The Fox and the Butterfly Take Flight
Turning the clock back a little, to when Naru had bolted after misunderstanding Han Yerin at first sight.
“Meow.”
“Honestly... you scared me.”
Han Yerin let out a sigh as she lifted Norangi, who had just lunged at her.
She had been startled, but since neither she nor the cat had been hurt, she decided to let it go as a harmless little incident. Once she set the cat down, it immediately took off again.
It was exactly the sort of self-serving thing a stray cat would do.
Still, it had made for good stream footage, so she counted herself lucky and spoke to the camera.
“I never expected a cat to come charging at me like that... I was seriously surpris—”
“Why is everyone acting so weird all of a sudden?”
Han Yerin... no, Luna, blinked in confusion at the chat, which was all reacting in exactly the same way. A moment later she looked behind her, but of course Naru, who had been hiding there, had already fled.
“You’re all in on it together, aren’t you? Trying to trick me?”
Luna was about to brush it off as nothing, but the chat kept growing more and more frustrated, and she only stared at the screen, unable to understand what was going on.
At first she had thought viewers were occasionally teaming up to fool her, but their reactions felt far too genuine, and that made her suspicious. So she checked the footage she had recorded.
And there, in the video her ability had captured from above like a drone, she saw the moment the cat lunged at Luna, and for the briefest instant a fox tail had flashed into view in the background before vanishing.
“A fox?!“
Startled, Luna replayed the footage and studied the spot where the tail had appeared. There, she found strands of fur that clearly belonged to a fox.
“It’s definite. There was definitely a fox here!”
Smiling, Luna used her ability to create even more butterflies.
“Come on, guys. Find the fox’s trail for me!”
At her command, the butterflies immediately flew toward where the fox had run.
They traced the route the fox had taken, fluttering low and searching for fallen fur or other signs, until the path seemed to lead somewhere else.
“Looks like the trail’s heading toward Back Mountain?”
As the number of viewers climbed, the chat grew hotter and hotter, and Luna smiled as she followed the trail.
Then...
“This is...”
Because it had rained yesterday, there were puddles scattered here and there, and in the course of fleeing, the fox had stepped through the water and left footprints behind.
“Guys, look at this.”
As Luna zoomed in on the camera and showed the prints, what appeared there was not an animal paw at all, but a human footprint... one that looked like it belonged to a small child.
“These are human footprints?”
“Wow... the chat’s going so fast I can’t read all of it. Anyway, I came to investigate because there was even a rumor that it might be a beastman... but what if it really is one?”
Just from the footprints alone, it was easy to tell that the one in question was a child, but there were far too many troubling details.
Even calling them footprints was generous; they were bare feet... or maybe only socked feet.
And the movement itself had looked like someone fleeing from her on purpose...
“This feels like it’s getting bigger than I expected.”
“Who do you think is scared? We’ve come this far, so I can’t just turn back now!”
Luna sounded confident, but the creeping unease she was feeling was something she couldn’t help.
A young beastman wandering around barefoot and running from people.
It was starting to look like she might need to call the police, and she couldn’t help wondering whether it was right to keep the stream going like this.
But...
“Gulp.”
Even now, as the viewer count kept rising, she found herself unconsciously swallowing at the thought of it.
In the end, she was human too, and she couldn’t completely resist the temptation. She decided to keep the broadcast going.
Then, not far from where the watery footprints had stopped, she found handprints pressed into the ground.
When Luna saw them, the words slipped out before she could stop herself.
“Whoa, no way. That’s tiny.”
The chat was just as fired up as she was, exploding with reactions at the sight of the handprints.
Luna glanced between the marks and her own hand, startled by how much smaller they were than she had expected, and thought to herself:
They’re really tiny. Maybe a first or second grader? Or even younger than that.
She didn’t know the exact age, but it was clear the child was very young.
That only made her more worried, wondering why such a small kid was wandering around alone and whether the child had somehow gotten tangled up in something awful.
“Moderator, please block any comments that cross the line.”
Luna stood up and ran toward the place her butterflies were guiding her to.
