I Won't Let You Wilt

This is me

"I-Is there something on my face, Sunny?"

A petal from the pink flower that Basil wore in his hair had peeled off and clung to the left strand in front of his ear. Basil hadn't yet noticed.

Sunny laughed at Basil's adorable confusion.

"It's nothing," Sunny said. "I just had a thought, but I lost it."

I thought about how happy you used to be.

Sunny vividly remembered Basil's smile when he made his wish as he blew out the candle on his birthday cake on his twelfth birthday. That day, Sunny had also wished for everyone to be happy together.

Moments after, he'd noticed that dreamy look Basil had sent towards him.

"Hmmm...a wish? Ahh... But what should I wish for? I have everything I could want right here!"

"Oh, I know! Hehe...I think...I'll wish for..."

"Just kidding. It's a secret."

At the time, Sunny had felt confused. He'd dismissed the feelings that grew in his heart, thinking it was just a coincidental locking of eyes, a flitting joy from seeing eye to eye with his best friend standing opposite to him as he made his birthday wish. But feelings, he now realized, never went away.

I once believed that only girls could be pretty...

You've changed me, Basil.

Whenever Sunny visualized Basil's pretty smile, he was confronted with an emotion so different that he'd resolved never to speak of it to anyone else, not even to Mari, and especially not to his parents. He didn't want to admit it.

After the incident with Mari, he banished any lingering emotion he felt towards Basil to the corners of his mind, resigning his life to his days dreaming away inside Headspace as that other part of himself, Omori.

Sometimes the emotion resurfaced. When that happened, he'd banish Basil from Headspace. Omori would be playing games with his friends and all of a sudden, Basil would simply...disappear. They'd often go looking for him for a while before they stopped remembering who he was entirely.

If they came close to finding him, came close to the truth, he'd find himself waking up back in Whitespace, the whole journey reset.

I couldn't deal with feeling that way towards him on top of what happened to my sister.

Sunny opened his left eye and found Basil standing in front of him with a stack of pillows and blankets in his arms.

He looked into Basil's eyes and wondered when exactly he started to find that turquoise green so captivating.

"Here's your sleeping gear, Sunny," Basil said.

"Thank you," Sunny said, reaching out to grab everything from Basil.

He hugged his arms around the pillows, discovering how soft and comfortable they were when he squeezed them. As his eyes started to become lidded, his gaze centered on Basil, and this attention made a soft red shade color Basil's cheeks.

"Ummm...Sunny?" Basil spoke. "Are you...okay?"

"Excuse me," Sunny said, leaning down and rubbing his face against the pillows like a cat would. "These pillows are so soft I almost nodded off to sleep."

"Oh-oh, okay," Basil said. "Are you tired? If you want to sleep right now, I can clear the kitchen and set up the mattress—"

"Not yet," Sunny said bluntly.