Beni barely came to his senses and raised his head that had been bowed as if buried in the stew bowl. Stew broth clinging thickly to his fur dripped down. The expression of the rabbit who had the best meal was truly blissful.
Phew—feeling like his stomach was completely full, Beni let out a long breath and licked his front paws to wipe around his mouth. Now that his belly was full, drowsiness came creeping in. Beni knew a secret place that was warm and out of everyone’s sight, perfect for times like this.
Before leaving the iron bars, Beni didn’t forget to give thanks to Cerberus for letting him steal his food today too. Though the greeting was nothing more than tapping his hind legs.
Afterward, Beni moved back toward Acre Farm. Acre Farm was a huge farmland with a long river flowing through the middle.
Beni went to that river twice a day to wash himself. There were clear water ponds throughout the castle, so Beni could actually maintain better cleanliness than when he lived at the Count’s household.
It was such a happy thing.
* * *
“Lea, when do you think you felt like you’d grown up?”
Even young boys and girls worked as servants at the Demon King’s Castle. Though the Demon King’s Castle was somewhat dangerous for young demons to work in, there were quite a few who came risking their lives themselves or forced by their parents because the pay was that high.
The reason the Demon King’s Castle work was dangerous was because of the Demon King. Most of the Demon King race’s bloodlines were selfish and had cruel aspects, so if you got on their wrong side, you could lose your life.
Originally it wasn’t this severe, but it had worsened somewhat after the previous Demon King stopped waging war or crossing over to plunder the surface world.
However, there was no one who could complain about that. Not only because the Demon King’s existence was to rule and govern demons, but the Demon King was fundamentally an absolute authority.
So servants composed of commoners were always intimidated, but lately vitality had gradually begun to return.
That was because this Demon King was excessively uninterested in servants and attendants.
At the question from Luna, a girl with her hair tied high in one place, Lea, a girl with short hair, pondered deeply. The stairs in the annex going west of Orte Palace, the main palace of the Demon King’s Castle, were sparsely populated and good for slacking off.
“For me… when I could sleep with chocolate in front of me. When I was little, I slept with it in my mouth.”
Chocolate is delicious—Beni agreed inwardly. Beni had tried chocolate for the first time after coming to the Demon King’s Castle. Since he’d only seen Trellou smacking his lips eating it in front of him, he’d wondered if it was really that good, but it was incredibly delicious. The rabbit smacked his lips, recalling the chocolate cake he’d eaten last time.
Currently, Beni was lying down in an empty space under the stairs in the south annex corridor. When he entered through a hole he’d discovered by chance, there was a subtle gap in front where he could secretly peek at who was coming up the stairs while only he could see, and because the space wasn’t very wide, it was even cozy.
Though dust had accumulated, the room he’d lived in at the mansion hadn’t been very clean either, so it wasn’t much of a problem for Beni. This moderately narrow, cozy space where he could occasionally come and listen to the chattering of slacking servants was a perfect place for Beni to take naps.
Beni quietly eavesdropped on the servants’ conversation. Listening to them talk freely, he would sometimes idly imagine how nice it would have been if he too had entered this castle as a servant.
“For me, when I caught a bug at once without screaming, I felt I’d become really strong.”
“Ugh, I still can’t catch giant centipedes. Come to think of it, didn’t a snake appear in the annex last time?”
At the word snake, his lying ears perked up. Snakes in the Demon Realm—even small ones exceeded 2 meters in body length. They even grew eating plenty of mana, so some snakes could use unique abilities.
“Right, now that it’s getting cold, monsters that lived in the lake or forest are slithering into the Demon King’s Castle. You should set a trap near your bed too.”
Ugh, I don’t want to. Lea muttered as if horrified, and Beni too kept it in mind without falling asleep. As long as he had to live in animal form, snakes were a great danger to Beni. Just as he resolved to be careful from now on—
“But you know.”
Luna’s voice instantly got quieter. It was a volume that could only be heard if close, but because Beni was right below the stairs where they were sitting, it came through very clearly. Since Beni gathered news about the Demon King’s Castle here, he didn’t stop paying attention to the conversation even while half-dozing.
“Have you ever seen the rabbit His Majesty the Demon King is raising?”
“You’re not supposed to talk about that…!”
His Majesty the Demon King is… raising, a rabbit? His closed eyelids shot up, revealing sparkling yellow eyes. The Demon King is raising a rabbit? Beni’s heart beat rapidly at a story he truly hadn’t expected—no, hadn’t even imagined.
