Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

ZPD, the Chief's office.

The afternoon sun was sliced by the blinds into small pieces of shattered gold, neatly laid out upon the sage-green floor. The gradually rising room temperature stewed this office—its walls speaking of glory and history—into an atmosphere of steady, rule-abiding propriety.

Silence and dust danced together in the shafts of light.

Two animals staged their daily, routine standoff here.

"Officer Hopps, are you certain you want to take this case?"

"I'm certain."

"I acknowledge your perseverance and ability, but..."

"Chief Bogo, I guarantee there's no one in the ZPD more suited to this than me." A look of persistence rippled across Judy's face. "You know I've been preparing for this for quite some time, and I even took acting classes specifically for it." As she spoke, the grey rabbit standing before the African buffalo adjusted her expression. Those violet eyes, which usually sparkled with light, lost their luster in the blink of an eye, and her entire face took on a numb and weary look.

Chief Bogo looked at the grey rabbit standing ramrod straight yet with a listless expression, and what churned in his mind were the things that had been continuously pushed down over the past month.

Fourteen missing carnivores.

The city's mammal disappearance case had been brewing for a month now. Fourteen carnivores—no sign of them alive, no body to be found dead. The media had guessed everything from "serial kidnapping" to "a shadow government behind it all that discriminates against predators," and had railed from "ZPD's incompetence" all the way to "should the mayor step down." The frequency of calls from the mayor's office to his office had gone from once every three days to three times a day. The pressure pressed down layer by layer, and in the end it all landed on the ZPD's head.

His head.

It wasn't that the task force hadn't been investigating carefully. But that was precisely the strange part—the leads had been contaminated. A majority of the witnesses had later changed their testimonies and had even provided quite a few false leads. No matter how many times they verified things over and over, the final deduction could only arrive at a ridiculous conclusion like "those missing animals simply vanished into thin air."

There was someone pulling the strings behind the scenes. Identity unknown. Motive unknown.

Chief Bogo covered his face with his hoof, dragged it down from top to bottom, and then heaved a deep sigh. "Alright! Hopps, this undercover mission is yours."

Indeed, there was no animal in the ZPD more suited to this than her.

"However, you must obey orders!" He raised a hoof to emphasize again. "Officer Hopps, you are a police officer. Obeying your superior's instructions is your first duty. Never forget that."

"Understood." The rabbit's eyes ignited. A laugh she had been holding back for quite some time spilled out in a light, lilting tone, and then she quickly reined in her expression.

The subordinate's young and spirited laugh reached his ears, and Bogo felt the urge to sigh again. To him, Judy Hopps had initially been nothing more than a nuisance forced upon him by Mayor Lionheart for a political stunt to garner votes. So when she joined the ZPD a year ago, he had assigned her to a logistics position. He hadn't expected that she would truly live up to her title as the top graduate of the police academy—wherever she went, she could shine, or rather, stir up something big. In just half a year, she had actually completed the optimization and digitization of the entire ZPD filing system, increasing the operational efficiency of every department several times over.

Over this past year, she had become a regular guest in his office. Through the daily process of getting along, he could no longer ignore the fact that this rabbit was brimming with energy and excessively zealous about her work.

A month ago, she had even passed the internal examination for senior officer. He had finally reviewed and approved her persistent application to transfer into the Criminal Division. At present, this decision seemed to be the right one. For instance, just when he was racking his brains over this damned carnivore disappearance case, she had handed in a new lead report—who knew how long she had been preparing it—along with a complete action proposal.

The report had re-collated the different timelines of the disappearances and cross-referenced them with the missing animals' movement trajectories, finally circling a new direction that surprised him and seemed completely unrelated—Crabapple Street. Alongside it was an annotation highlighting a key point: the number of missing carnivores might be more than fourteen.

This rabbit wanted to poke a hole right through the sky.

Fourteen was already more than enough.

Bogo didn't know a great deal about Crabapple Street. After all, it wasn't within his jurisdiction. All he knew was that it was a grey zone with far-reaching connections behind it, and it hadn't been around for very long. The ZPD's tentacles truly couldn't reach into it for the time being. If it was connected to the case, it was no wonder that they still couldn't make head or tail of things even now.

The animals there had their own rules, and those rules did not welcome anyone in uniform.

Therefore, a newly promoted rabbit detective who had never shown her face to the media or the public—capable, with an innocence not yet disciplined by the system, small in stature, and female—could indeed fit right into a district like Crabapple Street.

She was the ideal candidate for the undercover mission.

Once the decision was made, the weight in his heart settled, and the buffalo's attention immediately shifted to action and efficiency. He tapped the thick stack of documents on his desk. "Hopps, I've accepted your operation report. Tomorrow I'll reassign tasks for this case. Your whereabouts will need to be temporarily kept confidential, as required. I'll pull together a special operations unit to support you."

"Understood."

Her crisp reply only deepened his worry. Bogo voiced his concern. "Hopps, you've only just transferred into the Criminal Division. You don't have a compatible partner to work with yet, nor any practical field experience. During this operation, things could get extremely—" Chief Bogo cleared his throat. "...dangerous. Officer Hopps, I'm not underestimating you. You know what I mean."

Judy's ears drew taut as she discreetly read her superior's expression. "I know."

That was precisely her advantage.

Crabapple Street. Zootopia's red-light district. It was home to a large number of animals engaged in illegal bodily transactions. An extra rabbit in a district like that would hardly stand out. It was risky, true, but by the same token, it was also the place where she could best prove her abilities.

She had already waited too long since joining the ZPD.

A year. Not a single task that could be called a case had ever crossed her desk. That was not what she had become a cop for.

"Chief Bogo, I will complete this mission and find those missing animals. I guarantee it." The rabbit's voice was set with unquestionable confidence and resolve.

"I hope so, Officer Hopps." Ever since becoming chief of the ZPD, Bogo had rarely been moved by the enthusiasm of new recruits, and the rabbit's assurance struck him as nothing out of the ordinary. The buffalo merely put on his glasses, nodded, and finally offered the approval his subordinate needed. "I will fully support you in this mission. Be careful in everything. Remember, I do not want disciplinary documents landing on my desk because something happened to you."

"I won't let you down, sir."

Judy walked out of the Chief's office calmly, slowly loosening the fist she had kept clenched behind her back. A tingling ache rippled through the muscles of her paw, clearly awakening a long-dormant excitement deep within her body.

The rabbit could hardly contain her enthusiasm. The lights in the station hallway swam and danced within her two violet irises, glimmering and gleaming.

She would succeed.

 

＊＊＊＊＊

 

Crabapple Street.

The red-light district was, of course, illegal in Zootopia, and yet it existed all the same. The actual jurisdiction over this street was far from clear-cut. No city archive could pinpoint exactly which year it had first been stamped with its special mark. But mention the name of this district, and the public all tacitly accepted it as a gathering place for unsavory desires.

It had originally been a patch of marshy wetland on the edge of the Rainforest District, something like the moss that grew in the folds of the landscape—so commonplace it went unnoticed. Then the Lynxley family launched the Tundratown expansion project, and half of this place was frozen over by the ever-encroaching snow and ice. In the end, it became a blurred territory between Tundratown and the Rainforest District, a patch of land that neither side was willing to claim.

On a map, it was not small.

The crisscrossing streets and alleys had gradually evolved into two different styles under the influence of two climates. The eastern side, adjacent to Tundratown, was a zone of artificial snow, blanketed in ice and snow year-round. It was unfit for habitation, yet favored by animals who were destitute or whose identities were shrouded in mystery. They made their lives here, and gradually, a community of low, cramped dwellings took shape. Neon tubes with suggestive meanings hung crookedly above doorways, like streaks of pink scars.

The western side was a completely different story. Here, the color shifted gradually from snowy white to verdant green. When the cold wind from Tundratown blew through, even the humidity unique to the Rainforest District turned crisp and refreshing. Animals with a little money in their pockets all crowded into this side, and in time, a hierarchy emerged. On the main street of the western side, several luxurious high-end buildings even stood erect, their exteriors clad in pale marble and one-way glass, even the gold carved patterns on the doorframes exuding an exquisite sense of design.

Crabapple Street was deeply divided. Starting from the temperature, everything here was steeped in ambiguity.

The streetlamps were the most respectable adornment here, the one piece of municipal infrastructure that made no distinction between east and west. Atop each lamppost rested a cluster of crabapple-blossom-shaped lampshades, their light distinctly artistic—warm yellow and orange-pink interwoven, spilling onto the ground like melting lust. When night fell, it dragged the entire area into a dim, ambiguous haze.

Under the light, everything seemed softer—tired eye sockets, makeup-smudged cheeks, collars that had been torn, even the broken sobs seeping through door panels. And violence too.

Crabapple Street had no need for daylight.

Daylight was its time to catch its breath.

Nick Wilde pushed open the thin wooden door and stepped into the daylight.

The snow and ice seeped through the swollen, cracked pads of his feet, eroding the warmth between the fox's legs. The cold spreading upward stung him into blinking.

He was still alive.

Because his wounds didn't hurt, he'd actually thought he was dead. Looked like that damned stuff's effects hadn't worn off yet.

Nick raised a brow and looked back at his footprints.

Last night's snow machines had been diligent enough, blanketing this district in a fresh layer of soft, hollow white. The snow bore one pit after another where he had walked, and midway through, bright red bloodstains began appearing in those pits. Gradually spreading.

In the most recent one, the red filled half the footprint.

The fox withdrew his gaze, flicked his tail dismissively, and kept walking.

Might as well call it an ice pack treatment. Who knows, maybe that's even a legitimate medical practice for some species.

The trail of blood bloomed into crystalline pink all the way.

The sun had risen not long before. The scenery brought by the morning light, unobstructed by any tall buildings on the eastern side of the street, possessed an almost extravagant beauty. Platinum gold spread like gossamer across the bluish sky and snow, as if it were a pale oil painting. A pity, then, that the animals of Crabapple Street rarely saw it—and those who could had no heart left to appreciate it.

"Fox, you still haven't died today, either?"

A hoarse voice fell from overhead.

Nick paused and looked up. Astride the windowsill of the attic beside him sat a female snow leopard, her coat disheveled, her heavy makeup smeared by the clear sky into something viscous and somber—a kind of faded, sullen decay. She had a cigarette in her mouth, smoke spilling from the corner of her lips, scattering quickly in the cold air.

What was her name again?

A sleepless night had dulled the fox's mind. Before he could fully think it through, the corners of his mouth lifted automatically and shot back, "I'll take that as a good morning. Kelly, it's only right that I outlive a fool like you, isn't it?"

"I haven't used that name in a long time." The snow leopard yawned, revealing broken canines. She let out two short, scoffing laughs. "Kelly was last month. I go by Shira now. What, haven't seen me in a few days and you've already forgotten my name? Don't tell me that deer's underlings 'took care' of you so much you got amnesia?" She deliberately put on an innocent, guileless look. "Or would 'tortured' be more fitting? Come to think of it, I feel like I haven't heard you screaming from a beating in a while. I kind of miss it."

The temperature in the fox's green eyes dropped to zero.

The sun had yet to warm this street. The air still carried a stench that even cheap perfume couldn't cover.

The stench of blood, the stench of bodily fluids.

"Shira," Nick smiled, his voice stripped of warmth by the snow, "why are you so fixated on me? Don't tell me you've mistaken me for your old roommate? We're foxes of a different genus."

"Shut up!" The snow leopard's face contorted.

"Looks like you still remember. I was starting to think you'd forgotten your real name, and that arctic fox who landed you in this mess. Speaking of which, he's now—"

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Fox, do you want to die?"

Nick flicked his ears, which were ringing from the noise, and raised his paws, spreading them open. "I'm just concerned about your eyes. Shira, take a good look. I'm a red fox. I don't look anything like that ex of yours who looks like he's been run over by a car twice."

Her voice was hoarse, hatred seeping through. "He's not my ex."

"Oh, is that so?" The fox's eyes widened in surprise, his eyelids lifting a fraction. He tilted his head and continued with that sardonic tone, "But didn't you tell me you loved him? Who on Crabapple Street hasn't heard your love story?"

Her sordid past dredged up again and again, fury steadily filled the snow leopard's gaunt frame. She locked her eyes on the fox on the ground, her pupils dilated. "Fox, watch your tongue. I can kill you easily, as simply as tearing paper."

"Really? I'd absolutely love that." The smile didn't linger long on the fox's face before slipping away. "But, Shira, how are you going to use a body that's had its fangs pulled and claws ripped out, and is too starved to move, to deal with me?"

At the thought of her ruined body, Shira calmed down instead. She withdrew her aggressive posture and slowly raised a paw to take one last drag of her cigarette. A sneer crept onto her face along with the white smoke. "Heh, fox, you think you'll get to keep your teeth?"

The snow leopard's ice-blue eyes opened fully—a rare sight—and as they turned, they spilled out a gem-like, multicolored luster, looking somewhat uncanny. "Fox, I can smell the blood on you. You won't live much longer. When this street casts you aside for good, I'll buy your pelt for a doormat."

"Cast aside? Ridiculous." Nick tried to recall Shira's real name to strike back, but it was truly not worth mentioning, and he had long forgotten it. He had no choice but to confess a part of the truth. "I'm not like you. Shira, I have nothing. Whether it's casting aside or being cast aside—neither one has anything to do with me."

"I think you were born with the fate of being cast aside!"

"What, want to dust off your old con artist tricks? Should I get you a deck of Tarot cards?"

The snow leopard flicked the extinguished cigarette butt in the fox's direction. "You don't believe me? Fox, don't you still have a heart?"

