Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Did you know, blue is the rarest colour in nature?”

He says it like it’s a secret, something between them. Hushed and soft and blanketed with something warm and slow, like molasses dripping down the edge of the table, or the dribble of water from a leaking faucet. Basil is looking at him from where he’s entangled in the mess of both Hero and Kel’s limbs, uncomfortable but smiling. His voice rings like a cluster of church bells against the quiet.

Omori shuffles closer from where he’s kept between his sister’s legs, showing that he’s listening.

He shakes his head, cheek patted against his sister’s smooth skin. Basil unwraps himself from the mess of the two brothers and leans in to whisper into Omori’s ear.

“I think it’s funny.” He says, settling against the chequered picnic blanket. “You know, it’s everywhere around us: the sky, the ocean— but when it comes to plants and animals, it’s rarely ever there.”

Omori looks back up to the sky, an endless tapestry of stars and violet smudges, stretching far and beyond past the vast and unknown. In his house, there is nothing but a sprawling home of evergreen and overgrown roots. Omori can’t even recall the last time he had seen the ocean, but nevertheless, he  nods .

“I read somewhere that it was because of the light. Isn’t that amazing? That there’s something everywhere and yet, nowhere at all?” Basil chuckles, the sound so quiet it slithers like the hum at the end of a tune. “Aw, now that I say it out loud it’s a little stupid.”

Omori takes his que, shaking his head enthusiastically while trying not to disturb his sister from where he’s resting. It’s almost instinctual by now. He knows him by the tone of his voice, the sudden shift in tones when he drops from a high to a low. Basil’s confidence quivers and breaks like a leaf left against the riptide, constantly struggling to remain afloat downstream. They play with it in a form of song and dance, with Omori jumping into his part.

Basil’s smile is a dissonant note in a melody they’ve all memorised. He smiles when he lies. A terrible, terrible thing. Omori reaches out his hand, tentative but firm. Basil takes it.

“It must be such a pain, huh?” He sighs, letting their palms rest against each other. They shift and turn like cogs fitting into place. “Sorry, I know you get upset when I talk like that.”

Omori shakes his head. Squeezes once, and then twice. Making sure to stare directly into Basil’s eyes.  You’re not a pain.  Is spoken without words.

Basil hears. He always does. Despite being in a group, they always found company in each other. In their soft, whispered language. In unspoken sentences that only they can hear. Their friendship is written in the lines of a frown, or the downturn of a lip. It’s quiet, a secret only known by them. Theirs. Mutually exclusive and loved.

He squeezes again,  Continue.  

Basil doesn’t let go of his hand. A simple gesture that he knows Omori enjoys, because Omori doesn’t like being alone. He leaves his presence against skin, in the lines and grooves of wrinkles and imperfect flesh. “I was thinking, actually…it sort of inspired me to start planting more flowering plants, blue ones specifically. I know cornflowers are more common but I saw that morning glories are good for fevers. Though, summer is ending soon and gentians would thrive better during the fall.”

He turns his head, pulling away from the endless patchwork of stars and misshapen planets to instead look at his friend as he rambles away. It’s easy to tune out, the words fading into a steady thrum in contrast to the content silence of their sleeping friends (though, he prefers Basil’s idle chatter compared to Kel’s obnoxious snoring any day). Basil makes it easy to sit down and breathe, to listen and to let everything sink in. He’s here, in the lap of his sister who loves him, surrounded by friends to  play  and  laugh  with, holding on to his closest person.

It’s happiness without a doubt, gooey and warm and sits in the pit of his stomach like a second heart. He can feel it beating and flowing within his body, easing his bones and soothing his muscles like a balm. It’s better than any meal, sweeter than any candy or warmer than any sun. Omori thinks a heart could stop beating and a feeling could keep him alive longer than any organ.  It could carry him past death.

“What do you think, Omori?”

His friend’s face turns to meet him, eyes open and questioning. Omori doesn’t  think , his answer was already there from the start. He squeezes again, it doesn’t need a translation. He’s never been one of many words— or any at all.

Basil smiles at him, crinkled and freckle-dusted, like he’s laughing with just his eyes. “I’ll get them all so you can see them. Though, I might need to clear out some space. Then we can invite everyone else when everything’s grown, as a surprise!”

He thinks about Basil’s home, quaint and small and perfect in every way it needs to be; the plants hanging by the ceiling and the quilts kept in the closet every time they sleep over. Breaking the static monotony of liminal white walls and the flickering black light bulb overhead. He thinks of home, he thinks of a shoe in the clearing surrounded by sunlight and flowers.

He thinks of—

Something stands in the distance.

“Omori?”

Three squeezes,  are you okay?

His gaze reverts back to Basil, watching him with a frown. His eyes trail slowly to where his gaze had settled for the past few seconds, but Omori brings him back with a quick and sharp squeeze.  Yes.

Basil’s eyes stare into his, unflinchingly concerned. There’s a line of worry that puckers his brow. His lips move, then stop. They stay parted, like he’s been abruptly cut mid sentence. His eyes glossed over, hand held tightly in his.

(He can’t hear it.)

“—we should wake the others up, then we can go to my house and start. Is that okay? It’s getting a bit cold here.” He says, sitting upright. Omori nods, and as if they’ve been listening the whole time, his friends slowly rouse around them, yawning and saying the same thing; how the temperature had dropped so suddenly. His sister wakes up too, her hands finding their way to his shoulders. She smooths down his hair and says something about fevers, he doesn’t listen.

The picnic wraps up short. The blanket and snacks all get unceremoniously dumped in his sister’s seemingly bottomless basket. Kel leads the way, shouting whatnot and nonsense as Aubrey trails behind him, waving her toy in the air as they march along the beaten path. Basil unwillingly shoved between them. Hero walks in tow with his sister, offering to carry her basket until she finally relents.  

Omori waits until they’re all a good distance ahead of them before following along, making sure to not look behind him.

As he thinks back to the conversation earlier, trying to remember the details. Then he stops, realising he can’t remember what colour Basil’s eyes were.

There's a packet of seeds and an empty watering can the next time they check. Just like the last time they came. Aubrey is close to tears, she sniffles and whines. Her worry spreads and infects Kel, who braces himself up for a tantrum— but Hero steps in before true damage is done and diffuses the mess with well trained words. The group stays together, barely. Comforts are said and promises are kept as they continue on trekking forward. Omori makes sure to leave the door slightly open in case someone decides to come home.

