Chapter Text

Sunny had no idea how his friends would react to the truth. It didn't matter how long he spent mulling it over, trying to reason with himself; he knew he would never be able to completely predict how his admission of guilt would go over, never be able to craft a plan to work around, to think of the exact best things to say to everyone in advance to make things right.

Or, more realistically, make things better, Sunny supposed.

But, the realization that Sunny had come to from his grueling internal struggle against Omori, and confronting head-on those vile personal demons whom he had for so long kept shoved down, was not of what he needed to say, but rather what he needed to do. He needed to speak with his friends right away, and how they responded was beside the point.

Sunny awoke with a startle, the blinding white lights lined across the ceiling blaring down and reflecting off the pale white walls every which way, momentarily blinding his unadjusted eyes.

His... eyes...?

Waking brought with it an acute sense of burning in his right eye, which quickly overwhelmed him. He futilely pawed at the patchwork of bandages that was now wrapped around it, cringing in pain as he did. The pain lingered, and he wanted to cry out for help from anyone nearby who might hear and offer assistance, but a more logical part of his brain forced him to silently endure it. He had a mission to accomplish, after all, and he didn't need anyone potentially getting in his way.

Sunny remembered the deep breathing exercise his sister had gone through with him, what felt like so very long ago, after he had an anxiety attack over some random bother that would probably feel comically trivial to him now if he could only remember what it was. Long, slow breaths, in and out, and he felt the world start to become manageable again. He laid there in that cramped, uncomfortable hospital bed for what felt like a minute before flinging himself to his feet as soon as the pain in his eye became familiar. Unfortunately, the rest of his body felt like total shit too, he quickly realized, and he had to reach for the bed frame to support himself in fear of falling over. Still, he would have to manage.

He gathered all the strength he had, and began to march. He did his best not to look in the mirror as he stumbled his way to the door, at a pace slightly slower than he would have liked. He could assess how bad his eye situation was after he took care of his errand – though if he was being honest, he didn't really want to know.

Out the door he went, and into an eerily long corridor of that same, blinding white light and cream paint on all sides, left and right lined with rows upon rows of meaningless doors. Despite the corridor being a straight line, Sunny somehow felt more lost now than he had at any time in his life, this hospital he'd found himself in feeling as foreign as some sort of alien space ship. Nevertheless, he had to keep going; he'd made a promise to himself that his friends would hear the truth as soon as possible, and he would make sure that they would, come hell or high water.

In the distance ahead, he saw three vague figures, clad in purple, standing around for a moment before excitedly running off in some arbitrary direction as he drew closer. He didn't need to think about it for a second to know who they were supposed to be. Even now, when he was more resolute and prepared to face this awful world he was trapped in than ever, his mind still taunted him. He reached the spot that they had been standing around in, a crossroads in the path, and decided to head off in the opposite direction they had, just for the satisfaction of spiting himself. As he was turning to take the path to his right, he swore he saw the black silhouette of a familiar person rounding another turn up ahead. Following it felt right somehow.

Even the meager amount of walking he had just done seemed to thoroughly wind Sunny. He braced his left shoulder against the wall of the hallway, stopping to breathe for a moment, when he heard something. Muffled voices – one, then a second talking back to it, and eventually a third. He could only barely even make out the noise at all, let alone understand what they were saying, but he was confident that these were the people he was looking for.

A second wind coursing through him, Sunny all but ran ahead a few more useless doors, over to the room where the noise had come from. Stopping just outside, he swallowed, both what little saliva his battered body had been able to produce, and what bits of pride he had left, before gently opening the door.

As the door slowly swung open, Sunny could see Hero, Kel and Aubrey all already looking his way. He felt a shiver run down his spine at the sight, intimidated by his best friends before he'd even said anything. The four of them stood in silence, an odd combination of both positive and negative emotions crossing his friends' faces at the sight of seeing him up and about. Basil lay resting peacefully in a bed between them all the while, unconscious. Nobody, not even Kel, could find the right words to break the spell of silence.

Sunny closed his eyes and remembered his promise to himself. Come hell or high water, he would tell his friends the truth, and, come hell or high water, he would stand there and accept whatever they might say, or do, to him afterwards. He owed them this.

Sunny ended the silence with a heavy exhale.

"I have to tell you something."

Sunny's friends stood there, mouths agape, struggling to process the horrific story he had dropped on them. Perhaps they were trying to figure out if this were some sort of misunderstanding? A prank done in exceptionally poor taste? If so, he would gladly sort that out – insist upon how badly he had messed up, and what an awful person he was. But, the three of them just stood there, expressions unchanging, the silence from before coming back thicker than ever. Aubrey in particular seemed to be deep in thought.

Sunny knew that he could never truly predict how they might react to this, and that he just had to deal with whatever happened, but somehow the unexpected silence was killing him so much more than any situation he had predicted prior. If they needed to scream at him, berate him, call him names, he would simply nod in agreement with whatever they said. If they needed to hit him, he would drop his guard and let them break whichever bones they wanted. If they needed to kill him, he would gladly provide them the knife. But, this tension right now... it made him want to scream at the top of his lungs.

