Can I run after the motorcycle?
The door. There was no click.
There was no lock.
So she decided to try and see where WO and WT went. To get a good look, see what direction they went, and where they were going.
A forest? A garden? A market?
She rested her hand on the door. She was almost beyond the concrete wall. Half her foot was past the edge.
Just then, there was a tremendous explosion behind her. A gunshot. Not a blank this time. It was an actual bullet. A sliver of concrete burst from the wall. Blasted off. A deep hole appeared. Not that the girl noticed. She couldn’t have. The bullet had whizzed by so close she could have reached out and touched it. The air had trembled as the bullet passed; she could still feel it under her skin.
She was quaking.
…was he aiming for me?
She stiffened. All over her skin, her hair was standing on end.
Her face began to flush. She was still shaking, and her face kept turning redder and redder, the redness moving quietly, ever so quietly up and up, like water rising, until it reached her ears. At the same time, a new expression appeared on her face. She was biting her bottom lip. Biting down. Hard. Very slowly, she turned around and looked behind her.
Straight behind her.
Just three meters away, the old lady who she had thought was in the kitchen stood holding a pistol with both hands. Her apron covered with juice from the berries.
“Old Bag,” the girl said.
The old lady didn’t reply.
“So you were watching me, huh? I’m not the invisible girl after all.”
The old lady’s thick-lensed glasses made it hard to read her expression. Her true feelings.
And those same lenses were watching her. Observing. Like a machine.
“Pleased with yourself, aren’t you, Old Bag? Firing your fucking pistol at me. You fucking asshole, dicking around with me. I’m used to this kind of shit, you know. Even more than the dogs. You think a fucking gunshot can scare me? Don’t mess with a yakuza girl.”
She spat this out. These words.
And yet she had wet herself.
The stain was spreading even now across the crotch of her jeans. She could feel it. And she suspected the old lady could see it too. So she said what she had to say. To the old lady standing there with the pistol, posed just as she had been when she fired that warning shot.
“Shit… I swear I’m going to stab you one day. You and the rest of the world.”
Ten minutes later, the girl was back in the room she had been given, changing her clothes. She put on new underwear. She threw away the pissed-on jeans. She put her feet through into a pair of pants she had been given as a spare—the old lady had provided these too. The girl had never worn them before. Look at these cheap-ass shitty pants, she thought, resenting them, hating them. Are you fucking making fun of me? Don’t try to fucking make me wear little kid’s clothes. Those jeans I just tossed aren’t for fucking middle class losers, you know. Those were Gucci. Those were brand-name jeans, you assholes. That’s why I kept wearing them, even if I never washed them. Those were my favorite fucking jeans. Fucking Gucci washed denim.
And now they’ve got piss on ’em.
The girl felt it. A feeling she couldn’t name. Humiliation.
She put on her coat. She put on her hat. She dressed herself against the cold as if she were donning some sort of armor, shielding her raging emotions from view, disguising herself as an ordinary Russian child. She could have been a member of some mongoloid Siberian minority. Except that the words brimming inside her were Japanese. Japanese imprecations. Expressions of boundless rage. She could no longer contain it. She needed to let it out, and in order to do that, she needed the puppies.
Those puppies.
Number 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 113, and 114.
That cage. The time she spent, day after day, standing before it.
But the puppies weren’t in the cage that afternoon. The girl knew why. Three or four days earlier, things had changed. Already, the dramatic new developments that would take place in her daily routine had been hinted at, foreshadowed. The puppies weren’t being trained to fight and attack like the other dogs, not really. They had been taken out to the grounds, leaving the cage empty, for only a short time. During that period, the old man checked them out. Checked to see whether they were naturally inclined to fight. To see how they reacted to gunfire. How they responded to smoke. They were being tested, in other words. They had moved on from playing with balls to the next stage. One stage before he began training them in earnest.
Would these puppies imitate the “finished” dogs, the adults the old man had already trained? Or rather, would they one day learn to imitate their seniors?
Did they listen to human commands? Would they eventually?
These were the questions the old man had to answer.
Already, then, in a small way, their training had begun.
And already the results were in. All seven were suitable. Of course. The old man had known to expect this. Considering their breeding, their lineage. So naturally he increased the difficulty of the tests. Two or three days earlier, he had started testing their ability to respond to basic commands like “Go,” “Stop,” and “Down,” and having them play, for instance, at attacking a target.
Of course, out here on the grounds they had models to follow. They could imitate the adult dogs. They had to catch their scent, grasp the mood. What was it like to attack? What precisely was required of them? The puppies’ every movement radiated youth, but that was okay, that was only natural. It was all a game. Indeed, the fact that they were only playing made it more clear how well, or how poorly, they were suited to the task that awaited them.
And so she knew.
She understood the situation. There was no point going to stand before the cage. Because the puppies weren’t there. They were on the grounds. Fucking asshole, after all the time I spent taming them, now that I’ve finally succeeded, you drag the fuckers out to train them? Don’t fucking steal them. Don’t fucking steal my doggies, you dick. She knew they would be back in the cage soon, in a half hour, maybe an hour. But she didn’t feel like waiting. She understood the situation, and so she headed out to the exercise grounds.
Directly.
Her coat buttoned up all the way, her hat pulled down low over her eyes, her head full of hatred, taking form in Japanese.
The girl saw what was happening. The old man gave the word, and the puppies responded. I fucking showered them with Japanese, fucking shit-ass Japanese. And now the Old Fuck is teaching the little doggie-shits Russian. What’s the fucking idea? He doesn’t want them to hear my voice, is that it? She listened. She focused on each command as it was given. Disgusted, annoyed, she nevertheless let the words soak into her brain. As sounds. Just sounds. Soon she found herself unable just to stand there watching as he trained the puppies. She couldn’t hang back, observing from several yards off. She went up right behind the old man, not hesitating at all, not at all afraid of the dogs. She was confrontational. She was filled with raw, real hatred. She saw Opera off in the distance. The Old Fuck’s buddy, Opera. He was playing the role of the target, his torso and arms swaddled in protective padding, but without the helmet. He was the target in this game the puppies were playing. You’re training them, the girl thought, I know. Training them to kill. I realize what you’re fucking doing, assholes. She was feeling emotions she couldn’t have expressed in words. Destruction. That’s what they were doing. She wanted it to happen. Yeah, do it! Bring it all down! The old man paid no attention to her. He wasn’t exactly ignoring her, but he was focused on the puppies, on seeing how well they suited his needs. He spoke only to them. Gave them commands in Russian. The girl was able to remember them. That Old Fuck spoke to me. I never asked to have a conversation with him, he just did it. SHE-neh, he said. Drop dead. Yeah, well two can play that game. I’ll fucking get in your way. This time, it’s my turn, right?