The world stopped the moment Sunny looked back at the tree in his backyard that summer day. In that instant, seeing that shape hanging from a branch completely broke his sanity.

He didn't remember what happened afterwards, nor what happened before seeing Something for the first time. Basil was with him that day, but every time he thinks about him now, his gut decides it's time to retch again. As if he didn't threw up often enough already.

Everyday starts to merge together in his mind, there's no more real separation during the day, just like there isn't any during the night.

Whenever he fell asleep, he seemed free of Something's ever watchful eye, but he found himself in a white room, that he started identifying as "White Space". Nothing was ever out of place in White Space, it was nice being in a neat environment, nothing was clean and organized anymore when he was awake.

There was a warm laptop where he tried keeping track of the days, Mewo sleeping in a corner keeping Sunny company, his sketchbook, a tissue box and a lone lightbulb hanging from who knows where, because there was no ceiling. Actually, there were no walls either. Sunny tried to walk around a few times, but he never found anything. At some point whenever he started wandering through White Space, some red and white hands appeared out of nowhere and if they touched him, he was overwhelmed by a sense of dread that made him double over screaming and crying after reappearing at the center of the room. After a couple of times of being caught by those hands, he resigned to laying on the ground, sometimes he would draw in his sketchbook, other times he would pet Mewo, another way to pass time was also crying his heart out, but most often than not he would just lay there, staring at the black lightbulb.

But how to leave and go back to his awake self was a question Sunny started asking himself after spending an ungodly amount of time there for the first time. He tried pinching his arm, as he always saw in cartoons, but nothing happened, if not just a lingering ache where he tried pinching. He tried letting himself fall on his back, as he remembered from a movie he watched once, but it only caused his breath to leave his lungs and pain to spread through his body. He got up feeling disappointed and defeated until he heard the sound of something falling to the ground. Weird, he thought looking behind him, everything was in its place, neat and organized. He started looking over the limits of the room, towards where the hands hid themselves until they saw an opportunity to catch him. His breath hitched when he saw some shiny thing on the floor, a little off of where the room ended, close to the flying hands.

He could leave it there, ignore it and eventually forget about it. But could he really? He felt like he needed to know what it was. And if that was the way to leave White Space? One last deep breath helped him make up his mind, he was going to take that shiny thing, even if it meant suffering from those hands just one more time.

What he picked up, right before being touched by a pair of hands bringing with them their usual insufferable pain, was a kitchen knife. Peculiar, thought Sunny. What was he supposed to do with this, he wondered. He kept staring at it, at how shiny and pristine the blade looked. With the corner of his eye, he saw Mewo looking at him, lazily moving her tail. Was she waiting for something to happen?

A weird thought crossed Sunny's mind, it was so sudden and so horrible that he loosened his grip on the knife and let it fall to the ground with a loud thud that echoed through White Space. He started shivering uncontrollably. He just had a very bad idea. But it felt so right. He deserved it, after all. Sunny was confused though, why was he so fiercely convinced to deserve such a horrible thing? But there was this pull, like an invisible string that controlled his movements, towards that kitchen knife. There must be a reason why he's confident he deserves such a crude treatment, he was sure of it. So without much further thinking, he tightly gripped the blade and stabbed himself right in the abdomen. His legs gave out under him, pain spread throughout Sunny's whole body and he suddenly found himself gasping for air in his bed, with tears on his face.

From that first morning, Sunny decided that he hated how he had to wake up from White Space. It seemed so calm there, but he had to admit that such a strong wakeup call eased his mind and body for what was like being awake nowadays. His mind was a big mess of incoherent thoughts, the space around him a confused and wrong environment where everything that was important to him has gone missing. It was worth it, Sunny kept reminding him of such a fact, because it meant having peaceful nights to himself.

He was someone else in White Space, a clean canvas, just like his room. Soon Sunny stopped thinking of himself as Sunny while in White Space, 'cause there was no sun shining anymore, so why sunny? For a while he was a blank canvas without a name. Day after day it became normal having no name. Sometimes though, he could hear some distant noise in White Space. He didn't know where it came from, nor did he care. He didn't want to go look for its source, or the terrifying hands would catch him again. But a name started forming itself in the back of his mind.

One night he recognized the sound as a familiar music and that's when it stopped. He hated music. But the exact moment the music stopped echoing in the room, the name had made its roots in his head. From then on, in that Space his name was Omori.

In his dreams, nobody bothered Omori, so he preferred them to being awake.

He didn't remember much of that awful day and yet many kept asking him, even if it hurts Sunny so badly trying to remember. His mom, two men wearing matching blue pants and shirt decorated with some odd patches, a woman dressed in a nice suit and her hair in a neat bun, another woman who came by his house often dressed in different variations of the same dress were the ones who stood out the most to him. To all he said the same few things he could remember.

