He keeps finding paper hearts everywhere.

Those little square sticky note things — folded intricately (at least to him). Everywhere.

In his schoolbag, in his shoes, on top of his paint cans, in his mailbox. So long as Riff has eyes, he’ll always be able to spot a paper heart somewhere, perched and waiting for him.

He keeps them, too. They were starting to overflow his drawer, so he set them on his windowsill, or stuck them to his wall. He doesn’t know why he does this, why he likes them so much. He doesn’t know who they’re from, so why should they mean anything to him?

But one day, he goes over to your house to help you fix some sort of… whatever contraption you’d told him about. He hadn’t been paying attention. You invited him over and he hadn’t heard anything else after that.

He’s searching around your room for the flashlight you’d sent him to fetch. He opens one of your desk drawers, and inside is a pile of the sticky note things used to make the paper hearts he’s been finding. That stupid, dingy yellow color. A weird feeling stirs up in his chest. He seizes one of the notepads and runs out into the hallway where you are.

“It’s you!” He shouts. “You’re the one who’s been leaving those stupid paper hearts all over the place!”