Beni knew that when Ruan spread his arms, it meant to come close beside him. But tapping his thigh like that… Could he possibly mean to climb on top of it? Beni hesitated for a moment before saying,
“I’m not a rabbit right now…!”
“Doesn’t that not matter?”
“…What doesn’t?”
“The fact that whether you’re a rabbit or in your true form, you’ve often climbed onto my thigh hasn’t changed.”
When he put it that way, it wasn’t wrong either. Ruan now knew he was a rabbit, so perhaps there was no big difference to him. The only big difference was to Beni.
As he hesitated, Ruan grabbed Beni’s arm and pulled him toward himself. His body, having lost its balance, ended up settling on Ruan’s thigh. When the startled Beni tried to jump up, Ruan hugged him from behind and buried his face deep into his shoulder.
From Beni came a subtle earthy scent mixed with a fragrant herb aroma. When he breathed in deeply, beyond that he could feel Beni’s body scent very faintly. It felt like his insides would melt.
While Ruan healed his heart that had been tormented by the annoying High Priests, Beni wanted to faint. The firm thigh touching his buttocks, the arm wrapped from his side to his stomach, the breath hotly sweeping across his skin around his neck.
Perhaps because the other person was the Demon King, his mind became hazy enough to make his vision spin. Beni, whose face was gradually flushing red, bit down hard on his lower lip. He felt strange. The sound of their clothes rubbing against each other rang out excessively loud.
Beni licked his parched mouth with his tongue and grabbed the arm clinging to his body to try to remove it.
“Your… Majesty, isn’t this enough comfor—ngh.”
Ruan rubbed his face against Beni’s shoulder and hugged him even more strongly toward himself. Beni’s body, pulled in as if being rolled inside, hunched his shoulders and was gradually being covered by Ruan. It didn’t hurt, but it was a restraint difficult to escape from.
“L-let me go!”
At the desperate cry, Ruan slowly lifted his buried face to see Beni’s white nape dyed bright red. Ruan’s eyes narrowed into crescents.
He blew out a breath of air, then raised his other hand and lightly grasped one side of Beni’s belly. The flesh folded between his fingers felt soft. He whispered quietly.
“You’ve gotten quite plump now, rabbit.”
As soon as Ruan’s words ended, the fluttering Beni instantly disappeared from before his eyes.
“Beni?”
Ruan’s arms were embracing empty air, and just as he was rolling his eyes around, something wriggled inside Beni’s clothes piled on his thigh.
When he lifted the shirt, there was a white rabbit with drooping ears. The rabbit glanced at Ruan before hopping down his leg. Seeing Beni, who had turned into a rabbit from surprise, Ruan burst into laughter. Today’s teasing had been a bit excessive.
“Beni.”
Toward Beni standing at a distance looking at him, Ruan gestured with a still amused expression.
“I won’t tease you anymore, come here.”
The rabbit that would normally have come right away just stared up at Ruan with both ears standing stiffly. When he became a rabbit, it was harder to read his expressions compared to his true form, but Ruan intuitively realized that Beni wasn’t simply embarrassed right now.
When Ruan subtly stood up and took a step closer, the rabbit that had been sitting with its front paws neatly together turned its head away sharply. And then didn’t it dart into the flower bed like an arrow.
The Demon King felt a sense of déjà vu. He was reminded of when Beni used to hide and live as a rabbit before.
“Beni…!”
Ruan called for the rabbit in bewilderment while circling the edge of the flower bed, but the creature only stuck out its face and kicked its hind legs at the air toward Ruan. When he became a rabbit, his thinking became simpler and shallower than his true form. Beni glanced at the surprised-looking Ruan before—whoosh—hopping far away again.
“Uh…”
Ruan could only stare blankly at the plump rear view of the rabbit running away without looking back.
* * *
After running all over the greenhouse up to the second floor, the chase only ended when the exhausted rabbit finally collapsed on the stone floor. Ruan cautiously approached the side of the rabbit lying with all four legs stretched out, gasping for rough breaths.
“Beni… I’m sorry. Okay?”
The rabbit glanced at Ruan once before exhaling a deep breath. Thinking this meant his anger had subsided somewhat, Ruan cautiously approached and picked up the rabbit. Fortunately, the rabbit didn’t resist. Though it seemed more accurate to say he didn’t have the strength to.
