Chapter Text
Why is it that people without siblings always want to have one? It makes, like, zero sense, but it’s not like I can blame them. Being by myself all the time living with two old farts and nobody else would drive me insane. You could say there’s pros and cons to the whole thing, but I guarantee you that if any only child finally got a sibling, they’d instantly regret it. As soon as a new child is born, they instantly become the center of attention, and you get cast to the wayside. Now, I probably shouldn’t be one to talk, since I was the younger child in this situation. It was pretty cool and all, until everyone realized I wasn’t all that great as they thought I’d be. Still, I got my chance in the spotlight for those early developmental years, and that’s all that matters.
Every once in a while, when thinking back to those times, I wonder if I should feel at least a little bad about my older sister. I mean, my parents really liked me. My extended family even more so. I have faint memories of Christmastime what must have been over a decade ago now, everyone piling on the presents. I certainly wasn’t complaining in the slightest. I was the family’s newest child. I always wonder about why having a baby around makes people wanna fawn over it constantly. Maybe because babies are so helpless? I dunno. It remains a mystery to me, even to this day. My sister never seemed to hate the lack of attention, though. In fact, she seemed content to dote on me along with the rest of my family. Despite that, even if she did hate it, I still wouldn’t feel even remotely bad, mainly cuz she’s a fucking bitch.
Granted, most people who are even vaguely acquainted with my dear sister decidedly do not have that opinion of her. She’s very good at manipulating people into liking her like that. They’re all wrong. I know the truth. I mentioned before that my sister was super nice to me when I was little. She’d always smother me with hugs and cuddles and tuck me in every single night with a bedtime story and a goodnight kiss. It was all super rad. Big Sis was the best. She loved me, and I loved her. I wanted to be just like Big Sis when I grew up. I was wrong. I was naive. I was a fool.
As the years passed, the extracurriculars came. Being an asian family, my parents thought it was a good thing to reinforce as many racial stereotypes as humanly possible. Karate, chess, math club, softball, fucking language classes–you name it, I was signed up for it. The classes sucked. I sucked. I hated it. I wanted to quit. I stayed because of Big Sis. I didn’t care how bad I was, all I wanted was to spend time with her. She was always busy trying way too hard at school or some other thing, so those times we had together were precious to me.
Then came the music lessons. She got a keyboard for her birthday. As usual, she was good at it, so good that mom and dad dropped a bunch of money on some fancy grand piano about a year later. They both were awfully adamant about it, even dad, who hates expensive stuff. The most impressive part is how they got it through the door in the first place. One day after school, I found it sitting in the back room with the big window with no explanation as to how it got there. That day, my toy room became her music room. I didn’t play an instrument, since my parents could only afford the one. I didn’t blame them. That thing must have cost a fortune. I hear even smaller grand pianos can get into the five figure range. I was content to sit there, to watch her practice. Her playing was heard throughout the entire house. Each song enchanted me. Her notes touched every fiber of my being. This wasn’t like the other activities that I had to go through. I wanted more of it. I wanted to be a part of it. I lay awake in bed every night, fantasizing about being by her side, in our world. A world for just the two of us. A world where we made beautiful noise together, the combined sound resonating into the night.
It wasn’t until a year or two later that I got the violin. Apparently, I wasn’t exactly being subtle with my newfound fascination with music, and my friends took notice. They’d all saved up to get me a violin for Christmas. My parents even agreed to pay for lessons. It was all very touching. I remember my excitement that morning. An indescribable sensation of elatedness washed over me as I played that first note, in front of all the people who cared for me, who worked so hard to do this for me. Never before had I wanted to pursue something more than I did at that moment. I only wish it lasted longer. As you might’ve guessed by now, the sentiment proved to be short-lived, cuz I soon made the mistake of signing up for the recital with that satanic rat.
Y’see, Rat Satan’s fatal flaw is that she’s a perfectionist. She’s also prideful, judgmental, and controlling, but her perfectionism is the root of it all. As soon as I started getting used to my new violin, Rat Satan went and signed us up for some music recital. I remember her raving about a cash prize, and that if we’d won, we’d get to go to a higher-up competition and get a chance to win a bunch of stuff I didn’t care enough to remember, and how with how fast I was learning, there was no way we’d lose. I went along with it. I didn’t care about the renown. All I wanted was to play with her.
We signed up in early spring, and the recital was in winter of that same year. It was one of those Christmas-themed things. Actually, I don’t remember playing anything particularly Christmas-like. The main piece we worked on was a waltz, so I might be misremembering things. It’s been well over half a decade now, and I tend not to wanna suffer through all the individual details of that particular era of my life, so you’ll have to forgive my memory for being a little foggy.
