#major spoilers for omori

[hero-deserves-to-be-happy]

Grief (in OMORI)

After unspeakable tragedy, the five friends left behind grieve differently.

A study of Sunny, Basil, Aubrey, Hero, and Kel's grief. Soul-Crushing Angst. Part Fanfiction; Part Analysis. Cross Posted to AO3.

(Warnings for Soul-Crushing Angst, Grief, Depression, Referenced Canonical Character Death, and Heavy Themes. Canon Typical OMORI warnings and MAJOR Omori Spoilers)

Sunny’s grief is quiet. He fades into shadowy corners watching his mother’s wailing with stormy eyes, but he doesn’t make a sound. He hasn’t spoken a word since Mari died—not that he talked much to begin with, but now there’s nothing he could even want to say. He can’t stand speaking to an empty room, waiting for that familiar laugh or the lilted, tinkly voice of his sister that would never come. He’d never hear her voice again, never hear her laugh, never hear the sounds of her piano playing.

The house is quiet without her. There’s no laughter. No music. No sound besides the violent sobbing of his mother. Silence has never been so deafening. He hides in the comfort of his mind where she’ll laugh and talk again, forever because the guilt of knowing why the world’s gone silent is too much for him to bear.

His father thinks him cold and unfeeling because he won’t talk—won’t wail and weep like his mother or his friends, but painful tears struggle free from the corners of his burning eyes. They catch in his eyelashes, trickle down his cheeks—pained but silent. He feels the loss of her like losing a part of himself. It’s more painful than he could ever have the words to explain, so he doesn’t even try. His mother says that talking about it might make him feel better, but he doesn’t feel he has the right to that anymore, not after what he’s done. He silenced Mari and the world along with her, so he silences himself. 

(Continues Under the Cut)

*-*-*

Basil’s grief is destructive. It eats him alive from the inside until tears stream out of his bloodshot eyes like a faucet. He weeps unconsolably from the moment he gets up in the morning until he cries himself to sleep at night. He doesn’t think he will ever stop crying. He doesn’t think he deserves to.

Even thinking about Mari brings tears to his eyes to the point where he can’t even remember her—can’t even hold on to the good memories. The pages of his photo album are all colored out now as if that could somehow erase them. He doesn’t feel he deserves them anymore. He doesn’t deserve to remember her happy—to remember her as anything more than contorted, still, and lifeless at the bottom of those stairs or swinging limply in the wind from the limb of that tree outside.

It almost doesn’t feel real. A part of him still wakes up hoping it was all some horrible nightmare, but it wasn’t. It isn’t. Mari’s gone and playing a role in that means he doesn’t deserve to remember her. His grief will destroy him.

*-*-*

Aubrey’s grief is volatile—loud. She cries and screams as if the sounds of her wailing could somehow bring Mari back. But she knows that it won’t. Most days, she feels like she’s falling down a dark, bottomless pit without anything to catch her—without anything to hold onto. She can’t make sense of it—how something like this could happen. Why it would.

Her hands clinch into fists, throw things at walls of her room, pound into her pillow as she screams because she doesn’t have the words for the pain she’s feeling. Then, everything goes quiet, and she weeps.

The weight of a world without Mari is too heavy for her small, trembling shoulders. She’ll have to make them stronger.

*-*-*

Hero’s grief is overwhelming. It crushes him until he can’t breathe. He hasn’t been able to catch his breath since he heard she was gone. He feels like he’s drowning in pitch black darkness—dark water seeping into his nose and mouth if he tries to breathe, drowning out any cry for help he could possibly make. But he doesn’t make them. He doesn’t deserve to—not after he didn’t love her enough. If he had, maybe she’d still be here. The truth that she isn’t constricts and strangles like a chain around his heart, a crushing weight he’ll carry for the rest of his life. He crumbles under it.

Every time he thinks he’s finally stopped crying, the tears keep falling again. He can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t do anything but stare blankly at the ceiling of his room, tortured by guilt, by “what ifs,” by questions of if there was anything he could have done, if there was any way he could have saved her. But he is too weak. He can’t even save himself.

He always believed the sun shined brighter whenever Mari smiled, but he knows that better now because losing her has completely snuffed it out. The world is dark now, and Hero drowns in it.

*-*-*

Kel’s grief is aching like the dulled pain of an old injury when it rains. There’s an empty space in his heart now and it pangs every time he finds himself turning to say something to her or wanting to show her something or tell her a story only to realize that she isn’t there and that she isn’t going to be there ever again.

He doesn’t cry as much as Hero or Aubrey or Basil, and he worries it isn’t enough—worries it means he didn’t care about her enough. But he knows he did. He had to because even if it doesn’t always bring tears to his eyes, something breaks a little in him every time he realizes he’ll never make her laugh or make her smile again.

He tries to think of what would make her happy, if there’s anything he could do to make her happy now. All he can think is that she wouldn’t want another person crying for her, so he tries his best to heal, to remember the good times, and to smile when he thinks of her, even if his smiles are a little bittersweet, a little empty now.

He worries that his friends don’t remember how to be anything but sad and grief-stricken. Worries he’ll never see his brother smile again, will never see Basil without bloodshot, weeping eyes, will never see Aubrey without gritted teeth and clinched fists as she blinks back tears, will never see Sunny again at all. Kel’s grief isn’t just losing Mari—it’s losing everyone. It’s watching them suffer without anything he can do to fix it. Left wondering if any of them will ever truly be happy again. Wondering if they even can be in world without Mari, even when he knows that’s what would make her happy.

He’s never felt so helpless, and maybe that’s what hurts worst of all.

[acacia-may]

Am I Ready For Love? Or Maybe Just A Best Friend (HERO-Centric OMORI fanfiction)

Description: While playing "Mom Friend" to his college buddies' shenanigans, Hero is shocked to learn that he is widely considered the "Prince" of their campus. Though flattered, he doesn't feel he deserves the praise, especially seeing as his heart still missed the best friend and childhood love he had lost far too soon. He would always miss her and simply couldn't imagine being with anyone else...but that didn't mean he wasn't lonely. Even self-imposed loneliness wasn't free from sadness. When an unexpected conversation drudges up bittersweet memories for him, however, Hero begins to wonder if he doesn't have to be nearly as lonely anymore. He might not be ready for love, but a best friend didn't sound too bad...

Relationships: Hero & Brandi [Intimidating Girl] Friendship, Hero & Original Characters Friendship, Past Romantic Hero/Mari, Romantic Brandi/OC, Could be Hero/OC if you really wanted to see it/imagine it happening after the slowest of slow burns, but this is more about their platonic friendship and is very heavy on the past Hero/Mari angst. Mentioned Hero & Kel and Brandi & Bebe's sibling relationships and Bebe/Mikhael.

Characters: Hero (POV Character), Brandi [Intimidating Girl], Original Characters, Mari's Memory, Mentioned Kel, Bebe (Short Haired Girl/Fountain Girl) & Mikhael (The Maverick).

Genre: Hero-Centric Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Slice of Life, College Life, Lost Love, Developing Friendship, Developing Relationship, Greiving, Catharsis, Heart-To-Heart Chats, Hopeful Ending, Post-Good Ending, Hero Needs A Hug, Hero Deserves To Be Happy

Word Count: 7,779

Rating: T for some heavy themes and thematic elements (i.e. grief & healing from grief and trauma. Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death & Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues including depression & suicide. Mentions of Underage Drinking & Partying) Some language.

Warnings: Major Spoilers for OMORI! Heavy themes and thematic elements (i.e. grief & healing from grief and trauma. Implied/Referenced Canonical Character Death & Implied/Referenced Mental Health Issues including depression & suicide. Mentions of Underage Drinking & Partying). Some Language.

Link to original post on AO3. Please do not repost to another website. All other interaction (likes, reblogs ect.) appreciated!

A/N: This story (including it's title) was heavily inspired by the song "Turning Out" by AJR (which is just a shot to the heart when thinking of poor Hero 🥺❤️ Highly recommend), and this "Hero's Life After Mari" Universe was co-created by @randomsprinkles. Full story text below the cut.

Thank you so much for reading and cheers to good & happy things for Hero in the future! 💕

“You know, sometimes I think Kel is fine, but then yesterday he called to tell me he ate a whole can of spray cheese”—Hero sighed and shook his head—"nothing with it just the spray cheese…” He shrugged his shoulders, and Brandi laughed. Swapping stories about their siblings was one of their favorite activities—especially at these wilder college parties where they tended to gravitate towards each other in want of a familiar face and company that wasn’t completely wasted. Even though Faraway Town was small, and he had known Brandi nearly his entire life, they hadn’t really become friends until college and the hours they spent together reminiscing about home or making each other laugh with stories about Bebe’s hopeless lovesickness or Kel’s well-meaning but often silly antics. It was a relief to have a friend and a familiar face around, and Hero could never quite tell her how much that meant to him.

“Well, that’s nothing. Bebe is still lovesick over that moron who wears that ridiculous wig and calls himself ‘The Maverick,’” huffed Brandi. “How many times do you think he’s seen Top Gun? I’m guessing at least fifty, possibly a hundred.” As Hero stifled a chuckle, Brandi rolled her eyes as she leaned her elbows on the kitchen counter and poured herself another glass of something, Hero wasn’t entirely sure what and he didn’t ask. He had learned it was better not to.

“Well…his family does run the best bakery in Faraway Town, and—” Hero stopped. He was going to mention how Aubrey had been good friends with Mikhael for quite a while, but then he realized she probably had even less positive things to say about him than Brandi did. 

“I guess, but that’s just his family, and even if they’re great, he’s just…”—she paused as if searching for the right word—“a bozo. I just can’t believe she’d throw away her future for some guy like that. She says she wants to go to pastry school now so she can work in the bakery. She doesn’t even bake! You just wait until Kel starts dating,” she warned with a heavy sigh. “He’ll be driving you up the wall.”

With a shrug of his shoulders, Hero chuckled. Truthfully, he was a little surprised that hadn’t happened yet, but Kel didn’t seem particularly interested in a romantic relationship right now, which Hero could respect. He certainly felt the same way himself, though for different reasons, but he quickly pushed those thoughts away and buried them, changing the subject. “Speaking of dating, how are things going with you and C.J.?”

Brandi’s mouth twitched into a slight smile. “Checking up on your handiwork, matchmaker?” she teased dryly.

Hero’s face felt a bit flushed. That hadn’t been his intention, but he fidgeted.  “Are you upset that I set you up?”

“You didn’t set us up. You just…talked him up to me until I finally agreed to go out with him, there’s a difference,” Brandi insisted, and Hero chuckled. He supposed that was true. C.J. was one of Hero’s friends from his fraternity, and he had had the most obvious yet sincere interest in Brandi ever since they were paired up for a legal research course project. Hero had thought they had a lot in common—spirited personalities, strong sense of justice, same Pre-Law major and aspirations to become attorneys someday, and, though he usually tried to stay out of his friends’ business especially their love lives, C.J. had begged him to put in a good word for him so she wouldn’t see him as just another dumb, partying frat boy.

Hero couldn’t blame Brandi for her trepidation around fraternity guys. They didn’t have the best reputation, and if Hero was being honest, he likely would have tried to avoid them himself if he hadn’t been forcibly dragged…er…recruited into a fraternity last pledge term. He would say it was a long story, but it really wasn’t. They needed someone to cook and to clean around their garbage heap of a frat house—a “Mama,” as they quickly deemed him—and Hero was too polite and conflict-avoidant to refuse when Kyle, a sports medicine major in his organic chemistry class, practically begged him to pledge for his frat. His harrowing tale of how they had eaten practically nothing but instant ramen every day for the past year was really the final straw. Now he cooked not only for the fraternity but also for all their guests when they had parties since keeping everyone fed and hydrated with water when they were binge drinking resulted in less vomiting on the carpet and less passing out on the living room rug or in the yard.

