Chapter 14: Rabbit Hole

“Ugh, I figured as much.”

At my firm refusal, Elice surprisingly pulled away from the desk, walked over to a chair, and plopped down.

I was glad she was a rabbit who gave up easily.

Just then, she looked around and sniffed the air.

Sniff, sniff.

“Hmm… but since I came in, this room has had this really cloying, suffocating strawberry scent…”

“Is that even a type of scent?”

Did such a smell even exist?

As Elice sniffed the air and tilted her head, she suddenly clapped her hands as if she’d realized something.

“Ah… you were counseling Luna, weren’t you?”

Elice rested her chin on her hand and asked me.

“She’s exhausting, isn’t she?”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t discuss a client’s personal matters with anyone else, no matter what.

I simply waited for her to continue. Taking my silence as confirmation, Elice smirked and spoke.

“Luna… she’s nice. She’s a really nice, good person, that’s true… but do you know what her most fatal flaw is?”

I almost reflexively asked what it was.

I leaned in, all ears.

An S-class hunter, Luna. Information coming directly from someone close to her was incredibly valuable.

As if enjoying the anticipation in my eyes, Elice paused for a moment.

Then, she opened her mouth and said nonchalantly, “She’s a virgin.”

“…Pardon?”

Did I hear that right?

Elice’s eyes widened as if she couldn’t understand my confusion, and she repeated herself.

“A vir-gin. You know what a virgin is, right?”

I did, but…

What in the world did that have to do with anything?

“Because she’s a virgin, she’s totally repressed. In… many ways.”

She drew out the words “many ways” with a meaningful smile.

“She’s always nagging me about how a proud citizen of the Empire should conduct herself, or how I should be wary of my beast-human instincts. You have no idea how much she lectures me.”

Elice shook her long ears, looking utterly fed up.

“It’s ridiculous. The very same glorious citizens of the Empire she talks about don’t even treat beast-humans like us… as people.”

I felt like I’d found a clue.

Luna’s worries.

The true meaning of the sentence: [She stands precariously between her identity as a citizen of the Empire and a member of the beast-humans.]

But for some reason, I didn’t feel great about it. Was it because she kept dissing my client?

It felt like she was poking a sore spot.

So, without thinking, I spoke aggressively to Elice.

“You seem to know a lot, Elice. You must be very experienced.”

The seductive smile on Elice’s face stiffened slightly.

“…What? W-What are you… ha, haha… Of course, I would be, right? I’m a rabbit beast-human, aren’t I? It’d be weirder if I wasn’t, right?”

She let out an awkward, exaggerated laugh and quickly changed the subject.

“…Wow! What’s this?”

Elice’s red eyes were fixed on the small cookie basket on my desk.

Without even asking for my permission, she picked up a cookie and popped it into her mouth.

“Nom, nom, mmm?! This is delicious!”

She mumbled, letting out a pure, unadulterated exclamation of delight.

“You can take that and leave.”

“Oh, really? Nom, nom. Then I’ll leave if you give me one more.”

She spoke with her mouth full of cookies.

I pressed my temples and gestured to the entire basket.

“Take them…”

The moment I gave my permission, Elice, like a squirrel, swept all the remaining cookies into the pockets of her combat suit.

But just then.

“Put those down, Elice.”

The HR team leader walked in.

Elice froze on the spot, cookies in hand.

“What are you doing here… during work hours…”

“Aww, so close…”

At the team leader’s sigh-filled reprimand, her perked-up ears drooped and she pouted.

One by one, she took the cookies she had stuffed into her pockets and placed them back on the table.

In the end, Elice was dragged out by the HR team leader.

I watched them go in silence.

*

At that moment, in Luna’s Rabbit Hole.

The Rabbit Hole wasn’t some grand magic.

It was simply her bedroom, the safest place in the world.

It was nothing more than a deeply personal escape magic that let her dive straight onto her bed.

Poof!

With a faint sensation of warping space, Luna’s body fell onto the plush bed.

She immediately buried her face in a giant pillow.

Her bedroom, contrary to her cold public image, was filled with pastel-toned furniture and rabbit dolls.

“Ugh…”

A moment later, she lifted her legs into the air and began to torment the innocent bed.

-Thump! Thump-thump! Thump-thump-thump!

Like a child throwing a tantrum, she kicked the white duvet wildly with her white-socked feet.

Her identity had been exposed. She had been seen crying.

The imperial dignity and grace she had cultivated as the S-class hunter Luna had been shattered.

There was nothing left of her facade.

She stopped kicking and hugged the giant carrot-shaped body pillow at the head of her bed.

“I’m so screwed…”

Luna remained holed up in her bed for the rest of the evening.

This was not like her at all.

The star-shaped glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling shone faintly in the darkness.

But they offered her no comfort.

‘Is he still at the guild…?’

She’d heard he continued counseling late into the evening. She checked the time without thinking.

‘By now…’

She fumbled to get dressed. She couldn’t just skip work like this. She barely managed to pull herself up.

Before she knew it, she had arrived in front of the Union building.

Like a stray cat—no, a stray rabbit—Luna walked quietly down the hallway toward her private waiting room.

Thankfully, the lights on the counseling office floor were off, and the hallway was empty.

