At this point, Tao was sitting on his school’s roof, having long since given up on trying to read all the emails that were taking up space in his inbox. He still had a bit more time for lunch, so he had decided to come to the roof to eat the sandwich he had with him. Munching away and staring at the clear blue sky, Tao let his mind wander, specifically wandering to the topic of what his time in high school had been like.

Despite the stress school constantly gave him with grades and too many assignments with too little time, Tao had to admit that from an academic standpoint, he actually was pretty good there. He always did rather well in school, and if he did happen to struggle he always managed to catch up one way or another. The class that gave him the most issues and had consistently remained his lowest grade was English, but that was more from trying to figure out what each teacher per year wanted than him not understanding the subject entirely (he swore to hold an eternal grudge against the Modern Language Association for changing their formatting pretty much every single year because apparently they liked to mentally torment students). However, even though the academic side of school had never truly been an issue for Tao, the social side of things was another story.

To be blunt, Tao was not popular. He never has been, and he’s pretty sure he never will be. At the same time, if he were to draw the social hierarchy of high school as a ladder, Tao would honestly place himself at the middle. Not popular, but not at the status of the kids you see in movies who have their lunch trays shoved into their faces or be slammed into lockers. No, if anything, Tao would describe himself to be a ghost more than anything else.

Not hated, but seriously ignored to the point where it was almost like he wasn’t there. And while it could’ve been worse, it would be a rather bold lie to say that he never felt lonely.

Thinking about it, Tao didn’t really know why his social standing was what it was. It was strange, honestly it was. He liked plenty of video games, he enjoyed certain anime and manga, he was athletic, and he was at a good place academically. Shouldn’t those things make it so that his existence was at least acknowledged?

Or was his personality at fault? He knew that he tended to be one of the louder people and that whenever he got really into a topic that he was prone to rambling on about it. He also knew that he could be petty to an extent and overdramatic (his family, his parents in  part