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In the immediate aftermath, there was no sound. Nothing beyond a loud, tinny ringing in Sunny’s ears that added to his heightened hysteria. His hands were extended in front of him and they were trembling beyond control; he felt like he wasn’t breathing at all, but his throat was sore from hyperventilating. He hadn’t moved. He wasn’t sure if he could. She was there, at the bottom of the stairs…
She wasn’t moving. She hadn’t moved, either. It was a standoff. Sunny wouldn’t move, not until Mari stood up and opened her arms and he could run into them and say he was sorry. Say he’d practice the violin forever with her melodies in his ear, say he’d make it up to her. He wouldn’t move until she did.
In the end, neither of them moved. Somebody else did.
The front door cracked open. Sunny saw it play out in his peripheral; tufts of blond hair, a quiet shaken gasp, and the sound shoes on wood floors. He couldn’t hear; only saw the boy’s lips move frantically and his hands place on her shoulders and shake her as if to try to wake her from a bad dream. He did that for a long time; it felt like years.
All of this was a bad dream. He was sure of it.
Nobody else was home. His parents were out—doing what, he wasn’t sure, maybe out to dinner—and it was just them. Basil’s head slowly lifted, his eyes wider than Saturn, and peered at Sunny. He didn’t say anything for a second; if he did, Sunny couldn’t hear it anyways. This was the equivalent of getting caught with his hand in a very incriminating cookie jar; his arms shook and trembled from the force of keeping them outstretched in disbelief, and Basil knew. Sunny knew that he knew.
But Basil didn’t scream or call him a monster, or another word that he can’t face that starts with m. Instead, Basil slowly stood up and walked towards him, keeping his own hand outstretched towards Sunny. Nonthreatening and kind, Basil still offered him a tiny smile.
“Sunny?” The aforementioned boy watched Basil’s lips move. He took steps towards him like one may take to a cornered angry animal—but Sunny wasn’t angry anymore. Angry as he had been was a far cry from the seemingly world-ending terror he felt right now. “Sunny, breathe. Can you breathe?”
Can he breathe? No, no he can’t breathe. He slowly shook his head, which became his own frantic motion. He shook his head harder, taking a tiny step back. Before he knew it, he was on his haunches, his head gripped in his hands, fingers threaded in hair. No, he couldn’t breathe, or move, or think, or hear—everything was beyond his comprehension. All he knew was fear. Fear for her. Fear for him. Fear of his parents. Fear of his friends; losing everyone he’d ever known, being labelled a monster…Fear for Basil. What he could do. The power he held.
But Basil was always kind. He was nothing if he wasn’t kind. Basil wouldn’t turn his back on him, not now. Would he? He could. He had every reason to. Because even now, and even the moment it had happened, Sunny knew. He knew what he’d done. He knew she wasn’t getting up.
He hadn’t meant to. And he had tried to grab her. He thinks he tried to grab her; was his arms outstretched a sign of trying to fix what he’d already done, or just a sign that he’d pushed her to begin with? Had he tried to grab her? Everything was all too much, details getting fuzzy in his heightened state.
His head lifted to look at his hands. They were shaking and out of focus—everything was out of focus, maybe he was crying, but it was impossible to tell for sure—but they were not red. There was no blood on his hands, so…he couldn’t have pushed her. His eyes looked to Mari’s body at the bottom of the stairs. It had been so full of life only a few minutes ago…as she always was. She was kind and sweet and caring; she loved with the biggest heart Sunny had ever known, and she cared so much about everything, even little things…like piano. Like their duet. She had just wanted it to be perfect. Sunny wanted that too. He did, he really did. He cared about her just as much as she cared about him…but she had slipped. Hadn’t she?
There was no way he could have pushed her. He would never have done that to someone he loved so deeply. He wasn’t capable of it…was he? No.
It was all a dream. None of this was real. He was living a bad dream, and tomorrow he would wake up, and she would hand him his violin…
“Sunny!” Basil’s voice finally cut through the fog, and all at once, reality kicked back in. He was suddenly aware of his hammering heart and his ears were no longer useless. He could hear his own breaths, he could hear Basil’s; Basil’s hands were settled on his shoulders, and his eyes were searching his own, frantically. “Sunny, what happened? What happened?”
