Chapter Three

Routine

Min felt his body slowly coming back to life at the sound of chirping birds coming from outside the place where he was resting.

He burrowed deeper against the surface he was sleeping on, trying to keep the brightness of the morning as far from his eyes as he could. He wanted to have some more sleep, he was so tired.

His body was aching like never before, he could barely feel his legs and sure as hell he didn't want to leave the warmth he was surrounded by.

Warmth, he thought.

Kyu.

He opened his eyes but he could only see bright white so he closed them again, furrowing his brows. He tried again, his heart beating fast, and this time he could adjust to the brightness of the morning sun.

Kyu.

Min propped himself up slowly, his heart sinking painfully at the sight of the empty place, the warmth he felt was just the sun warming the spot next to him.

He sighed, dejected.

When was he going to be with his black bunny again?

His mind was suggesting a reply his heart wasn't ready to accept.

He dragged himself to the doorway feeling more tired than when he had laid down the night before. His heavy limbs where almost unresponsive and if he was up to him, he would have crawled until the end of the world.

Because his feet felt heavy, he tripped at the entrance of the space he had slept in so he half hopped and half rolled outside, cursing at everything he laid his eyes on in the meanwhile.

He landed on his back with a loud “!”, the pain paralyzing him on the spot.

Soft sounds of steps came from some place nearby followed by a voice.

“Are you alright, son?”

Min looked up in the direction the voice came from and there he was, the Ahjussi.

“It's fine, don't worry. I'm sorry if I disturbed you.”

The Ahjussi stared at him for a long minute and then turned himself away.

“Get up, it's late. You should have been at the cove fifteen minutes ago.”

Min sighed and got up, ignoring the pain at the back. He hated that place with passion, it made him feel a freak, a monster, something he never though to be before.

The “Cove” was a small wooden structure erected on a crescent-shaped bay of white sand situated to the south of the forest. It was property of Ahjussi and his wife, they had built it at the end of the great war as the symbol of the freedom of their new life.

The “Cove” was also the place Min was currently working to paying off his debt.

The day Min woke up after “the great blue”, he was alone in the woods. He couldn't move a muscle, he was like paralyzed and he was super scared, even if the sun was shining through the foliage of the trees all around. His body felt different, heavy, and he occurred a lot of energy to move one of his front legs.. legs that weren't white and fluffy anymore.

He had screamed, so loud, so scared, so torn. He called his mate for so loudly that he lost his voice, he cried so much that he felt like his eyes were about to fall, he sobbed so long that he struggled to breathe. He was thirsty and hungry and very desperate and no one of the animals of the forest was coming in his help.

No one was coming to help him because he was different.

He wasn't a white bunny anymore.

His body had legs and arms and was long, very long, he felt enormous, like a giant. He was no more covered in white fluffy fur, his flesh was covered in soft hairless pink skin that felt like velvet under the fingertips of his hands. He didn't have his long bunny ears anymore, instead he had small, little ears at the sides of his head that were covered by long white hair.

His hair were the only thing that could make a connection between what it was before and what it was now.

He could remember how he had dragged his new weak and uncomfortable body around the trees for few days, feeding himself with the all the berries he could find and drinking from a rivulet he discovered some time into the first day of wandering. When he had finally reached the border of the woods, he was exhausted. He had then spot a building just a dozen meters away from there and there were colorful pieces of fabric hanged on some sort of strings attached to some poles. Min felt cold and fragile without his fur so he had grabbed the first item hanged and had returned faster in the woods. The piece of cloth he had grabbed had the shape of a big “t” and it was the brightest pink he had ever saw in his short bunny life. He remember he couldn't take his eyes off from the pink garment and that he had crawled in the shadow of the woods for a little bit more before he had saw the bright blue sea where he washed himself later that night, cleaning himself from the dirt of the forest before finally putting on the pink oversize t-shirt.

He stayed there and waited, waited for someone to come and rescue him.

Waiting for K