“It’s just a dog, Riko-chan!”
That’s what Chika says, as she holds Shiitake’s forepaws and wiggles them around. Even Riko has to admit - he looks rather more like a stuffed toy than an actual live animal, his dopey face never changing except to yawn slowly even while Chika rubs his fur and flaps his ears and all sorts of terrible things.
Yes, she thinks, it’s just a dog, but it reminds her way too much of That for comfort.
“Riko-chan!” Chika says in an exaggeratedly deep voice, hiding herself behind Shiitake’s head and moving his paws as if he said it himself. “No need to be scared of me! I loooove you! Woof!”
“Chika-chan.”
“… Woof?”
Reluctantly, Chika gets off the monster of a dog and sits cross legged on the floor between him and Riko. It makes a little triangle. Riko tries not to scream when he raises his giant head to look at her. She can’t see his eyes. She’s not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
Breaking off her uncomfortable staring contest with the dog, Riko forces herself to look at Chika instead. Beautiful, vibrant Chika. Blissfully unaware Chika. You’re going to die, says the voice of paranoia in the furthest reach of her brain.
“It’s ok, Riko-chan,” Chika hums, “you don’t have to force yourself, you know? Shiitake doesn’t really mind.”
Riko shakes her head, trying valiantly to dispel the roiling in her gut and the pulsing of every nerve ending. She doesn’t know if her smile is too transparent, but Chika has the tact to not say anything about it.
“It’s not that at all, it’s just…” Wait. There’s no way Riko can say something like that. She almost laughs at her stupidity. “… I’m more of a cat person, myself.”
“Oh, I totally get you!” Chika picks up the thread with aplomb, going into a story about someone, probably Yō, or Kanan, or maybe it’s one of her sisters, and starts gesturing so wildly, Riko is sure even if she had been paying attention she’d have been lost by now.
Her ankle starts to throb, gently, just a reminder.
“Oh, and then-”
She appreciates the attempt at cheering her up, she really does. But Riko’s problem is much more deep rooted than Chika could ever hope to even believe. Even Riko can barely believe it.
Maybe this was really the wrong idea, after all.
She brushes her hand over her ankle without thinking. Just above the bone, still freshly scarred - two rows of indents; a bite mark.
“- man, I still can’t believe they put us on the wall of shame list. I didn’t know pet stores could even have a wall of shame list!” Chika finishes her story. Maybe Riko should have been listening. That ending is going to keep her up at night without context, and Chika is looking up almost expectantly for a reaction. She definitely wasn’t this close before. Was she?
Riko swallows.
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.” She says, and apparently her sudden dry humour makes up for the lack of reaction, because Chika settles back on her haunches with a twisted grin, fiddling with the hair framing her face. Her braids are out. That’s nice. Shiitake rumbles. Riko suddenly remembers why she needed cheering up in the first place.
Wolffish growls ring in her ears, like hot breath on her neck. Chika gets up, pats herself down, and the memory is gone.
“Alright, alright, sorry, Shiitake,” Chika uses all the strength in that small frame of hers to lift her bear of a dog off the ground and out of the doorway. Seeing Chika wrestle with something that size almost makes Riko feel sure in her safety. “I’ll be right back, ok Riko-chan?”
“And I'll… Be here.”
Riko waits until Chika is out of sight before releasing every inch of tension in her shoulders and back with a long exhale. Dogs really unsettle her. More than, perhaps, they have any reason to. Now that she’s alone, she lifts up the hem of her pants (skirts are still a risky choice, until it heals) and pokes at the wound.
It’s gone a peculiar shade of blue. Bruised, maybe. Riko used to bruise a lot when she was a kid but she hasn’t really done anything injury-inducing recently.
Well, until That.
It wasn’t even her fault, really. Maybe it was Chika’s fault, then. But that’d be unfair.
Chika doesn’t know. How could she?
“I’m back,” Chika announces her presence loudly enough and blindly enough not to question the way Riko hurriedly pulls her pant leg back over her ankle almost guiltily. The door slams shut with a light click.
The door
slams
shut,
locking Riko in here. The dog has gone, but she doesn’t feel any better. If anything, she feels worse.
Chika, ignorant to the coils and coils of fear inside Riko’s torso, grins wolfishly and resumes her position cross legged on the floor. Her feet are bare, typically so. Her teeth are white, a little uneven. There’s a gap between the two front ones. Part of her charm.
But.
Suddenly, they’re sharp fangs, set deep into the dripping, snapping jaws of That. They’re gripping her ankle, removing any means of escape, starting to squeeze snap and tear…
“Hey, Riko-chan, you ok?”
Riko wipes a tear from her hand and looks up, watery vision just catching the motion as Chika crawls over to her side. She flinches. She doesn’t mean to, but she does.
“Gee, I- didn’t know it’d affect you this much… I’m sorry…” Chika cautiously places a hand on her shoulder.
No, you idiot, Riko wants to shout, no, it’s not Shiitake that’s the main problem!
(It’s you, Chika. It’s you.)
She watches Chika’s hand move from her shoulder, brushing away a stray tear from her cheek. It stays human, of course. Nails stay nails, poorly trimmed back too short. Skin stays skin, doesn’t blacken and sprout handfuls of fur by the second. Bones stay bones, don’t crack and warp horribly, distorting and growing monstrously.
Chika doesn’t change. Of course not. That wouldn’t make any sense. Maybe, Riko thinks, the whole thing was just a fever dream. Maybe she was just attacked by a particularly vicious dog? Maybe… Everything really is just normal? Chika's hand on her cheek, which lingers more than is probably acceptable, feels more like a warmth and a lifeline than a death sentence.
“Riko-chan?”
Riko drops her pensive expression with a gentle smile and, shyly, since they’re alone and why the heck not, leans into Chika’s hand, just a bit. Chika raises her eyebrows, but breaks into another grin with a light flush. Ah, is this one of those romantic moments from her novels? Surely, it must be, in the orange ambience of the fading afternoon, alone, in Chika’s room. Alone. Romantic, right?
It probably would have been infinitely more romantic and less heart-poundingly terrible if Riko hadn’t noticed how sharp Chika’s teeth were getting.