I Won't Let You Wilt

New city, new haircut, new life

It's not selfish at all to want that.

"...I felt like you might feel that way, too. I know, it's weird, you already had your sister and our whole friend group, but..."

"It's okay," Sunny said. "We were the closest. Even around the others, I liked keeping to myself, and to you. "

And being by your side, listening to you read every day...

"Ah—ah, thanks, Sunny..."

Basil blushed a bit as he continued his story.

"Once, on a rainy day when I was sick, I imagined you were right there in my room, pretending to be sick so you could stay home from school and read books with me until I got better," Basil said, his voice quiet. "It's silly, right? But I kept dreaming about all the fun things we could do if we lived in the same house. We'd walk to school together, eat breakfast and dinner, help each other with homework, help out grandma, and...ummm, I guess somewhere in there, I dreamt about cutting your hair, too."

I definitely should've asked you to cut my hair when we were kids.

Basil smiled shyly. "I wanted to impress you with my skills, Sunny. I thought you were so talented...you were so good at the violin. I remember dreaming about decorating your hair, choosing your clothes, preparing everything for the day of the recital so...it'd be perfect..."

Those last three words trailed off into nothingness.

Sunny gazed down at his feet, at all the hair that had been cut.

He knew Basil spoke with happiness towards his past dreams because they had practically come true. They were living together, doing everything with each other now. But he could never fulfill the dreams of that childhood Basil, his best friend.

He could never reach back into the past and offer the Basil crying alone by himself a hand to pull him out of the darkness.

I'm so sorry.

Basil lifted one more strand of Sunny's hair and made his last cut. "There. How does that look?"

"It's perfect," Sunny said.

He examined his face in the mirror and found his new look stunning.

With his bangs just the right length, not too short but also not getting in the way of his eyes, the sides and back neatly trimmed, and just a touch of imperfection in the overall evenness—Basil was good but not perfect—he could, for the first time in his life, be proud of how he looked after getting a haircut.

"Thank you so much," Sunny said. "I really like it."

"You're welcome! Need any help with cleaning up?"

"Nah, I'm good."

***

Before Sunny asked for his haircut, Basil had been going through the criminology books Sunny had borrowed from the local library. It sounded dark, but they still had work to do if they wanted to deter their pursuers.

Sunny swept the bathroom floor clean, which took about an hour. He preferred taking showers in the evenings, and since it was still early afternoon, he decided to go out to help grab some groceries for Basil.

The sky was bright and sunny outside; there was supposed to be a thunderstorm this afternoon. He stepped out of their apartment and breathed in the scent of the city in the late summer, its unique mixture of odors carried by the wind.

Because the city was close to a flower field beside a large nature reserve, it wasn't all pollution and fumes; the place wasn't as remote as Faraway but it wasn't a bustling metropolis either. He could smell flowers and food being cooked.