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Atsushi is ten years old when he kills a dog for the first time.
He’s spectating a dogfighting match with his “family” — the man and woman who brought him in from the orphanage only to beg on the streets. Opportunities to watch the ring they own are few and far between, so Atsushi forces himself to become enraptured in the fight. The two dogs are sullen at first circling each other and baring their teeth but otherwise not jumping into action.
Then his “father” cracks a whip against the floor and the black hound dog lurches forward. It snaps at the other’s neck, but the bigger gray dog moves out of the way in time. The black dog’s teeth make a sharp popping noise as it ultimately bites air. The crowd around Atsushi begins to beat the stands with their excited feet. Whistles and hollers are traded back and forth as the dogs really get into it.
It’s horrifying, but Atsushi refuses to shield his eyes. He swallows down the bile in his throat every time the black dog lands a claw or bite on the gray dog, and he suppresses his flinches when he sees the new bleeding wounds on either of them. Instead, he lets the enthusiasm of the gathered crowd rush into his head and spike his heart rate. It’s the only way he can find enjoyment in the death match.
Atsushi leans over the railing of their elevated seating. As the owners of the ring, his foster parents get the best and clearest view of the dogfighting. Their seats are the only ones not covered by a thin layer of plastic that shields the rest of the semi-circular stands. They aren’t there to protect them from the dogs; rather, they prevent the people from throwing things at the dogs that may alter the fight in any way. The owners are trustworthy, so they don’t require plastic intervention.
His “parents” don’t say anything when he presses hard on the dirty railing. It’s cold and leaves brown marks on his calloused palms, but he ignores it in favor of paying attention to the fight happening below him. The gray dog jumps on top of the black hound in a vicious growl, sand flying everywhere and up into Atsushi’s eyes. Spurred by the roaring of the crowd, he pushes himself further over the edge of the railing, trying to get the closest glimpse possible of the dogs rolling in the sand.
His stomach rolls over the railing, then his hips, and he’s getting so close to the dogs that he can practically feel the grains of sand fly in his eyes.
“Atsushi! Get back!”
He hears his foster mother’s angry yell too late and suddenly he’s careening over the edge, plummeting straight to the ground. Atsushi lands with a thud in the sandy pit, the air knocked out of his lungs. While he struggles to regain his breath, he stares into the screaming stands. Most of them are standing to get a better view of the commotion going on inside. A few are horrified, but Atsushi notices with abject dread that most of them are excited.
They cheer with more fervor than they had before. Panic sets into Atsushi’s veins a moment later, getting him to scramble to his feet. The grey dog misses his head by only an inch. Its teeth are bared and dripping with blood and its fur is matted with the flesh of the other animal. Atsushi spares the black dog on the ground with a glance. Red liquid seeps from its torn stomach, and its flesh, and some sort of organ Atsushi doesn’t know the name of, are exposed to the heavy air. It pants and emits a high-pitched noise from its bleeding throat.
It’s dying.
The gray dog lunges and manages to get a hold of Atsushi’s bicep, dragging him down. Unbearable pain shoots up his arm, and he screams so loud his throat strains. He brings his fist down on the dog's head as hard as he can. The stadium is full of yelling fans, yet nobody deigns to come to help Atsushi. Nobody. Not even as the thrashes with its whole body, whipping Atsushi around and pulling him to the ground.
He was just a spectator a moment ago, but now he’s going to die. Just like that. He lands next to the dying black dog, whose movements are slowing to mere twitches in its legs. It whines, the gray dog growls, and Atsushi sobs. His arm isn’t functional even when the gray dog lets go of it. His limb is an unrecognizable, mangled mess, steaked with both his and the black dog’s blood.
The gray dog bares its teeth at Atsushi’s face with a deep snarl, its brown eyes blown wide with unbridled bloodlust. It’s bleeding from the neck and one leg from deep gashes left from the fight. Jaw unhinging, it leans down for the killing bite.
Atsushi doesn’t want to die like the black dog.
