tell with his old friend whether their mismatched interactions would make him feel happy, or send him into a mini crisis.

Nothing against Basil specifically. Just the way of old wounds that never really healed right.

Sunny: I’m okay. How are you?

Basil: good :D
Basil: I was just wondering how youre getting on with all the book stuff ??? i keep seeing copies everywhere online !!

Sunny blanched. It was online, too?

Of course it was. Everything was online now – but somehow the belated realisation still struck something deep and ugly within Sunny that made his skin prickle and crawl. The thought of any of them finding out about this had him wanting to run to his window and hurl up his breakfast onto any poor soul wandering the streets below. Sunny dropped his phone and dragged his hands down his face, pulling at the skin of his cheeks as if that would stop his skin from feeling so tight and gross.

A little voice in the back of his brain reminded him that he should probably be happy. It was impressive enough that his story was hitting local bookshops and libraries; the internet was surely the next big milestone!

The other, more realistic and grumpy sounding voice pointed out that if it was already being labelled a best-seller by big publishers and professional reviewers, then obviously it was online, and he should probably drop the whole concept of milestones altogether considering it had already reached what was essentially the furthest one in the authorship lineup.

It had just… gotten so popular so fast. It was an accident, really. Sunny was hardly keeping up.

Despite the roiling in his gut, he forced himself upright in his chair and picked up his phone again to see three new messages flit apologetically onto the screen.

Basil: sorry!! you dont have to talk about it to me, might be a little weird lol
Basil: we can talk about something else ??
Basil: sorry

Though Basil was the only friend he kept in touch with, that didn’t mean they spoke all that frequently. Just the occasional bi-weekly check-in or funny cat video sent over from Basil – certainly not frequent or deep enough conversations that Sunny really knew much below surface level about what Basil was up to nowadays. Sunny just hoped his day-to-day didn’t involve a lot of reading. He so desperately wanted to ask, but refrained.

Sunny: What have you been up to?

Basil: oh not a lot really :P
Basil: still working at that little garden centre
Basil: its kind of nice tho because its on the outskirts of berlin, not the centre where its all loud and busy

Sunny: That’s good.

Basil: yea :)

Sunny held his breath as he awkwardly scoured his brain for a new topic or ice-breaker, and by the looks of Basil’s skittish, non-comital typing bubble popping up and down again at the bottom of their embarrassingly sparse chat, he got the impression that his uselessness in conversation was reciprocated. He sat, staring helplessly at his phone screen until another message finally came through.

Basil: have you heard anything from kel recently?

Sunny went still. His thumbs moved slowly as he hesitantly typed a short response.

Sunny: No.

Basil: oh okay!! Nw
Basil: its just that i got a text from him the other day and wondered if you had too

That was… odd. It had been six years since Kel had tried to reach out. Why would he try now? Sunny went cold; had he heard about the stupid book? Was he asking Basil if they’d ever known some kid called Sam Shibata?

Shit, he could imagine it now: Kel’s wide-eyed, comically confused face as he slowly pieced it all together in his head.

“I don’t get it, you know? I don’t think we ever knew a Sam, but somehow this weird book is literally about us as kids. Like same names, same kinds of dynamics and everything. That can’t just be coincidence, can it? And where’s Sunny? Why is he replaced with some kid with a random name?”

Sunny was such a goddamn idiot for not changing those goddamn names. When he’d been writing it at the time, he’d never even thought anyone would ever see it apart from him and maybe Dr Barret on a good day. Changing names didn’t seem necessary. And when Dr Barret had commended this writing exercise and suggested he try and turn it into a ‘proof that there’s enough good in the bad to bring other’s enjoyment’ by getting it solo-published, he’d never thought many people would even give it a go then, either.

Sunny resisted the urge to bash at his forehead with the heel of his hand. If he’d had sense enough to use a fake alias himself, why the hell hadn’t he thought to use different ones for his friends too?

But he couldn’t say all that. So instead, Sunny begrudgingly typed out a quick:

Sunny: What did he want?

Basil’s typing bubble blinked mockingly up at Sunny from the increasingly blaring screen for a good few minutes, making his head throb irritatingly behind his eyes. Finally, the very underwhelming response came.

Basil: just asking how i was

Sunny huffed and closed his phone, the whiplash proving to be too much for one day. He needed some fresh air. Maybe he could go and sit in the park with his sketchbook for a while before his appointment with Dr Barret.

Grabbing his umbrella this time from the hook on the door and swinging his bag over his shoulder, Sunny had to admit to himself that this may have been one of those Basil chats that sent him into a mini-crisis. Oh well – at least he’d have a lot to talk about in therapy.

Chapter Text

“Your book is growing very popular,” Dr Barret stated as soon as Sunny was settled in his usual armchair. Sunny resisted the urge to throw his head back and groan in frustration like a toddler, because why was this damn therapy book becoming the only thing anyone ever wanted to talk to him about anymore? What happened to a good old, ‘Hey Sunny, what are you up to nowadays?’.

(Not that many people outside of this room really spoke to him aside from his mom and Basil. But even so, the topic was swiftly growing tiresome and making him want to rip his hair out.)

Sunny hadn’t responded, which - in Dr Barret’s secret counselling language - was its own kind of answer. The man rested both elbows on the armrests of his chair and stared levelly down at Sunny, a knowing glint in his squinty eyes, waiting. Sunny shuffled, picking at the skin around his nails.

“Can we not talk about it?”

“Why not?” Dr Barret asked without missing a beat. Sunny rubbed at his chin, avoiding eye contact.

“It feels weird,” he tried pathetically with a half-assed shrug. Dr Barret saw through it immediately; Sunny could tell by the way he nodded slowly, eyes never once leaving Sunny’s face as he crossed his legs at the ankles and cocked his head at an angle. Again, the guy simply waited in silence for Sunny to continue, until Sunny felt forced by the stagnant air to huff and throw his hands up.

“I don’t know," he snapped, a little more harshly than he’d usually express himself. “It’s just weird. I wrote this book as a way for me to come to terms with everything, but now it just feels like it’s pulling everything back to me again.” Basil, Kel, his mom getting all emotional, the worry of Aubrey or Hero every catching wind of this… it all felt too connected for his liking.

Dr Barret nodded, motioning for Sunny to go on. With much reluctance, Sunny took a deep breath and reigned his irritation back in a little, letting the anger seep from him as he paused to think about what he was really trying to say. It was probably more common for therapists to push and probe and dig with thought-provoking questions and comments that made you really feel. But that wasn’t how Dr Barret worked: whenever Dr Barret went silent like this, it was because he wanted to get to the bottom of something in Sunny and needed clues and evidence to figure it out. He got these things by simply watching.

Sunny knew better than to expect the trained therapist to know how to get his answers through questions – no, he needed Sunny to pull through and speak about it unprompted enough to apparently know what the hell to do about any of it. Sunny would never really understand why Dr Barret’s strange strategies in therapy were as unconventional as they were. Even less so why they worked so well on him.

“I think writing it really did help,” Sunny admitted lowly, letting his hands fall limply in his lap and slouching back against the crackly leather. “I haven’t felt so far from all the stuff up there-” he gestured vaguely to his head, “-since I started it. It’s been nice to revisit all those memories, as hard as it was sometimes.”

Dr Barret sniffed loudly, face scrunched. A tell that usually meant the cogs were turning and if Sunny just kept spouting whatever came to mind, he would be given a magical solution in no time.

