Chapter Text
Sunny.
Omori.
Sunny?
Omori?
Sunny!
“Sunny?”
“Wake up.”
“We’re going to be late, Sunny.”
He sits up suddenly. Nearly knocking Basil down. He looks at the tall boy through Sunny’s eyes. He should not be in Sunny's bed. Or seeing the world as Sunny. He is Omori. He doesn’t know why he isn’t in White Space. Anytime he reset—a version of sleeping for Omori—he was in White Space.
“Uh, you awake?” The boy next to him, startled, asks, picking up his backpack and slinging it over one shoulder as he heads toward the door. “I’ll just let Mari know.” The reminder of Mari brings him back to reality.
Basil slips out the door without another word. Omori looks around the room, patting the blanket he must have fallen asleep under. Not that he knows that he fell asleep under it. He doesn’t know what Sunny did yesterday. Sometimes he and Sunny can share these thoughts when Sunny visits him in Headspace; he doesn’t even have to speak for Omori to know what he wants to say. But right now, he can’t pull anything forward.
He looks around for the steak knife that usually brings Sunny back from White Space on the occasions he visits. There is nothing under the pillow, nothing out in the open around him, and nothing on him.
There is no knife.
He closes his eyes, trying to will himself back to White Space. He can see the room around him, Mewo in the corner, the laptop with his logs, and his sketchbook. He wants to be there. He hates Real World.
It doesn’t work.
He stands, finally. It feels like it's been about 5 years since he woke up in this room. He looks down at his blank tank top and white striped shorts. God, how is everything this boy owns black or white?
The room is painfully bare. Next to the bed, a desk was pushed up against the wall. The desk contains only his sketchbook and his computer, which he knew was mostly used for games of blackjack. The bed has only its white, surprisingly unstained, sheets, a baby blue blanket, and a white pillow with a white pillowcase. He opens the doors to the wardrobe pressed up on the other side of the bland bed. It contains the basics. A couple of pairs of tan khaki shorts, black tank tops, and white polos. When Sunny visited, he wore a similar outfit. Omori decides to do the same. It's pointless to switch things up.
“Sunny! Basil’s gonna leave!” His sister calls from downstairs. He recognizes her voice. Even when she is raising her voice, it is still somehow soft and kind. Always kind.
He hasn’t spoken yet. He isn’t sure what he sounds like. In Headspace, he is stuck at the age of 12. In the real world, Sunny is 16. What happens between 12 and 16? He would not know. He had been 12 for four years. He clears his throat, testing out the vocal cords.
“I’m coming.” It comes out as a whisper, and he shakes his head at himself.
He picks up the backpack off the ground, hoping that everything he needs is still inside. Walking out of the room is just as weird as waking up in it. It’s not a place he’s ever been. The couple of times Omori has managed to make his way to the Real World, he never left the room or the backyard. The stairs looked familiar. They looked scary. He didn’t like heights, that was true. But this wasn’t a fear of heights. This was something else. Something deep inside of him. Pulling him back to his room.
He pushes forward. If anything, Omori was known for pushing forward, and Mari was downstairs. Mari could help him with this.
He makes his way rather slowly down the stairs into a foyer area. Through another open door is his sister. Mari! At last.
But,
She’s not making her way toward him,
She’s sitting,
Not on a picnic blanket,
She’s in a wheelchair.
Why? Why is she in a wheelchair? Mari isn’t in a wheelchair. He takes a deep breath, repressing the shudder of fear. Not fear. A reminder. A reminder of what? He is not sure.
Again with the pushing forward. He takes a step forward.
“Hey, sleepy head. You all set?” Mari says, purple-haired Mari, sweet and beautiful Mari. His ever-kind sister.
“Yes,” It’s a whisper again, “Yes.” He says louder—not much louder, but enough.
“Okay,” she says, her face strange, like this isn’t normal, “Basil’s outside waiting.”
He nods, taking one last look at Mari and her condition. He moves forward and pushes on.
Something about opening the front door plagues him with fear, almost as if it is a false sense of security, and opening it ruins that.
He opens it. Basil is sitting on his front stoop. He has blonde hair, and he’s tall. Almost muscular.
Basil’s small, with that lovely teal hair.
“Finally,” the blonde boy rises to Omori’s height, but he still feels as if that is far too tall for his frail friend to be, “Let’s get going.” He walks ahead of Omori, leading him.
“Basil?”
“Yes, Sunny?” He looks back at Omori, his face isn’t happy. He’s worried. Why do they both seem so worried? Basil only worries about his plants. That must be it.