He reaches up with every ounce of strength he has and digs his fingers straight into the gray dog’s neck wound. It rears back with a loud whine, but Atsushi doesn’t let go. He wraps his legs around the dog’s back and flips them over. The dog’s kicks against his stomach thump hard enough to prevent Atsushi from truly breathing, and its thrashing head is almost enough to make him lose his grip.
Almost. He has hold of something thick and pulsing, and he yanks it with all he has. It comes out of the dog’s throat, accompanied by a great spray of blood that effectively douses the dogs, him, and the sand pit all at once. Instead of whining, the animal starts frothing. Salva seeps out of its teeth in red bubbles, and it lets out a choked gurgle. It tries to snap at Atsushi but fails to lift its head. The whites of its eyes overpower the brown coloring and thin black pupils. It weakly claws at Atsushi’s body in a futile attempt to somehow still win and keep fighting.
It lays limp underneath him, and the crowd deafens Atsushi’s ears.
All he can perceive is the pain wracking his body. No part of him feels remotely fine. Each scratch throbs as though he’s being brutalized again, and he registers dimly that he can’t quite keep his body up any longer. He collapses on top of the dog he just killed, squishing its flesh with an awful squelch.
The dog doesn’t breathe. Its chest is still and no air blows out of its black nose. Atsushi killed a dog with his own two hands.
It was an accident. He didn’t mean to. He didn’t want to. He was just excited to be off the streets, and he thought that if he showed enough enthusiasm they would take him to more fights rather than make him beg. It’s gruesome in the ring, but it's warm and safer than the city.
It was warmer and safer. The wounds scattering his body from head to toe show his changed reality.
“Looks like you’ve finally made yourself useful, Atsushi,” his “father” says. Atsushi doesn’t know when he got down into the ring — static has blocked out the screams of the overexcited crowd. “Welcome to the dog ring.”
From then on out, Atsushi lives in a kennel.
It’s only slightly bigger than the other dogs’ only because he is slightly bigger than them. He’s chained by the ankle to the metal bars to keep him from running in case he’s able to undo the latch keeping the gate closed. He wears a tight black collar around his neck, wears dirty, bloody rags, sleeps on the wire ground, and eats the same food the dogs do: mush in a bowl.
The only thing separating him from being a real dog is his opposable thumbs.
His foster parents quickly change their titles to masters, and Atsushi responds to them only in vague, unintelligible sounds. Dogs can’t speak, therefore he can’t, either. They forbid it, and nothing makes an animal learn faster to obey than the sharp crack of a whip and the weight of golden knuckles against skin. He cowers when he sees the long, black strip, and he stiffens at the sound of a whistle.
Most of all, he learns how to fight like a dog. His jaw becomes adjusted to how far he has to open, how quickly he needs to close, and how long he needs to hold until the blood and fur of his dead opponent is the only thing he can taste. His legs are strong, allowing him to move in a crouching position to increase his reach and claw a dog when they can’t get back at him. He bares his teeth to intimidate, and he dashes in and out of striking distance to slowly wear it down.
He enters the dog ring on his feet, but he always ends it on all fours. It’s the nature of the game. He doesn’t respond to the crowd calling his name and asking him questions. His words have long left him. He doesn’t know how long it's been — the only time he sees the sun or moon is when he’s taken outside to piss with the other dogs.
They clamp a muzzle on him when one of his masters tries to take his food. He bit the man’s arm until he felt his flesh give way to bone. He wasn’t done eating, and he’d done nothing to deserve the punishment of starvation. His fight had gone well enough; he was recovering from his deep wounds alone in his kennel. He earned his mush.
The muzzle is metal wire and fit for a real dog, not the hybrid Atsushi is. Its edges dig painfully into his cheekbones and jaw, limiting his mouth movement considerably and controlling the sounds he’s able to make. Worst of all, it prevents him from cleaning himself off. He’s learned to groom himself if he wants to keep his wounds from infection since the masters don't dare to put vicious dogs in the bath. The most they’ll do is hose them off, and that is not nearly good enough.