“But now, it kind of feels wrong,” he finished lamely, voice small. “With it being so public. I get what you were saying about going public proving that the worse times could have some creative or positive merit, but maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do this time.”

“You miss your friends more than you think you do.”

Sunny froze, eyeing Dr Barret with a frown. That… wasn’t the verdict he’d anticipated.

“No, I don’t.”

“Tell me why you don’t.”

Their conversations often felt like the turn-based battle in an RPG him and Kel and Hero used to play all the time. Every statement was countered with a new idea or challenge. There wasn’t any time for idle chit-chat. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it was certainly part of the reason Sunny always felt so drained and slept like the dead after every session.

His knee was bouncing absently now, and he stared intently at the plain, wooden doorstop for a long while, mind whirring. “I’m okay with not seeing them,” he eventually managed. Dr Barret hummed in a way that Sunny didn’t like, so he kept going. “I am. I don’t need them in my life anymore, and they don’t need me.”

“What about Basil?” Dr Barret asked. He was scribbling something in his notepad as he spoke, eyes not lifting from the paper. Sunny shrugged helplessly.

“I wouldn’t say the occasional hello equates to ‘being involved in someone’s life’ exactly.”

“I would.”

Sunny scowled at the floor. “Right. Well, I mean it. I don’t miss them any more than I miss being a little kid,” he declared, crossing his arms. “They are in a chapter that’s been closed for a long time now. That’s okay.”

Dr Barret let him sit with that statement for a moment as he finished writing. Long enough to ultimately have Sunny doubting everything he’d said up until this point, just a little. When he finished whatever he was etching into his notepad, Dr Barret slipped his pen into the plastic binding of the thing and looked up at Sunny with a different expression. Not that Sunny could ever place exactly what his expressions were supposed to be conveying; the most he could recognise was a shift between each one, not necessarily the emotion tied to it.

“When was the last time Basil spoke to you?” he asked, voice lighter. Sunny sighed. The man was psychic, he swore it.

“This morning, actually.”

Dr Barret nodded. “Was it a good conversation?”

Sunny could lie and say yes, and then maybe he would have won a point against this scarily intuitive asshole and proven that his friends weren’t the issue in all this. But that wouldn’t be very proactive in the long run, so he resigned himself to his fate and pushed his cheek into his palm, shoulders sagging.

“No.”

“You still miss your friends,” Dr Barret said definitively, with the subtle smugness of a polite, socially aware person who knew how clever they were, but were nice enough not to rub it in.

It felt rubbed in anyway.

“What I said about publishing your book still stands. I truly think that publishing your story to children who will and are finding enjoyment in it is a very special and positive thing. But those few, special people that used to be in your life are getting in the way of it having an improvement on your mental health. Sunny,” he said, leaning forward and tipping his head down, looking up at Sunny through his brows, all furrowed and serious.

“Tell me honestly. Why does your book being published make you feel weird.”

“They could read it,” Sunny said instantly, hardly even aware of himself speaking before the words were out of his mouth and hovering sheepishly in the air between them. The truth was pulled from him as easily as water through a strainer.

“Perfect. And I believe that you are afraid of them reading it because you are worried it may pose as a reason to connect you all again.”

“But if I miss them like you say,” Sunny said slowly, eyes closed as he tried to focus on his breathing. All this Faraway talk was making him feel… nothing exactly good. “Then why would connection make me feel so weird?”

Dr Barret paused. Then, he ripped out a piece of his notepad – the one he’d been writing on – and placed it carefully on the centre of the coffee table. Sunny leaned forward to peer at the word circled in the centre. ‘Weird’.

“You are sophisticated in your vocabulary, and very articulate when you want to be,” Dr Barret said, fingers drumming the soft wood next to the note. “Yet you have been consistently using this word. Not good, not bad… but some strange, uncomfortable combination in the middle.”

Sunny spent a good long while puzzling over this point’s relevance. His limbs felt even heavier than they had this morning, and the weight of whatever was wrong with his thinking was pushing down on his back until he felt like hunching over and hiding his face from the sun like a vampire. But he forced himself to face the stream of questions bulldozing through his buzzing mind head-on. He let each one hit him in the way that he knew Dr Barret was silently encouraging, and making himself answer each one.

Why was he using “weird” instead of a simple good or bad?

Because the thought of his book connecting him and his friends wasn’t a good or bad thing.

Why wasn’t it a good or bad thing?

Because as much as he felt he needed to move on from the past, he still secretly wanted it back more strongly than he could repress.

Why was Basil reaching out not always a good thing?

Because he secretly wanted Basil back as his best friend, but also didn’t want to let him get to close again.

Why was that?

Because he didn’t want to hurt anyone else ever again.

“You miss being a little kid,” Dr Barret interrupted, his gravelly, low voice wafting lazily through the stampede of thoughts in Sunny’s brain, somehow ringing clear. “Everyone does. But this is more than that. You miss them, but haven’t allowed yourself to believe that in six years. When you told them the truth, you thought everything was fixed, and therefor believed you didn’t had the privilege to still feel like something wasn’t right.”

“I don’t think I want to ever move on from them,” Sunny agreed quietly. “But there’s a part of me that wants to protect them still.”

“From you,” Dr Barret finished for him. It wasn’t a question, but Sunny nodded his confirmation anyway, feeling a little ill. Dr Barret hummed and picked up his notepad again. He began writing and didn’t stop for a prolonged while. Sunny sat in the thick, suffocating silence while he slowed his brain down until all those questions had fluttered weakly to the base of his skull and died there to be unpacked another exhausting session.

Eventually, he looked up. Dr Barret was writing with the pad on his knee, not exactly hidden. Glancing at the words, Sunny’s mouth pulled into a tight, thin line.

“What’s that?”

“A flowchart.”

“A… flowchart?”

“Yes.”

Dr Barret clicked the pen once, then set it down with a clunk on the table. He held out the piece of paper between two, large fingers and waited for Sunny to take it from him.

“There are two ways this could go,” Dr Barret explained, motioning to the twin paths trailing down each side of the note. “You could either ignore this realisation and continue as you are. Take a look at the consequences of that decision.”

Sunny reached up a slightly trembly hand to hold the paper in his palm. The left side of the flowchart revealed one, single box. In it, in tiny, neat script, read:

Let your achievements continue to hinder your health in silence, until your friends find your book and feel confused by its meaning and betrayed by your continued absence. Live without knowing what they really think of you for the rest of your life.

“Or,” Dr Barret went on, looking thoughtfully out the window. “You reach out to them. Read the consequences of that one too, please.”

There were a couple more boxes on this side.

Feel immense guilt over past issues you had convinced yourself were solved.

Feel out of place with a group of people who used to make life so simple. Argue and cry and shout at each other until it feels like you may never be friends again.

And finally, get closure.

The right side of the flowchart honestly didn’t sound much better than the left, though he was pretty sure the former was meant to seem more appealing. Sunny didn’t realise how badly his fingers were shaking until he heard the rustling of thin paper between them, jostled by his restless vibrations. He finally looked up at Dr Barret, who was watching him with a keen intrigue.

“What will closure do?” Sunny asked him quietly. Would he have his friends back again – was that the goal? Or would it drive them even further away? Was that better than the constant, stifling unknown he was currently drowning in?

