Chapter Text
“Behind that door lives the small child that is the real you. The small child who hurts too much and feels too much and laughs too loud and always believes... true love involves unlocking the many padlocks on that door, taking him by the hand, and guiding him- Joybell C.
“We may never know exactly when or how this began, but if we acknowledge this little one, he will somehow know that we are listening to him.”- Bonnie Badenoch
Omori existed, and then he didn’t.
Sunny had held him, and he had closed his eyes. He stopped existing when he closed his eyes, but that was normal. He didn’t exist a lot of the time, only when Sunny closed his eyes.
Except nowadays when Sunny closed his eyes, Omori still didn’t exist. There was no lightbulb, no door, no neighbor’s room, no headspace. It was just Omori, not existing, but still there. He didn’t know where “there” was, but that was where Omori was now.
In “There”, he had lots of time to think, so Omori thought. He thought about his friends, and he wondered if they were still waiting for him in their technicolor tree house. He thought about Mari and her picnic blankets, about her gentle smiles and cheerful attempts to help him. Omori thought about a lot of things, but the thing he thought about most was Sunny.
Sunny had hugged him, but that wasn’t normal. Omori was used to hugs from his friends, tight squeezes from Basil (almost too tight sometimes) and side grabs from Kel. Omori thought he knew how hugs felt. They were nice, but flat. It was like looking at a picture of a delicious food. It was delectable, desirable even, but underneath that initial thought, there was no substance. It was just something that happened to him.
But hugging Sunny felt, for lack of a better word, like something... more .
Omori didn’t really like Sunny. He spent most of his time trying and succeeding in forgetting that Sunny even existed. Sunny had created him, but Sunny was bad. Omori was supposed to be the good parts of himself that Sunny hid away, because Sunny knew he couldn’t be trusted around good things without hurting them.
Omori wasn’t Sunny, Sunny was a monster, but he knew that he was Sunny’s creation just like everything in headspace was. Did that make him Sunny? Did that make him a monster too? It was easier to just try to stab the older boy than try to wrap his head around all of that. But then Sunny made him feel more.
Omori had never really felt more before, only certain little moments of it during the worst parts of his existence. When he went past just scared, past AFRAID and into STRESSED OUT. When he went past his normal limits and became not quite Omori and not quite Sunny either. He had thought that anything more than what he was had to be bad, because the only time he was more than Omori was when he was hurt or scared. That was why they were all in headspace, wasn’t it? A safe place to lock all the darkness out and only leave the good?
But Sunny’s hug had been more, and Sunny was more, and he had made Omori feel warm for the very first time since he had woken up in White Space on that night.
Omori didn’t know what to make of it, how to try and rebalance what he thought he had known with what he knew now. In the “There” that he was still existing in he tried to find a way that it all made sense, but he couldn’t. There was no reconciling Sunny the Monster with Sunny the Boy. Could they both exist? Then what did that make Omori?
He was There, and There was nothing.
Then There was White Space.
Usually right before he opened his eyes, Omori always had the same two thoughts. Welcome to White Space. You have been living here for as long as you can remember. This time he didn’t think of a thing. One minute he existed “there” and the next he was back in White Space.
Mewo slumbered in the corner of the white rug, and his laptop began the process of booting back up all on its own. He had his box of tissues, full now instead of almost empty, and-
His sketchbook. It was new. Omori could tell you every exact detail of the things in White Space down to a tee. He could tell you where the dents were on his laptop, the exact spot where Mewo loved to be scratched under her chin, even the number of tissues that perpetually existed in his box.
His sketchbook was supposed to be dirty and beaten up, the paper was supposed to be crinkled at the edges. It was a sketchbook filled with drawings that scared him, drawings he knew that he had done, but also had no memory of ever doing. They were only the surface drawings, and Omori was frightened by them because he knew what lay underneath.
This sketchbook was sleek, black leather with crisp white pages, his name embossed in gold on the cover. Next to it sat an open pencil box, clear plastic blue filled to the brim with sharp colored pencils. Omori stood up from where he had been sitting on the blanket, and walked over. He kneeled by the new items and picked up the box, inspecting its contents.
He had never had blue before, or green or purple. A full glossy rainbow of options was peering out at him, waiting to be used. Omori shut the box, the box clasping shut with a neat snap that echoed into the white. Omori jumped at the sound, startled. The only sounds he ever heard in here was Mewo, the knife falling, or his laptop booting up. He opened and shut the box a few more times, just to hear the new sound again. Then he put it down and picked up the other new item.
The sketchbook was heavier than his other one. He ran a finger along the letters of his name, the gold glinting and soft to the touch. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to open it, it was so beautiful the way it was. Seeing the drawings inside would ruin it.
Omori didn’t want to see them, to have to look at Sunny’s nightmares, or the fragments of Black Space he could never fully purge from his mind. Maybe he didn’t have to look, he could just keep the book sitting here on his thighs until Sunny awoke again and took him back to the There.
