The late afternoon sun, a tired orange, bled across the urban sprawl, painting the familiar streets in a melancholic glow. Jun trudged homeward, the weight of his schoolbag a familiar burden on his shoulders, but it was the weight of his own thoughts that truly pressed down on him. The clatter of the passing train, the murmur of distant conversations, all faded into a dull background hum as his mind drifted, as it so often did, to 'Haruto'.
Haruto, the effortlessly cool, the perpetually popular, the bane of Jun's somewhat unremarkable existence. A sigh escaped Jun's lips, a mix of exasperation and a grudging, almost shameful, admiration.
Haruto was everything Jun wasn't: athletic, charming, a magnet for attention, especially the female kind. A pang of something akin to jealousy twisted in Jun's gut. Today, Haruto hadn't shown up for school.
