One Day, I Picked Up a Fox

One day, the emperor picked up a fox caught in a trap during a hunting competition.

Its fur was too black to be an ordinary fox,

its ears too large to be an arctic fox,

its coat too fluffy to be a desert fox—

a strange and foolish fox, somehow peculiar in every way.

***

“…A dog?”

This isn’t a puppy… is it a fox? A black fox?

“Kyiing….”

The fox looked up at Adrian with sapphire-like eyes. Its body trembled finely, paralyzed with fear, looking utterly pitiful. It was such a pathetic prey that Adrian had no desire to hunt it and was about to leave.

But strangely, he couldn’t tear his gaze away. Those blue eyes stimulated the capricious curiosity that had been sleeping deep within Adrian.

Adrian gathered the limp fox into his arms. It showed no wariness, no hostility. It simply looked helpless, as if desperately waiting for someone’s touch—someone who would either save it or release it from its pain.

Adrian clicked his tongue. To have so little suspicion.

“Don’t rely on me too much. Once I treat your paw, I’ll send you back to the forest.”

If you end up dying after that, well, that would be this fox’s fate. The world of survival of the fittest was always like that. Thinking this, Adrian mounted his black horse while holding the fox.

Little did he know how much this small fox would torment him in the future, how he would frantically search everywhere, going mad whenever it was out of sight.