They were at their old hangout spot again.
Kel was asleep as usual. Hero was preparing sandwiches and drinks for everyone. Mari and Aubrey sat by each other's side at their own corner of the picnic blanket. They sat with their backs against the tree, basking in a beautiful sunny day as a warm breeze gently stirred their long hair.
Aubrey's eyes turned to the flowers that grew nearby.
Those white, bell-shaped flowers hanging from the stems that sprouted near the tree only grew in that corner of the woods. Lily of the valleys were such unusual looking flowers. They were said to ward off evil spirits and to help people see a brighter future. They represented Mari the best.
But Aubrey was looking at a lily of the valley that had wilted, died. The flower's stem had gotten unearthed from the soil. She picked up the fallen flower with a sad light in her eyes.
Mari wrapped an arm around Aubrey's shoulder.
It was such a rare and pretty flower, and if more of them died...one day, they would not be able to find lily of the valleys growing inside these woods anymore. That made Basil wonder if many other plants and flowers in this beautiful place were doomed to a similar fate.
The colors of this scene faded away, replaced by red and black.
Instead of bell-shaped lilies hanging from a flower stem, a body hung from the tree, swaying in the wind.
Basil gazed at the body. Then he glanced at Sunny, standing beside him with eyes that had grown completely lifeless.
He remembered the feelings burning inside his chest. He remembered speaking words that could not reach the person he wanted to help most.
"Don't worry..."
"Everything is going to be okay."
The wind kept blowing.
Was this right?
It was right. Nothing could be done to help Mari anymore. The best thing to do would be to try to salvage what was left. He could still preserve some of Sunny's happiness. He just had to make sure that everyone believed this lie.
Was this wrong?
It was wrong. It was wrong because...
Because...
Because...?
Basil always had a feeling that this wasn't good, this didn't save anything. This was all messed up.
But Something had pushed Mari to her death.
Sunny wasn't willing to believe that, so Basil had to save him. Basil had to craft a lie that Sunny could believe in. That was the whole plan.
Was it so wrong then? Was it wrong to create a reality that made life more livable?
Sunny turned to look at him with those blank pupils, eyes more dead than a blind grey pupil.
"It's wrong because you broke everyone's trust," Sunny spoke. "It's wrong because you made our friends believe that Mari would kill herself without any sign. It's wrong because you traumatized us even further by making us hanging her body. It's wrong because you lied to all of us, and to yourself."
Basil turned his eyes away. The skies became red.
Then Sunny grasped Basil's hand.
"But you did the right thing," Sunny spoke.
Basil looked up into those dead eyes. "Sunny...?"
It wasn't Sunny anymore, but a pale boy in a black tank top.
"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.
The new anxiety in his chest grew out of a fear that things would only get worse.
I'm not delusional anymore, but...
I keep seeing this pain, the pain that Sunny felt when his friends rejected him.
I see this pain, repeating over and over.
And what would Basil have to subject himself to this time in order to save Sunny from experiencing the despair of abject loneliness? He knew it well. It was the despair that he'd carried within ever since the day his parents sent him away.
No one deserved to feel abandoned, least of all Sunny.
A hand reached up and pat Basil softly on his back.
With unsteady breaths, Basil opened his eyes. His gaze fell upon the boy who still held him.
Every time he gazed at Sunny, he felt such an aching longing inside his chest. Sunny's pretty black hair fell above eyes carrying a light that was marred by so much sadness. Yet those eyes still held a softness in them. They held a warm feeling that took hold only when they gazed back at his own. It trembled like a windblown flame as it danced between their gazes, wavering between a bright, rising fire and small, crimson embers.
Sunny held him. Sunny pressed their hearts together, steadying their trembling chests. Sunny placed his face against Basil's, their tearstained cheeks touching, and Basil could feel that he was close.
Our friends aren't our friends anymore.
Sunny and I only have each other now, but...I'm afraid, I'll only make him lose more people that he cares about.
Basil steadied his panicked breathing, steadied that hurricane of runaway emotions inside his head. The early morning darkness softened into a calm, uniform texture.
"They really won't forgive us this time, will they?" Basil spoke.
Sunny tightened his grip on Basil's hand. "It's my fault."
"No, it's my fault," Basil said. "I lied the first time when I framed...I'm sorry. If I hadn't done that, they would still be able to trust you."
A tense second before Sunny replied. "You still saved me."