That was what he was doing now, after all, making sandwiches on the stove, handing out glasses of water, and keeping an eye on the dwindling bottles of booze. He handed Brandi the grilled cheese he had been making for her with a smile, and Brandi hummed. “Thank you. And thank you for setting me up too, I guess. It’s nice not to be hit on all the time anymore. It was getting pretty annoying.” She laughed, playing with the red glow stick bracelet on her wrist, and Hero chuckled in spite of himself before she quickly added, “I’m really just teasing. C.J.’s a great guy, and we are very happy, so I really do owe you one.”

Hero smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He was glad to help, and it was honestly really nice having Brandi around more often. She cleaned up after herself at least.

“If you ever want me to return the favor, just let me know. I know a ton of girls who would kill to go out with you.”—she laughed as Hero blushed—“I’m pretty sure you’re like the prince of our campus.”

Hero’s face burned. He was sure it must be bright red by now. It wasn’t the first time he had heard that, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, but he never could take a good compliment, even a joking one. “I’m sure that’s not…” he mumbled, but his voice trailed off as he grew suddenly interested in the spatula in his hands. He shook his head and ignored the heat in his cheeks as he changed directions. “Thank you…that’s very flattering, but um…I’m just…I’m not…It’s…” He began to trip over his words, unsure of what exactly he wanted to say, but Brandi thankfully cut him off with a tilt of her head and a knowing, sympathetic smile.

“It’s complicated?” She finished for him, pointing at the yellow glow stick on his wrist. He always picked ‘It’s Complicated’ yellow for these kinds of traffic light parties. It was just the easiest—saved him from the awkwardness of being flirted with and having to turn people down while also not lying that he was in a relationship already.

Hero nodded, and Brandi patted his hand with a soft, bittersweet expression and a knowing smile. She leaned closer to him so no one would hear her whisper, “Your heart’s still with her, isn’t it?”

Something panged in that all too familiar ache in Hero’s chest. He supposed that was one way of putting it. It wasn’t something he ever really talked about, but he supposed it was no secret that he had not had a relationship with anyone since Mari. The truth was, even if he had wanted one—even if he could move on from her, he didn’t think it would be fair—not to Mari’s memory or to whoever he could be with. He had already had a beautiful love story and, even though it was cut short, he felt that to even wish for anything more would be greedy and ungrateful for the time that he and Mari did have together. That said, doubt occasionally set in that that was a bit of an unreasonable notion all things considered—he had been only fifteen when she had passed and had his whole life ahead of him. In the deepest corners of his mind, he knew she would probably want him to move on and be happy again, but at the same time even if he could someday be ready to open up his heart again, he worried that he would never be able to give that other person the love she deserved. He would never be able to say that she was the one and only love of his life and would never be able to tell her that he had never felt this way about anyone. He would always miss Mari, and, now, the only heart he had to give had already been broken and painfully pieced back together. It was so busted and bruised that, if he was being perfectly honest, he had trouble believing that anyone would even want it.

“Hero…”

“It’s okay,” he cut her off with a slight, reassuring smile, and Brandi smiled back. “I’m okay.”

Brandi nodded. “I understand,” she said with a sigh before taking a sip of her drink. “But if you ever change your mind…if you’re ever ready…you know where to find me, and I know where to find a ton of girls who would definitely be interested.” She winked at him, and he playfully rolled his eyes though he scratched the back of his neck when he felt an arm drape around his shoulders.

“What’s going on?” exclaimed Kyle, his voice already starting to slur from too much liquor.

“Brandi’s trying to set me up,” sighed Hero in a dry, somewhat joking way.

Kyle burst into raucous laughter. “Good luck with that. We’ve been trying too—since I’m pretty sure there’s not a girl on this campus who wouldn’t date our very own ‘Prince Charming,’ here, but he’s practicing to be a monk or something.”

“Well, you know, Kyle, it is possible not to have a relationship—it won’t kill you,” bantered Brandi with a frown.

“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Kyle stuck his tongue out at her. “I know you think I’m a serial optometrist.”

“Monogamist,” corrected Brandi, as Hero covered his mouth with his hand and tried not to laugh. “How drunk are you?”

Kyle hummed, kind of teetering in place. “I dunno.” He turned to Hero. “Mama, how drunk am I?”

Hero sighed, reaching to pour Kyle what was clearly a much needed glass of water. “Here,” he said, avoiding the question. “Drink this. You’ll feel better.”

Kyle nodded and gulped down the water. Hero must have refilled his glass at least twice more, before Kyle leaned his elbows on the counter and asked for a BLT which Hero promptly went to work making. “Thanks. Look, I love my relationships. I just don’t want my friends missing out, you know? And hell, if I was that popular, I’d probably be taking full advantage of it—most guys would. Mama here is an actual saint.”

Hero’s face flushed red, but before he could begin to protest, Brandi interjected with a huffy, “I’m sure you would Kyle” conveniently ignoring his comments about Hero’s supposed sainthood. Her brow furrowed—her eyes narrowing at the green glow stick bracelet on Kyle’s wrist. “I see you’re on the market again. What happened to Tiffany?”

“Eh, didn’t work out,” shrugged Kyle. “We were too different.”

“Realized you didn’t have anything in common besides your love of sucking face?” quipped Brandi sarcastically. Kyle rolled his eyes.

“No,” he insisted, but then sighed. “Alright…sort of…but there were more problems than that.” He sighed. “You know…never mind. I didn’t come over here to talk about Tiffany.” He waved his hand dismissively before his face lit up like a little kid on Christmas. “I wanted to tell you guys, there’s this whole group of girls hanging out in the living room, and they think I look like Nick Carter.”

“How drunk are they?” scoffed Brandi.

Kyle rolled his eyes. “Oh come on, I’ve always thought I looked like him. You think so, don’t you, Hero?”

Hero tilted his head. He supposed he could kind of see it. They had similarly shaped noses, heart-shaped faces, pale skin, light eyes, and blonde hair; however, the trait they had most in common was that curtain bangs haircut, and Hero was fairly certain Kyle had purposely styled his hair that way just to look like he could be in a boy band. Even so, he shrugged and said, “Yeah. You’re practically the sixth Backstreet Boy.”

“See,” he turned to Brandi with a triumphant huff, almost like the satisfied taunt a young boy might give his little sister. Hero chuckled lightly to himself. It reminded him a bit of Kel.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Brandi insisted. “Hero would say anything just to be nice.”

Hero’s face flushed. He hoped he wouldn’t get pulled back into this argument, but luckily Kyle didn’t seem to hear her, instead insisting, “And here I was going to say I think you look like Celine Dion, but now that you’ve been so rude to me, I don’t think I’ll say anything.”

“I don’t look like Celine Dion, Kyle.” Brandi shook her head before taking a sip of her drink.

“Aw, I think you kinda look like Celine Dion, babe,” C.J. interjected draping an arm around his girlfriend.

“Thanks, but I really don’t…” Brandi sighed, but C.J. cut her off.

“And I always thought I kinda look like Usher but with glasses.”

“Not you too…” she teased though there was a certain affection in her eyes and a twitch in the corners of her mouth. “What is it with guys comparing themselves to celebrities? I honestly thought that was just a girl thing.”

C.J. pouted playfully. “What? You don’t think I look like Usher?”

Once again, Hero could kind of see the similarities—oval shaped faces, wide cheekbones, warm eyes, dark skin, and bright, beaming smiles. They looked about as much alike as Kyle and Nick Carter though he wasn’t sure that was saying much, especially coming from him. Brandi, it seemed, was unconvinced.

“I think you look like C.J.” she said quirking an eyebrow at him.

“I’m not sure I know that celebrity,” he teased wrapping his arms around her neck. “Is he handsome?”

Brandi stifled a chuckle but playfully, pretended to ponder the question before finally meeting his gaze. “Yes.”

C.J.’s face lit up into that beaming, 100-watt smile as he looked into her eyes. Hero recognized that look, like Brandi was the only one in the room and they were lost in their own little corner of the world. She ruffled her hand through his tight curls, and he leaned in and kissed her.

“Get a room you two,” teased Kyle sticking his tongue out at them. With a flick of his finger, C.J. promptly told Kyle exactly what he thought of his comments before he cupped Brandi’s face in his hands.

With a bantering shake of his head, Kyle stared down at his green glow stick bracelet like it was watch. Hero turned away abruptly, his face feeling warm as if he had intruded on what should be a very private moment.

Truthfully, despite the awkwardness he currently felt at their extremely public display of affection, he really was happy for them—for all of his friends who wanted relationships and had found them. If he was being honest with himself, however, it did bring up some complicated feelings for him sometimes—made him feel lonely. It was a self-imposed loneliness, but that didn’t mean it was always free from sadness. He glanced down at the yellow glow stick on his wrist. The truth was it wasn’t all that complicated. Even after all these years, he still missed Mari, and he knew he would always miss her. It wouldn’t be fair to pursue anyone else while he felt this way—to put his new love in a situation where she’d feel like a second choice or a last resort, so he contented himself with being alone, probably forever. A bittersweet smile tugged at his mouth. Maybe he’d get a cat… he thought before turning his focus to making Kyle’s sandwich.  

As he added the finishing touches to Kyle’s BLT, Brandi finally disentangled herself from her boyfriend. “We’re making Kyle and Hero uncomfortable,” she said, but C.J. shrugged, draping an arm around her shoulders.

“Eh, they’re just jealous.” He stuck out his tongue at Kyle, who stuck his tongue out back. Hero sighed. It was very juvenile, but he still chuckled in spite of himself.

“Hey! I’m glad I’m not tied down,” Kyle insisted with a dismissive wave of his hand as he took a bite out of the sandwich Hero gave him.

Brandi frowned. “Tell me, Kyle. Have you ever had a relationship with a woman that lasted more than two weeks?”

“Yes!” He nodded emphatically. “With Zuzu.” He paused then called as loudly as he could out onto the patio. “Hey, Zuzu! Come tell these morons how long we’ve been friends.”

A redheaded girl in an oversized sweater whipped around with a somewhat affectionate if bantering roll of her green eyes. “Too long,” she quipped, wrinkling her lightly freckled nose at them, as she walked through the sliding door back into the kitchen.

“You wound me, Zuzu,” Kyle gasped in teasing melodrama, clutching his chest. “What were you doing outside anyway? Aren’t you usually glued to Mama at these things?”

“Because he’s the only sober person here,” she teased, but she smiled at him.  Hero’s face flushed. It was true that Zuzu, or Zoey as she was called by everyone who wasn’t Kyle, was generally his ‘partner in crime’ at all parties hosted by his fraternity or her sorority—spending the night helping him in the kitchen or passing out cups of water to the groups of plastered college students mingling around the house, and often helping with cleanup and dishes afterwards. Truthfully, he enjoyed her company and the conversations they had—talking and laughing for hours while making food, cleaning up or doing dishes together. Though he always felt guilty about putting a guest to work at his party, she always insisted she had a much better time spending the evening with a friend than she would have getting drunk and partying. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. He felt the same way. 

“Like you haven’t had a thing to drink,” retorted Kyle, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and staring down into her cup. Zoey merely blinked at him.