Hidden so damn well.

"Wow, don't tell me you're trying to say love. Shira, have you ever seen an animal on this street who believes in any kind of feeling? Well, except for you, of course."

Shira looked down at the fox with pity. "Precisely because you don't believe."

So one day you'll definitely get to savor the exquisite taste of having your heart dug out.

The venom welling up from her chest seemed to soothe the snow leopard's bruised vocal cords. Facing the clear sky, she offered the fox a curse that sounded like a blessing, and her voice actually took on a hint of girlish, artless innocence.

"Fox, you will be cast aside by love."

The piercing malice scraped past the fox's body on a cold wind, neither painful nor itchy. Nick didn't reply; he didn't even bother to roll his eyes. Pain and torment were as normal as breathing to the animals who lived on Crabapple Street, let alone a curse as childish as this.

Love?

What a worthless thing.

He nodded lazily in response and paid no more attention to the snow leopard picking a fight. The fox's gaze pierced through the morning mist, the tip of his nose twitching slightly as he confirmed in the haze that the pizza shop he was headed to was already open.

The diversion ended here.

The fox swiveled his ears, stepped forward, and walked on into the morning light. Blood beaded and dripped from his feet one after another. Amidst the numb, stinging ache, he pondered what pizza topping to choose, and along the way deleted the name Shira from his mind.

The animals here didn't use real names. There was no need. Who knew whether the other would still be alive tomorrow. Names changed over and over, and no one really remembered.

Crabapple Street had no habit of wasting anything.

Drawing closer to the pizza shop, the number of animals coming and going showed no increase. The street remained empty save for the fox alone.

Nick had just passed a scattering of trees sealed in ice when he suddenly sensed something off. An inexplicable chill scraped against the back of the fox's neck, and his fur stood on end, one hair at a time. The fox spun around to scan behind him with lightning speed. His sharp vision allowed him, with just a few sweeps, to swiftly lock onto the object of his alarm.

More than a dozen meters away, there was an animal.

No.

Odds were, it was dead.

Come to think of it, wasn't his luck a little too rotten today?

The fox's eyesight was good enough that he could make out clearly the shape huddled against the wall—very small, grey. The fine snow swept up by the wind had coated the tiny thing in an extremely thin layer, vaguely softening that figure, whose life or death remained uncertain.

He stood there for a moment.

He knew the rules of Crabapple Street better than anyone. Animals who stuck their noses into other people's business didn't live long. While he didn't find much meaning in living, that didn't mean he wanted to invite trouble.

Black pepper beef it was, then, for his pizza.

Nick withdrew his gaze and continued walking forward.

What if they weren't dead yet?

He turned his head.

They were fur-covered mammals. That name-changing snow leopard could roll around in the snow all day in nothing but pajamas. And this place wasn't the real Tundratown—it wasn't cold enough to freeze an animal to death.

Maybe they were just asleep. He wasn't some rude fox who liked disturbing other animals' good dreams.

He turned back. Took two slow steps.

Then stopped again.

Wilde, what are you thinking?

What could you even do?

The fox stepped toward the pizza shop at the end of the eastern street. This time, he didn't look back.

They had to be dead.

Did that even need confirming?

The scene inside the pizza shop caught Nick off guard. It was packed with animals, all looking weary and dragging their feet. Most of them were female, their garish, flimsy clothes giving off an overpowering scent of perfume that mingled with the shop's various greasy smells, fermenting into an indistinct, sour bitterness.

It wasn't exactly friendly to a fox with a sensitive nose.

But an empty, shriveled stomach didn't care about such things. Nick held his breath and sidled in. The crowded animals brushed past one another, rarely making eye contact, like a school of fish stranded in shallow water, none with the energy to care about the one beside them. No one was an exception.

At the counter, the fox took his extra-large pizza. The heat and the rich aroma of black pepper seeped through the cardboard box, warming his paws.

Pizza in hand, he headed back home the same way he came.

The sun rose quickly. The sparse, fine snow powder on the road had crusted over into clumps, starting to melt at the edges.

Perhaps it was the aroma of the pizza reviving the fox's energy-depleted body, or perhaps the numbing drug was wearing off. A fine, prickling pain ignited from everywhere without warning. A dull ache in his abdomen, stabbing pains in his limbs, even his head suddenly throbbed with ringing. The most impossible to ignore, however, were his feet—a sharp pain that dragged the muscles all over his body into spasms, beat by beat, in sync with his heartbeat.

It hurt so much that he had to stop.

The place looked so familiar it gave the fox a start.

What a coincidence.

Nick sighed inwardly. Without bothering to fight the twisted feeling in his heart, his eyes turned automatically toward the wall and locked onto that figure he had earlier deemed a dead thing and ignored.

The sun had melted away the thin layer of snow that had covered them before. Perhaps because the fur had gotten wet, the original grey shade appeared even darker now. Looked very cold.

The fox's ears pressed back.

Still not awake? Really dead?

Flutter-flutter—

A faint sound.

His ears twitched involuntarily. An inexplicable unease made him sweep his gaze around. His eyes had just shifted to the eaves of a low house when he saw a small patch of snow peeling away from the edge, falling in a clump through the sunlight. Then, the remaining layer of snow slid downward half an inch with remarkable ease, letting out that faint sound—the sound of friction between snow and tile surrendering.

Ah... this was not good. A certain premonition stirred in Nick's heart.

Suddenly, as if having locked in the perfect moment to charge, the entire slab of snow on the rooftop transformed in an instant into a giant white "quilt," sliding off all at once. Not the slightest bit off, and with perfect precision, it buried that grey form inside.

A perfect, long mound of snow stretched across the ground.

The world froze for a frame.

The fox stood there, stunned.

"...Huh?"

What had he just seen?

Had he really just watched the snow from the roof bury that tiny thing alive?

One second. Two seconds. Three—

Something erupted.

"Hahahahaha no way... hahahaha... this is just too..." Nick's voice was cut into pieces by the laughter spilling from his throat, impossible to hold back.

He couldn't find the second half of the word to describe it.

Too what? Too unlucky? Too absurd? Too ridiculous? To think there was actually an animal with luck even more rotten than his own. The malice of the world was so brazen it had reached the point where he ought to marvel at its miraculousness—even the heavens had to throw in one last stab.

The fox laughed so hard he nearly doubled over his stiff, aching waist, laughing until the wounds on his body throbbed in pain along with each spasm.

The mound of snow remained perfectly still amidst the laughter.

Once he had laughed enough, Nick picked up his pizza and walked over.

Up close, the snow pile wasn't very high. He crouched down, set the pizza box aside, and measured the snow pile with his paw. After picking a roughly suitable spot, he began to dig.

A few scoops later, a fluffy little ball of fur had been rescued by him.

The fox's paw pads brushed over it casually, sweeping away the snow particles on top.

This was... a tail?

He simply plunged both paws into the snow and felt around. The body beneath his paws was soft, and there was even body heat—seemed it wasn't truly beyond saving after all. The utterly conscienceless fox didn't stop to think about how he'd earlier concluded they were dead, nor about what might have happened had he really ignored them. He only thought that he should hurry—his pizza was about to get cold.

The fox's paws followed the body upward through the snow, trying to locate the little thing's arms. Then, he pressed against a waist of excessively slender proportions and gauzy fabric.

It was a female.

His paws nearly sprang back in an instant. Nick abandoned the plan of continuing upward to find the arms. He wrapped both paws around her waist, pulled outward, and simply yanked her straight out of the snow pile. Fortunately, she was very light, and there wasn't much snow—he barely had to exert his injured arms at all. The fox finally saw the true face of today's "trouble."

It was a rabbit.

The fresh snow, light and airy, was sent flying again by the motion, drifting and swirling abundantly through the air, reflecting glints of glittering light.

Nick held up his new trouble and looked her over.

The drenched grey-furred bunny hung limp like a doll pulled from the wash, her head and two long ears drooping, her face completely obscured. Of course, the other reason her face was hard to make out was that she was sparkling.

The fox, once again enduring the pain, laboriously hoisted the bunny's limp body higher and shook her left and right without a shred of pity, trying to shake off the glittering remnants of snow clinging to her.

But this did not entirely solve the problem of the bunny's sparkle.

The main factor was that she was wearing an extremely revealing, skintight camisole dress, the scant fabric studded all over with rhinestones. Squinting at the true source of the radiance, Nick could practically picture the dress's advertising slogan: Blindingly dazzling under any light.

The fox could only resignedly gather the bunny into his arms. He propped her body with one arm so that her head rested against the hollow of his shoulder, while his other paw brushed aside an ear and lifted her face.

Not quite the same.

Was it youthfulness? That wasn't quite right either.

Unlike what Nick had pictured, this bunny—who was dressed so revealingly and looked entirely like a fellow worker in the trade—wore no makeup. Her eyes were closed, fine droplets of water beaded on her long lashes.

Good. He had never seen her before. Didn't know her. Probably had no history with her.

He set half his heart at ease.

Saving a fellow worker was already breaking the rules. If he'd saved a fellow worker he had a grudge with, Nick felt he'd have to gouge out on the spot this conscience that had grown out of nowhere today, as punishment.

It was only upon clearly sensing the warmth of the other's body that the fox realized this bunny's breathing was not faint at all. One could even say her vital signs were quite normal—heartbeat and breathing both fine. And how long had it been since he'd fished her out of the snow? Ten minutes? How was he already able to feel the heat coming off her? Most crucially, so far he hadn't seen a single wound on her. She looked far healthier than he was.

The fox cast another glance at the decent-quality short gauze dress on the bunny.

From the west side?

He tightened his arm. The bunny's icy nose brushed past the side of his neck and pressed against his injured collarbone, bringing a faint, prickling sting.

Was this a coma, or just deep sleep?

He couldn't just stand here holding her until she woke up, could he?

Nick simply patted the body in his arms. "Little bunny." He shook her a bit. "Miss?" Then he gently pinched her cheek and tugged outward. "Time to wake up, fluff."

No reaction whatsoever.

The fox stood there, inhaled, lifted one of her drooping ears, and announced softly, "Little bunny, I hope you have a lot of money."

He secured her against his uninjured right shoulder, bent down to pick up the no-longer-warm pizza box. "You owe me." He blew at the fur behind her ear, which was wet and plastered together into a clump.

Owe too much.

Holding the bunny, he ambled his way home just as he had come.

The sunlight scattered behind their backs.

 

tbc.

Chapter Text

He pulled open the unlocked door and the pizza box gave out first, hitting the floor with a slap.

Tch. Nick flexed his drained left paw, still ignoring the body that had begun trembling from the pain. He shouldered the bunny over to the bed, fully intending to dump the "burden" straight onto it—only to stop short just as the bunny was about to touch the edge of the mattress.

It had his blood on it... and other things.

Ha, which animal living here would mind that? Beats being buried in a snow pile.

The fox scoffed inwardly at his own flicker of ridiculous concern.

He looked down at the bunny in his arms, his gaze sliding from her clean face to the blue sheets with a few dark stains on them.

Nick now suspected he was losing his mind from lack of sleep. Fine, he'd brought the bunny back—but was he actually considering whether to let her use his bed? Clearly, between the two of them, he was the one who needed rest more. If she took the spot, where would he sleep? Besides, the bunny was still wet, and he did not want to deal with a damp, moldy mattress.

Having thought it through, the fox turned around and, holding the bunny, walked slowly toward the sofa directly opposite the bed.

The layout of the space split here.

The sofa stood against the wall, carrying a sense of foreignness utterly out of place in this shabby room. For one, it was too large—large enough to casually annex a third of the room's space—and its texture seemed far too refined, the short velvet fabric casting a fine, soft layer of creamy white under the light. In this room where most things were cheap and grey with dust, it sat intact, expensive, untouched by a single speck of filth—like a colossal beast stretching its limbs after a full meal, occupying the most respectable spot with the matter-of-fact authority of a master.

It did not belong in this room.

So it was not the fox's. He never used this sofa.

But that did not stop Nick from deciding to set the bunny down on it.

Wilde's assets couldn't cover the value of this sofa, but his wounds and suffering could. Lucky for him, he wasn't short on suffering—if anything, given the nature of his work, he had a bit of an overabundance. So, in order to tear this unexpected trouble off himself and toss it aside, he didn't care whether he'd end up with a few more injuries.

Not that it mattered what he did or didn't do. He was going to take the whip either way.

The unconscious grey rabbit sank into the soft, clean sofa just like that. Compared to this giant piece of furniture, her small stature was practically pitiful—yet somehow it only made her presence all the more pronounced. Her grey-and-white fur, her warming pink inner ears and nose tip, that still-blinding rhinestone dress—all of it stood out in stark relief against the white velvet fabric, like a vivid splash of ink on paper.

The fabric beneath the bunny soaked through with the moisture still clinging to her fur, turning faintly grey.

As if it had taken on her color.

Ha! It felt... strangely fitting.

Having shed the weight, the fox didn't register how long he'd been staring. He only realized, suddenly, that this sofa that had been forced on him didn't seem quite as much of an eyesore as before. He flicked his tail, his expression taking on a touch of ease. But the improved mood did nothing to soothe a stomach that had gone too long without satisfaction. It could not help but lodge a protest.

"Grrrr—" Fairly audible.

The fox left the bunny behind in his mind, figuring he'd already done more than enough. He turned, crossed the room in a few steps, picked up the pizza box that had fallen by the door, then came back and sat on the floor, leaning against the sofa, and opened it.

The cheese had already solidified.

