Chapter Text
"I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING."
There was a specific kind of silence that settled over a room after a confession.
Not the comfortable kind. Not the kind that came after a long exhale, or the end of a good song. It was the kind that pressed in from all sides, heavy and suffocating, like the air itself had decided it wanted nothing to do with what had just been said.
SUNNY knew that silence well now.
He had rehearsed this confession in his head so many times over the years that he had lost count and imagined every possible version of how it could go.
None of them had ever felt like this.
AUBREY's face was the first thing he remembered. The way her expression crumpled, then hardened, then shattered all at once. Her tears came down fast and hot, and the way she screamed at him with her whole body, it felt like she was putting every single ounce of strength into it. He didn't flinch. He knew he deserved whatever she gave him.
HERO's face was harder to look at. There was no screaming from him. Just a long, terrible stillness, like watching a building hold itself together right before it falls. His eyes went from horror, to grief, to something completely hollow and unreadable. Then, he stood up and left the room. It was like he was never there at all.
KEL tried to be calm and understanding but he couldn't quite figure out what he was supposed to be calm and understanding about. He'd glanced at SUNNY with something that wasn't quite pity and wasn't quite fear, and then he'd gone after his brother. Because of course he had. That was just what KEL did.
And then the room was empty except for two of them.
SUNNY turned around slowly.
BASIL was smiling.
It wasn't a big smile nor an easy one. It was the kind that came from somewhere so deep, complicated and exhausting like how a person smiles when they've finally put down something they've been carrying for too long. His eyes were wet. His hands were shaking. But he was smiling.
SUNNY smiled back. He knew that the weight on their shoulders had finally, finally come loose as he saw SOMETHING dissipate slowly next to BASIL.
He knew his friends would never come to terms with him after the truth. It was inevitable eitherway, these were the consequences he had to face after revealing possibly the most heartbreaking secret that was ever told.
He had fully expected that to be the last time he ever saw any of them.
Which made it all the more confusing when his phone buzzed one afternoon, in his new apartment in FARAWAY CITY, with a voicemail notification. It was from KEL.
He pressed play.
"BZZT! — hey SUNNY! look, I know you're probably staring at your phone right now and be like 'why is this man calling me' right now but just listen, okay? We're coming over to your place! Like, uhm, right now. Me, HERO, BASIL and AUBREY, the four of us are literally in the car right now and we're like ten minutes away, and before you freak out—"
SUNNY did, in fact, begin to freak out.
"—we all agreed on this, okay? This wasn't just my idea, although, heh, I will say the original idea was mine which I think deserves at least some credit."
He could hear a brief grunting noise from AUBREY.
"Anywayyyy, Just— don't run away or lock the door or something. We'll be there in like 10 minutes or something, I don't know. OKAY? BYEEEE—"
The voicemail ended.
SUNNY stared at his phone.
The doorbell rang approximately 30 seconds later, which meant they had definitely been closer than ten minutes when KEL left that message.
SUNNY immediately dashed out of his room and stood in front of his door for a moment.
After taking one deep breath, he opened it.
"SURPRISE!"
Four voices came all at once. KEL had both arms in the air. BASIL was holding something wrapped in brown paper with a small ribbon. HERO had a cake box balanced carefully in both hands and AUBREY was helping hold all the snacks that they brought.
SUNNY opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
He wasn't sure what he expected to feel, standing in the doorway of his apartment looking at the four of them crowded on his welcome mat.
His throat tightened before he could stop it. His eyes starting to burn. He looked down at the floor quickly, like that was going to help anything.
"Are you—" KEL started.
"Stop." SUNNY managed, which came out considerably more strangled than he intended it to.
"He's crying," KEL said.
"I can see that," AUBREY muttered. Then, quieter, "...Oh, you idiot."
She stepped forward first and pulled him into a hug that was harder than he expected from someone her size. He went stiff for a second before he could make himself not be stiff. It had been a while since anyone had hugged him.
"You were twelve," AUBREY said, right next to his ear. Low and direct, the way AUBREY did everything. "You were a scared little kid and you weren't thinking straight, okay? That's all it was."
SUNNY didn't say anything. He wasn't sure he could.
"She's right." That was HERO's voice now, calm and measured and a little rough around the edges in a way SUNNY hadn't heard from him before. He must have handed the cake off to someone, because a second later there were more arms around him. HERO was tall. The hug felt he was being held together. "I understand why you did what you did. I really do, SUNNY. And I think MARI would have understood too."