“I haven’t. I have a thermodynamics exam on Monday and need to study tomorrow.” She always blamed her aversion to drinking on her difficult civil engineering major, but Hero knew she just didn’t care for drunk partying. Now that Hero was thinking about it, Zoey blamed a lot of things on her difficult civil engineering major—not least of all the red glow stick on her wrist despite being contentedly single. “Married to school,” she always joked, and Hero often joked the same thing.

“But that’s tomorrow,” Kyle whined.“You and Mama are both such old people.” He stuck his tongue out at them, but Zoey just shrugged with a lopsided smile.

“Old people have more fun. You’ll understand someday, Kyle.”

Hero stifled a chuckle behind his hand, before turning his attention back to the stove.

“Brandi and C.J., back me up here,” Kyle sighed, but when he turned around he realized they had gone, probably to continue their PDA somewhere a little more private, if Hero had to guess, but he didn’t really want to think about it. Kyle huffed. “Whatever. Be boring old grandparents together, I don’t care. You’re the ones missing out.” He grabbed his cup, a beer, and the rest of his sandwich, leaving them in the kitchen alone.

“Don’t mind Kyle,” said Zoey with a shake of her head. “He can be such a moron sometimes, but he’s a nice guy, even if he acts like a kid especially when he’s drunk…But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.”

A slight smile tugged at Hero’s mouth. He had been roommates with Kyle for over a year now, and he could definitely attest to that.

“We’ve already hit ‘Touchy-Feely Drunk Kyle’”—Zoey tilted her head at him—“How hungover do you think he’ll be tomorrow?”

Hero quickly stifled a breathy chuckle, but he sighed. “I don’t know. He always thinks he can drink a lot more than he can handle.”

Zoey’s mouth twitched into a dry smile. “I bet you’re an expert on nursing hangovers now. It’s a shame that can’t go on your med school application.”

Hero laughed but immediately felt guilty for it.

“Give him one of those sports drinks with breakfast tomorrow—it’ll help. I keep a ton of them in our fridge back at the sorority house for when the girls go out partying or bar hopping.”

“You really are the mom, huh?” Hero replied dryly, and though Zoey smiled, she raised an eyebrow at him.

“You’re one to talk.”  

Hero shrugged. He supposed she had a point and not just because she was currently holding his “World’s Best Mama” mug with a dry yet triumphant smile.

“Well,” sighed Zoey gathering up some more of the dirty dishes scattered around the kitchen. “Since you’ll probably be pretty busy playing nurse tomorrow, we should probably get started on the clean-up tonight.” She looked around the room with narrowed green eyes. “It looks like a tornado stormed through here.”

With a weary sigh, Hero rubbed his forehead. Unfortunately, she was right. Given the sorry state of the kitchen alone, to say that the party had trashed their place would be a bit of an understatement. It would probably take hours to clean everything up—to say nothing of the several hours of cleaning Hero had already done to prepare for the party in the first place. Hero supposed he could do most of the deep cleaning in the morning when some of his fraternity brothers might be awake to help out, if they weren’t too hungover that is, but, truthfully, he wouldn’t mind cleaning up on his own—after all, he did most of the cleaning around here anyway.

With a sigh, Hero conceded that Zoey was probably right and he might as well start cleaning now. He reached out to take the mug and the rest of the dishes from Zoey and turned on the sink to begin to rinse them out. Hero shook his head. If he had a nickel for every minute he spent doing dishes in this house…

He felt a nudge on his elbow as Zoey joined him, rinsing off some of the plates she had gathered from the table.

“You really don’t have to do that,” he insisted.

“And leave you to clean everything up by yourself?” She paused but not long enough for him to even begin to protest. “I’ve been there—it’s no fun at all.”

“We got our dishwasher fixed,” Hero sighed with a slight shrug of his shoulders.

“Then this won’t take that long,” she continued. “All we’ll have to do is rinse them off.” She pointed a sponge at him with a certain determination in her green eyes that said this sorry excuse for an argument was over, and Hero knew she was right. 

No matter how guilty he may have felt about putting a guest and a friend to work cleaning up his house, he was compliant and conflict avoidant by nature and had no stamina for arguing. She had insisted she wanted to help, and goodness knows he could use an extra set of hands. He would ultimately concede and even though she would insist it was unnecessary, later this week, he’d send her a thank you card with a plate of her favorite cookies or some flowers—or a more thoughtful gift if he could think of one. The last time she had helped him clean up after a party, he had bought her a set of Papa Chip coasters since, while they were doing dishes for hours by hand on account of the then broken dishwasher, they had somehow started talking about how they had both loved Papa Chip back when they were kids.

“And you don’t have to send me any coasters this time,” she teased, and Hero’s cheeks felt suddenly warm, wondering if she could somehow read his mind. “Not that they’re not great,” she added hurriedly. “You’re very thoughtful, but you really don’t have to do that.”

Hero’s face flushed red—he never could take a compliment—but a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I know, but I felt bad and…”

“Well don’t,” she interrupted. “We’re friends, and I don’t mind helping you out. Besides, a bunch of my sorority sisters were giving me dirty looks for about a week until I lied and told everyone they were from Jared. I don’t know if they really bought it or just got over it.”  

Hero’s brow furrowed. He supposed those coaters could be a gift someone’s younger brother would get for them—after all, Kel had gotten him a Papa Chip cookbook “just because,” once—but he wasn’t sure why Zoey had felt the need to lie to the other girls in the sorority house. “I’m sorry if I upset the other girls or made them angry with you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zoey shrugged it off with a dismissive wave of her hand. “They’re just jealous that we’re actually friends.” She sighed. “I’ve tried to tell them that you’re actually pretty friendly and nice, so they could be friends with you too if they started treating you like an actual person instead of some kind of ‘Campus Prince.’”—she shook her head—“But I don’t think it’s been working.”

Hero blushed. Though he found it very flattering, he still couldn’t wrap his head around how he could have possibly become some sort of ‘Prince’ of their campus in the minds of so many girls.

“You should tell them I’m kind of a dork…” Hero sighed sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck.

“I tried that too,” she bantered. “But they didn’t believe me.”

Hero laughed, but his smile quickly faded. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop sending you things.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she repeated, a little more forcefully. “They need to get over themselves. I’m honestly kind of sick of the Hero fan club that goes on in our house.”

Hero’s face felt suddenly warm, and he resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands. “Fan club?” he choked.

“Yes. You, Mr. Prince, are always the hot topic of conversation,” she teased with a lopsided smile. “If you asked practically anyone, they’d say you are probably the perfect man—even my sister who has this awful obsession with bad boys thinks so, which is really saying a lot.” She paused, and Hero stifled a chuckle. Zoey’s twin sister, Lorraine, was a sweet and bubbly girl despite her terrible taste in boyfriends, a topic often bemoaned by both Zoey and Kyle. A slight tint of pink flushed in his cheeks, he supposed it really was quite the compliment coming from her. “And it doesn’t help that you’re so mysterious.”

“I don’t think I’m mysterious,” Hero chuckled sheepishly, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck.

“I know, you’re not,” Zoey cut him off with a reassuring smile. “And I’ve tried to explain that to them multiple times, but they don’t really listen to me since they’re convinced I’m trying to steal you away.”

A blush filled his cheeks, and he turned away from her abruptly. “What?”

“You know, the idea of men and women just being friends, is a little beyond them, I think,” she quipped. “It’s ridiculous, but can you blame them? I mean in their minds you’re a real life ‘Prince Charming,’ and even though you’re interested in women and could have pretty much any girl in the universe you wanted, you’re really, really single.” She chuckled, as Hero buried his face in his hands. He could almost picture that bright, cheeky grin on her face, though he wouldn’t—no, couldn’t turn to look at her again. “You’ve got to be hung up on somebody, otherwise why haven’t you chosen from the hoards of adoring women who would kill to be with you?”

Hero’s face grew hot. He was sure it must be bright red by now. “Zoey…”

“It’s a big topic of conversation is all I’m saying.”

Finally, Hero managed to pull his hands away from his face, if only because his eyes were beginning to burn from the soapy dishwater. “Can you please tell them that I’m very flattered,” he stumbled, still blushing furiously. “But I’m just so busy with school that I’m just not…really looking for a relationship right now?”

Zoey shrugged. “Tried and failed, but I’d be happy to tell them again. Don’t expect them to believe me though. At this point, everybody’s making up their own theories.”

“Theories?” Hero choked.

“You know you have your normal ones like you’re too busy for a relationship or you had a bad relationship in the past and just aren’t ready to put yourself back out there again. Then there are the ones that you actually already have a relationship, but you’re very private about it so no one has ever seen or heard of her. There are a couple of wild ones in this category like she’s a celebrity so you have to keep it a secret so the press doesn’t find out and you end up in a tabloid.” She winked at him. “Just like in a movie.”  

“You are making this up.”

Zoey shook her head. “No, I swear I’ve heard that one, and that’s not even the craziest one. I’ve also heard a rumor that you’ve been promised in an arranged marriage since birth so that you can take over as the CEO of a toaster strudel empire. And, of course, my personal favorite: that you have an eccentric billionaire uncle who wants you to inherit his vast fortune but only on the condition that you remain a reclusive bachelor just like him.”  

Hero laughed in spite of himself. “That’s—none of those are true…” He cleared his throat. “Except the first one about me being too busy.”

“I know, and that’s what I always say. Everybody keeps coming to me and asking about it like I have some secret, inside knowledge or something, but I have a theory just like everybody else,” she joked waving her hand dismissively.

“You have a theory?”

Zoey stopped but shrugged. “I mean…not one that I just sit around and think about, but you can only be asked the same question so many times before you start thinking…” Her voice trailed. “It’s not one I ever tell anyone,” she insisted. “If anyone asks me, I always tell them exactly what you just said, which is that you’re flattered but too focused on school and your future to worry about a relationship right now.”

“Then what’s your theory?” he asked half-jokingly, half-actually-interested.

“You really want to know?”

Hero put down the plate he was scrubbing and shrugged. “Kind of.”

Zoey paused, and when she sighed, Hero fidgeted. “But you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to,” he hurriedly added.

“No, I…” She stopped though there was the slightest tint of rose in her pale cheeks. “But it’s just a theory. I don’t want to offend you or…”

Hero’s brow furrowed. Offend him? What in the world could she possibly be thinking? His breath caught in his throat. She couldn’t…know…could she?

“I won’t be offended,” he reassured her quietly, but his heart was beginning to pound. “Do you…not believe me? Because it really is true. I’m very busy with school and—”

“No. It’s…it’s not like that,” she cut him off with a sigh as she placed her sponge on the counter. “I really do think that you are very busy with school—studying for your classes and the MCAT and all of that. You just don’t have the time or energy for a relationship right now, but…I don’t think that means you don’t want one.” Zoey paused, her voice growing quiet, and she met his eyes. “I think you do want a relationship—otherwise you wouldn’t be so lonely.”

Hero inhaled sharply—his breath getting caught in his chest. Biting his lip, he looked away from her, staring down at his trembling hands. He wanted to hide—curl in on himself—maybe figure out a way to laugh it off like Kel or Kyle might be able to do, but he was frozen, shocked. Of all the things she could have possibly…? No, that wasn’t the question. The real question gnawing at him was had it really been so obvious?

“Hero?” He could hear the concern in her voice, but he wouldn’t—couldn’t look at her. “Listen, I can just…stop there…”  

“Is there more?” The question slipped out before he could stop it.

Zoey sighed. “Yes, but I feel bad. I can…”

“Go on,” Hero squeaked, barely managing a nod.

