Warmth of the sunlight

At school, I tried to sit as far away from other ponies as possible during lunch break. I didn’t plan to make any friends in the first place, so I didn’t mind the silence.

Then suddenly, another mare sat down right in front of me. I didn’t know her.

“Hey, you are the one who moved into the haunted house, right?” Asked the strange mare.

I nodded.

Her name was Pinkie Pie, a sophomore. At first I was simply answering her questions. She didn’t look like a bad pony, more like some pony who enjoyed making friends and can actually have fun with life.

We became “friends” from that day. I didn’t actually consider her as a true friend because all we do is go shopping together, or when I need to go to the other side of the town for some business, she would come and drive me there with her adorable small pink mini cooper.

Pnkie was popular. She always hosts the best parties, and every pony would come and have fun. I would go because we are “friends” after all, but I would usually sit down quietly and just read. Pinkie knew that I don’t drink alcohol, so she never forced me to. She was always surrounded by people, laughing and having fun. Every time when every pony’s attention shifted to some stupid drinking game invented by Pinkie, I would leave the party quietly. I have no interest to join them. Instead of sitting there and watch a bunch of half-drunk ponies making a fool out of themselves, I would rather sit on a quiet bench and watch the body of a cat rot. I always enjoyed being alone. Pinkie’s friends were all active and they always smile and laugh. They have money, they have hope, and they were always active. It almost felt like they are some pony from an alternative universe.

I felt like a lower creature when I compare myself to them. In fact, my odd ponyality and my looks had made me the laughing stock of them. Because I only talk when I absolutely have to, they thought that I was a cruel and emotionless pony.

One day they did a little “experiment”. They were in the hall way of a building, and they told me,

“Hey Dan, we gotta something to do, but we’ll be right back. Just wait here for us okay?”

I nodded in silence and they left, every pony including Pinkie. I sat down on the bench alone, reading book while I waited for them to come back. The room became quiet as I waited. I looked at the clock. It had been at least an hour since they had left. Even though I felt a bit uneasy, I still waited and read the book for another hour.

Then only Pinkie came back. She looked at me with emotions that were too complex to read,

“It was a prank, no matter how long you wait those guys won’t come back. They sat really far away and watched you, and they got really bored and left.”

“Really.” I said without any emotions, closed my books and decided to go home.

“Aren’t you upset? They treated you like a freak and wanted to see you act upset.”

It has happened to me a lot of times, and I really don’t care.

“I don’t mind, I am used to this.”

I left Pinkie alone standing there and walked away. I could feel Pinkie’s eyes gazing upon my back.

I knew that I couldn’t fit in them in the first place. They possess something that I could never obtain. So after talking to them, I could only lie down alone and chew on the hopeless with a heart that was filled with something close to hatred.

No, not just to them. I hate and curse everything. Things especially like the sun, blue sky, flowers, singing. I always focus on hating these, and think of ponies who walk around with a smile as a mentally challenge retard. To hate and hide away from this world is the only way I could find comfort.

But Sunny’s photos were completely different. Her photos showed an attitude of accepting and loving everything. From the photo she took of the college, this house, or the park, I could feel that her life was indeed like the sunshine. The photo of her cats and neighbor’s children were all filled with happiness and joy. I have never seen a single photo of Sunny before, but I could imagine her walking around town with a camera, and fillies jump at her asking her to take a photo.

If we both see the same view, I think my eyes would be caught onto a completely different side, I thought. Sunny’s soul had chosen the bright side, and she covered her vision with happiness pure and soft like cotton candy. But I couldn’t do it, I could only see the shadow of the dark side (Author: DUN DUN DUN). I think the world is cold, strange, unsatisfying. But I am still alive, and she was murdered.

I played a little while with kitten and felt better. I suddenly remembered Pinkie. Her friends left me there hanging, but she did come back to get me. Because of this, we still remained friends. We hung out as usual, going to parties and shopping together. The only difference, when she was surrounded by friends and saw me leaving, she would quietly leave the crowd and come after me too.

“Next time can I go to your house?”

I refused her request gently. I don’t want any pony to come to my house. I don’t want her to see the everyday strange things and lose my only so called “friend”.

Every day in the morning, the curtain will be opened by Sunny. I picked a room facing north as my bedroom on purpose so I don’t have to see the sunshine. But even though, the room will become bright once the curtains were opened. Sadly, I had to give up my plan to close the curtains and live in the darkness. No matter how hard I try to get rid of the light in my room, in just a few seconds, the curtains will be opened when I am not looking. After repeating the same thing a few times, I gave up. Looks like Sunny was determined on this.

At night when I lie inside the bed, I could always hear ponies moving in the hall way. I could hear hoofsteps in the darkness, coming from down stairs and disappeared in Sunny’s old bedroom. Surprisingly, I was not scared at all.

I couldn’t see Sunny, but when I wasn’t watching, the dishes will be cleaned. Or the bookmark in the book would skip ahead a few pages. I haven’t cleaned my room forever, but it’s still clean as if some pony cleans them everyday. It must’ve been Sunny. At first I felt strange when I feel some pony besides me living here, but soon I got used to it, and eventually I completely forgot about it.

The white kitten lied on the bed with his eyes closed. He was napping with his favorite shirt underneath him. He played with something, or some pony rather, I couldn’t see a lot. I stare in the direction he looked at, but I couldn’t see anything.

We had a lot of conflicts. When I moved in, Sunny had a lot of cat-shaped decorations on the top of her TV. But I couldn’t stand having any stuff above the TV at all, so I put them away. But the next day, they were there again. I did the same thing again a few times, but they kept reappearing.

“Putting stuff on the TV, that’s just stupid! If the TV moves, they would fall right? And they are distracting when you watch TV too.”

