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Ron from Accounting stood frozen in front of the shelter's one-way observation window, his coffee growing cold in his hand.
He'd been tracking Hazel for three months now. Government surveillance. Encrypted feeds. Watching from a distance like the stalker he was supposed to be hunting. But this? This wasn't surveillance. This was—
Déjà vu.
Through the glass, in the shelter's enrichment room, two rabbits sat pressed together in a patch of artificial sunlight.
One was a bright, canary yellow rabbit. Not dyed. it's a genuine, rare breed that looked like someone had plucked sunshine itself and given it fur. It was small. Quick. Nervous energy even at rest, ears twitching at every sound.
The other was an impossible blue. A shade so deep it looked like midnight had been bottled and poured over a rabbit's body. It was larger, calm, watchful, and it was nuzzling the yellow one. Gently. Protectively.
Ron's hand pressed against the glass.
Sunny.
The yellow rabbit had the same nervous energy as Hazel. Same bright color. Same way of looking at the world like it was bracing for something terrible to leap out of the shadows.
And the blue one—
Who the hell are you?
Ron's reflection stared back at him. Tired. Sleep-deprived. Messy hair. Dark circles. The face of a man who'd been watching over someone for months without them ever knowing.
The blue rabbit tilted its head. Looked directly at the glass. At him.
Then it went back to nuzzling the yellow rabbit.
"Names?" the shelter volunteer asked, clipboard in hand.
Ron blinked. "What?"
"The rabbits. You were staring at them pretty hard. They don't have names yet—they came in together. Someone found them in an alley, just huddled together. Been inseparable ever since."
Ron looked back through the glass. The blue rabbit had shifted, positioning itself between the yellow rabbit and the door. Blocking. Protecting.
He's watching over her.
"Name them," Ron said quietly. "Name them Ron and Sunny."
The volunteer gave him an odd look. "You want to adopt them? We've got paperwork—"
"No." Ron shook his head. "Just... let them stay together. Don't separate them."
He pulled out his wallet, handed over cash for their adoption fees and six months of care.
"Anonymous donation. Make sure they go to a good home. Together."
Later that night, Ron sat in his car outside the shelter, watching the lights go out one by one.
His phone buzzed. A message from his handler:
"Subject still in Metropolis. No signs of Stalker activity. Continue monitoring."
Ron pocketed the phone without responding.
Through the shelter's window, he could just barely make out two shapes in the nighttime enclosure. Yellow and blue. Pressed together. Safe.
He's watching over her.
Ron started the engine.
"I'm coming, Sunny," he whispered. "I'm always coming."
He didn't know that on the other side of the city, Hazel Jin was waking from a nightmare, one where a black rabbit with too many teeth had chased her through endless hallways.
But at the moment of waking, she could have sworn she saw a flash of blue. Blue.
Not black.
Blue.
That's new.
She didn't sleep again that night. But she did, for the first time in months, reach under her mattress and touch the unopened letter.
She didn't open it.
But she thought about it.
Three days later, Ron received a photograph in his encrypted files. Surveillance shot from outside the shelter's adoption viewing room.
In the photo, a blonde woman in a faded yellow cardigan was standing at the glass, her hand pressed to the window. Her eyes were wide.
She was staring at the blue and yellow rabbits.
Ron dropped the photo.
Sunny.
The shelter volunteer's report noted that the woman had stayed for over an hour. She didn't adopt the rabbits, she couldn't, her landlord didn't allow pets, but she'd asked the volunteer:
"Can I come visit them? Sometimes?"
"Of course. They're here until someone adopts them both."
"Together?"
"Someone donated to make sure of that."
The woman had smiled. A real smile. The volunteer noted it in her report.
"Sunny's smile was so bright it reminded me of a yellow rabbit."
Ron burned the report.
But he kept the photograph.
And he kept watching.