I Won't Let You Wilt

Reliving

Sunny weaved his fingers through delicate strands of silken sunshine. His thumb and index finger took hold of a pink daisy locked to a black dyed strand among threads of gold. With a mournful frown, Sunny removed the flower that he loved seeing so much in Basil's hair.

Can't have his dad suspect that the two "fans" coming to get his autograph just happened to be the son he had abandoned and his boyfriend slash partner in crime. The flower in Basil's hair might give that away.

"Don't be sad, Sunny," Basil said. "It's just for a short while."

"I love it when you wear that flower," Sunny complained.

Basil made a playful smile. He suddenly took the daisy from Sunny's hands and placed it in Sunny's hair, right above his ear.

"I do too," Basil said, laughing.

"Maybe I'll wear the flower, and you wear the whole flower crown," Sunny suggested teasingly.

"Want me to?" Basil said, eyes turned to the flower crown on the table that Basil had made last summer when they worked together on their garden.

"Always," Sunny said. "It's up to you, really."

Basil looked tempted, but he decided to stick with the plan to meet Sunny's dad properly disguised. "I'll wear the flower crown all day tomorrow. Let's just get this meeting with your dad over with."

"Okay."

I wish we didn't have to disguise ourselves.

Sunny's hair was dyed blond; it turned out that their hair swap fun at the start of the semester proved useful in hiding their true identities. From a distance, all his dad would see would be two blonds in sunglasses, one with a streak of black hair, waiting for him at the table to get his autograph. As long as his dad didn't suspect a thing, they could probably get at least a word in with him.

Sunny and Basil put on their sunglasses and headed out.

A knot of anxiety sat tensely inside Sunny's stomach. He still had his doubts about meeting with his dad. He was meeting someone who had abandoned his family, and with what he planned to tell him, he wasn't exactly going in with thoughts of reconciliation and forgiveness. He could not anticipate how his dad was going to react to seeing the son that he had discarded seven years ago. Nor did he know how he himself was going to feel.

All this placed a lot of stress on Basil. Sunny would have wanted to go alone, but Basil would not allow Sunny to face his dad all by himself. Even though this was sort of a personal family matter, Sunny felt in the end that it was appropriate for Basil to come along, given his involvement in everything. It could be Basil's only chance to confess the truth about Mari's death, but it all depended on whether his dad was willing to accept it without pressing charges.

As they walked towards the concert hall that his dad worked at, Sunny's brain wanted to turn tail and run, abandoning this whole idea. Dread lurched his stomach, bringing him back to his days of shutting himself inside his house.

He still remembered, and feared, the way that his dad had looked at him on the day that he ran away. A look of raw, visceral disgust—and terror. As if his dad couldn't even fathom how a human being could have done something so messed up. That look his dad gave him was one of many things that had convinced himself back then that he should never step foot outside of his house ever again.

I won't relapse into that state of mind again.

I'm stronger than that.

Overcoming my other half, Omori, made me more resilient.