Through the curtain of rain, another sound seemed to tremble faintly into being.
It slipped in under the hiss and patter, fragile and thin.
"Ginevra, do you hear something weird?" Jaynara Stevens turned her head, her hand still curled lightly around the handle of the umbrella they shared.
Ginevra Volkova stopped walking and listened carefully.
"I do," she said after a moment.
Night hung low over the narrow side street. The drizzle blurred the edges of everything, turning the world into layers of grey glass. This wasn't a main road—few cars passed this way—so apart from the steady rainfall, other sounds could still surface if you listened closely enough.
It was a kind of whimpering.
On and off.
Like the faint, broken cry of some small animal.
"Look," Jayna breathed. "Over there… isn't that a puppy?"
She pointed ahead.
Under the dull, amber glow of a streetlamp, something small and pale was huddled against the side of the pavement. If you didn't look closely, it was easy to miss—a little white bundle, shifting now and then, almost imperceptibly.
Ginevra opened her mouth to say something, but Jayna was already moving.
"Hey—"
Too late.
She darted forward, forgetting about the rain entirely, and ran toward the streetlamp.
"Ginevra, come quick!" she called. "It is a puppy—and it's so tiny…"
She had already dropped into a crouch in the pool of yellow light, her school skirt brushing against the damp concrete.
Ginevra had no choice but to follow.
She walked over and lifted the umbrella so it covered Jayna first, letting the wind and rain hit her from the side. Then she leaned down to get a better look at the little creature pressed against the ground.
It was small enough to fit barely into two hands.
A nearly snow-white puppy, its fur soaked through, with just one little tuft of black down that stood out like a smudge of ink right on top of its head.
It was heartbreakingly small, only a little bigger than Jayna's palm—probably newly weaned.
"Look how tiny it is… and it's raining like this."
Jayna carefully slipped her hands under the quivering bundle.
The puppy's fur was wet and chilly; its whole body was curled up tight, trembling uncontrollably in her warm palms. From time to time, it let out a soft, miserable whine, the sound almost vanishing before it reached the air.
Ginevra's gaze lifted from the puppy and swept the surroundings.
In the shadow of the nearby apartment wall, she noticed a soggy cardboard box slumped half-collapsed against the corner.
"This was planned," she thought.
Not far from a residential block.
Someone had brought the puppy out, tucked it into a box with a thin blanket to ease their conscience, and then walked away.
Abandonment, disguised as kindness.
"There's a convenience store over there," Ginevra said, nodding toward a small twenty-four-hour UnionMart across the street. "Let's go there first. You take the umbrella."
She handed the umbrella into Jayna's free hand and, with her own shoulders exposed to the rain, crossed to fetch the cardboard box from the wall.
Inside lay a damp little blanket that still held a trace of warmth.
"Someone really did leave it here on purpose," Jayna murmured when she looked inside. "They even put a blanket in. And then just… left."
She sighed, holding the puppy closer to her chest as though she could share her body heat through her uniform.
"Let's get it out of the rain first," Ginevra said.
"Okay."
Jayna nodded quickly.
With Ginevra walking ahead, carrying the box, and Jayna trotting beside her, cradling the puppy and trying to angle the umbrella over both of them, they hurried toward the pool of warm light spilling from the convenience store's glass doors.
"Welcome!"
The chime above the door sounded, and a bright, clear female voice greeted them as they stepped into the convenience store.
The warm air inside smelled faintly of coffee and instant noodles.
They shook the water off the umbrella at the entrance and left it in the stand. Ginevra went straight to the refrigerated section, picking out a bottle of hot milk from the heated shelf.
Jayna, meanwhile, walked up to the counter with the puppy still nestled in her arms.
The cashier, a young woman in her twenties, looked up and froze for a second.
"Wow, what a cute puppy," she exclaimed, eyes lighting up.
Hope flared in Jayna's chest.
"Um… excuse me," she said quickly, almost tripping over her words. "We found it near the apartments next door. Do you… want to adopt it?"
She added, a little apologetically in her head: Because I can't.
Her own family didn't allow pets. Mrs Rose was allergic to animal fur; even a visit from a neighbor's cat made her eyes water and nose run.
As for Ginevra…
No, she couldn't picture her with a dog at home either.
The cashier's expression turned apologetic almost immediately.
"I'm sharing an apartment with friends," she said. "We're not allowed to have animals. I'm really sorry."
"Oh."
The little spark in Jayna's heart flickered and dimmed.
She lowered her head, stroking the puppy's damp fur with one thumb as she watched Ginevra walk over with the milk.
Ginevra opened the bottle and poured some into the small dish that had originally been in the cardboard box. The milk steamed faintly in the cool air.
Jayna quickly set the puppy down beside it, guiding its muzzle toward the dish.
"Can we leave the puppy here?" she asked, turning back to the cashier with clear, earnest eyes. "Just… for a while? Maybe someone kind will adopt it. Or maybe the people who abandoned it will change their mind and come back."
She fed the puppy gently as she spoke, her voice soft but determined.
The cashier studied the two girls in their damp school uniforms—their backpacks, their tired faces, the way they hovered protectively around the shivering ball of fur.
She didn't have the heart to refuse.
"Mm… well," she said slowly, "I can let it stay until half past ten. Once my shift's over and I hand over to the next person, I can't guarantee they'll agree. Our manager doesn't really like cats or dogs."
Jayna checked the clock on the wall.
