Ahiru awakes from her dream in which she is a duck swimming in a lake, watching the prince dance. She expresses sorrow that she can't dance with him or hold his hand. A mysterious man appears and asks if she cares for him, which frightens her and consequently causes her to wake up.

Ahiru arrives early to class and catches Mytho practing alone. She admires his dancing, but becomes flustered once he notices her, begins to apologize profusely and trips. Mytho saves her from her fall, and she takes note of how lonely his eyes look. The encounter is interrupted when Fakir, another student, walks into the room. Fakir is shown to be condescending and controlling over Mytho, as he scolds him for injuring his ankle to help Ahiru.

Later, in class, Ahiru is surprised that the teacher is a cat, but this is something nobody else notices as strange. The students watch a performance by those in the advanced class, where it is shown that Rue is a talented dancer that many students aspire to be like. After class, Ahiru garners up the courage to go to the boys dormitory to apologize to Mytho for his injury. Fakir meets her outside the doors, and shoos her away before she can apologize.

That night, Ahiru laments about not being able to apologize to Mytho. While reflecting on how lonely his eyes are, she wishes there was a way she could help him. She then has an encounter with the mysterious Drosselmeyer; ⁠the man that she saw in her dream.

In the morning after, Fakir leaves Mytho his dorm as he goes to the library, and Ahiru uses this to try to apologize once more. Upon the roof, a fledging attempts to fly, but is forced to jump when a raven attacks it. Mytho jumps from his dorm window to save it, and proceeds to fall. Ahiru transforms into Princess Tutu to save him, and once to safety, Mytho asks who she is. When Ahiru remembers that she is a duck, she runs off.