The forest in the darkness was incredibly scary, but also very beautiful.
Ichijō Mirai hopped carelessly over rock after rock, leaping over this babbling brook, his fluffy tail sweeping over the green leaves on the branches of the trees.
He was sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, sometimes on the top, just stalking Suzuki Sonoko, stalking a rabbit.
But whenever one of the animals who had dealt with him saw it, they closed their eyes and mourned for the poor victim in the first instance, and again in the 'You played with a new victim, but you can't play with me again, oh?' The prudent and well-behaved afterthought realized something was wrong, and at the twelfth hour pondered why he looked like a deer, moving with dexterity and pleasantness, and the whole fox, either looking down with a drooped head or leisurely to the side, looked like a divine mural when a rabbit was reflected in his pupils in the darkness.
This was not the state Ichijō Mirai was in when he was 'playing catch' with animals.
...But he was self-consciously in a really good state because he was really busy.
Busy rounding up lies.
He had to drive the python from a few kilometers away to act as a first pass, blast the lions over as a second pass, and tickle a few cheetahs over...
So it's taking time out to keep an eye on Suzuki Sonoko and determine her location.
On yet another return, Ichijō Mirai picks up the scent of dog in the air.
Anyone who has ever owned a dog knows that canines have a special odor, that kind of odor is shared by quite a lot of furry animals, which should logically make the animals with a keen sense of smell to distinguish a little more, but because he had once lived together to the point where he couldn't even smell the smell of canines around him, he reacted in the first place and looked into the dark jungle.
There was a very cautious rabbit in the dark jungle, Suzuki Sonoko had no doubt about Ichijō Mirai's lie that the journey was bound to be very dangerous, and trusted that conclusion even more when she came across the python and the lion, and now she moved along almost as silently as a little ball of fluff, slowly but effectively.
There was another pair of eyes in the dark jungle, one illuminated by moonlight and belonging to a predator.
It was the eyes of a canine, or a large dog that was a fish out of water in the snow, that washed up about half an hour back and forth without necessarily wetting the innermost layers of its fur, that shouldn't be called a bath when it's bathing, it should be called a refurbishment, an Alaskan.
Ichijō Mirai's leisurely steps stopped.
He sniffed, and sniffed, and sniffed again, and between repeated sniffs, his gloriously oily tail drooped wanly, and his fox ears, which had been stubby, drooped.
Before he turned away, bright eyes in the darkness approached.
An Alaskan crept up to Ichijō Mirai and mimicked him, peering at the rabbit through a gap in the jungle greenery, "It's been a long time, what a coincidence, you're eating rabbit now?"
"-You're 'Messiah', right?"
Ichijō Mirai's tail drooped and drooped, and he was tempted to give a perfunctory, casual squeak, but since fox calls are calling and he wasn't really inclined to call out, it took a few seconds before he responded, not perfunctorily but very sincerely, "Uh-huh."
After a few more seconds, he didn't even look at Alaska as his tail continued to droop and he lazily called out the name of his former companion to prove he wasn't 'Satan', "Morofushi."
Without looking, he knew Morofushi Hiromitsu was looking at him with skepticism.
...Though it was fake.
...Though he knew Morofushi Hiromitsu was faking his skepticism, and Morofushi Hiromitsu knew he knew it.
"Well, today's red fox classmate is 'Messiah'," Morofushi Hiromitsu nodded decently, and then whirled around to ask seriously, "What's up? "
Why are you so...
Serious? It doesn't seem that serious.
Happy? It doesn't seem so, at least Ichijō Mirai didn't notice.
Then how should I describe it?
After some thought, Morofushi Hiromitsu asked, "Why are you happy and unhappy?"
And stalking a rabbit.
When it comes to nerves, Ichijō Mirai is pretty neurotic, as evidenced by the fact that he's very un-animalistic and doesn't hunt when he clearly has the ability to, but isn't a vegetarian, and will quite justifiably rub up against other animals' prey.
Stalking a rabbit is certainly not about feeding.
But if you want to say catching, you don't have to banish all kinds of animals over, right? He was gifted with the skill of catching animals, wagging his tail to get a plan, and in a matter of seconds he could come up with several easy and effective ways to do it, rather than using this laborious method with little gain.
Until now, the rabbit hadn't even been injured, just a bit lumbering and tired...probably tired from the rush.
This was certainly shocking to the 'Ichijō Mirai victims': what! Was this guy defeated? Did he fail in his attempt to catch him? Was it? No way! This guy is sick with a fever and is sneaking off to hide, how can any animal hide from the ancient Greek god who is in charge of teasing?
The animals who complained to Morofushi Hiromitsu that Cricket Ichijō Mirai had gone crazy again were in a state of shock.
"Your first sentence," Ichijō Mirai asks slowly, "was what again?"
What?
Morofushi Hiromitsu recalled uncertainly, "It's been a long time, what a coincidence, have you been eating rabbit?"
Although he had met Ichijō Mirai unilaterally recently, and the 'long time no see' was false, and so was the 'what a coincidence', but it wasn't so bad that he met and said a few words and then settled the score, was it?
In the midst of Morofushi Hiromitsu's thoughts, Ichijō Mirai replied with an equally thoughtful, "Probably."
His tail lifted and wagged, rather thoughtfully, "Maybe I'm more dehumanized..."
"I actually have an appetite."
What?
Morofushi Hiromitsu: "..."
He reacted for a few moments, eliminating the first two halves of the sentence that simply didn't match up, before he had to confirm that Ichijō Mirai was replying, 'Do you eat rabbit?' , 'Probably.'
"...Don't you," he asked, "not hunt?"