Basil didn't know why Sunny kept telling him that. He'd done the absolute worst thing imaginable to Sunny's sister—yet Sunny would only tell him that he understood, that he knew how Basil had felt at that moment, that he did what he thought was the right thing to do at a time when neither of them were ready to accept the reality before them. Why couldn't Sunny get mad at him?
Because he loves me...
Those words. Those forbidden words.
Even hearing them inside his head now, he found it hard to believe that it was true. The boy whom he loved so much loved him back. He was the least deserving of that love.
A few months ago, Basil recalled thinking that Sunny would have a much easier time if he just stuck with his old crush, Aubrey. The two blushed around each other and Aubrey was never rude to Sunny like she was to everyone else. Sunny wanted to see all the photos that Basil took of her. That meant they were a match. They had potential.
After what had just happened, the match had been doused with cold water and left to freeze in the snow. But perhaps the situation could be fixed if everything got pinned on Basil instead. If Basil could just get their old friends to see that he was the cause of everyone's problems, not Sunny...
I want to take the fall for Sunny.
...I guess this isn't different from him trying to take the fall for me, though.
I just have to ask if he still has anything left for her.
He couldn't keep the question from bubbling up and escaping his lips.
"Do you...feel like I ruined your chances with Aubrey?" Basil spoke.
Sunny blinked multiple times, staring wordlessly back.
"I meant to ask...and you can stop me if it's kind of embarrassing...what happened to your feelings for Aubrey?" Basil blurted out.
Sunny looked at Basil as if he had just grown a second head. "That was long ago."
Basil felt all his twisting, gnawing anxiety return. But it was more so out of embarrassment than fear. "Ummm...can I ask what changed?"
Another tension filled second.
A small smile spread slowly across Sunny's lips. His eyes gazed at Basil with a curious amusement. "It was just a kid crush! Nothing more."
"But you were always so shy and blushy around her..."
"Okay, you want to know what changed? I realized that Aubrey and I wouldn't work together. She gets angry really easily and sometimes I do too. We'd just fight over everything. I'd much rather have someone who's kind to me, who's patient with me, who can be there to reassure me without being all cold about it..."
"What, really...?"
"And I already know that person." Sunny squeezed Basil's hand.
AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—
"I didn't know I could like other boys until I talked to my therapist about it," Sunny continued. "When she told me it was okay, things started making a lot more sense!"
Basil's face was about to overheat and burst. "Oh, so...you also...liked me...even...back then?"
As those words left Basil's lips, he decided he might as well rename himself Mt. Basil, the exploding volcano.
Why did I have to bring this topic up!?!?!?!?!?
Sunny turned his eyes to the ground. "Erhhh. Yeah. I thought you were cute the very first time I saw you."
Basil shut his eyes, unable to form a coherent response.
Those words—
How could he deserve to hear that from Sunny?
How could Sunny say something so sweet to him?
One more confession like that and he was really going to explode.
"Anyway, me and Aubrey are over," Sunny went on. "You saw how she reacted to us."
"Yeah, but...if you still have any feelings for her, and I mean, any feelings, maybe I could...I could tell her that..."
Sunny silenced Basil's wayward words with a kiss on the lips.
Basil felt himself melting away. The taste of Sunny's lips ignited new passions inside him, and he kissed back, unable to hold his inhibitions any longer. That warm fire in his heart rose and burst into fireworks. He saw an endless array of colors, shining as brightly as the stars.
They parted to catch their breath; Sunny still looked eager for more.
"So...you don't feel anything for Aubrey anymore," Basil said, blushing.
"Don't even ask that question again," Sunny replied. "And don't even think about taking the fall for me like I tried to do for you."
Their lips pressed together before Basil could speak another word.
They kissed into the night, their arms wrapped tightly around each other, the warmth of their bodies providing all the comfort they ever needed. With every kiss, Basil felt those butterfly knots in his stomach growing tighter, untying, multiplying. Every kiss created such sweet feelings, drowning his vision in cozy rosy pink. He sank into thoughtless bliss. His whole reality melted away, and there was just Sunny.
Sunny in his arms.
Sunny's lips on his own.
Basil didn't know when it began, nor when it ended. They kissed and kissed so many times he found himself wondering if it was truly real. He pressed Sunny closer, tighter, and Sunny did not disappear.
The boy he loved so much loved him back.
Their love was real.
Basil opened his eyes at last to find himself gripping Sunny's hands, the two of them gasping for breath as they lay beside each other. He couldn't tell how much time had passed. He could barely even remember his own thoughts.
