Free Goth by Otsuichi

wrong.
    Yuka looked to me for help, but all I could do was pace back and forth.
    Every time he came over, his treatment of Yuka got worse. He even kicked her in the belly sometimes! Yuka would groan in pain and fall to the floor coughing, and I would run to her, putting myself between them, to the man’s great annoyance.
    He always came over on the same nights of the week. Those nights, Yuka and I would always huddle in the corner to protect ourselves. The house always felt very sinister when he was around. We could never tell when he might open the door and come in a room, so Yuka was always too frightened to sleep.
    Eventually, we could stand it no longer, and we began fleeing the house.
    Yuka started making me kill animals after the man began visiting. She cried a lot after he began coming over, and her eyes had a new kind of darkness inside them. That darkness made me very sad.
    ii
    “We first noticed at eleven o’clock at night,” the young housewife explained as she clutched her sound-asleep child to her bosom. We’d exchanged a few pleasantries at the beginning of the conversation, and she’d mentioned that the child had been born only three months earlier.
    “Before bed, my husband went to check on Pavlov, and he wasn’t in his house …” Pavlov was the name of their dog, which had gone missing on a Tuesday night two weeks ago. It was a purebred dog, but of a breed I’d never heard of before.
    The housewife and I were facing each other in the front door of a small home of Western construction, which was not much more than a mile from my house.
    On the way home from school, I’d decided to make inquiries at the homes where dogs had been kidnapped.
    I’d explained to the woman that I worked for the school newspaper and was investigating the series of pet kidnappings that had been occurring in the neighborhood. When I suggested that my work might lead to the capture of the individual responsible, the housewife had become extremely cooperative.
    “Thinking back on it, I remember Pavlov barking a lot around ten. But he often barked when people walked past, so we ignored it.”
    “And that was the last time you heard him?” I asked.
    She nodded.
    From here, I could see a tiny yard to one side with an empty doghouse—a fairly large one, with a metal hook out front for attaching the dog’s leash.
    “The kidnapper unhooked the leash and pulled the dog away?” I asked.
    She shook her head. “They left the leash—and there was a half-eaten chicken nugget.”
    The kidnapper must have dropped the chicken, the woman explained.
    When I asked if the nugget had been store-bought, the woman was unsure but thought it had looked homemade.
    The kidnapper had brought something a dog might like from home to tame the dog and then taken it away. Using a bit of chicken made the whole crime seem rather prosaic—a very common sort of crime, not at all related to professional dog thieves or evil spirits.
    I bowed my head and pretended to be grateful for the woman’s help.
    She looked sadly at the doghouse, remembering her beloved pet. “I hope you find out who did this.” Her voice was quiet, but there was murderous fury hidden within it.
    When the child in her arms began to sniffle, I said goodbye and turned away. As I did, I realized the house across the street had a dog as well. Through the gate, I could see a black dog—a big dog, about half my height.
    “Its name is Chocolate,” the housewife said from behind me.
    I mentioned that I hadn’t noticed it was there.
    “Yes, it almost never barks.”
    Chocolate’s house was in a much more visible position than Pavlov’s—but the dog was so quiet that the kidnapper might have simply overlooked it.
    I went home, where my sister, Sakura, and my mother were making dinner. My mother was hovering over the pot, stirring, while my sister chopped vegetables.
    My sister was two years younger than me and getting ready for her high school entrance exams. She was normally in