It isn't until they're across the Underwater Highway that they reach a roadblock. There's a stop, then a question, then a worn and rumpled flower crown on the ground, barely holding onto its petals. Simply abandoned despite the loving care each flower is weaved into an intricate braid of stems.

Kel kicks it into the abyss and Omori can’t help but feel as if something else had fallen with it.

Headspace is an oddity, so it’s truly nothing strange when they meet an odd piece of coral with a single swing set swaying in the air despite there being no wind. It's voice sounds like an amalgamation of errors, stitched and woven together into some inhuman vocal that squeaks like an animal but howls like it's in pain. It tells them of intertwined souls, guides them on the road they have lost. When they ask it what they seek; it answers just as vague as the question.

“You would like to know more about your Lost Friend?”

Omori nods, keeping its garbled words close. My Lost Friend, that’s what they were looking for.

(There is a  he , a string, and a place they must go to, The Branch Coral says. The deranged cacophony of its voice fades into the stagnant air. Dying out like a flickering matchstick and once again, they're left in the dark.)

Paths get intertwined and time is lost. Soon enough Hero stops halfway, foot paused before his next step, face twisted in thought. When the others take place beside him, asking what's wrong, he falters. It's so unlike him that even Omori stops to fall into line, standing by close but never getting fully involved. Hero laughs, hand reaching to scratch his neck.

He says he's forgotten what he was about to say. The words flat and humouring, he's clearly distraught about the sudden gap in his memory but he keeps a smile on for everyone else. They fall for it. Omori doesn't.

Omori holds a small, black keycap between his fingers. Cold and hard and real as it slips through the cracks and bubbles to the surface. Imperfect and disgusting. He keeps it in his pocket, tells the others they should go back, that his sister is probably waiting with her endless basket and sundry smile. They agree without any complaint.

He walks back through the trees which they started at alone. Hacking through the thickets, slashing the weeds. By the time he reaches the shoe-house in the clearing the water bleeds crimson and the branches twist and contort themselves into unnatural shapes. It reeks of decay, of roadkill left in the sun too long, and the door creaks under his hand as the house scarcely holds itself together from toppling over him. The hole in the centre of the once humble home is black and empty, dark enough that he can't see the bottom. It wanes and beckons him closer.

The Branch Coral's ghostly words trace back to him, its sentient macabre voice echoing from the bottomless pit.  He is special to you. A string of fate ties you two together. He cannot leave that place alone. Though be cautious, Dreamer. For what truth you may uncover in your search for what you have lost, may destroy the bare line of the world that of which we walk upon.

This journey is nearing its end. You already know what you have to do, Dreamer.

He is alone, with something following behind him, and a silhouette of a person outlined in his mind with no face. Despondent and unmoving, the shape of a name curls up on the tip of his tongue but he cannot say it. He knows that it exists, and that somewhere out there it belongs to someone, someone he knew. It's tormenting to say the least, he was once told a long time ago by his friends that he had the best memory out of all of them. Yet, in his heart sings with a sadness that goes beyond what the mind cannot remember.

The hole entices, singing the same tune but with promise of hope. It's the only way forward.

Omori waters the sunflowers outside before he jumps.

Omori encounters death within a dream.

The rain is a thousand little needles digging into his skin, though they are non-existent just like the rest of this fucked-up nightmare, they soak his shirt and leave him wandering through puddled footholes. The sky is static grey,  with deep storm clouds dropping thousands of droplets onto the pavement. It’s uncomfortable, yes, but despite everything that exists around it— the Room with Endless Rain feels like the safest thing in this hellish place.

So it’s truly ironic to see him here, too.

Stranger remains unaffected despite the barrage of droplets around them. His blackened silhouette is slightly translucent, flickering in and out like a dying flame. Despite not facing Omori he tilts his head inquisitively to the side, questioning him without words.

Omori does not respond. He grips the handle of his knife tighter even though he knows Stranger won’t attack, but still, knowing that a wolf has fangs doesn’t make them any less of a threat. Here, in this grotesque horror-show, nobody wants to help him, despite what friendly appearance they may take on, even Stranger wearing the face of someone he doesn’t know.

There’s white noise all around them. The rain continues to fall onto their bodies, neverending. It isn’t until Stranger laughs, a brittle and coarse sound, that their idyllic moment is broken.

“It’s so peaceful here,” He says, his voice and the Branch Coral aren’t too different, but where the Branch Coral sounded like a chimaera of impossible sounds and cries, Stranger’s voice is like the end of a song. Dissolving into quiet, the mark of finality. “It’s hard to believe that in such a terrible place, somewhere like this exists.”

Omori says nothing, but Stranger seems to have accepted it was always going to be a one-sided conversation and continues. “It just goes to show that even you, Dreamer, yearn for it. Peace.”

“This is the darkest place of the world that you have created. When the illusion finally cracks, this hides between the shadows.” He gestures to the unforgiving rain and stagnant static sky. “How many things have you seen that haunt you, how many things do you keep locked away in the crevices where no one bothers to look? This disgusting, vile place that you kept me in.”

There is nothing beyond the endless grounds. Just dead trees and patches of grass, figments of the world above, things that leak through. It’s not hard to spot the black key in the distance, hovering slightly above the ground, seemingly unfazed by the rain. Omori takes a step towards it.

“I’m not mad at you, you know.”

Omori doesn’t stop walking.

“Even if you hate me, even if I’m the worst person on earth. I’m still here, in this place that you still dream of. Every night, I watch as you make yourself believe that everything is okay, that the truth is just dust you sweep under the carpet, and I still can’t bring myself to hate you.” Stranger continues, still crouched on the ground, in the little patch of grass under the flickering fluorescent street lamp. “I have been forgotten by everyone, even you.”

Omori walks, even when the rain gets stronger and the path becomes cloudier and cloudier through his watered vision, he does not stop. The key floats ominously, and the door out is just a few feet away from it. He takes it in his hand, it’s metal cool and real. There’s a faint clicking sound from the door.

“I miss you Sunny.”

Omori’s next step is slow and deliberate, it’s weak, hesitant. It goes against everything. He needs to move, before the hands take him, before the door closes—

“You were always someone I could depend on to listen. My best friend. My problems... my hopes... my dreams... You knew them all. ” Stranger says, and maybe it’s from the rain, or his own heart beating like a drum in his ear that makes his voice sound a little more clear, a little more familiar.

It’s not Omori who’s scared to move, it’s not Omori who’s trapped here.

Stranger laughs again, and his ears don’t lie to him, he sounds— real, achingly so. Gone is all the heavy distortion and roughness. He’s no longer the subsiding silence at the end of a well loved melody, but rather, it’s refrain.