Then that day, could it be he was spared because he was a rabbit beastkin?
That thought suddenly occurred to him, but he soon folded it away neatly. Real rabbits and rabbit beastkin felt very different. Trellou also liked monsters and beasts, but loathed beastkin.
Moreover, the Demon King not only gave him a frightening warning at the coronation ceremony but even sent the Captain of the Royal Guard. From eavesdropping here and there, the Captain of the Royal Guard seemed to be a knight protecting the Demon King. Sending such a knight couldn’t have been a good meaning.
Beni corrected his thoughts before they flowed in the wrong direction, but at the same time couldn’t completely suppress his curiosity about the rabbit the Demon King was raising. He didn’t seem like the type of personality to raise something, so what kind of rabbit was it that the Demon King was raising? Was it incredibly beautiful-looking?
Would the Demon King take care of me too if I pretended to be a rabbit? Just as that thought reached that point, the head maid’s shout came from above the stairs.
“Lea! Luna! Loafing around here again! There’s a mountain of work to do, get over here right now!”
At the angry voice, the two girls answered in deflated voices and went up the stairs. The stairs going to the annex became quiet, and Beni fell into a nap while thinking about the rabbit the Demon King was raising.
* * *
In a burrow near the castle wall close to Acre Farm, looking inside the entrance barely the size of a fist, white fur filled the inside of the burrow. Before long, the ball of fur stirred and two bright yellow eyes appeared round.
‘Too… cold!’
It was Beni’s burrow. Even though he’d filled the burrow to the brim with his own fur and hay, it seemed insufficient to withstand the gradually cooling temperature. The rabbit pulled out a white ball of fur he’d hidden deep in the burrow and hugged it tightly to his chest.
It was a precious rabbit doll Beni had made stitch by stitch while hiding, collecting his own fur. Made by attaching both ears to fur he’d diligently rolled into a ball, using a yellow button he’d picked up at the castle as an eye and sewing it with plant stems, it was currently Beni’s closest friend. Though it was flawed in having only one eye.
Hugging the doll didn’t make him warmer or anything. It just gave him a little peace of mind.
In the early dawn, Beni curled up his body as much as possible to fill the warmth of his cold body, but it was a useless effort.
Eventually Beni gave up sleeping and peeked his face slightly out of the burrow. It seemed staying outdoors any longer was impossible. Now he gradually had to find a warm, secret place inside the castle where no one would know. Since the Demon King’s Castle’s winter was said to be very harsh anyway, it was something he’d have to do eventually.
The rabbit who came out of the burrow moved toward the castle quietly and swiftly. The Demon King’s Castle at dawn was mostly all asleep, so he just had to be careful of the guards. The guards too mostly patrolled the castle’s exterior and didn’t go inside much.
Beni decided to look around Orte Palace, the largest one, first. Though Niar Palace was also big, he somehow felt like he’d get caught if he went there, so he’d never gone even once until now.
Because he had conspicuous white fur, the rabbit moved while lying as flat as possible and headed for the door toward the kitchen side of Orte Palace. This was easiest to enter, and at dawn there wouldn’t be anyone in the kitchen.
Thus Beni safely entered the castle and relaxed his tension as he quietly looked around. Having secretly hidden for quite some time, he knew the geography to some extent, so the rabbit unhesitatingly examined everything from the basement to the third floor.
However, as expected, there wasn’t really anywhere suitable to hide for a long time. Though the stairs going to the west annex came to mind, it was too much to stay there. Because during the day he had to go to the field and Cerberus’s pen, and the possibility of being caught while going out was high.
Beni crouched in a corner of the third-floor corridor, lost in thought. The only place left in Orte Palace was the fourth floor—he’d never once gone to that place where the Demon King’s bedroom was said to be. Afraid he might get caught by the Demon King, he hadn’t even looked at it.
Normally even now he would have given up immediately and moved to an annex or another building, but Beni stared intently at the stairs going up to the fourth floor.
〈Have you ever seen the rabbit His Majesty the Demon King is raising?〉
Was the Demon King’s rabbit staying on that fourth floor? While wandering around here and there in the castle, Beni had seen mice and insects, but had never once seen a rabbit. If he became friends with the Demon King’s rabbit… wouldn’t the Demon King raise him too?