While Ruan resolved to restrain himself more in the future, seeing Beni get picked up so easily made him think it might be okay to do it one more time later.
“Rabbit, you’d be cute even if you gained enough weight for your flesh to fold in four layers, so why are you sulking like that.”
The rabbit that had been catching its breath sharply lifted its head and glared at Ruan. It wondered if he was teasing again, but there was no trace of mischief in his expression. The Demon King is saying something weird again—Beni, now tired and wanting to rest, tried to let his body go limp. It was at that moment.
Something white and cotton-like fell onto the greenhouse glass wall. Ruan, who had been looking at the rabbit, also tilted his head back.
“Ah, it’s snowing.”
The first snow was falling. It was the beginning of winter in earnest.
* * *
The first snow that began falling in the afternoon didn’t stop even when night came. Beni stood at the window in his room and watched the falling snowflakes.
“The window is big.”
The outside had always only been visible through a window the size of a palm, like a hole. On days when snow fell, the mansion would become quiet as a grave and the servants would watch the Countess’s mood. If they carelessly caught the Countess’s eye, they’d be whipped until their backs bled.
Beni too would curl up quietly in his room when it snowed. Suppressing the desire to leap into the world turning white like himself under the covering snow, he would just remain silent.
Once, the Countess had told him the reason she hated snowy days.
It had snowed just the same when Beni was finally born into this world. She had asked if he knew how terrible the sound of a baby’s crying that echoed loudly through the mansion grounds was that day.
There was almost no conversation worth mentioning that he’d had with the Countess. She had never wanted to see the unclean blood carrying the Count’s bloodline for her entire life. Though the conversation was full of harsh words, Beni still mulled over those words many times. The words that he was born on a snowy day.
She didn’t tell him the exact date, so he didn’t know. Beni had never had a birthday until now. Still, thanks to what the Countess told him, Beni had considered every snowy day to be his birthday.
Because he thought that if he celebrated every time it snowed, among those times he might celebrate his real birthday at least once.
Beni, leaning with both arms on the windowsill, hummed quietly. It was a bouncing, cheerful melody—the music that had echoed whenever it was someone’s birthday at the Count’s household.
Beni couldn’t take a single step outside his room during birthday banquets, but if he pressed his ear tightly against the wall, at least this music would come through clearly.
He didn’t know the song’s title. He couldn’t know exactly whose birthday it was either.
Still, after Trellou came and told him it was his own birthday, he could at least know that this was music celebrating someone’s birthday. So Beni had only hummed this song in his heart whenever it snowed. Perhaps from repeating it dozens of times, there was no awkwardness at all in the notes flowing out of his mouth for the first time.
Beni sang along to the melody of the song whose name he didn’t know, then threw open the wide window. The cold wind blew in fiercely and snowflakes invaded the room. His pure white hair scattered in the strong wind and his cheeks stung, yet strangely he found himself laughing.
His chest that had always felt suffocating as if crushed by something also felt cold and refreshing, as if cold wind was blowing inside.
With his cheeks and nose red enough to be crimson, he was watching the falling snow with the window open when a knock sounded. There was only one person who would knock on this bedroom door.
Beni jumped in surprise and hastily closed the window before immediately opening the door. As expected, Ruan stood there wearing sleeping clothes.
“Your Majesty! What brings you here?”
“Beni. What if you open it without checking who it is?”
“But you said this door only appears to me and Your Majesty!”
At the excuse of sorts, Ruan also relaxed his mischievously frowning face. Ruan discovered the snow heavily settled on Beni’s hair and brushed it off with his hand.
“Were you at the window with it open?”
“Ah…! Yes! The snow kept falling…!”
Beni became sheepish and hurriedly brushed off his shoulders and head. Ruan looked at the snow accumulating on the windowsill as well and asked,
“Then shall we go out for a bit?”
“Right now? No, it’s too cold. What if Your Majesty catches a cold?”
Though he actually wanted to go out, it was too late at night now. Beni refused, but Ruan looked at him like that and suddenly reached into empty air. More precisely, his hand disappeared as if rummaging through the air before coming back out, holding a fur-lined cloak.
Ruan draped it around Beni and even put a warm mana stone in his pocket.
“Your Majesty?”
Before he could even ask what he was suddenly doing, Ruan scooped up Beni and went to the window before jumping out just like that.
Kyaak—Beni’s choked scream rang out.