“Everything okay with the plants?” This seems to shock the boy.
He takes a moment to respond, giving a slight tilt of his head as he looks back.
“Yes.” He says this softer than normal. The boy is always soft. Mari says he is sensitive.
He concludes that it is just school. Sunny, on his occasional visits, would complain about school. Mostly gym.
He pushes on.
Waiting for something to happen?
The floor is uncomfortable, he swore he was in bed last night. Maybe he fell asleep watching TV again.
The light on the endless string buzzes.
This is not his living room.
It’s White Space.
He sits up slowly. Omori is usually here. Any other time Sunny has shown up, Omori is here.
He stands, taking in the surroundings. The nothingness. When he was a more frequent visitor, he enjoyed the emptiness of this room. It always helped him when the real world became too much. Too full. All of his favorite things were in this room, and just next door were his best friends.
He walks to Mewo, and she purrs at him as he runs his hand from between her ears to her tail. In Real World, Mewo never visits him anymore. She spends a lot of time with Mari. On Mari’s lap. Wrapping herself around Mari’s legs. She’s always scared of Sunny now; everyone is scared of Sunny.
Sunny is scared of Sunny.
Headspace Mewo isn’t scared of Sunny though. Not yet at least. She will be. Eventually. After what he does.
He swallows the lump forming in his throat.
None of that happened here. He knows that. None of that will happen.
And Mewo will still love him. Forever and ever.
He wasn’t sure why Omori wasn’t here by now. The younger boy always had an innate sense of when Sunny was visiting.
He didn’t visit much anymore. Basil or Mari were always pushing him to attend school. Despite every attempt to become an actual hikikomori and play blackjack or daydream until the day was wasted away. Now he just missed blackjack and daydreamed in school until the day passed.
His Headspace daydreams had become few and far between now. The connection to and need for Headspace faded with each passing day since the incident. The world lived on despite that.
He looked around the void a bit more. It contained the bare minimum; the door that casts a faint shadow, the laptop that was missing most of its keys, and Omori’s sketchbook.
It was filled with grotesque drawings, page after page of his deepest fantasies.
He refused to look through it. Sunny had moved past most of those feelings. When he did indulge in those feelings, Mari got that scared look on her face, and he got a borderline urge to dive right back into Headspace. He tried not to express emotion too exaggeratedly around her. She didn’t deserve the fear.
People always described him as emotionally void, Mari liked the term “Cliff-faced.” That's what she’d say to him when he’d come to her during the day. When he needed a bit of extra love that day.
“Looking cliff-faced as usual, Sunny.”
Her lovely smile. The kindness radiated off the girl as she pulled her younger brother into her arms, rubbing his back in soft circles. She was always so kind.
And he ruined her.
The boy shook his head; She was still kind.
Omori didn’t seem to be coming. He looked around the room for the knife. The one that brought him back home.
It didn’t seem to be there.
Maybe Omori was in Neighbors room?
He makes his way toward the door. Grabbing the shimmering knob and opening the door.
As he walks forward, the room seems to form around him. Hero, Kel, and Aubrey sit in a circle formation around the cards in the middle of the room.
They all perked up at the sight of him.
“Omori!” Aubrey jumps up first, making her way towards him, crossing over the pile of cards that sat scattered on her feet and over the stuffed toys spread around the room.
She wraps her arms around him, nearly tackling him to the ground.
“Aubrey, get off of him!” Kel butts his way in, grabbing Sunny from behind to keep him up. “He’s not strong enough to hold you!” The boy is loud.
“I’m not that big Kel! That's rude.” She moves away from Sunny anyway.
Once he is balanced on his own two feet, he realizes the height difference between him, Kel, and Aubrey. Aubrey, who had previously reached around chin height on Sunny, was now only a couple of inches shorter. Every other time he had been in Headspace, he had been quite a bit taller than the two.
Along with the tank top and striped pajamas, he was starting to realize that this was not correct. And did Aubrey call him Omori earlier? They recognized him as Sunny. He didn’t look anything like Omori anymore.
But he wasn’t Sunny, and when he finally took a second to look down at himself, he realized he was wearing those pajamas, the striped white pants, and the blank tank top. And his skin was as white as a piece of paper. He was Omori. It must have been a terrible mistake. Or a dream.
Kel must have noticed the realization on his face, the fear, “Omori? You okay?”
It was enough to jog Sunny out of his fog. He had to deal with this. He couldn’t let them know he was weak. Omori wasn’t weak. In this world, they relied on Omori; Omori was their strength. And Sunny did not have that strength. He had to figure this out. Somehow.