Out of nowhere, the tension was broken; not by words, but by a sound. A faint, gentle squeaking of some sort. The soft rustle of clothing followed. These sounds then repeated several times, becoming slightly louder with each repetition. Utterly baffled, Sunny looked over to Kel.

Kel was rotating. Around and around he went, the soft squeak of his worn basketball shoes on the linoleum floor sounding almost deafening to Sunny's ears. He wasn't, like, spinning super fast, or in a dangerous manner like he was fucking Crash Bandicoot or some shit, but it was still very concerning. When Kel happened to be in the right spot in his cycle for Sunny to be able to see his face, he looked moderately worried. It was the moderate worry of a man who had been stabbed in the heart by his best friend... and the rotation of a man who had had that heart wrenched out from his chest. And it was Sunny's fault.

Sunny looked over to Aubrey, a bizarre smirk now across her face. Her expression faltered, giving way to a gradually broader grin, before she was eventually smiling ear to ear. Sunny was using all the mental energy he had not to break down in tears as the love of his life threw her head back, beginning to chuckle. This soon became outright laughter, the kind Sunny hadn't heard from her since they were children, then a downright howling cackle. Kel cast her a concerned glance whenever he was in the appropriate part of his spin cycle to face her. Aubrey was now flat on her ass, rapidly kicking her legs and smacking the floor loudly with both hands, crying laughing, ignoring the shouts of patients in other rooms yelling at her to shut the fuck up. Those tears in her eyes – Sunny knew beyond a doubt that those were tears of rage from a woman who now thoroughly hated him, and who would, from now on, only acknowledge his presence for the purpose of spitting in his direction. And it was Sunny's fault.

Sunny closed his eye, bringing a hand up to his face to hopefully wipe away the tears that had formed before his friends could notice. When he opened his eye again, Hero was there. He was there and he was there. Hero was there, now only a couple inches from his face, noses almost touching, staring directly into Sunny's soul. He was there, and there he was.

Hero brought his massive hands up to Sunny's cheeks, and then brought his massive hands up to Sunny's cheeks, cupping Sunny's face. This soon gave way to Hero pushing Sunny's cheeks in with his massive hands, and then it was more like he was trying to crush Sunny's face like his massive hands were a goddamn trash compactor or something. It hurt, but Sunny was prepared to take this pain.

"Sunny I love you my little pissy poopoo boy. I forgive you for your past sins and transgressions and will always love you my little pissy poopoo boy."

Hero's words of comfort reverberated through Sunny's skull, ultimately ringing hollow. Hero now held Sunny's entire head and neck in a gesture that seemed like some sort of comforting head lock. There was no comfort to be had, however – Sunny did not deserve such things.

"Hero, chill out. You're embarrassing him..." Kel said, a look of vague concern on his face in the moments before he was turned away from the two of them once again. Sunny could feel the venom dripping from Kel's words. Actually, he wasn't entirely sure of what he'd said, Aubrey's obnoxiously loud laughter drowning out most sound in the room at this point, but it was the logical assumption.

Hero released his rough grip on Sunny's neck, pulling Sunny up by the armpits to eye level and violently eskimo kissing him, eyes open wide with a neutral expression across his lips. These were the actions of a deranged lunatic who could not be allowed to continue existing. And there was literally no means by which Sunny could claim this was his fault, but he chose to do so anyway because he has a guilt complex and enjoys taking the blame for random bullshit.

Sunny forcefully kicked Hero in the testicles, and several more seconds of nose-to-nose action later, he was gently let down. He looked over to the bed Basil was laying in.

He still wasn't awake.

'How fucking like him. Useless bitch baby not doing shit for anyone. Fucking Christ,' Sunny thought to himself, 'God fucking dammit Basil.'

This complex cocktail of negative emotions in Sunny's heart reached a fever pitch at that thought. In that hospital room, surrounded by the man Zoolander's girlfriend told him not to worry about, a pink lunar toon Mel Blanc sounding ass hyena, Hero, and a worthless bag of shit, it happened.

SUNNY is PANICKED.

The situation traumatized Sunny so much that the game had to prescribe him an emotion that doesn't even exist in the final build just to describe it. He seized up for a moment before running out the door, as fast as his legs would carry him, tears flowing freely from the one good eye.

Aubrey had now finally calmed down, and just as Kel was considering whirling on after him, she spoke up, looking up to meet his gaze for brief seconds at a time.

"Wait, why was Sunny crying just now? I didn't hear what he said."

Sunny ran, far far away ha ha pun, as far as his stubby little toothpick legs would take him. He ran all the way back into town, back to his neighborhood, and past the front door of his house – or rather, his old house, presumably. Never again could he return here, his past and present failures so thoroughly tainting any warmth, friendship, or nostalgia that Faraway may have had for him.

With a heavy heart, Sunny walked several steps west of the sidewalk in front of his house, past the playable area of Faraway Town and out of the bounds of the game, where he was certain Hero could not follow him.