A Guide to Keeping a Beastman - Chapter 3

The new fangs sat in the display case in my new home. The lighting had been designed well this time; every tooth gleamed.

I admired them quietly over a glass of red wine, then thought again of the beastman I had sent to prison.

He truly had beautiful canines.

When he had bared his teeth at me while pinned to the floor, I had seen how sharp they were. A good length too, and as white and clean as porcelain.

I wanted them.

But… I was not some outlaw. I could only suppress the desire in silence.

My new home was in X City, where only the rich or powerful could afford to settle.

That also made beastmen who committed cannibalistic crimes harder to deal with. Rumor had it there was… an enormous underground market for human flesh.

Wealthy beastmen did not need to hunt personally. They could simply buy what they wanted.

But since I had only recently arrived, I was not needed for any major cases yet. I was still on leave.

A leisurely vacation, an afternoon washed clean by rain—it was the perfect time to stay home and rest.

And eat a piping-hot delivery meal.

The moment I opened the door, I found a beastman curled up outside.

He reacted quickly, as if he had rehearsed this countless times. He launched himself at me and drove me flat onto my back.

His tail struck the door, slamming it shut.

I sank into the warm, soft carpet, my long dress soaked by the rainwater dripping from him.

His animal ears and gray hair were sopping wet. Beneath the clumped strands burned a pair of furious amber eyes.

I struggled. Beastmen truly were astonishingly strong. He had both my hands pinned to the floor, and the nearest gun in the apartment was two meters away.

“Why do you keep haunting me?” Had he tracked down my new address with nothing but that dog nose?

Chasing a suspect across a thousand miles? Someone had watched too many detective movies.

He glanced up at the conspicuous display case. “I wasn’t wrong. Your home smells of beastman blood.”

…

“And what does that prove? I like sleeping with beastmen. We play rough, and they give me a fang as a keepsake. Is that a problem?”

Apparently, he had not expected that answer. He choked for a moment. “Impossible! You look down on beastmen!”

Oh… and here I had thought I concealed the contempt in my eyes so well.

“So you think I’m a maniac who hunts and kills beastmen? Everyone else missed it, and you’re the only one who uncovered the truth?”

“Haven’t you found it strange? You demanded again and again to search my home. Even on mere suspicion, the station should have assigned officers to investigate me.”

“So why are you the only one here?”

His expression went blank. Then he shoved me harder against the floor. Meeting his furious stare, I tilted my head and smiled coyly. “Did no one tell you not to investigate me?”

“Or did you assume I’m some rich, well-connected heiress, so the truth was covered up and justice denied?”

“Hahahaha… It’s because I’m a government employee. My identification is in the bag behind the door.”

My department had been created specifically to deal with beastmen. Naturally, its existence had to be kept secret from them.

His colleagues had tacitly concealed the truth, unwilling to tell him and equally unwilling to watch him waste his time.

But he refused to take the hint.

He kept digging, and what he found in the end was the truth: the government disposed of beastmen who ate people.

“You wanted the truth? Here it is. Beastmen are always producing scum who kill and eat others. That’s why people like me exist.”

“Impossible. If things like that really happened, they would have been all over the news!”

I opened my computer. It contained the files from every assignment.

Appetite was the hardest desire to resist. Even if beastmen lived on plant protein and lacked no nutrients, their instincts remembered the taste of meat.

Photographs and videos filled the screen: victims reduced to masses of blood and mangled flesh. Sometimes even the first beastman to discover a body could not suppress the bloodlust and would begin feeding on it.

He watched until he bolted into the bathroom and vomited. I leaned against the doorframe at an angle.

“As for why the government doesn’t make it public—once your kind realizes you can eat one another, there’ll be even more atrocities.”

“Reason and instinct are locked in a constant tug-of-war. One day, that string will snap.”

“Oh dear… I’m so sorry I let something like this slip. I hope it won’t have any effect on you.”

He glared viciously at me, held out for a long moment, then retched into the toilet again.