Haru's POV.

Haruko Itsumokoshi was the kind of boy you’d almost miss in a crowd — not because he wasn’t beautiful, but because he didn’t ask to be seen. He walked softly through life, always half in a daydream, as if he existed slightly to the left of reality. Quiet, thoughtful, and gentle in the way falling leaves are gentle, Haru lived his life in observation rather than declaration.

From a young age, he preferred silence to noise. Words were messy things, often inadequate. But pencils? Colors? Sketches left in the corners of used notebooks? Those spoke volumes. He drew everything: the way sunlight broke through the classroom window, the curve of a stranger’s smile on a train, the pain in his mother’s eyes she thought she hid well. Haru felt things deeply — maybe too deeply — but kept his emotions tucked in the lining of his clothes like folded secrets.

He never thought much of volleyball.

Sports were loud. Boisterous. About winning. About dominance. None of that spoke to him.

But then came Shouzai Sky.

The energetic prodigy. The "Sun." Everyone's favorite. Haru saw him in a televised match once — a spike so high, so fast, it didn’t look human. Shoyo was energy incarnate, a firework in constant bloom. He was everything Haru wasn’t: bright, bold, adored.

Haru watched all of his matches after that. Maybe at first it was admiration. Or escapism. Maybe it was a yearning to be seen by someone like that, to shine like that, even if only for a second.

But then... something changed.

It wasn’t the spike that caught Haru’s breath one afternoon.

It was the set.

Precise. Timed to a breath. Beautifully silent in a world that screamed for noise.

For the first time, Haru noticed the other one. The quiet one.

Shinzai Sky.

Everyone else was still clapping for Shoyo. But Haru leaned closer to the screen, wondering who this boy was — this ghost of a twin who made brilliance possible and was never thanked for it.

He found him, eventually. On a rooftop.

Shin wasn’t trying to be found. But Haru had a way of finding broken things. And maybe Shin wasn’t broken, not yet — just dimmed, dulled by the constant shadow of his brother’s shine.

They didn’t speak much at first. Haru would sketch clouds; Shin would sit beside him, silent and folded inward. Eventually, a conversation started, like the quiet drip of a faucet into still water. One drop. Then another.

Haru hadn’t meant to fall for him.

But there was something about the way Shin’s hands hovered before setting a ball, like a pianist about to play. Something about how Shin flinched when called “the other one,” yet said nothing. Something about how he never looked surprised when people forgot his name, only tired.

Haru fell slowly. Steadily.

Like red pencil lead tracing a line across a blank page.

They held hands once. Shin flinched, but didn’t pull away. They kissed on the rooftop — barely a brush of lips, unsure and shaking, but real. Haru finally felt like someone’s center. Shin felt like home.


𖤐ᝰ.ᐟ𖦹+⊹

Then came Kairo.