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Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived at the edge of a forest. The little boy didn’t have any parents, and he was very lonely.
One day, when the little boy was feeling sad, he decided to go for a walk through the woods.
As he walked along the grass and fallen pine needles, he began to hear a strange noise rustling in the leaves.
Frightened, the little boy jumped into a nearby hollow tree stump to hide.
After a few moments, the little boy realized that the unfamiliar noise sounded like… someone was singing?
Gingerly, the little boy crawled out of the tree stump, listening closely. Drifting through the forest air, he heard … climbin’ up the bunny tree.
Puzzled, the little boy tilted his head as he followed after the melodious sounds.
He hadn’t walked for very long before he came to a clearing in the forest. In the middle of the little knoll, a pink and gold bunny, not much smaller than the boy himself, was dancing and singing.
She's got jelly beans for Yuji , chocolate eggs for Etsu. There's an orchid for Yuki , and all these presents, too!
As she sang, the bunny’s paws conjured things as if by magic – a fistful of candy, a scattering of flowers. All around the clearing, there were squirrels and birds and chipmunks, all leaning forward, all smiling and hoping for a little of the bunny’s attention.
Watching from behind a tree, the little boy was scared – not of the bunny, of course, she seemed too kind to swat a fly.
No, he was scared of how badly he wanted some of the bunny’s attention, too.
In fact, the little boy was so frightened of this sudden rush of feelings that he turned and fled through the underbrush.
He hadn’t run very far before he heard voices echoing above him.
Looking up, he found birds roosting in the trees above him. The birds were tittering, laughing at him.
“You think you have anything to offer the bunny?”
“You think the bunny would want anything to do with you?”
“Nobody wants anything to do with you. That’s why you’re alone.”
The birds laughed and laughed, and again, the little boy began to run.
He ran all the way home, locking himself up tight in his little cottage before he finally let himself cry.
But despite it all, he couldn’t stop thinking about the bunny.
Each day, when he woke up, he would linger on the edge of the woods, telling himself that there was no reason to go inside.
Each day, he would end up making his way through the trees, his feet taking him down the now-familiar path to the clearing so he could peek out from behind a tree, watching the bunny.
Seeing her somehow made his heart feel both warm and cold at the same time.
When the little boy had been visiting the clearing for a few weeks – memorizing the songs that the bunny liked to sing and wondering how it was she did her magic – he arrived at the clearing one day to find the bunny waiting by his hiding tree.
“Well hello there, stranger!” she said, bouncing up and down on her jelly-bean toes. “I saw you here the other day!”
The little boy’s face went hot. Surely the bunny would hate him for spying on her.
“Where did you come from?” she asked, and he hunched up his shoulders.
“What do you care?” he demanded. “It’s not like you’ve ever noticed me before.”
Her bouncing slowed. “I-I’m sorry. There’s been a lot of new faces, and-”
“I don’t care,” the little boy interrupted. “You’re a dumb bunny, anyways.”
Her long ears drooped. “Oh. Okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
And the bunny hopped away from him without another word.
The next time he showed up at the clearing to watch her, she didn’t approach him. From his hiding place, he noticed that the bunny didn’t seem to bounce quite as high as usual. The treats that appeared in her paws didn’t seem to sparkle in the same way.
The little boy felt bad that his presence seemed to upset the bunny – like it was proof that no one could ever want him.
But still, the weeks passed, and he couldn’t seem to stay away.
Then one day, a wolf came into the forest.
This wolf was sad and lonely, too, just like the little boy. But when the wolf saw the bunny, all she felt was jealous.
The wolf thought to herself: It’s not fair that the bunny has so many friends when I have so few. I should eat everyone in the forest, so there will be no one left to like the bunny more than me. Maybe then I won’t feel so bad.
Snarling and snapping, the wolf lunged out of the Camellia bushes she was hiding in and charged into the clearing.
The woodland creatures scattered, shrieking with fear.
In the clearing, the angry wolf advanced on the lone bunny.
His heart leaping to his throat, the little boy began to run, too.
He jumped over a fallen log. Nearly slipped in a patch of sedge. Yet he managed to keep his feet under himself, his eyes trained on the wolf.
With a mighty leap, he tackled the wolf to the ground just before her fearsome jaws could snap shut around the bunny’s throat.
With a howl of outrage, the wolf whirled, turning her sharp teeth on the little boy.
Her jaws clamped down on his shoulder; he cried out in pain.
“Get off him!!” screamed the bunny, grabbing at the wolf’s head.
“No,” mumbled the boy, wanting the bunny to run away and save herself.
She didn’t.
Instead, she jumped at the wolf, this time using her hind legs in an attempt to kick her off the boy.
She hit the ground and jumped up again, pummeling her small fists at the fierce wolf’s side.
