"Y-you didn't notice?"
Now it was her friend's turn to be stunned.
She took a deep breath.
"Then what did you notice?"
She asked through gritted teeth, enunciating each word.
"You saw Little Fox, didn't you?"
And when she asked whether Little Fox was cute...
Her friend had actually answered that she hadn't noticed?!
What kind of bizarre answer was that!?
"Mm."
The girl looked a little sheepish.
"I saw Little Fox."
"I was startled by its-"
"No."
The girl shook her head.
That wasn't quite right.
"I was scared by its expression."
"Its expression?"
Her friend was confused.
"What was wrong with its expression?"
"What kind of expression could a fox even make?"
Her friend pondered for a moment, but came up with nothing. Then she looked up—
"!?"
Her scream caught in her throat.
Her face filled with fright.
The girl took a step back.
She lowered the hand she'd used to pull the corners of her mouth up.
"...That was the expression it had just now."
"Scary, huh?"
Her friend: ...
After a long moment, her friend finally recovered.
"You..."
Her friend took a deep breath.
"Couldn't you have warned me first!?"
Her friend yelled in exasperation.
Caught completely off guard, she'd been badly frightened by the girl's bizarre, exaggerated, and creepy expression.
For a split second, she felt her heart stop.
The girl gave an awkward laugh.
"I was just trying to show you what happened to me earlier."
She'd suddenly seen a bizarre, exaggerated ghostly face without any warning.
A fox's face already looked a little human.
And with such a humanlike expression...
It really...
It had scared the life out of her.
A chill had shot through her.
Goosebumps had spread rapidly across her body.
The scream she'd been