Epiphany

Kiyo was winter. Haru was the first day of spring.

Kiyo had always belonged to the city. Everyone knew Kiyo, not because they loved him; because they had already decided what he was.

The boy who never smiled. The boy who fought too often. Haru was everything Kiyo was not. He came from somewhere far away - from streets lined with old buildings and little cafés, from a life spoken in another language, from a childhood where the world seemed impossibly larger than this city.

They laughed at his accent. They teased him when he searched for the right words. They treated his difference like something embarrassing. But Haru only tilted his head, confused. Because he had never understood why people cared so much about things that did not matter. A few people refusing to understand him could not make him smaller. And perhaps that was why Kiyo hated him at first. Because Haru carried something Kiyo had spent years trying to bury.

Hope.