“That smile isn’t just cute — it’s the kind that follows you around all day and makes everything better.”

Not found the way people usually mean — in a shelter, in a box, by the side of a road. Kuzu had been found on a Tuesday morning by a woman named Haruko, sitting very politely outside the sliding door of her apartment as though he had an appointment. He did not have a tag. He did not appear to belong to anyone. He wagged his tail at her exactly once, with tremendous dignity, and then walked inside as though the decision had already been made.

It had, apparently, been made.

Haruko put the red collar on him because it was the only one at the convenience store. He had worn it for eleven years. He had never once tried to take it off, which Haruko took as a sign that he approved. She had learned to read him in this way — not through barks or whines, but through the angle of his ears and the exact height of his tail and the particular quality of the look he gave her when she came home.

He was not a dog who worried. That was the thing about Kuzu that people noticed first — the utter absence of anxiety. He walked through the world curious and unhurried, tail curled high, certain in some unshakeable way that things would be fine. Not because he had proof. Simply because he had decided.

On their walks, he stopped to smell everything. Every post, every patch of ground, every gust of air that carried information he found relevant. Haruko had stopped minding the pace long ago. There were worse things, she thought, than being slowed down by someone who found the world endlessly interesting.

Where he had come from, she never found out.
Where he was going, she was fairly certain, was wherever she was.
And he would be smiling the whole way.