It was a hot sunny day, no clouds in the sky. He clearly remembers thinking how odd the living room looked with those red and blue hues filtrating through the curtains. He also remembers how fast Mewo ran into the kitchen to hide under the cabinet when strangers started piling up into the house. She's never liked strangers after all. In that moment he wished he was the same size of the cat to follow her footsteps and hide with her in the kitchen. Just like Mewo, Sunny never liked strangers. He remembers hearing screams outside his house at some point, he could only make out the word "sunny", maybe someone was shouting about how sunny that summer day was, odd but it was a warm day, he reasoned, maybe they got slight sunstroke. It had happened to him once, it made his head feel very light and confused. He remembers seeing many people dressed in white coats, funny having a themed party at this time of the year, but he wasn't one to judge. Also weird that the party was in his backyard, but he couldn't attend it, he felt sick just looking at the glass door. He also remembers how curious it was that they exited his house with a big white bag on a table. Maybe they didn't finish all the food and decided to pack it for everybody to take home after the party. Sometimes his parents did the same thing, it would be a waste otherwise to throw away perfectly good food.

He did mention Something, but nobody, except for the woman always wearing dresses, cared about that part.

He said he saw it in the garden, near the tree, an upside down teardrop shape, made out of fuzzy material, with one big terrifying eye looking straight at him. From then on, it kept following him everywhere. In his bedroom, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, in the living room, that one time he went with the two men with patches on their shirts to a weird room with a big dark mirror on a wall, to the big building where the lady with the neat bun brought him to while wearing a suit himself, to Faraway's church with his parents.

Something was around every corner, it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Nobody could see it, but him. So he stopped talking about it. Even to the lady coming to his house twice a week wearing dresses. She seemed frustrated when he stopped mentioning it. But it was better that way, she seemed nice enough, he didn't want Something plaguing her days as well.

The days and months after that loathsome day flew by and memories now are a jumbled mess.

One day he did kind of remember was when his family fell apart completely, he vaguely remembers his father screaming at him while his mother wept, he thinks at some point he fell to the ground, watching from his crouched position his father being pushed back by his screaming mother.

Next thing he knew, his mother dropped to the ground next to Sunny to hug him, but he was terrified when his vision was obscured by her hair. He started crying and pushing her away. He vividly remembers her stricken face stained by her own tears. She pulled her hair up in a bun on top of her head and hugged him tightly.

From that day on, he's never seen his mother with her hair down again.

He also remembers watching the retreating figure of his father's back get out of the house a while later, without saying anything, with a couple of suitcases with him. Sunny never saw him again after that day.

What he did see throughout the whole ordeal, though, was Something lurking in the corner of the room.

A while after that other wretched day, the nice lady in a dress had a conversation with his mother, he remembers how weird it was that she didn't come directly to him to talk, so he eavesdropped a bit of their conversation, as much as he could from his open bedroom door on the top floor at least. He wouldn't come close to the stairs alone, he was scared of heights, everyone knew that.

Unfortunately he could hear very little since they were talking in hushed voices. Sunny could make out just a few words, his name being said a few times, something about some trees, the word help or variations of it being said quite often. She then left, leaving Sunny a bit confused. How weird, he thought, she's never rude, why didn't she greet him at all, that's not like her.

He then heard his mother coming towards the bottom of the stairs and, when she saw him peeking through the opened door of his bedroom, she froze like a deer caught in the headlights. She looked at him with big watery eyes and after a couple seconds of silence, she hugged her son with tear stained cheeks. She started talking with a soft voice, as if afraid that talking too loudly would scare him off, causing him to retreat into his room.

What she said didn't make much sense to Sunny. She talked about a place, Pines something, saying that her and the miss always wearing dresses couldn't help him anymore, but in that place he would feel better, there were people who could put everything back together. She said that he would have to stop studying at school and seeing his friends for a bit, but it would be worth it because when he will be back at home, everything was going to be okay and he'll be back to laugh alongside her and his friends.

Sunny thought how odd it was that she mentioned school, he wasn't going to school anymore, it had been a while. Or how she mentioned his friends, he hasn't seen them in a while. His father hasn't been back home in a while either. And how weird and absolutely laughable it was that she thought everything was going to be back to normal. How could it? She was…

He can't remember what happened after that. He can't remember when he left his house, the look on his mother's face when she dropped him off, who he talked to afterwards or what they said. Sunny's memories jumped from sitting on the floor near his room while his mother was talking to him to sitting on the floor of a white and grey room, with bars on the window that blocked the sunlight, permeated with the smell of bleach and other sanitizing products.

A man came into the room he was in and brought him to another room, with a big wooden desk and a lady older than his mother who tried to talk to him. He didn't like her, so he talked very little. He didn't like strangers after all. She kept on looking at the clock on her desk, so very rude, in Sunny's eyes. She said stuff he didn't like as well.

Apparently he was there to stay for a long while, his sister was gone and he had to deal with it and they were going to help him do just that. There was no point in giving her the silent treatment. The faster he started confiding in her, the faster he could go back to have fun with his friends.

Sunny's head started throbbing obscuring most of the woman's speech. He didn't consider it that much of a loss. At some point his eyes started wandering around the room until they ended up on Something standing just beside the woman. Terrified, he dropped his gaze on his hands resting on his lap, never looking up again.