I said to the empty room, but I knew Sunny was listening. However, she didn’t really listen to me. My effort was in vain.

When I play music that I like, she would be annoying. When I use the bathroom and come back, I would find the CD being replaced by some classical cello or piano piece. Such bitter interests.

One day I was woken up by the sound of knives chopping. I went downstairs and found the breakfast ready on the table. When I came back from school, I went upstairs and put my backpack down in my room. When I came back downstairs, I would see a cup of fresh made coffee on the dining table. Sunny’s existence was that obvious.

But it was only a result. The coffee wasn’t made in front of my eyes. It appeared suddenly when I wasn’t looking. I was curious how did Sunny move the cup from the shelf to the table, did she roll it around or did it float in the air. But it’s the thought that counts.

Besides, it appeared that she was limited inside the house. When it’s time to take out the trash, the garbage bag would appear at the front door, packed nicely in a thick plastic bag.  It looked like she couldn’t go outside.

One day, the empty coffee can appeared on the table. “Ah, want me to go buy some more?” I thought, understanding her intensions, so I did.

Was Sunny a ghost? I know so, but it never felt like it. She never tried to scare me, or tell me how much pain it was to die. She didn’t appear half-transparent like ghosts in other stories, just silently and peacefully living her life like before. Instead of a ghost, I would rather say she haven’t got the time to become god yet.

Even though I couldn’t see, sometimes Sunny would make me feel warm inside. But I never mentioned the existence of her or the kitten to any pony.

One day I was going shopping in Pinkie’s car. The pink mini cooper was running smoothly down the country yard, and soon we drove past the small lake my uncle was talking about.

“I’ve heard some pony had drowned in there.” I said.

Pinkie’s smile suddenly disappeared. “Yeah… I knew him personally. He was a great friend of mine.” Pinkie held the steering wheel in her hooves, but it seemed that her mind had slipped. The car slowed down and stopped on the side of the road, and Pinkie closed her eyes.

“We had been friends since I was just a filly. The last day we spent together, we had a little… fight. I accidently drank too much, and said some hurtful words. The second day he was found dead in the lake. According to the police, he fell in when he was drunk. I wanted to apologize to him, but that’s impossible now. I would give anything to just see him once more…and tell him how sorry I was…”

Pinkie’s eyes turned a little red.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Pinkie closed her eyes and rubbed her cheeks, “nothing, just got some sand in my eyes.” She lied and said, “Even though you two looked different, but he was a lot like you. He wasn’t good at chatting, so he gave up and decided to shut himself away from the entire world. He never thought this world could be nice or happy.”

Maybe that was the reason why he didn’t force others to drink. I went home and looked through the newspapers Sunny had collected, hoping to find some more information. I had also walked to the lake from time to time, hoping to see his ghost just like Sunny’s.

One day I came home and found my shirts washed and dried. I didn’t remember dong any of this, so I assumed Sunny did them for me. She cleaned them and hung them outside. I watched my white shirt outside in the wind, flipping and flying.

In the little garden there had been green grass growing. Sunny was taking care of them when I didn’t notice. In fact, it was the first time I realized that there were actually still living plants in my backyard.

Sunny liked plants. There were always some flowers in the vase, and there were flowers on my desk as well. I used to think these kind of actions ridiculous, to me flowers were just annoying things that block my sight. But I could imagine Sunny placing fresh flowers into the vase, and surprisingly I could accept her actions.

What was she really doing? She seemed to have a lot of time, and sometimes she would trick me. She would tie my four shoes together and make me frustrated, or flipped the calendar to the next month before this one is over. Sometimes she would put the remote into my backpack. I have no idea she was doing.

Once when I was making cup noodles, she hid all the spoons and folks. I looked all over the place but couldn’t find any. In the end, I had to use two pencils like chopsticks so that my noodles wouldn’t be soft and sloppy.

The kitten would sit next to me when these things happen, looking up at me like I was an idiot. In fact, I was. I could feel the invisible Sunny right next to me, laughing her flanks off at these small pranks. The kitten always followed her, so I could kind of tell where Sunny was. The kitten to Sunny was like the bell on the collar.

“What you are doing wasn’t like a ghost at all, do something scary once in a while.” I said to the empty room jokingly.

The second day my desk had a piece of paper on it. The paper was filled with words like “It hurt so much”, “Why am I dead!”, “I feel so lonely” or “I’LL KILL YOU!” but she stopped half way through. In the end she wrote “I want ramen too D:” That was the first letter she wrote me, so I kept it.

(Author: Ramen, not the crappy cup noodles, the actual noodles with actual shrimp, actual veggies and actual mushroom. I was lucky to have tried it once, and it was so good that I accidently bit off part of the wooden chopsticks. It was THAT good, I promise.)

After that I didn’t talk much with Sunny, but I felt like I could understand her without even talking, which was amazing. Every Sunday night, the light of the kitchen would be turned on when I wasn’t looking. And the radio would be turned on, playing some show.

There was a night where I couldn’t go to sleep. It was windy outside. I listened and heard the sound of radio. I decided to get up and go downstairs. I could see the light from the kitchen and the small blue radio. For some reason, I felt strangely calm.

Sunny was listening to the radio, but the kitten wasn’t here, maybe he was sleeping with the shirt. But even though he wasn’t here, I could feel that Sunny was right there, listening to the radio. The radio was on and quiet, and the chair next to it was slightly pulled out.

I suddenly had this vision of her sitting right there, holding out her hoof to support her chin, and listening to the radio while shaking her other leg. In fact, I didn’t see anything at all, but the vision felt so real and calm.

I sat down next to her and closed my eyes. The wind outside became stronger, but my heart was calm like a summer night. I tried to hold out my hoof to where Sunny was. I touched nothing but air, but I felt warmth. Maybe that’s the body heat of Sunny.