At last, the sound of crying erupted.

“Waaah, I-I’m not stupid…! A-Allen, you, *hic*, stepped on my drawing first…!”

“Did I do it on purpose?! I said I was sorry! But you keep bothering me about it!”

Bonita, who had been lost in thought, was startled by the commotion and turned around.

There, Allen was standing with an angry red face, confronting a girl whose face was covered in tears.

Derek, who was standing next to them, frantically tried to stop his younger brother.

“Wait, Allen. You did step on Maya’s drawing. Just apologize…”

“I already said I was sorry! She’s the one being stubborn!”

“Waaah…!”

The girl could no longer speak and started crying bitterly. In her hand was a drawing torn in half by a shoe print.

“Hmph, fine. That’s why I didn’t want to come to this social gathering in the first place. The dollhouse was a gift from our mom and dad, why do I have to share it with them?”

“Ugh.”

Derek made a troubled expression.

Among the three brothers of the Hyacinth Viscount family, Allen was particularly hot-tempered and prone to extreme mood swings.

When he was in a good mood, he was cheerful, but if even the slightest thing went wrong, he would sulk and become stubborn like this. He was sensitive, or to put it negatively, a troublemaker.

The girl called Maya showed no signs of stopping her crying. Allen also turned his head away with a determined look in his eyes.

As the confrontation continued longer than expected, the other children who had been playing well started to become uneasy.

“Hic… why are you fighting?”

Derek felt at a loss when he saw tears welling up in the eyes of three-year-old Renan beside him.

Children tend to empathize unconditionally with emotions. The younger they are, the more pronounced this is.

If Maya kept crying like that, the dollhouse would undoubtedly soon become a sea of tears. If that happened, it was obvious that their mother would call for Derek with a stern expression when she came later.

‘Ah, this is why kids are…!’

Ten-year-old Derek scratched his soft brown hair vigorously. He had no idea what to do.

The one who saved Derek from this situation was a truly unexpected person.

“What’s wrong?”

“*Sniff*, waaah…”

“Hello.”

Bonita approached the girl who was sitting on the floor, constantly wiping her tears.

Maya, who had been crying her heart out, soon hiccupped when she saw the pink-haired girl approach her.

Instead of feeling upset about her drawing that she had worked hard on for an hour being torn, curiosity about this pretty girl she was seeing for the first time poked its head out.

Maya looked up at Bonita with tears still in her eyes.

Bonita asked.

“What’s your name?”

“I-I’m…”

Bonita waited for a very long time until the girl opened her mouth.

Waiting was something Bonita was better at than anyone else.

After all, Aria always came back late without saying anything.

“M-Maya Lavigne.”

As if Bonita’s patience hadn’t been in vain, the girl who had been trembling soon shyly revealed her name.

Her voice was cracked from crying for so long.

Maya looked at Bonita with reddened eyes. The hesitant girl asked with a slight reluctance.

“…And you?”

“I’m Bonita.”

At that point, Allen, who had been standing with his arms crossed, glanced in that direction.

He had been curious about what this tiny Lisianthus princess was going to do since the moment she intervened.

However, due to his lofty pride, Allen still pretended not to be interested and deliberately turned his head away.

“Maya. Why were you crying?”

“W-Well…”

At Bonita’s calm question, tears began to well up in Maya’s eyes again. She remembered what had happened, which she had momentarily forgotten due to her curiosity.

Bonita quickly asked before Maya could burst into tears again.

“Because your drawing was torn?”

Maya, holding the torn paper, nodded. Bonita examined the torn drawing.

It was a tall castle where a princess might live.

Although it was the work of a child no more than six or seven years old, it showed signs of effort. It was fully colored, so it must have taken at least an hour to draw.

As she looked at it, a good idea came to Bonita’s mind.

“Maya, do you like drawing other things besides castles?”

“…Other things, like what?”

“Well. Like mountains, or streets, or people. Things like that.”

After thinking for a moment, Maya nodded again. Unlike when she was crying earlier, Maya, who had stopped crying and become quiet, was as cute as an angel.

Bonita picked up one of the drawing papers placed next to Maya. There were pencils, paints, and crayons of various colors, presumably prepared for the children to draw and play with.

Bonita lay down with a pencil in hand.