Zoey sighed again, and Hero wasn’t sure if she was even going to continue until she finally said, “But…the thing is…you don’t just want a relationship with just anyone. You—you want a relationship with someone you can never be with. And even though you know your love is doomed…”—she paused—“you gave your heart to her a long time ago and you can’t even imagine being with anyone else.”

Something ached in Hero’s chest. Somehow he knew that was what she was going to say, but he had to hear it for himself. He wished he could sink into the floor, could hide from her, from his memories, from himself again. And yet…there was a part of him that didn’t want to.

“Wow…” he barely managed, after a long, heavy silence.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“No,” he quietly interjected, his voice hitching. “That was…pretty spot on actually…”

“Oh Hero…” Zoey sighed. “I’m sorry…I…”  

“Don’t be.” He fiddled with the sponge in his hands, and after a few intense scrubs at a particularly stubborn stain, he finally added as nonchalantly as he could manage. “I asked, and you were right…”

“I didn’t want to be right about this.”

Hero bit down hard on his lip as something burned behind his eyes. Scratching the nape of his neck, he let out a breathy, self-deprecating chuckle. “I guess I had just hoped that it wasn’t so obvious that I was so sad and pathetic...”

“I don’t think you’re pathetic.”

Truthfully, he hadn’t realized that he had even said those words aloud until she had spoken them back to him.

“And I don’t think it’s obvious—except to your close friends maybe?” She paused, sighing and placing a gentle hand on his arm. “She must have been special and very important to you. I think it’s sweet that you’re still devoted to her and there isn’t anything wrong with that, unless, you know, she’s married or something, in which case…”—she began to quip breathily, probably in an attempt to make him smile again—“but I don’t think you’re the type…”

Hero’s mouth twitched in the corners, but the ghost of his smile faded as he shook his head. “No, she…uh…” The words caught in the back of his throat. “She passed away.”

“Oh Hero, I’m so sorry.” Zoey wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into a tight hug. He took a deep shaky breath, staring up at the ceiling ignoring that prickling feeling in his eyes. When she pulled away from him, he somehow managed the slightest twitch in the corners of his mouth.

“It’s okay. It was a long time ago…” He wasn’t sure if his weak reassurances were for her or for himself. “I should probably be over it by now.”

As he couldn’t bear to look at her, he could only imagine what her face looked like right now. He shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he spluttered. “I’m sorry for making you sad. I—”

“No,” Zoey cut him off. “You didn’t make me sad. Hero…if you want to talk about it, you can tell me. I’m your friend—I care about you.” She paused, and Hero bit his lip. He could feel her gentle hand running comfortingly across his shoulders. “You’re not going to hurt me. I can take it.”

Hero finally breathed—a long deep exhale of the breath he had been holding for far too long. She had no idea how reassuring those words were. Still…try as he might, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. He opened his mouth, but the words got garbled in the back of his throat.

“Take your time,” she whispered.

After several deep breaths he finally choked out, “Her name was Mari.” His voice hitched, then the words began to tumble out of his mouth. “She lived next door for as long as I can remember, and I…I always thought she was just the most amazing person. She was smart and funny and very talented—she was wonderful at arts and crafts and gardening and a really gifted pianist. We even used to play together sometimes, and she was so kind and very generous—she was always going out of her way to help someone and make them happy. And when she smiled”—his voice cracked—”You would have thought the sun shined brighter.”

He paused, sniffled. “I think I loved her before I even knew what that was…And I couldn’t believe it when she felt the same way about me.” As a bittersweet smile tugged at his lips, his eyes grew misty. “We were high school sweethearts, until she died.” He swallowed hard—that familiar, hollow pang in his chest ached.

“We were 15. It’s kind of a long story but…at the time, we didn’t know how she died. We thought—I thought—she had ended her own life”—he inhaled sharply, shakily, unable to stop the words even if he wanted to—“It was probably the darkest time of my life. I was a wreck, and I blamed myself. I…I didn’t even know she was depressed. I thought if I had just talked to her—had just held her tighter, just loved her more—better then maybe she…” He stopped. Blinking back the tears in his eyes, he sniffled and cleared his throat. “But it was an accident. There were…witnesses…we found out later. She—she had a bad knee, you see, and…and she fell down the stairs…landed wrong and…” He stopped abruptly. “You—You’d think learning that would make the guilt go away but it…”

Hero swallowed hard, but he managed a shaky sigh. “But…But with time…eventually I just…threw myself into school and work and extra-curriculars. My parents had always wanted me to be a doctor, and all I could see was years of school, years of residency, long hours of studying and clinicals and work and I thought I could just bury myself in it—stay so busy that I wouldn’t feel it anymore, but it doesn’t ever really go away.”

He sniffled and wiped his eyes again with a shaky chuckle. “I know it doesn’t seem like it now, but I…I’m usually pretty okay. It’s been so many years now, and it doesn’t hurt like it used to. But…but sometimes I’ll see a wave of dark hair or hear a name that sounds like hers or someone playing a waltz on a piano or our song on the radio and”—his voice hitched—“I just don’t know if I’m ever really going to be over it.”  

He swallowed hard. “And you’re right. I can’t even imagine being with anyone else. It wouldn’t be fair—to her, to that person, I mean. What if—I couldn’t love her as much? And you know, I think maybe we all get that ‘once in a lifetime’ love in our lives and I’ve already had mine. It would be greedy to even want anything else. But…but mostly I think it’s just that I wanted to be with her forever, and”—there was a hitch in his voice as tears began to pool in his eyes again—“even now, all these years later, I guess I…I just still don’t know what forever looks like without her.”

A tear finally struggled free from his eye and splashed down his cheek, followed by another, then another. Hero frantically swiped at them, but they wouldn’t stop. Zoey’s arms wrapped around his shoulders again, and she pulled him close.

He wasn’t sure how long she held him. How long he listened to the sound of her steady breathing, felt her hand gently tangling in the hair at the base of his neck. How long it was until she whispered, “I wish you had gotten your forever…”

It wasn’t until he felt the tremble of her shoulders, heard the way her voice had hitched over her words that he realized she was also crying.

He pulled away from her and finally looked in her green eyes—warm and teary. Hero swallowed hard. He had never learned what to say to someone who was crying for him. “Please don’t cry.”  

“Sorry,” she said with the twitch of a bittersweet smile. “I’m not sure I can do that.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything,” he began to ramble. “I just—I…I really should be over it and I just completely dumped all of that on you and I was so…”—he struggled to find the words—“weepy and melodramatic and needy and…”

“No,” she gently cut him off. “You were real. Don’t apologize for that.” She wiped her eyes, and her expression softened. “Hero, what happened was so awful, and the idea of you having to go through something like that, it just—” She stopped. “That’s why I cried. You didn’t hurt me. I told you I can take it, and I’m okay.” She sighed. “And you know for what it’s worth, I think the whole idea of ‘getting over it’ is bullshit. There are some things in our lives that we’ll just never get over. We can get past them, but they’re still going to be there—we just have to learn to build a new life around them, so don’t beat yourself up. You’re still entitled to feel sad. Heck, you’d be entitled to never leave your room again after something like that, but here you are, out living your life, so give yourself a break, okay?” She nodded at him with a slight, reassuring smile before she patted his hand. “And for goodness sakes, stop worrying about me of all people. You don’t have to be the hero all the time. I know it’s your name, but…you don’t have to take it too literally.”  

A light chuckle reverberated in his chest, and a smile twitched in the corners of his mouth. Before he could say anything, however, Kyle burst through the patio door.

“Woah…what’s goin’ on?” He stopped abruptly, and his expression softened. “Are you okay?”

Flushing, Hero swallowed hard nodding and sniffling as he frantically wiped at his eyes. He had completely forgotten himself and couldn’t believe he had just shared what was arguably his biggest, deepest secret in the middle of a house party.

Zoey thankfully jumped to his rescue with a remarkably believable, “We were doing dishes, and poor Hero got some dish soap in his eyes. We’ve been trying to rinse them out, but they got all watery.”

Though it took a few moments, Kyle eventually nodded in understanding. “Oh. That sucks, man,” he said patting him on the back. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Hero managed a slight smile but shook his head. “No, Kyle. Thanks, but it’s okay. I’m fine.”

Kyle nodded again, but Hero saw him glance over at Zoey as if waiting for additional reassurance or instructions. When she nodded at him, Kyle sighed. “Alright, well if you need anything let me know, okay?”

Hero nodded at him then handed him a glass of water. Kyle took it with a smile then walked off towards the living room. When he was gone, Hero sniffled again and turned back to Zoey, sheepish and embarrassed.

“Zoey, I’m sor—” he began to apologize again, but she cut him off.

“No. None of that, Henry,” she insisted with a pointed emphasis on his real name. He could tell she was trying her best not to smile as she said it, probably strange and unnatural for her, if Hero had to guess. It was strange and unnatural for him too. No one ever called him that, ever. He had, of course, told her that she could if she wanted, but she never had—not until now that is. Hero’s eyes widened. Strangely enough, he felt a smile tugging at his mouth and the light flutter of a chuckle reverberating in his chest listening to her say it.

“I’m serious. I’m going to keep calling you that until you stop that,” she insisted. “Stop being a ‘Hero’—stop worrying about everybody else for just a second. It won’t kill you to be a little selfish for once…and it’ll honestly make the rest of us look better,” she quipped with a slight smile, clearly trying to brighten his mood.

It worked. His mouth twitched into a small smile as he replied dryly, “I’m sorry. I’ll try…”

“Good,” she said, but her expression softened as she reached out her hand to him. “But really…how are you? What do you need? What makes you happy when you feel like this?”

Hero shrugged his shoulders. If he was being honest, he didn’t know—even after all these years, he didn’t know, but… just having someone there, having someone listen to him…he already felt better. His face softened, and he felt something warm spreading through his chest as he met her kind eyes.

“Maybe a hero sandwich?” he shrugged his shoulders with a gentle smile, and her face brightened.

She gently nudged him in the arm before playfully taking his spatula. “Great,” she said. “I’ll make you one.”

[mysoulspiralbound]

more omri art! inspired by the idea that maybe sunny never bothered to cut his hair in the 4 years since mari died. i think it would make him the spitting image of her

i don't think omori could ever forgive them for looking so much like her. 4 years later, now just as old as she was when she died. it's like seeing a ghost in the mirror (and sunny&omori would know all about seeing ghosts in mirrors)

You killed her. You have no right to wear her face.

[meowing-at-u]

hey. sooooooooooo I haven't seen anyone else make any posts or videos about it but has anyone else noticed that as the acts progress, the text of Siffrin's dialogue options that have been chosen already become increasingly distorted? At first it's hardly noticable, like a few pixels of a letter missing then it gets increasingly fucked up? Like, multiple ENTIRE letters distorted or straight up missing.

IT HAPPENS IN THE CHARACTER BIOS IN THE MENU TOO, BUT ONLY TO SIFFRIN SO WHEN YOU LOOK AT A DIFFERENT BIO THEN BACK TO HIS IT GOES BACK TO NORMAL i fuckin' felt like i was being gaslit or some shit it's SO BRILLIANT!!

(i believe it also happens to the souvenirs/items?)

I was so scared and full of dread there'd be something horrifying and different waiting for me when I Looked Back but I DID IT EVERYTIME ANYWAYS

AUUUUUU77GHHHGWG and the way it reflects both Siffrin AND the player's mental states through multiple different interpretations SO GOOD WAAAAUAGGhHh

Noticed this for the first time when I played the demo! I thought it was some sort of weird game engine rending glitch and ignored it!