He tries to rip off the muzzle with his fingers, but they modified it so it could hold to a padlock rather than an undoable latch. He smashes it into the kennel over and over again, hoping the wire would bend under the pressure since it wouldn’t budge from his hands. It doesn’t work, and neither does simply yanking it off. It’s locked so tight to his head that it gives him a migraine within a few hours of wearing it.
The only times they take it off is when he eats in the kennel or fights in the ring. The masters beat him bloody for disobeying, both for biting the one master and trying to dismantle the muzzle. It stays on his head when he sleeps, paces, and breathes. Sometimes, they’ll even forget to take it off during his meals, and only after he’s starved for a day will they realize their mistake.
He’s wearing it when unfamiliar voices fill the entire building, and loud bangs shake the walls of the kennel room. The other dogs howl in distress, looking at each other through the wires as if they know what the sudden commotion is about. Due to the cage around his mouth, all Atsushi can manage is a pitiful whine. He presses himself to the back of the kennel like the other animals. The metal digs into his back, but it’s hardly worth noticing anymore.
A short pop sounds off much closer and a millisecond later, the door crashes open . It hits the wall and sends tremors up and down Atsushi’s body. Standing in the open doorway are two humans with long rifles in their hands. Atsushi knows guns. He knows them when the masters shoot the sick and older animals — the weak dogs. They’ll die in the ring anyway, so they’re taken the merciful way out.
Atsushi knows to fear guns.
The unknown people make their way into the room in slow steps. Their red coats flutter in a way that steals Atsushi’s attention for split seconds at a time.
“These are the dogs,” the brown-haired one says, his head turning to take a look at each one of the animals as he moves at a more relaxed pace. “Looks like they- holy shit.”
His gaze finds Atsushi, and he halts abruptly in place. His face contorts into an alarmed expression as they make eye contact with each other. Atsushi is unable to hide the whimper that comes from the back of his throat. He shakes at the sight of the human, the gun, and the intent gaze. It can only mean one thing:
He’s going to be killed.
His companion stops beside him, a frown pulling his lips downward. “That didn’t sound human. Don’t tell me there’s a kid here.”
“He’s in a kennel. He’s muzzled,” the brown-haired man replies. His voice is even, but Atsushi still detects the suppressed horror. It adds a hardness to the edge of his words, sharpening them in a way that can easily lead to anger. Anger leads to punishment.
Atsushi whines again, unable to press any further back into his cage than he already has. He can’t even open his mouth to attempt to scare the man away; the muzzle makes sure his teeth remain firm against each other.
“How old?” The white-haired man asks. The tips are a brighter shade of red than the clothes they wore, and his eyes are completely shut. Still, he moves to Atsushi as though he can see him. The first human isn’t far behind.
“Young. Ten, twelve?”
He crouches in front of Atsushi’s cage and finds the latch. When the gate opens, Atsushi’s body shakes in internal conflict. He doesn’t know what to do. These people don’t have the familiar scent of his masters, and they come bearing sticks of loud, quick death. He can’t dart past them due to the chain on his ankle, but he can’t sit there and do nothing. He has won every fight, survived every ring, and killed too many dogs to die from the bullets of two strangers.
“My name is Jouno,” the white-haired man says over the sound of a dozen howling and whimpering dogs. His strangled attempt at a smile looks like death itself. “We’re here to get you out of this place.”
Out. There is no “out.” When that word is used, he’s going to the ring. He’s going to train and be whipped and beaten. He’s going to pee outside. But he always comes back to the same kennel, licking his wounds clean and preparing for when he’s down in the sand again. Besides, the man does not let go of his gun. Guns are meant to be feared.
The first man taps Jouno on the side with his boot to get his attention. “Put the gun down. He’s scared of us in general, but he’s watching the guns more closely. It might help him come out.”
They set their weapons down next to each other, still within grabbing distance but no longer in their hands. “I promise we won’t hurt you. If you come to me, I can get you out.”
Atsushi doesn’t know what to do.
