Chapter Text
Sunny opens his eyes. He sees white, only white. He doesn’t bother to look anywhere else. Why is he here? His eyelids lower slightly as he wants to go back to sleep. He wants to go back to the place he had been in for the past four years. The only place he felt comfortable being in for as long as he could remember.
But alas, he has to get the day started and stop staring at his goddamn ceiling.
Sunny gets up from his bed and walks over to the bathroom, starting his morning routine. It’s been… a rough four years for Sunny, to put it lightly. The tragedy and painful memories of his time in Faraway are still freshly etched onto his brain. Sunny didn’t want to remember Mari’s death. Sunny didn’t want to remember Aubrey’s hateful words. Sunny didn’t want to remember the searing pain in his right eye. He’d rather forget it all.
But he can’t anymore, even if he tried. Omori isn’t here for him anymore. Omori isn’t entirely gone. He can never truly be gone. But Omori has shrunken enough to the point of Sunny having to deal with the machinations of his brain alone. There was no more Headspace. There were no more highly detailed and surreal scenarios playing in Sunny’s head.
The only thing left? The horrible memories. The good ones don’t help either. It just puts him in an even more depressing state, wishing that he could just go back, somehow. Any more wishful thinking and Sunny would be reeling over his nightstand, crying till his eye sockets were as dry as The Sahara Desert.
It isn’t even going to be his first time if it happens. The first week in this strange and bustling city was also rough. Not much to do when you’re alone in a new environment. That leaves Sunny alone with his thoughts…
W-Why now… Why tell us now…?
Ah, right, school. Sunny has to go to school soon. Being the kid to join mid-year has brought a lot of attention to him. Combine that with his gaping eye socket that’s covered with an eyepatch, and you get the perfect combo of a “Weird kid” vibe. He doesn’t want to go to school. But his mom forced him to.
What can he do? Call Basil?
But well, that was his first mindset. He knew starting school would be rough, and it was. The stares he felt crawling behind his back every goddamn second in that building made him have a panic attack in recess. The fact that he was alone for the first couple of days did not help that either.
But it was getting better, especially today.
If Sunny was told by someone that he’d be able to make a good amount of friends, maintain a good social status, and be invited to go to an arcade to play a new cool game called “Midnight Dune,” or something along the lines of that, he would just owlishly blink at them.
What? What would you do if a random person just walks up to you and spits out Mayan predictions like it was the 2012?
Well, it’s not like he was going to play games there. He didn’t like the games in the arcade. It was boring and didn’t have any progression to them. He’d stay with his GameBoy for now. It was getting too old, but it was still fun playing his games before the accident.
…
It’s strange for Sunny. Being able to think of the accident without having a mid-life crisis was something new to him. He was kind of scared that in the future, he would forget about the accident because of how unimportant it became compared to his new life. That thought was really alien.
Well, no more thinking to himself. Sunny didn’t eat breakfast. He can’t. Not out of guilt or self-deprecation like last time, but more of the fact that his stomach was nano-sized. A blueberry was enough to fill his stomach for a couple hours. That aspect didn’t help his weak and frail stature. He was the shortest out of the new friends he made.
Whatever, time to go to school…
School was… okay? It wasn’t fun for Sunny, but it was bearable. His new friends were there, but they were only able to keep his mind busy enough that the unbearable and agonizing thoughts didn’t have too much of an effect on him. But sometimes, school could be a bit too much for him. The teachers would be too daunting, his classmates would look at him oddly, his friends would ignore him sometimes or leave him out. He hated the times when it was just painful to go through.
But it was bearable. Bearable enough…
Now Sunny is in the arcade with his new friends! The arcade is packed with games he’s never seen before. Cool screens and flashing lights bounce across the arcade. Sunny was both enamored and overwhelmed.
The spot where the game his friends wanted to play was in the arcade corner. It still wasn’t quite, but it was far enough from the blaring noises and strobe light effects that Sunny could calm down slightly.
Apparently, the game was from Japan. Sunny’s parent was from Japan, and Sunny is technically Japanese. Upon realizing so, one of his friends exclaimed that Sunny should translate the dialogues from the characters.
But Sunny doesn’t even know a lick of Japanese. The most you can get out of him is “Hello” and “Goodbye.” You can’t blame him. He wasn’t even born there, and his parents never taught him anything about Japan or its culture. The only reason he knew a bit was because of Mari and Aubrey. Mari, for teaching him some slight Japanese that he already forgot, and Aubrey, for introducing him to anime .
And besides, he really, really , didn’t want to try and do an impression of a really muscular and deep-voiced street racer. So he declined.