Dr Barret just shrugged. “We won’t know until you get it.”

That was not a satisfying answer.

But then again, nothing Dr Barret said was ever particularly satisfying until his rationalised prophecy came true – which it had always done in the past. Sunny didn’t say anything. Just watched the old-fashioned clock on the wall tick by, listening blankly to the gentle click of every second passing. He’d counted one-hundred and seventeen before Dr Barret spoke again.

“How often do you think about your sister nowadays?”

The question didn’t hit like a truck the way Mari’s mention used to, but it did make him pause.

“Every day.”

“Does it hurt as much as it did a few years ago?”

There was a time when every single minute felt impossible. Where Mari’s death and his own, crippling guilt had made breathing seem like burning, and living feel like a sin. But now, she simply lingered in his memory as a reminder of all the things she used to say to him when she was alive.

“Don’t forget to brush your teeth, little brother! Cavities hurt.”

“Sunny! You forgot to eat breakfast again? You need your energy, you know.”

“Keep your head up for me, okay? I love your smile.”

“You’re stronger than you think.”

She hurt to think about, but it wasn’t impossible anymore.

“No,” Sunny said. Dr Barret offered as much of a smile as he seemed capable of.

“Then we know it’s not her stopping you from feeling steady.”

The implication was clear, though he didn’t explicitly say it. Sunny needed to follow the right side of that flowchart, no matter where it lead him in the end. Whether he found well-deserved hatred or long-awaited acceptance in his friends’ eyes, it didn’t matter.

 He thought he’d gotten the closure he needed by telling his friends the truth, but maybe that was just closure on Mari. Maybe, by telling his friends what he’d done and getting her closure, he’d opened up a whole new can of worms he’d been pointedly ignoring for the past six years: his friends he’d left behind.

He imagined what life might feel like if the memory of them was as light and nostalgic and innocently bittersweet as the memory of his sister was now. How much easier getting up every day and talking to Basil and going to readings of his book would feel. Maybe he could even read that group of kids the story himself. Feel pride in how far he had come since he was twelve years old, suffering so severely that even the thought of waking up in the morning made him want to follow Mari into the darkness he had forced her into that fateful day.

“Think about it,” Dr Barret said plainly.

Sunny closed his fist around the flowchart and nodded.

When he got home, Sunny lay down on top of his bedsheets and stared at the ceiling, the weight of that note in his pocket enough to drag him down into the mattress. He was just thinking about the potential merit of going to sleep for the afternoon, when his phone buzzed. He sluggishly reached for it, expecting a confused, nervous follow-up from Basil after their unexpectedly cut conversation earlier.

The screen seared bright as he switched it on.

1 new notification from Kel.

Sunny stared for a beat, then put his phone face down on his bedside, rolled over, and closed his eyes for the day.

Chapter Text

Kel walked out of the hospital doors and into the parking lot. The gentle, glowing sunlight spilled through the clouds above him, painting the concrete in streaks of gold. His skin tingled with pleasant warmth when it hit him, and he was left standing in the middle of an empty parking space, in a complete daze.

Sunny had killed Mari.

The fact was repeating over and over again in his head like some sick and twisted mantra, drilling itself into his skull until the words were etched deep into the bone. Sunny had killed Mari and Basil had them frame it as a suicide.

He didn’t know what to do with himself. Hero had left Basil’s room in silence after Sunny had told them what happened that day. Kel had assumed he’d gone to a bathroom or a waiting room or a balcony or something to process it all, but one quick glance at his phone showed him a single text from his brother, saying he’d already gotten the bus back home. He’d stayed for a little longer, prying a furious, sobbing Aubrey off Basil’s bed (and taking a couple swings in the process), and walking Sunny back to his room in silence once Aubrey had fled.

That walk was as silent as a corpse. He didn’t want to think about it.

And now, Sunny was moving away the next day, and Basil wouldn’t be home for another week, and the buses home were all delayed. So, Kel sat on the edge of the sidewalk outside the bus stop and stared at a small crack in the asphalt. A colony of ants were diligently lifting little pieces of a discarded sandwich back and forth.

An hour passed. A bus came. Kel went home.

He ignored his parents’ confused, frustrated questions when he’d walked through the door. They were asking what had happened, if Sunny was alright, why Hero wasn’t talking – all the while, baby Sally was wailing and screeching so loudly Kel thought his eardrums would burst. But still, he didn’t crack a reassuring smile, or break down into tears.

Mari hadn’t killed herself.

He walked straight past his parents and found himself in the doorway of his and Hero’s room. Hero was curled up in his bed, facing the wall, dead still. Hardly even breathing. He didn’t respond when Kel tried to reach out to him and say his name.

Kel didn’t push it. It wasn’t long after he gave up on trying to speak with his brother that he followed suit and went to bed.

Sally sobbed and sobbed all night, and Kel couldn’t shed a tear.

Basil: sooooo
Basil: i have some news

Sunny: What is it?

Basil: my parents are coming back home for a week. they want to pack up the rest of grandmas things and sell some stuff before the house is finally put on the market
Basil: theyve asked me if i want to come visit too

Sunny carefully placed his phone on his desk and his head in his hands.

Since his session last week with Barret, he’d been trying not to think about Basil and everyone that much. That flowchart had remained in his pocket wherever he went as a physical reminder of what he was supposed to be thinking about… but honestly, he had been trying to keep his brain as far away from Faraway as possible. Distracting himself with useless chores around the apartment, sorting through countless emails from publishers and reviewers and article requests, walking around the city and people-watching.

Anything to keep his mind off the fact that Barret wanted him to reconnect with his old friends.

And now, here Basil was. Telling him that he was coming home, in a chat right below Kel’s still unopened and unread message. It was like the universe was playing a really ironic, funny joke on him that actually wasn’t funny at all and made Sunny not want to ever message anyone ever again in his life. Who knew, maybe next it would be a text from Hero saying ‘haha funny story I forgive you for everything come home we miss you’.

The thing was, Sunny had vowed to himself that he would try to get better. Every night when he had to apply cream to his dappled, gaping scar under his eyepatch, and every morning when he peeled himself off his mattress and into the shower, he promised himself that he would continue to get better. And he had been, for a really long time now.

But all this? Right now? This felt like too much.

Despite how clammy his skin felt all of a sudden (that he would blame on the inconsistent spring heat between the bouts of heavy rainfall), Sunny tentatively reached for his phone again.

Basil: you obviously dont have to do this at all and i completely get it if this is a really stupid question and you can tell me to shut up if it is i promise i wont be upset or anything
Basil: but i was wondering if you wanted to maybe meet up ?

Sunny looked hard at the message for a long time. He didn’t know what to say.

He didn’t want to meet up. Not one bit. A part of him still loved Basil and he knew that, but seeing him again would bring back too much – so much that it might break him into pieces all over again and Sunny couldn’t put his mom through that. Images of the last time he’d been with Basil flashed through his mind: his friend lying weakly in his hospital bed, half delirious with pain-killers and medication from when Sunny had left him half beaten to death. Hero had left, Aubrey had lashed out, and Kel had lingered behind them.

Sunny had smiled at Basil, and Basil had smiled back. Then, Kel was escorting Sunny back to his room, and Basil was gone.

Seeing him again now, he imagined, would be so strange. Basil had spent the past five years living in Germany with his parents, who had finally settled there after all their pointless travelling around Europe. Sunny wondered if he’d look very different – maybe he’d changed his hair or started wearing a different style of clothes. Maybe he’d dropped the little flower clip he always wore just above his left ear.