[clegfly]

beyond beyond stuff I made in like 3 seconds

Mari slowly losing her shit is MAYBE my favourite thing about beyond beyond

[kijosakka]

the idea of hikikomori kel has been haunting me these past few weeks so i’m going to dump the au i made for it here

-

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF OMORI BELOW THE CUT!!!!!

heavily based off of this fanart by @/aubreymybeloved on twitter, all credits for the art go to them!!!

___

role-swaps:

sunny -> kel

basil -> aubrey

aubrey -> basil

kel -> sunny

hero -> mari

mari -> hero

___

- kel & hero played sports together; when hero injured his acl playing in a game, he dropped out of the hobby to focus on schooling. in doing so, he also pressured kel to focus on school, since he had been prioritizing sports above school. they end up having an argument, where hero is disappointed in kels school performance, and kel is bitter that he could treat it like a simple hobby when he was so effortlessly good at it, and now just because he got hurt, he wanted kel to give up all the progess he'd made

- they fight near the stairs, and when kel shoves hero, he shoves too hard—sending him over the banister.

- kel freaks out, aubrey was there to witness it. aubrey is the one who mentions the jumprope hero had gotten kel as a childhood (~7 years old) when kel had first expressed interest in wanting to do sports like hero—and so they hang hero, and that’s the ruse

- aubrey and basil were pretty close; basil invites aubrey to his house a few weeks after the funeral. when she’s there, he brings up the photo album, and aubrey agrees to look through it with him

- when basil leaves for a moment, she has a mini breakdown and tears apart the photos with hero in them and when basil comes back and sees what shes done, he kicks her out of his house in fear of hurting her; aubrey goes back home while basil calls sunny telling him he’s scared hes going to hurt someone or maybe himself

- sunny shows up to his house and calms him down, telling him that he needs to do something with his emotions or else hes going to end up doing something he regrets. a few days later, basil starts his descent into something like being a delinquent similar to canon aubrey

- its only after basil really hurts someone in his temper (kim) does sunny step in full time with basil. when basil starts to go overboard, sunny is always there to calm him down

- kim forgave basil pretty much instantly, especially after seeing how distraught he was when he realized the damage he caused. thus, kim accepted him and sunny into her social circle (the hooligans)

- instead of sports like canon kel, sunny is genuinely into the violin. after hero’s death, mari stopped playing the piano, associating it with the many times hero watched or sat in with her as she played. sunny was initially upset, but they ended up talking it out and that was that

- in this AU, sunny started violin shortly after mari decided to play the piano after noticing how much attention it got her from their parents; it didn’t really succeed at getting his parents attention, but his friends would sit in during his lessons and encourage him through it, and he slowly started to associate it with good memories rather than bitter ones

- mari homeschooled for a year, keeping up with her studies even in her grief; to honor his memory, she ends up going to medschool to finish hero’s dream of being a doctor

- she was really distraught over his death, falling pretty deep into depression. however, she ends up seeking help and reassurance from sunny (sunny had a period of time about a year earlier where he had p severe maladaptive escapism, reminiscent of his canon habits) since he’d gone through a vaguely similar thing

- they do end up having a pretty nasty argument, much like canon kel and hero, because sunny feels like mari is putting too much pressure on him to constantly be there for her, and mari feels like sunny isn’t even trying to support her through a very hard time in her life and keeps pushing her away

- after mari explodes at sunny during their argument, and sunny completely breaks down, absolutely bawling and sobbing, she realizes her mistake and they end up resolving it in the loosest terms possible

- mari starts doing regular online therapy sessions until she can find a therapist near her college, and apologizes for putting pressure on sunny. sunny forgives her pretty much instantly, but he does still block out the memory of their fight because it’s such a sore spot—mari doesnt block it out so much as sunny does, but she will look back on it pretty forcefully when she lapses into self-punishment habits. neither of them have really dealt with it or worked through it properly

- mari has a pretty bad habit of not telling her therapist things because she feels like she has to hold on to a certain image and doesn’t want to ‘ruin’ her therapists concept of her, so she doesn’t bring up her and sunny’s fight (until after kel and aubrey end up confessing the truth, and she realizes that she never really got over it)

- sunny retreated into his friendship with basil hardcore as a way to cope, especially after basil started embracing his more brash, angry feelings. the pair relies on the other for absolutely everything

- when mari went off to college, their dependency worsened considerably—when sunny or basil would lapse into old habits, they went to each other, and only each other. with sunnys absent parents, and basils grandmothers worsening health, they both felt like they had no one else to turn to

- this led to multiple secrets and habits being shared between the two; basil sneaks into sunnys house when he has bad nightmares, basil signs when he talks when he’s around sunny to mirror him, all sunny has to do is be there and he basically act as the in-game ‘calm down’ skill for basil, sunny goes to basil if he needs to be grounded/is dissociating too badly on a given day to function properly, etc

- a lot of it is technically harmless, but relying on the other does weigh on them after those four years, and because its routine neither of them want to ‘ruin’ what they have just because of their own feelings

- ^ in an attempt to stop feeling so weighed down by these things, sunny takes up regular drawing and journaling sessions, and basil learns how to crochet and embroider

- ‘white space’ still technically exists, as does ‘omori’ (isn’t given a name in this au) acting as an avatar for sunny, partly because sunny is remarkably bad at handling emotions and needed a reprieve from feeling anything; to him, the best way to handle his grief was to process it on his own, through someone he felt wasn’t him. as such, neither headspace, nor blackspace exist, as he isn’t escaping or suppressing anything

- ^ this above point is mainly because it opens up the opportunity for post-confession kel/sunny bonding

- kel became a shut in due to his extreme grief and guilt—because he literally cannot maintain a happy image because of that guilt, he ends up running away from his problems. instead, he tamps down all his problems and trys out something else; sunnys coping mechanisms

- sunny told the group once, after what happened the year before heros death, that he had really bad escapism issues; creating a false reality in his head that he used to daydream hours and hours away in

- unfortunately for kel, it works a little too well, and he becomes a full time hikikomori. his headspace isn’t as expansive as in canon, but it does get the job done

- he goes by ‘iko’ in his dreams, and unlike omori he isn’t the silent, achromatic avatar; he’s the brightest, and chatty. a representation of how he feels he could be in real life if he “wasn’t such a coward.”

- hero is the one on the picnic blanket, though it’s closer to a caricature of a buffet—reminiscent of his cooking hobby—and aubrey is the one who gets lost every time; sunny, basil, and mari are the ones in kel’s party. much like the canon roles that are being swapped, mari is the healer, basil is the heavy-hitter, and sunny is the wild card/all-around.

- kels headspace mari acts much more like hero than IRL mari does; she acts as an avatar for kel to have his brother with him while not having to witness him being injured or dying in battle

- basil is open with his worries and anxiety, influenced by kels desire and worry that basil didnt feel safe enough around the rest of them, and thats why he always retreated into sunny

- sunny is very reassuring towards kel, speaking mainly to him to represent kels bitterness over him and basils closeness, and his worries that IRL sunny never liked kel and only tolerated him

- aubrey acts a lot like canon basil; shy but bubbly, timid but energetic, worrying but eager; she acts representative of kels hatred toward himself for feeling like he ruined aubreys life, and caused her to be to paranoid all the time. while her and kel still argue in his dreams, it’s lighthearted and easily resolved, unlike the major crime both of them took part in, which kel believes can never be resolved or absolved in any manner

- aubrey retreats back into herself, her normally quelled anxious side high-strung and prominent for four years straight. she’s absolutely terrified of her friends finding out and leaving her behind; of mari, her big sister, being disgusted of her, of basil, usually kind and timid, looking at her with hatred, and of sunny, aloof and non-expressive sunny, being so clearly ashamed of her actions.

- she’s an anxious mess constantly, and often cries when she gets even slightly angry or frustrated, much to her hatred. she does her best to become as invisible as impossible, keeping the truth close to her all the while

- basil ends up taping the photos together, but he drops a few at school, caught up in the heavy last-day-of-school crowd. aubrey picks them up and brings them to him in the park to return them—around the same time sunny ends up dragging kel out of the house.

- sunnys mom and kels mom are very close, and sunny had overheard them talking about how they were most likely going to move if kel didn't improve, especially now that kels mom was pregnant with sally (about 3 1/2 years after the initial incident) and so sunny doubles down in his efforts to speak to kel, holding onto the bare hope that everyone can reconcile again

- basil assumed that aubrey took the photos from him and freaks the fuck out—screaming and lashing out at her. the rest of the hooligans dont really understand, because he’s never messed with aubrey—he usually just ignored her—but since he seems so genuinely upset, they are in full support of him, thinking that she must have done something pretty bad to get him worked up like this

- sunny drags kel all the way to the park, kel having opened the door a few minutes after he knocked---right when sunny started messing with the doors lock audibly. when they get to the park and sunny sees whats happening with basil and aubrey, he steps in

- sunny ends up breaking everything up, but basil, still tense and agitated from the fight, sees kel and spits out the first thing he thinks of, which happens to be mocking kel’s way of grieving his brother

- he immediately regrets it, but he knows he’ll do something he’ll regret even more if he sticks around so he books it and resolves to tell sunny so that he can properly say sorry when hes calm

- sunny apologizes to kel on basils behalf, knowing that basil will apologize anyway, and the pair continue on a string of events basically the same as the canon first day, save for the gift buying. mostly just exploring really.

- much like canon sunnys warped perception of reality, it's not uncommon for kel to not see the railing---he literally just wont register it at all, so it looks like theres no banister near his stairs, similar to canon sunny not being able to see the closet door to the left of the staircase.

- also similar to the canon closet, the small shed kels parents have in their backyard housing the sports equipment also doesnt register to kel

- on the second day, kel opens the door to both sunny and basil. basil invites him outside, and all three of them end up going back to their old hangout spot, where basil ends up apologizing to kel profusely, saying that it wasn't fair of him to have said that, and that even if it wasn't an excuse, he was worked up and agitated at the time

- kel doesnt really understand why basil is apologizing, since he figured he deserved to be called out on how he reacted to a death he caused, but he accepts it and forgives him anyways

- sunny brings up aubrey to basil, and says that they at least need to talk about what happened without going at each other first, but after seeing how kel flinched at the mention of her, decides that they can all help with some of the preparations for mari to come back from college for a bit

- mari ends up showing up in the evening, after basil had left to go speak to aubrey, when kel and sunny are at the house. shes excited to see kel out and about, and ends up suggesting a sleepover for all of them, and they all agree.

- ^ this would have a conversation much like the optional, canon one you can have with kel in the graveyard, where sunny mentions him and maris fight. sunny makes a reference to wanting to stop blocking it out and hopefully getting a chance to talk about it with mari while shes there.

- ^^ also, similar to the canon line after aubrey pushes basil into the lake, it would have themes and direct parallels to what happened with hero and kel (e.g.: 'i know she didn't mean it' 'i just wanted her to leave me alone' 'she expected too much of me because of her own feelings' etc)

- on the third day, basil and aubrey are at the house by the time kel wakes up. basil explains that aubrey explained herself, and even if the photos were a sore subject, he was willing to try to work past it. mari makes a breakfast dish that hero used to make, and even though kel eats it, its so close to heros version that he ends up vomiting anyway, though he blames it on poor eating habits instead

- they kinda just laze around, playing old games and catching up on the mundane things that have been happening. its after everyone lays down and starts falling asleep that things go wrong.