She let out a sigh of relief and was about to open her door, but at that very moment.

“Ah… Luna-nim… perfect timing.”

A voice from behind made Luna’s shoulders stiffen.

It was Team Leader Guk Hae-won.

He approached her with a haggard smile, looking like he’d had a rough day.

In his hand was a small, elegantly designed paper bag.

“Counselor Yoo Seon-woo asked me to give this to you… before he left for the day.”

Luna accepted the bag with a puzzled expression.

Inside was a small box tied with a pretty ribbon and a single, crisp card.

She opened the card first.

And read the letter written inside.

[To Luna-nim,]

You must have been very surprised.

I imagine you were quite startled by the sudden incident this morning.

The most important thing in counseling is that it begins when the client truly wants it to.

So please, don’t feel pressured.

I will be waiting in the counseling office until you are ready, Luna-nim.

This is a small snack. Sweet things can help lift one’s mood.
So please, I hope you have a comfortable evening.

– Your Counselor, Yoo Seon-woo.

Luna stared blankly at the letter for a long time.

It was completely at odds with his sharp, handsome face… a surprisingly gentle letter that made a corner of her heart flutter strangely.

His words were filled with a consideration that didn’t rush her.

At that warmth, she felt her face flush without her realizing it.

‘What is this…?’

It was an unfamiliar feeling, as if she had received a clumsy but sincere love letter for the first time in her life.

With trembling hands, she opened the box.

A sweet, buttery aroma wafted out, revealing a delicious-looking cookie plumply sandwiched with white fresh cream.

“What is with this person…”

It was her favorite snack. The cookie she would secretly eat when her stress reached its peak.

Just as she picked up the cookie, she discovered a small memo tucked underneath it.

The handwriting was messier than the letter’s, as if it had been scribbled in a hurry.

[Next time, I’ll add strawberries. :)]

“……”

After reading the note, Luna spoke softly.

“…Team Leader, do I have any official schedule tomorrow?”

“Pardon? Ah… no. You’re scheduled to be off tomorrow… Is something the matter?”

The team leader answered, flustered by her sudden question.

Without meeting his eyes, Luna stared down at the cookie in her hand and mumbled, “Then tomorrow… I’d like to use a vacation day…”

“Pardon?”

“Tomorrow… I’m thinking of going… to that counseling office…”

The team leader’s eyes went wide.

He had recommended counseling countless times, but she had never once accepted.

And now she was going on her own?

Guk Hae-won asked again and again, disbelieving his own ears, but Luna didn’t answer.

She thought to herself.

It seems I have to, at least once.

I have to meet him.

As if solidifying her resolve, she took a large bite of the cookie in her hand.

“Wow…”

Sweet, soft cream spread throughout her mouth.

*

That evening, I leaned back in my chair and stared at the translucent system window floating in the air.

[Luna] [PINNED]

[Current Status: Hiding from reality under the covers in her bedroom. Mentally, she is in a state of extreme embarrassment. She is feeling shame from both her identity being revealed and the crying incident.]

[Main Stance: Wants to give up on everything and simply become one with her bed.]

Honestly, this alone was half the battle won.

When I first met her, her emotions were centered on the rather heavy theme of an identity crisis.

But now, it was different.

All her feelings had shifted to shame and embarrassment—emotions that were much clearer and easier to handle.

I had turned a chronic illness into a temporary, acute one.

It was a perfect first step for treatment.

Just then, the system window flickered, and her status changed.

[Current Status: Heading to the company. However, she does not want to run into the counselor. If an encounter occurs, she plans to use Rabbit Hole immediately.]

If she had arrived, she would have received my gift from the team leader by now.

I kept my eyes fixed on the system window.

This was the best a counselor could do.

If the client didn’t want counseling, there was nothing more I could do.

And a moment later, the change I had been waiting for occurred.

—Bzzzt!

[Luna] [PINNED]

[Current Status: Her tongue is reeling from a mind-numbing sweetness, while her heart is fluttering with a bashful warmth. These complex, overlapping sensations are throwing her into utter confusion.]

[Main Stance: ‘Should I really go, just once…?’]

“Got her.”

I closed the system window floating in the air and smiled in satisfaction.

This was enough.

The wounded, wary rabbit had finally walked into the trap I’d set.

The bait, I suppose, was a fresh cream cookie.

All that was left was to treat this frightened rabbit.

From now on, the veterinarian had only one job to do.

“The Empire and beast-humans.”

On my way home, I had picked up thick theses on the regulated world of the Empire from the Association’s data archives and now piled them on my desk.

With these documents, I could fill my head with the official knowledge of the Empire’s history and social structure.

…And once I had the official information, I also needed the unofficial kind.

I turned on my computer and logged onto a familiar site.

[Hunter Gallery]

A chaotic space where all sorts of speculation, information, and sometimes, raw truth were mixed together.

I typed “beast-human” into the search bar.

Hundreds of posts filled the screen.

And one of them caught my eye.

[Title: The scientific reason why a rabbit beast-human is in heat for 365 days, just like a real rabbit. fact]

“……”

Is this…

The right way to go about this?

After a brief moment of deliberation, I finally dove into the chaotic rabbit hole.

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Translated By: Meher (RaidenTL)

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