Eos, Salon Level.

As soon as Riki descended the magnetic elevator out into the salon, the lively commotion fell instantly and completely silent.

It's him.

Riki.

The slum—

—mongrel.

The whispers were loaded with envy.

No.

Isn't that—

Are you kidding me? What?

Quick to discover the love bites etched on Riki's skin, the indignation rose in their eyes.

Why? 

How?

It can't be.

Impossible.

All realized that the rumor—the impossible reality— that Riki, the mongrel who hadn't appeared at a single mating party since his debut, enjoyed the nightly attentions of his master Iason, was no exaggerated lie or hoax, but the truth.

Mongrel scum. 

How dare he!

Even though he's a slum mongrel—

Unacceptable. 

How?

Why is that trash given special treatment?!

Teeth gnashed in envy. Riki was used to such sights. Immature pets constantly flowed in Eos, so that shockwave only repeated itself without ever ceasing. To those who didn't know Riki's true nature, he looked like a kind of malignant infection jeopardizing their identity.

But as much as he hated being a freakshow, ultimately, a week of being trapped in a room, killing the empty hours, was all Riki could stand.

The slum quarters Riki was used to were narrow, old, dirty, and unsafe—but even thinking about them now was pointless.

Iason's residence was spacious, exquisite, and clean. And on top of that, he was served three sumptuous meals a day.

Eos, where there were no such things as inconveniences, came with a suffocating feeling of entrapment.

In the slums, Riki was on his own, free to walk his own personal path to damnation. But in Eos, he could only have the things given to him, with no freedom to choose or reject anything.

On the other hand, it could be said that Riki was "lucky" compared to the other pets, as he could shout "No" to things he hated or "I refuse" to things he did not want to do. Even if his wishes didn't come true, he was able to vent out his true emotions.

Excluding that one thing, this situation was not what he personally wished for. Of course, for Iason as an owner to permit this out of nothing but magnanimity was a prerequisite.

Still, half a year of absence truly brought change to Riki's heart, branded as Eos' most nefarious troublemaker since its beginning—or perhaps it was too much to call change.

Last time, he had been so full of himself, he couldn't see his own feet, let alone reflect on his surroundings, but thanks to the time spent back in the slums, Riki now understood Eos in a way that hadn't been possible before—or perhaps it was because back then he didn't try to understand. No, it should be said that this new perspective was forced onto him only by circumstance— for better or worse, thus, a product of emotion rather than introspection. But it was no great thing now for Riki to take what vexed him in Eos and walk away from it.

Iason sarcastically called this "great progress," but for Riki, pointless fights weren't his interest in the first place. Neither were ostentatious punishments. Even if Riki sputtered out words asserting his innocence, they never got through.

But as soon as he came back, Iason warned him: "Since you're a returnee, you should know better by now." He felt there was something more to that declaration.

It frustrated Riki no end that even innocent words had layers of hidden meaning with Iason. He knew it was pointless to read into them, but Iason's words wouldn't leave his mind. Yet, Riki would never acknowledge it to be a conditioned reflex. He did recognize the fact that as he got older, he lost the motivation to fight on the same level as other pets.

That didn't make him want to go out of his way to avoid trouble, but Riki himself was really tired of being the subject of scandal when he didn't ask for it. Even if the eyes of the other pets never left him, Riki ignored them and walked purposefully to his destination.

On this floor, there was a botanical garden.

Not the scale of a cozy greenhouse, but a vast area encompassing the entire level; quite the impressive sight. Here were all kinds of trees, vegetation, and colorful flowers that had a soothing effect; negative ions poured down, cleansing the body and soul. For pets, kept illiterate, walking its spaces was part of their education on aesthetic sensibility.

Access was unrestricted, but to get to the garden, one had to go through a tunnel with a sterile air shower between a sensor-operated automatic door and a touch- activated door. Sensors were emplaced to prevent organic matter from exiting the level; not even a petal ever made its way outside.

At this point in time, Riki had no interest in playing childish games at the salon. He spent a few hours in the garden when not working out in the training facilities, where he could have some real exercise. But he didn't come here just to kill time.

The garden was an enclosed space, but had a pond and brooks, where small birds and palm-sized animals roamed freely. Riki could stare at them for hours.

Each time he came here, he brought an illustrated plant guide that had been downloaded on a memory stick. If he felt like it, he could stop to check the name of a particular flower. Riki would've preferred to have an EL (Enhanced Learning) device that had many other uses, unlike the dataslate, but getting such a thing, even if he asked, was impossible. Make an exception and a thousand will follow—or so he'd heard once. But Riki honestly felt that if he had nothing to lose, it was worth insisting for.

It was Mimea who had told him about the garden. "Boys prefer the arcade, but I like it here the best." Riki now knew her favorite flower by heart: Clarissa

Mellow Lavinia. A gaudy flower with seven colors to its name.

