Not the distant past.

The next day was a wedding, so Daisy was swamped from morning to night.

To be precise, it wasn’t Daisy’s wedding. The bride was the second daughter of the head of the Rohum Trading Company, the wealthiest merchant in the district, and Daisy was one of the florists who had taken on the massive flower order for the ceremony.

Although the opportunity to supply the bridal bouquet had gone to a more established and larger flower shop, Daisy had still secured a considerable amount of work, including the flower petal baskets for the flower girls and the floral arrangements for the officiant’s podium.

“Mmm.”

Daisy rubbed her tired eyes with the back of her hand and glanced at the clock.

Running a small flower shop without a single clerk and handling every task herself, she had lost track of time, and it was already well past closing, nearly ten o’clock at night.

‘Alright. I’ve finished everything I needed to do. I just have to wake up early tomorrow morning and make the delivery.’

Daisy tidied up the workbench, then straightened her back and stood up.

Her lower back ached, and her whole body felt stiff and heavy. She stretched out her arms with a long yawn, wiped her hands on a towel stained green, and headed for the front door. The first floor of the two-story building was the flower shop, and the second floor was her home, so all she had to do was lock up the first floor and she was done for the day.

Daisy stood on her tiptoes to fasten the lock at the top of the front door, then pressed down the latch on the door handle, and with a tired but light heart, made her way toward the back door.

But her footsteps stopped, about two meters short of the back door.

‘…What is that?’

Something outside was making a strange, low growling sound. It came intermittently, but just when she thought it had stopped, it started up again.

At first, she thought the water pump in the backyard had broken down again. But as she stood still and listened for a moment, she could tell it was the rough, ragged breathing of some animal.

The moment she realized that, goosebumps prickled up along her spine.

‘What’s going on?’

In an era where horses, donkeys, and mules served as common means of transport, encountering animals was nothing out of the ordinary. But no matter how long she listened, that low growl did not sound like the breathing of any herbivore.

On top of that, an unpleasant smell crept in through the gap of the slightly open back door. The smell of blood.

Daisy’s palms grew damp with sweat.

‘The door, I need to lock the door….’

She couldn’t see what was behind the door, but her instincts told her it was a dangerous animal.

Yet she couldn’t quite muster the decisive courage to act. Her body had gone rigid as a block of wood, and the growling beyond the door showed no sign of retreating. If anything, it seemed to grow louder, rooted firmly in place.

How much time had passed?

She couldn’t stand here in a standoff all night. At last, Daisy gathered her courage.

‘Just run over and slam the door shut. All I have to do is drop the latch. I’ll run on three. One, two….’

Three! The moment she counted it in her head, Daisy lunged forward. Her fingertips were just about to reach the door latch.

Bang!

“Eek!”

The door suddenly swung wide open inward.

Daisy shrieked in surprise and tumbled to the floor. But before she could even register the pain.

“Grrrr…!”

“Ugh!”

A fierce, furious snarl rang out right in front of her face.

Daisy instinctively threw her arms over her head, curled her body inward, and squeezed her eyes shut.

But even as she huddled there trembling for a long moment, nothing happened.

“……?”

Daisy slowly lowered her arms.

At her feet lay a massive, shaggy creature, and even lying flat on the ground, its body rose to roughly the same height as Daisy sitting on the floor.

The beast lay sprawled out, breathing roughly, and stared at Daisy with a pair of vivid golden eyes. With a look that said it was just as startled as she was.

Straight, triangular ears. A long snout. A thick, fluffy tail. Front paws large enough to cover her entire face. And a body bigger than an actual calf, no matter how you looked at it.

“Oh, it’s just a dog.”

“……”

Daisy let out a sigh of relief.

The creature, which was clearly not the size of any ordinary dog, lifted its head with an expression of pure disbelief, then groaned and dropped back down to the floor.

Daisy looked more closely, puzzled, and noticed that the fur around the back of its neck was soaked through, dark and glistening. Blood.

“Are you hurt?”

Asking wouldn’t get her an answer. Daisy cautiously, hesitantly reached out a hand and stroked the back of the beast’s neck.

