A/N: This story contains inference of under-age (and unrequited) love, with younger Haru and older Makoto. There are warnings for domestic/child abuse and neglect, emotional trauma, and mentions of self-harm and purging.
The park on the corner was the same every day. The brightly coloured playground and neglected creaky swings never changed. The sky was always bathed in the same golden orange light in the afternoon and the busy sounds of traffic were always gnawing away in the back of his mind. The faces of the children around him may change, but the world was static. The grass never got any greener and Haru never got any closer to making any friends. After a while, his mother seemed to recognise the impenetrable cocoon of loneliness the boy had weaved around himself, constructed from the broken dreams of his childhood and the tattered remains of the failed relationship between him and his parents. When he finally withdrew and stopped talking altogether, she stopped pressuring him into social situations. She had given up on him. It was pointless now anyway. No matter how hard she pressed the issue, he would never be a "normal kid" and he felt like he would never meet up to her expectations.