So it was true. What Yurkas had foretold – or rather feared – had come true. A wolf had come and stolen Taiga's chicken. And yes, Yurkas had shot that wolf, and yes, he had hit him, he had hit him in the chest even! Yet here he was, the culprit of this murder, smiling a childish smile and holding a dead rabbit by its ears. After a moment of shock and realization I quickly ushered him inside and motioned him to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs and pull off his shirt. I wasted no time to check his chest and take care of his wounds but oddly enough, there were none. Yet the holes in his shirt indicated that something sharp had pierced the fabric. There were even a few dark red spots on his shirt.

"So is the blood the rabbit's…? Weird…" I mumbled and waved my hand absent-mindedly as in 'It's okay, I'm done.'.

And so the boy let his shirt drop down again and instead focused on the rabbit, still in his grip. He leered at it hungrily and then shoved it towards me, motioning me to take it. I hesitated. This rabbit had been dead for a whole night already and who knows what kind of illnesses it might have had. Ultimately I decided that I needed to do something to push my worries aside and bring a bit of normality back into this situation. And so I cautiously took the rabbit from his hands and got to cooking.

I hadn't eaten a wild animal's meat – or any meat at all – in quite a while so I actually looked forward to it a little bit. Sitting behind me at the kitchen table, the boy excitedly shuffled his feet (instead of his tail in wolf form I suppose). Seeing how I prepared the food and smelling the tasty roasted meat, he could barely contain himself. I think he even drooled a little bit. I guess it's only natural, given that he hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning.

Since it was a Saturday and the next Monday would be a holiday, I decided to use these three days to get my new housemate more accustomed to living in a village. That especially meant to teach him a bit of my language – I couldn't keep him away from the rest of the village forever after all – and establish a few rules. Like, don't break into chicken coops and act like a human once in a while – although, I have to admit, him acting like a dog all the time was pretty cute.

Just when I thought that, someone knocked on the door. Without even waiting for an answer, the door swung wide open and in came my mom, followed by my dad, who pushed my grandpa in his wheelchair as my grandma walked next to him.

"Arka, dear!"

My mom rushed at me and squeezed me in her arms.

"I heard all about it from Marie…how you were nearly attacked by a wolf, how you suddenly fell unconscious…"

She suddenly let go and hastily inspected my entire body.

"Mom, I'm fine. Nothing happened to me, thanks to Yurkas. He chased the wolf away."

"But what if — ", my mom began in a slightly angry tone, but then, as her gaze wandered above my head, stopped.

"Arka…", my dad began with a slight smile, "why didn't you tell us?"

"Tell you what…?" I asked as I turned around to see what my mom and dad saw.

The boy had gotten up and now stood right behind me. As I looked at him, he tilted his head a bit and nodded ever so slightly in the direction of the stove where the meat was getting close to being done. I wondered if he just had a really good nose, even as a human, or if he already knew what a roasted rabbit looked like, but before I could really think about it my mom called out:

"He's right! Since when do you have a boyfriend?"

Oh. Well, I guess that's what it looks like, huh. A couple having breakfast together, even though this is a bit much for just breakfast…

Then it clicked.

"N-no! It's not like that! He's just a friend! Um…", I blurted out, but then realized the situation I was in. Where should I go from here? How could I explain to them why he lives with me?

My mom and dad stared at me, wide-eyed in surprise at my sudden outburst. The first person to talk again was my grandma.

"A friend, hm? He's not from around here, is he?"

She carefully inspected the boy.

Great. Now I even have to make up a story about how we met.

"Well…"

In an effort to win myself some time to think, I turned off the stove and prepared the table.

"Why don't I tell you while we eat something together? We haven't had a family meal in forever!" I said cheerfully while I smiled the most innocent smile I could.

While my grandma was still skeptical and my grandpa rejoiced in his wheelchair over the nice food – my mom treated him like a child sometimes because of his age and condition, so he rarely ate anything other than porridge and veggies –, my mom happily sat down at the kitchen table, happy little tears forming in her eyes. She had always been the easy-to-touch type. To be honest, I made use of that way too often…sorry about that, mom.

There was only space for four people at the table so I had to bring out another, smaller table for my grandparents. I pushed the boy to the seat next to the wall and closest to the stove and then quickly sat down right next to him to shield him from my grandma's eyes. As soon as I brought out the food, everyone was fixated on it.

"Arka, honey, it looks great! I didn't know you were already this good at preparing meat!", my mom beamed like a proud mom does.

I just kept on smiling. In my head though, it was a race against time. My mom was also very attentive so I had to find the perfect, flawlessly believable story.

"So…basically, he is a traveler that got robbed on his way to the next big city. He hit his head pretty badly and since he can't pay the hospital fees he's staying with me until he can contact his family."

"Must be from pretty far away…I wonder where…", my grandma murmured.

"Haha, yeah…I've been wondering, too."

"It's so great to see how responsible you are now! Ah, my wonderful daughter…", Mom sighed, folding her hands as if thanking a God.

So sorry mom…you're just too easy to fool when you're like this…

"But that doesn't explain how you two met.", my dad added, still smiling his 'I just met my daughter's first real boyfriend'-smile, "I mean, you were at work, right? Or did he just show up at your doorstep?"

Mom chimed in with a "Yeah, that's right! I mean… as much as I love you and trust you to be an angel, I don't think he just showed up here."

"Well…I met him when I was…when I was at the bus stop! He looked like he was searching for something, but when I approached him he looked kind of sick so I took him with me on my way back home."

"Taking a random man back home?"

"Well…he just seemed so sick that I felt responsible…?"

And there she was again, my proud mom.

"Still, you need to be careful. He could be all kinds of things. How did you even find out he is a traveler?", Dad enquired.

"Uh…he just seems like one. I mean…a crazy person wouldn't dress like this. I've never seen these clothes before, but they seem pretty well-made so…"

Before my dad or my mom could ask any more questions, I offered them a piece of the rabbit.

"Come on now, let's eat already!"

And so, what I had planned to happen in a few weeks or so happened right then: I introduced him, the…sick traveler from a faraway country, to the rest of the village. Those few hours of rest I got that Saturday would be the last I got that weekend. Now that everyone would hear the news from my mom, I had to make sure he was ready for even more attention.