There were still several hours until ten-thirty. In that time, people would be coming in and out, grabbing drinks, snacks, cigarettes—most of them would notice the puppy.
If she was lucky, one of them might fall in love with it at first sight.
"Do you think someone will adopt it?" she asked quietly.
"Hard to say," Ginevra replied.
Her tone was calm, almost neutral, but she didn't look away from the puppy.
"I can't have a dog at home," Jayna said. "Can you?"
Ginevra's eyes dropped.
She stayed silent.
That alone was enough of an answer.
Back home, Jayna sat at her desk and stared at the clock on the wall.
Her textbooks were spread out in front of her, but the pages stayed blank in her mind.
All she could see was a trembling white ball under a blanket, in a cardboard box on a convenience store floor.
She had no idea whether anyone had adopted it or not.
The uncertainty made her restless.
She kept telling herself not to be selfish, not to drag a puppy into a house where someone would sneeze and itch and try to be polite about it.
But knowing that didn't ease the knot in her chest.
She picked up her phone. Her thumbs moved almost on their own.
—Are you there? Do you think someone will adopt the puppy?
She typed the words into the chat window, the little cursor blinking at the end of the sentence.
Then she glanced at the time.
10:05 p.m.
Ginevra was probably still studying.
Panic flickered through her for no logical reason. She hurriedly pressed delete, watching the message vanish before it could be sent.
On the other side of town, Ginevra stared at her screen for a moment, the empty chat window faintly lit.
She exhaled silently, then closed her book.
The pages shut with a soft thud.
She rose, moving soundlessly across her room, and eased the door open, careful not to make the hinges creak.
In the dim hallway, she took a black umbrella from the stand by the door. Her fingers had barely closed around the handle when something moved quickly in the darkness behind her.
A bulky shadow lunged.
A fist cut through the air, swinging straight toward her shoulder with no hesitation, full of force.
Anyone else would've taken the blow square on.
Ginevra's body dropped forward in an instant.
She bent at the waist, the punch slicing through empty space above her back.
Her hands shot out, reversing the grip to clamp around the attacker's wrist. With a sharp jerk, she dragged the person forward, using their own momentum.
They both went crashing to the floor.
But Ginevra caught herself on one elbow, absorbing the impact.
Before the stranger could even react, she had already shifted, one hand tightening around the most vulnerable point of their body—the neck.
With the other, she snatched up the fallen umbrella, fingers closing around the cold handle.
In a blink, she raised it, the tip hovering right above the person's exposed throat.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa—hey! You serious?"
The person sprawled on the floor yelped, voice low and rough, coughing a couple of times for emphasis.
Only then did Ginevra lower the umbrella.
Her face remained expressionless as she reached over and flicked on the hallway light.
The overhead lamp blinked to life, flooding the space with warm yellow.
Her father, Mr. Volkova, sat on the floor rubbing his back, grimacing dramatically.
He stretched out a hand toward her, pretending to look deeply wronged, a picture of wounded dignity.
Ginevra ignored it.
He sighed and hauled himself up on his own, groaning under his breath.
"Impressive," he said at last, bending his broad frame slightly as he shuffled toward the living room. The fall had left his steps a little unsteady. He sank down onto the sofa and rubbed his spine with a wince. "You still managed to dodge that. You've improved a lot."
Ginevra flexed the wrist that had taken the brunt of the movement, feeling the faint ache in the tendons.
"If I didn't dodge, would you be driving me to the hospital?" she replied coolly.
A flicker of something like pride flashed behind the mock injury in his eyes.
He pulled a suitably aggrieved face, as though he'd been terribly wronged.
"I just wanted to mess around with my daughter a little," he grumbled. "No fun at all."
He paused, then squinted at her.
"So late and you're still heading out?"
Ginevra looked at him quietly for a few seconds, thinking.
"Dad, I want to talk to you about something," she said.
He straightened at once, all playfulness disappearing, replaced by quick interest.
"What is it?" he asked, grinning broadly.
"I want to have a dog," she said.
She hesitated, then added, a shade faster, "When it grows up. We can keep it at the shop, let it watch the place for you."
For a moment, he just stared at her.
Then the surprise melted into something softer.
His daughter rarely asked for anything.
The fact that she wanted a dog…
And another creature in the shop would make things livelier anyway.
"All right," he said. "But pick one that's not too fierce. Don't want it scaring the customers away."
Ginevra nodded.
Then she reached for the umbrella again and stepped out into the night.
She walked quickly, her footsteps light but urgent, eyes flicking to her watch every few minutes.
By the time she turned the corner and saw the soft glow of the convenience store sign again, her breath had quickened slightly.
As she reached the automatic door, the cashier from earlier stepped out, shrugging on a jacket.
"Hey, you're that high schooler from before, right?" the woman said, recognizing her at once. The girl's delicate, distant features were difficult to forget; there was something quietly aloof about her that set her apart. "What's wrong?"
"Excuse me," Ginevra said, her voice calm but edged with urgency. "Is the puppy still here?"
"Oh, yes, it's still inside," the cashier said. "I talked to the manager. He saw how pitiful it was and decided to let it stay until the rain stops."
She turned and pointed toward the glass window.
Behind it, in a little display area near the counter, the small white puppy lay curled on its blanket, eyes half-closed, belly rounded now with warm milk.
Ginevra's shoulders eased.
She let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"I'll adopt it," she said.