SWNOVELXO Chapter 65: A Very Large Rabbit
Chapter 65: A Very Large Rabbit
"Uwaa!!!"
A loud scream echoed from the wooden stairs that went around the trunk of the big tree.
Nanako slipped and fell from the stairs. She was following from behind.
"Uwaa..."
Plop!
Nanako's face, hands, and feet were all stuck in the snow.
"Huff!"
Before Kato Jun could step forward to help, Nanako had already gotten up from the snow by herself.
She shook her head, and snowflakes fell everywhere.
"Are you okay?"
Jun hadn't expected someone to be following him from behind.
"No problem!"
With her bear-skin gloves, Nanako patted off her fur coat and stood firmly in front of Jun.
He looked at the little girl for a moment, then at the wooden stairs that had just become a slide.
Should he just build a slide next to the stairs? Climbing up was easy, but going down that way was too dangerous.
"Why did you come down too?"
He asked Nanako while looking up at the treehouse.
Yukino and the others were waving at him.
"Don't forget... come back quickly!"
Jun could still hear the girls' voices faintly through the thick snow.
"Did Yukino tell you to come with me?"
Nanako quickly shook her head.
"Yukino-nee, also Utaha-nee, and... I wanted to myself too."
Wearing a bear-skin coat, Nanako didn't seem bothered by the cold air.
Even so, her little face was red from falling into the snow earlier.
As a girl who grew up in a barbarian camp, she really didn't like being cooped up in the house too long.
"Okay, be careful not to fall. The snow here is quite thick."
Jun reached out his hand to her.
"Come on."
Nanako walked up to him and licked Jun's hand.
"Hey—"
She was licking Kato Jun's hand, which still had a glove on it.
"What are you doing?"
Jun looked puzzled at the little girl who was acting like a puppy.
"Licking your hand?"
Nanako realized she might have misunderstood.
She looked at him, confused.
"I meant hold hands. So you won't fall easily…"
Jun patted his forehead, then extended his hand again.
"Hold hands?"
The girl said something quietly, then placed her little hand on Jun's.
"Like this?"
Jun could only take that small hand and hold it tightly.
"Okay, let's go."
With Nanako's small hand in his, they started to walk slowly through the snow toward the underground storage.
Nanako felt happy because of the holding hands, her face smiling as she followed Jun.
The snow started to melt, and the sun appeared slowly.
No matter where you looked, you only saw white fields.
There was open ground, trees, rocks scattered everywhere, and even the frozen river surface was covered in thick snow.
The air was very cold.
Even wearing a coat, gloves, and a bear-skin hat, Jun still felt his body heat slowly fading.
But walking kept his blood flowing and his body warm.
A pair of big and small footprints were left on the snow. They formed a long line cutting through the white landscape.
In the distance, several large deer were looking for wild plants under the snow.
Sometimes, they would look at the figures of Jun and Nanako walking by.
Jun was amazed by the beautiful, snowy scenery.
The snow in Japanese cities wasn't just ugly; it was often tainted with exhaust smoke and turned grayish black.
But the snow here was different.
He felt like he was part of the white landscape.
After walking for a while, they were already covered in snow.
Even though it wasn't snowing anymore, the footprints they had made earlier were slowly being covered again.
Luckily, their house was up in a tree. Trees over twenty meters tall worked like signal towers.
Jun wasn't worried about losing his way.
Right now, he's thinking about two things: finding the underground storage with the bear meat and whether he can open it.
"That's a rabbit!"
Nanako suddenly shouted, sounding happy.
Jun followed the little girl's pointing finger.
There were several white rabbits playing around the roots of a big tree. It looked like they were searching for food.
"So cute... if roasted, they'd be delicious,"
Jun said this while looking at the fluffy white animals with long ears and bright black eyes.
He thought they were cute, but he also lowered the bow from his back.
Those white rabbits looked like guardian spirits of the snow.
Sometimes they buried their faces in the snow, and sometimes they just stared off into the distance.
Jun took two arrows from his quiver.
There were still some other rabbits nearby, but the two in front looked the fattest.
Their hind legs alone were enough to make him want to eat them.
He had never seen other rabbits in the forest before.
Today, he had to taste their meat.
Meanwhile, the two rabbits were still unaware of the danger.
They stayed standing, their ears pointed, listening to their surroundings.
Nanako covered her mouth so as not to make a sound, then stared at Jun and the two rabbits with wide eyes.
Tweng... The sound of an arrow being shot from a bow.
Even though he was wearing gloves, which made it a little harder to aim, Jun was confident in his target after aiming for several minutes.
Swoosh! Swoosh!
Two arrows were fired at the same time, each hitting one of the rabbits in the head.
Zzzrrk…!
The two rabbits trapped in the snow were in pain.
But Jun quickly jumped forward and lifted them by the ears.
One male, one female.
The male was still kicking, but the female had already closed her eyes.
"It's okay, you'll be together in the afterlife,"
Jun said quietly, smiling. He tied them with a tree vine, then put them in his boar-skin bag.
Nanako kept playing with the rabbits' ears with her fingers the whole time.
"Jun-nii, the rabbits are huge!"
When Nanako started to swallow her saliva, Jun realized that the little girl was just like him.
From the start, they had been eyeing the rabbits' bodies.
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