I Can't Believe You Picked It Up

Season one's twentieth chapter introduces Hiro Sohma, a young zodiac member whose resentment of Tohru is plain from the start. His jealousy over Kisa's growing closeness to her drives his hostility, but beneath it lies a painful history he struggles to admit. The episode slowly peels back the reason for his guarded, biting manner.

Kisa's time with Tohru stokes Hiro's jealousy, and he snatches Tohru's notebook, which holds a photo of her late mother. Kyo, Momiji, and Kisa help recover it, and when Tohru hugs Hiro he transforms into his sheep shape. Hiro and Kisa turn up at Shigure's house, and he orders Tohru to take them out. At a park the truth emerges: Hiro once loved Kisa, and when Akito learned of it the fallout landed Kisa in the hospital. To spare her further harm, Hiro pushed her away, a distance that stretched even to her bullying and left him seething at his own helplessness, which curdled into his attitude toward Tohru. By the end Tohru has helped both children, and Hiro resolves that he will be able to protect Kisa.

The title takes one of Hiro's lines, and the episode is his first in the anime. Drawing on the thirty-seventh and thirty-eighth chapters, it reorders and cuts a number of scenes and shifts several settings, such as staging a confrontation inside a dojo rather than outdoors. Various small beats were added or removed, including Tohru's reaction to Hiro's teasing and an image of him as a prince reaching toward Kisa dressed as a princess.