SUNNY started sniffling, he wasn't going to fall apart in his doorway.
"Okay, I'm also getting in on this," KEL announced, and then SUNNY was very suddenly part of a group hug that had absorbed BASIL at some point without anyone asking him whether he wanted to be absorbed, though BASIL didn't seem to mind.
They stood like that for a moment, the five of them crammed together in the doorway.
"We all forgive you, alright?" KEL said, somewhere above SUNNY's head. "That's kind of the whole point of us being here. In case that wasn't clear. In which another case, I feel like it might not have been because no one said it out loud yet."
"Yes, Thank you, KEL," HERO said.
"Yeah, yeah, I know." KEL took his brother's gratitude proudly.
SUNNY exhaled slowly.
He forgave himself, he knew that. He had been working on that part for a long time. But there was a specific piece of the weight that couldn't be moved by forgiveness that came from inside. His friends' forgiveness.
He hadn't realized how much he still needed this one.
The dining table felt very full with five people crowded around it, which was not something SUNNY had needed to worry about when he moved into this apartment considering it was usually just him and his mom. He made a mental note to get more chairs at some point.
The conversation with his friends was easier than he expected it to be. Not without its awkward silences, not without the occasional subject that gently steered itself away from certain things, but, it was easier.
KEL talked about almost everything, his basketball games, his video games, his any games, with the same enthusiasm, which was honestly just how KEL was, you couldn't help him. BASIL asked about the apartment, about the city, about whether SUNNY enjoyed the place or not and such. HERO asked careful questions about school and seemed genuinely pleased with the answers. AUBREY occasionally chipped him to ask him more about his personal life, how he was holding up and stuff.
At some point, HERO stood up, retrieved the cake box from where KEL had apparently deposited it on the kitchen counter, and set it down in the center of the table with both hands.
Everyone went quiet for a second.
The box opened to reveal a cake that was, by any reasonable measure, too large for five people.
"HERO, what the-" AUBREY said.
"It's his birthday," HERO said simply.
"Well, it's huge."
"It's his birthday."
KEL was already sitting forward with a gleam in his eye that AUBREY clocked immediately.
"KEL, don't you dare.." she said.
"I haven't done anything." KEL calmly replied.
"You're thinking about doing something."
"I am simply sitting here—"
"You've already picked up a fork."
KEL looked down at his hand. There was, in fact, a fork in it.
"...Hm."
SUNNY watched all of this happen and felt something in his chest loosen a little more. Something that had been clenched for a long time.
HERO lit the single candle in the center. It was a large one, shaped like the number sixteen and they all leaned in.
The light of it was warm and small in the room.
"Sixteen," KEL said, after a moment. His voice had gone a little quieter. "That was MARI's age, wasn't it? Before she…"
The table got soft.
"She'd be here celebrating with us if she could," HERO said. Low and certain, he was certain.
"She'd be eating the first slice," AUBREY added, which was said so completely deadpan that it took a beat before it landed, and then BASIL laughed first and it spread.
"Okay," BASIL said, when the laughter settled. He looked at SUNNY with a smile that crinkled around the eyes. "Never mind all that for now. This is about you. Make a wish."
Four faces turned toward him. Waiting.
SUNNY looked at the candle.
He thought about what to wish for. It wasn't a complicated thought. He already knew.
He just wanted one more chance to see her. Not to undo anything, not to change anything — just to let her see how far he'd come. How hard he was trying. He wanted her to know.
He looked up at the ceiling for one brief second, in the vague direction of wherever it was that prayers were supposed to go, hoping that the gods above would look into the prayer box and find his.
Then he leaned forward and blew out the candle.
"What did you wish for?" AUBREY asked immediately.
"It's a secret," SUNNY said, smiling at her.
"Aww, come on! Just give me a hint."
"No, can do."
KEL leaned forward on his elbows. "Was it something embarrassing? It was something embarrassing, wasn't it? Is it about a girl? Ooooo, do you have feelings for someone? SUNNY—"
"KEL." HERO said.
"What? I'm just asking questions—"
"Stop asking questions." AUBREY followed after.
BASIL already had his camera out. He looked through the viewfinder, made a small adjustment, and the shutter clicked.
