You're back, Mari

Chapter 6: A Realization, and Paranoia

"So are you going to explain to me why the hell Basil had those garden shears in his backpack?"

Hero looked up from the kitchen counter. Aubrey walked closer to him, before moving and sitting on one of the stools nearby. Hero went back to constructing sandwiches. "When did you see that?"

"When I was looking over his shoulder at the pictures. He left his backpack unzipped and I just happened to peek inside." Aubrey said, and there was a strong sense of worry in her words. "Hero...what happened in the bathroom?"

"Well..." Hero trailed off. "It doesn't really matter now. I talked some sense into him, and cleared up some misunderstandings."

"I need to know, Hero. I'm worried. I'm not...I'm not bullying him anymore..."

Hero turned around at that, placing down what was in his hands. He looked at her embarrassed and guilty expression and let out a sigh. "It's not that, Aubrey, it's just...it would be hard to understand where he's coming from. Even I don't really get it, to be perfectly honest..."

Aubrey rose a brow. "It can't be that bad. What, was he going to attack someone or something? I can't really imagine Basil doing that, especially since he felt so bad about fighting Sunny." Aubrey kicked her legs, frowning.

"If I tell you, you need to keep it to yourself. Sunny especially cannot know. To be honest I...I don't think Basil would want me to tell anyone, but...it's probably a good idea to have another person to...to keep an eye on him."

"Promise." Aubrey gave him her most serious nod. Hero sighed again, feeling like he'd been doing that a lot lately.

"Well...Basil thought that if he...did the same thing to himself as he did to Sunny...then that would make it up to him."

Silence.

"W–What. You're...you're..." Aubrey stared at Hero's level gaze. "Oh my god, you're serious. That's...that's some crazy shit." She then fiddled with her hair, her shocked expression starting to ease. "Well...maybe it's not that surprising, now that I think about it."

"What?" Hero recoiled. "What has Basil done to possibly indicate he'd do something like that?" Besides his overwhelming anxiety and attachment to Sunny, there wasn't anything Hero could think of that was to the level of...of gouging his own eye out.

"I assume his reasoning was a lot more skewed than how you're putting it. Probably something a lot more creepy–oops, I shouldn't call him that." Aubrey ruffled her hair, strangely relaxed. "Anyways, it's obvious Basil's kind of obsessed with Sunny."

"O–Obsessed?"

"Dude..." Aubrey gave him a withering look. "Do regular besties cover up murders for each other in the way that Basil did? Especially at age twelve? Plus, Basil's reasoning was purely that he didn't want to lose Sunny...Hero, you can't be that dense."

"Okay, well..." Hero bit his lip.

"The only reason I didn't punch Basil after hearing the truth was that I'm pretty confident there's a screw loose up there–and it probably has something to do with his parents," Aubrey said, sympathetic. "So, I kind of get it..." The last part was mumbled.

Hero felt really stupid, to be honest. He was so distracted by his own feelings that he didn't really think deeply about the reasoning behind Basil's actions. Hero started to think about Basil's behavior.

"Oh...the blacked-out photos..." Hero blinked.

"Yeah, dumbass." Aubrey rolled her eyes. "That's why I called him a creep. Which was awful of me and I still feel guilty, but like...it didn't come from nowhere."