Even if I wasn't walking barefoot through the woods in a flimsy nightgown, I still wouldn't like the forest. Call it my weakness as a human being or plain stubbornness, but even the growing throbbing sensation in my feet couldn't push away the memories of a boy who held the forests in his eyes. No matter how much I shook my head or tried to hum a tune, wandering out here all alone kept brining me back to the past.

Thinking on it, the human mind is really fickle. Here I was lost, alone and in attire that was entirely unsuitable for a forest walk and all I could do was think about him. Not to mention how foolish my earlier plan of finding someone to fix the mix up that happened was when I was in the middle of nowhere. And the more I walked, the harder it was to ignore those thoughts when there was nothing to distract me from them.

So I walked and I walked and with that action came memories that not even my sister Leyla knew about.

His name was Faris. It was a heroic name which meant knight. When were still children, a part of me must have regarded him to be as great as the knights within the pages of my family's library. Looking back, it was especially idiotic when I considered how neither of us really had control over our fates.

Faris was born the mortal son of the Governor of Ward Fifteen. Yet even if he did not possess the strength and abilities of his siblings, he was never the sort to bow his head. Yet, that I came to know him was a matter of pure circumstance and happenstance. For we were born on the same year. Furthermore, there was no other human child from the Governor's family or her favored human clans with children in our year.

So whether our personalities matched or not, as children we were always grouped together. To be completely honest, when I first knew him, I didn't like him at all. Faris was too loud, too quick to fight the other kids, too much of a showoff and too everything. In those days, I was never sure if he much cared for me either, but we both continued to be around each other because the alternative meant we'd be spending the majority of our free-time alone.

Once in the fourth grade, he got detention for punching another boy in our class square in the face. I remember because I was sitting at my desk, copying down nursery rhymes that I had to memorize before I walked home from school. As I wrote, I hummed the tune to the rhyme while tapping my uniformed shoe against the rug of our classroom to help me remember the words without looking at my notes.

Then a loud crash made me drop my pencil and look up. All other chatter in the classroom also stopped as everyone looked at Faris standing over a much more well-liked boy in our class. Walking here in this forest far away from home, I couldn't recall the boy's name. Yet, I still remembered the words Faris told him that day.

He stood over the other boy's fallen body and said, "It was just one punch. Don't tell me you're all talk and no bite, unable to get up from being hit once."

"That's it." The other boy got up and tried to jump Faris, but the difference in ability was apparent when Faris only had to side-step to avoid the boy's clumsy moves.

Looking at them I frowned. Everyone knew that even if he was still human, Faris still trained with his siblings at home. There's no way a normal person would be able to win, so why were they fighting? Looking around, none of the boy's numerous friends did anything to help either. They just stopped and stared, a disgusting excitement in each and every one of their eyes.

It was the first time I learned that people could take pleasure in the suffering and pain of others in much the same way that they enjoyed a play or song. It was enough to make me want to vomit so I looked away and back at the "fight." It wasn't a real fight by any means. The other boy kept on trying to punch Faris, but Faris kept dodging and moving while taunting the boy.

If the teacher walked in and saw this, both of them would get detention, no matter who Faris' mom was. The boy and his friends then might take revenge on me if I didn't have Faris to walk home with me. My heart sunk at that prospect, so even though I'd get in trouble for standing out, I slammed both my hands on my desk, forcing everyone in the room—even Faris and the boy—to turn and look at me.

Just think of it like practice for a play.

With that thought, I took a deep breath and imitated my mom's scolding face. "You're being too loud. Some of us are trying to enjoy our free time."

By luck, the teacher, a human woman who's brother was mated to one of the governor's guards, walked in. As if sensing the awkward atmosphere, she put down her stack of books, notes and papers on her desk, paused and looked around. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing," Faris said, for once keeping his mouth shut.

Just as I breathed a sigh of relief, however, the other boy began weeping. Not just small tears, but big ugly crying while pointing at Faris. "Teacher, he was mean to me and hit me."

My jaw fell open. Although I wasn't sure why Faris hit him, this was the first time Faris had ever picked a fight with someone so obviously weaker than him. Even if by some weird stroke of events, Faris had lost his few remaining strands of sanity and hit him for no reason, why would the other boy just cry like that? Didn't he have any sense of shame? Even at that young age, I couldn't understand the other boy's reasoning for crying such obvious crocodile tears.

As my young mind was trying to make sense of the events, the teacher turned to Faris and asked, "Is this true?"

I focused my attention on our teacher and the two boys once more. It would be fine. Faris had his mom and siblings backing him. Even if his brothers and sisters went to the werewolf school across the street, all he had to do was say what happened and the teacher would believe him. Yet, he just stood there, those forest-colored eyes of his staring back at the teacher and his mouth not so much as opening a crack.

Why isn't he saying anything? Why is he just standing there?

"Maybe you didn't here me the first time." Our teacher must have been put off too because she kneeled in front of Faris so that she was eye-level with him. "Is what your classmate said true?"

"Its true that I hit him." He paused. "As for everything else, believe what you want."

As the teacher stood up, a cold sweat formed on the nape of my neck. He wasn't going to say anything. Why I was unsure. What I did know is if Faris got detention, there's no way I'd be able to make it home or even to Leyla's or any our cousins' and siblings' classrooms before they took revenge on me. I was one of the slowest kids in our class and with how mad Faris made them, they might break my hand and make me unable to practice my oud.

Our teacher stood up. "Then I have no choice but to—"

I stood up slamming both my hands on my desk again. When all eyes once more turned on me, I said, "I asked Faris to hit him."

It was a lie. I knew it and most of the other kids knew it. You couldn't force Faris to do anything he didn't want to do. Still, all the teacher knew was that we spent a lot of time together so as long as Faris continued to keep his mouth shut, this might work.

"That's not true," he yelled. "I didn't hit him because she asked me to!"

Not even thinking, I yelled back, "He's lying!"

"No, I'm not! You're the liar!"

"No," I refuted. "You are!"

"Enough!" The teacher's hard voice made us both stop and look at her as she once more asked, "Then, Faris, why did you hit your classmate?"

He clenched his fists and looked away.

"I see," the teacher said. "Then I have no choice but to give the two of you detention after school. I'll also be contacting both of your parents about this."

When both of us said nothing at this news, the teacher clapped her hands. "Now, that's enough of a commotion for one day. Everyone back to your seats and let's get started."

For the rest of the day, me and Faris didn't say anything to each other. We still sat with each other during lunch and recess, but instead of talking about school, games or home like we usually did, there was this strange awkward silence between us. The long two hours spent in detention only seemed to make it worse.

Then we were finally let out and had to wait alone at the gate until someone came to pick us up. Even so, we just kind of stood there in the same awkward silence that overtook us the entire day.

It was as I was beginning to think that I'd have to spend the rest of elementary school stuck with this unescapable quiet that he turned to me and asked, "Why did you do that?"

"Huh?" I turned to him. "Do what?"

"Lie like that."

Not wanting to admit that it was to save myself, I asked, "Then why did you hit him?"

"Not telling."

"Then I'm not telling."

He frowned. "You shouldn't have gotten in trouble for something that I did."

"You chose to hit him. I chose to lie." I licked my lips. "Just because you want things to turn out a certain way, doesn't mean that they will."

His eyes nearly popped out of his head, but before he could say anything more, a car pulled up. In the driver's seat was a human who worked for his family. We both got in and stayed silent. The next day, however, things returned back to normal. For reasons I could not explain, we went back to talking about mundane things, studying and playing together.

For a while, I thought things would continue like this until we graduated elementary school. Yet, That was all before the gym storage incident happened.