Anyways, it turned out I was pretty alright at the violin. Well, I was as good as any overeager twelve-year-old could be, but my violin instructor always seemed impressed. It wasn’t good enough for Rat Satan. I was always a quarter beat off, or a little flat, or was going too slow or too fast, or whatever other complaint she had at the time. It’s not like anybody would’ve known. I hardly noticed any of her own so-called “silly mistakes” myself, but she’d insist on starting over from the top every single time either one of us made one. Naturally, I was the perpetrator behind most of our do-overs. She always had this, disappointed, condescending tone to it all, as if I were the sole factor keeping her from achieving greatness.
That was the part that pissed me off. It made me realize she didn’t care about playing with me in the slightest. All she wanted was for her to look good. Every action she took was for the sole purpose of making herself look good. She was the valedictorian her graduating year. She interned at a fancy-ass law office. She exerted her dominance over every single girl in the entire school by being the only one to seduce the equally perfect Henry Ramirez. She even convinced an unprecedented seventy-eight point three percent of the student body that she was the best choice for student council president. She approached me to be her treasurer once, but I was wise enough at that point to turn her down. I still remember the dead look of the unfortunate soul who ended up with the job in my place. I heard that she overworked the entire student council, but nobody cared cuz that was supposedly their “most successful year in recent history.” I doubt she had any remorse, regardless.
I could go on and on about all the people who suffered through Rat Satan’s reign of terror, but I’d end up wearing myself out. I have a bad habit of zoning out a lot. Some call me quiet, but if you get me going, I can talk your head off for hours. The problem is, most people don’t care enough about whatever useless shit I have to say. Bagel sits there and listens sometimes, but even he can get sick and tired of it. Also, it’s not like my ability to ramble on and on about absolutely nothing in particular means I have any real social skills. All I know how to do is whine and complain and be mildly sarcastic from time to time.
“…Sunny.”
I’m currently trying to come up with a single instance of when I wasn’t being dismissive or mopey, but I can’t recall anything in recent memory.
“Sunny."
I can’t even remember the last time I actively initiated a conversation with someone.
“Sunny!”
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m–
My thoughts are interrupted by Eggplant throwing a pillow at my face. It’s only then that I remember that I’m in the middle of playing checkers with her.
“Dude, it’s been like, what, ten minutes? Make a move already!”
I remove the pillow from my face. We’re both sitting on opposite sides of her cramped dorm, the red and black board separating us. The dull, white plaster walls are mostly bare, aside from some sparsely placed Captain Spaceboy memorabilia from her old room. That always bugged me. I keep my own walls completely barren, but if you’re gonna put up stuff, don’t just stop at two or three awkwardly-placed posters. She got a single dorm, so she had the whole room to herself, which made it even more noticable. Spaceboy stands there, looming over us, his face tinted slightly by the fading sun. Its orange rays of light shine through the metal bars over her first-floor windows, because society’s supposedly gone to hell already. Generally speaking, the room isn’t very impressive in the slightest. It definitely isn’t worth paying twenty percent more on tuition to live in for less than a year. Makes you hate capitalism. I don’t even know why we’re even playing checkers in the first place. The checkerboard isn’t even ours. She stole it from the student center. She brought nearly all of her stuff over here so there’s plenty to do. There’s a PlayStation not ten feet away from where we’re sitting. Playing checkers makes me feel like some senile old man losing my wits in some retirement community while my offspring slowly wait for me to keel over and die so they can collect that sweet, sweet inheritance.
Speaking of dying, Eggplant might just kill me if I keep her waiting any longer. She’s been glaring at me with this pissed-off look. I slide a piece diagonally along the board.
“Jesus fucking Christ, finally.”
“Sorry. I was just…thinking.”
“Uh-huh.” She hesitates for a moment, as if trying to calculate some 500-IQ master plan for a game of checkers, then moves a red piece across the board. “Anyways,” she continues, “I was asking about your plan.”
I move my own piece and capture one of hers. “My plan?”
She moves and captures three of mine. Shit. “Your plan? For this summer? Were you even paying attention?”
“No, but, uh…” This time it’s my turn to pause, both to contemplate my next words and to formulate some form of strategy to win back a now seemingly hopeless game. “I don’t know. I was planning on doing whatever,” I finally say. I can hear a snort from across the room.
“What?” I respond, sounding a little more annoyed than I intended. Maybe playing checkers is getting to me. I never thought I’d stoop so low to be tilted by a board game other than chess.