But at the same time, Sunny didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to catch up in person or be reminded that he hadn’t actually moved on from his past as effectively as he had tricked himself into believing for however long. Basil was surely still struggling too; seeing Sunny wouldn’t help him either.

But Dr Barret’s voice echoed in his head, overwhelming the anxiety already brewing. The flowchart in his pocket screamed at him from underneath the material of his pants, and Basil’s question blinked up at him from his screen, teasing him.

The first step to finally fulfilling his promise to himself was right in front of him. Basil, one of his best friends since he was nine years old – the one who, if anything, was going to be the hardest to come into contact with given the long distance – was asking to meet up with him. All he had to do was say yes. It wouldn’t quite be the closure he needed, but it would be enough to get the ball rolling toward it.

Sunny held his breath, thumbs hovering over his keyboard, unsure of what to type. God, he had no idea what he was doing.

Huffing, Sunny let his head drop onto the hard wood of his desktop with a mildly painful thunk, before hurriedly typing out a quick ‘I’ll think about it.’. He pressed send before he could overthink it to death, and closed his phone. He didn’t even want to think about whatever was in that message from Kel – that, at least, was something he was allowing himself to procrastinate opening for a little longer. Screw Barret.

“Sally! Pass the ball!” Kel shouted across the garden, waving his arms exaggeratedly with a wide grin. His baby sister (not so much of a baby anymore, but still a baby to him) giggled and zigzagged her way over to him as fast as her little legs and uncoordinated ball-bouncing skills would let her. When she was close enough to throw the ball, she launched it straight at him with the force of a thousand suns!

That was what Kel told her the throw was like afterwards, anyway. In reality, it was kind of pathetic.

But Kel couldn’t complain; his little sis was taking an interest in his favourite sport. Ever since she’d sat with Polly in the crowd last month and watched one of Kel’s basketball games for the first time, she’d been enthralled and had begged Kel to buy her a ball of her own. The regular ones were a little too big and hard, so he’d found her a smaller, softer kiddies’ basketball instead. Plus, it had rainbows on it, so who was really winning at life here?

Every morning, Sally would leap onto Kel’s bed, shake him awake, and insist they play basketball in the garden. Her radiant, gap-toothed grin never failed to make him smile, no matter how early it was that his presence was demanded.

“And he takes the ball!” Kel commentated in a mock-yell as he shot around the space. “And he passes it back to Sal!”

Sally screeched with laughter and clapped her hands. She didn’t catch the ball when he gently threw it to her, but she ran after it and scooped it up as quickly as she could, before bolting for the mini hoop he’d set up against the back fence. The one separating his and the Suzuki’s old backyard.

“What’s this?!” Kel called, cupping his hands around his mouth as he watched her run. She had completely ignored the whole dribbling rule and was simply running with it, but he let it slide. “Sally is going for the hoop! Will she score? Will she score?!”

Sally threw the small ball up at the hoop, and to both the siblings’ absolute shock and joy, it went cleanly through and bounced away back across the yard.

“SHE SCORES!” Kel cheered at full volume, sprinting over to his little sister and scooping her up into his arms. “AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!”

She was in fits of breathless, full-belly laughter as he whooped and chanted and flew her around in the sky like a plane, and the sound alone was enough to remind Kel that he had everything he needed right where he was. He didn’t need college like Aubrey or a prestigious job like Hero, he was grateful for the little life he had built himself right here, at home.

“That was amazing, Sal!” he laughed as he finally set her down on the ground, ruffling her bright orange curls as he caught his breath. She was getting heavier and heavier by the day. He was almost worried that by the time she turned seven next year, he wouldn’t be able to lift her high above his head like he could now. The thought was kind of sad.

“I know!” she boasted, hands on her hips and a smug grin stretched across her rosy, freckled cheeks. “I scored and won the game.”

Kel sighed, smiling at her and flicking her sunhat in a way that had her jutting her bottom lip out at him with a very intimidating glare. “You sure did, ya little MVP. But now, I think it’s time for some lunch.”

Sally complained, but Kel didn’t take no for an answer. He took her hand, and marched her little tantrum-throwing ass back inside. They’d been out there all morning, and anyway, Kel needed to get ready for work. He was already running late.

They walked past the living room and smelled something warm and delicious wafting from the kitchen. Sally jumped and squeaked before rushing to follow the smell.

“Polly’s here!”

Kel listened to Polly greeting Sal excitedly, and walked over to the couch to see his mom. She was still there, like she always was, lying on her side and facing the TV. Her eyes were vacant and blank, unseeing. Kel leant down to press a quick kiss to her cheek and murmured a quiet, “Hi, mamá,” before following his sister into the kitchen. He had long since passed the days where her silence hurt his feelings.

“Hey, Polly,” he called over his shoulder as he kicked his shoes off into the corner of the kitchen. “Didn’t see you come in.”

Polly shrugged, busying herself at the stove as she tried to fight off a very eager, hungry little girl – who was currently reaching her stubby fingers far to close to the burning hot frying pan for comfort. “You two looked like you were having fun. Didn’t want to disturb.”

“I scored and won the game,” Sally told her importantly, still desperately gunning for a third-degree burn. Kel quickly strode over and lifted her away by the armpits, sitting her on the countertop safely away from any harm. Polly smiled warmly at her.

“Did you now? Well, isn’t that lovely.”

“Thanks for coming by such short notice again,” Kel said quietly from beside her, looking into the pan to see bacon and eggs sizzling enticingly. “Sorry. You know how it is at Hobbeez.”

Polly tutted and gave him a look, wiping her hands off on her apron. She wore a light green dress and had her mousy hair up in a neat bun; a couple flyaways had escaped her hair ties, but that was about the extent of her dishevelment. She always seemed so put together; it made Kel’s head spin. He hardly even had time to shower, between taking care of Sally and picking up extra shifts at Hobbeez and Gino’s whenever he could get time away from home.

“Seriously, Kel. You need to stop saying sorry for these things.” She turned to grab a plate and used the spatula to slap the eggs and bacon onto it, much to the delight of Sally behind them. “I love looking after the little one, you know that. And it’s always nice to help out a friend. Oh, and don’t worry – I’ve sorted your mom’s medication for the day and sat with her for a while already.”

Kel sighed and placed a fleeting touch to her arm, mouthing a quick and earnest thank you, before popping upstairs to get changed. He genuinely had no clue what he’d do without her. It was a miracle in disguise that she’d been around those few, short days taking care of Basil and his Grandma all those years ago. If she hadn’t been, Kel would never have met her and gotten her number, and wouldn’t have asked for her help once his dad left and his mom went into a depression. He may have been the one in his family who had stepped up after Hero went back to college, but he couldn’t have done any of it without her.

Kel tugged on his Hobbeez uniform haphazardly, leaving the shirt untucked for the time being and rushing to go brush his teeth in the bathroom. He ignored Hero’s empty, sparsely furnished side of the room and shut his bathroom door behind him. The sound of Polly and Sally talking and laughing downstairs made him smile as he shoved his toothbrush in his mouth and tried desperately to tame his rapidly growing hair.

His phone vibrated on the side, and Kel grabbed it, hoping maybe Basil had responded to his message that morning. To his… surprise? Delight? Mild discomfort? To his whatever-it-was-he-felt, it was him.

