The Fox Hunts Hunting.
It was true that if I wanted to eat and I had no money, I’d have to hunt. But even so, the thought of eating a rat made my stomach turn.
Of course, I had already eaten cat food, so I probably had no right to say that. Still, if I were being generous, cat food could at least be classified as something people made. A rat could not.
“Meow.”
“You want me to do it myself, Boss?”
Fortunately, the rat Boss had caught wasn’t meant for me to eat; he had caught it to show me. So there was no danger of that. Even so, I could already picture myself hunting rats and swallowing them down, and the image was not pleasant at all.
“Uuugh...”
As I wrestled with the balance between human dignity and survival, a tiny sound caught in my large ears.
Rustle-
“!!!”
It had been a very small sound, but it came through with such startling clarity that I instinctively lowered my body and looked around.
Convinced that something small was moving, I fixed my gaze on the direction of the sound, and soon I spotted a rat darting away from not too far off.
How dare it try to run from Lady Naru. What an insolent rat.
I braced my back legs the way Boss did, digging strength into my haunches, and the instant the rat stopped to assess the situation, I moved on instinct.
I was going to leap like a butterfly and sting like a bee...
Thunk.
“Kyang?!”
I put too much force into my hind legs and smashed my head into a branch, then fell straight back down.
“Hnngh... It hurts...”
“Meow...”
“Please don’t look at me like that, Boss...”
Haaah...
It would be better to admit it honestly.
I had been arrogant.
It was hard to fully control power I had awakened to only recently.
But no one could be full after just one bite.
When Boss had been teaching me how to hunt, I hadn’t understood why. But maybe he had been trying to tell me to use my abilities properly?
“Boss is amazing!”
“...?”
Boss’s eyes said, “What is wrong with this one?” but I didn’t care.
“Boss, I’m going to work really hard and learn!”
I resolved to learn hunting from Boss with even greater determination.
I watched every movement Boss made and copied him as best I could, but for some reason, unlike Boss, I kept springing upward on pure instinct.
Was that a fox’s nature...? I didn’t know, and honestly it didn’t matter.
Chirp- chirp-
I charged at the sound of crickets, but I put too much force into it and smashed my face into the ground, failing again.
Flutter-flutter-
I spotted a sleeping bird, but I couldn’t quiet my presence, and the bird flew off before I even got close.
After that, it was nothing but failure after failure.
“Meow!”
“Sorry, Boss...”
Boss finally got so fed up that he smacked me with a cat-paw punch and scolded me.
With a sigh, Boss looked at me as if to say this was my very last chance, then showed me how to hunt once more.
I watched him carefully and studied why he succeeded when I failed even though I was following his movements as closely as I could.
First, Boss moved around without a sound, suppressing all signs of his presence in order to find prey.
Then, not long after, he spotted a bird not far away.
Boss immediately lowered his body, fixed his eyes on the bird, and kept scanning his surroundings with twitching ears.
That was the difference between me and Boss.
No matter how keen your senses were compared to a human’s, they were useless if you didn’t know how to use them properly.
In other words, I had only used those senses to find prey in the first place. Once I found it, I relied only on my eyes, and that was why I kept crashing into things or getting spotted by my prey.
The answer was to use every sense I had to the very end.
“I get it now, Boss!”
Flutter-flutter-
“Ah.”
“...”
The moment I understood, I shouted without thinking, and Boss’s prey, startled, flew away.
When Boss silently glared at me, I instantly shrank down and bowed my head.
“I’m sorry, Boss...”
Time passed like that, and thanks to Boss’s teaching, I finally earned my glorious first success.
The prey I had caught was none other than a mole!
I heard it moving underground, leapt like a bee... wait. Was it the other way around?
Anyway, the moment the mole stuck its face out, I darted in and bit the back of its neck. Success!
Now that I had learned how to fully heighten my senses, I could say I had evolved one stage beyond yesterday’s me... no, two stages beyond.
“Meow.”
“Right, Boss. I won’t get arrogant, ever.”
It wasn’t just my skills that had grown. My spirit had grown too.
In other words, I was three times stronger than yesterday’s me.
I looked at the prey we had caught today with Boss and smiled with pride, then let out a triumphant roar.
“Meow!”
“S-sorry, I’ll be quiet.”
After getting scolded by Boss, we carried our prey back to our home.
I had gotten so excited that I hunted without even thinking, but what we had caught was a rat, a bird, and some bugs.
And naturally, the reason we had hunted them was to eat them.
“...”
I glanced at the dead rat and broke out in a cold sweat.
No matter that I had eaten cat food, this was...
Rumble-
“Nggh...”
Because I had spent so much energy hunting, my hunger was starting to catch up with me.
That didn’t mean I was planning to just eat this. But throwing it away like this also didn’t feel right. It didn’t seem respectful toward the prey.
Rewinding time a little, to the moment Naru awakened.
A video started causing a stir on the internet.
Its subject was none other than a clip from a CCTV recording of Naru running away with a cardboard box over her head. Anyone could see the fluffy tail sticking out as she dashed along, and it was absurdly cute.
Title: A Moving Box Appears in Real Time.
(A box with only its tail showing bumps into a telephone pole, jolts, then starts running again.)
Wow. A monster has appeared in Seoul!
I’m so scared my heart hurts... d
Title: After Looking Up the Box Fox Video
(Video)
It was a fast-moving clip, so I can’t say for certain, but if you look closely beneath the box, isn’t that a human foot?
Title: If the Box Fox Is a Person, That’s Kind of Strange
(Photo)
The foot shown in the video above was from a person, and if you compare the box size with the surrounding objects...
(Photo)
It’s about this size, and at that scale there is no way an adult could fit inside it.
And on top of that, the whole body was hidden inside a small box, yet the thing still ran at that speed?
(Rough calculation formula)
By rough estimate, the only way that could happen is if the body were the size of a five- to ten-year-old child.
Title: Isn’t This Just Kids Being Kids?
Awakened are rare enough as it is.
It’s probably just some silly brat playing around with a tail.
“Hmm...”
Someone was looking at the internet posts that had recently become such a hot topic and repeatedly watching the box fox video.
“Box Fox, huh...”
She smiled faintly.
“Maybe I should go find it?”
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