The man reached out one long, well-muscled arm and stroked the cheek of Daisy, who stood staring at him in a daze.

That gentle touch, tender enough for the most delicate and fragile of things, contrasted with the rough texture of his palm in a way that left Daisy feeling dizzy beyond words.

Those well-shaped, deep red lips parted again.

“Take responsibility.”

“…Pardon?”

Daisy blinked at the man in front of her.

Take responsibility?

Daisy had done nothing that would make her responsible for a man this large. She was certain she had never met this man before today. What exactly was she supposed to take responsibility for with a man she had just met?

“U, um.”

She was even stumbling over her own words without meaning to.

“I think you might have me confused with someone else? I, I don’t know who you are, but…”

“Every time I open and close my eyes, I think of you. I cannot forget a single one of your sensations.”

He moved a little closer to Daisy, slowly and with a carefulness that seemed at odds with his size.

Then, the way one lowers their head to drink from a spring, he slowly bent down and buried his nose between Daisy’s neck and shoulder, and breathed in.

A faint animal scent came off him. A scent Daisy knew well, one she had missed.

The large man bent at the waist, yearning for something, and stood pressed close enough to touch her.

Without thinking, Daisy’s hand moved naturally to stroke his back.

Her fingertips caught the faint twitch of finely layered muscle. A body temperature slightly higher than a human’s radiated into her hand and arm.

A warmth and temperature she knew well. This felt just like…

“Ru…ik?”

“You have to take responsibility. You have completely occupied my mind.”

He let out a low, amused laugh and pressed his forehead to hers, as though he had been waiting for that name to leave her lips. Like a large dog being affectionate, or rather a wolf. And indeed, that was what he was.

“Isn’t that right? My Daisy. You said you would take responsibility for me to the end. Yes, it’s me. Ruik is back. No, I had no choice but to come back. I haven’t forgotten a single thing about you, not for a single moment.”

He spoke gently, but there was something precarious and fierce about him.

He had wrapped an arm around Daisy’s waist now, and tilted his head. His short, fine black hair fell with a soft whisper. His eyes gleamed dangerously, holding her captive.

“Or are you saying you’ll throw me away now, after all this? Hm? Say it, my master.”

Daisy couldn’t say a word and swallowed hard. Impossibly, unbelievably, he was…

“…Are you really Ruik?”

He was the big dog Daisy had taken in and cared for!

Ruik, the man who had just been asked that question, held Daisy’s gaze with a playful look and let out a short laugh.

“Do I seem fake?”

“No, that’s, that’s not it, but… How did this happen?”

If Daisy went around telling people ‘The dog I lost came back as a person. And a strikingly handsome one at that,’ she would have a hard time escaping the label of a madwoman.

Daisy herself would be willing to call anyone who said such a thing a madwoman.

But this man’s scent, this man’s warmth, this man’s touch, his eyes, all of it told her that this man was Ruik. Daisy could never mistake another dog, or rather another person, for Ruik. No matter what anyone said, this man was Ruik. It was him.

“Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you, where on earth did you go to end up like this…”

At that moment, something soft touched Daisy’s lips as she stumbled through her words.

It was Ruik’s lips.

“Mmph.”

Ruik’s lips did not stop at simply pressing against hers. Before Daisy could even feel flustered, a long, supple tongue pushed through the gap between her lips and slipped inside.

His tongue stroked the roof of her mouth softly.

Each time the tip of his tongue grazed the roof of her mouth, Daisy felt an unidentifiable sensation in her lower belly and her body gave a small shudder. It was a strange feeling, somewhere between a tickle and an ache.

“Mm, mmh…”

Held entirely in his arms, her pounding heart pressed against his right chest, Daisy kissed him back as though she were being consumed. Before she knew it, he had gently wound his tongue around hers and tangled them together.

Saliva trailed from the corner of Daisy’s mouth. Wet, slick sounds came from between their lips each time they parted by a fraction and then pressed back together, hot and insistent.

Daisy’s cheeks burned, and the heat spread all the way to the roots of her ears. Her eyes were neither closed nor open, caught somewhere in between. All she could see was Ruik’s long, delicate lashes.

