A past to remember

The grand foyer of SMG4’s castle was unusually tranquil. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, casting colorful patterns across the plush carpet. SMG4 himself was slumped on the velvet sofa, his laptop finally closed for the first time in seventy-two hours. Beside him, Tari was focused on her handheld console, the soft pings of her game the only sound in the room. Bob and Fishy Boopkins were arguing in hushed tones about an anime, while Meggy sat on the floor, polishing her Splattershot with a rhythmic, soothing motion. Even Melony was present, curled up in a corner of the sofa, her breathing slow and steady as she drifted in and out of a nap.

"It’s... quiet," SMG4 remarked, his voice echoing slightly in the vast room.

"Too quiet?" Tari asked, looking up with a small smile.

"No, just the right amount of quiet," Meggy said, leaning her head back against the sofa cushions. "Mario’s been gone since eight this morning. He said something about a 'secret spaghetti pilgrimage' in the mountains. Honestly, I’m just glad the castle isn't currently on fire."

Luigi, who was sitting on the far end of the couch nursing a cup of chamomile tea, gave a weak, shaky chuckle. "Yeah. It’s nice to have a break. My heart rate hasn't been this low in weeks."

The peace was absolute. It was the kind of afternoon that felt like a reward for surviving the constant, reality-bending nonsense that followed their red-clad friend like a storm cloud.

Then, the massive flat-screen TV mounted on the wall flickered to life.

Static hissed through the speakers, sharp and jarring. Everyone jumped. SMG4 reached for the remote, clicking the power button frantically. "Hey, what the heck? I didn't turn this on."

"Is it a hack?" Tari asked, her cybernetic eye glowing blue as she tried to interface with the castle's network. "I can't... I can't block it. It’s coming from an external source, but the encryption is... ancient."

The static cleared, revealing a grainy, sepia-toned video.

Luigi’s tea cup hit the floor with a dull thud. The porcelain didn't break, but the liquid soaked into the rug, forgotten. His face went ghostly pale, his eyes widening until they were dinner plates. "No," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "Not this. Not now."

On the screen, a tiny figure appeared. It was a toddler, barely able to walk, wearing a miniature red cap that fell over his eyes. He was playing with a wooden block, humming a disjointed version of a familiar tune. It was unmistakably a very young Mario.

"Aww, look at little Mario!" Boopkins chirped, leaning forward. "He was so cute!"

The sentiment was short-lived. A shadow fell over the child on the screen—a massive, towering silhouette that blotted out the light. Then came the voice. It wasn't the high-pitched, jovial tones of the Mario they knew. It was a deep, guttural roar, vibrating with a cruelty that made the air in the castle feel cold.

"You useless, gluttonous brat!" the voice boomed.

The little Mario on the screen flinched, dropping his toy. He looked up, his lower lip trembling. "P-Papa? Mario sorry..."

What followed was a blur of motion. The camera shook as the large figure lunged. The screen went black for a second, but the audio remained—a sickening thud, followed by a scream. It wasn't a comedic scream, not the "Mama Mia!" they were used to. It was a high-pitched, raw shriek of pure agony and terror.

Meggy stood up, her Splattershot clattering to the floor. "What is this? Stop it! Turn it off!"

"I can't!" SMG4 yelled, his face twisted in horror as he yanked at the cables behind the TV. Nothing happened. The screen remained powered, fueled by something other than electricity.

The footage jumped forward. Mario was older now, perhaps seven or eight. He was sitting in a dark corner, his clothes tattered. He wasn't crying anymore. He was just staring at a wall with hollow, vacant eyes. The vibrant blue of his irises looked washed out, the light behind them extinguished. Every time a door creaked on the screen, he would twitch, a reflexive shudder of a child who expected pain as a constant companion.

"Luigi?" Bob asked, his usual bravado gone. "Yo, Greenie, you know about this?"

Luigi was shaking, his hands buried in his hair. "He told me to never speak of it. He said... he said the 'stupid' was his armor. If he was the funny one, the loud one, the one who didn't care... then the memories couldn't hurt him anymore. He reinvented himself so he wouldn't have to be that boy again."

The crew watched in stunned, heavy silence as the montage continued. They saw Mario growing into a man, his face becoming the one they recognized, but the expression was all wrong. He looked like a ghost haunting his own body.

Then, the scene changed to something strangely familiar.

The screen showed a younger Mario, perhaps from the early days of his arrival in the Mushroom Kingdom. He was sitting alone in a field, away from the castle, away from everyone. In his hands, he held a simple, uncarved melon.

He was cradling it as if it were the most precious thing in the world.

