TSROTRATBP Chapter 23

Shaking my head, I gnawed nervously at my lip, uneasy.

This proved that the hand I'd seen that early morning hadn't been a mere illusion after all. But I'd distinctly been back in rabbit form when I woke up that time.

Then could it be that even now, I'm only human temporarily?

Why? How?

Why.

No matter how I tried to reason it through, the answers kept slipping past my grasp, filling my head with questions I couldn't resolve.

To begin with, I hadn't even gone through the fever—I'd just felt an inexplicable pain, and then I'd become human. That circumstance alone defied any explanation.

Lost in thought, I suddenly went wide-eyed at a presence outside. I'd been so flustered I'd forgotten to close the door entirely.

What if it's Ahin?

Would he recognize me. What should I do, what should I do. My hands, gripping the cloth wrapped around me, tightened.

The rising panic left everything ahead of me washing white.

"Come out."

Click. Along with the sound of the door shutting, footsteps approached.

"I know you're here."

My mouth went bone dry at the voice that broke the quiet room. It wasn't Ahin. Unfamiliar, but a voice I'd heard somewhere before.

"They're kicking up a hell of a racket looking for you out there."

Rune Maniuntz—the lion beastman at odds with Ahin, without a doubt. His face was hidden behind the edge of the table, but I could feel his footsteps drawing steadily closer. Without so much as breathing, I held my breath and strained my ears.

"Let's talk for a—the fuck—!"

Rune startled and blurted out a curse, and I, startled in turn, clapped a hand over my own mouth.

"Who, no, why are you under the table…?"

He bent down and then simply froze there. Our eyes met across the empty air. He stared for a long moment before his ears flushed red and he took a step back.

"What's with the—clothes, or…"

Wary in turn, I realized his reaction had to do with how carelessly the cloth was wrapped around me, and I curled in tighter. A sharp sense of danger surged through me at being alone in an enclosed room with a lion. Walking wasn't something I knew how to do yet—running was out of the question.

S-should I crawl away?

Or maybe I should shove him and roll away instead. Whatever I pictured, it seemed like I'd get caught within two steps.

Rune's foot, flailing at empty air like he'd lost his footing, jerked to a stop.

He came back toward the table and immediately bent down to face me. His outstretched hand grabbed a handful of long white hair.

He brought it to his nose, and after a brief pause he lifted his eyes, which had been lowered halfway. In his calm golden gaze, my still-unfamiliar reflection appeared.

A silence that felt like it lasted minutes stretched over what was really only a few seconds. A sneer curled at his mouth. Rune said it like a man certain of himself:

"So you really weren't just a rabbit. A beastman."

Just from smell—that was enough for him to be sure? A chill crawled up my spine.

Afraid of being found out, I instinctively shook my head—and then went still. Come to think of it, couldn't I speak human words now?

…But how?

Unable to force out any words, I just kept opening and closing my mouth. When I tried repeating "ah, ah" to test my voice, Rune's golden eyes sharpened.

"Can't you speak?"

I've just never done it before.

You expect me to believe you could speak the instant you finished your own humanization? Damn beast. Unable to argue back, I threw myself into the effort of producing a sound.

After working my tongue for a good while, I felt like something decent might finally come out. Surprisingly, Rune waited quietly for my answer. Having practiced a few words under my breath like a rehearsal, I swallowed against a dry throat.

"…Um,"

A rather unfamiliar voice came out. Encouraged by how much clearer the sound was than I'd expected, I opened my mouth again.

"I'm not a rabbit beastman."

I'd gotten the first words out, but what followed wasn't triumph—it was pure self-loathing.

Ah, why did I say that. The very first thing I said, and it was a denial of my own existence.

Humiliation stung enough to bring tears, so I bit my lip. My one small comfort was that, slow as it was, the pronunciation had come out fairly clear.

"The hell you on about."

Rune gave a disbelieving laugh.

"You reek of that black panther's pheromone, though?"

His voice carried certainty, not a guess. He tilted his head, and his pale pink hair swayed along with it.

"No."

Deny it first, worry later. Unable to gauge what expression I was currently making, I turned my head away to cut off the eye contact.

But Rune wasn't ready to let the interrogation go so easily.

"Then how do you explain the violet eyes?"

"I'm…mixed-blood."

"You're a rabbit beastman. Admit it."

"I told you, no."

A strange standoff unfolded. What pheromone was he even talking about. Whatever scent Ahin and now this lion were both insisting they could smell, my own nose couldn't detect it at all.

…Did Ahin put it on me?

Hadn't he said something about erasing the lion's scent, or whatever it was? I secretly lifted my hand to my nose to check, and Rune's brow furrowed openly at the gesture.

Startled, I flinched, and my hand tugged gently at the fistful of hair he still held. He let go without resistance, and just as he opened his mouth to speak, a commotion rose outside.

Bang—the door slammed open, and familiar silver hair caught the lamplight and shimmered.

Light spilling in from the corridor lit the room brightly.

Ahin, one hand still frozen on the doorknob, folded his arms and leaned against the frame. A moment later his head tilted lazily to one side. It was almost the look of someone observing something.

Ahin.

Staring back at him, dazed, I found myself suddenly gripped with worry that he might recognize me. Using Rune as a shield, I shrank back, and at the same moment Ahin's lips parted.