Basil: i don’t know kel. he doesn’t really even talk to me all that much and we text kind of often
Basil: im not saying he wont reply!! i just don’t know if you should expect a something back any time soon

Kel sighed, shoulders sagging. Maybe it was a stupid idea to try and reach out to Sunny after all these years anyway. The dude probably wanted nothing to do with them anymore. He spat his toothpaste out and washed out his mouth, quickly managing to tug his hair into a half bun before typing out a short reply.

Kel: k thanks gtg srry

He hesitated, before tacking a quick smiley face on the end of the message and pressing send. Then, he dashed back downstairs to catch the tail-end of whatever one-sided, babbling discussion Sally had trapped Polly into listening to before he had to head off for work. She was shoving bacon into her mouth by the forkful, chubby cheeks full and covered in toast crumbs and ketchup; Kel scrubbed at her face with a napkin and reminded her to slow down as he walked past, before pressing a quick kiss to her forehead and slipping his shoes back on. The heels were completely trodden down and weathered now, but he couldn’t afford new ones – not with Polly to pay, food bills and the money for his mom’s medication.

“Have a good shift, Kel! Make sure you eat something while you’re out!” Polly yelled as he slammed the door behind him.

Chapter Text

“And so, Omori and his friends travelled back the way they came, through Pyrefly Forest. They’d gotten so side-tracked in Sweetheart’s Castle that they had completely forgotten about Basil!”

A couple of the kids on the carpet gasped and exclaimed. The rowdy boy at the front laughed and made a comment about the characters being silly to forget about their best friend. Sunny felt oddly inclined to defend them, before remembering that Omori’s friends and Sunny’s friends were supposed to be separate.

(Which would have been an easier distinction to make had he given them different names or changed their personalities a bit. Sunny had gotten tired of counting the number of times that idiotic decision had returned to bite him in the ass.)

“ ‘What should we do now, Hero?’ Aubrey asked, eyes shining with tears and bottom lip wobbling. Even Kel was beginning to look a little disheartened. ‘Basil wasn’t anywhere in that forest!’ Hero shivered, wiping a big, sticky web off the shoulder of his pyjama top, before turning to kneel down in front of the other three with a kind smile.”

Sunny felt something in his chest grow heavy, remembering what was coming. He looked down at his hands, pointedly avoiding the colourful illustration of the sweet, heart-warming scene that the narrator lady was showing around the room.

“ ‘Come on, you three! Cheer up – just because something is a little hard, doesn’t mean it’s impossible,’ Hero said. ‘Basil will be here somewhere. We just need to keep searching.’

“ ‘But what if we never find him?’ Kel whined. Omori felt sad – the idea of not being able to play with Basil at the park ever again made him want to cry. But Hero shook his head, smiling even wider. Hero was good at cheering his friends up. Just one look at his big, encouraging smile could light up every room.”

It had been so long since Sunny had seen that smile. He’d dumbed down the language for his target audience, sure, but all the sentiments still rang true. Hero was like the older brother Sunny and Aubrey and Basil had never had. He was funny - sometimes intentionally, sometimes not – and supportive and wise. And his smile really did have the power to make people feel better, no matter how deep their frown.

Sunny sagged. He doubted he would ever see it again. Even if he decided to go back to Faraway to see his old friends, Hero wouldn’t dare share his smile with the guy who’d murdered his girlfriend - his best friend, his everything at the time. Why would he?

“ ‘Well,’ Hero said slowly, tapping his chin in thought as he gazed up at the purple, glowing night sky. ‘We could always give up.’

“Aubrey gasped, her tears disappearing and a determined glare settling on her face as she shouted, ‘What? No! We can’t give up!’

“ ‘Yeah, Basil needs us!’ Kel agreed, nodding frantically. Hero grinned and gave a big, cheesy thumbs up.

“ ‘That’s the spirit! You don’t think Basil would give up if he was looking for one of you, do you? No! So, I’d say…’ Hero stood up and pointed toward the Playground. ‘Let’s meet back up with Mari and make a new plan. There has to be somewhere else we haven’t looked...’

“Omori nodded too, suddenly feeling very eager to continue the search. He wanted to look through all of Basil’s photos again and smile at the good times. He wanted to be with his favourite people in the whole wide world, and play hide and seek without a care. He wanted to be happy, and he wanted Basil to be happy too. The only way to do that was to go and find him!”

Sunny’s breath caught in a choked sort of cough that had all the parents’ hawk-eyes trained on him in milliseconds, but he couldn’t bring himself to meet any of their gazes. His vision was vignetting at the edges and he felt ill. It was a bad idea to come to this reading today. The narrator-lady didn’t stop; she kept reading in her fun, dramatic, exaggerated story-telling voice as the kids all goggled at the artwork on every page. Sunny could hardly bring himself to breathe.

“ ‘Little brother!’ Mari called when the group trotted into the park. She was beaming brightly from her seat on her familiar picnic blanket, an array of candy scattered around her and her basket. ‘Hello everyone! Any luck?’ Aubrey shook her head. Mari’s smile fell, but she didn’t let that stop her.”

Something dark and sluggish hovered densely over Sunny’s shoulder, watching him. He hadn’t felt watched like that in five years now. He didn’t want to turn around.

“ ‘Oh. Well that’s okay! How about you try Deep Well?’

“ ‘But Mari,’ Aubrey started. ‘That’s all the way across the water, and Omori is afraid of drowning! We can’t do that!’

“Mari smiled sweetly at Omori, reaching out to put a hand atop his head. ‘Well then, Omori. Looks like it’s time to face another one of your fears! Don’t worry – you’re stronger than you think.’ ”

No, he wasn’t. If he was strong, he wouldn’t be being so pathetic. Ignoring messages, brushing off requests to meet up and make amends – if he were strong, he would have never moved away from Faraway. He wouldn’t have run, when staying was the only way he could have fixed his mistakes for good.

“Ma’am! Ma’am!” one of the kids gasped excitedly, bouncing on her bottom. “Why is Omori scared of drowning? Doesn’t he like swimming at the beach?”

No. Because he’s pathetic.

“Well, how about we ask Mr Shibata,” the lady offered, turning to face Sunny. Something flickered dangerously over him, engulfing him in a glum, dark shadow. His tongue felt thick and dry and he couldn’t move his lips. Words got caught in his throat and stuck there, slowly suffocating him. He could hardly even lift his chin to look at the curious little girl, still waiting patiently for an answer. Blood was roaring in his ears, and the flowchart laughed mockingly in his pocket, pulling him further and further down until he felt like he really was drowning.

The silence stretched, unbearable and terrifying. A couple parents murmured disapprovingly. The rowdy boy sniggered to his snotty little friends. The lady called his name softly, concern lacing her patronising, sickly tone.

Suddenly, Sunny stood up from his stool. He opened his mouth to excuse himself, but no sound came out. With a quick, (hopefully) polite nod, he walked shakily from the book corner. Parents made way for him, whispering behind not-so-subtle hands, but he didn’t stop to listen. Making a hurried beeline for the library’s restroom, Sunny tried to breathe. They came in shallow, frantic gasps, and his throat burned around each sharp intake. When he’d slammed the door behind him and the white, clinical light bounced off the bathroom tiles and into his blurry eyes, he found himself terrified to look up into the mirror.

