What stood before the eye of the young girl was another curious and bizarre thing, in comparison to everything she had seen there so far. A fork. The path, until now straight and unique was divided in two different paths, one to the left, one to the right. Shinkuu stood in the middle of the fork, looking to both paths to see if she could figure out where should her go. From her point of view, she was able to see that there was a gate in both roads, but they were different from each other: the gate to the left was wrapped in colorful and vivid flowers, and behind the golden and shinning gate, there was a beautiful green garden, decorated by flowers of many colors; the gate to the right leaded to an old and eroded gate, wrapped in gray and thorned ivies, prelude of a vast and desolated field. Somehow, a warm and bright light spread from the garden and Shinkuu was able to feel the comfortable and welcoming sensation of such place. There was no doubt about the path she wanted to choose. With a new light in her eyes, the girl rushed towards the golden gate, feeling her long and strange travel was about to end. The gates opened, and a huge figure walked out from the wonderful garden. Shinkuu stopped to watch the creature that suddenly appeared before her: it was a giant wolf-like dog, which fur was as white as snow. When the dog was near to Shinkuu, both of them stopped to watch each other. The more she watched the dog, the more she felt something familiar about it, until a forgotten and painful memory came out from her heart, making her chest hurt and cutting her breath. As tears started to run down her checks, she was only able to pronounce the name of the white dog: Kiba.

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October, 2009

Shinkuu recently started the third year of middle school, without even a friend or someone to play or to talk with. The alienation her classmates put her through due to her gloomy look and behavior make only things worst for her. To that point, she threw away her feminine look in exchange for a more boyish and simple appearance, cutting her hair short behind and long before her lost eye. An appearance that, in a school frequented by the sons of popular and important people, was a certain way to be ostracized from social life. Some people on school thought of her to be some kind of dangerous person, but she was actually unable to have any kind of social interaction. Indifference was her way to survive surrounded by nasty comments and jokes.

It those days, during a rainy day of autumn, Shinkuu decided to take a shortcut through a park to arrive faster at home. It was a place she usually didn’t cross through the day to avoid contact with the women and their children, after noticing her presence somehow disturbing them. Thanks to the rain, there was no one in the park, or that was she thought. While running, she noticed something oddly white under a bench and, getting closer to it, she found it was a little puppy, trying to avoid the rain. Shinkuu was surprised to see the little thing there, all by itself: a cute little American Eskimo entirely white, which face seemed to be always happy even in such predicament, fluffy tail and pointy ears. Before such innocent creature, she couldn’t help but doing something for it. She remembered having with her a tuna sandwich she didn’t eat that morning, so she offered it to the little dog. The puppy didn’t think twice before jumping on Shinkuu’s arms to devour the sandwich with joy. More than once the girl was about to have her hand bitten by the puppy’s sharp fangs, which makes her thought about a name for it: Kiba, ‘fang’ in Japanese. She stayed under her umbrella, sitting on the bench with Kiba resting on her lap, and the two were together like this until the rain was finally over about an hour later. Since it was getting late, Shinkuu decided it was time to go. She promised to the puppy she would return soon, putting in into the bushes. Then, she rushed home and told her parents about her meeting with the dog. At the beginning, both of them weren’t interested in the story, instead making her take care to not dirty the furniture with her filthy clothes. But, as she mentioned she would like to take the puppy home, they really payed attention to her, just to forbid such desire: her stepfather was allergic to dogs, while her mother simply didn’t wanted animals at home, which she considered just annoying and troublesome. Shinkuu was sad for the opposition, but she didn’t surrender. Since that day, she keep going to the park to feed the little puppy, before and after school. The puppy learnt to wait for her and the same spot, so it didn’t move around the park very much. People noticed it, but didn’t care about it. Moreover, Shinkuu learnt to didn’t care about the frightened gazes of both children and mothers while she was on her way to meet Kiba. Between the girl and the puppy grew a strong feeling of affection. Shinkuu passed entire afternoons after school until night, playing with her new friend in the park, or simply having Kiba sleeping on her lap, while she read some book. For about a month, Shinkuu was really happy to have found a true friend. Unfortunately, this happiness didn’t lasted long.