Chapter Text
BASIL
It's the last month of sophomore year during a study period when Basil approaches Kel for the first time in four years. Kel is hunched over his desk as usual, squinting into the pages of whatever advanced textbook he busies himself with today. When Basil peers over the book to see what subject it is on, he is met with only nonsensical symbols and diagrams. It makes his head spin.
...So is it math? Science? Something else that he can't possibly wrap his head around?
Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, Basil remembers helping Kel with his math homework. Basil remembers a Kel who cared more about going outside and having fun after school than completing his schoolwork on time. The Kel he stands over now is not the same. Today's Kel is nothing like the Kel who would run around for hours with no care to the hot sun beating down on his back or the dirt caking his fingernails. Today's Kel is studious, organized, and speaks only when he raises his hand diligently in class.
Today's Kel doesn't even notice as Basil stands over him, contemplating if walking over to his old friend's desk is worth the trouble at all. He isn't the same person as he was four years ago. He shares the same face as the loud troublemaker pictured in Basil's photo album, but nothing else.
This Kel is a stranger, and it scares him.
He could just turn around, he supposes. He knows Sunny would come to him and keep him company if he did as little as send him a text. Sunny hasn't cared for rules in a long time anyways. Skipping class doesn't mean anything to him. It means even less to him if it is skipping class for Basil's sake.
It wasn't just Kel that had changed from those days, after all. Sunny has more friends now than ever, but they aren't the kinds of friends that Mari approves of. Basil knows that Mari and Sunny have both been in something akin to a cold war for several years now.
She still greets Basil warmly whenever she's at home to see him, though. He suspects that he's the only classmate Sunny is allowed to bring home on her watch.
Basil hasn't seen much of Aubrey. She skips school almost as much as Sunny does, but she doesn't seem to have any friends to spend that extra time with. Whenever Basil catches a glimpse of her, she's always sporting some sort of new injury. More often than not, there wouldn't be just one.
Just where do they come from? Is she okay..?
He worries for Aubrey, but the glare she sends in his direction whenever he meets her eyes is more than enough to send him away.
Basil wonders if he's changed, too. Probably not, he thinks he's still as weak as he's always been. Though if he's so weak, then how does he muster up the courage to open his mouth and speak in the face of a stranger?
"Kel, um…" Basil tries. His voice is shaking. Kel makes no indication that he even hears what the other is saying. "I was wondering if you wanted to study together for finals after school."
"Sure, why not? I heard that studying with others could have its benefits." Kel replies lamely, flipping to the next page in his textbook. This page has even less pictures than the last.
"Great, so...your house or mine?"
"Yours. Where else?" Kel finally lifts his head to give Basil a long look. His tired eyes burn into the blonde boy's very being.
Basil winces. It makes sense.
"I'm sorry..! I shouldn't have asked. It just slipped my mind, and..."
"It's fine , Basil." Kel waves it off. "It doesn't matter. I'll meet you in front of school if you want to walk together."
...The conversation was awkward, and the walk home even more so, but Basil can't help but to believe that he had accomplished something for once.
KEL
Kel shares a room with a ghost.
It isn't so bad when he can hear his parents and sister downstairs or in the bedroom just down the hall. It isn't so bad when the days are long and bright and he can trust that the sunlight will keep the shadows at bay. It isn't so bad at night when he turns the lights on and closes the blinds.
It isn't so bad at those moments, but it's never good. When light fills every corner of the room, it only reminds Kel of the half that is frozen in time. He gravitates to it, brushes off the finest layer of dust, straightens the sheets of a bed that is already perfectly made. It surely isn't healthy, but at least he can pretend that there's someone to keep the room tidy for this way. He can pretend that one day the door of their room will swing open again, and everything will be okay.
It's not okay, though.
At night, the shadows in the room swirl and the ghost that lives in the other side of his room begins to take form. It amasses itself into something awful that Kel can't even begin to explain, bound only by the shadowy wires that drip off the darkened walls behind it. It stands over his brother's empty bed, and Kel lets it linger there until morning. Even as the sun filters through the blinds the next day, Kel can still feel its eyes burning their way into his back.
The feeling gradually leaves as he gets ready for the school day, hot water melting murky shadows off his skin. His walk to school is forgettable and freeing. The shadows can't catch him where they are weak. He chases unnecessary thoughts away with numbers. The stress of keeping equations rooted in his head is what keeps him sane.
He thinks of Hero, only briefly. He was better at this than him.
