The beginner class has gone home for the day, with the exception of a few stragglers. The advanced class is practicing now, though they're still doing basic training. Mr. Cat regards most of his students with something resembling approval. His ears twitch when his gaze lands on a certain student.

"Serafin! Have you been practicing every day?"

"Who, me?"

"Yes, you. Your dancing lacks precision."

"Does it."

Fine, then, he can dance more precisely, this seems like much more fun than getting into an argument about how often he practices.

Mr. Cat twitches, but does not pursue the matter further at that particular moment.

The students complete their basic drills, and then there are paired dances - during which the other students are to be quiet and attentive, so as to offer useful feedback to their peers.

He can manage 'quiet'. 'Attentive' is harder.

Mr. Cat calls on a few other students to offer critique. All of them are able to offer something, with varying levels of insightfulness.

"Serafin? Any thoughts?"

"Oh, I wasn't paying attention."

"Mraaugh! Serafin, if you do not learn discipline, you will never improve beyond your current level." He twitches distractedly. "As I cannot have you marry me, I shall be forced to assign you to clean the studio after class."

He glares.

Mr. Cat largely ignores him for the rest of the lesson. At the end, he gestures to the mop and bucket in the corner. 

"I am sure between the two of you, you can make this place presentable. Or else -"

"Or else I'll have to marry you," sighs a girl who has thus far been sitting quietly at the back of the room. "I know."

Serafin snorts and shakes his head and stalks over to the mop.

Mr. Cat leaves the room, secure in the knowledge that various threats will result in the room being sufficiently clean by morning. 

"Uh, you don't have to stay if you don't want to. I'm used to cleaning the whole room by myself. Though I understand if you want to, because I don't think we've met before and so I guess you don't have a reason to trust that I'll actually do that."

"He didn't threaten to marry me," Serafin points out. "I could just leave. But I'm not gonna."

He grabs the mop and attacks the floor with it. Metaphorically speaking. This floor is sure getting cleaned.

"...OK," says the girl, who will just take another mop and, uh, clean this other part of the floor somewhat more calmly.

Time passes.

Not very much of it. A few seconds, maybe.

"I don't even mind the detention," he says, possibly more to himself than to her. "I wasn't paying attention, fine, fair enough. But I practice more than anyone else at this school! I don't need him telling me to practice every day!"

His mopping is getting steadily more aggressive.

"Wow," says the girl, thinking about how much some of the other students practice. "Um, maybe he just wasn't thinking about it?"

He snarls under his breath, glaring at nothing in particular.

"If he's not thinking about what he says to his students then what's the point of calling himself a teacher!"

"....I guess?" She doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with this.

The mop handle cracks apart in his hands. He throws the pieces on the floor with a hiss of rage.

"I'm gonna burn down his house," he announces, and strides out of the room as though intending to accomplish the deed this very minute.

The girl's pendant glows softly. 

"You're - hey, wait!"

She's not supposed to leave the room until she's done, but she feels like Mr. Cat will be even more upset if his house gets burnt down. Besides, Serafin has a heart shard.

She carefully deposits the broken mop in the closet, then follows him at what she thinks is a safe, relatively stealthy distance.

He's tall and moving pretty fast; she's going to have to hurry to keep up.

—But she doesn't keep falling behind forever; in his haste, he trips over a tree root, and immediately spins around and punches the tree.

Yeah, that's definitely a heart shard. Anger, maybe frustration? She doesn't want Mytho to be angry or frustrated - she was really hoping she'd be able to give him some nice feelings at some point - but she can't very well leave the heart shard where it is.

She'll just keep following until she's handed a suitably dramatic moment; she thinks maybe she can only turn into Tutu when it's dramatically appropriate.

Serafin is... honestly doing surprisingly well, in this fight he is having with this tree.

But the tree is still made of wood, and he is still made of flesh and bone, and so when the one goes crack the other goes crunch and Serafin hisses and cradles his broken hand.