All seemed hopeless – the little boy’s eyes were growing dark – when starlight burst from the bunny’s paws.
The wolf howled, leaping off the boy and shrinking away from the blinding flash.
As if uncorked, wild magic poured out of the bunny, swirling around the wolf – a kaleidoscope of dazzling sparkles and bright color and the promise of burning heat.
With a yelp, the wolf tucked her tail between her legs. On shaking legs, she ran from the woods, never to return.
The bunny cried out, trying to fight her way through the uncontrollable rush of magic to the boy’s side.
As the flow of magic finally began to ebb, the bunny dropped to her knees in the leaves next to the little boy. “You baka, why would you do that?!”
“I’m sorry,” the little boy sputtered as the bunny conjured bandages, fumbling her paws over his wounds, “I just… I couldn’t let you get hurt.”
A furrow formed in the bunny’s forehead. “Why would you…?”
Looking up at her sad eyes, he realized with a start that the bunny would never hurt him. Not on purpose. “I want to be your friend,” he confessed. “I always wanted to be your friend.”
A single tear rolled down the bunny’s cheek. “I want to be your friend, too.”
And so the bunny stayed by his side, carefully tending to his wounds.
Once his injuries were taken care of, the bunny rallied the woodland creatures to help her.
Together, they took the little boy back to his cottage at the edge of the woods, tucking him into bed.
For weeks, the bunny barely left his side, changing his bandages, feeding him; eventually, with all of the bunny’s good care, the little boy grew healthy and well again.
And from that day on, the little boy and the bunny were the best of friends.
The End.”
Mamoru closed the picture book and smiled down at his daughter, tucked up against his side in her bed.
Blinking her ruby eyes up at him, Chibiusa asked “Papa, why didn’t the little boy just be nice to the bunny in the first place? That would have saved them both a lot of trouble.”
Mamoru let out a little chuff. “I’m sure the little boy asked himself that same question a lot once he and the bunny became friends.”
Chibiusa continued to stare at him expectantly, and so he sighed and squeezed his arm around her. “Well, honey, sometimes, when we’re afraid, we can’t think super clearly. So even though the little boy had no reason not to trust in the bunny from the beginning, his anxious brain wouldn’t let him believe it. He’d already been hurt a lot and was scared to be hurt again. So he was mean because it felt safer, even though it was the wrong thing to do.”
“Oh, okay,” she said, not looking wholly convinced.
Kissing her on the top of the head, Mamoru unwound his arm and slid off the edge of her bed. “The moral of the story,” he explained patiently, “is that it takes more courage to be kind than to be mean. And that, even without magic, the bunny was braver than the little boy ever was.”
“Ohhh, okay,” she said, picking up the book and nodding at it like now she understood.
Mamoru chuckled to himself and reached out for the book. “All right, princess, time for bed.”
“One more story?” she pouted, hugging the book to her chest.
He shook his head, tossing a couple stray socks into the pink laundry basket at the foot of her bed. “Sorry, honey, it’s a school night and you need to get to sleep.”
Chibiusa flopped back in the bed, sending the book flying across the room. “But I’m not sleepy,” she said, the protest interrupted by a gigantic yawn.
“Close your eyes and count to one hundred,” Mamoru suggested, deftly catching the flying book before scooping up the laundry basket and balancing on his hip.
“One, two… three… zzzz.”
With a fond shake of his head, Mamoru tiptoed out of Chibiusa’s bedroom, sliding the book back onto the shelf and flicking off the lamp as he left.
“You know, Mamo-chan,” He turned his head to find his wife leaning against the wall just outside Chibiusa’s bedroom. “You could tell her the actual fairy story about us sometime.”
Pulling the bedroom door closed, Mamoru felt his lips curl up in a smirk.
“This is the actual fairy story about us.” Usagi’s eyebrow went up and he pressed on. “Endymion and Serenity? Sure, they really existed, but they don’t have anything to do with how we fell in love.”
Now Usagi smirked at him. “Yeah, but they do make the story more complicated.”
His mouth pulled into a grin as he reached out and booped her on the nose. “‘And then the little boy found out that he and the bunny had also been best friends in another life. But it didn’t really change anything, because he wanted to be friends with her no matter what. The End.’”
Usagi giggled, mock-swatting at his hand. “Fine, fine, it doesn’t change the story.”
“Thank you,” Mamoru pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. “Now then, did my magical bunny happen to conjure any dirty socks under the bed that I need to check for before I start this load of laundry?”
She squinched her nose. “Proooobably?”
“Okay,” he stepped towards their shared bedroom. “Let me get those and start the laundry, then we can watch an episode or two of Terrace House before bed.”
Flashing the bright smile he so loved, Usagi hopped up on tiptoe, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “I’m the luckiest bunny in the world.”