“Oh, well… This happened when I was eight or nine, and I was minding my own business during recess when this bunch of uncultured bullies came over, offended that I was reading a novel about adventures on the high seas.”

“How strange.”

“I thought so too. Who doesn’t enjoy reading about a morally gray protagonist obsessed with hunting down a poor whale that was only following its instincts?”

“No, I meant the bullies. That they went after you.”

Perhaps it would be mistaken to assume no one with bad intentions would target Julien, given his friendly and easygoing nature. But Francis still struggled to imagine anyone who’d known Julien even a little hating him enough to want to harm him.

For that matter, he had already forgotten any animosity he’d felt toward Julien himself in less than a week. And if Julien had been as he is now even as a child, Francis saw even less reason for him to have accumulated a horde of enemies.

“To be honest, they didn’t usually go after me,” Julien explained. “They were never very fond of my stories, and although they did dare to throw an insult or two at me in passing, they’d never tried to hurt me before. I think that particular day they did it because it was unusual to find me alone in the yard; otherwise they wouldn’t have dared.”

“Typical of that sort of scum. In a group, anyone feels very brave.”

“Obviously I defended myself, like I always did when they got annoying. But come on, it’s not the same to deal with a couple of humiliating remarks in the hallway with thirty witnesses around, as it is to deal with four idiots shoving and threatening me when I was alone. And they were older than me!”

“What happened then?” Francis was already angry, which didn’t even make sense, since this must have happened at least fifteen years ago.

“They had me by the jacket, and I could already see myself being hung from a tree until a teacher came to rescue me. But then this other person showed up,” Julien continued, fully immersed in the tale. “He was another boy, three or four years older, who had the audacity to interrupt them and spare me from going home covered in bruises.”

“You mean he got into a physical fight?”

“Ah… Not so much a physical fight. In fact, there was no fight at all: this person simply asked them what they were doing, in a rather unpleasant tone, and after he shot them a threatening look, they ran off in the opposite direction instead of answering.”

Francis had a bad feeling when he heard this, though it didn’t stop him from asking:

“And what happened after that?”

“After that… it may or may not be that those thugs managed to achieve their goal of hanging me from my jacket a meter off the ground before running off once they were yelled at, and that this kind fellow helped me get down,” Julien mused. “I thanked him for the help, by the way. I even offered to repay the favor somehow! But I don’t think he heard me, since he seemed busy muttering under his breath about modern delinquency and how badly behaved some children were—namely, those bullies.”

“I don’t believe you…”

“Oh, I believe it. There are people that absent-minded, with a good heart and the mind of an old man. It doesn’t surprise me that he wouldn’t pay me attention after saving me.”

“I didn’t mean… Forget it, it was a very interesting story.”
Francis hoped his sudden nervousness wasn’t noticeable; he believed he was doing a job that, if not good, was at least decent. “Those thugs never bothered you again after that, right? Then let’s be glad for that and let the matter rest.”

“Wait a moment—do you actually know the boy I’m talking about?”

“No.”

Francis denied it quickly. Too quickly, in fact. So quickly that perhaps he hadn’t done as good a job faking ignorance as he thought.

“You were the unknown hero!” And seeing that Francis was unable to deny it, he added, “Now I remember it well—how the hell could I forget that sullen look you already had back then?”

“If you’re going to get sentimental, then I really will leave.”

To be honest, Francis hadn’t recognized Julien as the elementary school kid he’d once saved. He had never been the type to get involved in other people’s conflicts—he preferred to leave that to more helpful types.

Still, just as he wasn’t very inclined to help others, he wasn’t the sort to stand by with his arms crossed watching an injustice unfold. And that particular afternoon, since no one else was close enough to intervene, he’d had to be the one to step in.

Francis didn’t consider himself a hero for it, and had Julien not figured it out on his own, he would never have confessed.

At school, Francis was the kind who preferred to keep to himself. He didn’t have many friends and, all right, maybe he already had the reputation of being surly. Since he tended to stay serious all the time, and his comments often sounded sharper than kind, it wasn’t unusual for people to assume he was just another bully best avoided unless one wanted a black eye.

People were stupid, to put it simply. Francis had never in his life hit anyone, and even now he was unsure what he would have done if Julien’s attackers hadn’t listened to him and continued with the lynching. But anyway, he was used to being judged by those who didn’t know him.

“How come I don’t remember ever talking to you at school?” Julien suddenly asked.

It seemed the road of nostalgia had been unlocked, and no amount of fences or fallen logs would block it again. It was obvious Julien would want to know more now.

“It’s normal—you said it yourself: you were several grades behind me. Besides, I think I remember this happening just a few months before I moved to the city and enrolled in another school.”

“But I talked to practically everyone at school, not just those in my grade. Even if we weren’t friends, we should’ve exchanged at least a word or two.”

“If we did, I don’t remember.”

In fact, Francis was fairly sure they’d never even said hello.

The first time they’d seen each other—on the train to Chambéry—Francis thought Julien’s face looked familiar. But it was such a fleeting thought that it slipped away as quickly as it came: too many years had passed, Julien had changed a lot, and, anyway, it was far simpler to assume he’d seen him in a newspaper photo after associating his identity with the guy who kept trading jabs with him in the press.

And back in school… Even if Julien had already been a social butterfly, that gift would have meant very little with someone like Francis, who’d long been used to going unnoticed.

“No matter, there’s no point dwelling on the past,” Julien said, though his expression showed frustration, as if it genuinely bothered him that he hadn’t recognized Francis earlier. “What matters is that you’re here, that I’ve finally found your elusive self, and I can finally thank you properly.”

“You don’t have to. It was a long time ago, and it was an impulsive gesture on my part. If I’d known you’d react like this fifteen years later, I wouldn’t have intervened.”

“I’m afraid acts of kindness don’t expire—not in my view.”
Before Francis could insist on his lie, Julien had already placed the little figurine in his hands. “So this belongs to you.”

“I suppose it could’ve been worse,” Francis murmured, looking at the figurine again with different eyes—perhaps slightly more appreciative. “I thought you were going to give some touching speech, exaggerating everything, as always.”

“Why would I do that when I can simply thank you and invite you to the New Year’s dinner at my family’s house?”

“Right, why not…? Wait a minute! A family dinner does not count as a discreet thank-you.”

“That’s true—which is why you can take it out of that category and treat the invitation as a completely separate thing.”

“What?”

“I wanted to invite you earlier,” Julien explained, with all the patience in the world, “but since I never saw you again and I didn’t know exactly where your friends live, I couldn’t stop by to do it properly. So I’m taking the chance now.”

It was unheard of—who in their right mind would invite Francis to such a personal event after less than a week of knowing him?—and yet, at the same time, it sounded exactly like something Julien would do. Of course he had to be the only idiot capable of that.

“So… will you come?” he insisted, sounding a bit anxious about the answer. “I know you’re with your friends, and if they want to come, they’d be welcome too. If not—if you already have plans—that’s fine. I don’t want to intrude.”

And that was the thing: Julien never intruded intentionally. And no matter how much he occasionally got on Francis’s nerves with his enthusiasm and his desire to please everyone, Francis couldn’t deny that he liked receiving that invitation. Even if only because someone genuinely thought of him to share the holidays, and not out of social obligation.

That’s why, without wanting to think too much about it for fear he’d regret it, he ended up accepting the invitation.