He didn't bother reheating it. Unhurriedly, he took out a slice and put it in his mouth, chewing mechanically to the rhythm of another breath beside him.

Nick Wilde had never been one to shortchange himself—he even considered himself a fairly self-caring fox. But after living on Crabapple Street long enough, any animal's definition of shortchange tended to shift a little.

The fox included.

Whether it was living in this room with its peeling walls and warped floorboards—every inch etched with squalor and decay—or ignoring the wounds that clung to his body like parasites. To him now, none of it counted as shortchanging himself anymore. As long as he could still swallow food, even food gone cold.

He wasn't shortchanging himself.

Dignify it with the name—survival strategy.

Nick had only taken care of two slices of pizza. He had no intention of fully obeying his stomach's demands. Eating too much would make his mind slack and prone to drowsiness, and that was not what he wanted. Animals were like that—satisfy one need, and the body greedily wanted the next. And he wasn't at his limit yet. The bright light outside the window reminded him that it was far from time to allow himself to sink into unconsciousness.

He had a feeling his luck today could be even worse. So he planned to wait and see.

The fox began meticulously wiping his paws.

The eastern side of Crabapple Street was always quieter. The never-ending fresh snow absorbed most stray sounds, and the animals living here were too wary of everything—whatever they did, they were like shadows without substance. Thus, stillness was its reigning motif.

The bunny's breathing was irritating.

Even though the sound was, in truth, very soft.

But it still tired the fox's self-monitoring ears. Nick got up, tossed the scraps of paper into the trash, and turned to look at her again.

The grey-furred bunny lay on her back, still in the same position, limbs slack and relaxed, so utterly defenseless it baffled him. Her chest rose and fell faintly, and that breath of hers slipped out from somewhere he couldn't see, appearing in a room that should have held only him, brazenly siphoning away a portion of his attention.

Truly strange.

The fox was close to frowning over this unease that had come from who knew where.

Was it because it was too rare a sight?

He wasn't used to it?

Nick truly wasn't used to it. In his long years of living alone, he rarely heard this kind of sound. The animals who walked through this door always came carrying all sorts of emotions—or rather, the only sounds they could make were those laden with lust or malice. Not like this. He had almost forgotten this long, even rhythm of life that only appeared in deep sleep—one inhale, one exhale, one after another, carrying no emotion, bearing no added noise.

Not hurried, not revolting. Yet exceptionally grating.

As if constantly reminding him that there was a living thing in his space now. And this, he had brought on himself.

The fox tried to ignore it, but couldn't, actually.

It didn't stop there. Nick even found that his own breathing seemed to be following the rise and fall of her rhythm. Once he realized it, he deliberately held his breath to adjust.

Yet this act unexpectedly matched a scene curled up deep in the fox's memory.

It belonged to a past so distant it reached all the way back to a childhood still fairly peaceful and happy. In the house where he lived with his mother, his ears had stored the same kind of breathing.

It was an ordinary afternoon, the date long lost to a young fox. His mother held him close, reading a storybook in their olive-green striped sofa. Back then, he had always wanted to figure out how her voice flowed through the warm sunlight. So when the storyline gradually gave way to that long, even breathing, he held his breath.

And so, that day, that single sound cycling in his ear had left a faint mark somewhere inside him. It gave the young, oblivious kit a singular experience. He learned—when a life slumbered safe and sound beside him, a feeling would carry him along; his heartbeat and breathing would unconsciously answer another's, and then a synchronized drowsiness would gently drag him into vivid dreams.

That feeling was called—peace.

The fox was thrown into agitation by the memory flashing back at him and the bunny's ceaseless breathing.

This bunny was big trouble.

Might as well just toss her out.

The thought hadn't even fully formed before the fox's paw was already pressing down on the bunny's shoulder, gripping it tight.

The touch was warm and soft. Frail... fragile.

Damn it!

Nick pulled his arm back, along with an even more unwarranted impulse.

Bring her back just to toss her out? Did he have nothing better to do?

He did something stupid today.

The fox turned away, irritated. Ignoring the pull on his wounds, he strode toward the crooked cabinet in the corner. From the bottommost layer, he dug out a large blanket. Camel-colored, it looked quite new.

He shook the blanket open. Impossibly long, it rolled out like a carpet from one end of the room to the other side of the sofa, with length to spare.

Fine dust rippled and spread in the sunlight.

Nick walked back to the sofa, unfolded a corner of the blanket, and briskly covered the bunny entirely. Then, pressing the blanket down, he pushed her over onto her side, and the blanket wrapped loosely around her. Still not enough. The fox kept going—once, twice, one more time—until the blanket wound all the way to its end and he could no longer make out any sound from her. In the center of the sofa lay a giant furry roll.

Ha! Now that was right.

It looked so stupid.

The fox, whose mood had finally smoothed out, wrapped his arms around the giant furry blanket roll and set about dragging it to the left side of the sofa, away from the drafty window. Thanks to his injuries and exhaustion, it took him a long while.

Having settled the "trouble" into a more suitable spot, Nick measured with his paw to make sure the bunny wrapped inside wouldn't feel restrained or end up suffocated from not getting enough air. Then he folded the extra length of blanket up over the top and tucked the edge into a crevice. The bunny disappeared entirely. Her breathing along with her.

He stepped back a few paces and looked.

Like a meat wrap sold at the supermarket.

A laugh huffed out through the fox's nose. He thought again of how she'd looked buried in the snow.

That perfectly timed, perfectly shaped long mound of snow.

He really should have taken a picture back then.

Come to think of it, wasn't now a good chance too?

Nick raised a brow at his own childish sense of humor. He turned to grab his phone from the bed.

The frame froze. Click.

The shutter click was overridden by the sound of familiar footsteps.

The fox's ears turned toward the door first. The next second, the door was yanked open roughly. Noon sunlight poured in through the gap, letting a long, narrow black shadow surge inside. The moment he made out who it was, the rare mischief and laughter in those green eyes receded like a tide.

It was a deer.

A female fallow deer, short chestnut fur, round white spots, slender of build. She stood in the doorway, backlit, her features blurred into an elegant silhouette. Behind her, as usual, trailed two gerenuk bodyguards, motionless, like two pillars she carried around with her.

Ah! His employer. Dear Miss Cecilia.

Vicious psycho.

The fox's wounds recognized their Creator and began to cheer, claws bared. His muscles tensed involuntarily.

Why at this hour?

He knew it. His luck today would hit rock bottom. Do a good deed, get payback. Wilde.

Nick tossed aside his phone and spoke first. "Miss Cecilia, you've got plenty of free time lately."

"You're still awake?" The doe's voice was soft and lovely, as if genuinely surprised.

He put on a beaming face. "What, better if I were dead?"

"So eager to die, fox?"

"Not at all."

"What a shame." The doe's regret sounded even more genuine.

Cecilia stepped inside unhurriedly, her thin heels clicking across the creaking floorboards. The fallow deer's gaze swept over the room with languid disdain, landing on her designated sofa.

An ugly lump, on her sofa.

She tilted her head, a trace of intrigue surfacing.

"You put a rug on my sofa?"

"That's no rug. It's a blanket. Miss Cecilia, you put it in my home—doesn't that mean the sofa was a gift to me? My things, my right to handle and use as I see fit."

"Yours? You think it's yours?"

The fox raised his voice in astonishment. "Isn't it mine?"

The doe smiled and didn't answer. She tilted her head, casting a glance at the door.

The gerenuk bodyguard carrying the black toolbox approached her without a sound. The door closed shut behind them, cutting the sunlight off outside once again.

The fox's heart stopped for a beat.

"You know what to do," she said.

The order given, the two gerenuks stepped past the doe and the fox, heading for the sofa.

The fox moved forward two steps, blocking the cramped path they had to cross. His paw clapped onto a gerenuk's shoulder. "What a coincidence. I've been sick of this sofa for ages, too. Since you're tossing it, do me a favor and dump the blanket on it as well. Won that thing in a raffle. Giraffe-sized stuff is just too much for a fox—really, I can't use it."

Cecilia looked at the fox with astonishment. The doe's eyes were light brown, carrying the gentleness typical of herbivores—yet she possessed a pair of utterly abnormal pupils: rectangular. After thousands of years of evolution, ever since animals had begun walking upright, pupils bearing such atavistic genes had become all but unseen.

Whenever those horizontal pupils fixed on him, Nick felt nothing but cold seeping through his entire body.

"Fox, what's gotten into you today."

"I don't follow, Miss Cecilia."

"You're defying me." She stated the fact.

"Defying? Is there any need for that?" The fox faced the doe and stepped forward. "Miss Cecilia, you have so many playthings. Could it be you've forgotten I'm not like your other diversions?"

"Do I need to remember the differences between toys?"

"That's exactly what I'm reminding you of. We have an employer-employee relationship, but that contract became scrap paper long ago. The current arrangement is: you pay, I provide a service."

Cecilia blinked with an innocent air. "Oh, I nearly forgot, fox. Your mother passed away."

The premise under which they'd signed the contract was gone, and so the original relationship truly was void. How had she forgotten that this fox was no longer bound!

Then was there any point... in him still existing?

"Ha. Miss Cecilia, what's with that look? Found out I'm no longer under your control—going to kill me?"

"How could you think that? She's been dead for ages. If I truly wanted you dead, would I have let you live this long?" The doe reached out her long, slender arm and pressed hard onto the fox's injured collarbone. "As you said, don't we still have our current arrangement? I can buy everything you have with money."

"So you understand now? Miss, everything in this space is mine."

"I do understand." The doe didn't so much as twitch a brow, tolerating everything with magnanimity. She brushed past the fox and seated herself on her sofa. Dead center.

The sofa was large enough. That ugly lump was still far from her.

The fallow deer leaned back against the cream-white sofa, bringing her legs together elegantly. Her gaze settled upon the fox—who, before her, always tried by every means to preserve some scrap of dignity and self—as though appraising an item in need of evaluation.

"Well then, fox, may I enjoy your services now? I've prepared new tools today." Her voice betrayed a note of eagerness.

Cecilia gave a slight lift of her impeccably groomed hoof, signaling her subordinate to ready her "tools."

One of the gerenuks opened the toolbox.

The toolbox's lining was black, making each implement seem to float in a void.

Each had its precise place. On the top row lay an array of small metal knives nestled in grooves, their silver blades thin and narrow, carved with curling vine motifs—things that looked as though they belonged in a jewelry box. A transparent syringe sat alone, tucked in a corner of the case, its clean glass barrel reflecting the black of the padding. On the other side coiled a short leather whip, wound into a neat circle.

They lay there quietly, waiting to be picked up, to be used. They shared the same temperament as Cecilia, this self-restrained, upper-class herbivore—refined, orderly, beautiful, like objects of art. From the outside, not a trace of the cruelty of their purpose could be seen.

Nick gave it a single glance. Inwardly, he was rolling his eyes so hard they nearly went through the roof.

Tools? Toys? More like instruments of torture.

The fox stepped back a few paces and sat down on his bed, facing the doe. He crossed his stiff, swollen left leg and let it dangle, his tone indolent. "Miss Cecilia, you were here yesterday."

He needed time for the wounds to heal, at least.

The doe was unmoved. "Shouldn't they have healed by now?"

"Oh? I didn't know I'd become a machine. The kind where wounds can be erased with a single button."

"Fox, you think a predator is qualified to speak of wounds."

What? Was he dead? Did this damned deer think predators couldn't feel pain? And foxes were omnivores, for fuck's sake! Ignorant thing!

"Very well, Miss Cecilia, you're the employer. Everything goes by whoever pays." The fox's voice carried its magnetic timbre, and now he deliberately softened it, so it came out like the syrupy murmur between lovers. "How would you like to play today? I should warn you, I might pass out. Don't let my condition spoil your fun."

The toy's docile attitude did nothing to please the doe. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hoof. The brief intrigue she'd felt before arriving had, with the passing of time, all but drained away. The fox's feigned compliance was letting impatience gain the upper hand.

She dropped all pretense of poise. "I've noticed you don't like screaming anymore lately. Have the punishments been too light? Perfect timing—I've had enough of your half-hearted shrieking as well. Why not enjoy something else?" Cecilia lifted her chin slightly, and the silent bodyguard behind her stepped forward.

The fox was slammed into the bed with a single punch.

When the pain hit its peak, no sound could come out. Nick trembled, curling into a tight shrimp of a ball. The taste of blood welled up in his throat. Behind his shut eyes, overexposed white and total black alternated in succession, all his senses wrenched into the domain of pain, his consciousness trying to flee.

The extreme exhaustion from long-suppressed sleep now delivered the reward the fox had been hoping for.

He was about to pass out.

Nick opened his eyes, still seeing nothing but black.

Fine. Time to sleep, then.

"Don't let him lose consciousness. I haven't seen the effects of the new products yet," the doe instructed lightly.

Alright. Not time to sleep yet.

He did not want to experience the effects of those damned drugs again.

The fox dragged his drifting consciousness back. His breathing was ragged, his vocal cords straining to hold steady. "Wait... wait, I'm... still awake. Miss Cecilia, shouldn't you give notice before starting?"

Cecilia let out a soft laugh. "Isn't this the service I purchased?"

The doe took out her leather bag and withdrew a stack of bills of considerable thickness. She rose from the sofa, walked over to the bed, and with a flick of her slender forelimb—

Brand-new bills fluttered down, scattering across the bed.

A few landed on the fox, just so happening to cover a wound.

"Your payment."

Nick figured that in his current state, there was absolutely no way he could leap up and sink his teeth into the deer's neck. So he smiled.

