A firm press. Then another.

Deep in sweet slumber, I felt a heavy weight at my waist. Something was disturbing my precious sleep. Frowning, I swept an arm through the air, and whatever had been pressing down on me withdrew at once. Peace restored, I drifted back to sleep.

Another long, firm press.

Something heavy settled on my waist again. I swung my arm as fiercely as I could, and it hastily disappeared. With a satisfied smile, I fell asleep again.

An even longer, firmer press.

This was starting to get annoying. What insolent creature dared disturb my precious sleep? I would have to teach it a lesson. The moment the weight settled on me, I jerked upright, snatched the foot pressing down on me, and pulled. Now I would pin it down so it couldn’t move.

Huh? Why wasn’t it moving? Strange. I was pulling with all my strength, but it wouldn’t budge.

Where had I felt something like this before?

The Military State was a nation of steel frames and concrete. Everything that made up its cities was rigid.

The buildings, the people, even their ideas.

Once, while passing beneath a bridge, I had touched one of its piers. A sturdy, solid pier, built around a steel frame and set in concrete. I still vividly remembered the feel of that structure, capable of supporting the people and enormous carriages passing overhead. Even when I kicked it, it hadn’t so much as trembled. It was as though the thing called a bridge pier existed entirely independently of me.

The leg pressing down on me now was much like that pier of steel and concrete. It wouldn’t budge. The difference was that it was warm and soft, but the strength inside it exceeded even the pier’s.

As I lay there blankly, pointlessly clutching the leg...

"Woof!"

The leg followed my hand of its own accord.

Adults let children drag them along not because they were weaker, but because they wanted to go that way. By much the same principle, the soft, squishy foot moved where I guided it. As a result, a large shadow leaped onto my bed.

Before my eyes appeared a girl with eyes full of curiosity. Her blond hair was tousled and unkempt, and her face displayed every expression in broad strokes. She had knotted her standard-issue shirt tightly just below her bust. I couldn’t tell whether she meant to accentuate her ample breasts or keep them from bouncing around. Below her navel, a half-curled tail swayed gently.

The moment she saw me, she broke into a soft smile and patted my chest. There was so much trust and affection in her touch that I actually felt flustered.

What was this?

Some woman had suddenly woken me up and started acting cute. Was she an assassin? Or had she come to collect a debt...?

Alarmed, I read her thoughts.

Oh. No, it was a dog.

The King of Dogs. A puppy.

I brushed my hair back and sat up in bed. Now that I was awake, my mind was clearing. Noise seeped into my previously quiet head, and my field of vision broadened like spreading mist.

When I made to climb out of bed, Azi promptly moved out of the way.

"You came to wake me up?"

"Woof!"

"Because you heard me ask who would wake me up without an alarm clock?"

"Woof, woof!"

"Right. Thanks. Good girl."

"Me, good?"

"Yes, such a good girl."

"Woof, woof! Me, good!"

From her barking to the way she rolled around on my bed, delighted simply to have been praised, she was a dog through and through. In essence, she was closer to the species called "dog" than anything else in the world.

Right. A dog. Not a girl.

I washed my face and changed clothes. My standard-issue shirt flowed into the biometric terminal on my wrist, and I slotted a new clothing packet onto it.

For some reason, I wanted to pour cold water over my head.

Of course, my daily water ration could never cover such extravagance. I ran out partway through washing and barged into the room next door with water dripping from my wet hair. The bed in there had been folded in half and the cabinet smashed, but the tap still worked. Whenever my own room ran short of water, I borrowed some from there.

I finished washing and raised my head. Azi was still hovering around me. Drying myself with a towel I had hung out to dry, I checked the remaining ration.

There was a little water left. One person’s ration was never enough, but two was slightly excessive. Typical of the Military State.

I poured the remaining water into a cup and gave it to Azi. She buried her face in it and began lapping.

She was doing exactly what she always did, but today it struck me as oddly strange, and I found myself needlessly scolding her.

"Azi. You do have a human body. Pick it up with your hands and drink."

"Woof?"

She tilted her head, responding purely to the sound of my voice.

"Woof? You called?"

If she listened when I told her something, she wouldn’t be a dog. Sighing, I sat Azi on my lap, held the cup to her mouth, and carefully tilted it.

She kept flicking her tongue out, then seemed startled when the water sloshed toward her mouth. She squirmed for no reason. Still, I held her firmly and slowly soothed her so she wouldn’t be frightened. Before long, she relaxed and began gulping down the water trickling into her mouth.

"There. Good girl. Isn’t that much easier? Try drinking like this from now on. What do you think?"