"See? Isn't it beautiful?"

Riki had no interest in flowers, he only pictured them as painfully bright to the eye. There were no flowers in the slums in the first place—or so he thought. Admiring flowers couldn't fill a stomach. There's no point in observing something you can't eat. And so, in the slums, flowers were useless. This was the common, brutal and cold logic of the slums.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to know this flower's name?"

But the sparkly-eyed, innocent Mimea was gone.

"You're all ganging up on us, trying to destroy our relationship!"

Gone forever—right before Riki's eyes—leaving behind unfading, vivid memories, bitter pain, and gut- wrenching regret.

What happened to Mimea afterwards, Riki didn't know. After emerging from a month of incarceration and torture, there was no Mimea. Just all sorts of speculations and exaggerated rumors—

Coming to this garden, Riki inevitably thought of Mimea. Along with the indelible regret and mockery towards his stupid self back then.

Little by little. Drop by drop. The past hurt him.

Bordering on self-deprecation and self-torture.

Riki was under the impression that his feet spontaneously led him here so that he would never forget the pain. And so, he swept his negative feelings of guilt under the rug, knowing all too well the past couldn't be undone.

Walking around, dataslate in hand, Riki was resentfully glared at by the pets already present there. As if their paradise had been defiled by the slum mongrel.

Riki paid them no attention. It didn't matter to him whether they took his behavior as intolerable or as conceited. Riki was past caring.

Then.

"—Um," said a rather hesitant voice behind him.

Riki chose to ignore the voice—no, he was so focused on searching for the name of a flower he had taken a picture of with the camera built into the dataslate that he didn't feel like turning around to check behind his back.

Then again. "Um—excuse me."

This time, the voice became more distinct.

Still convinced it was meant for someone else, Riki ignored it.

And, finally, "You do hear me, right?" The tone changed to an overtly impatient one.

Only then did Riki take his eyes off the dataslate. His gaze drifted to his left and right to make sure nobody else was nearby.

Is that voice for me? Riki slowly turned around.

"I've been calling you for a while now—" the voice said sullenly. It came from an ash-blond boy with a vibrant tan.

At that moment, Riki had a feeling of déjà vu.

—This brat.

Riki inadvertently stared hard at him.

Paradita—?

Riki had a sudden flashback.

Glossy brown skin. Slightly wavy, ash-blond hair. And eyes the color of emeralds. No idea who his owner was but definitely a Paradita breed. Riki had seen him for the first time—was it two years ago?—at the boy's debut party.

Although there were a lot of other newcomers, this pet had made a strong impression with his unique coloration, unusual in Eos. At parties like that, Riki either earnestly sulked and dozed off at Iason's feet or listened to music on his wireless earbuds—but he at least remembered that one of them was a Paradita. Paradita were a cross between the Melrose and Dalton breeds, and males were exceedingly rare.

Normally, Melrose only gave birth to females, no matter what they were bred with. Very rarely were males born, but ninety-nine percent of the time, they carried a chromosome abnormality that prevented them from growing up properly. Paraditas were a middle-ranked breed, but rarity made male hybrids valuable. In auctions, their open-price was rumored to be as high as Academy- bred pets.

But that was not the only reason why Riki remembered the Paradita.

"Why did you ignore me?"

It wasn't intentional. Riki didn't expect any curious, no, reckless challenger to call him out in that place.

Yes, just like last time. "—What?" Riki replied. "Do you—remember me?"

"You're the Paradita, right?" Riki answered in a laconic tone.

Paying no mind to Riki's guess, the Paradita flatly replied, "It's Miguel."

Oh—yeah.Miguel. Right.

Now that he told him, it came back to Riki. The tremulous, nervous voice, the faint tone in which he had addressed him—

Back then, Riki first thought it was a new kind of pestering, some penalty game—or else, surely some unavoidable rite of passage for a newcomer to be integrated into a pet clique. That Riki was the object of silly games at the time had been nothing more than an endless source of annoyance.

It is a kind of thrill to make one do something they don't want to do, putting their courage to the test.

And so, most pets broke down and cried, to the derision of their fellow pets. Otherwise, when they didn't face the infamous, vicious slum mongrel, they grouped up at a distance, noisily barking and yelping—but nobody ever approached Riki.

However, Miguel was different. He didn't know who or what Riki was.

"I just got here... so I really don't know... the etiquette of this place or anything—"

Nevertheless, how could he start a conversation of his own of all things? Riki had been at a loss for words, astounded by the reckless challenger's ways.

Anyone, if they paid a little attention at least, could see that Riki was blatantly shunned by the other pets— that's what he'd thought. Miguel had not gotten the opportunity to do so, apparently.

"Everyone stares at me—"

Because Paradita traits were peculiar, he drew as much attention as Riki did, but in a different way. Although there were more than enough egoistic and hoity- toity pets out there, the visually unique Paradita would not blend in with the crowd, for better or worse.