"Much obliged. Miss Cecilia, I'm quite satisfied."

Pain and humiliation crawled and coiled around the fox's body. Everywhere.

He fought against the instinct to curl up and stretched out his limbs instead, presenting a posture fully laid bare. "You may do as you wish now."

"Admit it. You're mine now?"

"You're lavish enough."

The doe gazed down at the fox on the bed with lofty disdain, her horizontal pupils splitting open with a blaze of fervor. "Fox, remember this. I am the one who dominates you. It is an herbivore who dominates a lowly predator like you. You should be honored."

Nick raised his eyes impatiently, his gaze nailed to the ceiling.

The fox's limbs had been bound to the four corners of the bed, forced into a fixed position that allowed no struggle, the straps biting into his wrists and ankles.

"Hey! Buddy, trying to snap my paws off?" Nick turned his head and directed his protest at the gerenuk beside him who was about to yank his arm out of its socket. "I think people in your line of work ought to pick up some basic medical knowledge. Don't you know tying too tight cuts off circulation? Where's the fun in that? Speaking of which, my long-necked friend, you got a girlfriend? Do you even know a thing about teasing?" The fox cocked a brow suggestively.

The gerenuk was unmoved. Having dealt with the fox, he looked to his employer.

Cecilia sat back on the sofa, glanced at her watch, and issued her subordinate an order. "Let's try the new products first. I don't have much time today."

The fox's question drifted out immediately. "What new products? Miss Cecilia, my services do not include drug testing."

His statement was met with nothing but silence.

In the stillness, Nick watched the syringe in the gerenuk's hoof. A forced panic began to flow through his body, an inexplicable cold tide spreading in patches from his legs, carrying with it a chill sense of foreboding.

The fox's voice finally slipped from its hard shell of pretense, betraying a trace of fear. "I don't want this."

The needle tip drew closer.

"Fuck this! I said I don't want this!" he shouted.

Amid the struggle, some liquid was injected into the fox's leg.

A faint prick.

A deep, overwhelming helplessness peeled the fox's hide clean off him. He felt naked, exposed, and gave up on the act entirely. Nick lifted his head—the only part of him that could still move—and looked at the doe on the sofa. His voice steadied into something eerie, his disgust completely unhidden. "Psycho. What did you inject me with?"

Cecilia toyed with her watch and finally responded. "Merely a newly developed estrus inducer."

"Ha! Cecilia, if you want me to fuck you, all you need to do is spread your legs!"

The doe was not provoked. She merely raised her hoof a fraction with casual indifference, and the fox was lashed hard by the whip.

"Mind how you speak. I am the one who dominates you. A base thing loses its value once it turns crude again. Besides, what are you getting so worked up about? You should be on your knees thanking me." Her voice had savored the fox's pain, a trace of madness threading through its gentleness. "I'll tell you the truth. You're the first in rotation today, and the dosage you were given is still quite small. I imagine the reaction won't be especially intense. The next toy won't be getting your dosage. Fox, you ought to be grateful I'm not coming at night."

The reactions in his body were gradually confirmed by the doe's words. A ferocious heat consumed the original pain. Nick knew—the drug was taking effect.

Strange lust tore through the fox's veins, carrying a current blunt yet effective, stripping away his control over his own body bit by bit. Soon, he felt the pressure from his pants, and that pressure transformed into a sweet ache, pooling and building at his waist. His senses magnified by his now-sensitive body, his heart pumped faster and harder, straining to deliver the base urge—the need for release—to every muscle in his body, straining, trembling. Instinct and pleasure began to drive out what little reason remained. Under the assault of wave after wave of stimulation, the fox's vocal cords switched masters entirely, manipulated into spilling out unbearable, yielding, lingering moans and gasps.

One after another, a plea laced with misery.

Pure pleasure was a lowly organism, possessing every trait of a parasite. It never cared about the unwillingness of its host. Once stirred awake, it would extend its tendrils and invade, hijacking control of the nervous system to run that basic program written into DNA.

Pleasure was a pursuer—release, relief, dopamine, that was its finish line.

If it failed to reach its goal, it would trigger a punishment mechanism, inflicting upon the host a multiplied, compounding suffering and unease.

At that point, pleasure changed its name. It became "torment."

Uncontrollable, raging lust made the fox's eyes widen. Those green eyes, their pupils dilated to the limit, were numb and vacant, unfocused.

What little consciousness remained told Nick that his vision should now be of a spinning, blurry ceiling. But his eyes, instead, clearly projected within that ceiling the image of a giant white sofa.

A cream-white velvet sofa.

It sat there quietly, like an ordinary piece of furniture.

Through those long, drawn-out moments of being used, the fox had countless times shifted his gaze away from that sofa—to the ceiling, to the walls, to wherever. But his eyes could turn away or close. His memory could not.

He knew it was there. And he knew she sat on it, watching him.

This sofa was a witness.

Witness to his helplessness, again and again, and again. In the end, the suffering chose to carve it into the fox's retina.

He should not have been able to see anything at all.

And yet that sofa—too large to ignore—like Cecilia's very incarnation, would, in any moment he felt wretched, arrogantly appear, occupying the fox's field of vision.

Cecilia.

Vile, goddamn psycho! Race-supremacist bitch, rot in hell! If he could, he would grind her bones to splinters, inch by inch.

No matter how he tried to keep himself intact in front of that damned deer, how he refused to become the groveling, kneeling predator she wanted—in the end, it was all the same.

Fate always seemed to stand against him, sneering at everything he struggled for.

From his body to his dignity.

From the physical to the psychological.

Every moment—this moment, for instance. The gap between the physiological need manufactured by the drug and its impossibility to be satisfied spawned an endless humiliation. It sought to brand every sense of self the fox possessed with the mark that he was base and lowly by nature.

It was on the verge of succeeding.

Because this was not the first time "torment" had come. Nor would it be the last.

Having been through it too many times, the fox knew the process of torment by heart—pain would carve into his flesh, the feeling of being degraded would leave new marks all over him, and that deer would sit on that revolting sofa, telling him with those alien herbivore eyes of hers: everything you endure, you deserve.

He was a predator. He was a fox. He sold his body.

He was born with original sin.

All of it—the suffering. It was all deserved.

Everything about Nicholas Wilde, this fox—because of those two words, "torment," over all these years—broken and hideous.

The defiant hatred of instinct tore violently through the lust churning inside the fox's body. It lasted only a moment, but in that moment, his vision cleared. Nick seized the chance and looked toward that sofa, ready to throw back every last shred of humiliation he had received. Even if only with his eyes.

His gaze landed on the sofa—and stopped.

Huh?

Something glaringly out of place had appeared in the scene that should have been etched into the fox's retina.

A blanket roll, just as imposingly huge in its own right.

Brazenly, flagrantly, occupying a spot on the sofa.

The silhouette in the fox's eyes shattered under the surprise.

His suffering, his humiliation, his helplessness and fragility—obliterated, crushed, destroyed by that presence.

Nick Wilde felt, in that instant, as though he'd been rammed by a speeding train.

Ha! What the hell?

Ha?

Hahahahahahahaha—the absurd laughter bubbled up from nowhere once again. It echoed through the fox's consciousness, growing louder, beyond control.

Inside this space was something that did not belong to Cecilia, did not belong to this room steeped in humiliation, did not belong to any filth.

Here was a ridiculous unconscious bunny wrapped in a blanket.

And this bunny—he was the one who had brought her back.

This realization made the fox's tattered consciousness begin stitching itself back together. Slowly, laboriously. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze fixed in that direction—the camel-colored blanket roll on the left side of the cream-white sofa. Apart from him, no one knew that inside it lay a breath he had locked away into silence.

He looked at it.

He had kept her. He had saved her.

Without knowing why, a distinct coldness reached the pads of the fox's paws—the chill of snow. A part of his body detached from the present and drifted back to the moment he'd dug the bunny out of the snow pile. As if he could feel anew the texture of fresh snow, the faint warmth of the morning sunlight, the damp rawness of the bunny's gauze dress against his touch.

Pain and lust seemed, at this moment, to be fading into a background noise.

For no reason at all, Nick remembered the moment he'd set the bunny down on the sofa, watching the moisture from her fur seep in bit by bit, and yet finding it strangely, inexplicably fitting.

Now he understood. This sofa—witness to all his humiliation and despair, yet so clean it was an eyesore, so arrogant it was revolting—had, in that moment, been seeped into by her presence.

All of it. He had done it himself.

He did something stupid today, for once.

Stupid in just the right way.

The fox let out a sigh of relief, a breath distinct from a moan.

That sigh caught the doe's attention. "Hm? Is the drug wearing off already? It shouldn't be." She studied the fox's state, murmuring to herself.

Cecilia rose from the sofa and walked over to the gerenuk holding a whip. "What dosage did you use?"

"Five milligrams."

"Then why do I have the sense he's regaining consciousness?"

"He was given Agent A yesterday. Agent A has a paralytic effect—the drugs may be interacting. Miss Cecilia, shall I administer another dose?"

"Hold for now." The doe glanced at the bodyguard on the other side of the bed who was carrying the toolbox. "Bring it here."

The toolbox was delivered into her reach with care.

Cecilia picked up one of the small knives and examined the curling vine motifs upon it, then tossed it carelessly to her subordinate. Her interest waning, she gave her order. "Cut off his clothes. All of them." She cast a light, sidelong glance at the gerenuk holding the knife, tilted her head, and smiled. "How deep you go—that's up to you."

The sharp blade tip landed on the fox's other collarbone—still untouched until now—and drew fresh blood.

One stroke. Two strokes. Three strokes.

From top to bottom.

Until the doe got what she wanted: the return of the fox's pained whimpers.

The fox was stripped into a naked strip of an animal.

His clothes. His fur.

The thick stench of rust and a faint whiff of some ambiguous bodily fluid, no longer contained now that the fabric lay in tatters, began to spread through the room.

Cecilia watched the fox's body convulse, his arousal still standing high, and nodded in satisfaction. "The effect is still there. I was starting to think he could actually resist Agent D. Seems I was overthinking it."

Having confirmed the new product's efficacy, the doe glanced at her watch again.

About time.

She decided to wring the last drop of despair from the fox. Cecilia rapped her hoof heavily against the toolbox. "Fox, I'll give you a choice. You may pick one—consider it your final reward for today."

This time, Nick ignored the doe completely. He did not look at the toolbox that would bring him more pain. He focused only on, amid the searing pain, recalling again and again that blanket roll, that cool, icy sensation that had spread across his limbs earlier—and then kept them intact in the last sliver of clear consciousness he had left. Guarding them.

He closed his eyes.

The cream-white sofa still lingered in his vision, flickering with blots of light. But the deer upon it had been replaced by a grey-furred bunny—the one the fox had pulled from the snow—drenched, unconscious, her face strangely clean, and for reasons he couldn't name, far better suited to that sofa.

The way she looked in deep sleep, slack and relaxed.

The fox felt an utterly unfamiliar sense of comfort.

This comfort was a sensation from a higher dimension of space, one that could easily pass over his wounds and the torment of unsatisfied lust, and then, gently and persistently, stroke the deep exhaustion inside him. Nick suddenly felt as though his body held a second set of eyelids.

He tried closing his eyes.

At last. At last. He could see nothing.

The fox stopped within a perfect, complete darkness of peace. He breathed steady.

 

＊＊＊＊＊

 

Judy Hopps is a fact animal.

She had no objection to that herself. After all, her ideal was simply a belief that focused purely on facts.

Make the world a better place. That was a fact.
Just a fact with no criteria for judgment whatsoever.

So, back then, no animal took the childish words of a little bunny—"I can make the world a better place"—as an ideal. It was ultimately seen as a child's dream and accepted with indulgence. But once she found the way to realize that ideal—once she decided to become a police officer—her ideal, or what they saw as an innocent, adorable child's dream, suddenly became an impractical, delusional fantasy.

You can't.
How ridiculous.
Since when does a rabbit become a cop?
We're just worried about you.
Growing carrots can make the world a better place too.

Judy, you can't be a cop.

She had asked why.

The conclusion she got was—you're a rabbit. No rabbit can be a cop.

She was probably born stubborn, or she just knew from birth that her own thoughts mattered most. So, instead of making her drop her ideal, those voices only made her hold onto them even tighter.

Her self-worth, in this process, became firmly tied to the path of "becoming a cop."

So, when she was still a little rabbit, she had already, in her own initiative and the passivity of criticism, trained her eyes and ears into sieves.

The emotions and hesitation brought by those voices and denials—automatically filtered out.

Only the remaining conclusions, facts, and the next step to take were focused on.

Finally, she became a fact animal.

By the time she realized this herself, she found that this set of action- and goal-focused choices of conduct had already become her way of breathing.

The way a fact animal operated was always more focused on factual outcomes. Therefore, even when facing her own mistakes, Judy would not offer herself any softening explanation to fall back on.

She was even harsher than that. Merciless. Leaving no room.

Today, her judgment of herself was—

She had screwed up badly!

The second before she passed out in the snow, Judy swiftly drafted a summary report in her mind of the string of missteps she'd made during this period.

One: evidently, going three days without sleep was not a good idea.

Ever since receiving her first real assignment as a police officer, excitement had become the main engine driving all her choices. This had briefly made her forget she still had a blind spot: when her focus locked onto the goal and the action, she saw nothing else—including her own body's needs.

The fact animal mode gave Judy an extreme capacity for action and focus. She was efficient—in just three days, she could sketch a mental map of the street layout of Crabapple Street's west side, and along the way figure out the basic structure and operating logic of the neighborhood's various organizations, large and small.

