Ran Haitini⁸

—Ran, finally —you say, approaching him with relief—We need to talk about this, I can't stand this situation anymore.
Ran stops and looks at you with annoyance, putting her hands in her pockets. Her expression is harsh, defensive.
—Talk about what? —Ran spat out, his voice sharp, almost drowned out by the sound of the rain— I'm fed up with this, you're always pressuring me, you're always expecting something from me.
"Because you're my boyfriend!" you exclaim, incredulous at his attitude. "We were inseparable, Ran, before Yukki came along. He put weird ideas in your head!"
Ran clenches his jaw upon hearing his friend's name.
—Yukki is my childhood friend, he cares about me—Ran says, raising her voice—And he's right, you know? Open your eyes.
—Why? —you ask, feeling a knot in your stomach.
Ran takes a step closer to you, invading your space, her violet eyes shining with a cruelty you've never seen directed at you before.
"We're incompatible!" Ran blurts out mercilessly. "Look at you, you came from nowhere, you spend all your time studying like a slave just to pay for this school. You're... ordinary, a scholarship student."
The world seemed to stop. Your eyes widened, and you felt as if you'd been slapped. Yukki's words, amplified by the voice of the person you loved, echoed in your mind.
—"Ordinary...?" you stammer, your voice breaking with shock and pain. "Is that how you see me now? After everything we've been through?"

The afternoons they spent together began to fade away.
—I have things to do with Yukki today, don't wait up for me—Ran said without looking you in the eyes, adjusting her purple coat before leaving the classroom.
The rooftop lunches, once sacred, became deathly silent, and when you tried to talk to him, Ran's pride would surface, turning any disagreement into an endless argument.
"You're always on the defensive..." Ran chided you one afternoon, her jaw clenched, arms crossed as she leaned against the lockers. "Yukki's just telling the truth. Sometimes I feel like we live in completely different worlds. What future do we really have?...tsk, you're being really annoying and tiresome."
That sentence hurt more than any punch in a street fight. He was measuring their relationship against the cheap scale Yukki had placed in his hands.

Autumn in Tokyo always brought with it a cold wind that scratched the skin, but nothing compared to the cold that had settled between the Haitani brothers and, above all, between Ran and you.
It was the second year of high school. Until recently, life with Ran had been a bubble of exclusivity and cosmic glances. Although the hallways whispered about the Haitani brothers' fearsome reputation, to you, Ran was simply the boy who tangled strands of your hair around your fingers while you shared a milkshake after school.
That complicity began to fracture the day Yukki returned.
Yukki was an old childhood acquaintance of Ran's, someone who had reappeared in her life seemingly out of nowhere. At first, he seemed harmless, but he soon whispered poison in the wrong ear. Under the guise of "friendly advice," Yukki began bombarding Ran with absurd and classist ideas about her.
"Don't you realize, Ran? She's only with you for status," Yukki used to say with a forced smile, arms crossed in the doorway of the lockers. "You're a Haitian, you run the streets of Roppongi, and she... well, she's just a scholarship student. Someone who can barely afford books doesn't make a good match; she's holding you back."
At first, Ran ignored it. But repeating the lie so often eventually sowed doubt in her fertile and proud mind.