TSROTRATBP Chapter 19

The words had barely left his mouth before a pained, choked yelp sounded from above.

Not long after, urgent footsteps sounded, and Meimi appeared over the terrace railing, her expression coming undone in a way that suited her very little.

"Miss Rabbit!"

Meimi's roving gaze landed at last on me, held in Ahin's hand. Haah—the breath of relief she let out scattered into the air.

Meimi...!

Only at the sight of her did I finally feel released from death's shadow. As the tension I'd been holding drained out of my body all at once, tears felt ready to spill over. Just then, Ahin's low, warning whisper reached my ear.

"Don't cry now."

Says the man who spent so long begging me to cry more. I shot him a look, half disbelief and half fury, and he answered by curving his eyes into round, mocking crescents. His narrowed red eyes held such a genuine flare of warning that I bit down hard on my lip and swallowed the tears whole.

According to Iverin's account, the wolf that appeared in the library was a mixed-blood beastman, part black panther and part wolf.

No wonder its eyes had been red—the black panther blood in it, it seemed. What's more, that wolf, the moment Meimi's attack landed, had chosen suicide on the spot.

It had apparently infiltrated by way of the simple hiring process for temporary staff, and so, deep into the night, a full commotion erupted as every servant in the estate reverted to their true form to prove their standing as black panthers.

I'd heard the relationship between the black panther and wolf clans was strained, but using a mixed-blood beastman to infiltrate like this was something entirely unimaginable back in Rabbit Territory.

Why bother attacking me at all, though? Was he simply that starved, or was there some curiosity in me being Ahin's food?

And that suicide, on top of it—such an extreme choice was so far removed from the world I'd grown up in that it felt like something happening to someone else entirely, a story from very far away.

All manner of questions kept crowding in, but a hand extending slowly toward me pulled me forcibly out of my thoughts.

Move.

I gave the back of the hand a smack, and the large hand withdrew. This exact scenario had now repeated itself some ten times over.

With Ahin and Iverin off investigating, Meimi and I were currently waiting it out in his study. The one problem was the lion beastman named Rune, who kept reaching a hand toward me where I sat on the sofa.

What is this beast even doing here.

Yet again, an unwilling hand crept back toward me, and Ahin's voice echoed inside my head.

Vivi, if you come back with that smell on you one more time, then—

If you come back with that smell on you, then—

Then what—! Shaking all over, I smacked Rune's hand away, rough and hard.

"Ow."

I hit you so it would hurt.

Narrowing my eyes into axe-blade slits, I caught the lion clan's characteristic golden eyes and quickly looked away. Rune, his hand gone red from the repeated skirmish, turned to Meimi, who stood waiting nearby.

"Excuse me. This one's a beastman who's shed their humanization, isn't she?"

"She's an ordinary rabbit, Miss Rabbit."

Meimi denied it flatly, without a second's hesitation. But since half of it was true—not the humanization part, but the fact of being a beastman—I startled and drew back on guard.

Had he sensed my pheromone somehow, the way Lady Valens had? But I'd definitely kept it properly suppressed.

"I don't think so."

Refusing to let the matter drop, Rune opened his mouth again. His voice carried an excessive degree of certainty.

"I beg your pardon, but she is an ordinary rabbit, Miss Rabbit."

"Ordinary, hell. There's a rumor going round about a rabbit that talks."

"A somewhat special rabbit, Miss Rabbit."

Could she not, just once, drop the damn "Miss Rabbit" from every sentence? Sometimes I really admired how unshakeable Meimi's resolve was.

"Is he really keeping her as a pet? That black panther?"

Rune scoffed, having thoroughly scanned me over with those golden eyes. Up close, unlike Ahin's mischievous look, Rune's face carried something both bored and edged. A faint trace of the lion clan's trademark laziness showed through, too.

"Well. How's anyone supposed to read the mind of a black panther who isn't in his right mind."

Last time he'd called Ahin insane too. He wasn't wrong exactly, but what sort of standing let him say such unrestrained things about him? Meeting my questioning gaze, Rune murmured.

"Why'd that wolf go after you, I wonder."

"……."

"Well. You do look tasty, at least."

Clearly, the minds of predators were filled with nothing but appetite from top to bottom. How else could anyone spew something so cruelly thoughtless?

Entirely unconcerned with my horrified state of mind, Rune checked his pocket watch with indifference.

"With a commotion like this, the ball might get pushed back."

"The invitations have already gone out, so unless something truly disastrous happens, it will proceed as scheduled."

"...Ah, what a bother. Can't I just go back to my own territory."

At Meimi's answer, his face twisted with annoyance, and he sank back into the sofa cushions. If he went back like this, his sister would kill him—Rune's meaningless muttered lament went on and on.

A ball?

Watching his curls sway with the motion, I finally understood why the number of household staff had grown so much lately.

House Raebien had also always brought on temporary staff when hosting a ball. Though I'd never once been given the chance to attend, if this was a mansion this grand, surely its scale had to be at least twice that of House Raebien.

If even beastmen from other clans came to attend, the scope was beyond anything I could estimate. As I sat there thinking blankly, I glanced sidelong at Rune.

"Pretty startled, huh? Not that unusual, though—other species infiltrating the Sovereign's own residence."

Misreading my glance, Rune's bored expression turned faintly amused. It carried something of mockery, or maybe just the sound of someone remarking on the entirely unremarkable.