A familiar sound came from behind him, and then Mewo was brushing against his leg, sitting in front of him and pawing at the book. Omori raised a hand and pet between her ears, giving one long stroke down her back the way she liked and then a small scratch under the chin. She purred and then gave another soft meow, asking him her standard question.
Waiting for something to happen?
Omori hummed and gave Mewo another long stroke, taking a deep breath and steeling himself for what was to come. He closed his eyes when he flipped the cover of the book open, feeling on the page with his fingers. On his old book he could feel the shape of the pencil marks, the harsh jagged lines of black and red that marred his memories. He couldn’t feel anything. There was nothing under his fingers but paper. Omori opened his eyes.
The page was blank. He flipped through the pages, his pace slow but gathering pace as it went. Finally he reached the other cover, white turning to black. The entire book was blank. Was it...for him? How did it exist?
Did Sunny make it for him?
Sunny had never made him anything before. Sunny had just created the things he wanted, or chosen to protect the things he didn’t want to ruin. Sunny had never made anything just for Omori before. Mewo made a soft noise and picked herself back up, going to his side again and lying down against him, her neck stretching so her little head was in his lap alongside the book.
Omori was frozen, his mind swirling and racing. This had never happened before, and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He was so used to the monotony of headspace, of repeating the same journey over and over. It all always happened the same way, it had a formula.
The formula had never been interested in his happiness before. He had just assumed Sunny couldn’t care less.
Eventually his legs started to cramp up, and Omori changed positions, lying on his stomach with the sketchbook sitting between his arms as he stared at it. Mewo wasn’t happy about this change, but she took advantage of it and jumped onto his back, kneading his muscles with her paws until she was satisfied and then lying back down. Once she was settled, Omori decided to gather his courage and test it.
Slowly he reached towards the blue plastic of the pencil box, not taking his gaze off the sketchbook. He kept his eyes glued to the page, expecting at any second for the white to vanish and for the horrors of before to replace it.
But they didn’t. Not even when he opened the box and took out the deep purple pencil and put it against the paper. The first stroke was just that, only a stroke. It wasn’t a picture, it wasn’t even an idea. It was just a stripe of purple on white. He stared at it and waited, but nothing changed. Mewo continued to sleep, the pencils sat in the box, and the purple stayed.
With constant pauses of hesitation, Omori flipped to the next page and started to doodle, switching pencil as he pleased. He ignored the red and black, but every other color was up for grabs. Soon enough he had a scene of the playground with all of his friends, Mari’s picnic blanket checkered with blue instead. Once he was done with that, something unexpected happened.
A blinding joy struck Omori, starting at his center and spreading up to his head. He was smiling, nearly giddy as he looked down at his drawing. It wasn’t like being MANIC, it wasn’t an overwhelming emotion that clouded everything around him and left him vulnerable. It was just happiness, clear in his mind and wiping away the fears that left him guarded. He flipped to the next blank page and dove into another drawing, fingers working at a rapid pace to make the next one.
He wasn’t sure how long he had spent drawing, time was always funny in White Space, but eventually his attention was coaxed away from his drawing and to something else new on his blanket.
It was a tiny plastic ball with circles cut out of it, inside he could see something golden. Mewo awoke when he shifted, and she let out a soft trilling noise, hoping down from her spot on his back and towards the ball. She sniffed it and batted it with a paw, a soft tinkling noise filling the air around him. Mewo was entranced, her pupils growing big and black as she pushed the ball again to hear the bell and her tail swung back and forth.
Omori watched her play for a while, and then he turned back to his book to draw what he saw. The sound of her ball rolling around in the background filled the empty air, and the JOY was joined by happiness for Mewo that she also had a new gift to enjoy.
Things began to appear in this fashion. Time passed in the too slow too fast way it always did, and new things would show up. His new sketchbook filled up quickly, and the moment it did there was another next to it. Omori was afraid at first that his drawings would disappear, but both books stayed side by side.
Soon enough he had a shelf too to put his completed books on, and his colored pencils were joined with markers. A blanket appeared, smaller than the one he was sitting on, but infinitely more luxurious. It was a rich blue with tiny white dots that looked like stars. Mewo enjoyed this gift just as much as he did, and she spent her time either dozing on its soft surface or playing with her small collection of new toys, the tiny bell ball continuing to be her favorite.
Omori liked all of the new additions to White Space, but if he had to choose a favorite, it would be his new light. The dark bulb that had hung above him was gone, the Black Space within it no longer hidden, but eradicated for good. In its place, Omori had a string of twinkling sea angels, hanging on nothing but the air. They swam above him when he lied down under the blankets with Mewo, swaying in an invisible breeze.
The more things were added, the more Omori felt. These were things with color, with sound and feeling. Things that made him feel more. White Space was no longer just where he existed. Now it felt...more like home.