But this mode didn't come without a cost.

Confirming which of the leads in her paws were useful took priority over lying in bed. The dopamine produced by excitement made exhaustion seem negligible, and her sense of mission filtered out her body's warning signals, over and over.

In the end, her judgment quietly eroded without her knowing. It led her to do something stupid—like, after three days of sleep deprivation, running off to a low-temperature zone in a flimsy bunny girl outfit suited only to the west side's climate.

Two: she really should have understood her superior's repeated insistence.

Hopps, obeying a superior's instructions is your first duty in this operation.

She should have realized then that those words were not just a routine reminder—Chief Bogo had known all along that she would encounter "accidents" in this mission. He had said she had no partner, no experience. And obeying orders was the only way to keep the unexpected under control.

But she had failed to read that layer of warning. Instead, before the special operations unit assigned to her had even been pulled together, she had acted on her own, going undercover alone into Crabapple Street to gather intelligence.

At the time, she hadn't realized at all that without a partner to back her up and without institutional support, from the moment she set foot in Crabapple Street in those flimsy clothes, she had, without meaning to, already forfeited the support network that came by default with her identity as a police officer.

In the eyes of every animal coming and going, she was no longer Officer Judy Hopps—because no one knew she was. She had become one of the many bunny girls living on Crabapple Street, unremarkable and unnoticeable. The background blur she'd always wanted to be.

The disguise had worked perfectly. She had gathered intel smoothly, even tracked down new leads.

The cost: now she really had run into an "accident."

No one to come.

By the time she realized her vision was starting to blur and her paws were trembling, it was already too late.

She had hypothermia.

Her body had reached its limit. Under such dangerous circumstances, an even more dangerous will forcibly overpowered her survival instinct. She found a concealed spot, pulled out everything that could expose her identity—her phone, wallet, micro camera, voice recorder, notebook, and so on—dug a hole, and buried them.

This act drained the last of her physical strength. Before her eyes, only blurry color patches remained, leaping in motley. She could no longer feel the cold. The unnatural warmth spreading through her body tore at her consciousness. Before her awareness sank completely into darkness, Officer Hopps made one final effective judgment.

She had to pass out somewhere animals would pass by.

It was early morning. Someone was bound to see her.

No animal would turn a blind eye to a poor unconscious bunny. She would be rescued. Her identity would not be discovered. Her mission could only succeed.

The rabbit collapsed into the snow.

 

＊＊＊＊＊

 

For a bunny who had decided to become a police officer since she was little, Judy had certainly encountered plenty of bewilderment, rejection, even prejudice and discrimination. But that didn't mean there wasn't a single animal in the whole world standing by her side. Judy knew this world was wide enough to hold a bunny's dream. She had known it since she was little.

So, Judy always felt she had received more. Especially after she had truly set foot on that path she had no choice but to fight for.

Once, her parents' rabbit nature and farmer mindset had made them voice worries over her choice. But their dissuasion carried no denial. The enormous love of the Hopps clan had never changed the fact that she was special. She had been pinned with her police badge under the gaze of nearly three hundred family members. Judy was the Hopps family's odd one out—their proud odd one out.

And her friends, her boyfriend, the companions she grew up with in Bunnyburrow—almost none of them hadn't been helped by her at some point. They believed from start to finish that she was cut out to be a cop. The understanding and support they gave her steadily outweighed those voices of denial.

What's more, when she began proving herself through real action, those once-doubtful looks gradually turned into surprise, then admiration. This transformation had accompanied her entire journey of growing up. Every time she saw it, it filled the tank for her next step forward.

Every time she did something for the idea of "making the world a better place"—found some precious lost item, saved a child nearly swept away by a river, turned a troubled, distressed face into one with a grateful smile. Every time she faced these facts, the warmth surging in her heart would polish her ideal even brighter.

Make the world a better place.

She had made it this far, treading a path strewn with the grit of denial. Because every day when she opened her eyes, this sentence hung before her. Always following her. She would do something for it—something to make it real. Small things, big things, the things she could only do after becoming a cop.

She could always do something.

In reality, she had hardly ever fallen into a situation where she couldn't act.

But the way the world works doesn't follow reason. Doesn't look at facts. Sometimes, it even favors accidents.

She heard a sound.

There was a pleading voice. A very sorrowful voice.

What happened? Why? Who was it?

Judy suddenly found herself walking through a haze of chaotic white mist. She couldn't see anything.

Where was this?

The next second, everything in her vision switched to black. Like a light switched off.

Nothing was left. Including herself.

One second.

One minute.

Several minutes...

It was the sound of suffering.

Someone was making sounds of suffering.

One after another, drifting closer from far away. When that note filled with suffering fell into the rabbit's consciousness, the light and white mist reappeared.

Judy started running uncontrollably. Faster and faster.

Driven by that voice, she ran forward without stopping. She couldn't make out the specific words, couldn't distinguish the quality of the voice, but she touched it completely. She felt it. This sound, this cold texture—it was suffering. It was despair.

An animal needed her help!

She had to go help them!

That voice gradually grew sharper and sharper, taking on a heavy, ragged breathing.

She had to go help them!

Judy ran through a place where there was nothing but mist, searching for the animal who had made her feel the same suffering in her own body.

The next second, she plummeted into "nothing."

She no longer existed.

Another several minutes passed.

It felt like a very long time had passed. So long it neared the edge of forever. She was pushed out of the dark, inky sea by something soft.

Something was pulling at her.

Something was touching her.

It was a sound.

A voice of longing.

A voice light as a feather, lingering and entwining. Faint, drifting moans.

It was a voice of craving.

A voice scorching like fire, thick and searing. Heavy, ragged breaths.

The voice drifted, slow and unhurried, floating onto Judy. In an instant, the space she was in was torn completely apart.

It was the sound of suffering!

She sank into the viscous white mist. Her consciousness was crushed into shattered pieces.

Judy felt she was trapped in hell.

She didn't know why, but she had collapsed into a puddle of limp nothing. Her limbs felt as if they didn't exist, completely beyond her control. Her paws wouldn't lift. Her feet couldn't step forward. She couldn't even make a single sound.

She didn't know where she was, didn't know why she had fallen into such a state. She knew nothing.

Beside her, there was only a patch of white mist. The visibility was so low she was nearly blind. In this entire space, there was nothing but her and a voice that made her feel like she was suffocating.

It was in so much pain.

The dense emotion carried by that voice forced tears from the rabbit's eyes.

And she was trapped. She was going insane!

She couldn't do a thing! She had no way to help them.

Where are you? Tell me!

Where are you? What happened?

What's wrong with you?

TELL ME!

Judy began to shout at the top of her lungs. Even if this space had no medium to carry her voice, she would shout until she had no strength left.

That suffering, sorrowful animal didn't know she was here.

They still let out broken, hoarse, grief-stricken sounds, as if being torn apart.

One after another. Shattered.

Judy felt herself slowly crumbling.

She had never experienced it firsthand—watching an animal die in agony right before her eyes. Helplessly watching. Unable to move.

She couldn't see them. She could see them.

Suffering chewed roughly on the rabbit's body, biting fear piece by piece into her useless frame.

She smelled it. The smell of rust. The smell of blood.

That voice was gradually growing softer, weaker. The intervals between the sounds were lengthening, as if there was no strength left to breathe, as if a life was fading away.

They were dying.

They were going to die!

Hopps! What are you doing! Why aren't you doing anything!

Does your existence mean nothing at all!

The white mist changed color in an instant. Pink. A deeper pink. The red of death. The crimson mist drifted, gathered, and in the blink of an eye coalesced into a massive cloud of blood-red.

Judy looked up. A torrential downpour crashed down.

The sky lost its voice. The whole thing came smashing down, and she was completely submerged in fresh, hot blood.

Judy Hopps opened her eyes.

God... it hurts!

The rabbit's face couldn't help but scrunch up.

Had she been hit?

A dull pain spread upward from deep within her unbearably dry eyes. A chill swept across her entire head in an instant, followed by a continuous, throbbing ache. Her temples felt like they were being jabbed with needles, and she immediately shut her eyes again.

In the blackness of her vision, red patches flashed without reason. Judy felt her heart wrench sharply. An inexplicable anxiety and restlessness crawled along her veins and spread through her entire body. It was only then she realized her breathing was rapid—even her heartbeat was absurdly fast, pounding so hard that every part of her upper body trembled slightly.

She... what was wrong with her? Where was this?

Judy tried to recall, but her consciousness crashed first into an achingly unfamiliar soreness. For some reason, an urge to cry welled up behind her eyes and in her nose. A deep, heavy sorrow wrapped itself tightly around her.

What had happened? Why was she like this?

Judy felt that her brain was now like a rusted machine forced to start up—retrieving any information at all was impossibly difficult.

She seemed... to have had a dream.

But what had she dreamed? She couldn't remember.

When had she fallen asleep?

She obviously hadn't slept in so long, because she... had taken a case.

The case!

Right. She was on an undercover mission. Investigating the missing animals case. And then... she collapsed. On Crabapple Street!

The alarm for recognizing danger went off.

Judy snapped her eyes open. Nothing.

She couldn't see anything?

The rabbit nearly shot upright on the spot—but she didn't. Because... her limbs... were they restrained?

Her heart dropped heavily, all at once.

Was it dark? Had she been tied up? Locked away?

No. Calm down! Hopps.

There were colors. There was light. It wasn't nothing.

There were no restraints on her wrists. She hadn't been tied.

Ignoring her throbbing head and swollen eyeballs, Judy forced her eyes wide, desperately trying to make sense of her situation. But it was too dark—she still couldn't see anything clearly. All she could do was twist her body, move her numb, heavy limbs, until step by step she regained control over them. She began to feel around her surroundings.

She touched a piece of soft fabric. Furry.

It was only then Judy realized she seemed to have been rolled up in a blanket.

She had passed out from hypothermia—was this the animal who rescued her trying to keep her warm? But the blanket was way too thick. Had her hypothermia been that severe?

The rabbit tried to push the blanket off her body. The blanket did not budge.

Judy had no choice but to keep twisting her body, her paws prying apart the fabric wrapped around her until she pulled open a gap from above her head.

Her gaze caught bright light again. It was daytime.

But at the same time, another one of her senses—smell—also caught a signal she couldn't ignore.

The smell of blood. Thick.

The instant the signal registered, every thought was wiped clean.

Judy kicked hard with both legs and rolled off the sofa, blanket and all. The blanket loosened in the tumble. She crawled out of it, jumped up, uneasy, and quickly scanned her surroundings.

And then, Officer Hopps was floored by what she saw.

The scene before her made Judy understand, even more than the moment she had collapsed from hypothermia, what it truly meant when blood ran cold.

She was frozen to the spot.

Opposite her, on the bed, was a fox with all four limbs tied. He had no intact clothing left, nothing but torn shreds of fabric hanging off his body. His fur was tangled and disheveled, many patches soaked through with dark red blood, matted into stiff clumps.

He was injured.

But that fox had almost no expression. He was lifting his head from the center of the bed to look at her. His heavy green eyes were clouded with mist, holding no emotion inside.

Judy instinctively averted her eyes. Her gaze shifted away from the fox's upper body—

And fell into a scene that left her even more speechless.

Money was scattered on his bed. There was blood on the bed. There were traces of sex.

He was abused! He was hurt!

He's a victim!

He's injured! Hopps!

Panic and shock swelled inside the rabbit like a balloon inflating further and further, until it finally burst at the limit.

In this moment, the scene—inscribed with sex, nakedness, and violence—landed a punch square on the rabbit's ideal of "making the world a better place."

Judy, already dazed and far from clear-headed, was caught completely off guard.

She was reeling. The undercover mission, the current situation, the words of thanks—everything was completely drowned out by the stench of blood flooding her nose.

Officer Hopps's consciousness held nothing but a single alarm screaming: He's injured!

He's injured!

Hopps! Do something!

The instinct to act was faster than all the thoughts still surging and churning.

Judy didn't know who he was, what had happened, why she was here. She had too many questions, but—

She threw herself at the fox's bedside.

Judy met those green eyes. She said:

"I'm calling the police."

 

tbc.

Chapter Text

Nick wasn't sure when Cecilia had left.

He was exhausted. The things in his consciousness began to lose their names. At some point, he seemed to see a long-limbed gerenuk move toward the door, sunlight appearing. The door closed, sunlight leaving.

Then, memory became riddled with gaps.

In some of those gaps, the fox felt he might have slept, for a little while. Or maybe not, because he was still holding on through the alternating waves of arousal and torment, still having to cling his entire attention to that blanket roll, maintaining himself. Preserving the last sliver of undissolved consciousness to fight against this body that kept betraying him.

Had they left? He didn't know.

He was too tired. Coexisting with pain was an energy-consuming business. The fox had no spare capacity to think about anything else, including whether he was still conscious right now.

In the long, long silence, at some unmarkable moment, the drained adrenaline suddenly withdrew. In an instant, something collapsed thunderously from within.

...It was over...

Will was a consumable. Once used up, it was used up.

The body, eroded by the drugs and held taut for too long, made its judgment: it was time for this to end.

That ferocious heat surged toward its final destination, erupting from deep within his lower abdomen, climbing up his spine and plunging down, swallowing him whole in an instant. The fox's body convulsed violently in its drained state, muscles spasming, and then he felt that stuff spray out of him once more—thin, barely worthy of being called bodily fluid, soaking his stomach and the sheets.