"Simon said... in this place—I could make friends if I came here... But I don't even know where to go. Wandering around, I ended up by this flower bed."

So Riki told him he should be taught by his assigned furniture, before wandering in this place, the "three principal rules of Eos," which were:

1. Do not get uppity and out of line

2. Do not get cocky and show off

3. If you can't beat them, join them

Entirely different from the Eos Pet Code consisting of nine articles.

Riki didn't even know who came up with these rules. Daryl had been the one who'd told him about them, of course, in much more graceful language. Maybe it had been more of a distant, soft request from Daryl to Riki than from Eos. Just don't get into trouble in the salon—not that it had worked out.

If he was the usual Riki, though, he would never have felt like stepping in, no matter who it may be. But he was in rare form that day. Maybe because it was obvious that Miguel was a newcomer, still not part of any clique—and excessively disheartened by it.

And finally, Riki added a rule more important than the three aforementioned:

4. Never ever go near the slum mongrel

Even if Riki didn't put it to words, no doubt Miguel's furniture would say so. But newcomer Miguel was, in a sense, from beginning to end, an unpredictable boy. What was Miguel's most amusing line again?

"Do—do you work here?"

Miguel had mistaken Riki for a gardener.

Riki, who had already been approaching nineteen at the time, was a different case for a male pet—no, he was the epitome of absurdity. No pet had ever been kept in Eos to that age.

In Eos, where the most important condition for a pet was to be a youth without fully grown pubic hair, Riki was a heresy. Miguel was just thirteen, so to his inexperienced eyes, Riki didn't look like a pet.

Instead of making Riki mad, it made him laugh. It was the only time Riki had ever laughed from the bottom of his heart in his three years in Eos.

Back to the present.

"I'm sorry—about before." Miguel lowered his eyes as he spoke.

For a second, Riki was dumbfounded. The unpredictable boy, after two years, was still as surprising.

"I—didn't know you were Master Iason's pet. I thought you were a gardener here."

That's it? Riki almost said "No way," but held his tongue.

"When I asked Simon about you, he turned pale as if he was going to faint."

Not because you thought I was a gardener, but because he was afraid I had tainted you with my grubby slum mongrel paws, Riki thought.

That he could even think this meant Miguel knew full well what Riki's position in Eos was. Nevertheless, Riki had neither the aspiration to wield his master's political power to take control of the salon nor the intention to act in a manner befitting a Blondy pet.

"I came here many times after that, but I could never find you—"

Of course he hadn't. Because Riki had broken out of Eos right after that. No, even if that hadn't happened, Riki was certain they would never have met since then. Once Miguel knew he was a slum mongrel, he would never approach him again. He would only despise him with contempt from a distance as loudly as other pets did. Since he thought so, Riki didn't remember Miguel more than that.

"I never thought I would meet you again like this. I heard you were... disposed of."

That might be the only way of saying it, no matter how you may sugarcoat it. Riki had assumed he was done with Eos as well until Iason shoved his still uncancelled pet registration into his face.

"So what?" Riki laconically probed. Indeed, he and Miguel had privately made each other's acquaintance in the past. But nothing more. A point and a line may intersect once by chance, and it was not such interaction as to make him immersed in sentimentality and nostalgia.

"Can I—stay with you?" "Huuuuh?!"

Narrowing his eyes as much as he could, Riki stared at Miguel.

"I won't get in your way, I promise."

It's not about that. "Do—you have any idea who I am?"

"You're Master Iason's pet?"

"Didn't your furniture or anyone warn you against associating with the 'slum mongrel'?"

Miguel immediately fell silent. He turned his eyes away.

"I'm not so bored as to babysit kids." As Riki flatly refused, he powered down his dataslate and walked away, his declaration firm and resolute.

Riki came to the garden to avoid being bothered by anyone. For some reason, his presence alone in Iason's residence made Cal restless. As much as Cal thought he hid it well, it was obvious he still hadn't figured out the sense of distance to adopt towards Riki.

A pet concerned about a furniture's feelings—Riki wasn't such a pushover, he preferred spending some meaningful time outside over being concerned with stupid things like that. If he went to the salon, he couldn't avoid being conspicuous, no matter what. Unlike the salon, the garden was a perfect place to hide—or at least, in the garden, where there were just enough green spots to admire the scenery, he could spend some time alone without worrying about being interrupted.

It was quiet, pleasant, and no one looked for him here. For Riki, it was his once-a-day time in paradise. His daily arrival at set times meant other pets went out of their way to absent themselves then. It wasn't a misapprehension of his.

But an outsider, Miguel, had slipped into his comfortable territory—Riki had no means to banish him from the garden. This was a relaxation area open to all.

Riki just wanted to enjoy his time alone. He had zero interest or concern about anything else. Riki had no idea why or what Miguel came here for, but he didn't want to take part or get caught up in it in the slightest.