TSROTRATBP Chapter 2

After that, the man stuffed me into his pocket with the air of someone putting away a handkerchief and walked somewhere.

The handling was so rough that I fainted along the way.

When I came to, I was in a bedchamber more lavishly appointed than anything I'd seen at Raebien House.

'...Where is this?'

I bounced back and forth across the plush bedding and arrived at despair.

There was simply no way to summon the courage to jump down from this bed. I had to escape—I absolutely had to—but the drop was too far.

Before I'd lost consciousness—just before being deposited in the man's pocket—I had seen something I shouldn't have.

Specifically: a head, rolling.

And in the man's other hand, a sword drenched in fresh red blood.

Anyone who looked would conclude that the man was responsible for the deaths of the two beastmen who'd been transporting me. Not a complicated deduction.

The lady's maids at Raebien House had always said that black panthers from the neighboring territory had no patience and no restraint.

If that was true, why had he brought me here instead of killing me on the spot? I turned this small head of mine and arrived at a dreadful conclusion. In a form like mine—baby rabbit—I probably didn't even qualify as emergency rations. Emergency snack, at best.

'No, no, absolutely not—!'

I stamped both front paws against the mattress in mute anguish.

No. Absolutely not. Ending up on a plate in some strange place I'd never been, that was not my home— 

'Now or never. I have to get out.'

I fixed my gaze, gathered energy in my hind legs, and began building momentum. Even if I broke a bone in the landing. I had to jump.

'...Going!'

I'm really going, I'm actually going—

Fwp. At the height of my most determined leap, a hand caught me in midair.

Please don't let it be that black panther from the forest. I went stiff and moved my eyes sideways. A man with dark black hair was looking down at me with visible concern.

"That could have ended very badly. What a reckless thing to do."

He was not, mercifully, the arrogant black panther from before.

The odd thing: his face and his speech were neat and composed, but his expression and his voice were so entirely flat it bordered on the surreal.

The strange contradiction made the tension drain out of me for a moment—and then I caught sight of his fangs, glimpsed between his lips whenever he spoke, and every bit of that tension came straight back.

Besides which: most black panthers had red eyes, according to the gossip. This man's eyes were red as well.

"Ahin, leaving a rabbit this small on a bed unattended. Now then—where have you come from, if I may ask?"

I had no way to answer.

Rabbit territory, I'm from rabbit territory! My internal declaration reached no one.

"I see. You can't speak...?"

That's a bit dramatic as a realization. And I never said I couldn't—I said I hadn't. You're stupid, aren't you. Let go of me. I delivered a scathing interior rebuke that also arrived nowhere. The man gave no indication of putting me down.

"The floor is safer than the bed, I think."

He walked to the sofa in the corner, picked up a cushion that looked soft enough, and set it on the floor.

"Miss Rabbit, now that you're here, you mustn't come to harm carelessly. You are Lord Ahin's property, after all."

He set me down on the cushion with great care and explained this with absolute seriousness. He even waggled a finger.

'Explain that in more detail.'

'Miss Rabbit' was a strange form of address, and 'property' was not a word I'd been hoping to hear. I stamped both front paws against the cushion in agitation.

He seemed, somehow, to understand this—because he reached out and gently stroked the top of my head with one finger.

"Also, you must maintain cleanliness of person at all times."

'Cleanliness?'

I stared up at him, uncertain.

Still—from what I'd observed in these few minutes, I had gathered a few pieces of information.

The man in front of me was a subordinate of the silver-haired black panther who'd put me in his pocket. The repeated honorific Lord Ahin suggested that was the silver-haired one's name.

'Tell me more.'

He seemed to read the urgency in my look—because the finger tracing gentle lines across my head paused, and he began again.

"Lord Ahin bringing Miss Rabbit personally into his own bedchambers suggests that perhaps you are something truly special!"

'Special?'

"Emergency rations, most likely."

...Well. That's very insightful of you.

Lady Vivi's distinguished self—sapient adult, possessed of eighteen years of education, firstborn of a noble house, currently residing on a floor cushion—

Fainted again, frothing and gurgling.