"Woof!"

"All right, let’s see."

Surely she understood now? I carefully set the cup on the floor. Without a moment’s hesitation, Azi dropped to her knees, buried her face in it, and began lapping.

Watching the tail swishing above her raised bottom, I muttered,

"Well, that was pointless."

At the sound of my voice, Azi stopped drinking and turned her head. When our eyes met, she gave me a radiant smile and barked.

"Woof, woof!"

I couldn’t help chuckling.

Why did humans find comfort in innocent, simple animals?

To feel superior as they looked down on lesser creatures?

Or to reminisce about the innocence they had lost?

"Whatever."

The reason didn’t matter. Perhaps the feeling came first, and the reasons were only tacked on afterward.

In the end, all that mattered was enjoying it.

Azi finished her water. I hung the cup back on its hook and left the empty room.

"Let’s go have breakfast."

"Woof!"

Today’s menu was the meat stew left over from yesterday. There wasn’t much meat left, but it should get us through breakfast. And for dinner... beans. I was sick of stew, but bean stew was the best option available right now.

"Don’t they send supplies here? I’d love some fresh food."

It wasn’t as though there were dozens of us. Just two humans, one dog, and one corpse. Surely they could send us supplies. Besides, one of those humans and the corpse were self-sufficient.

It wasn’t as though they didn’t know this place existed. They were taking their time with both supplies and contact.

Grumbling, I headed to the dining hall.

The fourth floor. Even being generous, it was hard to call the laborers’ quarters decent. Countless hairline cracks ran through the concrete walls, the damage from repeated impacts spreading like growth rings. Doors that couldn’t be locked stretched down the narrow corridor. If you absentmindedly leaned a hand against the wall, either a door would swing open or the wall would shake.

Fortunately, at least the dining area, where the facilities were, was spacious and sturdy.

The dining hall was larger than the rooms and had all the necessary equipment. Several standard-size pots, plenty of plates, even trays to carry them on. They had probably expected the laborers to deliver meals to the prisoners.

"They probably didn’t need trays to carry food. Just walking downstairs would have counted as a food delivery."

I shrugged and approached the covered pot.

But just as I was about to lift the lid, I felt a premonition I couldn’t put into words. Should I call it déjà vu? Or an intuition bordering on foresight?

Oh, come on. Surely not. Again?

"No. Not after all that fighting yesterday. Surely not."

I smiled to shake off my unease and lifted the lid.

Only to find an empty pot. Its pitch-black bottom looked like a vision of my future.

"YOU GODDAMN MUUUUTT!"

My roar echoed through the dining hall.

"Are you incapable of learning? You call yourself the King of Dogs, but how are you any different from a dog? Some famous genius dog out in the countryside would be several times smarter than you!"

"Awooooo! Not me! Woof! Woof!"

As the holy war between human and dog raged, the Regressor came running at the commotion and spoke with a hand pressed to her forehead.

"What is it this time?"

'Something trivial again, I’m sure.'

Trivial? Clothing, food, shelter. Of those three, food had always been the one to toy with human lives. In other words, this was practically a matter of life and death!

Pot in hand, I strode over to the Regressor. Holding up the empty can and the equally empty pot, I shouted,

"Do you see this? Normally, one can feeds a person for four days. That’s how much nutrition is compressed into it! But here, thanks to this mutt, an entire can disappears in a single day!"

Azi’s aggrieved voice came from the other side of the room.

"Not me!"

"Liar! If it wasn’t you, who else could it be?"

"Not me! Not me!"

"If you’re a Beast King, say something else! Repeating the same words makes you a parrot, not a dog!"

"Not parrot!"

"Speak like a human if you want to convince me!"

The Regressor interrupted, making a show of covering her ears.

"Hold on. You’re both too loud."

Azi and I glared and growled at each other. The Regressor heaved a deep sigh and muttered,

"Why are you so sure Azi did it? It might not have been her."

"Then did you do it, Trainee Shei?"

My eyes rolled wildly as I spoke.

"Trainee Tyrkanzyaka is a vampire. She only drinks blood. That leaves you and me as the remaining humans. But it wasn’t me. Unscrupulous as I am, I wouldn’t do something as pointless as eat the food myself and blame the dog. I’m in charge of the storehouse anyway."

'So you know you’re unscrupulous?'

"If Azi isn’t the culprit, that necessarily means you stole the food, Trainee Shei. Do you understand? What you just said was no different from telling me to suspect you!"