By this point, Maya realized what this unfamiliar girl was trying to do. She was going to draw.

Maya mumbled with a disappointed expression.

“I don’t want to draw again…”

The drawing that Allen had stepped on and torn was one she really liked.

She had even expected to take it home after the social gathering and receive praise from her mother.

But as Bonita started to draw lines on the paper, Maya’s face, which had been filled with disappointment, soon changed to surprise and admiration.

“Wow…!”

The world unfolding from Bonita’s small hand was marvelous.

A few lines that seemed simple soon became an old and shabby street with traces of people.

With each movement of her hand, buildings were erected. Pillars, then delicate doors and windows were drawn, and pointed roofs covered them.

Maya watched, mesmerized, as Bonita added stains on top of those roofs.

The children who had been whimpering at the commotion slowly gathered around.

The children let out exclamations of admiration one by one. However, Bonita, who was the subject of their admiration, was so absorbed in drawing that she couldn’t hear any sound.

Living things filled the empty spaces of the buildings.

A woman holding hands with a child, walking home together. A middle-aged man walking with a hunched back, exhausted from manual labor.

On the wall was a cat looking down, and below it was a large, dark-colored dog. A few older boys seemed to be trying to call the dog over, pointing at it.

But the character that caught the children’s attention the most was the person Bonita drew last.

The glamorous woman with wavy hair and bright eyes was still beautiful even in plain, worn clothes.

She was walking towards the viewer of the picture, wearing a white brimmed hat and carrying a roughly woven basket.

The children then realized that the drawing was a view of the street seen through a window.

The woman’s eyes were directed forward.

Their eyes met.

That’s what it felt like.

One of the young children watching Bonita’s drawing in silence murmured.

“Wow, it’s amazing…”

Soon, the children who were amazed by this marvelous drawing started to pour out various excited comments, causing Bonita to snap out of her reverie much faster than when she was drawing alone.

“How did you do that?!”

“It’s incredible!”

“Teach me too!”

“Can you give this to me?”

The children who had been minding their own business regardless of who came in earlier now flocked to Bonita. Bonita, who was much smaller than her peers, was soon completely buried by the children to the point of being almost invisible.

Allen, who was still turning his head away, flinched. He was still wavering between curiosity and pride.

Then, an indifferent voice reached Allen’s ears.

“If you’re so curious, why don’t you go and look?”

It was Cassis.

Thanks to Bonita, he had escaped from the infinite block stacking and spoke with annoying calmness.

“And apologize properly. To be honest, you tried to brush it off at first, didn’t you?”

“No, I said it was a mistake, but she kept snapping at me, so I felt unfair…”

“So you think you did the right thing?”

At Cassis’s sharp question, Allen closed his mouth like a clam.

It was clear to see his little head rolling back and forth. Cassis inwardly shook his head at his simple-minded older brother.

‘Well, he’ll apologize.’

Allen was a bit stupid, hot-tempered, selfish, and prone to throwing tantrums on the floor, but…

He often secretly stole other people’s snacks and lied about it, or snuck out of the viscount’s mansion through the dog hole, causing trouble for the maids, or insisted on playing rock-paper-scissors again when he lost, but…

But… but…

Still…

‘…Huh?’

Cassis blinked as he tried to think of Allen’s good points.

Come to think of it, were there any?

Elder brother Allen is just a stubborn idiot.

Allen would have made a big fuss again if he had heard this. Fortunately, Allen didn’t have the ability to read Cassis’s mind.

Allen clenched and unclenched his fist repeatedly. He scratched the back of his head vigorously. It was a habit of the viscount’s brothers when they felt awkward or embarrassed.

“Agh!”

Then, like a horse making a sudden start, Allen abruptly turned his body. He shouted as he squeezed in among the gathered children.

“I want to see too!”

“Woah!”

“Don’t push!”

“What’s going on?”

As Allen, who was a head taller than his peers, started to push his way through, the displaced children started to complain.

If one person was pushed, the person next to them was pushed, and that person pushed the person next to them, and that person pushed the person next to them…

It was endless. The sound of bickering voices rang out loudly.

Allen ignored all the complaints of the children and finally poked his head towards where Bonita was.

Soon, the drawing Bonita had made came into Allen’s view.

That’s when it happened.