SUNNY looked over at him.
BASIL lowered the camera and smiled. "Sorry. I had to."
SUNNY shook his head. "Don't apologize."
It was a few days after his friends had came over for his birthday when he pulled up his phone to scroll through the camera roll and found the photo BASIL had sent over.
All five of them around the table. Cake in the center, candle blown out. KEL mid-sentence about something, one hand gesturing. HERO looking patient. AUBREY with her arms crossed laughing at what KEL was saying. BASIL's own seat was empty in the photo, which SUNNY had known would happen, he wished that BASIL would be in this photo but he more than made up for it as they took multiple group photos together.
He put his phone in his pocket and walked down to the subway.
As he boarded the train, a notification rang.SUNNY pulled his phone out only to find out it was from a group chat that he was added into after his friends came over. The message was from KEL asking if the bunch would like to hangout sometime during the weekend. He mentally checked through his schedule. His weekend was free.
Alright then, hangout it is. SUNNY had nothing to do during the weekend eitherway. In a way, he would appreciate it if it was spent with his friends too.
He reacted to the message with a thumbs-up, put his phone back in his pocket sat down.He put his earphones in and picked a song he liked for napping. He leaned his head back and let his eyes close. It was going to take a while before he was going to reach his station eitherway.
He let himself drift before he noticed something. The right side of his vision snagged onto someone.
He wasn't sure what made him open his eyes. Just a shape, just the peripheral edge of something white moving through the train car. He turned his head.
A girl in a white dress was walking through the connecting doors to the next car.
SUNNY sprang up from his seat, almost slipping in the process but he managed to catch himself.
He had dreamed of her face more times than he could count. He had sketched it into his memory over six years of missing her until he could have drawn every feature from nothing. He knew that face.
He ran.
He pushed through the doors, stumbled into the next car, scanned it. There, the white dress moving through the far end. He ran again, pulled open the next set of doors, and caught another glimpse of her just before she slipped through to the car beyond.
He was breathing hard. His heart rate spiked up. His chest was doing something complicated.
He made it through four cars before something else registered.
The windows outside were dark.
Not evening-dark. Not tunnel-dark. Completely, solidly, impossibly dark, like the train was moving through nothing at all. No platform lights, no flickers, no reflections. Just black on the other side of the glass.
He stopped and looked around.
He was alone in the car. Completely alone. He turned slowly and checked both directions, and there were no other passengers. Not a single one. It was just him.
He got his phone out. No service. He stared at the empty bars and tried to think sensibly about this, which was becoming harder by the second.
He breathed.
Okay. Okay. He had survived worse than a mysteriously empty train. He had survived six years of something far worse than this. He just needed to—
The train lurched to a violent stop.
SUNNY was thrown sideways into the pole, caught himself badly, ended up on one knee on the floor of the car.
What in the world just happened, he thought to himself before even his own thoughts were cut off.
A sound crackled through the speakers.
"YOU ARE NOW ARRIVING AT—" SUNNY couldn't understand what came next as it sounded like words were being fed through a blender. "—STATION."
Excuse me, I didn't quite get that, he thought. He sat around for a bit before realizing the announcer wasn't going to repeat themselves. He then heard a noise coming from the doors and stared at it whilst getting up slowly.
The doors slid open.
On the other side of them was white. Not the white of a platform or a wall or a bright light — just white. Flat and total and without edges, stretching out into somewhere, somewhat like WHITE SPACE.
He stood in the doorway for a long moment.
He thought about the birthday wish he had made, three days ago, at a table surrounded by the people he almost lost.
He took a deep breath.
He stepped through.
The white swallowed him completely, and then—
—and then it didn't.
As he slowly opened his eyes, he was standing in a room he recognized.
The wooden floors. The framed photos on the wall, particularly the large family portrait on the wall.
SUNNY stood very still.
He knew this room.
"SUNNY!"
The voice was sharp and tired and unmistakably, it was definitely hers. His head turned itself to see his sister MARI standing right in front of him.
"Do you realize what you've just done, young man?"
SUNNY stared at her. His mouth was open. He could not produce a single word.
She was here.
She was alive.
He pinched himself hard on the thigh.
It hurt.
He pinched himself again, just to be sure.
Still hurt.
He wasn't dreaming. And the sister he had wished to see once more, was here. In front of him.