That night he couldn't sleep. The room was unfamiliar, the clothes he was wearing weren't his own, the smell in the room was noxious, there wasn't her smell lingering in the room, one of the few things that could still calm him down. He could feel Something's gaze on him even if Sunny couldn't see it.

The second day in that place felt like an eternity. At meal times, he was brought to a big dining hall where there were other people eating. He didn't talk to anybody though, they were strangers after all. He was also brought to some classroom during the day, but he didn't pay much attention. In the afternoon, Sunny had another meeting with the woman from the day before, it didn't go that much differently.

Sunny was starting to think that he didn't considered the lady always wearing dresses who came to his house as nice as before anymore. She was the one who sent him here. He didn't like being here. So he didn't like that lady anymore.

The second night he was so incredibly tired and his mind kept on wandering without his consent to his friends, that everyone kept on bringing up in conversations. He did miss them, missed how carefree they all were, how fun it was going to their secret hangout spot in the park, how delicious the food that she prepared in her basket for their picnics was, how Kel and Aubrey kept arguing with each other, even if at the end of the day they still laughed together at the stupidest things, how Hero would scold them and blush for something she said with a mischievous smile, how he always taught them all something new about flowers and had always at least one in his hair.

He missed it all.

He missed them all.

When sleep finally claimed him, White Space welcomed Omori as usual. Though there was something truly unusual that night. There was a door in the middle of the blankness that was White Space. It seemed calling out for him to open it. Omori didn't want the flying hands to touch him again, so he tried ignoring the new addition to the room. He checked his laptop, tried laying next to Mewo while looking at the lightbulb, he sketched out some unsettling drawings in his sketchbook, he looked at the tissue box. He was trying so hard to keep his mind away from that wooden rectangle with a doorknob, but he kept failing and failing. Omori has never wanted anything. He was content lounging in White Space. But now for the first time he wanted to do something, he wanted to open that door and see what was on the other side so badly. His fingers kept flexing as if gripping the doorknob. He just wanted to take a peek, just a peek and then he would leave it alone, he reasoned.

With a deep breath, Omori walked towards the door, he noticed his hand shaking a bit before reaching the doorknob and with one final deep breath he turned it, or tried to, because the door was locked. Omori has never known what disappointment was until that moment. He just wanted to see what was on the other side. How unfair. He walked a few steps back and looked longingly at the door.

He just stood there for who knows how long, until he heard a metallic sound. The knife, he realized, maybe Omori could open the door with the knife. It was weird that it wasn't in his pocket, he didn't realize his absence until he heard the sound of it falling to the ground. He looked around and started walking towards the kitchen knife once he located it. As soon as his hand gripped the handle, the flying hands brought him back to the room. Omori just gritted his teeth trying to overcome the pain and looked at the door as a click reverberated in the Space.

It seemed like picking up the blade was the right choice, the door was going to open now. He approached it once more, standing there a couple of seconds just looking at it and then yanked it open with his free hand in one fast motion.

What was on the other side stunned him a bit, too colourful, too bright. His eyes immediately found the big yellow cat's ones who seemed purring near a wall. He has seen it before, he was sure of it. Seeing it now filled him with peace, everything was going to be okay, he was guarding Omori's tree house and his friends.

A small commotion brought his attention back at ground level, where his vision was filled with the happy eyes of one of his friends, Aubrey. He cared a lot for the small girl, he knew he cared for the girl like Hero cared for her. So it was like a breath of fresh air seeing her demand his attention after not have any contact with anybody for so long.

She dragged him to the center of the tree house, where Hero and Kel were playing cards. He always taught Kel's childish and carefree attitude to be refreshing and seeing him shouting about an insignificant game almost brought a smile to Omori's lips. Almost. Omori's never been too carefree unfortunately. Hero's trying to be the peacemaker between the two little balls of energy that were Aubrey and Kel made Omori feel nostalgic for something, but he couldn't place what, nor did he really care, he had a feeling here he wasn't going to need anything.

They said they were waiting for him to go join them in the park for a picnic. Could it be?

He wondered a bit around the tree house, there were all the things he and his friends brought there to pass the time together, like the old TV, some cards, a baseball bat, a pillow and wrapped gift. They often ate in the tree house as well hence the toaster and blender on the counter. There was one thing on that counter though that seemed out of place to Omori, he didn't even dare going close to it, for how wrong it felt. There was also a puddle on the floor with a tentacle sticking out of it, it seemed familiar to Omori, not like all the other things that called the tree house their home, but like the big yellow cat on the wall familiar, he couldn't place where he saw it before.

With a last look towards the big yellow cat, he felt content leading the group out of the tree stump, listening to their chatter, Aubrey and Kel's bickering were always amusing to listen to. Once they reached the park, he saw them sitting on a picnic blanket. Omori didn't know why he was so surprised to see them, it was obvious they were going to be at their hangout spot as always, safe from any harm, waiting to start a new adventure together.

He felt his insides become light and fuzzy when Mari glanced his way with a smile.

He now understood what everyone meant.

Everything was going to be okay.

He would make sure of it.