"Yes," it was Ichijō Mirai who said that he had an appetite, and it was Ichijō Mirai who justified it, "who hunts, I don't know how long it's been since I've washed it, and looking at how many rolls in the dirty rain and mud I've had on the clean fur, I can't even get down to myself, so how can I possibly I can't even go down to my own mouth, how can I go down to my mouth to hunt."
After saying that, he immediately added, "But rabbits from the city should be clean..."
"I should think so..."
His tail wagged again, the former sentence and the latter a completely different face.
Morofushi Hiromitsu again, "..."
"Please don't get upset and bare your teeth at me when you're making your point," he was polite, "No matter how you think about it, I'm the one who gets held down in the river for half a day before I can have a normal wrestling class with you, right?"
"And by all accounts," Ichijō Mirai was also polite, "I'm the one who broke down after the fight when I realized that your innermost fur was actually still dry, right?"
With that said, it's obvious who the victim really is.
Although there was a bit of disagreement on who the victim was, they agreed on the point that the victim was obvious, and said no more.
After a few moments, Morofushi Hiromitsu examined the rabbit fluff ball, which had moved with great perseverance since the beginning of the conversation and thankfully moved a full twenty meters, and rigorously inquired, "Why do you have an appetite for rabbits?"
"What about for other animals that are on the fox's menu?"
"What about for other small animals that look clean and don't usually go in and out of places you consider dirty?"
Uh, well...
Ichijō Mirai thought about it for a moment and replied in a very righteous manner, "I'd be willing to let you take the first, second, and third bites of the can and just open it for me."
Translation: the surface of the can is too dirty to nibble, only the inside.
Translation again: rubbing it in.
But just don't chase the canine down and ask 'don't you think it's strange, why is there a can when there's no human?' Morofushi Hiromitsu is at peace with such back-and-forth, illogical questions that confuse the canine.
He had long been accustomed to it and skillfully squashed the objection, "It still sounds as if you have no motivation to hunt yourself and no appetite for other animals."
So, why the appetite for this rabbit?
Morofushi Hiromitsu went to see the rabbit: in the space of a few words, she moved forward a full three meters!
But here's the problem: Ichijō Mirai would never nibble on a mouthful of dirt-soaked food.
But the rabbit was on her back, carefully arching forward.
She looked like a maroon pom-pom, which may be appetizing to carnivores, but her soft belly was stained with the color of dirt, which would never be appetizing to Ichijō Mirai.
...This doesn't make sense, does it?
Repeatedly surveying the situation, Morofushi Hiromitsu reminded, "First of all, she's enlightened and talking, not prey."
"Second, she's hiding from the carnivores, stalking on her back."
"Yes," Ichijō Mirai replied in a second, "been on her back for an hour and a half now, and spent thirty minutes of that skirting the python,"
He exclaimed, "That's a lot of perseverance,"
"She could probably try to catch carnivores in reverse if she grew up in the wilderness. Growing up in the city would have been nice though, it's kind of cute."
"Want to eat."
Morofushi Hiromitsu: "..."
Wait...
No, bro, wait...
'Cute'?
Is that a word to describe prey?
It seems like maybe maybe maybe maybe it shouldn't be, right?
Instead, it's kind of like...
However, the animal that said that was Ichijō Mirai, and Morofushi Hiromitsu looked sideways at Ichijō Mirai, saw his eyes glowing in the moonlight, and quickly dismissed the unbelievable speculation, releasing, "Impossible, you, absolutely impossible."
Ichijō Mirai was still staring at Suzuki Sonoko, and he found they'd have to crouch forward or they wouldn't be able to see Ms. Bunny's short ears that twitched around alertly at the sound of the wind.
He had been looking at Suzuki Sonoko almost the entire time, and most of his conversation with Morofushi Hiromitsu had been spoken and forgotten off the cuff, and glanced over curiously at her words, "What?"
"Infected by me, what's with the sudden nerves? Go towards the front, she's arching away."
After moving forward, Morofushi Hiromitsu was silent for half a second in the shadows of the trees, and asked, as if casually, "What exactly is your 'appetite' for?"
Hmm?
Hearing the casualness, Ichijō Mirai also casually replied, "What else is appetite, it's just wanting to eat, it's still a new feeling for me, I guess I want to eat, but I don't want to eat at the same time?"
After saying that, he gave another reason, "Probably because she looks delicious, but after all, she's not swishy, so I can't eat it, right?"
Ichijō Mirai himself is shocked that he actually has an appetite.
That appetite was created when Suzuki Sonoko spoke.
When she lit up her dark green eyes and timidly but rightfully answered one sentence after another, a very subtle feeling arose from Ichijō Mirai's body, like stiffened blood reviving, his heart beating, and all of a sudden he was a little hard, a little itchy, and wanted to do something, and all in all was immediately and busily moving.
It was a feeling that was very difficult to describe, very impossible to judge exactly.
Even Ichijō Mirai pondered for half a second before cautiously judging from the subtle sense of watching Suzuki Sonoko's back and aggravation: it was appetite.
What kind of unspeakable state would a fox be in due to a rabbit? Appetite when hungry, of course.
It could be a sign of diminishing humanity...it's not like he's really a fox to want to eat a rabbit!
However, humanity has diminished, but not completely, and with his morals already thin and almost non-existent, Ichijō Mirai is relieved to find that he still has morals and humanity: while wanting to eat, he can actually convince himself to think about it and not actually eat it.
And it was as easy to convince himself as the sun rising, or water flowing downhill, or common sense like he didn't have an appetite in the first place, etc., and it took barely a second.
Though not completely convinced.
...Not to actually eat it, but a bite would do, right?
It's always okay to swish it a few times and then arch it with your nose and take a few light, gentle bites, right?
What a genius curved decision!
He asked himself pleasurably, "It's okay."
So the tail wagged again.