He remembered all the times he had looked into it before, when he was a teenager, still hiding away from the world. Horrible, grotesque images of looming figures watching him from over his shoulder, twisted, broken silhouettes of Mari – sometimes swaying limply from a rope, sometimes stood firm, staring at his reflection with hollowed eyes and an eerily glazed glare.

Sunny took a deep breath, swallowed the stuffy, smelly air, before opening his eyes.

…It was just him.

He was alone. Nothing was behind him.

A wash of violent relief flooded him, the force of it so strong that it physically knocked him forward, elbows hitting the cold marble of the sink. He let his head hang between his shoulders as he took deep inhales through his nose.

He was a goddamn adult, for shit’s sake. He needed to get himself together.

This wasn’t what Dr Barret said would happen if he published this book. Sunny was supposed to feel better. Liberated from his unhealthy coping mechanisms and prideful of how far he had come. How he’d made something that plagued his life for nearly a decade into a celebration of his childhood.

“Maybe the only way to do that is to take the next step forward,” a voice that sounded suspiciously like Barret’s rang hollowly in his skull. Maybe he really did have to do this.

Sunny groaned out loud, turning the tap on and splashing his face with the icy water.

The sound of the water running and the almost inaudible popping and fizzling of the soap bubbles in the sink was all that could be heard inside the Suzuki’s small apartment.

Moonlight trickled in through the blinds of the window, and if you listened hard enough, you could hear the rare hoot of an owl somewhere nearby. Marilyn generally loved to listen for these little bits of evening magic, but today she was preoccupied, watching from around the corner as her son stared at the gushing tap in a trance, unmoving. She worried her lip between her teeth, trying not to let her concern overwhelm her; he’d been acting off all week. Quiet and more reserved than usual, almost reminiscent of old habits.

She’d left him a message the same as last week’s, asking if he wanted to meet her for lunch in the café opposite the library after his reading, but he hadn’t replied. When she got home later, he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling blankly. His phone was on the floor, discarded. She had opted not to bother him, but she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t worried sick. She just wished he would talk to her every once in a while.

“Sweetheart?” she tried carefully, emerging fully from around the corner. Sunny didn’t move. She tried again, a little louder.

With a jolt so sudden it wouldn’t have been remiss if her voice were as loud as a gunshot, he whipped his head around. His eyes were wide and stern. She swallowed, trying her absolute best to paste on a small smile as she sidled up beside him and switched the tap off. The bubbles were about to overflow.

“You seem deep in thought,” Marilyn commented idly as she picked up the first dish and dropped it in the water. After a belated moment, Sunny simply blinked, shrugged, and rolled up his sleeves. He didn’t say anything in response, and after a moment of hopefully waiting, she understood that he wasn’t planning on speaking at all without further prompting.

“Can you talk to me?” she asked. Sunny opened his mouth, then shrugged. Marilyn sighed. “Please, hon. I want to help.”

She turned to face her son fully. She had to look up to reach his eye now – whether that was because he was taller than he used to be or she was just incredibly short, it wasn’t exactly apparent.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Sunny’s eyes met hers for a beat, before looking down at his socks. His gaunt face, though not as pale and sallow as it had once been, looked tired and thin. The bags under his eyes were deeper than she remembered them being last time she’d really looked at his face, and his hair was a little messy. She reached out to rest a cautious hand on his forearm. In times like these, he almost reminded her of a skittish cat who she had to tread on eggshells around. Her lovely Mari always used to say he was like a cat when he was little, too.

Eventually, after much internal consideration, Sunny sagged forward and leaned against Marilyn’s shoulder. It wasn’t so much of a hug as it was him just draping himself heavily on top of her, but she wrapped her arms around his wiry frame anyway and squeezed as tightly as she dared.

When he pulled away, his hand was wriggling around in his pocket: he pulled out his phone a few seconds later. She watched confusedly as he opened it. Sometimes, on worse days when speaking was too much for Sunny, he would type on a notes app or write on scraps of paper, but this didn’t seem like that. He clicked onto his messages and selected one of the chats at the top. Basil.

Out of the blue, Marilyn felt like a weight had abruptly crushed her chest. She didn’t like to think about Basil.

Sunny tilted his screen toward her to show their latest messages, and her stomach dropped.

Basil was coming back home for a week, and wanted to meet with her son. Her immediate reaction was to say no. A quick, easy, blunt refusal – even if he hadn’t really been asking permission to go. She didn’t need this boy tugging her Sunny back down into a pit where she couldn’t reach him, and neither Sunny or Marilyn needed the cruel reminder of that period in their lives. They had moved on as best they could, and they were doing okay. This was a bad idea.

But then she caught a glimpse of the pain and conflict in Sunny’s small, dark eyes, and she hesitated. In the pause, Sunny pulled out something else form his pocket: a piece of paper with a bunch of boxes and writing neatly spread across the space.

It took her a while of reading and re-reading, before it clicked in her head.

“Dr Barret wants you to meet with Basil,” she said, feeling a little slow. Sunny nodded, watching her intently with sharp, assessing eyes. Even when he was a little boy, he’d always had that look on him – as if he was analysing every expression on your face to try and gauge your feelings before you even said a word. It never took him very long to read his mother though, what with her being as easy to read as an open book.

“Does he want you to meet with the others as well?” she asked him, the dishes now abandoned behind them. Sunny nodded. Something acidic trickled into her gut. Everything in her was screaming for her to just hold her baby close and not let him go near any of that mess, wanting desperately to protect him from further harm.

But Sunny wouldn’t have spoken to Barret about his friends if the topic weren’t bothering him lately. Barret wouldn’t have written the two sides on this piece of paper if he didn’t think there was a correct path to choose; she would put money on the left side being the supposed ‘wrong choice’, even if it seemed the most sensible from a mother’s point of view.

She was worried that Sunny would just get hurt. That Basil would serve as a negative energy in his life, that Hero and Aubrey and Kel would never forgive him – it had taken her a long enough time to come to terms with his mistake, and she was his mother, for Christ’s sake. She just didn’t want him to be shattered again, not after she was just beginning to see the old cracks slowly mend themselves.

But… if he missed his friends enough that he needed that closure from them more than he needed to feel secure, then what kind of mother would she be to say no?

Sunny pulled up one final piece of evidence on his phone. An unopened message from Kel.

“He texted me last week,” Sunny said, voice croaky and dry. Marilyn felt her heart ache. She couldn’t imagine the toll this must have taken on him, especially so soon after everything taking off with his wonderful story.

“Listen,” she said seriously, taking his face in her hands. His skin was cold. “I can’t tell you that I’m thrilled with the idea.” That was an understatement. “But I also can’t say that Dr Barret is wrong. Maybe— maybe this is what you’ve needed, all these years. And I just haven’t been able to see that.”

Sunny shook his head, about to argue, but she cut him off.

“No, I know. This isn’t about me. I just need…” She took a deep breath. “I think that you should see Basil. See what Kel wants. Maybe even try to meet with Hero or Aubrey or anyone else from our old home. Even if it’s hard, maybe Dr Barret’s right and it will bring you the peace of mind you’ve needed.”

Sunny’s eyes shone, and for a moment, he reminded her of a little boy again. All uncertain and nervous and looking to her for validation.

God, she hated the idea of him getting hurt again, but really, what else could she do?

Chapter Text

Sunny: When would you like to meet?