"Iverin. Sword."

His flat, even voice broke through the chilled silence. Since he was in formal wear tonight, the longsword usually at his hip was absent.

Iverin, quietly stepping aside from the hand extended toward him, shook his head.

"Absolutely not. …He is the son of the lion clan's sovereign."

"Not too late to cut first, think later."

"That would be too late."

"Just two cuts, then."

"Not even one."

And who's this "son of the lion clan's sovereign," anyway. The fact that Ahin was reaching for a sword at all was one problem; Iverin's remark was another problem entirely.

My trembling eyes landed on the back of Rune's pink head as he stood facing the door.

Him?

It happened in an instant. Faster than I could register any alarm, Ahin drew the sword from the hip of the nearest guard.

"Lord Maniuntz. Having fun?"

The gleaming blade swung to point directly at Rune.

"Lord Grace?"

"Trying to steal what's mine. In this place."

The obsession threaded through those words, paired with those crimson eyes curved into crescents, was thoroughly unsettling.

Steal—the word made no sense to him, and Rune, standing frozen, turned to look at me. His golden eyes went wide enough to nearly leap from his face.

"No, wait, hold on,"

He stammered, apparently caught off guard, and even threw up his hands to wave the accusation off.

"Attempted kidnapping is a serious crime all on its own."

Ahin's cold voice rang out through the room again. As if trying to mediate the swiftly worsening atmosphere, Iverin stepped into the room. His finger snapped up, pointing at the cloth wrapped around me.

"Lord Maniuntz, I'm afraid Miss Rabbit is not the sort to be kidnapped so easily with nothing more than a scrap of cloth."

"…What kidnapping."

His expression still caught somewhere between confusion, Rune scooped me up on the spot. In an instant, caught by the scruff, I found myself staring straight into his eyes in midair. My vision swam, and a familiar puff of cotton-white fur swam into view.

I—I—I'm back!

When? How? Bewildered, I glanced back and forth between my two front paws.

No wonder these predators had all been looking oddly gigantic earlier.

These are paws, right? Just to be sure, I stretched both of them out, and Rune blinked in disbelief. He didn't seem to have noticed the change back until he actually looked at me himself.

"What kind of trick is this? Just a second ago—"

Wait, no!

The moment Rune's mouth started forming the words I could already see coming, I panicked and kicked out, catching his mouth square with my paw. Caught off guard, he took the hit right on the lips. "Ow," he groaned in pain.

"What are you—mmph,"

His words couldn't continue past that. With single-minded focus on sealing his mouth shut, I threw my whole body into the effort, twisting and lunging.

Dodging the sudden barrage in the air, he let out a bewildered laugh.

Quiet down!

Whatever just happened stays a secret, for now. I fired that look at him and gave a threatening growl. This whole stunt was a problem given Rune's standing, but if the human-form secret got out, my life might genuinely be over.

"Vivi, one more hit."

Ahin, somehow already right beside us, leveled the sharpened blade against Rune's throat. His red eyes curved softly. His smiling face looked as terrifying as a devil's, and mid-kick, I went rigid with sudden stillness.

"For the son of a sovereign to go thieving in another territory."

Clicking his tongue, Ahin snatched me from Rune's hands like he was reclaiming stolen property. Unable to muster even a word of defense, Rune opened and closed his mouth, staring up at me now held in Ahin's grip.

"K-kidnapping Miss Rabbit?"

"How could such a thing—!"

Noise stirred outside, and Rune and I turned our heads at the same moment. A crowd of servants had already gathered, murmuring among themselves and casting looks laced with contempt.

Iverin stood with his arms crossed, saying nothing, but even Meimi had hardened her expression into something fierce, her hand fiddling beneath her apron. That, without question, was where she kept her dagger hidden.

In an instant, Rune had been branded an attempted rabbit-thief—pitiful, in a way.

I felt a small pang of pity watching him rub at his face over and over. I chose, quietly, to look away.

After making the same excuse dozens of times over—that the cloth had just fallen off the table, that he'd only stumbled onto the rabbit by. pure. chance. and meant to bring it back to the ballroom—Rune finally shook loose of Valens's grilling a full hour later.

"They're all out of their minds."

His color had gone bad over the course of the day. He crossed the dimming garden, his unfocused eyes carrying more than a trace of wounded indignation.

He'd never have guessed the matriarch herself would step in over some rabbit—a rabbit, of all things.

The atmosphere had been genial enough, like idle chatter—but scattered through it, Valens's words and manner had made it plain enough that she was fond of the thing.

Rune paused mid-step and touched his still-tender lips. Some kick, that. For a mere kit.

'If I'd been unlucky, my lip would've split open.'

He tilted his head slightly, and the curls resting against his ears fell loose. Turning the incident over again, he recalled the black panther scent that had assaulted his nose.

The rabbit had been thoroughly doused in pheromone, as if to mark it as property. At first he'd wondered whether the arrogant black panther had somehow fallen in love. But the way he actually treated the thing was nothing more than what anyone would show a pet.

What was more, the rabbit—which shifted between a human shape and its true form—had, judging by its behavior, clearly wanted to keep that fact hidden.

'Don't tell me... Grace doesn't know the rabbit's a beastman.'