“I don’t know!” Sunny blurted, the words feeling like bombs being dropped in the otherwise silent room. “I don’t know, I don’t know—”
“Sunny, she isn’t breathing!” Basil was engulfed in their shared panic now. The world around them was black and red; he couldn’t tell what was real anymore. “Did…” Basil’s grip tightened on his shoulders, like he didn’t want to ask, but had to know. “Did you…?”
Sunny’s lips parted, and then closed, and then parted, then closed…words were there, so many of them, in fact, that he didn’t know what ones to say. It was all too much. Sunny’s gaze finally lifted from Mari’s body on the floor to meet Basil’s eyes, still shaking like a leaf in a hurricane. It was an impossible question. Did he? Had he really done this? If she was…gone, and he had pushed her, and she had fallen…did that make him…?
In the end, he couldn’t answer. He just stared, unable to catch his breath, or do anything at all. Basil stared in shock for a moment, but only a moment, before he looked back at Mari. She still hadn’t moved. Basil said she wasn’t breathing. She was…
Sunny was a…
He had…
His sister was…
“Hey,” Basil spoke with conviction and maturity for his age that could only be brought out by sheer instincts. “What are we going to do? I’m with you. I’ll—I’ll help. What do you need?”
“No—no…” Sunny shook his head again, buried it between his knees like he was bracing for the crash of a plane. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. Talking had never been easy, but now? In the face of the greatest crisis he could imagine? It seemed impossible.
“Sunny, hey, please…!” Basil gave his shoulders a gentle shake. “We have to do something, you can’t block me out! We have to do this together, Sunny, please…”
But in the height of everything, a thought more terrifying than anything else pierced his mind like a gunshot.
Was he going to go to jail? Was he going to get taken away, with the abusers and the killers and the thieves? Was that who he was? Was that where he belonged?
“Sunny, please tell me what you’re thinking!” Basil pleaded, tears now streaming down his face. “I need you to talk to me!”
Sunny stared at Basil with wide eyes and a ghastly pale face. “…Am I going to…go away?”
Basil’s brow furrowed for a moment, but then terror overtook his expression. “No.” He said it definitively. “No, you’re not going to go away, because nobody’s going to know, okay? We’ll—we’ll hide it. There are other ways, she could’ve just fallen—”
“We can’t leave her here.” It was the only thing Sunny was sure of. Her body couldn’t stay here, because if it did, right where he’d been standing side by side with her…then that could only mean that maybe he did deserve to go. Maybe he had done this. He couldn’t take the thought.
“Okay, so…some other way.” Basil nodded his head, slowly getting to his feet. He extended a hand, and Sunny took it. He pulled himself to his feet, adrenaline and Basil’s hand the only things keeping him standing. “What do we—do we hide her body? How can we—does your dad have shovels? In the garage, maybe? Or—or a shed? Where’s the tools he built for the treehouse?—”
The idea struck them both at the same time. Their eyes locked.
The treehouse. The tree.
Branches. And a rope.
That’s all that they would need.
They didn’t speak about the plan. They didn’t have to. “Where is it?” Basil asked, his voice quiet and shaky. Sunny raised a hand and pointed to the door to the garage. Basil went to get it. Sunny stood, feet like concrete. He looked at Mari one more time.
Tomorrow, they would wake up together, and they would go to their duet. They would get it perfect, just like Mari wanted. But tonight was a nightmare, nothing more than a bad dream; and in the dream, he knew what needed to be done.
It wasn’t real, it was just…dream logic, and it was a nightmare he couldn’t wake himself up from, yet. But tomorrow. Tomorrow. Just a little bit longer and it would be over.
Basil came back, holding a bundle of ropes in his small arms, the tail of the rope trailing behind him. “This will be enough,” he said, like he knew what he was talking about. Like either of them knew what they were doing. There was no guarantee this would work, but it didn’t have to, not forever. It just had to be convincing enough to wake him up from the nightmare. That’s all.
The two of them finally stood beside Mari’s body. She had gotten more pale since Sunny remembered her last. She was almost as pale as they were in their terror. The boys looked at each other. Somebody let out a sob, but neither of them could tell who. “Do you want to…?” Basil slowly pointed at Mari. “We have to get her outside...”
Sunny only pictured it for a second, but shook his head frantically. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t touch her. The last time he’d put his hands on her…
“Sunny—” Basil’s voice was almost a desperate whine, but he stopped himself. “Okay, okay, you…you take the rope, I’ll…” His face twisted up, and this time, Sunny knew that he was sobbing. He didn’t want to make Basil do it, but…he couldn’t. It was better this way. His hands seemed to only bring pain. Basil was kind, they both were, and in this dream, Sunny wasn’t. Sunny was the monster of his own nightmare.
