Chapter Text
Sunny was tired. Ever since he had moved away from Faraway Town into his new home, he was constantly tired. That was an absolutely wonderful side effect of walking for multiple hours every day.
In the 6 months since he had left, he found himself venturing out into the city more and more. After 4 years of being stuck at home, he had no desire to stay there any longer than necessary.
This city was a huge place. You could probably fit about 10 Faraway Town’s here, and that was just a guess!
“What city does Sunny live in?” you might be asking yourself. Why, just the ever elusive Big Apple itself, New York City!
While it sounded a bit too unrealistic, it really was true. His mother had gotten them an apartment in the most glamorous city in the entire state of New York! This led to him wanting to check out every single part of the city.
He was still getting caught up on all the school work he had missed, though, so after all his tutoring was over he would usually run outside and explore NYC. While nothing could ever replace his childhood town, he did find some super cool places here.
The pizza shop down the street from his house did have some pretty good pizza. It was New York, after all, so that was to be expected. He was a New Yorker, born and raised, and had very high expectations for pizza.
But that wasn’t the only good thing to eat here. While he normally wasn’t that fond of street food, the hot dogs, bagels, and pretzels here made him reconsider.
For the first time in 4 years, he was starting to eat well, and had gained about 15 pounds since moving. That was in no small part to the delicious food here.
He couldn’t keep going on about the dough that didn’t cost him a lot of dough, though. (He laughed a little to himself with the terrible pun he had just made.)
There was way more in New York City than just great bites. Central Park was awesome, with lots of space to run around and plenty of trees to sit under if the heat got to be too much.
It reminded him of summer days spent in the treehouse with Aubrey. When everyone else was busy, they would play alone together. He fondly looked back on lots and lots of hours spent up there, even missing lunch and dinner in favor of staying up there with his-
He blushed.
Ever since moving here, he had quickly grown accustomed to the Faraway nostalgia flashback. A lot of things here reminded him of old memories.
But while some would just make him happy, like memories of Kel and Basil, something about the memories he had with Aubrey never failed to make him red. He sighed. He knew the answer why, but it never got any easier to say.
He…
Okay, deep breath in, hold, deep breath out.
Sunny was in love with Aubrey.
Despite it being a chilly day in December, and having a puffy jacket on, he felt very warm. Looking around at the beautiful Christmas lights spread everywhere on the light poles didn’t help in the slightest.
Why do I still like her? He asked himself.
While it might have seemed that he only thought of her as a friend, considering what had gone down back in summer, his feelings for her had never truly gone away. They had only been repressed.
In truth, he still didn’t think he deserved to feel anything like that towards her. All he had ever done was lie to her and hurt her! No. He quickly tried to stop himself from going down that rabbit hole.
Remember what Mari told you? She said that I had to forgive myself.
It had been a while since he had seen Headspace Mari. The entire time he had lived in New York City, he had yet to have a dream of his headspace companions.
Most of his dreams nowadays revolve around reminders of the past, whether that be having a picnic again, or just feeling happy and carefree with his friends. If there was one word he could use to describe these dreams, it would be bittersweet.
It made him happy to see his sister again, sure, but it also reminded him that those innocent carefree days were never going to happen again. Lately, Sunny was noticing that sometimes he would wake up with dried up tears on his face.
He didn’t want to keep living in the past, though, as he already had enough of doing that to last a lifetime. But still, he missed Mari. How could he not? She was his sister, and probably the most important person in his life. He gave everything to her, and that didn’t end well. For Mari, and himself.
He pinched his arm before anything else could happen, muttering out a little “ow!”
Okay, so the depressing thoughts can stop now, me. Sunny thought. There’s no use in reflecting about something you can’t change.
But despite some of these dreams, he always came back to a particular one. When Omori (he still had yet to figure out how he felt about that kid. Sunny wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to.) and Mari were trying to get to the Last Resort, she stopped at the end of the dock and told him that she wanted him to forgive himself.
But the thing that bothered him the most about this was that she seemed to have knowledge of the truth. Why would she talk about forgiving himself if it wasn’t about that?
But there should’ve been no possible way that Mari knew. Or headspace Mari, anyways. The only people who actively knew of the truth were Basil and Omori, and Basil wasn’t even in Headspace at the time.
So the only explanation could be… What if it really was his sister? His real sister, not the one that always accompanied Omori’s friends on her picnic blanket.
He second guessed himself. No, that’s not possible. Ghosts aren’t real.
But in the back of his mind, he had a feeling that his sister really did talk to him. And if she did, Sunny would really appreciate some more advice from her.
What was he going to do about this persistent crush? He was about 30 miles away from Faraway Town, so he couldn’t just waltz on over and confess to Aubrey. How would he ever get the courage to do something like that, anyways?
That question seemed kind of silly in retrospect. Half a year ago, he had done the hardest thing in his life, and that was confessing the truth about Mari’s death to his friends. He shouldn’t be afraid of anything!
But as cute as Aubrey could be, she was still pretty intimidating.
Cute?!
He realized what he had just said and was this close to permanently becoming a tomato. He could gush about Aubrey all day.
From her silky smooth and bright bubblegum colored hair, to her pretty contacts that made her eyes a wonderful teal, to her adorable smile she made when she was embarrassed. And you couldn’t forget about how once she opened up, she would tell you everything.
He had learned more than a few crazy secrets this way. If this were a cartoon, there would’ve been steam coming out of his ears from how long he had rambled about Aubrey. He really was in love with her. He wished he could see her again.
It had been so long! But what could he do? He pondered this question for a bit.
Suddenly, an idea came straight at him like a 2 ton truck. What about…? But would that really work? What would mom say?
He was going back and forth on his idea until he gave up. “Oh, screw it! I’m just gonna ask!”
He stopped everything he was doing, which wasn’t much, considering that he had been mindlessly strolling down the sidewalk for the past hour, and ran back to the apartment. He had something to do.
Something very important.