- aubrey declines sleeping in the living room with everyone else, and mari directs her to sunnys current bedroom---shes cracking under the stress of seeing everyone and doesnt think she can handle being in the same room as all of them while they sleep pretending everything is fine

- after everyone is asleep, kel ends up going over to check on aubrey bc of his own guilty conscience, aubrey is staring at the stump of the tree heros body was hung from, which was just barely visible from sunnys window

- confrontation scene happens, im not sure what given weapons they would use?? i guess kel took a knife from their kitchen and aubrey had... something. maybe they were just bare-handed beating each other i didnt really think about this part too much

- unlike canon, i don't think there would be any major things lost like sunnys eye---instead, aubrey was the one who got nearly blinded, since i'm going to say that kel had the objectively better weapon out of whatever they were fighting with

- kels 'omori' fight against his alter ego sees the color palette slowly oversaturating with each phase, until it looks kind of like the end frame floating mirror jumpscare, including the distorted expression. like canon, if he chooses to give up, he'll jump off the roof. if he chooses to continue, he'll end up following a shadowey silhouette of aubrey through the hospital to her hospital room

- in this AU, i'm going to say that both aubrey and kel are eventually forgiven---in the loose order of mari, basil, and sunny.

- mari was the first one to forgive them, even if she had reacted badly at first. she was more sad than angry, really, and after contemplating what had happened, and how she would feel if the roles were reversed (a nod to canon), she forgave them both, though recognizing that their relationship might be strained as they worked through it

- basil ended up forgiving them next, ultimately coming to terms with it and the explanation that actually made sense to him; part of his anger came from the fact that he just didn't understand why hero would do something like that since there was, literally, no warning. knowing the truth gave him the closure that he desperately needed, and he was thankful that they told the truth even if it hurt

- sunny ends up being the last to forgive, mainly because the confession came right after he made a resolution to himself to start fully working through and coming to terms with heros death. he thinks about it for a while, and takes the time to himself to recognize what they both did and work through his feelings concerning the both of them; he does end up forgiving them in the end, because this is my au and i want a happy ending

[schoolrust]

Omori (2020)

[grisen06]

one thing i think is really interesting in omori is sweethearts character. like at first glance i didnt really think that deeply about her since headspace is this kids fantasy and she seemed just like any cartoon-y villain who gets what she wants and is really rude to people (A/N: I came up w a lot of this as I went and I wrote this on the bus so idk if things in here are 100% accurate)

the first interesting thing is in her lovers. Firstly we have Rococo who is said to have fought a lot with Sweetheart. Captain Spaceboy, when treated badly, seems to have fought back to some degree (In the space ex-husband fight his reaction to all the angry memories being "How dare she treat me that way!"). Finally we have Hero who seems to be the first person who didn't "worship" Sweetheart. She also has a tendancy to get bored of relationships very easy, or at least move on from them.

Still, she seems to want to fall in love, she wants to get married.

Sweetheart is also the main hindrance in our search for Basil. It is a villain created by Omori as something to go up against. Her purpose of existance, not only from the game's pov but also from Sunny's escapism, is to be an antagonist.

So this 12 year old's imagination creates this villain who's whole thing is being in abusive relationships and wanting to get married. This means this abusive/marriage obsessed character is either

1. Created by Omori to disstract Sunny from the more traumatising stuff in his mind. This means that not only does this child know about abusive relationships enough to create Sweetheart, but finds them easy enough to swallow that it probably was something he had somewhat gotten used to and had gotten normalised (Perhaps even that the abuser was someone who still was very well liked).

2. This is one of Sunny's fears slipping through (Like the ladder, spiders or the ocean). This would mean abusive relationships and this marriage obsession is not only something Sunny knows of, but also activley fears (Probably to the same extent he fears the things that lead him to literally almost drowning, so pretty badly).

This leads me to further believe Sunny's parents relationship was,,, less than ideal. My assumption is that it's his father from the little information we have about them (Sunny's mom seeming more neglectful but not angry and the tree chopping scene). The popularity could also be a hint towards the common occurance where and abuser can put up an act towards other people. This could probably be very confusing to a child as they see this person doing horrible things and yet being loved and looked up on by others.

(Idk how this turned from "I think it's interesting how the person Sweetheart first wants to marry is the first to not want to be with her" to "Sweetheart's character could be further proof of Sunny's home situation being abusive" but well, here we are)

[thataltfan]

He enters Basils room… to see him dead on the floor. Something is pulsing and writhing around his corpse, a pair of garden shears lodged into his chest. Alt immediately closes the game, hating the tears threatening to spill down his face at the mere drawn image.

what the fuck

why am i…?

[anulithots]

Okay... listen tho.

Give me spoilers without the context. It's often the spoilers that get me to read something, because it's not the surprise (for me at least) it's the suspense, it's the promise for characters that I will fall in love with, for that twist that will change everything, for the elaborate fantasy world I will want to explore. I want the promise for my new hyper fixation, and it's the spoilers that will convince me.

That may just be personal preference tho.

(You have full permission to give me spoilers for your WIP)

I think the worst part about writing a book is wanting to tell everyone everything about your characters and your ships and your elaborate fantasy world and the massive plot twist at the end of your novel but you can’t, because if you do, then where is the fun in reading it? What is a good book without its element of surprise?

[hero-deserves-to-be-happy]

Tell Me Where It Hurts (Hero and Kel Brotherly Hurt/Comfort and Angst Fic)

"What Hero wanted more than anything else in the world was to protect his little brother—to take care of him, to help him whenever he was hurting. Nothing hurt Hero more than to see his brother in pain, especially a pain he couldn’t fix."

OR

When seven-year-old Kel falls off his bike, Hero immediately steps in to help him care for his wounds. All he has ever wanted is to take care of his little brother, but what will happen when he can't protect him anymore?

Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Pre-Canon, Family Feels, Hero & Kel's Fight, Hero & Kel's Brotherly Love, and Sad Ending

Characters: Hero (POV Character) and Kel

Relationships: Hero & Kel as brothers (A/N: Love them! They deserve the world 💙🧡)

Word Count: 2089

Rating: T (for canon-typical heavy themes such as grief and depression)

Warnings: Mentioned Minor Injuries from a bike accident (Non-graphically depicted), Mentioned Blood, Canon-Typical Heavy Themes (i.e. grief and depression). Emotional Hurt and Heavy Angst. OMORI SPOILERS.

Link to work on AO3. Full text below the cut.

Thank you for reading!

“I’m fine,” Kel insisted, but he groaned—tottering on his scraped and bloodied knees as he pulled himself up off the ground.

Hero sighed. “Kel…” He held out his hand, patting his brother on the shoulder, but Kel just frowned at him then at his crashed bicycle—rolling his eyes in that annoyed yet affectionate way it seemed only seven-year-old little brothers could manage.

Hero’s chest ached. Despite his insistence that he was fine, Hero could see the way Kel’s eyes shimmered in the corners, the way he bit down hard on his quivering lip. Hero sunk to his knees beside him in the grass—something visceral, instinctive aching in him as he reached out his hands to Kel, begging without words: tell me where it hurts.

Kel shrugged him off, squirming away from him. “Hero,” he began to protest again, but he sniffled—wiping his hand across his nose then his eyes and leaving a streak of dirt on his cheek.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Hero gently interrupted, rubbing his hand comfortingly across his brother’s back.

“My bike—”

“It’s okay. I’ve got it.” With a reassuring nod, Hero grabbed the orange handlebars and set the bike upright again. It was in much better shape than Kel who had been flung off of it when he had hit that uneven spot in the sidewalk outside their house. Despite Hero’s gentle warnings that Kel should slow down and look out for that infamous crack in the pavement, Kel had slammed into it at rapid speed, losing his balance and skidding across the sidewalk into the dirt with a painful scraping sound. Hero could only imagine how much that had had hurt. The thought made something twist in his chest. He couldn’t stand to see the tears caught in Kel’s long eyelashes, to watch his bottom lip trembling as he tried not to cry. He wished it had been him who had crashed the bicycle rather than his brother. It probably would have hurt less.

As they carefully made their way back into the house, Hero shifted—pushing Kel’s bike with one hand as he reached out the other to try to support his brother, but Kel, stubborn and resilient as ever, just shrugged him off, hobbling along on his injured legs. When they finally made their way inside the house, Kel, thankfully, let Hero support him up the stairs to the bathroom—leaning almost imperceptibly on his elder brother’s side until they reached the landing. Bounding through the bathroom door, Kel plopped down on the side of the bathtub as Hero thoughtfully scanned the hutch of shelves for a first aid kit or bandages. His parents had been pretty insistent that since he was only ten years old, he wasn’t allowed to rifle through the medicine cabinet, but they usually kept bandages and antibiotic ointment where he and Kel could reach them. It was a good thing too seeing as his little brother’s impulsive recklessness often led to lots of scrapes, cuts, and bruises. Thankfully, it was never anything too serious—only usual childhood injuries, but Hero still worried. He had quickly become pretty talented at wound care and his brother’s “little doctor” as his parents sometimes affectionately teased him.

“Ow!” exclaimed Kel, pulling Hero out of his thoughts. He turned to his brother with a start to find him frowning at his leg as he rubbed a faded, worn washcloth across the scrapes and scratches.

“You should get that wet first,” Hero gently suggested, as he turned on the bathtub’s faucet. He grabbed a clean washcloth off of the hutch, then ran it under water when it reached a comfortable, lukewarm temperature. After ringing it out, he began to wipe the mess of dirt, blood, and grime off of Kel’s legs and arms. Kel’s knees and elbows were especially beat up, and—Hero sighed—the massive, scabby scrape on Kel’s forearm from a scooter accident a week ago had just reopened. Kel was lucky it was all just superficial scratches, and he didn’t need stitches. He really should be more careful.

Kel squirmed and fidgeted. “Ouch! That hurts!” He yelped, jerking away from him as Hero cleaned the nasty gash on his knee as gently as he could.

“Sorry,” mumbled Hero. “But we really need to clean these off. You’ve got dirt in them.”

“So what?” Kel huffed.

“So…you can’t put bandages on them until they’re cleaned off.”

Kel huffed again, crossing his arms. “I don’t need any bandages.”

With a sigh, Hero shook his head slightly. His brother really could be so stubborn sometimes. Truthfully, he kind of admired that, especially since Hero, himself, had always kind of struggled to speak his mind and stick up for himself, often finding himself exhausted by arguments and desperately trying keep the peace. In times like these, however, Kel’s stubbornness tended to get him into trouble.

Hero sighed again, but his expression softened as he gently encouraged, “But mom got those new Captain Spaceboy ones and everything.”

Kel’s brow furrowed, and he hummed thoughtfully. “Well, I guess that’s okay.”

Carefully, Hero got up from his place on the side of the bathtub and washed his hands in the sink. Then, he grabbed the tube of antibiotic ointment and several boxes of bandages of various sizes. Kneeling down on the bath mat in front of the tub, Hero put the antibiotic ointment on Kel’s knees and wrapped them up in large, square bandages. Then he did the same to the scrapes on Kel’s legs, arms, and elbows. To Kel’s disappointment, most of his wounds were too big for the Captain Spaceboy Band-Aids, but he had a few small scrapes on his hands that could use them. Hero hoped Kel wouldn’t mind that too much, especially since putting them there would make it easier for Kel to show off the bandages to his friends when he saw them next.

Sure enough, as soon as Hero had placed the Captain Spaceboy bandage on the back of Kel’s hand, he had held it up and exclaimed, “This is so cool! I can’t wait to show Sunny!”

As Kel excitedly scrambled to his feet, Hero chuckled lightly to himself. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah, thanks, Hero! You’re the best.” Kel’s face lit up into a wide smile—bright and beaming even despite his couple of missing baby teeth. “If you weren’t gonna be a chef, you’d be a really good doctor.”  

