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Chapter 9
I nodded with half-lidded eyes.
Nana hesitated for a moment, clearly troubled by the situation.
“…Then just for 10 minutes. Only 10 minutes, got it?”
Yes, ma’am!
I almost jumped off the table in joy without realizing it.
As I climbed onto Nana’s outstretched palm, my field of view suddenly soared.
It was about the same height as when I had been human, but since I had grown used to a rat’s perspective, practically glued to the ground, the elevation felt a bit scary.
I sat obediently on Nana’s palm.
Most of the people in this mansion are nocturnal, and since it was daytime, we arrived at our destination without encountering a single soul.
“Mr. Jjikjjik. Don’t go too far. You must come back exactly in 10 minutes, okay?”
Nana emphasized her words repeatedly as she set me down.
The place Nana brought me to seemed to be the garden.
The grass and trees were neatly maintained, but I ran into an unexpected problem.
Hmm.
For the humanized residents, the grass was just the right length, but to me, it was practically as tall as I was.
It might as well have been a jungle. But I wasn’t here for a stroll—I came to get a sense of the mansion’s layout. I had already thoroughly observed the interior on the way here, so the garden didn’t interest me much.
Still, I couldn’t let Nana know my true intentions, so I pretended to be fascinated, diving into the grass with enthusiasm.
“Squeak!”
Then I tripped over a rock I hadn’t seen.
I screamed and fell flat. My foot was scraped, and blood oozed from the wound, stinging a bit.
Ugh.
An unplanned injury.
It throbbed with every step, so I turned to call Nana for help.
But Nana, whose sleep schedule had been forcibly flipped because of me, was dozing off in the shade, clearly not yet adjusted.
Seeing the dark circles under her eyes, I decided not to wake her and endured the pain as I stood up.
Nana treated me like a fragile sandcastle, so if she saw my injury, she’d immediately take me back to the room.
Since I had already given up the premium bedding and raisins to come here, I decided to look around a bit more.
That’s when I felt a sharp tension in my back.
My prey instinct was screaming.
There was another predator nearby.
One that made no effort to conceal its pheromones—a stranger.
Beastfolk usually didn’t hide their pheromones.
Dana and Nana had never revealed theirs when alone with me out of consideration, and powerful types like Kaiman or Wishid refrained from showing theirs casually, believing their pheromones shouldn’t be wasted on just anyone.
So the person approaching now—brazenly radiating pheromones—was likely not very respectable.
But a predator is a predator to me, no matter who it is.
Nana was some distance away.
Still, if I ran with all my might, I could get to her in under 15 seconds.
Just as I steeled myself to sprint toward her—
I was yanked into the air by the scruff of my neck.
“Squeak!”
“A rat?”
A faint smell of poison and a voice whispering right next to my ear made my skin crawl.
It felt like bugs were crawling into my ears—utterly disgusting.
I turned my stiff head in fear to check who it was, and saw vertically slit, light brown pupils.
I forgot to breathe.
The eyes staring down at me didn’t regard me as prey—no, not even that. They looked at me as something beneath even that.
“A snack? That’s a bit low-grade for someone of such noble taste.”
A snack?!
“Squeak! Squeeeak!”
I felt the blood in my body surge and screamed at the top of my lungs.
Before this snake could eat me, I screamed louder, hoping Nana would wake up.
“Squeeeeak!”
“Hold still! You smell like something…”
The snake began sniffing around me.
Then suddenly, the focus vanished from his eyes.
“I smell something delicious…”
He opened his mouth wide, as if he was about to swallow me whole.
“Lord Sioran!”
Just as his venomous fangs were about to sink into me, I curled my tail in fear and shut my eyes tight—then heard a voice of salvation.
Nana!
She had finally woken up, and her already pale face turned completely white.
Sioran?
I blinked at the snake beastfolk called Sioran.
Not the main lead Reynold, but Wishid’s other enemy—his cousin, Sioran.
Sioran wasn’t pure-blooded, but he carried Black Mamba blood and was one of the elders’ two secret weapons besides Reynold.
Though, calling him a “secret weapon” might be an overstatement.
Sioran was as ruthless and twisted as Wishid. And now, I was in his clutches.
“What’s the deal? Is this your snack?”
“Please put Mr. Jjikjjik down!”
“Jjik… what?”
Sioran tilted his head, holding me up in front of Nana and shaking me.
“This?”
“Yes! That’s Mr. Jjikjjik!”
Sioran examined me closely.
“What is it?”
“Mr. Jjikjjik is Lord Wishid’s—”
No! Don’t say it!
“Wishid’s? Wishid’s what?”
“Lord Wishid’s…!”
Nana had begun her sentence confidently but couldn’t finish.
Of course—she didn’t actually know why Wishid had taken me in.
That psycho’s experiments were being kept secret, with only a select few like Kaiman even aware.
“So, Mr. Jjikjjik is…”
Sioran yawned and opened his mouth again.
“He’s Lord Wishid’s snack!”
Nana finally spat out an excuse, but I was already in despair, and Sioran just laughed.
“Then I should eat him too.”
Damn it!
The excuse Nana came up with only further provoked Sioran.
Sioran was illegitimate—not the previous duke’s, but a close collateral line.
The elders had once cast out young Sioran and his mother, calling them disgraceful, but when Wishid became duke and started threatening their positions, they hastily brought him back.
Sioran always harbored an inferiority complex toward Wishid and was desperate to provoke him.
Nana’s excuse was like pouring oil on that pathetic jealousy.
And there was no way a mere maid like Nana could stop Sioran.
“Squeeeak…!”
Wishid…!
I screamed for him with all my might.
“Squeak!”
Wishid!
Where are you, you bastard?!
Wishid was the only one who could save me.
More precisely, I believed he would save me because he still needed me.
But miracles didn’t happen.
Sioran dropped me toward his gaping mouth, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then something gripped the back of my neck—tightly.
Am I… going to die…?
Through my blurry vision, I saw crimson eyes flicker, then I drifted into deep unconsciousness.
* * *
“Ha, fuck.”
Sioran roughly wiped his bloody lip with the back of his hand, swearing under his breath.
The elders had egged him on again—telling him to go mess with Wishid—so he’d come to the mansion, only to be told Wishid wasn’t there.
It wasn’t the first time Wishid had blown him off, so he’d released his pheromones to confirm. Sure enough, Wishid really wasn’t present.
Feeling sour, Sioran was about to leave in a foul mood.
But then, for some reason, he had wandered into the garden and witnessed something unexpected.
A rat scurrying around in the snake beastfolk’s garden.
Something about that bizarre scene drew him in. And then a sweet scent reached him.
Next thing he knew, he was holding a trembling rat and drooling, his mouth wide open.
Sioran looked at his dripping saliva in alarm.
Drooling… over a rat?
Even if it was close to mealtime, this was a first. No—more like, it had been a long time.
Until the age of fourteen, Sioran had hidden in the slums with his birth mother.
Back then, rats were a rare delicacy—if they were lucky, they got one a week.
After his mother died from an illness and he was about to starve to death, the elders took him in.
Now he ate gourmet meals prepared by skilled chefs using the finest ingredients.
And yet, just now, he had wanted to crush that rat’s neck and swallow it whole in his true form.
Sioran had snapped out of it and tried to toss the rat away—until he heard that it belonged to Wishid.
