Later that night, Anna came to his door with dinner, and Ran told her to enter.
Even so she came in carefully, because of the way he had warned her never to approach his room unless he called for her. Then she looked up and was startled all over again. The seventh prince looked like a homeless man. His clothes were torn and tattered and there were leaves in his hair.
"Don't fret," Ran said. "I got them dirty walking in front of the palace."
He was relieved when she accepted the excuse, since she had very nearly walked in on him turning back out of a crow a few seconds earlier. He was exhausted and thoroughly frustrated. He had gone to the imperial forest with a plan and achieved none of it, having spent the entire day chasing a squirrel through the trees until he ended up looking like this.
"Bring me new clothes," he ordered. "I'll bathe and change before I eat."
Anna acknowledged the order, and then asked about the bag.
Ran looked down and discovered that the squirrel had followed him home.
Before he could grab it, the animal shot out of the bag and across the floor, and Anna became instantly terrified that the scumbag prince would torment the poor creature. She begged him to spare it and offered to carry it outside the castle walls herself.
"The clothes," Ran said.
Anna was confused for a moment, until he barked at her to remind her that she had already been given an order.
She rushed out and down the corridor as fast as her legs would carry her, hoping to get back in time to save the little guy from being erased.
On her way back with the clothes, she ran straight into Menel.
The first princess recognized her at once as the seventh prince's maid, and asked why she was in such a hurry.
Anna greeted her and then, frantically, began begging for her life.
Menel accused her of stealing imperial property. Anna denied it, trembling like a fish out of water, and explained that His Highness had dirtied his clothes while walking in front of the palace and had asked her to bring him fresh ones.
"It's impossible to deceive me," Menel said, and placed her hand on Anna's head to read her mind and find out whether she was telling the truth or simply spouting whatever might save her.
From Anna's memories, Menel saw the seventh prince's dishevelled state exactly as the girl had seen it: the torn sleeves, the dirt, the leaves. Her little brother had not been strolling in the garden in front of the palace. He had been in the imperial forest.
Meanwhile, oblivious to the fact that his lie had already been dismantled, Ran was still trying to catch a squirrel. He tried promising it, in a reasonable voice, that he would return it to the forest if it would only submit.
The squirrel was out to get him. And Ran was genuinely worried that a rodent strutting freely around his room might cause problems for him. Beyond that, he could not stand the squeaking. It reminded him of the rats scratching inside the walls of his rotten little apartment in his previous life. The whole story of this world was already straying from the original he remembered, which had been getting on his nerves for weeks.
And now this squirrel was going to make his fuse explode.
Ran lunged, and this time he caught the little guy. He was about to stuff it back into the bag when it bit him and he dropped it.
"You bit the hand of royalty," he barked.
The creature ignored him entirely and scampered up the wall, well out of reach.
Ran stood there working out how to capture it without it fleeing again, and the only method he could think of was to become a squirrel himself.
He focused his mind on that. Nothing happened for a long moment, and just as he was about to give up, the familiar tingling of the transformation crawled over him, and he changed.
He was a squirrel. Which meant he had just found the condition.
Before he could celebrate, the other squirrel free-dived off the wall as though testing his patience one final time.
Knowing the little guy would not survive a fall from that height, Ran threw himself after it and caught it in the air.
Just then Anna's voice came from the doorway, trying to stop Menel from barging in without permission.
Menel ignored her protests, pushed the door open, and declared that she did not need to walk on eggshells around her own little brother. She was still complaining when she noticed a small dark figure on the floor, and upon closer inspection realized that it was a squirrel clinging onto another squirrel.
Menel was instantly disgusted that Ran would allow wild animals to roam freely inside a royal residence. Anna, standing behind her with the clothes, was left completely flustered by the overwhelming cuteness of it.
And Ran, who at that moment was a squirrel, was a nervous wreck, certain that his secret was about to be exposed in the most stupid way imaginable.
By the following day, Ran and the stubborn squirrel had become best buddies.
Ever since the transformation the night before, the little thing had been clinging to him constantly, which made him wonder whether it was because he had saved it from that fatal fall. Taking it all the way back to the imperial forest would be a hassle, so he decided to keep the little guy around for now.
He was glad, at least, that the whole chaotic mess had helped him work out the condition for transforming into a specific animal.
The crow, the horse and the squirrel had all shared exactly one thing before he changed into them. He had touched the nape of each one. The rear part of the neck.
Ran felt that this activation condition was far too ridiculous for such a useless ability.
Putting that aside, he turned to his current problem, which was the first princess.
According to her character description in the novel, Menel had already been portrayed as a terrifying figure. But Ran had never expected the expression on her real face to be more frightening than anything the book had managed to describe.
After she barged into his room the previous night, Anna had quickly lied that squirrels were His Highness's pets, which had given him the opportunity to slip out through the window. He had returned to his human form outside, come back around, and walked into his own room to meet her.
Ran had thought everything would end there. Instead, after scolding him thoroughly for harbouring wild animals in a royal residence, Menel had told him sternly to come to her residence the next day, saying they had matters to discuss.
He racked his brain over what she wanted to talk about. He feared, briefly, that she had uncovered his true identity, then dismissed the thought and decided to go with the flow, since he could hardly refuse her invitation.
A few moments later, Ran arrived at Menel's residence, where a knight directed him toward her chambers.