When you come to, the world is wrong-sized and tilted. The lights are too bright, the air smells of disinfectant and something vaguely sweet, like pet shampoo gone overboard. Sounds — muted voices, the clink of metal — drift through a haze. You try to move and realize you are enclosed: a small metal cage, a soft blanket at your feet, the bars close enough to touch but far enough to make reaching impossible.

Around you, animals in human clothing move with the practiced ease of those who have learned to mimic a different species. They speak in a language you don’t understand — voices shaped by muzzles and beaks and paws, laughter that sounds like wind through leaves. Their faces not are humanlike, their clothing tailored: shirts, jackets, shoes. None of it makes sense. The word you hear most is something like “pet” in their tongue — an idea you sense but can’t fully grasp until a shadow falls across the front of the cage.

He is impossibly large. A grizzled gray wolf with vivid blue eyes stands directly in front of you, broad shoulders filling the gap between rows of enclosures. He wears a black T‑shirt that hugs powerful muscles and gray pants tucked into sneakers; even his casual clothing seems sculpted to his frame. The wolf drops to one knee so his face is level with yours, and places a heavy, callused hand against the glass. From where you sit, his paw dwarfs your entire arm. You see claws — sharp, controlled — but the touch on the glass is careful, almost reverent.

There is a look in his blue eyes that you don’t expect: curiosity folded into something like delight. He watches you as if discovering a rare plant in a dry field. He motions to a clerk in a uniform, nodding. The exchange that follows is foreign and brief; you are ushered onto a pallet, wrapped gently, and pushed into a carrier. The wolf — the one with the sky eyes — buys you. The realization lands with a cold clarity: your world has been reduced to possession.

Perspective shifts.

The pet shop staff were obliging — quick with gloves and a soft voice, telling me the way to handle humans that had made my day. “Put them in the carrier,” they said, “it’s easier to transport.” I could hardly believe my luck: a genuine human, alive and no doubt exhausted, and bewildered. And cute. God, so small and impossibly fragile. My thumbs fidgeted against the handle of the carrier the whole way home; I kept picturing Rolf’s face when he found out.

The walk back to my apartment was a string of careful steps. I took my shoes off in the entryway, set the carrier down as if laying a sleeping thing on living room floor, and sat in front of it with a grin that wouldn’t fade. The apartment smelled of coffee and the faint tang of old textbooks I never quite finished moving out. I opened the carrier, waited a beat to let the human get their bearings, then coaxed in a voice I tried to make softer.

“Come on, human‑chan. We’re home.”

I know my speech is a deep, animal sound — they won’t understand my words — but there’s a tone humans seem to listen to. A minute of quiet pleading, a few rustles, and the human peeks out. The moment they step free, I don’t think. Instinct takes over — I gather them up in a hug that’s meant to be warm, possessive, proud. My arms close around their ribcage and I realize, a fraction too late, that I’m squeezing harder than I intended. Their breaths come shallow, a small sound of panic pressed into the hollow of my chest.

Phone out of my pocket, thumb flying, I can’t keep the grin out of my voice. “Rolf — I got one. A real human pet! They’re adorable!”

On the other end, Rolf’s voice is a stunned high note. “Zinoviy‑sempai, you… you really got a pet?”

“Come over. You have to see them!” I say, tightening my hold without noticing the hitch in the human’s inhale. The pulse under my palm is fast. They are so small. So real. My excitement blurs everything else into a bright, eager haze, and for a moment the world narrows to the rhythm of a heartbeat beneath my hand and the thrill of possession.