There were 4 cabinets, so all of his friends got in one. He stood behind them as they swiped their arcade cards and picked a map. Sunny didn’t understand the game much, so all of the conversations about the game went through his brain.
But there was something that caught his eye…
There was a game. It was right beside the racing game his friends were playing on. It looked like a washing machine. It had a screen with a circle shape; surrounding it were some buttons. There was no one playing it right now. The screen would show some circles from the center of the screen moving outside of it. It would sometimes show stars dragging across the screen as well. It was playing a song he couldn’t recognize. He thinks it’s Japanese as well, but he couldn’t be sure…
It was odd…
Really odd…
…
Then, it all clicked for him.
It’s a rhythm game! He remembered Mari playing something like this! It wasn’t the same, however. What Mari played was like a piano. Bars would go down, and Mari had to click it at the right time. There was even like a circle thingy where Mari had to slide across it sometimes! It was insane seeing Mari go hard on the game. She stopped playing after she started high school, though…
…
He should play the game. There was something inside him that wanted to come out again. Something that Sunny had locked with multiple chains to never reveal itself again. Something that caused all of Mari’s pain. Something that caused everyone’s pain.
Mari would be proud of him.
Mari would be proud of him if he actually got good grades. Mari would be proud of him if he could’ve gone through the recital and performed like a normal person would. Mari would be proud of him if he was able to keep himself quiet and still in front of Mari’s most deserved and brutal lecture.
Would Mari be proud of him if he was able to move on?
…
He went to the center of the arcade, ignoring the fact that his new friends just let him go and wander around without asking him. The blasting sounds and seizure-inducing LEDs were surrounding him again. He bought a new arcade card using the money he never used from his odd jobs. He went back to the rhythm game he found and read the title.
maimai DX UNiVERSE
He slides his new arcade card on the cabinet as the rest of his new friends continue to play, forgetting he was even invited. It took a while for Sunny to understand how to get to the “Main Menu” of the game. Still, he got to the tutorial after several button presses.
So objects will come from the center of the screen. If it’s a pink circle, tap it when it reaches the edge of the screen. If it’s a star, tap it and slide your fingers across the screen following the track. Yellow objects mean that there are two of them at the same time. Some objects will also appear somewhere on the screen, and you have to tap them at the right time.
…
That… was not that much. Seems easy, actually. Rhythms games should be easy, right? Just do things at a rhythm! After the tutorial was finished, he was sent to what he assumed to be the main menu. It was actually the song selection.
Huh. So Sunny can pick any songs he wants? What’s the end game, then? Is there a game over? The tutorial didn’t explain much now that he thinks about it. Whatever. He’ll just pick a random song.
Oh, actually. Apparently, there is a difficulty setting at the top of the screen. Currently, it’s set to BASIC, the text showing all in green.
…
It’s gonna be hard, Sunny. But you won’t gain anything if you don’t break a sweat!
He should try and increase the difficulty. Playing in what seems to be the easiest difficulty won’t be fun. He picked the next higher difficulty.
It was ADVANCED, all in yellow. That seems good. He should pick a song now; the timer on the screen is ticking down, and there are only 30 seconds left! Since he didn’t know what song to choose, he decided to just look around until he found one that sounded nice.
He clicked the NEW MUSIC section and began to scroll across the plethora of song collections.
Hmm, not that one.
Nope, not that.
…
Ah, this one!
It sounds pretty catchy. He thinks that all of the songs are Japanese, or at least are from japan. Either way, he clicked the music he chose and came out with more options for him to decide. He chose the same difficulty he chose before. It was level 8. That should be good, right?
But then, there were even more options! God damn, can’t he just play now?! Apparently, he has to choose the settings of the game now. There was a text saying that settings are “recommended for BASIC.” Hmmm, he’s not playing in BASIC difficulty. He clicked a button, and the text changed to “recommended for ADVANCED.” Perfect!
He clicked a button, and the cabinet played a sound before falling silent. He guessed it’s starting now. He put his hands up across the screen and readied himself…
The song ended, and Sunny’s mental fortitude collapsed. He was heaving and panting as he rested his head onto the cabinet and grabbed his legs to rest his body in an equally tiring position. He was tired, really tired. He didn’t understand. How can someone… do that? The goal is to hit all of the notes, right? But they were practically impossible to hit! This game is impossible! It was also too heavy for Sunny. Any more, and he might faint.
…
Come on, Sunny. Just one more time…
…
He took a deep breath and composed himself again. He was still drenched in sweat and slightly panting.
He looked to his side.
No one was playing the racing game.
There was no one queuing for his cabinet either.
…
He’ll try one more time…