But Ivan simply wouldn’t let her be. The next morning, he found himself in front of Poire’s home—and the mornings that came after that day, too, were the same.

Poire did her best to push away his friendship, and by that she meant not giving him her slice of pie anymore during recess hours. Yet, much to her dismay, Ivan was not going away. And as the days went on, he eventually asked her if he could stop by once more, with the words, “I had a lot of fun last time.”

And how could such a lonely girl as Poire turn down a lonely boy such as Ivan, when he had asked her so nicely?

Perhaps, she thought, both my sister and I were wrong. Maybe Ivan simply wanted to make a good impression and got carried away. After all, he wouldn’t do all this just to see her again, right? He must care about me somewhere in his heart. Right?

Poire nodded. “Of course,” she said. “When are you free?”

“Today?”

“Oh.” Poire gulped. “T-that’s a bit sudden,” she said, wondering how it was that each time he picked a day, it was always when her sister happened to be home.

Ivan’s smirk wilted into a frown. He cocked his head to the side. “Is that no good?” he asked.

Poire quickly shook her hands, along with her head, and said, “N-no. Of course not. I was just…surprised, that’s all.”

“Then…” Ivan pushed their tables closer together. Poire’s strawberry milk fell over and dripped onto the floor. “How about we stop by the library before?” he asked her. “You like books, right?”

She let out an awkward laugh. “Of course, but… Y-you do too, don’t you?”

Ivan rested his chin against his open palm. He tapped his fingers against his jaw. “This isn’t about me, though,” he said. “It’s about you.”

Poire felt stupid when she heard his statement. Maybe I really did doubt a genuinely nice person, she thought. Maybe I was just being jealous.

And Annabelle’s always been overprotective anyway.

“Thanks, Ivan.” As she felt a blush crawl up her neck, and giddy butterflies dancing around her stomach, Poire looked down to her shoes. However, her sensation of joy did not last as long as she would have liked it to, for Poire quickly took notice of the strawberry milk that had tainted her desk’s leg. Her eyes went wide. She gasped and glanced back to the classroom’s clock. Recess was about to meet its end, and soon, she would too if she did not hurry up with cleaning up this mess.

It had been a while since Poire had felt submerged by feelings she had yet to understand, and as she glanced to her trembling fingers, listening to the rattling of her heart banging against her rib cage, she could see it again—the forest.

The lemur called out to her. “You must return,” he said. “This place is turning into ashes without you, girl. You must—”

But the warmth of another’s skin on hers erased her vision of terror. “Are you okay?” Ivan asked as he wrapped his palms around Poire’s. “If you’re worried about the milk, it’s fine, I’ll clean it up. It was my fault anyway,” he said.

Poire’s lip quivered in shame. The bell was ringing, and the others would be back any second now. “I-I can’t let you do that!” Poire cried. “W-what if they catch you? What if you get in trouble for—”

He chuckled. “It’s fine, I want to do it. And besides…” Ivan stuck out his tongue in a cheeky grimace as he grabbed a napkin and began to dab the dark wood. “I’m still kind of new,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll go easy on me if I’m caught.” Looking at Poire from below, he grinned again. “So, meet you at the gates after school, then?”

And that was that.

As much as she had tried to fight it over the past few weeks—Poire could deny it no longer.

She was smitten.

Smitten with Ivan Marnon and all that he was.