“So if you're still there... please let my words reach you one more time.”

Omori pushes past, through the rain and through the agony, he continues forward without falter because he is perfect in that sense. Omori does not kneel down and cry when he is hurt, he does not express more than what is necessary. Omori can convey his thoughts without words and everyone understands him, everyone adjusts for him. Omori does not  feel, he is emptiness . A home without warmth. With the purpose to survive instead of living. Just like the room he wakes up in every day. Omori was made, not born.

And even being perfect, the ugly and unwanted still manage to slip through.

Sunny looks back—

Time does not stop, nor does the rain, or the agony, or the aching. In the place where Stranger was once crouched— staring heavily on the sight in front of him rather than looking back at Omori even as he walked away— sits a small, untouched daisy.

They meet each other again, in violent glimpses within pockets of borrowed time. Each moment they grace each other’s rotten presence again. Stranger continues to flicker, becoming more of just an afterimage before he completely vanishes into the vast, unrelenting darkness of Black Space. Omori feels a twisted sense of relief whenever he looks at him, fading back into the nothingness of which he came.

It does not stop Stranger. Despite his tether to Omori fraying, he continues to be persistently cryptic. Calling him by names that get muted out before they even leave his shadowed mouth, reminiscing about memories that never even happened. Even in his last moments, he can’t help but be a pain in Omori’s side.

Even so, his irritation towards Stranger cannot be said to Basil.

Basil, his Lost Friend. Each door he passes through he feels a little bit of himself leave when he exits. Each key feels like a shackle in his hand and Basil’s smile before he gets his head bashed in, cut off, or exploded is another piece of Omori lost within the endless pit of misery that is Black Space. Everytime he walks in and hear’s Basil’s honeyed voice, a trickle of dread runs through his body like lightning. He’s so happy before he dies.

He can only hold so much together before the last drop of water hits the rim of the cup and the whole thing shatters.

Except Omori is perfect, he does not shatter, or break under pressure, or cry when his best friend is repeatedly and brutally torn apart, chewed up and killed. Omori does not show a single emotion when Basil reaches out every time, crying out his name when the panic seeps in and the frantic need to escape settles in his bones. Omori does not flinch when Basil’s honeyed voice becomes tar.

When the final door emits its sickly red glow, the final click echoing across the barren abyss, Omori does not feel contentment or satisfaction.

The path from thenon becomes one lined with grief and guilt.

Omori does not remember when Sunny takes over, or maybe it was just him all along, but at some point it becomes too much and he is taken so strongly that it wakes him, even in his dreams. Like he’s been dropped in a lake of frozen water and left to drown, though this time there are no loving arms that run in to save him, no warm embraces after the biting cold to ground him back to reality. He can’t breathe, his grief needs oxygen, and like all things it catches the light and begins to smoke.

(He’s been burning for a long time now.)

“Sunny, the truth is here.”

Stranger’s voice cuts through the monotony of his suffering. He stands behind him, almost completely disappearing into the white backdrop of the church. His ghostly white eyes stare back at him, unblinking, but more alive than anything around them. Sunny thinks he looks sad.

“You’ve been running from this for so long,” He says, a light airness to his tone, almost wistful. “But this time, we can face it together.”

Stranger takes his hand. His spectral touch is nothing more than a light breeze that slowly lifts his palm facing up, it feels impossibly gentle.

“Whatever you face there will be difficult, it will be hard and you will feel like giving up.” He speaks, and another piece of his body flickers in and out of existence. “But just know it’s good to remember the bad, as much as you remember the good. These memories are all we have left, and they are all that will be left behind when everything is over. You have sealed me away with the pain for so long that you have forgotten what had hurt you the most, but in doing so you also hurt me.”

Stranger shakes his head. His  eyes hauntingly  bright. “Whatever happens, whatever you find out. Just know I don’t hate you. You have carried the burden of our sins for far too long.”

Stranger presses something into the swell of his palm. It’s soft and silky, and it's the last thing he does before he vanishes into the wind.

Sunny holds it tightly in his hand, he does even when he walks the long road scattered with photographs of everything he has kept repressed. Even when her body hangs from the branch, her single eye staring at him, lifeless and dead. He doesn’t let go, even when Omori grabs him back and tries to keep everything back down.

A single white egret orchid petal is all he has left.

Sunny had never liked hospitals all too much.

They stank of death, even when it was masked over the overwhelming scent of sterile equipment and sour lemon sprays. He never went willingly, nor did he go alone. Mari was always with him when he had check-ups, or his mom, or his dad when he was still someone who loved Sunny. They would hold his hand and talk to the doctors for him and when it was over they would wrap him up in a big hug. Was  it scary? I know you don't like it. I'm so proud of you for going through that.

When he had sprained his ankle once and had to be stuck to the bed for 5 whole hours, Mari had asked to go home early from school and carried him on her back from his bed to the car. The scent of her shampoo when he hid his face in her hair would wash away the pungent sterile, and her hands would rub at his cheeks wiping away dried tear stains. She would describe her day, about the cat she saw on the sidewalk going to school, to the sound of the softball making an impact with her bat as it flew across the sky like a light.

But now, Mari isn't here and the hospital still smells like death and there's no one to wipe the tears off his face, he had taken that person with his own hands, he had done it to himself, afterall. A sprained ankle is nothing in the face of silent, almost tangible grief. Swelling in his heart like an invasive tumour, so big he can almost rip it out with his hands.

He almost wishes he could go back.

( Tell me where it hurts,  Omori would say. The knife in his hand pointed to him, to Sunny, he'd want to kill them both. Omori was made for comfort, but he held a knife and never questioned death when he killed things. Like some sort of rabid dog without a leash.  Stop howling, just calm down and show me where. Let me fix it. Let me fix you.

But Sunny couldn't tell where, couldn't calm down. Maybe some people just never stop howling.)

He stumbles out of the bed with as much grace as someone who just had their eye gouged out of its socket has. As odd as it is to be walking around with one eye closed, it isn't as bad as the looming dread he had felt everyday for years when he stepped out of his bedroom and looked at himself in the mirror only to see something lingering in the hallway. He manages on shaky feet, taking one step, before another, then another. Like a baby deer slowly relearning how to walk, wide-eyed and in the fray of danger.

There are plants strewn across his room, each meticulously potted and freshly watered. That's good, at least someone can take care of them. He walks past them and through the row of empty hospital beds and medical equipment. There's no sound, and as much as an empty hospital has the potential to be eerie— he feels strangely at peace in its strange tranquillity.

