A Guide to Keeping a Beastman - Chapter 2

Within two days, I felt that familiar gaze again. This time it did not come from a van but from a telescope hidden behind the curtains of the building opposite mine.

A dog was a dog, after all. So fond of spying.

I went about my life as usual—strength training, yoga—and two days later, I showed up at his door with a squad of police officers.

He was eating instant noodles when they pinned him to the floor, his face utterly bewildered.

I looked around. The apartment had barely been set up. White sheets still covered the furniture, and his only bed was a camp cot on the floor.

How pitiful. He had spent so much renting this place that he could not even afford a proper meal, yet here he was, overflowing with righteous zeal.

“Officer, that’s him. He’s been stalking me. Please see if he’s taken any pictures.”

There were pictures, but not a single one showed the deliberately revealing outfits I had worn. They were all just photos of me exercising.

That made him look somewhat less perverted.

But secretly photographing someone was still wrong, so off to jail he went.

With him watching me like that, I could hardly take another assignment.

Only once I was certain he would not be getting out anytime soon did I board a plane for my next destination.

“Want me to send someone to deal with him?”

“Listen to yourself. You make us sound like an evil organization. Aren’t we a government department?”

“I only meant keeping him locked up a little longer.”

“No need. I won’t be staying in this city much longer.”

After hanging up, I reviewed the target’s file. Another canine beastman. He had lost control and killed a herbivore beastman, and was currently on the run.

The beastmen’s animal instincts had always been unstable, and only a tiny minority volunteered to wear restraint collars.

For political reasons, the collars could not be made compulsory.

The result was frequent crime. Humans were not the only ones in danger; herbivore beastmen were too.

That was why beastmen ought to stay in the wilderness. No one cared about survival of the fittest out there. They could slaughter one another as they pleased. But no—they insisted on imitating humans and living in cities.

Then they had to submit to human laws.

And be killed by people like me.

With my partner tracking him in real time, I quickly cornered the lion beastman in a dead-end alley.

His massive frame shook without pause as he begged, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong, but I was so hungry… I was really so hungry…”

The enormous figure dropped to his knees. He looked haggard, tears spilling from his eyes, as if taking a life truly tormented his conscience.

But saliva kept running from his mouth. He swallowed over and over, still gazing at me with longing.

There was nothing in his eyes but… appetite.

Four hundred years earlier, the virus that altered their genes had erupted without warning.

It had begun as a mad attempt to force biological evolution. Then the virus escaped and rewrote the world entirely.

Its creator could not have expected this outcome either, could he? The beastmen had humanlike faces and intelligence, yet their animal nature could never be eradicated.

They possessed thoughts and souls, but still yearned for the law of fang and claw.

Carnivorous beastmen differed from omnivores and herbivores. A bloodthirsty hunger was built into their instincts.

Once all animals became beastmen, eating meat was outlawed. Eggs and milk were the only animal proteins available in abundance.

Taste buds denied for too long, cravings impossible to resist—in the end, tragedy was inevitable.

Carnivores and herbivores were housed in separate districts, yet incidents like this still occurred. Some carnivores even… preyed upon weaker members of their own kind.

Whether beastman flesh or human flesh, meat was fiercely addictive to them and could trigger a fatal regression.

In other words… irreversible reversion to animal form.

The kneeling figure’s limbs began to shake and contort uncontrollably. His fangs lengthened, thick fur forcing its way through smooth skin. When he raised his head again, he was a beast through and through.

That was why a beastman who had eaten flesh had to be put down.

Otherwise, even with a gun aimed at his head, he would still drool over me just like this.

“Don’t kill me. I won’t eat it again. Don’t kill me…” Even as he begged, a threatening growl rumbled from his throat. Gradually, his tongue grew clumsier.

I slowly removed my glove and waved my hand before his eyes.

My hand was pale and slender, with little flesh on it, but my fingertips were rosy and full of blood. One bite, and it seemed they would bleed…

He lunged at me.

A gunshot cracked. The huge body stumbled twice and collapsed two steps away from me, never to move again.

“You failed the test.”