It took some time for reality to solidify back into existence around him. Slowly and steadily, boxes of information allowed him to remember where he was, who he was, and how he got here. Facts about himself and his own life. The life he shared with Sunny.
The dark blue light visible in the tiny gaps of their room's curtains revealed that it was almost dawn.
"Maybe I shouldn't have kept you up," Sunny said tiredly.
"It's okay," Basil replied.
"But...mom is taking you to therapy tomorrow."
Basil blinked.
Oh, that's right.
That reminder crashed back into his brain with the force of a moving truck. Mrs. S had also booked him a therapy appointment. After hearing what had happened between Basil and his former friends on the car ride back from Faraway, she expressed sympathy for all the pain he had gone through. To make sure he didn't do anything drastic, she booked a session between him and Sunny's therapist.
"Ummm...is Ms. Sato a good therapist?" Basil asked.
"She's really calm," Sunny answered. "Mom hired her because she wouldn't judge us."
"Really?"
Sunny nodded. "She has an interesting way of thinking. She says, everyone does what they do because their circumstances made them do it. So even when I told her about what we did...she just nodded, and said she understood."
"That's...wow. Did her advice help you?"
"Some of it did," Sunny replied. "And some didn't. I think that's how it goes with therapy. You have to pick the pieces of advice that work for you."
"Oh, okay..."
"I think you'll like talking to her," Sunny said reassuringly. He smiled in a gentle, sleepy way as his eyes closed.
Sunny looked so pretty when he was sleepy and cozy.
Basil slowly let go of Sunny's hand so they could both get some rest. Holding hands was nice, but with how passionately they were in love right now, it got both of them too excited for sleep.
I hope I do.
***
"Hi."
"Hey, Basil," Ms. Sato spoke. "Sunny told me about what happened. So how do you feel?"
"I feel okay," Basil responded.
"Let me know if there's anything you'd like to talk about."
Basil felt a little nervous. How much could he trust her? He had always kept his feelings to himself; he'd always preferred to suffer in silence than to reveal his heart to others, except Sunny. Maybe he just distrusted people. Especially adults.
But if Sunny trusted her, maybe it was alright to talk to her about the thoughts inside his head.
Still, he preferred to be cautious. His own thoughts had always been a mess. A good number of them would make him an outcast the moment he put them into words. He had to prune and select his words very carefully.
"So...you know what happened between me and Sunny?" Basil asked.
"Yeah."
I should be self-critical so that I don't look like a complete freak.
At least if I criticize myself, I could try to come off as being aware of how wrong my thoughts are.
"Ummm...so you know that I framed Mari's death as a suicide," Basil said.
"Yes."
"And...you know that I stabbed Sunny's eye out that night."
"Yes."
This is the part where you tell me that I'm a lunatic who belongs in an insane asylum.
"Isn't it..." Basil struggled to say the right words. "Don't you find what I did disgusting?"
"Not at all. I think it's impressive."
Huh?
"Basil, I can tell that you have a really strong will," Ms. Sato said. "You can hold a single motive for years. Even when things get really hard, you still manage to pull through. And the motive you chose simply made sense to you at the time. It's not your fault you didn't have better guidance. And you deserve to be congratulated for how far you went to protect Sunny."
Uh...what?
Ms. Sato smiled. "I'm not saying you did the right thing. I'm just applauding you for always trying your hardest to take care of your best friend."
"But...isn't what I did all messed up?" Basil asked.
"Sunny told me that you saved his life that night," she said. "If you hadn't been there, he was ready to...you know, end it for himself."
Is that really what Sunny said...?
"When you're in a bad situation, sometimes you only have bad options to choose from," Ms. Sato went on. "This might be a bit cold, but let me put it to you this way. You could have called everyone to tell them what happened. Sunny would then have a high chance of killing himself out of sheer guilt, but on the up side, everybody gets to know the truth. On the other hand, you could hide the murder and tell Sunny that everything's okay. Sunny would have a slightly lower chance of killing himself if he's willing to listen to you, but on the down side, you lie to everyone and hurt everyone else much more. Given these options, you chose to protect your friend. You chose to do whatever was necessary to lower his chances of killing himself."
"Was my choice...correct?" Basil asked.
"There's no need to box everything into right or wrong," she replied. "It's better to just see the upsides and downsides of each choice. And once you've made your decision, all you can really do is learn from its consequences. If you don't like it, you can't travel back in time to change things. You just have to try to do better next time. Even if there was a truly correct choice, I don't expect you or anyone else to always make that choice. No one is perfect. Everybody makes mistakes; let's introspect, learn, and move on."