When she arrived, it was the Back Mountain she had expected.
“This is...”
But not the side with the hiking trail. It was the exact opposite.
The butterflies had traced the trail up the steep, hard-to-climb side of the mountain.
“Is the child up there? And this is...”
Beneath the mountain, Luna spotted cat food someone had left out.
It was the kind of thing you could find near stray-cat caretakers all over the place, but the butterflies had clearly shown that this was where the fox’s trail led.
“Don’t tell me... did the kid eat that cat food?”
The food had been set out for stray cats by some well-meaning caretaker, but from the look of it, the hygiene was far from great.
Being so close to the mountain, insects had gathered around it, and the bowl had clearly never been washed.
“...”
Luna stared at the food bowl with trembling eyes, unable to say anything. Unconsciously, her fist tightened.
Child.
Mountain.
Cat food.
Tracks.
It was as if all of it were pointing to one terrible conclusion.
The chat, too, seemed to sense the strange atmosphere. Joking comments and messages full of curiosity about the fox beastman began to thin out.
“Everyone, wait. We still... we still don’t know yet. Maybe by coincidence there just happened to be a child’s footprints where the fox ran... maybe...”
Even as she said it herself, the words sounded strange, but she wanted, in any way she could, to look away from the cruel reality.
But now that she was here, she couldn’t turn back, and even if the answer waiting for her was merciless, she had to see it through.
“...”
It had started with a streamer’s greed for content, but now it had become something a person couldn’t simply walk past.
So first, she had to check.
“Find the fox... no, the child.”
Luna, no, Han Yerin, made more butterflies and began searching the mountain for the child.
She did not send the camera along.
She couldn’t broadcast the worst-case scenario as it was.
“I’m sorry, everyone. I’m going to talk a little less from here on out. It might not be as fun, but I’m sorry.”
As the violet butterflies slowly rose and flew up into the mountain, Han Yerin linked her senses with theirs.
Closing her eyes, she began searching for the child through the butterflies’ field of vision.
And not long after, Han Yerin spotted a little girl in the distance.
“Found her.”
She had a small, childish face, still round with baby fat. At most, she couldn’t have been more than ten years old.
If anything, she seemed fortunate not to be badly hurt or in pain, so for the moment Yerin could breathe easier.
But there was one thing that was impossible to ignore.
On top of the child’s head were large fox ears, the kind no ordinary human would ever have.
Her orange tail and hair, the color of sunset itself, made her look like a doll that had somehow come to life.
Her ears twitched, and her bright golden eyes moved busily this way and that, so adorable that Yerin found herself staring, dazed, without even realizing it.
Worse still, the child seemed to be learning how to groom herself from a black cat.
This is dangerous... she’s so cute my heart hurts...!
Because the child was so focused on grooming, and because Yerin had deliberately sent the butterflies far enough away, she hadn’t been discovered, but she almost found herself moving closer without meaning to.
If she ran away, that means she must be wary. I need to be careful.
Looking more closely, Yerin could see that the child was wearing a worn, baggy top and skirt that didn’t fit her little body, and that she had no shoes at all, only socks forced on in the wrong size.
They were stained with dirt and grass juice, making it painfully clear she had no proper shoes.
So she really isn’t being protected by anyone.
“Haah...”
Han Yerin sighed and started thinking about what she should do next.
I can’t just film her like this on the stream, but I don’t think I can just shut it off either...
After thinking it over seriously, Han Yerin made her decision and opened her eyes.
As expected, the chat was already filling up with comments from viewers waiting for the result.
“I’m sorry to disappoint everyone, but it seems like she ran off because she smelled me. I think I could still keep chasing her, but if she’s really just a little kid, she’ll probably be scared, so I’m going to stop the search here.”
With that announcement, the viewers who had been waiting for an answer began posting messages about how this was going downhill, feeling both let down and angry, but Han Yerin apologized over and over until, in the end, she ended the broadcast.
Alone at last, she looked up at the mountain helplessly and said,
“Now what am I supposed to do...”
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