Basil: oh! Um
Basil: well our flight is a week tomorrow

Sunny: Does Saturday in the city centre work for you?

Basil: the 15^th?
Basil: yeah !! yea sounds perfect :)
Basil: i mean we arent staying in faraway, we have booked a hotel not too far from the city actually so that works out rlly well
Basil: again though sunny, we really dont have to do this if youre not comfortable with it ? i don’t want you to feel pressured to say yes if you actually don’t want to

Sunny bit the inside of his cheek, fingers hovering above the keyboard. He thought about just leaving Basil on seen and putting his phone down; he usually did when Basil got all nervous and chatty like this. But another part of him also reminded Sunny that Basil was probably equally as uneasy about the whole plan. Leaving this conversation unfinished wouldn’t do his old friend any favours either.

Sunny: I don’t feel pressured. See you soon.

He put the phone face down on the coffee table and looked up at Dr Barret. The man was watching Sunny intently, brows raised in a silent question. Sunny just nodded.

“Done,” he mumbled, resting his elbows on his knees. Barret mimicked his posture and gave him a small nod.

“What do you think?”

Sunny shrugged. “I don’t know. Feels weird.”

“There’s that word again,” Barret commented casually, though something sharp behind his eyes told Sunny that he’d gathered everything he needed to about Sunny’s state from that one statement alone. Sunny cursed himself internally for being so predictable. He wasn’t always this easy to read, was he?

He cleared his throat uncertainly.

“So… that word means I’m not feeling good or bad about Basil?” he asked, sounding irritatingly meek, even to his own ears. Barret gave him an odd look that somehow said, in perfect English, you are an emotionally intelligent individual and you do not need me to clarify your own opinion on how this is making you feel. Am I inside your head? No.

Yeah, well you act like you are, Sunny’s own odd look snapped back.

Barret sighed and leaned back in his chair, gazing out the window. Sunny wanted so badly to ask what he was thinking about, but didn’t. The guy never answered any questions unless they were yes and no answers anyway.

The prolonged silence gave Sunny room to think, at least. That was one of the things he liked abut these sessions. He didn’t feel like he had to fill any of the frequently-fallen quietness with aimless rambles. In fact, a lot of the emotional analysing and breakthroughs he came to therapy for often occurred when he was allowed to just sit in the presence of his therapist and think for himself. Sometimes he’d speak up and Barret would offer an outside perspective, but most of the time, Sunny would work something out himself, bring it up after a few more minutes of pondering, and that would be their next topic of discussion.

He thought about what he’d just agreed to do. Meet with Basil, in a week’s time. As much as the idea made him want to squirm in his seat, he couldn’t ignore the wash of… something that made him want to smile, just a little bit. Maybe he had been repressing his longing for his old friends more than he thought he’d been these past few years, because the idea of seeing one of them had him feeling some conflicted warmth blooming behind his ribcage.

Thinking this through logically, he was starting with arguably the easiest friend to get closure from, if he were to approach this whole ordeal with a more rigid, step-by-step process. Basil was the one Sunny had kept in touch with, however stifled their attempts at conversation may have been over the years. He was the one who had known the truth for the longest, and who didn’t resent Sunny for it. How could he, when he’d had to live with the role he played in Mari’s death just like Sunny?

So… so maybe this really was a good thing. Basil might bring horrible memories and flickering illusions back with him, but it was like a trial run for the real thing.

The real thing being the people who it was going to be less easy to reconnect with.

“Your sister died on the fifteenth of October, correct?” Dr Barret asked quietly. Sunny blinked, snapping back into the room like lightning. He didn’t meet Barret’s eye, but nodded. Barret hummed, then fell quiet once more. Sunny waited for an explanation, but none came. Trying to shake off the burning, uneasy curiosity now nibbling at him, Sunny tried to slip back into his thoughts. If he let Barret stew on whatever thought-process he was running along in his mind, then in a few minutes, they could come together and share whatever they’d been wandering and work together form there. Maybe merge their ideas or something constructive and proactive like that – Barret liked that sort of thing.

Sunny wondered how Kel would act when seeing Sunny again. Kel was always the easiest to talk to, in any situation. Always grinning, always with so much energy and positivity, always with something to fill the silence – and not in a way that Sunny hated, either. As much as Kel could be sometimes, his heart was irrefutably in the right place, no matter the extent he was annoying people (Aubrey).

Kel probably wouldn’t have changed much, Sunny decided. Maybe he’d gone to college like Hero. Maybe he chose one nearby and still visited his parents and little Sally on weekends. Sunny had always secretly envied the Montoya’s next door. They had the most idyllic, perfect little family, while Sunny’s always seemed so patchy in places.

Sunny thought about Aubrey. Maybe she’d gone to college by now too. Maybe she’d gotten better and mellowed out a bit – he wondered what courses she would have taken. Come to think of it, he didn’t really know what her interests were nowadays. In the brief few days he had reunited with her after his four years in hiding, they hadn’t exactly had time for friendly catch-ups.

He hoped she was doing better, after everything. He hoped he hadn’t completely destroyed the fragile peace they’d all built over those three days.

Then there was Hero. For some reason, the thought of seeing Hero was the scariest of all. Even if the truth had hurt all of his friends just as much as each other, it just felt… more visceral with Hero.

Dr Barret was watching Sunny’s face move as he got lost in his thoughts; an obvious indication that he was done thinking and was ready to begin unpacking something. Eventually, Sunny noticed and brought himself fully back into the room. He tapped at his knees as he waited patiently for Barret to say whatever was on his mind.

“It is May.”

“Mhm.”

“Do you think,” Barret said, agonisingly slowly. If Sunny didn’t know better, he’d assume that the man was unsure about speaking his thought out loud. But Sunny did know better, because Dr Barret was never unsure about anything. Sunny could feel himself being assessed and analysed as he waited – whatever this suggestion was, it was clearly going to sound ridiculous enough that Barret thought he’d have some sort of external reaction.

“…that the tenth anniversary of Mari’s death in six months time would be an effective way to bring you all together again.”

Sunny didn’t move. Didn’t even blink.

Tenth anniversary.

God, it really had been that long. Sunny was going to be turning twenty-three, while his big sister was still stuck at fifteen. The fact struck a deep, churning note somewhere deep inside him that sent a warbling shiver up his spine, as dissonant as an untuned violin.

He began to shake his head.

Barret, for once, didn’t jump in to ask why he was refusing. He simply nodded and tabled that idea for another day, some time when that event was more visible in the not-so-distant future. The rest of their session was spent in companionable silence, with only the occasional question or comment littering the calm.

Sunny pushed the suggestion from his mind in the way he did best, and tried his hardest to act like the fifteenth of October would never happen.

“One step at a time, little brother!”

That’s what Mari would say.

The week went by far too quickly for Sunny’s liking, and before he knew it, it was the morning he was meeting with Basil.

He lay awake in his bed for a good hour after waking up, watching as the soft, delicate glow of morning gradually flickered into a vibrant, cheerfully bright sky. Light filtered through his blinds and fractured his dark room into fragments. Sunny felt oddly awake, but utterly unable to bring himself to sit up.