Hero was perfect. The world looked upon him with appreciative eyes. The world said he could be anything, and he was everything. For all of fifteen years.
If the world thought Hero to be anything, what is Kel to such a world..?
Kel is nothing but a shadow, a botched replica. A reflection sitting upon shattered glass.
He chases unnecessary thoughts away with numbers.
Vertical Asymptotes can be found by solving the equation n(x)=0. Asymptotes can be defined as lines that approach a curve closely, but veer away before they are ever able to touch.
Of all the ghosts from his past that he thought would approach him first, he didn’t expect Basil to be the one. In their childhood, Basil was always a follower. He and Sunny were always content in letting the other members of their little group decide what they were going to do in those distant summer days.
Kel thinks he might have underestimated him.
He agrees, of course. Out of all his old friends, Basil is the one that is most welcome to him. Besides the fact that he has some excess courage now, Basil is more or less the same person as he’s always been. It’s comforting, almost, the way Basil falls into talking about the new plants he’s growing when Kel doesn’t offer any conversation topics on their way home.
It’s so familiar. He can almost pretend that nothing has changed at all.
The two boys are sitting side by side over the dining table in Basil’s house when Kel asks a question that had been on his mind for the whole afternoon. It’s a selfish question, really, but nothing he has never asked of Basil before. He wonders when exactly it became so hard to ask something so trivial of his former best friends.
Everything has been spun off-kilter these past four years. Things that seemed normal back then are leaps and bounds over invisible lines now.
But Kel is afraid of the ghost that haunts his room, and he is willing to cross a line to evade it, even if just for one night.
"Hey Basil, do you think I could stay over until tomorrow?"
SUNNY
The day Mari yelled at Sunny to get out of the house for once and make some friends, he was honestly caught off guard. Mari rarely raised her voice. Sunny could only remember a couple of times in the past thirteen years when something made her mad enough to resort to such measures.
Maybe knocking on the closed door of the piano room was pushing it. Sunny could hear the cacophony of dissonant piano keys even when he was upstairs, and it only became more discordant as he stood in front of the room. It was so unlike Mari to play anything short of perfection. He was worried. He missed her. He only wanted to help.
If he only wanted to help, how did he end up making things worse?
“Don’t you have anything better to do, Sunny?”
He can still hear her voice in his head sometimes, and he can still feel himself shaking his head no. It was hard for him to go out as much as he used to when his friend group splintered across every corner of Faraway Town, refusing to mend itself.
“I have auditions to work on for college. You're bothering me."
He knew that. Whatever Mari was subjecting herself to wasn't just preparation for college, though. The two of them share a room, but at that time she only came in to sleep in the early hours of the morning, and she always left back to the piano room a few hours later. It was like she created a new room for herself. It was like she lived there instead.
No one was there to chase the nightmares away for him anymore, there was only empty space and the distant sound of piano keys. He would spend the next few years dealing with them all on his own.
"Why don't you go outside and make your own friends for once? I can't always be shielding you. You're not a little kid anymore!"
He can still feel the tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He couldn't help but think that she was right. He still had Basil, but he was just as bad as making new friends as he was. Mari and Hero were the ones that stitched their little group together to begin with. They were the ones that led the way and made sure that they always had plenty of fun things to do.
Hero is gone now. Sunny can't help but to think that he took Mari with him, too.
Sunny doesn't remember much after that. He thinks she must've said more that day, but it didn't really stick in his mind.
He ran out of the house when it became too much. He still remembers Mari yelling after him. He doesn't remember what the words were. The words didn't make sense to him anymore. He only wanted them to stop. He thinks it was drizzling that day. He was glad for that at the time. It hid away his tears.
That day he bumped into someone, after all. One of his neighbors. Someone he doesn't remember talking to at all before that day.
"You're Sunny, aren't you? From down the street..?" The boy in the blonde wig asked him as he pulled himself up from the ground. Sunny felt bad. The boy's clothes became soaked and dirty because of him.
"Yeah...sorry."
"It's okay, man. We all need to get away from home sometimes."
Sunny couldn't agree more. That fateful run-in with Mikhael set the stage for him meeting the rest of his little group of troubled friends. It's been three years since that day, and Sunny has done so much since then.
He's learned to laugh again. He can speak for himself. He spent his savings for an electric violin one day (much to Mari's dismay), and the rest of the gang picked up instruments after him. They play in Faraway Park every Friday, and use the change they earn from passersby to buy themselves greasy pizza right after. It's not the same as back then, but it's close enough.