His friends meet him when he enters the hallway.

He knows they're not real, of course, Kel is much taller and Aubrey has hair the shade of neon street signs, but these are the ones he's spent the past 4 years running through forests and having picnics with. These are the friends who love him despite his fears, who know to never leave him alone and compensate for his lack of speech. and never push him past anything he's uncomfortable with. They aren't perfect, not in the way Omori was, but their flaws and shortcomings are what made them so tangible, almost easy to believe.

They run off into the hallway, laughing and gesturing for him to follow. Sunny stands still, feet rooted in the ground as he waves them off with a smile.

Stranger waits on the other side of the hallway, watching him as he bids goodbye to the last figments of happiness he's had. He says nothing but waits patiently even as Sunny stares off into the glass doors where they had gone through. When he finally goes to move, he does not gesture or call his name, just walks away knowing that Sunny is trailing close behind.

(How confident he is knowing Sunny will follow him anywhere is intimately beyond him.)

Stranger stands in front of the door, his hand hovering over the handle in question. He looks to Sunny, wordlessly asking for an answer. Beyond this is a choice, he would say in that strange enigmatic voice of his, you will have to make it.

Stranger leaves and Sunny opens the door.

It plays out in slow motion, something from the movies Mari used to love. When the main character confronts the enemy and puts an end to everyone's suffering. But Mari is dead and Sunny is no hero, not when he is the root of everyone's torment and the reason their story had become a tragedy. It rings like a eulogy, the worried faces of his friends when he stands in the doorway. More like the death march of a villain finally put to its loathsome end.

"Sunny? What are you.." Hero asks, getting up from his seat beside the bed.  "You shouldn't be up, you're still injured."

Sunny shakes his head. Taking another brave step forward he can feel the ghost of all his burdens weighing down at him at once. They're screaming in his ear, something gripping him from behind with its claws digging into skin waiting to tear him apart. His bravery is born of ephemerality and adrenaline, and it’s not going to last him that long.

“I…I need…”

He can’t say it. It’s stuck between his teeth, under the side of his mouth and in the back of his throat. It’s itching uncomfortably in his neck, like he’d just swallowed something wrong. Kel is looking at him concerned, inching closer with his hands in the air in mock surrender.

“Hey man, you don’t need to say anything, alright? Let’s just go back to your room first.”  Kel prompts, getting closer until he’s barely an arm’s length away.

“No, I—” He looks to Aubrey who’s still standing by the bedside, her hands grasping the metal railing until her knuckles are colored alabaster. She looks to him, and then to the figure laying down on the bend with a deep frown on her face.

Basil is still asleep. She’s watching him in case he lashes out on Basil.

He touches the wrapped part of his face, numbed and painless. He had almost forgotten what it felt like. The slick quelch of metal as it plunged into his skull, the hot burn against his cheeks when he realised he was crying. It had felt like his heart was clawing its way out of his throat and tearing his flesh apart, but unlike feelings, blood only gets realer when you feel it. Sunny had been trying to be real, but it had cost him too much.

It all comes crashing back down, the cause of everything terrible. He would’ve had two eyes if he didn’t push Mari down the stairs. He is the ill-root that makes the whole tree rot, they can trace back the lines of their suffering back to him like grooves in a palm or the veins of a wicked heart.

He is not guiltless, nor is he forgiven. He could not bring himself to be mad at Basil when he had spent so much of his time being mad already. It wasn't until recently that he had sat with his anger long enough to realise it’s real name was grief.

(He isn’t a martyr. Sunny isn’t anything at all. A sick part of him wants to wake Basil from his bed and shake him till he pops screaming why, why did you bother saving  nothing ?)

His eye looks around the room, anywhere beside Basil, he’s sure if he stares too long he might break out into something unexplainable. They end up falling on the pot of white tulips sitting placidly on his bedside.

Sunny takes a long, drawn out breath and slowly exhales. If he was any more broken he would’ve imagined the sensation of Mari’s fingers digging into his shoulders like a lifeline. And really, it’s all that simple. The sky is blue, his sister is still dead and Sunny is tired from trying to stay awake.

He bites his tongue and holds his head up high.

“I need to tell you something.”

Maybe, when this is all over, he can find a way to ask Basil why he kept the flowers for so long.

There was nowhere left for him.

Their fight was one-sided, Omori knew that from the start. He knew Sunny like a heart knows the blood that runs through it, in the way it can sense when a disease is about to start or when the body begins to shut down. He had known there was something planted inside Sunny before he had brought out the knife, that treacherous feeling of determination and hope. Omori was stronger, but Sunny brought out the violin, the wood lovingly cleaned of any dried blood and strands of hair, and played the song that Omori knew he had nothing against.

Mari, she was their only weakness, and even in death she’s still better than him.

He wasn’t dead, however. Death does not come to nightmares dwelling in the back of your head, there is no concept of peace for the fear that lingers ominously where the light does not reach. Omori is simply the manifestation of all the bad things, all the unwanted and the unloved. He’s escapism and safety, perfect in every single way.

But Sunny doesn’t want that, not anymore at least. It’s unfortunate enough for both of them that Sunny had decided to run off from the haven that he had painstakingly crafted for his comfort to go and confront the same thing he was running from all this time. That painful and ugly truth that Omori tried so desperately to fight back. He had even travelled down into the darkest parts of them only to be left behind with the door locked shut.

So that leaves Omori. In the same, dark hole that all things imperfect go to.

“Oh, you’re back.”

The rain still seems to hate him.  Drip, Drop, Drip, Drop  it splatters against his skin in a lulling rhythm. Stranger is yet again left unaffected, though this time his attention is captured by the several flower pots in front of him, all neatly lined and freshly potted.

“Where did those come from?”

Nothing grows in Black Space, every tree is either dead or a mirage of eye-bleedingly wrong colours and glitches. That is a fact, but yet again Stranger seems to be completely beyond that. His body is no more a flickering candle on the verge of going out. He’s solid now, more real and grounded.

Stranger turns around, his eyes still glowing that unnerving shade of otherworldly white, slightly wide. He’s shocked, but his voice is tinged with a light playfulness. “Ah, you’re finally talking to me! I thought I was going to be carrying the conversation for the both of us forever.”

He says  forever  like the implications don’t matter, like they aren’t both stuck in this terrible, terrible place to rot for the rest of whatever may count as an eternity. Here, Omori is casted aside as useless while Stranger is simply left to be forgotten. What an awful pair they make.

Omori does not respond. He doesn’t want to start getting in the habit of being friendly to Stranger, even when they are the only two people in hell.

