Just A Little Bit Shy

Perfect. Perfectly Shy - 2

Haru Ahane woke to the sun gently caressing his face. It beamed through his bedroom window and bathed his surroundings in warm, inviting light. His lips stretched into a wide smile as he recalled what day it was.

A school day.

Call Haru strange, but he loved school. He swung his legs over the side of his bed, a song caught in the hum of his throat; in the mouthing of his lips. The smile never left his lips during his entire morning routine of showering, dressing, and styling his hair until it was perfect. Not one lock out of place. Haru couldn't have that, after all. He always needed to look his best. Especially for school.

A knock sounded at the bathroom door (a common occurrence when Haru took up too much time in here).

"Honey," his mother called out from the other side, "breakfast is ready. You should eat it while its hot."

"Yes, Mom," Haru replied, looking over himself one more time in the mirror.

He checked out his best angles — he needed to be sure he looked better than good. Once he was satisfied, he mercifully left the bathroom and sat down to enjoy breakfast with his Mom. She was eating with one hand and checking the news on her phone with the other. She always checked the traffic before she headed out. She had a long commute after all.

Once breakfast was eaten and the dishes soaked, Haru headed out for the day, bag over one shoulder. Immediately he was met with Sara and Kei, his two closest friends. They always waited for each other at the end of the street.

Sara gave a distracted, "Morning, Haru," while scrolling through her phone with knitted brows.

Kei, unlike his friends, was not a morning person and the heavy eye bags underneath his dark eyes were prominent. He yawned and gave a lazy two-finger wave to Haru. Kei ended up trailing behind him and Sara by a good few feet.

"What's up?" Haru asked Sara, gesturing from her to her phone.

Sara bit her lip, "Ugh nothing! Yua is not answering her phone again. I swear if she sleeps in and misses morning classes for the millionth time this year, she might finally be expelled."

Haru laughed — which earned him a vicious slap on the shoulder.

"Don't laugh!" Sara scolded him. "This is serious."

"You're right, I'm sorry," Haru acted throughly chastised, hiding his further chuckles behind his hand.

Honestly, he was relieved it was one of those days Yua didn't join them on their walk to school. Yua was a good girl, but her crush on him was bothersome to deal with on a daily basis.

Still, that didn't mean they remained three for very long. Emica, a friend of Yua's, joined them, having been practically adopted by Sara who was in love with Emica's bottle-blond hair. There was Minoru, too, the poor boy in Haru's class that had been pining after Sara since first year.

This was how Haru woke up every day and walked to school: surrounded by friends, warmth, and light hearts.

Everyone loved him. Haru's peers loved him because he was friendly and cute. His teachers loved him because he was polite and hardworking. His parents loved him because he was accomplished and driven. Haru could only be described with good adjectives.

He was like the sun, inevitably pulling everyone around him into his brilliant and warm orbit. And it showed.

It showed in the way he was the center of the group, Sara looping her arm through his, enthusiastically chewing his ear off about the upcoming school festival. It showed in the way the others always had their eyes on him; their pace matching his pace; their ears attuned to his every word.