"It’s okay," the Mario on screen whispered, his voice cracking. He stroked the rind of the melon gently. "They’re all busy today. But you’re here. You’re my best friend. I’ll call you... Melony. Yeah. Melony."

He pulled the fruit into a tight hug, burying his face against it. "Thank you for listening to me. You’re the only one who doesn't yell."

In the castle, the real Melony sat bolt upright. Her sleepy haze vanished instantly, replaced by a look of profound shock. Her golden eyes shimmered with unshed tears as she watched the man who would eventually become her creator—her father figure, her friend—finding solace in a piece of fruit because he was too broken to seek it from people.

"He... he gave me a name before I was even me," Melony whispered, her voice trembling.

The footage shifted again, and the atmosphere in the room turned from pity to a crushing weight of guilt.

The screen began to play a rapid-fire sequence of the crew’s recent interactions with Mario. It showed SMG4 screaming at him, calling him an idiot, and kicking him out of the castle. It showed Meggy using him as a literal punching bag during "training" sessions, her face contorted in annoyance. It showed Bob and Boopkins pranking him until he cried, and the others laughing at his expense.

It showed Mario standing in the middle of a room while they all circled him, throwing insults like stones. On the screen, Mario was laughing, playing the part of the buffoon, but the camera zoomed in on his eyes—the same hollow, extinguished eyes of the little boy in the dark corner.

He wasn't in on the joke. He was surviving it.

The video showed a specific moment from a week ago: Mario had tried to show SMG4 a drawing he had made, and SMG4 had snatched it, crumpled it up, and thrown it in the trash without looking, telling him to go do something useful. The camera lingered on Mario’s face after SMG4 walked away. The smile didn't just fade; it collapsed.

Meggy felt like she couldn't breathe. She looked at her hands, the same hands that had knocked Mario into walls for "comedic effect." "We... we did that. We knew he was sensitive, but we just... we treated him like he couldn't feel anything."

"I called him a burden," SMG4 said, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. He sat back down, his legs giving way. "I told him the world would be better if he just stopped being himself for five minutes."

Melony turned to look at them, and for the first time, there was no warmth in her gaze. It was a look of deep, cutting disappointment. "He loves you," she said, her voice steady despite the tears rolling down her cheeks. "He loves all of you more than anything. And you treated him like the man in the first video did."

"No!" Tari cried, clutching her chest. "We’re not like that! We’re his friends!"

"Are we?" Bob asked softly. The trash-talking garbageman actually sounded somber. "Look at the screen, Tari. Does that look like a guy hanging out with his friends?"

The TV suddenly cut to a bright, colorful commercial for a brand of spaghetti sauce, the upbeat jingle clashing violently with the funereal silence of the room.

The transition was so jarring it felt like a slap. The crew sat in the flickering light of the advertisement, the loud music bouncing off the walls, but no one moved to mute it. They were frozen in the sudden, agonizing clarity of their own actions.

Luigi was the first to speak, his voice thick with a lifetime of suppressed grief. "He never complained. Not once. He’d get beaten up, insulted, thrown away... and the next morning, he’d walk in with a plate of spaghetti and a joke, just to see if he could make us smile."

"Because he knows what happens when there’s no smiling," Meggy said, her voice cracking. She looked at the TV, where a cartoon chef was dancing. "He was protecting us from the darkness he grew up in, and we used that light to blind him."

SMG4 stared at the trash can in the corner of the room, the one where he had thrown Mario's drawing. He felt a physical ache in his chest, a knot of regret so tight it made it hard to swallow. He had spent so much time worrying about his channel, his views, and his "perfect" characters that he had treated the heart of his world like a disposable prop.

"We have to fix this," Tari said, her voice small but determined. "We have to tell him. We have to show him he’s not... he’s not that boy in the corner anymore."

"How?" Boopkins asked, wiping his eyes with his flippers. "How do you apologize for years of that?"

"You start by being better," Melony said, standing up. She walked over to the TV and placed a hand on the glass, right over the spot where Mario’s face had been. "And you never, ever let him feel alone again."

The commercial ended, and the screen went black, leaving the crew in the dim afternoon light. The silence was no longer peaceful. It was heavy, expectant, and filled with the ghosts of a thousand "jokes" that weren't funny anymore.

In the distance, the heavy front doors of the castle creaked open.

"It’s-a me!" a boisterous, muffled voice called out from the hallway. "Mario is back! And I found a rock that looks like a butt! Hey, why is it so dark in here? Did someone die?"

The sound of his footsteps—clumsy, heavy, and familiar—approached the foyer. Usually, this was the moment where someone would tell him to shut up or complain about his nonsense.

This time, no one said a word. They just waited, their hearts breaking in unison, as the man who wore a mask of joy stepped into the light.