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The silence between them doesn’t last too long. Junmyeon squints, trying to check if his eyes are deceiving him, and he turns to look at Yixing who is lying next to him.
“Have you ever seen wild rabbits?” He asks.
“Rabbits?” Yixing sits up just like him, and raises an eyebrow. “No, I haven’t.”
Junmyeon points at the beginning of the forest. It was the border of their village, the place which created tales of lost children and their ghosts. Because of the stories, Junmyeon stayed away from the forest, this grassland was as far as he was ready to go — but the rabbits look cute. There are a lot of them, Junmyeon can see, and they’re of different colours too.
“Those are rabbits?” Yixing glances at Junmyeon, as if to confirm, and continues to stare at them. “Can we go closer?”
“We’ll have to be careful, though,” Junmyeon stands up and moves diagonal to where the herd is, and he squats behind a thin bush. It’s not too much of a cover, but it’s something. “They’re very alert of their surroundings, and easily scared.”
“Because they’re prey animals,” Yixing mutters next to him. “That makes sense.”
“We can get a little closer look though,” Junmyeon looks around the herd. The forest is said to have just trees on the inside, but maybe they can hide in the thick bushes which adorn the forest like a fence. Hopefully, none of those are poisonous. “Can you be quiet?”
Yixing scoffs. “I’m training to be a royal guard, Junmyeon. Can you be quiet?”
“I’ve been around wild animals all my life,” Junmyeon rolls his eyes. “We’ll have to sneak behind the bushes near them, do you know what’s duck-walking?”
“Yeah.”
Walking like a duck with legs longer than a duck hurt a lot, but they didn’t make a single noise and Junmyeon couldn’t care about aching legs when they reach a few feet away from the herd. They probably shouldn’t go behind the bushes, it’ll be too much noise and the herd might go back to its burrows.
“I don’t think they’re wild rabbits,” Junmyeon whispers. One of the rabbits notices them, and goes back to grazing. “They aren’t scared of us.”
“Well, you’re just as small as them,” Yixing snorts behind his hand. “Why don’t you think they’re wild?”
Junmyeon glares at his friend for a moment before he starts picking grass under his knees. “They aren’t running away, that’s not normal for wild rabbits. They should be in their burrows by now.”
He moves a little closer, Yixing right behind him, and extends his hand to the herd. The rabbit which noticed him from before notices him again, and hops towards him. Junmyeon holds the grass with the tip of his fingers, and waits patiently. The herd has two coloured rabbits, brown and white — but the brown has become darker with mud, and the white has become very dirty.
“Should I pick some grass too?” Yixing whispers.
Junmyeon nods absently at him. He watches, a bit fascinated, as the rabbit shuffles closer, and sniffs at the grass he’s holding. It’s so cute, this brown rabbit. It sniffs for a long time before it decides to chew on it, and Junmyeon covers his mouth to suppress a squeal. How adorable.
“Do I just hold and wait?” Yixing whispers once again, and he’s holding even less grass than Junmyeon is. He copies Junmyeon’s posture, and clicks his tongue once.
“Don’t,” Junmyeon whispers to him. “Don’t make any noise, if they notice you, and are interested, they’ll come to you. They’re definitely domesticated. Or someone visits them.”
Yixing crosses his legs on the grass and waits with a frown on his face. The herd is still uninterested in him, but once the brown rabbit has finished Junmyeon’s section of grass, it moves on to Yixing’s.
“He’s so cute,” Yixing whispers. The rabbit chews slowly on the grass, and Junmyeon’s heart expands with fondness as he watches the rabbit. The herd stops grazing and looks at them curiously, and the biggest one’s ears twitch when it growls.
“We need to go,” Junmyeon gets up, pulling Yixing’s arm with him. “Come on, the herd isn’t happy.”
“What?” Yixing pouts. “But it just started eating mine.”
“The biggest one growled,” Junmyeon frowns, looking at said rabbit with a twinge of fear. “If we stay here any longer, we’ll get scratched, and there’s a high chance we’ll get sick because of it.”
“But they’re so cute,” Yixing coos, and the biggest one growls again. Junmyeon starts moving away, pulling his friend back as he walks away from the herd. “Junmyeon! What’s—”
“You’re going to get bit, Yixing,” Junmyeon grunts. “Come on, we’ll play with them later.”