Chapter Text
Kakashi can still remember when he saw a dog for the very first time. He is two, a little too old to be completely ignorant of the world, but a little too young to understand it.
He remembers feeling hungry and crawling out to the veranda. Kakashi remembers the shadow of his father’s back against the evening sun. He remembers the splinters that dig into his palm as he crawls across the floorboards and the large, furry thing that circles around his father’s feet.
Perhaps large is a less appropriate term. In hindsight, the creature had been about the size of a house cat. Although back then, it would have rivaled him in size.
Out of curiosity and wonder, Kakashi crawls over and grabs the creature by the nose. It yelps and scurries into his father’s lap. Sakumo blinks in confusion, before catching sight of Kakashi’s fist, slick with the creature’s mucus. At this, his eyes soften in understanding. From his lips then spill words, words that still remain as incoherent garble in Kakashi’s memory.
A calloused hand soothes the creature, lulling it to slumber. The other cradles Kakashi’s tiny palm. His hands are gently pried open, fingers spread out. Sakumo’s hand dwarfs Kakashi’s as his tiny hand is brought over the creature’s back. The creature barely stirs. After all, its fur is not even ruffled by his touch.
Kakashi has to crane his neck at an awkward angle to see his father’s face but the fruits are worth the labour.
The slight smile that graces Sakumo’s visage mirrors the calm fury Kakashi will soon observe when he is brought along on his father’s missions. For now, there is no ruthless killer. On the veranda now sits a simple man, with a heart large enough to fit the world.
“Remember, Kakashi.”
And he will, for the rest of his existence.
Kakashi is four years old when his father brings him into the kitchen. His father teaches him to look out for the tell-tale brown that says he will burn the meat if the fire is not extinguished. He is taught how much salt is too little and how much sugar is too much. After Kakashi is taught how to make food look presentable, he joins his father in mincing chicken and mashing spinach to a pulp. When he pours water into shallow bowls, Kakashi is told he cannot leave them on the veranda for more than a day.
Lest green mould stains the white plastic with disease and the clear water left clouded grey by mud and rain.
When he scoops out minced chicken portion by portion, He is reminded to pick up any bones sticking out.
Kakashi now knows the creatures are called dogs. Despite grown-ups insisting otherwise, they have intellect. Enough to memorise his father's schedule with frightening accuracy. Every day when the sun sets, they appear in his backyard. Sakumo obliges their pleading eyes, gesturing for Kakashi to bring out the bowls of water to wash down the food neatly placed in a row on the veranda.
Kakashi is warned not to touch the dogs when they eat. All are protective over the precious things they were once deprived of. For shinobi such as them, who have no worry of their keep, it is love. For those of basic animal instinct, it is food and water.
Once the dogs have had their fill, Kakashi is free to stroke and prod them, however he pleases. Simple creatures, they are. To reciprocate what love they are given tenfold. They are receptive to his affection but Sakumo is the one they all crowd around. At Kakashi, they sniff at and wag their tails. On Sakumo however, they jump on and lick till the slob drips down his face.
Kakashi asks his father why they spend valuable coin to feed the strays. It is not that they don't have the means, but he wonders why they don’t splurge on other vices instead. The answer he receives is not one he has expected. Sakumo first speaks of morality and compassion but soon the conversation veers towards his mother. Kakashi knows nothing of the woman who gave her life to ensure he had his place in the world.
He cannot mourn what he has not known and his curiosity of her is a fleeting thing. After all, her memory was effectively sealed away in a crypt kept shut by Sakumo’s grief.
Now, Kakashi can see the doors creak open.
Sakumo speaks of her feeding them as he did now. Of how the dogs not only showered her with affection as they did him, but how they could understand her.
He chuckles when telling Kakashi about the time a rather rowdy fellow made unwanted advances at her. All she had to do was lock eyes with a pack of dogs. She never told Sakumo what happened exactly but one could guess. By the time he had arrived at her side, he found her bent over laughing, holding the seat of the fellow's pants in her hand.
The fellow was nowhere to be found. Sakumo, however, could hear the melody of screaming and growling in the distance.
