Unwritten: Diary of a Lean Green Plumber

A Most Cosmic Year

18 July 2007

MK

Dear Diary,

Sleep comes to me only in short bursts. Most of the night, I'm wide awake, thinking about what happened. How I gave in to those feelings inside me, thanks to Nastasia's hypnosis. How I almost helped some psycho destroy all worlds just because I was secretly jealous. I didn't see this coming. I thought I was handling it! Mario and I have squabbled and fought, but I always brought my envy under control, and we made up. Given the Koopa situation, I couldn't afford to let my jealousy rage out of control. Yet it did. And now I can barely sleep, because I can't stop thinking about it.

And when I'm not thinking about it, he is. He's laughing and chortling and telling me how fun it was to finally push back against Mario. His voice whispers in my ear, and it makes me shudder—he's trying to draw me back in. I can't let him. I won't. I have to fight back. Otherwise, his voice will always be inside my head, I'll never get a decent night's sleep, and all of my relationships will suffer. There's no way I'm gonna let that happen.

Relief comes when I'm in Josh's gym or in Jules and Jackie's. Either one is fine. A good forty-five minutes to an hour on a spin bike gets that voice out of my head. Especially in the cycling studio, with the instructor's music pulsing around me and my fellow cyclists. I close my eyes and let everything melt away, stopping only when my muscles start yelling at me. The workouts help in spades, because after I get home, I shower and fall into bed, dozing off almost instantly, with no nightmares to torment me, for a while, at least.

"You were right, Josh," I said to him when I finally told him what happened. "You were right."

"It's not too late," Josh said softly. "Now that you've seen what hiding those feelings can do, you can finally talk them over with Mario. Otherwise, some other powerful villain will use it against you."

"How can I broach the subject?" I asked. "I'm not the only one torn up over what happened. Mario's pretty shaken over having to fight me—three times."

"You can broach the subject once he's had time to recover—or you can be willing to hear him out if he broaches the subject," Josh told me. "Either way—you have to address it if you want to get past it."

I nodded. I would wait until Mario was ready, and then I'd finally confess everything to him. The days of hiding everything inside me are over.

Luigi

22 July 2007

MK

Dear Diary,

I was relaxing at home, watching a sitcom, when Mario knocked on the door.

The second I let him in, he started talking.

"Lil' Bro—why didn't you tell me?" he asked.

I knew exactly what he was talking about.

The two of us sat on the couch, and I began explaining everything to him.

"Mario—it's true. I feel like I've spent the last twenty-one years in your shadow. But—I didn't think it was proper to tell you. I didn't want to ruin anything. If I said anything—then I'd come across as petty and selfish. You're the better hero, anyway."