I hurled the pot into the sink and shouted,

"You said you had an emergency lunch box! That you didn’t need anyone to cook for you! Did living on packed lunches tempt you into rummaging through the pot at night for some Military State soul food? Is not just poverty, but even the soul food born of poverty, nothing more to you than a relic to put in a display case?"

"What relic? Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t eat canned food if you gave it to me."

"Then stay out of this, bourgeois! Today, that mutt and I are settling this to the death!"

"Wait."

The Regressor sounded irritated. At her will, the treasured sword Sky Cherry Blossom slowly rotated in midair and began pointing at me.

I shut my mouth at once.

A fight to the death was one thing, but I wasn’t about to die for nothing.

"What I mean is, someone else might still be here."

"Personally, I don’t like stories where the culprit turns out to be someone whose existence nobody knew about. It’s far too convenient."

'... He usually makes perfectly reasonable points, then occasionally says something completely insane. I really can’t figure this man out.'

"Whether you like it or not, the possibility exists."

"Well, that’s a reasonable suspicion. However..."

Her reasoning had so many holes that I hardly knew where to begin. Was that all you had, Regressor? Let me teach you something. No matter how complicated a case may seem, the truth was always the simplest answer.

I pointed a finger at the Regressor and declared,

"Trainee Shei, your deduction is wrong."

"Why?"

"This is Tantalus, in the bottomless pit. A completely isolated place that people cannot enter or leave. You’re saying someone unknown to you, me, Azi, and Trainee Tyrkanzyaka is hiding here and only comes out at night to eat our food?"

With a sigh, I laid out my flawless logic.

"Ridiculous. No such person exists, nor should they."

"I understand that it’s hard to accept, but what do you mean, they shouldn’t exist?"

"If something like that really existed, what could it be but a ghost?"

"And?"

"Ghosts are scary. I refuse to believe in them."

Belatedly understanding what I meant, the Regressor’s jaw dropped. Looking stupid suited her nicely.

"So you won’t even consider it because something like that would be scary?"

I promptly nodded.

"Yes."

"What... What the..."

'Is he actually insane, or is he doing this on purpose?'

On purpose? What nonsense.

Think about it. A Regressor with all sorts of bizarre tricks. A vampire who could come running from a thousand leagues away the instant you bled. The King of Dogs, with a dog’s nose.

And on top of that, my mind reading, which had seen through even the Regressor’s stealth.

Something none of us could detect was hiding in the dining hall? Something whose thoughts even I couldn’t read?

If something like that existed, I needed to run immediately.

'He’d be mistaken to assume there’s nobody else. It was outside intruders who turned Tyrkanzyaka and Azi into "pieces of the apocalypse," and there’s also "her," who will come for "that thing" at the bottom of the pit. Besides, "he" might still be somewhere around here. How should I explain this?'

... Why was this actually true?

No. I couldn’t accept a future like this. The current occupants alone were enough to make my head explode, and now there were outside intruders, plus a monster comparable to them on the way?

'Explain what? This is my first time inside Tantalus, too. What could I explain? I’ll save that fun for when it happens.'

Lies. It was all lies. It couldn’t be true.

I whipped around toward Azi.

"Azi. Did you really not eat it?"

"Not me!"

"Don’t just keep saying no—ugh. Why am I even trying to talk to you?"

As always, all I got was a reminder of the gap between human and beast. I shook my head.

Even if I could read this mutt’s thoughts, nothing would change. She would deny it to the bitter end.

In the end, there was only one option.

I had to catch her in the act.

I needed to seize the moment this mutt went after the pot. Only then could I corner her completely.

I would open another can. The operation would take place tonight, once the daytime lights went out and only the night lights dimly illuminated the prison.

That was when I would nab this mutt.

My lips twisted into a sinister smile as I looked down at Azi, and she glared back in defiance. Sparks seemed to fly between our eyes.

'Do those two get along or not?'

How could you define the relationship between a human and a dog with just one thing? When it was good, it was good. When it was bad, it was bad.

Just you wait, mutt.

As I was growling to myself, the Regressor suddenly turned her head. Her brow furrowed as she stared intently at a spot in the distance. Sky Cherry Blossom gave a thin hum, as though voicing her wariness.

'Wait. I sensed something back in there.'

Oh, please. Don’t. This was genuinely scary. Somehow, hearing that it was your hunch made it feel as though there really was something there. And I slept on this very floor. In a small, dark room, perfect for a ghost to visit.

What if something attacked me at night? I didn’t have any kind of warning alarm. Hmm.

No alarm, but a guard dog...

I turned to Azi and said quietly,

"Azi. Want to sleep with me tonight?"

"Arf!"

Rejected.