The moment her fingertips made contact, the beast lurched roughly and turned its head toward her arm, snapping at her hand. Daisy yanked her hand back in surprise, but then slowly extended it again, running her fingers along the blood-soaked tips of its fur.

“What are we going to do… You’re badly hurt, aren’t you.”

“Uuugh….”

The beast looked displeased, but soon closed its eyes and went still, its chin resting flat against the floor. Watching it for a moment, she could see it whimper now and then but never open its eyes. It seemed to have lost all its strength.

‘If I leave it like this, it’ll be in serious trouble.’

Daisy hesitated for a moment, but soon steeled herself and got to work.

* * *

Daisy was a florist, not an herbalist, but her trade kept her constantly handling blades and risking cuts to her hands, so she always kept a stock of ointments and medicinal herbs that worked well on lacerations.

She used up every last bit of those supplies, boiling water and fetching dry towels and making a tremendous fuss of it all, until dawn finally broke.

“I think it’s past the worst of it….”

Daisy looked at the dog lying flat on the thick blanket in her upstairs bedroom and let out a sigh of relief.

There were no veterinary clinics open in the middle of the night. And even if there were, no doctor in the middle of the capital would treat a dog the size of a calf that wasn’t some noble’s prized pet.

Daisy had no choice but to treat it at home, and fortunately the dog’s wounds were not as deep as they looked.

She had worried about how much blood it had lost, but the dog had lapped up every drop of water she brought it, whimpering all the while. It still had some strength left, so if she fed it well and looked after it for a few days, it would likely recover soon enough.

‘I’ll boil some meat and feed it with the broth. There was some pork I got a few days ago, I think….’

Just then, she heard someone knocking at the front door downstairs.

“Coming!”

Daisy called out and hurried down the stairs.

She opened the front door to find the worker Jon standing right outside.

Jon startled slightly at the sight of her, but quickly composed himself and stated his business.

“I’m here to pick up the flowers.”

“Oh, yes. They’re all ready.”

Jon was the worker Daisy had hired to deliver the flowers to the wedding venue. With no horse, no mule, not even a donkey to her name, there was no way Daisy could haul all the flowers to the venue herself.

Daisy and Jon loaded the finished floral arrangements onto the cargo cart he had brought. After loading all the many flower baskets, she paid him his wages, and Jon tucked the money into his coin pouch, then hesitated a moment before asking.

“By the way, did you sl*ughter a chicken this morning or something?”

“Pardon? A chicken?”

She had been planning to start boiling pork from now, not chicken. But Jon quickly shook his head.

“Never mind, then. I’ll be off to deliver to the venue.”

“Yes, please be careful when you unload.”

“Will do.”

After Jon drove the cart away and she closed the front door again, Daisy absently looked down at herself and understood his question.

The mint-colored apron she wore for work was blotched and stained with dark reddish blood. It was the dog’s blood from the treatment the night before.

“Oh no, and this was my favorite one….”

Daisy made a miserable face, but quickly shook it off and untied the apron.

‘Can’t be helped. I’ll try washing it while the meat boils.’

She scrubbed the apron vigorously the entire time a large chunk of pork simmered in the kitchen, but the bloodstains refused to come out. After a desperate battle of laundering with cold water and cleaning agents, the stains faded to a faint, hazy shadow of their former selves.

‘It’s fine since I can still wear it.’

Daisy consoled herself, lifted the meat out of the water to let it cool, and in the meantime went outside to hang the apron on the clothesline.

In the chaos of the night, she hadn’t noticed, but now that dawn had broken, she could see blood smeared messily across the floor of the hallway leading to the back door.

‘I’ll need to clean that too. I was planning to close the shop today anyway….’

Daisy let out a long sigh and stepped outside, careful to avoid the pooled blood on the floor.

After hanging the apron and cleaning up all the blood in the hallway and backyard, exhaustion came crashing over her. Daisy washed up quickly, then trudged upstairs with the bowl of meat, one weary step at a time.

The large black dog was still lying on the floor, out cold in a deep sleep. It growled and groaned now and then as though in pain, but never opened its eyes.