Luckily for both of them, Stranger doesn’t seem to care. He hums an upbeat tune despite the unnatural distorted impairments of his voice. “It doesn’t matter much now, though. Seeing as we are both in the same situation.” He laughs, “Truly a sight for sore eyes. I had long accepted my fate here. I don’t know about you.”

It’s against the entirety of the natural order of things. The creator being subjected to its own creation. After spending so much time in the surreality of Head Space and the cold, perpetual nothingness of White Space, even a simple drop of water on his skin feels like a revulsion against his single-mentality. Omori was made to be a shield against all the things left in the dark, now he’s expected to live the rest of his uncounted days in that darkness with the most terrible, terrible person.

(It feels like punishment. Not fate)

“I’m going back.”

Stranger tilts his head. His arms crossed against each other. “You can try. There are no red hands here, I thought they must’ve followed your orders. No matter how far you walk past here, you just end back at the same place.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to, I’m not saying you should. Try it, and see how long you can run before the world collapses in on itself.”

Despite his words, Stranger does not sound like he’s trying to provoke him, rather, the tired look in his eyes makes Omori question how long he’s really been here, eternally searching for an escape from the hell he’s created. How many nights he had spent wondering if the sky would suddenly split open, or if the ground would consume him whole. There is no death for nightmares, afterall.

“I hate you.”

Stranger laughs. A loud and unfeeling sound.

“Then why am I here?”

The sky shifts, the rain does not stop but the static grey moves and contorts, as if it’s listening in on the two of them. The single street lamp above Stranger flickers. The whole world seems to be caving around him.

“If you hate me, then why haven’t you forgotten me?” Stranger prompts. He’s standing fully now, the distance is far enough between them that if he so wanted to, lunge at Omori and strike him down, maybe they would fight, maybe there would be blood and the sickly feeling in his gut would go away. “You’ve done it before, right? Push things you don’t want anymore away, things that hurt you, things you hate. When you chose to hide, you split me in half. You hate this, the ugly and the awful part, but there’s some part of me that you still wish to see, right? The one who’ll forgive you for what you’ve done, the one who believes you’re some kind of saint who needs protecting. This is your mind after all, everything was made using your dreams. Your friends, your sister. This is the underbelly where the failures and bad memories get shoved under, hated, but still existing.”

Stranger gestures around them, the vast distance where nothing grows, the constant rain. “But even you still want to be safe, to be at peace. That’s why this is here, isn’t it, Omori?”

He takes a step forward, hesitant. Looking at him when he takes the next, and the next, and the next. Like a hunter handling a wild animal. When they’re only a few inches away from each other, he speaks again, almost a whisper. “Hate me. See what happens.”

Mari’s hanging body appears in his mind, her single eye staring a hole into his head. Then, her warm hands, guiding  his  on the violin as she joined him in their  final  song. Her smile, her laugh, her voice whispering into his ear so lovingly without the anger he deserves,  You’ll forgive yourself won’t you, Sunny?

He misses her. To never see her face again is what grief is.

Stranger looks at him like he can read all the words off his mind on his face.

“I want to go back.”

He smiles.

“But where to? Home? To the house where she died? Or the room you made to hide yourself from everyone else?” Stranger lifts a hand, waiting, he doesn’t touch him. “You will never be completely home again, because part of your heart will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and losing people in more than one place.”

“People aren’t made to be homes.”

There’s something touching him. The rain has completely drenched him from head to toe, but Stranger grabs his hand and holds it tightly in his nevertheless. Omori doesn’t take it back. He feels so real.

“It was foolish…to love something so fleeting. People leave so easily.” He murmurs, both of them thinking of the same person. “But— it’s nice. Being loved.”

You’ll forgive yourself won’t you, Sunny?

Omori nods his head. The hand in his squeezes once, before pulling him forward. Omori does not struggle, he lets himself be guided with gentle steps towards wherever, there’s no other place worse than here anyway. It’s only a few paces until they stop.

When he opens his eyes he’s greeted by the sight of tousled dirt strewn all over the grass patch, a dirtied spade and a pair of bright yellow garden gloves laid beside it. There are several pots, all in varying sizes, some half filled, some patted with dirt and stuck with a little wooden stick. There’s even a small container with what looks to be an assorted array of seeds, caringly labelled and sealed for future potting. It’s the start of something, something that will need a lot of time and care put into it.

“Where did these come from?” He asks, Stranger shrugs. He hasn’t let go of his hand.

“I don’t know. They just showed up one day.”

Omori doesn’t even know if they’ll grow at all. Maybe it’ll all be a waste, and Stranger will get disheartened and try to leave again. Maybe they’ll grow angry and resentful, mad at each other from so much closed time in such a dreadfully stagnant world where it always rains and there’s nothing but dead trees and grass patches. And when they try to kill each other it’ll be the only escape they have. After all, killing is what Omori was made for, when the time comes he won’t hesitate with Stranger. Maybe then.

“Here.” The hand leaves his and is replaced with a metal spade. A duller knife, he thinks. “Do something useful while you’re here.”

Omori relents because there’s nothing else they can do here anyways. He kneels down beside Stranger, the grass is surprisingly dry under his knees as he goes to work. Shovelling dirt into the clay pot until it’s halfway full before selecting a random packet of seeds from the container to drop inside. The actions come to him naturally, like second nature. Muscle memory from something he can’t remember.

(Maybe one day they will.)

“Will they grow?” He asks, patting down the dirt over the seeds. Daffodils the label had read.

Stranger shrugs, “We’ll have to find out.”

“I think it’s kinda cool that people like you so much. Especially in only 3 days? You must be really easy to love, Sunny.”

Sunny shakes his head, from where he’s sitting on his bed, he can see Basil’s rapt attention on the bright cluster of flowers kept in a tall glass vase by the television. He’s surrounded by numerous other bouquets and a stout little bonsai plant that apparently is a wonder in itself as Basil said earlier:  They need a lot more care and attention to be this healthy and compact! This is overkill for a get-well-soon gift!

“I just helped with leaking pipes the whole time.” He shrugs, pressing his colored pencil harder onto the paper to let out a bold streak of blue. “Anyone could’ve done it.”

It must’ve been the wrong response because when Sunny looks up from his drawing he’s greeted with an affronted look from his friend. “If you’re just anyone then what does that make me?”

Sunny looks back down at his drawing. “Yourself.”