Finally, by around nine, he had forced a bit of breakfast down him. His mom was hovering anxiously around him like a fly, buzzing and flittering nervously from room to room, a careful eye always trained on him as if he were going to fall apart any moment. They were meeting in the small park at the centre of the city at eleven. Sunny planned to walk there for ten, to give him some time to sit with his own thoughts and internally debate with himself whether this was a good idea or not - but somehow, nearly two hours had passed in a dazed, dissociated blink and it was already nearly time to be there.

Maybe that was evidence enough that this wasn’t a good idea after all.

Sunny walked himself down to the park, feet dragging as if he had a ball and chain tied to each ankle. Every step felt heavier than the last, and that lingering feeling of something hanging over him forced his gaze down at his scuffed shoes.

But eventually, he got to the bench he’d texted Basil about, and there he was; sat in the fresh, morning sunlight with a nervous, wobbly smile. He wore a simple green polo-shirt and light brown khakis, and his wispy, light hair sat as messily as ever atop his head. He still wore that small, flower clip above his ear after all.

Standing up too quickly, Basil seemed to startle himself, before waving over at Sunny. It was only then that Sunny realised he’d stopped walking entirely. Basil was taller now (a little taller than Sunny himself, by the looks of it), and had put on a little weight compared to the last time they’d seen each other. The fact made Sunny want to smile; he looked healthy.

It seemed to take a lifetime for Sunny to force his legs to move forward again, but soon enough, he was stood awkwardly in front of his old friend. Basil’s pale, freckled arms were glued to his sides uncomfortably, eyes darting around as his mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. Sunny watched him fumble for a greeting, unsure of what to say or do.

“Uh— hey! Hi,” Basil finally blabbered, shrugging tightly. “It’s been a long time!”

Sunny opened his mouth to say hello, but no sound came out. His chest was tight and his throat was closed and he couldn’t bring himself to speak, even if this was one of the few people he’d ever felt safe enough to talk to in his childhood. Everything had changed so much these past six years, whether he’d been well enough to acknowledge it or not.

He silently cursed himself for being so weak, before offering another small nod and a wave and sitting down. Basil’s eyes widened for a fleeting second, before he jumped to follow, perching on the hard, wooden slats as far as physically possible from Sunny. Whether that was for consideration of Sunny’s discomfort or his own, he had no idea. He didn’t know if he wanted to find out, in all honesty.

The silence was deafening as both parties seemed to stare around and tap at their knees like old ladies waiting at the bus-stop.

He tried so hard to ignore it, but that dark, eerie presence of something loomed over the pair from behind, watching them in a way that made Sunny’s skin prickle. He knew, really, that it was just in his head. That maybe, if he hadn’t been dreading this meeting for a week and making himself believe Barret was somehow wrong in all this and hiding away was the solution to all his problems, he might actually have been able to enjoy himself a little today. But no. As always, Sunny messed that up for himself too.

“It’s a nice city,” Basil blurted hoarsely, avoiding Sunny’s eye. “I… um. Took a walk around the centre before I got here. You know, because I was kind of early? And, uh— and it’s really nice!”

Sunny nodded. Basil swallowed audibly.

“Do you like it here?”

Again, Sunny opened his mouth and tried to bring himself to talk, but everything felt too dense and terrifying. So instead, he reluctantly dug out the dusty old box of sign language at the back of his brain he hadn’t had to really use properly since he was twelve years old. He remembered the day he and Basil had first promised to learn like it was yesterday, even if his actual ASL skills were most likely rusty as hell.

A nine-year-old Sunny had been crying, curled up in the corner of his room. He was finding it hard to speak, and he couldn’t really understand why. He hated it. He hated that it made it harder for his friends and his sister to play with him.

Basil had come after him when he’d ran upstairs. He sat down in the corner, next to Sunny, and took his hand with a warm smile.

 “I know you don’t want to talk sometimes, and that’s okay! Maybe me and you can come up with another way to talk to each other when it feels too hard.” Basil paused, face pinched in thought as he tapped at his chin, before jumping with an idea.

“Oh! My Grandma taught me about a sort of… language that some people use with their hands the other week. Do you want to try and learn that? Then, if we both know it, maybe I can help the others understand you better, too!”

Sunny had nodded smally as Basil wiped his tears from his blotchy cheeks.

Later that day, they’d gone to the library and poured over a book on ASL. They had studied from it side by side for a whole year, until they were just about fluent enough not to need it anymore. Most of the time, with his best friends, Sunny was okay with talking. But, on worse days, they spoke to each other through their hands.

It felt special. Like a secret code only they knew – the others hadn’t learned any. Mari had tried, but was too busy with volleyball at the time to put much commitment into it. But that was fine; Sunny had Basil to translate for him, when he needed it. He was really glad to know he had such a good, supportive friend.

Sunny blinked back into focus and uncoordinatedly signed a quick, yes, it’s nice.

Basil seemed to pause, mouth opening in a little ‘o’ of recognition, before a more relaxed, earnest, sort of sad smile tip-toed onto his cheeks. He nodded, old routine washing over him as he took hold of the reigns and steered their chat onward. He didn’t ask why Sunny was signing or why he wouldn’t talk. He probably knew Sunny wouldn’t know how to talk about that if he did.

Basil had always been good like that; intuitive and sensitive to others’ feelings.

“I had a look around that little high-street down there,” Basil went on, pointing down a colourful street that branched off from the square, just beyond the boundary of the little park they were in. “There are little bookshops and stalls with all sorts of trinkets. You’ve been before, haven’t you?”

Sunny nodded. He’d often used all the quirky little stores there to buy his mom Birthday or holiday gifts.

“Actually! I, uh— I got us something! Just as a sort of… peace offering, I guess?” Basil tried, grimacing sheepishly. At Sunny’s blank stare, his face dropped. “Not that there’s anything wrong between us. Because there isn’t, I’m pretty sure. But… oh, I don’t know.”

Basil reached into a little paper bag at his feet and pulled out what looked like an encyclopaedia. Sunny frowned and took it from him, before opening it up to peer at its contents. On each thin page was a large, detailed image of a different plant or fungi, followed by an empty page beside it with a small, cartoon pencil in the corner. Basil laughed a little awkwardly.

“Sorry… maybe it’s a little more suited to my interests, now I’m looking at it,” he managed, voice cracking. Sunny cocked his head in a silent question. Basil picked up on it immediately. “Oh, it’s a little wildlife drawing book. I figured that— maybe if you didn’t want to talk, you could draw whatever is on my side while I read all about it.”

He pointed at the diagram of a pretty, droopy, baby-blue flower on the left side, then quickly reached for a pencil in his pocket and handed it to Sunny.

“Weirdly specific kind of book, right?” Basil sighed, fidgeting at Sunny’s lack of response. “There was this friendly lady who makes them all from scratch. Said she liked the idea of learning about things before you try to make art out of them or something. I just thought…”

He trailed off. Sunny was still staring at the book in his hand.

This was so thoughtful.

Despite all his worries and fears and dread about whatever was to come from all this, he couldn’t help but feel like there was nothing he wanted to do more, right now in this moment, than to sit and draw with Basil.

Thank you, Sunny signed, trying for a small smile. Basil’s pale eyes lit up, and he beamed, shuffling closer so he could rest one side of the book on his knee, and the blank side on Sunny’s. His shoulders untensed a little and his breathing slowed, just audibly enough to show Sunny how uptight he’d been up until now.

Something was still there, a little bit. Watching them from behind. But its presence wasn’t overwhelming as they found a strange, fragile peace in this strange, fragile moment.