The heat receded. The drug's effects finally began to slowly dissipate. In the sound of his own breathing, pain gradually reclaimed control, the ache grinding back onto his nerves.

Nick's consciousness settled back through the pain, flowing slowly, cracking, turning into shattered ice, melting piece by piece back into this battered, broken fox body.

They... were gone.

But something was making a sound. Muffled.

It took Nick a few seconds to realize it was his own heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump. Heavy and slow, too slow, not like a rhythm that could sustain a life.

He counted passively. One. Two. Three. Four. Five...

When the count reached some hundred-digit number starting with four, the heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm. The fox was a little more awake.

How was he still conscious?

He'd rather just pass out.

Consciousness opened the door, and pain was the first to squeeze back in. It queued up like visitors touring a museum, filing into his body one after another with keen delight, reporting the location of every "damaged exhibit": fresh knife cuts on his collarbone, strap marks bitten into the fur of his limbs, bruises from blunt force on his abdomen. The dense, countless pains wove together into a net.

It hurt too much.

Nick opened his eyes.

The ceiling looked strangely unfamiliar. The grain of the wood, the cracks in the corners of the wall, the strings of colored lights hanging beside the lamp fixture—none of it, in this moment, looked like something he had seen countless times before. The afternoon light filtered in through a small window, casting a rectangular patch of light upon the wall. He stared at it for a long time.

Thought: This is my room.

He... was still alive.

He didn't know if that was a good thing.

At some point, the hollowed-out exhaustion rippled through his thoughts like rings of water, spreading, covering everything.

Nick felt his consciousness begin to thin and lighten, becoming a membrane floating only on the surface. That membrane was being pulled upward by some uncontrollable force, like a kite let loose. Little by little, it was drawing "him" out of this wrecked body, separating, peeling away.

The feeling was familiar. Not the first time. Somewhere on the edge of his consciousness, the fox speculated that he seemed to be entering that special state again—detachment. He even felt a little relieved. Should have happened sooner. Should have slipped into this isolating crevice way back when those "tools" were still "taking care" of him.

When it happened, pain would recede into a low, humming background. The distance between him and every sensation would stretch far, far enough that he could watch those negative or extreme emotions swim back and forth like fish in an aquarium, his face pressed against the outside of the glass. Feeling nothing.

He would float in midair, watching that fox.

Even if that fox looked very pitiful.

And he, he would feel nothing much about it.

That was not him.

That was not him.

He was nothing at all.

So leave!

Just leave, then.

He did not know anything in this world. He had no connection to any of it. Cecilia would not let that fox go. He was going to die soon. You know that.

Take one last look at him. There is a fox there.

The houses on the eastern side of Crabapple Street weren't known for good soundproofing, yet the animals here saved up the energy they'd need for the night, dying soundlessly in their daytime sleep.

The room was always quiet. Too quiet.

And too bright.

The sun was the only light source in this space that never went out. It was always derelict in its duty, staying lit through the day like a spilled glass of wine, pouring light everywhere, illuminating everything.

So bright he could see it all! And once he saw, there was no way to keep ignoring everything. Had it never occurred to the sun that there were animals who didn't need, didn't want to be seen?

Wilde didn't want to admit that the fox illuminated so clearly by the sunlight, pinned motionless on the bed, was himself.

The sheets were too filthy. Blood, sweat, bodily fluids, all of it sticky and clinging there, disgusting and degrading. The mingled smells evaporated and dried in the warm air, leaving behind a lingering, briny stench.

All of it his own scent.

Wilde's rationality calculated coldly in this moment. If everything he left behind was nothing but these revolting smells, if everything the light illuminated on him was nothing but filthy traces, if he himself held no value and nothing worth missing, then what was he living for?

Might as well just die.

“Mm... no!” A weak voice rose abruptly out of the silence and brightness. It came from the furry roll on the sofa, muffled by the blanket, the sound a little soft and blunt.

Nick's drifting consciousness plummeted.

Plummeted hard back into his body.

He jolted awake, his body struggling involuntarily. The zip ties still bit into his limbs. He used what little strength he had to flex his paw tips, and a spike of numbness and sting shot up from his wrist, echoing the fresh knife wounds on his body. Precise pain.

What had he just been thinking?

She was awake?

Nick lifted his head and looked toward the sofa. This movement shouldn't have been so hard. His muscles protested. The fresh wound on his collarbone split open slightly with the shift in position, the elongated, thread-like sting reminding him how far those blades had traveled when they cut his skin open.

The blanket roll was still there. Motionless, as if the voice he'd just heard had been a hallucination. But the fox knew. It was her, as certain as the wounds on his body.

She hadn't woken yet.

That bunny had... pulled him back again. Right when he'd been about to admit defeat.

If it weren't for her, he would have had to face it alone and endure it alone. The sun—that callous, selfish light-giving thing, blind to suffering—would have kept forcing him to see his own desperate inventory: a room with nothing in it, a filthy bedsheet with everything on it, a body that hurt so much he wanted to flee it.

And now, she was still here.

He was still alive. He had won.

He absolutely would not allow himself to die in some weak, seductive illusion of relief!

The fox looked at the camel-colored blanket roll on the sofa. He always prided himself on his reactions and his memory, but for some reason, he didn't seem to have held onto the bunny's face. He had clearly brought it to mind so many times, yet all that remained in his head was a blurry outline and an impression of "clean."

How had he not remembered it?

What did she look like?

The fox's curiosity, long atrophied, began to swell uncontrollably in this moment. What was her name? What did she look like? What color would her eyes be? Blue? Brown? Grey like her fur? Or green? Why had she chosen a dress in such terrible taste? And then, why had she passed out there?

"No!" she cried out again, sharp. A breathy voice laced with fear.

What was wrong? Was she dreaming?

The blanket trembled once, then fell still.

She was about to wake up.

An observation rose from within him: She had been asleep for so long.

The fox's eyes watched that cocoon about to hatch, unblinking. Nearly doting. Obsessive. His neck was starting to ache from being held up with no support, but he couldn't care less.

But then, that subtle, newly risen anticipation of his shattered the moment the distinct rustling sounds came from within the blanket.

She was about to wake up!

No. She was awake!

The fox was thoroughly jolted awake by this realization.

How could she wake up?

How could he have wanted her to wake up!

They didn't even know each other. Once she woke up, she would see all of this! The damned state he was in right now—every bit of it would be imprinted clearly in her eyes. They were animals utterly unknown to each other. He knew nothing about her, and she—she would know exactly what kind of fox he was at the very first glance.

Fuck! Fuck!

Nick had never been seen in this miserable, wrecked state by an animal he hadn't expected.

The unheralded shame brought panic, flooding into the fox's body one wave after another. He went cold all over, worse than when he'd seen that deer. As if someone had torn open his chest and placed a chunk of ice that would never melt against his heart. The fox, in despair, cursed viciously—she'd better be blind!

The blanket roll shifted. A pair of small, scrabbling paws poked out through a gap.

She was awake. He thought this expressionlessly.

"Mm..." A puzzled hum came from inside the blanket roll.

The fox maintained a surface indifference. His ears fixed on her with utter concentration. His thoughts tangled into a knot.

...How much? How much had she heard? Could she have been awake long ago? Pretending the whole time. When did she wake up? Had she seen? Or had she heard? What would she think of him once she came out? What would she think when she saw a fox so filthy and wretched beyond all measure? What would she do? Would she be frightened? She'd find him disgusting.

Would she still be clean?

Was she really clean?

He'd thought she was clean earlier—why? She clearly looked the same as him. She wore a dress like that. Weren't they both in this line of work? It was nothing. He was the one who saved her. She had no right to pass judgment on anything about him.

The blanket rolled off the sofa, its edges spilling open.

The fox's breath cut off completely.

Goddamn it. He did something stupid today!

Silence.

The life inside the blanket broke out of its cocoon.

The light in the room had not changed—brilliant and bright, it reflected off that rhinestone minidress in translucent, multicolored iridescence, even more glittering and dazzling than it had been in the early morning. The bunny's entire outline was wrapped in a halo of light, even the fur on her body diluted to a paler grey.

Then, she turned around.

They looked at each other. The fox finally saw her eyes.

So... they were...

Purple. A soft, pale violet.

A rare color.

Those violet eyes looked crystal-like, dreamlike. They stole away all the light and breath, reducing this color-starved space to nothing but a backdrop. And now, they were aimed at the bed. The fox's entire reflection was mirrored in them. The image seemed to contaminate her pupils. Shock and alarm stretched that violet into a narrow ring.

He did not look away.

She looked away. She lowered her head, ears drooping.

As if disgusted.

Nick finally permitted himself to blink and breathe again. The negative emotions he had suppressed rushed back in full force. A groundless anger burned through every wound on his body.

You've seen enough. Get out! Now.

Get out of his house!

Just as the fox was about to roar what was in his mind, he saw the bunny lift her head again, stumble, and throw herself toward him.

The bunny landed on the right side of the bed, pulling the fox into her domain. Her breathing was heavy and rapid, stirring the fur of the fox's ears. With those violet eyes, she naturally drew his in, letting him see the undispersed shock inside them and the urgency that had joined it. Her voice trembled faintly, but her tone was firm.

She said, "I'm calling the police."

What?

The fox's thoughts had a momentary power outage.

What had he just heard?

Call the police? Not disgusted?

Those sticky emotions—the spiraling, churning anger and revulsion, the ceaselessly sinking despair—all of it, in this moment, was like marks carved deep into the sand of a beach. No matter how deep they had been, under the tide of that single sentence from the bunny, "I'm calling the police," they were swept away, washed clean without a trace.

Nick turned his head further and more forcefully, staring at her directly, confirming it, over and over. The emotion in those violet eyes was distinct, holding many things, but there was indeed no disgust.

Perhaps he had been silent for too long, because she said it again.

"Are you okay? Don't worry. I'll call the police for you."

Nick Wilde's instinctive will rapidly revived itself in that sentence, which so clearly belonged to the category of "concern."

And along with it, his acerbity.

Call the police? Ha. Call the police. He really hadn't misheard?

Call the police. And for him? For a fox living in a lawless district? Where had this naive idiot come from?

"Little bunny," the moment the words left his mouth, Nick himself was startled by how hoarse his voice was. He frowned, coughed twice lightly, and continued, "Do you know where this is?"

"But you're... hurt."

Her tone struck the fox as overly grave, not as if he were injured, but as if he were about to die. He was once again tickled by the absurdity radiating from this bunny, and couldn't help breaking into an exaggerated laugh, but the very first sound pulled at his wounds, a sharp pain slicing through. His face crumpled. "Shit."

After a moment to recover, Nick rolled half an eye, light as air, meaning to wake her up and show her just how laughable her words were.

"What? Little bunny, you think you're a cop?"

Judy's heart lurched.

Her paws, which had been prying at the zip ties binding the fox, stopped.

A flurry of thoughts shot through her mind: Had she come on too strong? Did he know? How could he know? No, he hadn't found out, and there was no way he could have found out her identity. He was... just making fun of her. And if he could make fun of her, his mental state wasn't that bad after all.

Officer Hopps relaxed slightly.

Judy, having thought it through, regained her vigilance. She didn't answer the fox directly, nor did she intend to bring up anything more about herself or calling the police. She continued cautiously feeling around the fox's wrist, trying to undo it. But the plastic zip ties had him bound fast, so tight that one side had chafed through the skin at the edge, sinking completely into his wound. She didn't dare act rashly.

All she could do was ask, "Do you have scissors?"

"You're going to cut me loose?"

"Yes." Judy was a little puzzled. "What else would it be for?"

"Who knows? Maybe you've taken a liking to my pelt. How do I know where you'll cut once you get your paws on them?"

His cruel words made the rabbit's heart tremble again. Her duty as an officer made her take stock once more—here was a bed soaked in violence, a fox who had been brutalized. Her instinct made her want to know what had happened.

But none of this should be the most important thing right now.

She pushed down her churning emotions, softened her voice, and assured him, "I won't. I absolutely won't hurt you. I just want to cut the zip ties off."

The fox said indifferently, "You can just snap them with your claws. They're not that thick."

"But that would hurt you."

"I don't mind. It's already like this anyway."

"You're hurt. How can you..." She swallowed her emotions and continued, "I'm helping you."

"Am I supposed to say thank you?"

Judy was nearly driven to anger by this uncooperative fox and the smell of blood that kept seeping from him. "Where are the scissors?" she asked again, her eyes sweeping the room as she searched.

"I don't have any."

"What?"

Nick's eyes curved with a smile, an inexplicable schadenfreude surfacing on his face. "I said, I don't have scissors."

Judy couldn't help staring blankly at his face. It was a face so lighthearted it didn't match his wounded body at all.

He didn't care? How could an animal be like this? How could he care so little about himself? She was clearly helping him! Why? Hopps, always eager to help others, was encountering this situation for the first time—an animal in need of help, yet refusing her.

She sent the signal once more. "I really do just want to help you."

"I know. You've said that. I'm telling you to just snap them off."

"That would hurt a lot."

"No, it won't." Nick tried flexing his claws. It didn't work. Sure enough, they were already so numb he couldn't feel a thing.

He had been tied up for too long.

She suddenly realized something. Judy wiped the expression from her face and felt the fox's paw to check, but a rabbit's palm had no pads—the thick fur blocked her from sensing the fox's real condition. She simply crouched down and pressed her nose against his pads to check the temperature of his paws.

Ice-cold. Like a dead thing.