After a long moment, Ruik finally pulled his lips away with evident reluctance.

“…Haah.”

The moment their lips parted, Daisy drew in a deep, gasping breath. Even as she caught her breath, the heat and strange sensation he had poured into her through that kiss still lingered in her lower belly, and her legs trembled.

“Wh, what…”

“I couldn’t do it before. My body wasn’t built for speech.”

Ruik whispered in her ear, pressing kiss after kiss to her cheek with an air of finding her unbearably endearing.

“The wolf form and the human form, both of them are me. You treated me like a puppy, for some reason.”

And Ruik laughed again. Daisy’s ears burned all over again.

After laughing for a moment, Ruik suddenly met Daisy’s eyes and turned serious.

“I knew you were looking for me, but I couldn’t come sooner. There were circumstances… I’m sorry, Master. I mean it.”

Those eyes held nothing but unfeigned sincerity.

“Will you forgive me?”

“……”

While Daisy stood unable to react to everything crashing over her all at once, Ruik took her hand and held it briefly, then let go, as though reluctant to release it.

“I’m sorry for appearing out of nowhere and doing as I pleased. But I couldn’t help it. Until today, until this moment of seeing you again, it truly felt like I had been holding back for an eternity.”

“Ruik…”

“You have no idea how much I missed the sound of your voice calling my name. My Master.”

Ruik pressed his lips to Daisy’s forehead.

Unlike the deep, consuming kiss from before, the lips that touched her forehead were reverent and tender.

“I will never disappear on my own again.”

It was less a reassurance to Daisy than an expression of the love welling up in Ruik, impossible to contain.

*   *   *

“……”

Daisy opened her eyes in bed.

It was Daisy’s room on the second floor of the flower shop, unchanged in every way. The sunlight was exactly as bright as the day before, and the clock’s hands sat at the same time Daisy had woken up yesterday.

In other words, it was a perfectly ordinary morning.

Not the kind of morning that follows a night of kissing a strikingly handsome stranger who appeared out of nowhere in front of her house.

‘I must have missed Ruik too much. Dreaming about a man who looks like Ruik…’

Daisy scratched her head and got up. It was a little embarrassing to have had a dream like that, but what of it. Dreams were a place no one else could look into.

Daisy put on her slippers and headed downstairs still in her pajamas, yawning as she went.

But about halfway down the stairs, she noticed something different from usual. She caught the rich, nutty scent of freshly brewed coffee.

‘Huh? Is someone in the house?’

That couldn’t be right. After the Malcolm incident, Daisy always bolted the door from the inside and checked it several times before going to bed.

But her memory of last night was strangely hazy, so maybe she had forgotten to check.

‘A burglar?’

A burglar who brewed coffee in someone else’s house would have to be out of their mind. Just as Daisy’s legs were stiffening with dread, the human Ruik from her dream appeared downstairs, perfectly at ease.

“You’re up? I was about to wake you.”

“……”

Unbelievably, Ruik had even wrapped Daisy’s spotted mint-colored apron snugly around his large frame.

Ruik stood holding a coffee pot in one hand and a spatula in the other, and smiled when he saw Daisy.

“Go wash your face. I made breakfast.”

“…Excuse me, um, who… are you?”

“Didn’t we settle that last night?”

Ruik gave an exaggerated shrug at the blank-faced Daisy.

“If you don’t remember, I’ll help you remember again. But you might want to wash your face first. You’re cute like this too, though.”

“Really? You’re really Ruik? This isn’t a dream?”

“I have never once existed only in your dreams.”

Ruik smiled with a hint of mischief.

“Have I?”

“H, how did you get in, why did you come in…”

“This is my home too, isn’t it? Surely you’re not planning to throw me out just because I look different now. Are you, Master.”

Daisy was at a loss for words.

When he was a dog, it had been perfectly natural for him to come inside and live there, but she had never said he could come in looking like this. But that dog and this man in front of her were the same person, and yet…

Her head was spinning. Daisy ran into the bathroom and plunged her face into the washbasin. Half hoping that if this was all a dream, this would be the moment she woke up from it.