"This isn't exactly a place fit for herbivores to live, anyway."

"Lord Maniuntz."

Worried, perhaps, over my condition after being chased by the wolf, Meimi moved at once to cut Rune off. Though the earlier terror hadn't fully faded, for an entirely different reason now, my eyes were trembling in their sockets.

Sov—... what?

Ah. Not wanting to face reality, I pressed a forepaw to my head and curled in on myself.

House Grace. Lady Valens Grace. Ahin Grace.

The conversations of the maids back at House Raebien drifted vaguely back through my mind.

'The city's been noisy lately, apparently.'

'A hyena clan delegation passed straight through the city district, they say. Cross the Border Forest and you're right at House Grace, aren't you. They must have taken the shortcut through the town on their way there.'

'Ugh, of all places to share a border with—Black Panther Territory, and the Sovereign's own house sitting right there of all things.'

They'd sometimes badmouth the predator clans, and most of it was about the black panthers and lions along the border. Only now did I recognize the source of the déjà vu I'd felt the moment I'd heard Lady Valens's full name.

It's the Sovereign's house—!

In territories without royalty, the Sovereign was, in practice, the head that gathered every black panther under a single figure. Naturally, the image of a great house with numerous annexes and a lavish interior swept through my mind like a panorama.

Which meant Lady Valens, as the family head, was the Sovereign of Black Panther Territory itself, and Ahin, as the next head—

The next Sovereign of Black Panther Territory.

Stay calm, stay calm. But unable to settle myself easily, I couldn't stop pacing back and forth across the sofa.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Miss Rabbit?"

Voices came, laced with confusion, but they simply passed through one ear and out the other. Only now could I understand Ahin's willful nature and his world-owning arrogance.

They say a beastman turns up dead at House Grace every single time, don't they?

They say if you go into the forest, it's covered in corpses. How would the likes of us understand the world these predators live in.

Still going in circles, I finally dropped, plopping down flat.

Not just some noble young master—the pack leader himself?

Somehow, the world in front of me had gone as dark as a black panther's fur.

Not until near dawn did we get back to the bedroom, and once there, an awkward air hung between me and Ahin.

To be exact, it was pretty much just me squirming about it alone. And Ahin wouldn't stop staring at me point-blank, of all days, which only made the whole thing feel more strained.

The Sovereign's own house.

For a noble, Ahin hardly kept many staff at all. He usually traveled alone, and the attendants who came and went from his bedroom stayed the same set of faces every time. Perhaps that had something to do with black panthers generally living solitary lives.

That was exactly why I hadn't expected his standing to be this high. If I'd stayed at House Raebien, he would have been a figure so far above me I'd never have had a chance to so much as meet him.

At the sound of the bathroom door opening, I reacted with a startled nerve and dug a burrow beneath the pillow.

How long had I stayed hidden away there? Straining my ears, I could make out the click and shuffle of sound and movement.

"In Black Panther Territory, subordinates who disobey orders are sometimes beheaded."

The flatness of his tone did nothing to hide the meaning buried inside it, and my body trembled at once.

"I put Meimi on you—she's no slouch with a blade—partly to guard you, partly to watch you. And yet she failed to escort you."

Anxious now, I poked my head slightly out from beneath the pillow. Ahin, seated lightly on the edge of the bed, gave my nose a light tap with his finger.

"Do you want Meimi punished?"

Of course not. She only stepped out for ten minutes, tops—just to fetch the hay I like. Something warm welled up in my chest, guilt mixed right in. When I shook my head, the corner of his mouth curved up into a soft little smile.

"But that's not Vivi's call to make. That's mine."

Then why ask at all. Setting aside the resentful thought, I got up quickly and grabbed hold of the back of Ahin's hand.

Please. Just be lenient, for once.

My trembling eyes drifted toward the scabbard propped by the sofa. Blood, gone dark and crusted, clung to the hilt.

It wasn't difficult to guess that killing had taken place again today. Now that I knew his standing, the fact that such matters were nothing but trivial to him landed with far more weight than before.

Which meant beheading was, by no means, some far-off story—if it were Ahin, he really might cut through a neck without so much as blinking.

I pictured Meimi's head snapping clean off her shoulders, and the color drained from my face; I shook my head again and again.

"...The more I think about you almost getting eaten by that goddamn mutt, the sicker it makes me."

Wiping the smile from his expression, Ahin muttered.

"You've no idea how much I'm holding back right now."

Wh—what are you holding back?

You can't just haul off and sucker-punch me with a line like that. Unable to properly faint this time, I stared at him with eyes wide with shock.

"Anyway—I'll let Meimi off, since that's what you want. But don't you think there ought to be some give-and-take between us, too?"

It amounted to nothing less than a one-sided deal, with Meimi's head held as collateral. I made a face of open displeasure, but the moment his gaze landed on me, I hurriedly looked away. His eyes stayed fixed on the side of my face, and the silence dragged on, strange and long.

"I forgot to mention it, but you're not allowed to cry anywhere else."

...What does that mean?

It was such an out-of-nowhere demand that unease flared up in me at once. Wasn't it you who said crying would save my life?

Now that I thought of it, back when I'd jumped down off the terrace, Ahin had whispered that I mustn't cry. Was there some separate reason behind it?

"Cry only when I ask."