He’s quiet again. It feels like half the time they’ve spent together has just been mulling over silent contemplation. It’s not like Sunny minds, though. He wouldn’t enjoy it if Basil pushed himself to keep talking for the sake of making noise to fill the silence, he much rather likes it if they just sit down and do whatever meaningless things they can whilst in the presence of another person. It might just be him, but Sunny never truly liked being alone.

He thought he had grown out of it in his isolation, and he did, but when life pushed him out of his front door and kicked him into making actual conversations with people (albeit one-sided as usual) he’d realised how much he deprived himself of contact, and now embarrassingly enough, he longed to hear and see people once more.

But this is fine, he digs his pencil deeper into the paper it almost rips with the force. Basil doesn’t need to be anything for him.

“How’s everyone else doing?” He asks again a moment later. Sunny’s hand stops, hovering over the paper as he thinks of what to say next.

“They left.” He puts it simply. He knows who Basil is referring to and the memory of them still stings like alcohol to an open wound. “Kel said he would be visiting soon, though.”

He’s purposely leaving out the part where Hero pushed him out of the way when he ran out the door, or when Aubrey lifted her hand up to hit him, before hesitating and breaking down into tears. Basil only woke up when everyone else had left the room, his eyes snapping open when Kel had been the last to leave, grabbing Sunny’s shoulders with a frantic look in his eyes as he asked if it was true. Sunny couldn’t bring himself to lie one more time and instead remained quiet as Kel’s face fell and his entire demeanour seemed to sink.

“Oh,” Basil says. He gently fiddles with the petals of a bright fuschia flower. “...that’s alright”

They fall back into familiar motions, easily enough that it feels like the 4 year separation between them never happened. Basil doesn’t push, he doesn’t make unnecessary sounds or tries to be more than what he is. Sunny is quiet in his appreciation, and normally it makes their silences feel comfortable. Their friendship is quiet, afterall.

Though this silence feels heavy. Like there’s something floating in the air between them that remains unsaid.

“What about your mom?”  Basil asks again, playing with the petals of the bright, happy flower.

“What about her?”

“Weren’t you moving?” He says a little quickly, like the words are pouring out of him unconsciously, “...Isn’t she here with you?”

Sunny turns to look at him— one of the disadvantages of having one eye now, having blindsides. “She’s finishing the move. I have to rest.”

Basil looks like he’s sick with how pale he’s gotten by his response. “Does she know about…”

He doesn’t elaborate, but his gaze lingers on the bandaged part of Sunny’s face. It is quite noticeable, long gauze wrapping half of his head. It only bleeds every so often now, but the bandages feel stiff and restrictive when he still has the instinctual urge to blink with both eyes.

“Yeah,” He answers, lifting a hand to touch it carefully.

Basil rips the petal off the flower and it falls to the ground with a loud clatter.

“I’m— I’m sorry.” His voice cracks. Sunny promptly puts his sketchbook down on the bed in favour of giving his full attention to Basil who looks as if he’s caught on the verge of hysteria.

Sunny’s  eye   narrows . “It didn’t break.”

Basil looks down at the vase on the floor. The water puddles around the fallen petals and stems, the colour bleeding into it. He shakes his head so fervently Sunny worries it might fly off. “No— not the flowers. I’m sorry about everything.”

He stares at the bright fuschia flowers as if in a trance.

Sunny doesn’t answer, he doesn’t trust his mouth to start saying things that he doesn’t believe in. Words were always so daunting to him, they could do everything. You could destroy a person’s everything, their bare existence with just a curve of a consonant or the hum of a vowel. A life is born out of external hearing, out of things people have said. He’d rather show things in ways that didn’t need them.

He gets up from the hospital bed on slightly unsteady feet (still getting used to the decreased depth perception he has), and walks to where Basil is kneeling beside the ruined stems and petals of his get-well-soon gift.

Sunny ignores the way the water wets his clothes and instead sits directly in front of Basil.

“Does she know I did it?”

He shakes his head. “No.”

Basil makes a small sound that reminds him of Mewo when she’d paw at the door of Mari’s recital room when she wanted to be let in. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

Sunny is quiet for a beat, thinking of the answer that is truest to him.

“Because she wouldn’t let us be friends anymore.”

Basil’s hands shake. Such wonderful things, the same hands that lovingly plant each seed into a flower bed and patiently wait for them to grow. The ones that hold the umbrella under his head when the rain grows louder with each passing drop. The ones that wrap tightly around his own in the way that speaks of distances, of intervals of time where skin brushes against skin and the very feeling of being alive rushes through his veins.

Sunny knows they hurt, that they’ve taken as much as they’ve given. They’re the same ones that fumble with the jump rope, the ones that knot it into the tree. They were the last ones to touch Mari, and even then they shook.

Basil’s hands had never been anything else but his own. Just like how he’s just Basil, in spite of everything, despite everything.

“Does that even matter?” He says with a hysterical laugh. It cracks in that ugly way a note on a violin screams when played wrong. “You should just tell her.”

“No.”

“Sunny, you know you should.”

“I don’t want to.” He’s sounding like they’re 12 all over again, and Basil huffs like he is too.

“Stop that, stop it!” Basil shouts and they really are kids again. Suddenly it’s summer, and they’re by the lake and the sun is hot and Sunny can’t help but let the ugly feeling in his chest take him whole. “We can’t be friends anymore, Sunny! Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand that I’m terrible and that you should know better?”

“You’re not terrible.”

“But I  am. ” He cries, “I killed Mari— I— I tried to save you and I couldn’t even do it right— and I still ended up hurting everyone because I’m so fucking terrible! I gouged your  eye  out, Sunny, can’t you see that I’m the worst person? I can’t be anyone to you— I can’t be your friend because everyone treats me like I’m a walking hazard out to blow up, and I am! I can’t do anything— I can’t—”

Sunny stays when Basil cries, the ugly hiccups and wheezing gasps. He wails like a child, something they’ve both been robbed off. When Sunny reaches out to take his shaking hands and hold them in between his own, Basil heaves a sound that echoes across their empty hospital wing like a discophant bell. There is no one here but them, no one to listen in on their horrificness.

Sunny holds Basil when he cries, he doesn’t let go even when Basil hits him pathetically in the side or when he slowly loses energy and slumps into his arms.  The tears have wrung him dry but Sunny knows there’s a whole ocean of terrible, terrible things that only now have bubbled to the surface.

He holds Basil when he reaches the gentle realisation that he wants to get better, for this, for the both of them.

“You didn’t kill Mari, I did.” He says when their silence comes back, lighter. “You don’t get to choose if I can’t be friends with you anymore.”

