Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

Who was human

Sunny's lips wore a vivid smile.

They kissed passionately, full of burning longing for each other, leaving wet strings behind each time they parted to recover their breath, only to join their lips together again as their eyes locked. With every kiss, the sweet warmth inside Basil's heart grew from embers into a bright, burning heat. Basil had long believed that this intense, yearning passion lived only within himself. He could never have imagined Sunny sharing the sentiment.

No thought, no words could capture it. Neither did words allow Basil to understand what he did to deserve this kiss from Sunny. He couldn't wrap his head around Sunny at all.

When their kiss finally ended, they both gasped for breath. Basil felt light-headed. He saw rosy pink on Sunny's cheeks, and a small reassuring smile that spoke that he enjoyed the kiss. They were both too out of it for words.

Sunny was here for him. Sunny had kissed him even though he never did anything to deserve a kiss from the boy he loved so much. His head was totally swimming.

"So...yeah," Sunny said, the first to catch his breath back. "Are we clear now?"

Basil tried to speak but what came out was a garbled mess of "ahs" and "uhmms".

"I'm sorry it took so long for me to confess my feelings for you," Sunny said. He turned his eyes away and looked a little sad again. "And it's not the only confession I have to make. There's something else."

Basil's head was fully lost in another place. He was still trying to understand what made Sunny love him. Another confession would just be information overload. He could only nod to go along.

"It's about...what I told our friends," Sunny said. "About the truth."

Eh?

Basil snapped back to reality. Or, perhaps he was still in the clouds, but at least he'd found some grounding.

Given his recent email exchanges with Hero, Basil grew an odd fitting feeling. Had Sunny somehow found out that he'd been trying to tell his old friends to forgive him?

Basil tried to look okay even though he couldn't wipe the persistent smile off his own face, a smile that still carried a taste of Sunny's lips.

"What did you tell them?" Basil asked.

"I...erhhh...I, umm, I didn't...exactly...tell them...what I think I was supposed to tell them," Sunny began. The blush on his face became palpably red. It didn't look like he was only embarrassed because of their kiss. "I...erhh...how should I put this?"

"Sunny?" Basil spoke with more concern.

With a sigh, Sunny looked Basil directly in the eye. "I just have to say it. Please don't get too mad at me when I tell you everything, okay?"

It's hard for me to ever feel mad at Sunny.

"Ah, alright," Basil said.

Sunny sucked in a deep breath. "I told Kel, Aubrey, and Hero that I killed Mari, that I came up with the idea to frame her death as a suicide, and that I forced you to go along with it. I told them that I forced you to keep it a secret for all those years. I basically made them think that it was all my fault and that you're blameless."

Basil blanked.

"Also...I told my mom that you didn't really stab my eye," Sunny went on. "I told her that, on that night, I went into your room and tried to kill you with your garden shears. Then I tripped over some plants in the darkness and ended up stabbing my own eye out."

What...the...

As those words left his lips, Sunny collapsed. His shoulders sank and he fell to his knees. His eyes dropped to the floor, his arms hanging limp at his sides.