Like many great wall-flowered youths, I was a creature of the shadows. A childhood of less traveled paths, unconventional friendships, and what many called a grim outlook on my future—which I argued was the bitter truth in realism that others failed to accept. It was never easy, as one might imagine, being the afterthought of people's lives, constantly living under the radar of fellow peers under the guise of acquaintances or classmates. And it certainly was never easy being the shadow to Icarus Melgren, to which we had become close friends under peculiar circumstances.

Icarus was the antithesis of everything I was not: charming, extroverted, social, outgoing; the list goes on. He shone as bright as the sun, eclipsing everything and everyone he interacted with—especially me. A trait that I both despised and admired—more so the latter. We were equals, he told me, on opposite sides of the spectrum—as opposite as the sun is to the moon and more different than alike; and yet, we had been friends throughout our youth, growing up side by side as best friends do, with little hiccups to uncover. 

Hiccups that I had learned were mountains, in retrospect. It was clear that despite my low profile, I was not well masked away from young people's troubles regarding their feelings and emotions toward others. Fancying someone, dreaming of a future together, unthinkable thoughts were not something Icarus and I could escape.

But our fancies and attentions were not reciprocated toward ourselves; no, it was a tumultuous spiral that had been the labyrinth of our first years of adulthood. A time in which Icarus Melgren fell in love with the sun—a sun that shone brighter than he himself in his eyes—a man by the name of Elion Montague.

Elion was a labyrinth that not even Icarus could navigate.

But I wasn't the only one entangled in a labyrinth of my own, a web of complexities and intricacies that was my emotions and feelings for Icarus himself. Twists and turns riddled our childhood that only exploded into greater obstacles I could never overcome. 

I could not say whether these feelings were truly under the scope of love or whether it was adoration, jealousy, or something indescribably more—but what I did know was that Icarus was either the sea or sun that would be my demise. 

Just as Elion Montague would be his.