Sakumo feeds the dogs and they reward him with the decency to leave their excrement elsewhere. The greatest reward, however, is how her shadow trails behind the dogs.
In every bark, he hears her chime-like laugh. When the dogs crowd at his backyard, he sees her petting each one. In every grin the dogs give him, he sees her toothy crooked smile. Every pleading glance from the dogs is looking back at her bemused expression from that day. Every dog that stares at him from afar is her coming back to check on him.
“Even now, she’s here. Laughing at my tears.” Sakumo smiles through eyes welled up with nostalgia.
Kakashi stares at the pack of dogs, but in his mind, the woman with the black hair and the golden eyes Sakumo wishes he had inherited stays trapped in the many photo albums kept in their house.
The dogs are not the only visitors to his house. Sometimes in the dead of night, Kakashi sees golden lights coming from the garden. Once he swore he saw the fin of a shark on the shoji screen. He turns to his father, sleeping on the futon next to his. Most parents dismiss their children and tell them to go back to sleep. Some draw their weapons to protect themselves.
But not Sakumo. He gets up, irritatedly mumbling about another one coming at an ungodly hour. He walks to the veranda in a stupor but returns shortly. On the days Sakumo washes an extra bowl or two, Kakashi finds a small pile of trinkets or gleaming gems. The patterns hurt his eyes to look at and he cannot find the gems from any book. They cannot be used as currency as every merchant rejects them, stating they would seem more at home in an artisan’s workshop.
Sakumo has a different opinion. He says they are treasures from another world, choosing to lock them with his mother’s keepsakes. Kakashi wants to refute that statement but the trust that his father knows better keeps him silent.
When Kakashi asks Sakumo about the huge bloodstain that appeared on the veranda overnight, he answers while scrubbing away at the floor,
“Some sort of animal. I couldn’t really tell what it was but it drooled all over the place.”
In that tone, he may as well tell Kakashi that dinner would be ready in an hour. The nonchalance does little to calm Kakashi who begins to sputter,
“What? What could lose that much blood with no harm? And where are we getting all that stuff from? What’s going on in our house?”
Sakumo continues speaking from his kneeling position,
“Our house welcomes all kinds of strays, some careless enough to leave their things here. It’s not something I can explain now. I’ll show you when I get back from that mission, okay?”
Kakashi nods but internally, he grimaces at the eternity that is to pass before his curiosity is sated.
That statement rings ever more true when he stumbles on his father’s limp body in the bathroom.
After that “embarrassing” “failure” of a mission that resulted in Sakumo’s “shameful” self-termination, even the strays eat better than Kakashi.
Sakumo has left behind enough that Kakashi can still have a comfortable existence until he is a jonin. But try as he might, once he finishes his tasks for the day, he has no strength left for himself.
On a good day, he eats as he would. On less pleasant days, all he can stomach is a bowl of rice. Sometimes all he sees is the pool of blood and the food goes back up his throat and onto the table. Other times, the silence in the house is so unbearably suffocating, it squeezes his throat shut.
The spinach is chopped less evenly and the chicken is left in larger clumps. The dogs couldn’t care less about the food. Or they are too hungry to notice. Yet when Kakashi has to make a second trip to bring out the water bowls, when the tears fall, leaving streaks of fire down his cheeks, they know.
They know Sakumo is gone and that’s when the howling starts. It presses on his heart, pushing down on the shards until they resemble diamonds. Their howling is an annoyance but for once, he knows he is not alone in this world.
The silver lining of the noise is that his weeping is drowned out. No one can discern that his cries and tears are for a “traitor”.
Kakashi knows he is no substitute for Sakumo and neither are they. Yet, what choice is left but to move forward? Even if all the world wept for his father, he could not be brought back.
When the dogs come and go for their daily feeding, Kakashi begins to feel Sakumo’s hand brush through their fur alongside his. A sensation that addles his mind and causes his eyes to sting.