Basil doesn’t say anything, he just sniffles into Sunny’s shoulder and with the barest shift of his head, Sunny can tell he’s wordlessly saying  go on

“You’re not a hazard, you’re Basil. You’re not the worst person, or a terrible person, you’re just a person. I want you to stay in my life.”

Basil turns his head, “You don’t.”

Sunny clenches his hands with all gentle fury he has. “I do. I forgive you.”

Wrong,  when Basil stumbles out of his arms and onto the side. He’s looking at Sunny with wide, red rimmed eyes, mouth downturned and eyebrows furrowed. He looks at Sunny like he had just stepped over his patch of sunflowers, mildly angered and frozen in shock.

“Don’t say that.” He says, breathless and urgent. “I don’t— I don’t want it.”

Sunny lips involuntarily pull themselves down, “What?”

“I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve your forgiveness.”

Sunny sits with him on the cold hospital floor, with their ruined bouquet of flowers laying between them and a whole lot of issues, but he wouldn’t be lying if he did say there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

“When, then?” He asks patiently, laying his hands back down on his lap.

“I don’t know.” Basil murmurs, looking off into the side. “I want to, though.”

Sunny nods, “Then I’ll wait.”

“You don’t have to wait for anything. You don’t know how long it’ll take. You don’t know if I’ll still want it. I could be lying to make you feel better.”

“No,” Sunny replies, because he knows Basil. He knows all of Basil’s tells and the way he smiles when he lies. Their secret language may be outdated but Sunny still knows the words to the song even when the melody has changed. “You waited for me before.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I know.”

“I waited for you because I thought it was my fault, for Mari. I don’t want to be a burden again.”

“I know.”

“I can leave you— I can walk away and ruin everything again.”

“You won’t.”

Basil looks down at the floor, at the bright fuschia flowers falling apart at the seams. “I’m sorry about your zinnia.”

Sunny hand twitches. “It’s okay.”

It takes a while for them to get up off the floor, an embarrassing amount of time, really. Soon enough Basil helps Sunny balance himself from the ground and then promptly shoves a wad of tissue papers onto him to soak up the water staining his hospital gown. Basil sits with him on the bed, kicking his feet while he watches Sunny draw with feigned interest.

They talk about nothing, Sunny finds himself falling back into it.

“What is that?” Basil asks softly, nudging his head at the sketchbook Sunny has been reverently pressing his time into.

Sunny looks up at him, then to the rendition of Mari’s picnics back in headspace on the paper. All in bright shades of lavender, green and blue. He hopes he can capture the same sense of fleeting peace and freedom it gave him, so he can look back and realise that he was grateful for the memories, even if they were a faux-reality.

“My dreams.” He replies, sketching a figure with teal hair and a flower crown, his smile is wide and carefree as he holds a photobook close to his chest. His loveliest memories.

Basil smiles at the messily drawn flower boy, “Were they happy?”

Sunny smiles back. “Yeah, they are.”

It takes a while.

The discharge process involves a lot of talking, that’s already enough to set him up for the next 4 years but Sunny endures nonetheless, if anything it only makes him wish for his mom more. He gets strapped with a white medical patch over his eye and is sent out to the hospital lobby with his luggage and he’s promptly blown over with— everything, really.

Basil sits beside him on those rickety hospital chairs while they wait for his mother to come pick him up. They don’t say anything and that’s fine.

When it’s finally time to go and his mother is waiting by the curb with her hand on the steering wheel, Sunny leans into Basil and wraps his arms around his oldest friend. Basil freezes up and for a moment his hands hover over his back like he’s unsure where to put them. Sunny keeps hugging him until he evens out and settles his arms across his shoulders with only a slight tentativeness.

Kel, Aubrey and Hero didn’t come and that’s fine with Sunny, he can live the rest of his life knowing that he isn’t forgiven— he’ll spend everyday trying to rebuild from there.

The car engine hums and he leaves Faraway Town with a whisper.

Time moves slower from thenon.

There’s a lot of work and a lot of pain. The apartment in the city is nothing like his childhood home. It’s always noisy and Sunny realises that’s a good thing, the sound of a constantly bustling metropolis of people and cars drowns out any thoughts that occur. Where Faraway was humble and honest, the city is demanding in the way it pushes him beyond what he knows. His mom works hard enough, juggling jobs while still leaving him her sticky notes on the bathroom mirror every morning. So he has to be the one to venture out into the unknown and sort things himself.

Sunny learns a lot from the noise. People constantly talk and there’s a labrador down the hallway that goes out every morning at 6 and Sunny loves it to death. The bakery shop he visits knows his name and order by heart and the neighbour across from him brings him leftovers when his mom works late into the night.

He goes back to school, gets decent grades and makes his mom smile again.

But nothing is linear, sometimes he can still feel his skin hissing or his rotten heart ripping past ribs and flesh as it aches with something not quite human. He still turns on all the lights past 8 pm and avoids looking in the bathroom mirror when he can, and it’s those instances where nothing is happening and he’s 12 years old again with the body of his sister hanging by his favourite tree and there are arms wrapping around his neck  you killed her, you killed her, you—

Basil texts him sometimes, only when he’s free, which is mostly all the time.  

He’ll send a picture of a plant, some jumble or words and a paragraph dedicated to its innate history, or a random cat he sees while walking back to his own  school: it reminds  me of you, he even has one eye, too. They both decide to name the cat Pyrate, even though Basil is insistent on Rain. Sunny tells him it’s corny, Basil calls him stupid. In retaliation, Sunny gets a houseplant and calls it Fernabelle Polypodiophyta the III. Basil doesn’t talk to him for the rest of the day.

Kel messages him once during his birthday. He sends a picture of Pyrate with a hat with no text. Sunny cries when he sees it.

He goes back to school, mid-way through class it feels like his heart stops beating. He only manages to scramble his way into the bathroom in time before he throws up into the stall. He cries for Mari, but only wakes up to see the terrified expression of his mother, half in tears, half out of her mind as she holds him tight enough that he won’t fall apart.

The school counsellor recommends a therapist, his mother looks at him like her daughter died all over again.

Basil sends him a picture of Pyrate and another cat that night, he names her Pecan because of her fur and almond-like eyes. Basil has less of a hissy-fit over his naming capabilities and they talk about nonsense until the sun dips far into the ground and the moon is their only witness.

Sunny >>> Basil

Should i talk to someone

Basil >>> Sunny

Whos  someone?