Shit! She directly took the fox's paw into her arms, lowered her head, bit down on the gap between the zip tie and the bed rail, and clamped hard. The zip tie snapped. She tasted the fox's blood, acrid.

Judy didn't bother wiping the blood from the corner of her mouth. She rushed to the foot of the bed and used the same method to free the zip ties on the fox's other limbs.

Nick was stunned speechless, roaring inwardly:

She was insane! What was she doing! Didn't she find it filthy? Why? He'd told her she could just snap them off!

His limbs freed from their restraints, the fox's paws and feet were flooded anew with returning blood, burning as if pierced by thousands of needles. Yet he had no attention to spare for the searing pain. His mouth hung open in shock, his eyes following the rabbit around the bed, unable to make a single sound.

Then he watched the rabbit return to the right side of the bed as if nothing had happened. Without hesitation, she took his limp paw in her hands, kneading it back and forth, as if assessing the situation. "How is it? Any feeling yet?"

He finally exploded. "Are you insane!?"

The rabbit's ears skewed sideways from his roar. "What's wrong?"

Nick's gaze fell on the dark red bloodstain at the corner of her mouth. The tangled emotions coiled in his chest churned relentlessly. "What's wrong? You're asking me? Bunny, you tasted it, didn't you. What if I have some disease? You want to get infected?"

Judy's eyes widened, a creeping unease beginning to spread. "You... do you?"

"Of course I do. I'll die of it soon enough, and now it looks like I'll be taking you along."

"Do you really?"

"...No." The fox averted his gaze under her stare. "I'm perfectly healthy."

"Healthy? Where?" Judy's eyes swept across the fox's scarred body once more.

Only then did Nick become aware of his nakedness again. Only a few scraps of fabric hung from his body, and standing before him was a female bunny. The fox couldn't help curling up, his tail coiling over and covering his lower abdomen.

This bunny, seriously clueless. Where the hell was she looking!

And yet her matter-of-fact attitude toward his body blurred the fox's speculations about her once more. She didn't recoil from his body, ignored the bedsheets soiled with blood and semen, even touched him of her own accord. No shyness at all, she looked like she might be in the trade. But she also had no interest in the money on top? That was... problematic.

"I mean, my blood is perfectly healthy. You don't need to worry."

But he was the one who scared her first! Judy couldn't hold back the accusation. "It's not funny."

"No, it's not funny at all. Bunny, you should take my advice and stop doing one stupid thing after another."

"I was just trying to help you."

"That's the stupidest thing of all. Helping without regard for yourself is just asking to die. Don't you know that? You don't live here, do you?" Nick forced himself to calm down. How had she managed to pull such strong emotions out of him?

"..."

Judy was stunned by the fox's sharpness. She had barely said anything at all so far.

Officer Hopps had trained for a long time to secure this case. She knew she had no undercover experience and no acting skills to speak of, so she had followed the advice of her acting instructor—don't disguise yourself. The first time the unremarkable-looking old cop met her, he had crossed his legs and told her she didn't need to come. "Rather than turning yourself into another animal, I think you'd be better off just being yourself. Hopps, that special zeal of yours was never much like a cop to begin with. No rabbit in Zootopia has ever been a detective on the force. That's your biggest advantage."

Of course, she hadn't listened to him entirely. She had still dutifully completed every training session. On the west side of Crabapple Street, she had even deliberately shown a naive and innocent side to lower the guard of the animals she approached. Over the past few days, not a single animal had seen through her act or asked her whether she "lived here."

This fox was a little unusual.

She couldn't let him control the conversation any longer.

"I want to help you... because I want to thank you. You saved me first, didn't you?" In her urgency, Judy seized on a reason the fox couldn't question.

"How do you know I was the one who saved you?" Nick asked back, not letting a trace of anything show. She had been unconscious the whole time. By all logic, she should know nothing—unless, as he'd suspected earlier, she had been awake all along. She was a liar.

"This is your home... isn't it?" She added a questioning lilt to the last word.

"Oh? And where did you draw that conclusion from?"

The floor and the cracks in the corners held fox fur of different colors. The worn grooves along the edge of the mattress matched the shape of a fox's body. On the bookshelf's upper left compartment, a photo of you was stuck to the side of a box. And a lot of other things besides.

Judy, of course, wasn't about to say that she had been picking up on every clue since the moment she crawled out of the blanket. She blinked. "You were the only one here after I woke up. Of course I'd think this was your room. Aren't you?"

"I am."

"So, you were the one who saved me."

"…Right. Bunny, you got lucky. I saw you collapsed by the side of the road on my way back from buying pizza, and right away, out of the kindness of my heart, I saved you." Without the slightest shame, Nick rewrote what had actually happened and tested her reaction.

"Thank you." She thanked him formally and sincerely.

"Forget it." The fox turned his head away.

So… she didn't know. Then was she just naive? Did she really see him as the one who saved her and wanted to repay him, like she said?

He couldn't help turning his gaze back, watching her from where he lay on his back.

Though there were plenty of bunnies on Crabapple Street, he had never gotten a close look at one before. He noticed that every patch of grey on this bunny was a slightly different shade, and he silently identified them one by one in his mind, until his eyes reached the bloodstain still lingering at the corner of her mouth. Beneath the bunny's nose was a ring of soft white fur, against which it stood out starkly.

Nick pushed down that faint sliver of discomfort and said to her, "There are tissues on the table in front of you."

"What?"

He tapped the corner of his own mouth. "You've got blood there."

Does that really matter? Didn't he already say his blood was healthy? Judy lifted a paw and wiped the corner of her mouth.

Something else mattered more.

"Your wounds... need to be treated." The fox's condition was too terrible. Those dark traces crusted from dried blood were steadily eroding Officer Hopps's tolerance.

"They do? They're not even bleeding anymore. I'd say they've already healed." The fox's tone was still as dismissive as ever.

"They do. It's not about whether they're bleeding. If you leave them like this, they'll get infected. Do you have a first aid kit?"

"Ha, you think this place looks like it has a first aid kit?"

"You don't have one?"

"I don't need one."

The rabbit hopped straight onto the bed.

"What are you doing?"

Judy wanted to tie that fox's mouth shut. Her head was splitting, muscles aching, energy spent, every cell in her body feeling ten times heavier than usual. She really didn't have the strength to deal with a sharp-tongued fox this guarded and alert, not in this state. But he was so badly injured—neither her professional duty, nor her innate moral sense, nor the fact that he had saved her could let her leave him be.

And him saying no didn't count, either.

Judy sat sideways beside the fox, deaf to the acerbic remarks and questions still coming her way. She planned to assess his condition first before taking any action.

The fox's lower body was entirely wrapped in his large tail, so Judy could only examine what was exposed. She leaned in close, gently parting the matted fur on his arms and chest, carefully observing his wounds, evaluating.

"Can't you hear me? Bunny, I'm asking what you're doing." A chill crept into the fox's voice.

"Looking at your injuries."

"Like what you see?"

"Not really." Judy straightened up.

It was worse than she'd thought.

After looking him over, Judy had to admire the fox's tenacity. She didn't know how he was managing to hold a conversation with her in this condition. She didn't even know how he was still conscious. The fox's body was covered in injuries—knife wounds, bruises, whip marks. The worst were the knife wounds. Though not deep and mostly scabbed over, some had clearly become infected, the edges red and swollen, seeping fluid, faintly warm to the touch. It must hurt like hell.

He was trembling.

She was silent for a brief moment. "You need to go to a hospital."

"I don't think so."

She knew he wouldn't agree. Did this fox not know how to spell the word cooperate?

Judy had no choice but to settle for less. "I'll treat them for you. I can go buy medicine."

"Buy medicine?"

"Yes."

"For me?"

"Yes."

Oh. So that was it.

Nick's realization was exhausted by the time it arrived.

He was too tired, hurting so much it felt like he could pass out any second. The spirit he'd forced himself to rally was draining away with his spent emotions. The only drive still propping him up to face this strange bunny was that he hadn't yet figured out her true intent. What did she want? What did she want to do with him?

Now, he seemed to know.

She planned to con him.

The fox had survived on Crabapple Street alone for too long. Experience had become a set pattern. He knew the fundamental logic of this place—every animal living here was nothing more than a commodity. A commodity's body could be bought, but it didn't need to be looked after. A commodity had to endure pain, but could never expect to be eased. He was the same, one of their kind, a commodity, an animal long accustomed to needing nothing. Nicholas Wilde was not the kind of life that got treated with care.

He knew this understanding had cost him too much.

It wasn't just him who knew. They all knew.

On Crabapple Street, there were even more of their kind who exploited this very void.

Look at this moment. He had just endured torment and lay weak on the bed, yet a harmless-looking bunny was treating him gently. She had untied his bound limbs. She didn't meet his acerbity with acerbity. She refused to accept his refusals. She had looked over his wounds without the slightest concern for his filth and degradation. And then, she told him she wanted to buy medicine for him, wanted to help him—for him. She even had the perfect reason to treat him this way: he had saved her first.

She was filling his void with perfect precision.

So this was a perfectly flawless scenario, the kind an animal with a "void" would easily fall for.

Little con artist.

He wondered how much ambition was packed into that tiny body. She could have just taken the money on the floor and the bed, but that wasn't enough for her—she figured she could get more out of him. So she stayed, using that innocent face to con him?

Too bad. She'd run into him.

"Ah, so that's what you were planning." The fox nodded, as if he'd finally understood something, his tone lightening. "Little bunny, you had me worried for a second. I almost thought you actually had a conscience and meant to take care of me."

Judy found that in her current worn-out state, she couldn't keep up with the fox's words at all. "What do you mean?"

"Do you have money?"

"Of course—er—"

...She didn't. Everything she had was still buried in that hole outside.

"My wallet isn't on me right now. You can lend me a little. I'll pay you back."

"So, you plan to take my money, walk out my door, and then, in your words, buy me medicine?"

"Yes."

"Ha," the fox laughed again. "Do I look like an idiot to you?"

"..."

Could she really not tie his mouth shut?

Why hadn't he passed out? That would have been so much more convenient.

Honestly, Judy had never encountered a victim who refused to follow the script. He was supposed to accept help, cooperate, get himself to a hospital bed as fast as possible—not ignore his injuries and keep doubting her!

"You can trust me."

"Trust? If I had the strength right now I'd be laughing out loud. Bunny, looks like you really are new here. Otherwise you wouldn't have nearly died by the side of the road."

"You saved me. I want to help you."

"These are nothing."

"You're hurt."

"Not serious."

"Serious! You're hurt!" She couldn't help raising her voice.

Nick lifted his heavy eyelids to look at the small, furry face so close to his own. The bunny's eyes caught the light and refracted a beautiful violet glow, the emotion in them complicated. The fox suddenly blamed himself for being too awake, too clever, too good at reading expressions—for letting him see something in those violet eyes that shouldn't be there: earnestness and... a kind of ache.

Wilde, she's a con artist.

"...The money's on the bed. Might have a bit of my stuff on it. But we're both in the trade—I'm sure you won't mind. The pharmacy's a bit far. Out the door, turn left, pass two intersections, then keep going straight."

Judy looked down at the money scattered on the bed, silently took a few bills from beside her, and hopped off the bed. Just as she was about to head straight out, the fox spoke again.

"Wait, little bunny. I don't suppose you'd mind helping me put all the money away? Since you're set on helping me, you might as well be thorough. As you can see, I'm not exactly in a convenient state." His voice softened. "I trust you."

The fox's yielding demeanor put Officer Hopps much more at ease. There, that was more like it. She had successfully settled into her usual pattern—listen to the difficulties and needs of the animal being helped, then do her best to solve them.

The rabbit swiftly gathered all the money scattered across the floor and the bed, straightened it into a thick stack, and placed it by his bedside.

He said, "Take it all."

"What?"

"The money. You can take all of it. Weren't you going to buy medicine for me?"

Was there any need to take that much? The rabbit turned around and held up the bills in her paw to show him. "I think this should be enough."

"Is it? Enough? I don't think so." A faint smile floated on the fox's face. "Didn't you say my condition was serious?"

"It is serious. That's why going to a hospital would be better."

"I only trust you."

"I can go with you."

"I refuse."

What a pain. What was the fox up to now?

Judy silently turned her gaze back to him, only to have her thoughts cut off first by the shifted emotion in his eyes.

The fox's eyes were green, bright green. Every time she had locked eyes with him before, all she had seen was a darkness settled deep within them, one that revealed nothing—not even the mockery and guardedness on his lips. Now, his eyes unexpectedly held a childlike innocence and clarity, a soft light rippling across his green irises, setting off with striking lucidity the "trust" and "dependence" he had just admitted to.

It reminded Judy, for no reason she could name, of a forest back in Bunnyburrow, her hometown. On every childhood morning on the way to school, she would see that forest. With the sky just beginning to lighten, the forest was always shrouded in thick mist, an unremarkable, even somewhat eerie presence. Yet once the sun's rays pierced through it, the light would draw out a strange green from the forest. Seen from afar, all the trees and green were wrapped in the lingering mist, one indivisible mass. No light or shadow, just dense, saturated color, hazy and crystalline. Like the places where fairies and sprites lived in storybooks of fantasy.

The fox's eyes right now were that forest of mist, glowing.

Her father had warned them since they were little never to play there.

Because there were swamps inside.

Very beautiful. And very dangerous.

Whatever he was really up to right now, she hadn't forgotten his earlier attitude. What he wanted was his business. She just needed to go out, buy medical supplies, treat him, and leave.

Judy blinked and took all the bills off the bedside table. "Fine, have it your way. Is there anything else you need me to do?"