Kakashi’s mind tells him Sakumo is long gone, his hand dead and buried next to his beloved wife along with the rest of his body. His heart, however, chooses to indulge him, leaving Kakashi in a daze until the lapping of a wet tongue on his cheek brings him to the veranda.
One day, he falls asleep on the veranda after the dogs have left. Kakashi doesn’t remember when he fell asleep, only how many bowls were full of food. When he wakes up, it is to a runny nose and every bowl licked clean of its contents. He swears the dogs left at least 3 bowls full when they left. Kakashi cannot find the spillage and so chalks it up to a faulty memory.
The days pass in a blur and Kakashi cannot remember a day when there was a bowl left untouched. There is an absence of excrement and its odour and hence no new arrivals not privy to the unspoken rule.
Even if there were strays to finish the food, he doubts they are the ones behind the neat row of bowls he wakes up to. Not that it mattered.
To be so numbed by grief that he forgets fear. Kakashi only feels gratitude that he has less to do and less to waste.
He thinks the solitude is driving him into madness when the dogs begin to intrude his dreams. They swarm him as they did Sakumo. A furry sea of black, brown, and yellow chases him through an open field towards the horizon.
His routine is set. Academy, feeding, dream, cleaning. Over and over again.
One day, the dream changes.
As he is chased towards the horizon, a cliff appears ahead. The pack feels no fear and neither does he. No one slows down or changes direction as they all crash into the clear waters of the deep blue sea.
This time, Kakashi wakes up.
To the sound of meowing and barking no less. He blinks away the stinging sensation from the light.
Is it day?
He overslept!
Kakashi jumps to his feet. He bends down to pick up a bowl.
That is when he notices the murky night sky. His eyes dart back to the veranda, to where he believed the light stung them. To his shock, a yellow spectral is eating from the bowl next to where his head was. A blue blanket that he certainly didn’t use clumps over where he slumbered.
Kakashi lived alone.
He scans the veranda where he sees more spectres crowding around the few bowls that still contain food. His calloused feet scrape against the rough wood as he takes a closer look.
The spectre takes on the form of a cat. All yellow, from its head to the tip of its two tails.
Nekomata? He doesn’t think so. It does not resemble the malevolent spirits of lore. However, if their dual tails were anything to go by, they must have achieved a great age.
It walks up to him, purring against his palm. The cat is of light, without the warmth of the living. Yet, Kakashi finds a sense of mellow spread through his heart.
The yellow cat lays snug in his arms as he looks to the spectres crowded around the bowls. They come in different colours, but all emanate a warm glow. The cats rub up against every wall and the dogs wag their tails before jumping down to play in his backyard.
Kakashi always remembered his yard as a brown, dusty place devoid of vegetation. For easy maintenance, Sakumo always said. Now, it is a world of colour as phantom flowers cram themselves into every crevice their roots can burrow into.
The cat jumps down from his arms, leaving Kakashi’s hand free to clamp over his mouth in disbelief. A dog of green light bounds up to him, digging its paws into his pants. It forces him to look down, into the dog’s eyes. For his own to widen like dinner plates.
Through the dog’s eyes, Kakashi watches Sakumo smile as he puts down a bowl of water. He can almost hear his father’s voice through the movement of his lips.
“There’s more than enough for everyone, okay?”
The phrase, likely meant to soothe the rowdy dog then, brings about the opposite effect in Kakashi. His chest only tightens, squeezing out a pool of tears long suppressed.
Kakashi throws his arms around the dog’s neck, sending his knees crashing to the floor. The dog makes no attempt to evade him, allowing his kneeling form to hug it.
Suppression be damned.
He wails till he is hoarse and cries till his eyes burn.
When Kakashi wakes up again, it is to the fallen blue blanket wrapped around him once more. He has no memory of when he let go of the dog, or when he fell asleep.
Kakashi gazes expectantly at the yard expecting to find the phantoms from the night before.
To no avail. The yard was now back to its brown, disappointing self.
The only remnants from the previous night are an unfamiliar warmth lingering around his shoulders and knees.
He doesn’t question it but thinks it is too soft to be from his father.
And for once in months, he doesn’t feel so alone now.