Well, that's...
That's certainly a very blunt way of framing everything.
"Sunny told me you've done a lot of reflecting in the past few months," Ms. Sato said. "Do you want to talk it over with me?"
"I...I do," Basil replied. "But what I want to talk about is, ummm, the consequences of what me and Sunny did, and what happened between our friends."
"Tell me everything," she said.
Basil took a moment to breathe and to gather all his thoughts.
"I kept Sunny's secret for so long because I was afraid of what would happen to him if I let it out," Basil began. "And...I still am. I'm just scared that I'm going to keep hurting Sunny. Scared that everything I do is going to make things worse for him. I tried to protect him from 'Something' but I ended up stabbing his eye. When I tried to protect him from bullies he got beaten up so badly he broke his nose. Then we confessed some secrets to our friends and...I just wish...I just wish that I could stop hurting him. Now his friends won't even talk to him anymore."
Those words stung, his friends.
Would they think of themselves as anything even close to being friends with us?
Ms. Sato nodded. "It's hard. Protecting your friend is one of the hardest things you can ever do."
Basil raised his eyes. "It is?"
"Most people care only about themselves or their immediate family. Devoting yourself to a friend is something truly special. It's a very noble goal."
"Ummm, but, what if I keep messing up? It's not noble if I keep making things worse...?"
"The way you do it is very noble."
Basil felt confused. "Uh..."
"Let me make a clear distinction," Ms. Sato said. "You've probably heard the word overbearing. Think about what it means to be an overbearing friend. They try really hard to be your best friend, but instead, they get in your face too much. They're there even when you don't want them to be. They might think they're helping but actually, they're a burden on you and you'd rather not want them to be around."
"Am I overbearing?" Basil asked.
"Sunny told me you're not overbearing at all. Because you have empathy for Sunny, and you know what Sunny wants. You know that there are times when Sunny would rather be alone. You respect his boundaries and you don't bother him until he wants to be bothered. You always think about what he wants and you never try to force your own will onto him. That's why he thinks you're a very good friend."
"But...wasn't what I did to his sister wrong? Didn't I stab out his eye?"
"When Sunny was in that situation, his mind totally shut down. He told me he didn't know what he wanted. Just processing reality was too much for him. At that time, the best thing for him was to spend some time alone. He needed time, a few months, maybe even a few years, to work through his feelings. There's no other way around it. And you gave him that time, by protecting him for all those years. Things could have gone much worse if he was arrested and sent to juvie. He might not have been given the alone time he needed to process his feelings in juvie. Of course, he did shut himself inside for too long, but that's on his parents. He needed better adults and role models to get him to come out sooner."
I...never thought about it that way.
"Same with the eye. You were both really stressed out when that happened. He didn't even think about his own eye, and he was very afraid that he might've killed you. He forgives you completely."
It's hard...hard to believe that I deserve forgiveness.
"And you sacrificed way too much of your own happiness and energy to protect him—according to Sunny's own words," Ms. Sato said. "That's why Sunny feels that he owes you. Of course, he also loves you, so he wants to be with you even if he didn't owe you anything."
Basil felt a huge blush coming on. "Ummm!!!"
"By the way, it's completely normal to love someone of your own gender," Ms. Sato said with a smile. "People might judge you for it, but they're wrong and closeminded. If you love Sunny, you should love him with all your heart, and I will totally support you."
This was too much for Basil to handle. He turned totally red.
"About your friends—sadly, it might be best to leave them and move on," Ms. Sato continued. "If they choose to cut you out of their lives, there's nothing, no apologies or favors or gifts, that you can do to get them back. You just have to wait for them to ask you to come back into their lives."
Basil's red hot embarrassment went away, replaced by cool blue sadness. "I...I guess. But it makes me so sad. For Sunny."
"It's okay to be sad sometimes," she replied.
"But if I get sad too much, I'll get depressed," Basil protested.
Ms. Sato remained silent for a little bit.
Basil felt worried he'd said something that would make him look like a total freak. To his surprise, Ms. Sato smiled at him again.
"Being cut off by your friends, that's a situation where it's good to feel sad," she said.
"Really...?"