“Just please don’t tell me you’re gonna hide inside your house again,” she tells me. Oh. Right.
Summer of senior year. One last stretch of fun before shipping out to college. Three whole months of complete and utter freedom, and this dumbass decided to spend all of them playing League of Legends. I can’t believe I ever let Charlie’s older brother talk me into downloading that game in the first place. I started playing a few weeks after school ended. Rat Satan was off on vacation with her malewife, and my parents work until late, so nobody stopped me. I wasn’t even aware that the summer was over until Shaq literally dragged me out of my room so to hang out one last time.
I start drifting off again. I stare intently at a corner of the checkerboard. It’s slightly chipped. Makes you wonder the exact chain of events that led the board to sustaining the damage in the first place. Everything has to start from somewhere. There’s a finite amount of matter in the universe, after all. It’s weird that a select group of atoms floating around in the primordial soup underwent some wacky chain of events to eventually help form the neurons in my brain that are making me think about those exact same events. Realistically, I know none of this was even remotely occupying your thoughts, but they were invading mine. I guess I’m just a weirdo. I really am nothing like my sister, am I? I’ve heard different things about siblings being similar, or siblings being different, but I’ve never heard a definitive answer. We do have some things in common, though. We’re both good at school, albeit she’s much better than I am. We’re also both, uh… I can’t think of anything else. Just goes to show that I was right after all. I quit most of my activities once I started getting more fed up with Rat Satan, so we don’t even have that in common anymore.
Circling back to the whole stereotype thing, you could say we’re both standard-issue asian kids, albeit two wildly different versions of the stereotype. She’s obviously more of the little-miss-perfect type. As for me, let’s see. I like math and don’t understand books or feelings. I watch anime and read manga. I also don’t have any social skills whatsoever. Basically all traits which can be generalized under the blanket term of “League of Legends Player (Derogatory).” Definitely not the most desirable person out there.
As the timeline of the lives of the zillions of atoms in the multiverse start to creep into the forefront of my mind, I start to consider the infinite alternate timelines of Sunny Suzuki. What about if I was one of those BTS-type K-Pop stars? It’s not too late to still do it. All I have to do is learn to sing and dance, get a more interesting haircut, grow at least another foot–wait, nevermind. I sometimes curse my shortness, but I relish in the fact that I’d be the one to survive in a survival scenario where you’d have to fit into a small vent or something. Mr. Long, Tan, and Handsome wouldn’t make the squeeze. You could also argue that I’d be the one to die a horrible and excruciating death if it was one of those scenarios where you needed to jump and reach high up. I guess size does matter depending on the scenario–
“Not this shit again,” Eggplant moans at me. I quickly move a piece, only to have it immediately taken. “If you don’t wanna play you can just say so.”
“I don’t want to play,” I tell her. She responds by unceremoniously flipping the board and walking over to her bed, flopping down in a huff. Red and black pieces scatter across the room and into the most inconvenient of places.
“I’m not cleaning that up,” she says while pulling out her phone, sprawling out uncomfortably on her mattress. She could’ve been laying her head on a perfectly good pillow had she not chosen the path of violence a few minutes ago. It was still sitting next to me. I considered being nice and giving it to her, but she lost that privilege the moment she upturned the board like she was Jesus F. Christ and I was a tax collector.
As I start to pick up the various scattered pieces, go back to following the alternate universes. I briefly contemplate what my current state would be if I never got over that Slime Girls obsession I had when I was in middle school, but I quickly cut myself off. Nothing good would ever come from that. Best case scenario, I’d be spotted at some weird fetish convention salivating over a rubber body suit of some tentacled aberration. There’s also the version of me if I ended up studying business instead of data science. The thought is frightening. By business, I don’t exclusively mean business majors. They just happen to make up the majority. If you’ve seen one, you know what I’m talking about. Those filthy rich, over-privileged white kids who think they’re hot shit or something. The ones that get into any school they want because their parents pulled a Carmela Soprano. If that were the case, there’s a good possibility I’d wind up in school with Rat Satan, and I couldn’t last four more years of that without hating myself. Scary stuff. What about another timeline? The lowest evolution of Sunny. The exact opposite of BTS Business Major Sunny. A possible future if I never freed myself from Riot Games’ evil hypnosis. The Incel Sunny.
I can see it clearly now. I’d spend all day on Discord, talking to random strangers online while losing brain cells by the picosecond. Half my money would disappear, spent on in-game skins and cosmetics. The other half would go into drinking a six-pack of Orange Joe a day, like Shaq somehow does without keeling over and vomiting all of his innards out of his mouth and onto the nearest surface. I’d call people normies and–wait, am I an incel? Like right now?