Sunny >>> Basil

A therapist

Basil stops typing. It feels like decades for Sunny as he watches their conversation dwindle into silence. Days seem to pass and Sunny lives through life like a husk in another person’s body. He’s on the verge of relapsing back into his recluse self when his phone chimes up a week later from the only person who’s number he has on his phone besides his mother.

Basil >>> Sunny

it’s up to you. but you said you’d wait for me back in the hospital.  i want  to be good enough for you. but if you want to be good too, then i  dont  mind giving us time.

Sunny stares at it for a good minute before clicking the call button.

They talk until morning comes.

Sunny goes back to school, apologises to his teacher for disrupting class and makes plans to visit the psychiatrist on Saturdays. His mother smiles impossibly wide, as she wordlessly places a plate of steak in front of him that day.

It takes a while.

Faraway has this ingenuitive charm to it that only former residents can see. It cloaks itself in a mist of nostalgia and bittersweet  contentness  when Sunny’s car drives past his old house. It’s like looking through an old photo and realising you were living in a memory that was yet to be made, and that years later you would be sitting in the backseat of the car wondering if you’ll ever go back.

But there’s no photograph, and the house has been sold to a new family that will never know the horrors that transpired underneath its floorboards and the suffering that paints its walls, maybe it’s better like that. That nobody knows the bad and they make new memories to overtake those ones.

Sunny remembers, though. He’ll continue to hold all of them like a glass bottle rolling across the sea, waiting for someone to share them with.

His mother drops him off by the house far east, tucked into the edge of the forest where the soil is richer and the rain comes in symphonies.  He waits in the car, looking at the flowers that have doubled since he last visited. All of them bright and thriving, a watering can laying nearby.

“You’ll be okay, right?” His mother asks, and he can see the tenseness of her hands on the steering wheel.

Sunny nods, still looking down at the front yard. His mother starts the engine again.

“I’ll pick you up later, okay?” She says gently patting his head. “Have fun.”

He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car. The bouquet of bright, blue flowers in his hands crumples slightly when he digs his fingers into the parchment while his mom drives off into the distance, slowly fading out of view. He inhales deep, and lets it out in a long sigh.

Sunny knocks on the door.

Mari used to say that meeting people was her favourite thing, she said that everyone had a childhood, a first love, hopes and dreams they wanted to do before they all went away into the meaningless pit of time and erosion. She was sentimental like that, and maybe that’s why people adored her. She listened to so many stories, heard about every heartbreak, every painful moment to the best shining success and she relayed them back to him. In wonders, in the curves of certain lines, in the loveliness and certainties of so many colours.

She never got to finish her story, it had ended abruptly like a page torn off or the ink running dry halfway through. Sunny had taken away her ending with his own hands, she would’ve been everything and more.

He carries that now, her story, he says it to the people he meets on the side of the road or the ones who come passing and going in fleeting shades of black and white. His isn’t a happy one, his is a tragedy lined with pain and grief, but at least it hasn’t ended yet.

Basil opens the door, his nails are caked with dirt and his forehead gleams with a sheen of sweat. There’s something sooty streaked across his face and the summer sun makes his freckles stand out stark against pale skin.

His eyes are wide, mouth parted open. But he doesn’t close the door, which is good.

“Hi,” He says, only slightly breathless.

“Hi.” Basil says back.

They pass like that, like stars intersecting but never quite meeting, in that sweet-almost serendipitous way. Sunny wishes it could’ve gone better but at the same time it’s perfect how it is. Stupid and brave, everything that they are and more.

“I might be too early, but I remembered something you said a long time ago.” He starts, brandishing the flowers in front of him. “Surprise.” He says, absolutely devoid of surprise.

Basil looks at him like he’s grown a second head, but there’s this silly smile on his face that makes it look like Sunny had just plucked the moon from the sky and served it on a platter for him.

“Is this your excuse to give me flowers? Because if you kinda forgot, I have a lot of them.” He quips, his thumb pointing at the flowers that decorate every inch of his house, all of them bright and vibrant.

Sunny shakes his head. “They aren’t this flower. You said before blue is the rarest.”

Basil’s eyes go slightly wide. “That was years ago.”

He nods, ignoring the way his fingers instinctively tighten around the poor flowers as he pushes them towards Basil more insistently. He almost regrets it when Basil takes them and he’s left with nothing to hide his shaking hands.

There’s a beat of silence before Basil asks. “Do you know what forget-me-nots mean?”

Sunny nods, he spent a lot of time preparing beforehand. He’d gotten particularly close with the florist in the city when he asked her about their selection of blue flowers. At first he wanted to get a mix of every one of them, but when he had seen the meaning of this one, he had decided.

Basil looks down at the flowers with a soft look. “You really won’t give up?”

“I said I wouldn’t.”

Basil looks at him, and it shakes him a little off balance. In the hospital he’d been skirting around something, on the precipice but never quite reaching. Sunny had been patient, quiet and unwilling to leave because it’s not about what he owes, it's about them.

“Before, when I was still… stuck. How did you wait for so long?” He asks, because it’s been on his mind ever since they hugged in the hospital lobby. Basil had been the last to let go.

He stares at him, Sunny realises how blue his eyes really are. Ah,  he thinks. That’s what I’ve forgotten.

“I believed in you. That you would come back.” He says slowly. Fingers delicately running over the soft blue flowers. Sunny had gotten the tiny blooms so Basil could plant it wherever he wanted. “It was hard.”

“I know. Thank you.” He replies. And it might be because of that stupid-born bravery, or that nostalgic contentness, or both, but he reaches out his hand and asks without words.

Basil hears. He takes Sunny’s hand and holds it tight.

“It’s okay.” He says, and Mari would’ve loved to hear it. She would’ve loved to know how the next part played out, how this was the start to healing. It’s the relief at the end of a dark tunnel when the sun breaks through and you’ve felt like you’ve spent your whole life drowning. She would’ve wanted his ending to be happier, for both of them. “You’re here now.”

It’s the start. He hopes he never lets go.

“I am.”

“Omori! Come, look at this!"

There’s a shuffling of feet, muffled by the sound of the rain hitting the glass of their half-constructed greenhouse. Omori turns from where he was snipping the leaves of their daisies to where Stranger is crouched down in the middle of the room, staring at the ground.

“Looks like it’ll be nice and healthy, huh?” His ghostly voice sighs wistfully with a hint of a laugh. “That’s a relief.”

Omori nods. He walks over and crouches down with him to watch a small daffodil break through the dirt. Alive and waiting.

“We have not touched the stars

nor are we forgiven, which brings us back

to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,

not from the absence of violence, but despite

the abundance of it.”

― Richard Siken, Crush