When Basil’s arms slid underneath Mari’s own and he used his strength to pull her limp body towards the sliding glass door to the backyard, he was sobbing. He stumbled a time or two, likely due to Mari’s height difference. Sunny quietly choked out “I’m sorry”, but he wasn’t sure to who he was apologizing; Basil, Mari, or…most likely both.
Sunny pushed the door open and Basil dragged her out, still sobbing and struggling with the weight and awkwardness of such long limbs, and Sunny followed after them and closed the door behind him. They made their way towards the tree, and together, they did what they had to do.
When it was done, when she was hanged in the branches, they collapsed, but they didn’t cry. It was weird; Sunny would have thought this would be where the emotions hit him, but…they didn’t. They stood there, numb, staring at what they had done with their own two hands. Eventually they got to their feet and headed for the glass sliding door. They couldn’t stay out here forever.
Sunny wasn’t sure why, but on the way, he stopped. He turned, slowly, to look at Mari one last time. And from behind her hair, her eye peeked out. It was as if she was watching them. Her face was blank, she was pale and ghastly, and Sunny could only imagine what she would think if she was watching. Would she call him a coward for running away? Would she hate him?
He turned away, unable to look any longer, and Basil followed suit. This time, he was the one to close the door. As they were heading towards the main room and the staircase, they heard a quiet meow.
Sunny made a detour towards the noise and heard it coming from the piano room. With a shaking hand, he turned the knob, and there sat Mewo on the piano bench, staring at them. Basil stood behind, and even now, gave the cat a quiet greeting. Sunny said nothing; he stared at Mewo first, and then his eyes drifted to the brand engraved on the piano’s surface.
OMORI.
It was a nice name. He’d never noticed it before.
That night, he slept on the couch—the thought of facing the staircase to go back to their empty room feeling entirely impossible—and Basil stayed with him. It was the quietest sleepover that Sunny had ever been a part of; what do you talk about when you’ve witnessed the worst thing a child can possibly imagine? What do you talk about when you have the shared blood of a friend on your hands? What do you talk when you’re both in a nightmare, and neither of you know how to wake up?
Basil was the one to break the silence. “When are your parents coming home?”
Sunny thought about if for a while. When are they ever home? He thought about answering, but the act of opening his mouth and speaking seemed impossible with this bone-deep fatigue. He merely shrugged. He had no answer beyond that, anyway.
“Should I leave before they do? I mean…it’d be bad if they linked it to me, right? To us?”
Sunny didn’t say anything. He just stared at the carpet. In the middle was a stain where Kel spilled his Orange Joe what felt like lifetimes ago from now. An hour ago, a fight about perfection felt like a lifetime ago now. In the end, he got what he wanted, didn’t he? Now nothing would ever have be perfect, not even the world; not without Mari in it. Was he selfish for something he wanted causing him such agony?
His eyes, only for a moment, wandered towards the doorframe. He could see his broken violin on the floor still, even from here. A gift from all of them. They all worked so hard to give it to him, and now…he wondered if Basil noticed. If he put the pieces that Sunny still tries to bury deep within himself together in a moments notice. He knew, they all did, how much of a perfectionist she was.
And with what Basil was saying, about it being linked to them…it seemed unlikely, that their parents would ever figure out what really happened; who would think twelve year olds capable of something so horrible? But it wasn’t impossible. Or maybe he was just paranoid. Either way, he knew he needed to hide the broken violin. In doing so, he would give up the instrument completely.
Music didn’t sound beautiful without Mari, anyways.
But he would do it tomorrow. Because in-dream tomorrow was never going to happen—he was certain that he’d be waking up any moment now. He had to. And when he somehow finally felt tired enough to sleep, he thought that meant he was waking up.
But instead, all he was greeted with was white. Everywhere he looked was white.
Was this what Mari saw when she died? A bright white light?
It wasn’t for a few moments before Sunny saw the black lightbulb hanging from…nothing. Around him were walls; but things extended beyond them. The walls weren’t a restriction, merely a suggestion of a room in this void. He only knew two things: that this was better than wherever he had been before, and that he wasn’t himself. His skin was a sickly grey and his clothes completely monotone; it was as if all the color and life had been drained from him.
At least he fit in with the decor.