What was initially a passing thought soon grows into genuine worry as my brain evaluates the possibility. Mainly cuz I used to complain about ‘normies’ all the time back in high school. I grew out of that phase, but it was still concerning behavior.
Ok, let’s see. By the literal definition, I’m an involuntary celibate, so I’m an incel in that sense of the word. Actually, I’ve never made any effort to pursue a relationship before, so you can’t call it involuntary. I’d just be a normal celibate, then. You could also argue that the lack of effort doesn’t matter. I’m saying it does cuz I don’t wanna think about my future prospects if it turns out I am an incel by the end of this spiel. What I mean is that I wouldn’t be remotely successful in getting a girlfriend, even if I tried. I can’t remember the last time I talked to a girl. You might say it was about three minutes ago, but I’ve known Eggplant since forever. She doesn’t count, even if she does make my guts feel weird sometimes. Aside from her, my life has been devoid of interaction with girls. No Rat Satan either. I make it a point to avoid her at all costs, if it wasn’t already obvious. Mom doesn’t count either.
At least I don’t browse 4chan anymore. I do still unfortunately have Reddit installed on my phone, but I only use it to browse anime stuff. I’m also pretty sure I don’t have any of the other typical incel qualities. I’m generally not out committing hate crimes, I’m not misogynistic, and most importantly, I’m not attracted to children, so considering all of that, I can semi-confidently maybe probably conclude that I’m not an incel. I hope not. I’m grasping at straws at this point. I better get a second opinion about all this.
“Am I an incel?” I ask aloud.
Eggplant finally looks up from her phone, only to stare at me as if I’d just claimed that I was secretly going to clown school in order to pursue my lifelong dream of being in the circus. “You spend fifteen minutes staring at a wall and that’s the first thing you say?” She walks over to pick up her previously discarded pillow.
“Kinda,” I reply, instinctively bracing for impact.
“I guess you are one, then.” She proceeds to bludgeon me with the pillow before walking back to her bed and properly laying down on her back, facing the ceiling, her phone out again. I slide down to the floor and direct my gaze to the LED light fixture to match her.
I’ve noticed she’s been awfully violent as of late. Ever since Shaq went off to who-knows-where to ‘find himself,’ she hasn’t had a proper punching bag, has she? It also doesn’t help that the two of us are like fifty or so miles from everyone for another few months, so I’m the sole target of her violent tendencies. Too bad I’m not a masochist.
Speaking of violent tendencies, I’ve noticed Eggplant has a lot of gamer rage moments. I had my fair share back during my time as a hikikomori, but it never got exceptionally bad. Just a few sALT+F4’s here and there and way too much time spent sharpening my verbal switchblade. I think highly enough of myself that I don’t see myself ever stooping so low and act like she does when she’s playing one of her bang bang shoot shoot games. She can get really bad. I’m surprised she hasn’t canceled herself yet. She’s gotten pretty damn close before, so I suspect it’s only a matter of time until she decides to recreate Pewdiepie’s infamous bridge escapade. I’d probably end up breaking stuff every once in a while. I’ll admit that I have a tendency to do that, like when I broke my violin all those years ago.
I never got a chance to mention that, did I? Eggplant kinda did cut me off earlier. If you aren’t in the know, we never did get to play in that recital. I threw the violin down the stairs that day, the morning of that recital.
We were doing some last-minute practicing. She woke me up at some ungodly hour so we’d have enough time to be sure we would “play at our very best.” It was a Saturday, but that didn’t stop her from waking me up every single morning before school the week before. I dreaded that performance. The amount of pressure was building up too much. I couldn’t take it. My nerves were shot. I couldn’t sleep at night. My dreams of musical bliss were replaced by an endless nightmare of her expectations. She didn’t notice. The sun wasn’t even visible yet. The sky was pitch black. My hand trembled as I pressed down each string. I could hardly focus on the notes on the sheet in front of me. I was so tired. I just wanted that day to be over.
It was only a matter of time before I made another one of my signature “silly mistakes.” The screeching of the violin pierced through Rat Satan’s harmony. She stopped playing. We were already at five do-overs. I knew what was coming next. I didn’t want to hear it again. I bolted out of the room, up the stairs. She came after me, yelling at me to get back in the room and keep playing. I responded by throwing the violin with everything I had. All of my pent-up frustration, all of my anger, went into that throw. It didn’t make it halfway down. It hit the stairs with a resounding crack, rolling down the rest of the way and landing at her feet.