"Nothing." The fox wore that submissive look again, the one that made her so uneasy.

"Then I'll just—"

"Do you really think it's enough?" he asked suddenly.

"Money?" Judy held up the bills in her paw, nearly too many to hold, her patience spent.

"Yes. Is it enough?" he pressed.

He's hurt he's hurt he's hurt!

Judy chanted it quickly in her mind, then pulled on a polite smile. "Maybe... not enough?"

Satisfaction surfaced on the fox's face. "Not enough." He echoed it softly, his voice even gentler. "Am I really that badly hurt? Do I need that much money?"

She hesitated, then decided to play along. "...Yes. Some of your wounds look infected already, so I need to treat them as soon as possible. Can I go now?"

"I'm in so much pain. Could you pick up some painkillers for me while you're at it?"

"I will." She had been planning to anyway.

The fox's ears pressed back. He pointed at the cabinet in the corner and said, "Since you think what you have now still isn't enough—my pink shirt in the cabinet, the patterned one, there's more money in the inner pocket. You can take that too."

Why did he keep bringing up money? Wasn't he the one who'd said it wasn't enough? Judy knew the fox was testing her, but she didn't know what he was testing for. What would it mean if she took that much money? What would it signify? Was it counterfeit? Dirty money?

"Fine." She finally answered, defeated, and walked over to open the cabinet. She felt for the "some money" inside the shirt. Some? This fox had way more savings than she did.

Just in case he wasn't satisfied and kept stalling, she took out all the "some" the fox had asked for and was about to close the cabinet door when she froze.

Motionless.

Seeing the rabbit stop so strangely, Nick asked, "What's wrong?"

No response.

In the silence, he watched the rabbit slide down soundlessly and sink onto the clothes in the cabinet's lower shelf.

"Little bunny? What's wrong?" He raised his voice and asked again.

A few seconds passed. Nick was even about to struggle up to go check on her when he finally heard the rabbit's voice. "I'm fine."

Judy pressed a paw to her spinning eyes and stood back up, forcing back the violent nausea surging up inside. Vision blacking out a moment ago, consciousness snapping off in an instant. Cold sweat soaked through, body weak, head spinning, dizzy.

"Can I..." She opened her mouth, but the words came out even fainter than a breath, nearly inaudible.

The fox caught half of it. "Can you what?"

She made another string of vague sounds.

Nick spent half a second filling in her question. "Borrow my clothes? Sure, take your pick."

Judy dropped the money in her paw and, trembling, slowly pulled on a slightly thicker green long-sleeved shirt of the fox's. Once dressed, she braced herself against the cabinet and sank back to the floor.

"You're unwell."

She lied. "I just have low blood sugar."

"You were unconscious for a long time today."

"Which is exactly why I haven't eaten in too long and have low blood sugar."

The fox went quiet for a beat. "There's pizza and water on the table."

"Thanks." She really did need it.

The conversation in the room came to a stop. Nothing but two different breaths in the air, followed by the sound of a rabbit chewing. The fox noticed that when they were both awake, their breathing never synced into one rhythm. Each went its own way. The rabbit's breathing was a little faster than his.

"You okay?" After who knew how long, the rabbit's voice broke the silence again.

Such dedication. Nick nearly lost hold of the mask he was wearing. He was on the verge of genuine admiration for this little con artist. About to keel over herself and still mustering the phony concern to ask after him first.

"Me? Same as you saw before. Half dead, hurting like hell. What about you, how are you doing?"

"I'm okay."

"But you have low blood sugar, little bunny. Can you really go out? What if you pass out again out there? This time I won't be able to bring you back. Why don't you just rest here for a while instead."

Of course, he knew a high-level con artist wouldn't back down easily before getting what she came for.

"No need. Low blood sugar isn't a big deal. Your wounds can't wait."

See, he knew it. The fox who saw through everything offered his hypocritical agreement. "You're really too kind. How can I ever thank you?"

"It's what I should do."

Judy replenished her body's long-depleted water and energy at lightning speed, until the objects in her vision stopped spinning and doubling, though her pounding heartbeat still stirred her temples with a throbbing ache. She forced herself to choke down one more large gulp of water past the nausea before she felt a little better.

Then she got up and walked over to him, taking stock of the fox's condition. As she'd suspected, a low fever was setting in. In just this short time, his temperature had already risen. She herself was running on empty too. Neither of them had time to wait any longer.

She went back to the wardrobe, found a bag, stowed the money she'd tossed aside, and slung it over her shoulder. Then, carrying the fresh sheets and blanket, she leaned in toward the bed.

A hint of resistance crept into the fox's voice. "You want to change my sheets?"

"Yes. To prevent cross infection." She should have done this right from the start, but it hadn't occurred to her until she opened the wardrobe.

"I don't want to change them."

Judy drew a deep breath. "Why?"

Because this sheet was filthy and disgusting.

"Because there's no need right now. Logically speaking, shouldn't they be changed after the wounds are treated?"

"You have several sets of sheets. You can change them again then."

"So there's no need." Nick's tone grew firmer.

"Every second you lie in this bed as it is now, you're at risk of infection."

The fox simply closed his eyes and met her with silence.

So childish! Was he really an adult animal? Her youngest little brother had stopped fighting hospitals and shots with that attitude ages ago, and this fox wouldn't even let her change the sheets? Had his brain fried from the fever?

Judy was about to lose it. She yanked out the half of the sheet not lying under the fox and spread the fresh sheet over it.

"Bunny, I said I don't want to change them!" he repeated, his voice carrying a panic that was both utterly unfamiliar and strangely, disturbingly familiar to Judy, sharp enough to nearly pierce her eardrums.

The rabbit's ears dropped instantly. She nearly went down again, headfirst.

Judy pressed the back of her paw hard against her sore eye sockets. A moment ago, a crushing wave of negative emotion had nearly overwhelmed her, blurry images flashing before her eyes—an endless expanse of red. She didn't know what it was, but helplessness soaked through her entire body and doused her agitation.

Hopps, think about what Jack said. Patients are just children. They're in pain, they're suffering. This fox is the same. He has severe injuries. He's in agony right now. He's just been hurt. He has every reason not to trust any animal. You don't know what he's been through. He's in pain. You can't be hard on him. You absolutely cannot force him!

"I'm sorry," Judy apologized earnestly. She set down the sheet in her paws.

"I'm sorry. I should have asked you first."

Nick found a sliver of reason in the bunny's repeated apologies. He gasped for breath, his consciousness drifting. Moments ago, when the bunny had yanked at the sheet, he had been dragged back to the moment Cecilia had forced the drug into him. He had been bound again, reliving every detail. Helplessness, humiliation, and despair clinging to his emotions once more.

But she seemed to have said something different. Hadn't she? What had this bunny said?

He asked, mechanically, blankly, "What did you say?"

"I said I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Why... are you apologizing?"

"Because I did something against your will. I was wrong. I shouldn't have touched your things without your consent."

"My will? My consent?"

"Yes."

"Ha?" The fox didn't know why a laugh escaped him. "I have such a thing?"

"You certainly do."

"So you did something wrong. But you were helping me, weren't you? You just wanted to change my sheets, and I refused. Don't you think I'm a fox who doesn't know when to be grateful? I know you want to help me. You've said it so many times. But I—" He murmured on, rambling.

Judy's expression and heart went cold together.

She had made a serious mistake after all. She had clearly touched on his trauma.

She hopped onto the fox's bed once more, and under his startled and bewildered gaze, she took hold of his paw.

"I'm sorry. I was wrong." She repeated it, emphasizing each word, stroking the back of his paw gently. "Let me tell you again what I did wrong. I disregarded your will just now, and that was completely out of line. I should have listened to you first, because your body should not be handled by any animal, for any reason, without your consent. No matter how good my intentions were, even if I wanted to help you, it should have been in a way you could accept. So I was wrong. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

The fox gave no response.

This silence stretched longer than any before it. So long that Judy began to wonder if he had passed out with his eyes open. But he could still blink.

She couldn't help asking, "Did you hear what I said?"

"I have ears."

Good. His acerbity was back. The rabbit felt at ease.

The fox guessed the bunny wasn't thinking anything good about him right about now. Because she was looking at him the way one looks at an idiot, while her little paw moved gently back and forth across the back of his, bringing a faint prick and a faint itch, and more than that, a strange, foreign warmth—the heat of another animal's body.

Had he asked something? Or had he let some expression slip? How had she come to treat him like something fragile and breakable?

He didn't need that at all.

He'd gone quiet only because he was trying to figure out how to sum up everything he had just heard. After all, for as long as he could remember, his own will had never once been factored in as something deserving respect. This might be the first time an animal had backed down and apologized after he'd explicitly refused. His refusal was actually valid? The "no" that no one had ever respected had been acknowledged—by this bunny he'd pegged as a con artist.

What exactly did she want from him?

She was so "good" it genuinely scared the fox.

A truly cunning con artist. A high-level con artist.

Nick opened his mouth, meaning to say something to her. His tongue touched an answer lodged in his throat, something like "Are you conning me?" or "I saw through your game a long time ago." But what came out was:

"Take your paw off me."

Judy let go immediately.

She actually let go. Just like she'd said, she was listening to him, she was willing to listen. A con artist's apology was fake, was bait. But her apology sounded too good, too gentle. Nick admitted this little con artist had him outmatched. She was willing to apologize for disregarding his will—even if it was fake, it was something he needed right now. So... consider it payment.

Consider it payment for her being willing to treat him this way.

"You took how much?" the fox asked abruptly.

"What?"

"The money."

Why was he still on about this? Judy didn't understand why the fox was so hung up on how much money she took for the medicine, but she didn't want to set him off again. She just swung the heavy bag on her back and said, "A lot."

"A lot? You think it's a lot?"

"Yes. Quite a lot."

"Do you have this much money?"

She really didn't. She wasn't in the habit of saving. "I don't."

"You can go now."

He really was so baffling. Judy marveled inwardly at the fox's leaping logic and nodded. "Okay." But she still wrestled with something internally and didn't get off the bed.

"What is it?"

She hesitated, then opened her mouth. "...The sheets."

"I don't have any more."

"What? What do you mean you don't have any more?"

The fox cast her a cool glance. "Cash. What you've got is everything. You can't use my card even if you took it. I think that's enough, don't you?"

So you don't need to keep putting on an act of caring.

She didn't understand. She truly didn't understand a single thing the fox was saying, none of it answering what she'd asked. Judy closed her eyes, then opened them again. "...The money really is enough. It is. What I'm trying to say is your sheets really do need changing."

She remembered the fox's rising temperature from earlier and reached out a paw again, touching the side of his neck. "If we don't change them now, you'll definitely run a high fever from infection tonight. Don't you hate pain? It'll hurt even more then. Do you want that?" She had slipped into the voice she used to coax her little brothers and sisters into taking their medicine.

Feeling the bunny's paw touch gently against his jaw, Nick let out a weary sigh inwardly.

He had already paid her for her services. More than enough. Since she felt the need to put a final touch on her performance, to keep pretending—whether out of some strange stubbornness of her own, or because she was a dedicated little con artist who meant to see the con all the way through—and since it was, after all, taking care of him, what reason did he have to refuse her professional zeal?

He couldn't deny the quality of the experience itself. Might as well just enjoy the sham tenderness she was willing to give, and take in her final service item with a clear conscience.

It was just changing sheets. So what if they were dirty?

She was willing. She brought it up first. He'd paid.

The fox's voice went thoroughly soft. "Will it really get infected? You're not lying to me?"

With hope of persuading him in sight, Judy loosened the string that had been pulled tight in her chest. "It really will. I'm not lying to you."

"You don't think it's dirty?"

"Hm? Isn't that exactly why it needs changing? There are a lot of germs on it."

Germs? Ha, just germs? Nick lowered his eyelids. "...Fine. You can change them now."

Finally! Judy didn't want to know why this volatile fox had relented. She just wanted to yank the blood-streaked sheet off before he changed his mind.

"Do I need to get up for the sheet change?"

She quickly put that thought to rest. "No, it'll pull on your wounds. Just listen to me."

She had already spread half of the new sheet earlier. The part of the old sheet she'd pulled free was rolled at the fox's side. Judy pointed at the fabric roll. "You just need to step over this part here."

She knelt beside the fox, draped one of his less injured arms over herself, and moved him onto the other side of the new sheet with the utmost slowness and gentleness. Fearing any jostle might tug at the wounds covering his body, Judy braced one paw against the fox's lower back. Or rather, the base of his tail.

"Nngh..." A moan escaped the fox.

"What's wrong? Does it hurt?"

He wished it were pain! That damned drug's effects still hadn't cleared out completely!

Touched by accident in a spot made unnaturally sensitive by the drug, his body stirred with an untimely, subtle reaction. Nick immediately withdrew his arm from the bunny, gritted his teeth, and dragged the clean blanket over himself, rolling into the new sheet.

The movement hurt so much his vision went black. The fox curled inside the blanket, taking little gasps of air.

"What's wrong? Did I pull on a wound? Let me see!"

The fox's head emerged from the blanket, his ears flattened completely. "No need. One or two wounds might have split open. You know, that's unavoidable."

"But—"

"Just go!"

She didn't insist. With the sheet changed, Judy poured a glass of water and placed it on the fox's bedside table.

"I'll be back soon."

Ha, as if.

The fox took another look at those glinting violet eyes and laughed, light and airy, delivering his parting line of cooperation. "For my money, I'll pray."

The door closed behind the bunny.

She wasn't coming back. Nick was certain.

tbc.