He knows what happens when disobeys his masters. They punch, kick, and whip him bloody. They starve him and spit in his face. These aren’t his masters, but they are human all the same. Their voices are taut, so sharp that they’ll undoubtedly cut Atsushi at any moment.
“You’re free now. You don’t have to fight anymore,” Jouno says, and there is something new. It’s not something Atsushi has ever been told before. You don’t have to fight anymore.
Atsushi has never wanted to fight, but not fighting means being killed instantly.
Their guns are on the floor, and Jouno waits in front of him as still and quiet as a mouse. Atsushi removes himself from the back of the kennel and the only way the small space will allow him: forward. The dogs bark and howl, but those have never meant much to Atsushi anyway. No matter how long he eats, breathes, fights, and sleeps as a dog, he has never been able to understand their communication the way they innately do.
When Atsushi gets close to Juono, he stops and waits for them to reach for their guns to end his life. They do nothing of the sort. Juono produces a key from his pants pocket and shows it to Atsushi. “The person behind me is going to unlock your restraints with this. I’m blind, so I’ll have a harder time locating it. I don’t want to scare you more than I already am.”
He stands and hands the key to the brown-haired man, who takes Jouno’s spot in the kennel gateway. His brown eyes are narrow, and his jaw clenches with what Atsushi knows to associate with fear, and fear with anger. For humans, they are the same emotion.
It takes fighting every instinct in his body to not move out of the way when the man passes Atsushi’s body to get to his ankle. He knows that’s where his chain is, knows that’s the one thing keeping him from running. But the close contact of humans is never good. It always comes with pain. Oddly enough, so does contact with other dogs.
Atsushi has only known pain for so long that he doesn’t know what to do when the man doesn’t hit him. The band connecting the chain releases from his ankle, falling uselessly to the ground. The brown-haired man with three dots under his eye retracts his head without a strike.
“I can unlock your muzzle, but I’ll have to touch your head,” he says, just loud enough to be heard over the dogs. They’ve become white noise to Atsushi — when they bark, howl, and yelp, they become another piece of static to his ears. “Are you okay with that?”
Atsushi doesn’t know how to respond in a human way. The two men wait for him to indicate that he even understood those words, but all he’s been taught how to do is tremble and fight. He’s never had to answer questions. Dogs can’t talk.
He raises a hand and swipes at the muzzle’s lock behind his head. It rubs against his matted hair. When the man looks at him with a puzzled expression, he does it again and lets out a whine. He seems to understand the second time, but his face turns into one of sadness and anger. Sadness and anger.
The guns on the floor are meant for Atsushi’s death. Yet, he does not reach for his weapon, and he does not shoot. The man only circles Atsushi’s head in order to unlock the muzzle keeping his mouth shut. It comes undone, and the man catches it with one hand before it can hit the ground. The metal wires are gone from his cheekbones and chin. His jaw slacks and he lets only a sliver of his teeth show.
His muzzle and chain are gone. He could bite the man’s arm and run away. He could find his masters or he could find the way out. Out. The real “out,” where there are no fights, no whips, no golden knuckles, no small glimpses of the sky and fresh air, no kennels, and no other dogs.
“You are free,” the man says. “No more fighting.”
Atsushi thought he’d forgotten how to do it, but he manages to cry. Tears stream down his face uncontrollably, and his whole body heaves with his desperate gasps for air in between sobs. The sound is strange and unusual from his throat. He can’t remember the last time has cried. He doesn’t know if he’s doing it right, or if it looks strange to the humans to see a dog sob like this.
Hands wrap around his armpits and gently — gently, even though Atsushi has never known the word — pull him out of the kennel. He wants to turn and bite the man’s arms, but his energy seeps out of his body. He can’t do anything but sob, and sob, and sob.
“Sh, it’s okay. You’re okay now,” he whispers close to his ear. Instead of clawing his eyes out, Atsushi grips his red cape tight enough to tear a hole straight through the fabric. His muzzle is gone. The chain is gone. A human holds him without hurting or killing him. He isn’t hit, strangled, or kicked.
It’s foreign and unnatural, but it happens anyway.