Mad isn’t even close to describing how Rat Satan was. She’d gotten mad before, but in that moment, I was fearful that I’d wind up on one of those true crime documentaries where the older sister slices up her little brother into ever littler pieces and eats him for breakfast. Don’t ask what was going through my head. Bagel was showing me some of his murder mystery books around the time, and I think it was starting to get to me. I used to get into those a lot. I remember one of my favorites was where a couple of dumbass kids killed someone and staged it as a suicide. Too bad I failed to consider that. There’s always next time. I sat there, still as a statue while she went off for what must’ve been ten or so minutes about how I ruined our chance in the spotlight.
It was always about her, wasn’t it? I agree that breaking the violin was a shitty thing to do. I still regret it to this day. Everyone pitched in to get it for me after all, and private music lessons probably hurt my parents’ wallet on top of all of Rat Satan’s stuff, but she never cared about any of that. All she ever cared for was the performance, for the prestige. I remember everyone talking about the event to us while walking around town the weeks leading up to it, so I guess she had even more reason to pummel me to a bloody pulp and desecrate my corpse. I continued to sit there as she went on and on about how I was weighing her down and how I should be grateful that I got a chance to play with her, as if she were some immortal piano deity, and her willingness to perform with me was some great service to the world or something. I’d heard the same rant about a million times.
Some other stuff happened, but that was all like six and a half years ago, so I can’t remember exactly. I know my parents were mad, and I was grounded for a whole month, but that was about it. Everyone was way too understanding about it all, a real testament to their character. Everyone but Rat Satan. She never got over it. She might’ve told me everything was going to be ok, or how there was always next time, but I knew. She still holds a grudge to this day. Here was Sunny, the little brother who couldn’t. Little Sunny showed so much promise with the violin that she jumped at the opportunity to win some stupid competition, and it backfired hard when little Sunny fell off. It’s her fault for not seeing it coming. I’ve been that way with every single thing I’ve ever done. I start it, get decent fast, then always hit a plateau. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me, but it bothered her way too much. It happened so many times and she still had the audacity to act like she didn’t know it was gonna happen again.
That was the last day I touched a musical instrument. Ugh, remembering that day makes me feel like crap. I still don’t know why they were so quick to forgive me for that. Damn, now I’m starting to feel bad for that summer, too. I find myself looking through the photos of all the stuff I missed from time to time. So many memories I missed out on. Camping, days at the beach, it seems like they did it all. It’s not like they didn’t want me there or anything. Shaq knocked on my door every single day without fail, asking me to hang out with them. He went so far as to get my parents to open the door and drag me outside right before I shipped out for college. I’m such a shitty person, aren’t I? I don’t deserve them. I don't know why I have friends to begin with.
Oh.
As much as I hate to admit it, the only reason there exists anyone who even remotely acknowledges my existence is ultimately because of Rat Satan. Yeah, she sucks diarrhea dick in almost every possible way, but I owe her that much. It seems like a weird claim, but, like, think about it. Shaq and Henry have always been our neighbors, but we never interacted with each other until Rat Satan decided to be a fucking simp. I started going outside more often because of that, and that’s when we met Eggplant, who then introduced us to Bagel and eventually her Eggplant posse. Everyone else from high school who knows of my existence knows me through someone else. Even now, in college, I only know people because Eggplant knows them. It’s kinda pathetic.
What I’m trying to say is that without Mari, I’d be another one of those sad, creepy, friendless weirdos who sits in the back of class and doesn’t do anything but sleep and play video games. I mean, I am sad, and creepy, and I do spend way too much time on discord, but I have friends for some reason. I have people to connect to. People to bring me up when I’m not doing so well. People who care about me enough to sit there and listen to my stupidly long tangents. It’s a miracle, but I feel like I take it for granted a lot of the time. I practically ignored all of them for an entire summer to play one of the worst video games in the entire multiverse. Maybe I am an incel after all.
You know what? No. I may be a loser, but I still have a chance. A small, minuscule, fleeting chance. A chance, however unlikely, that I’d be a goddamn fool not to jump at. A chance to prevent the shitty alternate timeline that awaits me if I let myself fall back into the deep abyss. Never again. Gone are the days when I’ll skip out on a hangout because I don’t feel like it, or some other meaningless excuse. I’ve been given a boon. One out of a million losers, with a chance to have a normal life. I’m not satisfied with just that. I can see it now. A new vision unfolding right in front of my eyes. Why settle for something so plain? I’ve been given a gift. I’m totally running with this, you’ll see.
Mark my words. I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that this summer is one to remember.