Far Removed. ( OMORI )

Two: No Suprises

It's 7:38 PM. A cold fall wind blows gently outside the hospital window. Yellow and orange leaves are swooped up in the wind and taken afar as the sun slowly lowers itself. It's dusk, about to turn night. Sunny is asleep already, laid in his white hospital bed, breathing steadily. The doctors have yet to discharge Sunny at this point, and seeing how it is only 22 minutes to the end of visiting hours, chances are he'll be leaving in the morning. This doesn't matter to him right now. He is asleep after all, fallen it's gripping pull just minutes ago, swept up in a dream that is surprisingly mundane, at least for Sunny. Not even he can control every single dream he has.

Ms. Suzuki sits quietly next to Sunny, in that uncomfortable hospital chair that she had been sitting in all day. She is just watching the boy, staying with her son for as long as she could before she had to leave for the night. There was a subtle tension in the room when Sunny was awake, a quiet, underlying tension that they could both feel. Sunny didn't want to talk about what he had done. He wanted to ignore it and for his mother to ignore it as well, but all Ms. Suzuki wanted to do was talk about it, to find a way to help her son so she wasn't the failure of a mother she thought she was. Now that Sunny was asleep, that tension was gone, and the mother was left by herself.

She sits in silence, watching the boy, her son. She thinks back to when he was younger, when he was just a child, when he was so bright and happy. She thinks of all the trouble he got into with his friends, how happy they all seemed together at the time, like nothing could ever go wrong. This isn't the same boy anymore. She thinks about how he acted after Mari's death, how closed off he had become, how he quit doing everything he loved. She should have done better as a mother. she should have pushed him a little more, not letting him rot in his room for four years straight. The mother was grieving, too, though. She had lost her only daughter, and then her husband, the father, to her children. She was a wreck for so long. Ms. Suzuki looked away from Sunny as she toiled within her mind.

On the day she came to pick up Sunny from faraway town, when Sunny had finally told her, and everyone else, the truth, she felt a wave of anguish flow over her. She felt like she had been stabbed in the back by her only son, lied to and betrayed by him. Years of grief and sorrow were recontextualized, all of it preventable. her heart shattered a second time that day. She couldn't look at Sunny the same for a long time after that day, her mind told her that he was a murderer, that he had killed her only daughter. But her mind also told her that it was an accident, that he didn't mean to hurt Mari, that he was just a frightened, confused child, and that was why he did what he did. She couldn't hate her son. No matter what he did, she would never be able to. He was her flesh and blood, her kin. Eventually, she forgave him for what he had done, for causing Mari's death, for making that poor boy Basil help him cover it up. That's what Sunny had told her, as well as everyone else, that he was the one who came up with the idea to hang the body, not Basil.

But even after she forgave him for what he did, even after he had paid for his mistake for four long, lonely years, even after they had moved for a fresh start, Sunny never got better, she could see that now. Everything just got worse for him. Her son was lonely, depressed, and worst of all, actively suicidal, She didn't know what to do. She didn't know how to protect her son. She knew that Sunny wouldn't talk to her about this, to anyone about this. He would refuse to talk to a therapist even if she forced him to go to one. Who would he talk to? Who would be able to help him? What would help him? Her head lowered into her hands as she asked herself these questions, trying to figure out what she could do to help her baby. Then, it came to her. There was one person that she had seen Sunny talk to frequently in 2 whole years, even if "frequently" meant once, maybe twice a month. One person who actively wanted to talk with him. One person that he had known since childhood. His best friend.

Basil wasn't the only one of Sunny's friends that attempted to keep in steady contact with the boy after the truth was set free and he left Faraway town, his other friends made attempts too, Kel called in every once in a while, sometimes accompanied by Hero, Aubrey would write letters, too. They still cared about Sunny, even after what he had done, but the boy rarely reciprocated their attempts to reach out. He avoided calls from them, left letters unread, and shut himself off to them all but a few times. The only person he didn't do that to was Basil. Sunny always picked up calls from Basil and always talked to him any time Basil would call, even if their conversations were short, since Sunny never had been much of a talker. Basil may have been the only person that Sunny had a relationship with now, and he may have been the only person Sunny could talk to. Maybe he could help him, Ms. Suzuki thought, maybe he was her last hope. The only friend Sunny had.