It's close enough.
MARI
Omori is Mari's longest friend. The grand piano always listens to her, letting her vent out all of her frustrations onto its keys as much and as long as she wishes. Omori never asks anything of her, it never complains when Mari slams the keys a little too hard after messing up this one note for the third time in the row. Omori just sits in front of her in comforting silence, waiting for her to begin again.
"Deep breaths, Mari. You don't always have to be perfect."
Like you can say that.
Slam.
"You should probably take a break. Here, I'll make you something."
You can't.
Slam.
"Sunny wants to spend more time with you...aside from your work on the recital."
He doesn't want that. Not anymore, at least.
Slam.
Mari can't pinpoint where exactly she went wrong. What note did she hit to create such terrible dissonance? She could've been faster. Maybe she wouldn't have slipped up if the tempo was right. Maybe things would be different then.
Maybe then, he would still be alive.
She often loses herself in the rabbit hole of "what ifs". Staying away from Faraway Town doesn't save her. She would toss and turn on her lumpy dorm bed the same way she tosses and turns back home. Her thoughts are what’s haunted, not the town. Her thoughts haunt everything she sees and does. As long as she has these thoughts, she will never be at peace.
She came home from college three days ago. Her mom and dad embraced her as soon as she opened the door. Sunny was nowhere to be seen. The sound of children laughing in the sunlit halls were but a distant memory. Her thoughts haunt her. She will never be at peace.
"Don't overthink. Just play."
Right. That’s where it gets me, doesn’t it?
Her hands settle over the keys again. They land more gently this time. A silent apology to her dutiful and forgiving piano.
A silent apology to his voice forever reverberating in her head.
The song that leaves her is not the music written on the score set on Omori’s music stand, but an echo of a memory.
AUBREY
Aubrey goes to church every Sunday. It's something that she picked up four years ago, and it's frankly a blessing that she doesn't ever see any of her old friends there. Even catching sight of any of the four of them around town sends her spiraling. Especially Kel.
She doesn’t want to talk to Kel. Not now, not ever. Not after what he did. Not after what he continues to do.
Aubrey isn’t an idiot. She knows what he’s doing when he buries his head in books and forgets about who he was before that one day four years ago. He's trying to mold himself into someone else, someone who can’t be around anymore. He’s trying to make up for his mistake that day. She’s not an idiot. She knows it would never work.
It never works for her, either. So why would it work for him?
She knows that they are one and the same. The real reason she can’t stand him is because it’s actually like looking into a mirror. Looking in a mirror, just like that day. Two faces twisted into the same disgusted expression. Two matching pairs of clenched fists.
She has to stay away from him. She has to find peace, somehow. She knows talking to him will only end up in a fight. She hates fights. She would do anything to stop a fight.
She's suddenly reminded of the bruises up her arms, the shallow scratches covered up by band-aids. There's more of those than what can simply be seen. She feels a familiar numb pain where her body meets the church pew. It never goes away.
She would do anything to stop a fight. It doesn't matter if it hurts her. It doesn't matter if all the residual anger from the fights she interrupts is directed at her instead. She would do anything to stop a fight. It's the only way she feels she can redeem herself.
Even so, she still can't forgive. No amount of pain will ever make up for what he did for them. Maybe one day she can hope for a similar fate, maybe she'll be forgiven then.
Aubrey goes to church every Sunday. She speaks her sins to the air. She feels the pain of all the fights she's broken into sink into her skin. It isn't enough. It will never be enough.
It's something , though, and she would like to think her something is more than Kel's.
HERO
HERO hums to himself as he plates up KEL's eggs and bacon (with extra bacon, of course) next to a tall glass of orange juice. He always makes sure to cook a hot breakfast for KEL before he leaves their shared home every day. HERO doesn't have to worry about the food going cold, for it is not something that is possible here. Here, it's not worth wondering about what is and what isn't possible.
[But what is "here"..?
It is hard to say.
Reality is a hard thing to grasp, sometimes.
Sometimes it is better to get lost in a dream.
Dear DREAMER, have you grown weary of the monotony of this place?
Dear KEL, is it not the safety of this space that you wish for?
Why do you make dealings with ghosts of the past?
Do you not know that he is only going to hurt you..?]
HERO isn’t exactly sure why he has to leave, but he feels that it’s something he should do. KEL will meet him along the line, anyways. He always does.