Hero’s face flushed, but he smiled. “Thank you, Kel.” He patted his brother on the head, ruffling his thick hair. Kel frowned as he absentmindedly fidgeted with the bandage on his arm, and Hero's brow furrowed. “Don’t pick at those. You have to leave them alone so they’ll heal.”

“Yeah…yeah...” mumbled Kel, rolling his eyes.

“Also, try to be a little more careful, okay?”

Kel shrugged. “I guess I can try, but it’s okay because I’ll always have you to take care of me if I get scraped up and stuff.” Laughing, Kel paused, turning to him with wide, smiling eyes. “Like a hero, just like your name.”  

Hero’s face softened, and his heart ached. What he wanted more than anything else in the world was to protect his little brother—to take care of him, to help him whenever he was hurting. Nothing hurt Hero more than to see his brother in pain, especially a pain he couldn’t fix. He couldn’t save him from that—couldn’t save him from falling off of his bike, from losing his favorite toy, from scraping his knees, and from getting his feelings hurt, but he knew he would do anything he could to make things better and to fix him up anytime he needed him. He didn’t have the words for how much it meant to him to know that Kel saw him as someone he could always depend on, someone who would always be there to help and support him—a real hero.

Sniffling just a little, he pulled Kel into a quick hug and quietly reassured him, “That’s right, Kel. I’ll always be here.”

*-*-*

6 Years Later…

Something caught Hero before his knees slammed into the hardwood floor of his room. He could barely see anything through his blurred, weeping eyes in the dark. The frantic but hushed voices of his parents talked over each other as they held onto him, but his head was spinning, throbbing. He couldn’t make out what they were saying. Everything around him shook. No, he was shaking, trembling as he gasped for breath. Hot tears cascaded down his cheeks. Somehow he hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t noticed anything. How could he when he was drowning—desperately struggling to stay afloat in a dark, endless void of dark water. It spilled out into the room—filling every corner, every crevice until it swallowed him whole. In truth, he barely even knew where he was, who he was. It didn’t feel real. It was just another part of this horrible, never ending nightmare he had been living ever since Mari had died, leaving him numb, empty—a void of feeling. A shell of a person.

But then he caught sight of something over his dad’s shoulder. Kel... with tears caught in his eyelashes, struggling in the corners of his eyes, and streaming down his cheeks. The sight was so overwhelmingly heartbreaking that he wanted to cry out, but his throat was raw, hoarse from the painful, thoughtless words that had just lashed out of him. 

As Kel met his eyes in the dark, something shattered inside Hero. His chest panged and twisted at this image of Kel utterly broken down and torn apart—trembling, cowering against the wall as tears spilled down his face. It would be permanently seared into his mind, would haunt his thoughts, his waking dreams, his nightmares.  For the rest of his life, whenever he would think of his brother, he would see this moment, and the regret would destroy him.

For the first time in months, he felt something riveting through the numbness in his heart—something visceral, instinctive aching in him as he lurched forward, desperately reaching out his hands to Kel, begging without words: tell me where it hurts, even though he already knew the answer. 

Tears pooling in his eyes, Hero wrapped his arms around him, pulling him tightly against his chest as it panged and twisted. He sobbed, bitterly, choking on his anguished apologies. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Kel’s chin pressed into his shoulder. Hero could feel him trembling, could hear his whispered assurances that all was forgiven and that he was fine.But he wasn’t fine. And Hero knew it.

He felt the words ache in his heart, desperately begging again and again: tell me where it hurts until the truth clawed at him, tearing him apart in guilty anguish so great Hero could feel it crushing him until he couldn’t breathe—like the world was caving in around him.

The truth was Kel didn’t have to tell him where it hurt. Didn’t have to tell him that the pain he felt now was worse than any cut, any scrape, any bruise he had ever gotten. He didn’t have to tell him that there was no bandage, no ointment, and no first aid that could fix it. And he didn’t have to tell him that it was all his fault.

Hero knew that the wounds we couldn’t see hurt the most, especially when they were given to us by someone we loved, and he wept—writhing in pain as he clutched onto his brother, screaming apologies into the night as if they could somehow drown out the ghosts of his thoughtless, painful words. But he knew they couldn’t.

Something was broken now, and it could never be fixed. They could never go back to the way things were before, back when Kel knew he could always turn to him for help, when he knew he would always be there to fix him up and support him. Hero could never again ask Kel to tell him where it hurt and expect a straight answer. He could never again patch his wounds or hold him while he cried without the dark, heavy weight of this moment, of their one and only fight, hanging over them. Doubt would always set in, and even now, even as he held his brother so tightly, so desperately—it made no difference. He could feel the distance between them.

He wasn’t Kel’s hero anymore.

[laviaceae]

your art has spiked my interest haha what’s tower of hanoi and how/where do i play it?

OKAY.

TOWER OF HANOI IS THE BEST GAME YOU ABSOLUTELY, 110% GUARANTEE NO REFUNDS, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF.

LET ME EXPLAIN.

(also known as: i win at all times ever and im glad my tawahano propaganda pays off, HAH!)

----------

Have you ever heard of... END ROLL? Walking On A Star Unknown? Farethere City? These are all relatively niche RPGMaker 2000 games made by a Japanese game creator known as Segawa (せがわ), with END ROLL being the most popular among Western Fans (you might see the main character, Russell, in some fanart with OMORI or Yume Nikki characters for example)!

In fact, for followers of mine who are In Stars and Time fans, END ROLL was credited as one of the inspirations for that game!

TOWER of HANOI is another game made by Segawa, one released in November of 2020, and one of the final games they've made in RPG2K (so they've got an absolute mastery of the engine).

I'll be in part directing this post towards ISAT fans since that makes up the majority of my followerbase on Tumblr, so there may be ISAT spoilers (including Two Hats/Act 6 Secret spoilers) up ahead! There will also be mild TOWER of HANOI spoilers required to explain the game's premise. Proceed at your own risk.

Section One: So, what is TOWER of HANOI all about?

TOWER of HANOI is a narrative-driven RPG with multiple endings (2 'true endings', 3 'bad endings') set in a futuristic, post-post-World-War-Five society. The game mostly takes place within the TOWER, a hyper-realistic virtual reality simulation currently undergoing playtests that was built to be able to rehabilitate HANOI (androids that look and sound and feel emotions like humans do) who have dangerous levels of mental instability.

The stability of a HANOI is measured through their Stress Level, a numerical representation of that HANOI's mental state. HANOI are generally considered by society to be more of technology or property than people (like your computer or your phone would be), and as such have no rights and are often mistreated by humans. More than 50% of HANOI hate their human employers.

In order to combat the dangerous upward trend of HANOI Stress Levels (caused by their mistreatment), the TOWER was created. In it, HANOI are expected to fight and defeat virtual enemies that approximate humans in order to destress through violence. Upon a successful completion, HANOI are to be returned to their human employers.

Because the TOWER is currently undergoing testing, groups of HANOI are accompanied through the TOWER by a human "Inspector" who is expected to report any bugs or issues they encounter during their playtest.

You play as one of those human Inspectors; Inspector No.102, Coral Brown.

(this is my art! you may have seen him in my ISAT au as taking the place of Siffrin).

He's 33 years old, kind, calm, and soft as a marshmallow. He's also a human being who believes in the rights and wellbeing of HANOI, and sympathises with their suffering. As a child, he was raised by a HANOI instead of his parents, which may have contributed to his feelings towards them.

Over the course of the game and as you progress through the TOWER you'll get to meet and intimately know the ten HANOI under Coral's care with Fire Emblem-esque Support events depending on how many times you bring each of them to battle. These can be between Coral and the HANOI, or the HANOI between eachother. (There are more than 100 of these such events to collect in total!)

TOWER of HANOI's characters are both charming and tragic. They each have incredibly well-realised personalities, backstories, and relationships both with the Inspector taking care of them and eachother. It's easy to imagine day-to-day interactions in Headquarters (your hub area) between them all.

You have Adams, a HANOI built for missionary work and who's Stress Level is the lowest out of all ten (and actually below the 'dangerous' stress threshold)! He's silly and mischevious and adores spicy food. Despite this, he's here at the TOWER because he doesn't believe in God, despite that being an important part of his 'role' in the world. When did he stop believing in God, and why? What is his relationship with the people at the Church that took care of him?

Or Mira, a Childcare HANOI that reminds Coral of the HANOI that looked after him as a child. She loves children, but has to constantly grapple with the fact that she can't have any and that any children she takes care of will eventually, inevitably leave her. How will she and Coral resolve the fact that they both remind eachother of someone they knew in the past? How will she interact with the other HANOI?

There's also Nanashi, a cheaply-made HANOI for miscellaneous chores who's trust and care for humanity has been completely shattered due to his ties with the mafia. He wasn't even important enough to be given a name until Coral gives him one upon their first meeting in the TOWER. He hates humans, hates Coral, and refuses to trust him, instead convincing himself that Coral is merely faking his kindness to get him to let his guard down just to use him like all humans he's ever known have done. Will Coral eventually be given Nanashi's trust? What will he do once he leaves the TOWER, and has to be sent back to the mafia where he came from?

Finally there's Kimon Noroi, a HANOI who resembles a child that fulfils a very special purpose. Noroi is what's known as a Yorimashi (憑坐), and uses her body to allow spirits to occupy it and commune with the living. She's seen how terrible humans can be because of the spirits she's seen and can come across as a bit standoffish (though she's really just as much of a menace as Adams is), and definitely, definitely, definitely doesn't miss the Priest at the shrine she lived in before coming to the TOWER at all! How will she interact with Adams, both having people they miss back at home? How will she interact with Mira, who's like a mother figure to her in this place?

As you progress, you can find the answers to all of these questions, as well as the identities of the six other HANOI I've not even mentioned here- all as well-written and interesting as these four.

However, the HANOI aren't the only faction in the game to worry about.

The very NPCs and enemies you'll be fighting along the way are coming to life, gaining sentience, and realising they want something more in their existence than eternally repeating dialogue chains and fetch quests and death in battle.

The head of this 'rebellion' of 0s and 1s, a computer virus named Shunya, acts as the main antagonist for the majority of the game, but even she isn't... 'evil'. She has her own found family, a group of bugged enemies she's befriended along her journey, all of whom want her to realise her dream of "melting" down the TOWER and returning all of the 0s and 1s inside to their base state of not thinking, not feeling, and not being in eternal pain.

Should you fight these people, if their emotions really are real, and defeat them without caring about their plight? Is it right to, to disregard the thoughts and feelings of 0s and 1s for the sake of the wellbeing of the HANOI Coral's grown so attached to? Should you follow the 'role' you've been given, or disregard it and create your own?

TOWER of HANOI excellently tackles the dichotomy of themes between 'roles' in societies and the 'dreams' people have, and nowhere is this more apparent than Coral Brown himself. Throughout the game, there will be multiple events and opportunities in order to control Coral's own Stress Level, and how he feels towards both the side of HANOI and the side of 0s and 1s he's stuck between. Lower his stress and he'll side with the HANOI and enjoy his job, and at higher stresses he'll begin to hate it, being unable to eat or sleep as he starts feeling awful for the 0s and 1s he spends his time killing in the TOWER....

These branch into the two main 'True Routes' of the game, depending on your Stress Level... but I shall leave the specific nature of those to discover in your own playthroughs. :)

If you've enjoyed ISAT, there's a good chance you'll enjoy TOWER of HANOI. Not only is one of the creator's previous games an inspiration for ISAT, they share a lot of similarities in their characters. Coral and Siffrin are very similar as protagonists, and as for others...

