Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

This Balancing Act

"You didn't doubt yourself for four years," Sunny said. "Why doubt it now?"

"Because...because I felt that I hurt you," Basil said.

Basil knew it was wrong. It was all wrong.

"You saved me," Sunny replied. "If you hadn't done it, I might have killed myself on this night."

Basil felt his words getting caught in his throat.

"Even now, you still don't think like the others," Sunny went on. "You don't think about the wrongness of framing her death as a suicide. You only think about whether or not it hurt me."

Sunny opened the palm of his hand.

A lily of the valley, wilted.

It transformed into a sunflower, and a white tulip, intertwined together.

"Basil," Sunny said, very softly. "It's okay."

"Wasn't it wrong of me?" Basil protested.

"Wrong or not..."

Sunny clasped Basil's hand in his own, holding those flowers together.

"It's just the two of us now."

Basil saw a soft light shining in Sunny's eyes.

"Let's protect each other," Sunny spoke. "Even if it costs us the whole world."

Basil's hands trembled. "Even if it costs...everything?"

The light in Sunny's eyes dimmed. With a dip of his head, he grasped Basil's fingers tightly, steadying his hands and their resolve.

***

"Basil?"

Basil opened his eyes, discovering that he'd been tossing under their blanket. He couldn't calm his rapid, shallow breathing. The silence and darkness of the room felt crushing. He reached out for someone, anyone, something to hold his grasping hands.

Sunny grabbed hold of Basil. He wrapped his arms around Basil's body and held him tightly.

But Basil was trapped.

Thoughts and memories raced through Basil's mind, bringing back emotions buried deep beneath. He saw a long, bloody road that he forced himself to walk down, suffering endless slings and arrows at each step of the way. It was his road to walk down because of what he had done. With the tying of a noose, he had condemned himself to suffer until his last breath.

Sunny didn't deserve to be hated. Sunny didn't deserve to be ostracized. He didn't deserve to feel the loneliness that Basil felt all his life.

"Please, just leave your sister alone."

Hero's words echoed inside Basil's head. Those words smashed the road he'd condemned himself to walk down. All that he'd suffered, all that he had tried to do to protect Sunny—

—it was all for nothing.

Because Sunny was now hated by all his friends.

Because there was no way their friends could ever forgive Sunny anymore.

The dark webs lurking at the edge of Basil's vision spread their jagged tendrils into Basil's chest and gripped a cold, bony hand around his heart.

This was a different kind of anxiety than what he felt before. He no longer truly believed that something behind Sunny had been the cause of all of Sunny's pain. These months of being reunited with Sunny, talking with him, living by his side—he allowed himself to accept that Sunny was a flawed human being. He had to shatter his belief in Sunny's perfection in order to be with the real Sunny.