Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

Who was human

Sunny exhaled slowly. "I'm so sorry, Basil. I should have just told them the truth. I guess things must have been confusing for you when you spoke to our old friends...and to my mom...I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. I understand if you can't forgive me for lying to you, to everyone."

That's...that's why...

Our friends...

Basil felt his whole body trembling.

The emotions that shook him were even more chaotic than what he'd felt before from their kiss. Shock. Relief. Realization. Rage. Understanding. Confusion. Doubt. Anxiety. Despair. Endless questioning.

...They forgave me because you took the blame for everything.

He opened his mouth and wanted to shout, "Why?!"

Instead he remained silent, too bewildered to say anything.

Why would you lie to take the blame for me, Sunny?

Why would you hurt yourself like that?!

All in all, he was about to melt into a puddle made up of the words "I don't understand", and he was afraid that no one could ever reassemble him back together into a coherent shape again.

Why, why, why, why, why...?

And then another voice.

Basil, do you understand?

His emotions beat him down. It wasn't even the usual maelstrom of torment that whirled inside his head. If it was that, he would at least have been able to formulate a scream.

Basil, it's okay to not understand.

Grandma's voice.

Basil, sometimes there's no answer.

His trembling hands tried to reach for something to cling on to inside his head. All those emotions flowing together could not create something understandable.

There was no answer.

There was no answer.

There was no answer, but...

But you can create your own answer.

His head whirled around. He was beaten and battered by the storm. And yet he discovered that he kept finding bits and pieces of feelings that weren't so intolerable.

Among his suffering doubt and anxiety, he saw something that illuminated a calm within the storm. It was faint, but it was a thread worth clinging on to.

There's no answer to painful feelings, and yet you can still see it, can't you?

A thread formed by a feeling he caught.

Slowly, with no more than just the thinnest breath of life surfacing out of his inner depths, he formed a trace of structure to all his thoughts.

In a manner that someone had once taught him to do, he asked himself leading questions, questions that were designed to guide him towards answers that already lay within him.

Why did Sunny lie to everyone?

Was it because Sunny hated him, and wanted to torment him more?

Was it because Sunny wished to create another illusionary world to live in, and was now inviting him to join in that illusion?

Was it because Sunny just didn't want to deal with such a heavy fallout from confessing the truth, and so he simply lied?