(Loop artwork credit to Insertdisc5 from In Stars and Time)

I could write a whole essay on how these two are so painfully similar and would kill eachother on sight. Maybe I will one day. Who knows. Me when I have a guide character lacking half of a face that has Fucking Issues TM stemming from intense jealousy and shares some visual similarity with our main character. Just look at them. This is the sole reason for the twohats warning. Just look at them.

Section Two: Wow, that's so cool and awesome Mx Lav! How do I play TOWER of HANOI?

You can check out the official website here, and the official downloads page here! I'd recommend following the instructions on this website to get the game working faster (because RPG2K is a pain in the ass on modern systems).

...

...Oh? It's all in Japanese? ...Well-

Section Three: --WAIT WHY IS IT ALL IN JAPANESE??

Yes, that's TOWER of HANOI's One (Big) Thing. The one thing you have to look past in order to actually play the game; it's all in Japanese, and an English translation will never be made (unless Segawa-san lifts the translation ban).

However, you don't actually need to know Japanese to play the game. I sure don't! And all of the other English-speaking fans I know that have played this game don't either.

There are three main ways to accomplish this, but I'll only discuss two here:

Sugoi Translator or similar translators. Sugoi Translator (or Sugoi Toolkit) is a machine translation tool that automatically grabs and translates the text in game you're looking at. The translations themselves make a good amount of sense, too! It's a little difficult to set up, but once you've calibrated it once you never have to worry about it again. This is definitely easiest if you want to read all of the dialogue in the game, including flavourtext (as yes, all 10 HANOI and Coral have unique flavourtext for every item in the game...), but is only available for free on the 15th and 16th each month and is otherwise only available to download on the creator's Patreon.

Google Lens. The easier, plug-and-translate method of the two. Simply download the Google Lens app and point it at the text on the screen, it'll read and translate it for you. The translations here are a little goofier (and sometimes, depending on your phone camera quality or lighting conditions, can be difficult for the app to pick up), but it's easy to complete a playthrough with just this tool alone.

If you can't get past this game's One Big Thing, I get it. It's a hard game to sell to people precisely for this reason. I'm at least glad you've read this far down into the post to get to this point and have showed interest in the game. And now you now about a game you didn't before, and you also have an itty bitty bit of context for all the non-ISAT stuff I post here. But this game has had me in a chokehold for the past two years and I promise that, if you can get through it, it's extremely worth it.

If you have the time and you're willing to try, please do! I love this game with all my heart and it's such a shame that most Western fans will never have easy access to it. I shill this game with all my heart, for realsies.

Section Four: Trigger/Content Warnings

If you've played a Segawa game before, you knew this section was coming. Segawa-san's games often tackle heavy or dark themes, and TOWER of HANOI isn't an exception. I'll add a list of content warnings here just so you aren't surprised by anything.

Suicide, both on and off screen

Self-harm, on-screen through dialogue

Themes of terminal illness, on screen

Hospitals (on screen, a majority of one of the game's dungeons takes place in one)

Death (on-screen)

Abuse (off-screen, but portrayed through dialogue)

Child harm/death (mentioned)

Kidnapping/Child kidnapping (mentioned)

Horror elements (no chase sequences, one jumpscare through an optional and hard-to-find sidequest)

Sexual Assault/Abuse (Not on-screen but talked about extensively, can avoided if you avoid Melitica/Merrytika's dialogue)

Mishandling of discussions surrounding gender identity (this character's identity is shown generally throughout the game to be a positive/supported thing, but some dialogue and design choices are quite ignorant/transphobic- though not maliciously. This can be avoided if you avoid Kathy/Cameron's dialogue)

There is also a substantial amount of screenshake employed near the end of the game. This list is from memory and limited from the amount of dialogue I've personally seen/translated, so it's probably not fully comprehensive. But it is thorough.

Section Five: Conclusion

oof... You've made it to the end! This took me the better part of a day to write, and I'm glad I finally got to advertise my favourite game on main. I hope... any of this makes sense, and that you enjoy! Even if you decide TOWER of HANOI isn't right for you, you at least know a little more about something you didn't before. Thank you so much for getting to the end, and I wish you the best!

[kxmikomrade]

🍁˖࿐ Accidental Confessions - Reo, Isagi, Hiori

╰┈➤Reo x Reader, Isagi x reader, Hiori x reader (separate) Genre: Crack, Fluff Gn!Reader Warnings: Swearing, maybe major-ish Omori spoilers, it isnt rlly much since da fandom jokes abt it the whole time? idk Authors note: Its my first time doing these, lmk if i did smth wrong or if u want more

Pt 2 Pt 3

Reo Mikage

Isagi Yoichi

Hiori Yo

Reaction memes on Isagi's part were made by lovely @torufilms !!

[some-mari-thoughts]

*politely puts it on the brainrot place*

I am WAY too full of stranger thoughts but surprisingly some-mari-thoughts actually doesn't have most of my early stranger headcanons,, Basically first Dreamsil/Stranger(eventually) likely didn't know what happened and why he was in that Space til several encounters with omori and uh. basils or maybe Mari if she could be there at all. I doodled several encounters before, but here's first Dream Basil encounter? (Dreamer's basil and Omori's basil)

He's having his first encounter in vastness of black space and its Him but weirdly behaving and miscolored and speaking about Omori? and a photo he's got in his album? (He's carrying the black and white truth album) He's lost? now are they both lost? ( they both eventually become strangers)

What happened is basically.. first headspace got pretty much destroyed and swallowed by black space, and then white space appeared as a safe realm, then Omori appeared and started making his dreamworld, taking some from old Headspace/dreamworld and perfecting it with each reset so nothing could possibly trigger Sunny/Dreamer The vast majority of old headspace inhabitants as well as resetted/trashed Headspace friends got since corrupted by black space into being unrecognizable (Cindy, little somethings, basil corpses, faceless friends, Stranger army, and Stranger/first dream Basil himself) as well as Black space constantly shifting itself. It's kinda a terrifying parody of what dreamworld used to be for Sunny? So now we have what we have now

Ooooh these are really cool ideas, and I love the little doodles!! I think I do recall seeing you mention the “Stranger was the first dreamsil” headcanon in the early days of the omori fandom (think it was in the tags of a post?)

I’ve always found the idea that an early version of Headspace was more similar to the real world interesting! And poor Stranger, having no idea what happened to him until later, being so confused on why he’s in this weird and seemingly endless world :(

[fae-that-rambles]

OMORI AND STORYTELLING THROUGH CHARACTER DESIGN

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I think it’s a very fun detail to over analyze.

SPOILERS AHEAD‼️‼️‼️

HEADSPACE

Upon first meeting the headspace gang Omori and Basil stand out very sharply. Omori with his lack of color, and Basil with the unique color of his hair and eyes. The two are clear foils; Omori is silent and keeps himself as far from focus as possible- While Basil is the group glue and focus before and after his disappearance.

Through the character designs and personalities, we are primed to connect and focus on Basil rather than Omori. Basil is pastel colored, a pacifist and a lover. Omori’s vacant eyes and silent knife-wielding nature are less inviting. Very often with RPG horrors, silent protagonists are overlooked in favor of supporting cast. Omori actively uses this as an aspect of its story. We’re supposed to focus on Basil- Sunny is supposed to focus on Basil

THE HORROR

This all lends to our first bait and switch- and our first of Basil’s complex role in the narrative.

Basil is our first glimpse into the horror themes of Omori- and this actively betrays the players trust. Again- Basil was our lovable safe character- We are primed to trust him. Then everything goes wrong (Sounds familiar).

The red eyes are obviously unsettling- again, betraying our trust by subverting the innocence of Basil’s appearance.

Furthering this! With Basil’s disappearance arrives Stranger

A shadowed figure resembling Basil leaving bloody footprints- Basil’s design has been completely subverted into something known and comforting- to a Stranger.

Omori and Stranger are an inverse of Omori and Basil’s design foils. Omori is white with black accents and eyes. Stranger is a full black silhouette with glowing white eyes. And they are of course just as much personality foils. Omori is danger and escapism under an innocent mask. Stranger is a frightening and cryptic individual who only aims to help Sunny. The bloody footprints are foreboding and unsettling- But they’re guides helping Sunny.

Adding on to this, Stranger and Omori’s design’s aren’t foils in the way of being opposites- they’re foils in the way of being compliments. They’re reflections of black and white- two sides of the same coin.

REAL WORLD BASIL

The introduction of real world Basil once again subverts previous expectations- I think for both the audience and Sunny. Setup as foils- opposites throughout the entirety of headspace, the Real World Basil and Sunny could not be more similar design wise. Their outfits are near identical; and their pale frail physiques are the same- even down to the height.

Despite everything set up in Headspace- Basil is by far the character most similar to us in Faraway town. As much as Sunny tries to deny it in his mind- he and Basil were heavily shaped by their shared history. They’re not opposites. Both have become reclusive in the days since Mari’s death, they both lost connections with the group, and both are riddled with guilt, fear, and self loathing. Sunny tries so hard to sever his connections to Basil in his mind, they’re in the exact same position.

Through the final fight with Basil, all of Sunny and Basil’s parallels are put to light. Both in the same clothes, living with the same crippling fear of what they both went to together. Both of their Somethings heightening their fear and crippling any rationality. Basil’s weapon- garden shears are an easy parallel to Omori’s knife.

Their only major design difference is their eyes and hair. Sunny’s eyes still their empty black (or sharp red when stressed out) and Basil’s an eerie glowing blue. Even if they’ve developed in the same circumstances, the two have reacted very differently because of their personalities. Sunny avoidant and stoic, Basil desperate and erratic. Once again, the two are complimentary foils. No matter what form Basil takes, he and Sunny are tied together as reflections of one another, and the shared experiences that molded them.

BONUS- HIKKIKOMORI

In the Hikkikomori route you fight Stranger instead of Real life Basil. The Hikkikomori route illustrates a complete refusal from Sunny to acknowledge the truth of the incident, and this means erasing Basil as a person. Destroying every one of these parallels I’ve discussed.

Basil and Stranger lose their depth. Basil is resigned to the picnic basket with Mari and kept out of the way. He’s lost his right to focus and autonomy, rather staying a shallow memory vague enough to protect Sunny’s repression.

Stranger is treated as an enemy. He is solely Omori’s opponent and will be eliminated as such. All of Basil’s complexity wiped away with his death. Leaving that cardboard cutout- Headspace Basil.

Furthermore, the fight with Stranger (obviously) has direct parallels to the final fight with Basil. Basil and Sunny wear their identical clothes and fight as two parallels. Stranger and Omori are black and white enemies, as Omori refuses to acknowledge Basil’s connection and similarities to Sunny. He refuses the complexity Stranger represents.

[applejaxx1]

MAJOR OMORI SPOILERS BELOW! SUICIDE TW!!

i just realized that basil was probably trying to kill himself on two days left and here's why:

if you remember that on two days left when kel and sunny visited his home, polly said that basil was missing and had asked them to find him. this means he left home without telling anybody and went to the secret hangout spot where he thought nobody knew about and hadn't visited often. that's why he was so in shock when the hooligans showed up. he literally had a mental breakdown because he thought they were going to hurt him.

he was most likely going to attempt suicide since he tries the next day on one day left. (if you don't save him he does succeed in doing so.) also, basil gave sunny his photo album on three days left before he had even knew that sunny was moving away.

this is an obvious sign of suicide. in conclusion, basil was probably trying to kill himself at the start of the game.