"You know, people will tell you, 'don't be sad', or 'don't be angry', but from my experience, you can't actually control the way you feel. I bet that even the person with the strongest will in the world can't control their feelings. If you want to get scientific about it, I believe it's because feelings exist, physically. Happiness is neurons firing in a certain pattern. Sadness, neurons firing in a different pattern. Same with anger, fear, and every other feeling. So telling yourself, 'don't be sad', when your own neurons are firing in a sad pattern, it's like telling yourself, "this chair doesn't exist", when the chair is right in front of your eyes. Of course, people don't like to be sad. They try to do everything to remove their sadness. This sometimes works, but it won't work with friends who cut you off. You just have to accept that you can't get them back, and you'll have to feel sad for the time being. If you keep fighting the sadness, then your sadness grows stronger, like if you're pretending this chair doesn't exist but then someone asks you to sit on it, so it becomes really hard to keep pretending it's not there. So if you keep denying your own sadness, it just grows stronger, until you get depressed, or worse."
"What if I accept my sadness but it lasts forever?" Basil asks. "What if I'm just...sad for the rest of my life?"
"You won't be," she assured. "Feelings are paradoxical like that. Sometimes, when I can't fall asleep, I just tell myself, 'fine, brain, just don't sleep for the rest of your life!' and surprisingly, I fall asleep again. I think it's the fact that our brain is an amazing problem solver. If it identifies a problem, it won't rest until it solves it. So if you treat your own sadness as a problem, you won't feel better until you remove the cause of the sadness. But, as I explained earlier, you won't be able to remove the cause when the cause is your friends cutting you off. You can't control what other people do.
"When you accept that your friends aren't going to be there anymore, your brain will decide to just let the problem be, and slowly but steadily, it will reconcile with failing to solve it. Think of it as...your brain forming new synapses, new connections that are necessary for the task of moving on with life without your friends. A more independent life. Then, your brain starts searching for new problems. One day, you'll realize that your next problem is planning an amazing prom date with your best friend, and that'll occupy your whole mind. Sadness only sticks around if you keep working on the same problem, which has no solution."
This was plenty for Basil to take in. He nodded, but he had a lot to think over.
"And...I know. There's always the fear. 'What if I keep losing friends?' 'What if my boyfriend breaks up with me?' 'What if I'll always end up alone?' It's scary. But here's the thing. The problem of 'What if' has no solution either. No one can predict the future. And trying hard to prevent any bad things from happening to you will make you feel extremely anxious, because there's just no way to predict everything bad that can happen. Yet you'll still want to, right? It's funny.
"So here's what I want you to do. Acknowledge this contradiction. Acknowledge that we exist in a constant tension between solving a problem, searching for future problems, and reconciling our life with problems that have no solution. This is extremely difficult. But you have a strong will, Basil, so I know you can do it. Every time you feel like you can't deal with life anymore, remember that it's okay to live inside tension itself. It's okay to play this balancing act for the rest of our lives. Because there is no fix-all solution to our problems, there is no utopia beyond the horizon, and there is no future free from bad outcomes. If you need something to believe in, then believe in accepting all your feelings. Because your feelings are your own, and nothing can ever take them away from you."
Basil nodded again.
I guess...
I guess that's how it goes.
I have to live with knowing that my friends might leave me, and I might be left all alone one day.
I have to live with knowing that...even Sunny might leave me one day.
Basil's eyes turned down at the floor.
Even so...
He steadied his trembling fingers.
I'll stay with Sunny right now because he says, at least according to what I've heard, that he wants to be with me.
He shut his eyes.
And I'll stay with Sunny...even knowing that he might leave me one day.
Basil sucked in a deep breath.
Because I just have to live with all my feelings by my side.
He exhaled, and let himself relax.
'Letting myself love Sunny, yet being okay with parting ways with Sunny one day'.
It was so difficult to accept that.
But he had to live with that difficulty. Because he had realized that the reason he was so afraid of hurting Sunny was because he was deathly afraid of Sunny abandoning him.
The problem of how do I prevent Sunny from ever being hurt again? had no solution.
Therefore, he had to accept that he might hurt Sunny sometimes, and that Sunny might leave him one day because of it.
Yet, while Sunny still wanted him...
While Sunny still wanted to be by his side...
They would stay together.
They would be in love with each other.
"Thanks, Ms. Sato," Basil said. "I think you've helped me clarify why I was so afraid of hurting Sunny. I just didn't want him to leave me. But...I guess, if I really loved Sunny, I would be okay with him parting ways with me one day."
"You're welcome," she said. "Wow, you're really good at introspecting."
"Thanks," Basil said.
Maybe a little too good...
Basil found that kind of funny.