Anger Management Therapy
"Hung……?"
"The hell is this."
"That mouth of yours runs remarkably free, I must say."
Joe shot out of the carrier and went straight to picking a fight, and the animals stared at him as if they couldn't quite believe what they were seeing.
"Sir. What is this one, sir?"
"Name's Joe. A friend's dog — I'm watching him for a few days. Nasty temper on him. Figured I'd try to fix it."
"Temper does seem genuinely foul, sir."
Cheongho looked as though he agreed completely.
Joe, having caught the exchange, flared right back up into a rage.
"Hey! What'd you just say! Say it again! Whose personality is what? You wanna die?!"
He charged me and sank his teeth into my foot, gnawing furiously to make his anger known. I was wearing socks, though, and Joe's bite force was pathetic beyond words. All I felt was a tickle.
I paid him not the slightest mind and looked over Cheongho and the rest of them.
"He'll be here the next three days. While he is, I want you lot to educate him. Just kill that temper dead. Don't hurt him, though. No injuries — moderate. Moderate, you hear me?"
"Just leave it to me, sir!"
Cheongho brought his right forepaw up beside his head as if snapping a salute, confidence rolling off him.
Whether that display rubbed him the wrong way or not, Joe promptly retargeted onto Cheongho.
"Leave it to you? Leave what! Die!"
He clamped down at random on the left forepaw Cheongho had planted on the floor, but Cheongho, as expected, didn't so much as notice.
"All right. Look after him."
Thinking how thoroughly dependable Cheongho was, I headed up to the bedroom.
"So-eun! Night-night with Daddy!"
She hated the smell of alcohol, and she let me know it with a kick.
Look at our girl. Healthy as anything!
That kick hurt more than Joe's biting ever had, and still I found it rather heartwarming.
I'd handed Joe over to the animals, but I couldn't help worrying all the same. He wasn't the sort to get along with the others the way every animal I'd brought home before him had, and I kept fretting that someone would lose patience, get worked up, and take it out on him. Worse, Joe wasn't even mine — he belonged to the vice-captain — which only made me worry more.
So I checked in on him and the others at regular intervals.
"What're you lookin' at! Drop your eyes! Oh, you're not dropping 'em? Ignoring me 'cause I'm small? You wanna die?"
"……………………Moron."
These days even blinking was too much trouble for Natae, who simply stared off into empty air, and Joe had hurled abuse at him for it. True to form, the reply arrived late enough that it only made Joe angrier.
"I'll kill you!"
Boiling over, he charged straight at Natae and bit into that fluffy belly. True to his toy-breed size, the little Chihuahua's assault was doing a bit of damage — not enough, of course, to actually wound Natae.
"……………Ah."
He had, however, managed to draw an annoyed reaction out of him. Belly bitten, Natae stared blankly for a moment, eyes blinking slow — and then, all at once, he fluttered into motion.
"Kwek!"
The one who paid for that movement was Joe. In a flash, Natae kicked away the dog still clamped onto his belly.
"D-did you see that? Natae moved!"
"Oh, come on, don't lie. When have you ever seen Natae move?"
"I'm telling you, he just did!"
"You even get it on video? No proof, and what does that make it?"
"I mean……"
A few of the customers in the café had seen Natae move, and they were openly aghast. Natae never moved — only when he wanted to be carried somewhere in someone's arms, or when he was chewing a treat — and he had just moved with actual agility. Shock was the only reasonable response. If I hadn't been watching him myself, I certainly wouldn't have believed it either.
In any case, kicked clear, Joe went skidding across the smooth tile. He slid a fair distance before he finally stopped, bumping into something with a soft thunk.
"Ghk! I won't let this go!"
He flared all over again and made to charge Natae — and would have, if the next blow hadn't come in from right beside him.
"Kwek!"
"You crash into somebody and just walk off?"
"Y-you — who the hell are you! Ghk!"
Thrown by the hit that had suddenly buried itself in his flank, Joe snarled and turned on his attacker.
"'Fore you ask who I am, you bump into somebody, you apologize first. Cocky little shit."
"Cocky? I won't let you get away with—kek!"
He tried to spit his fury at Namcat, the one who had struck him. Namcat was not, however, the sort to stand around and watch.
Namcat could throw a Nyangnyang Punch at anyone who wasn't So-eun, and he did it with perfect impartiality. He didn't hesitate for a second.
"Kyaak! Kang!"
He laid into Joe as if he meant to pound the dog into rice cake on the spot.
"Ghk! J-just you wait!"
Taking several Nyangnyang Punches a second, Joe ground his teeth at Namcat, who strolled off with his tail swaying in deep satisfaction. The moment Namcat glanced back, of course, Joe bolted as if fleeing for his life.
Looks like treatment's actually possible.
Watching that, I was certain Joe's anger disorder could be cured. The way you treated a thing like that was by teaching fear — making them learn it, then planting, good and firm, the recognition that the moment they let their rage out, it came back on them. And there was no reason that work had to pass through my hands at all. The animals were already carrying it out faithfully.
"Move! This is mine! Get lost!"
"Wh-what the—!"
The raccoon stared in bewilderment at Joe, who had suddenly set his sights on its food bowl — the reaction of a creature that had never once had its bowl taken by anyone. The bewilderment didn't last. If any animals were as food-crazed as Namcat, it was the raccoons.
"Oi! You think you fight that good, do ya? Get out here!"
"Kwek!"
Joe, coveting their kibble, was seized by raccoon paws and dragged in, and the beating that followed left him no choice but to scream.
"Kwaaaah!"
Unable to endure two raccoons smacking him about like a pair of slaps to the face, he turned tail and ran. The price of stealing a few pieces of kibble was dozens of those slaps.
"Damn it……!"
Having somehow escaped, he ground his teeth in frustration and slunk off to prowl somewhere else. Into his line of sight came Cheongho, hauling a wagon. The moment Joe saw him, he charged and rammed the wagon — thud! Or rather, not a thud. A tap.
"State your business."
"And what, pray, do you think you are doing?"
"What manner of deed is this-sha!"
Cheongho, Yubu, and O-gito looked at the dog who had just collided with the wagon. No — they glared. So far as they were concerned, what Joe had just done was nothing short of an attack on So-eun, even if she herself was fast asleep and oblivious to all of it.
"You're a disgrace to dogs! Hauling a thing like that around! I'll punish you myself! Die!"
He threw himself at Cheongho without a care for the fact that the shepherd was several times — no, several dozen times — his size. He bit down, but to his misfortune, piercing that tough hide was simply not a thing that happened.
"Die! I won't let you get away with—gyak!"
Needless to say, Cheongho had no intention of letting him be. Someone messing with him, he might overlook. Messing with So-eun, he would not. Even if there was no actual harm, Cheongho took issue with the act itself.
"Watch that mouth. Anyone who lays a paw on the Young Mistress does not walk away."
He lightly pinned the dog gnawing on him beneath one forepaw. The Chihuahua, not even fully grown, was crushed under it and let out a grotesque sound.
"Gueeeek! L-let me go!"
Joe thrashed and shrieked, but there was no escaping from under that paw. And Cheongho wasn't the only one his latest stunt had set off. Yubu came down on a rustle of wings, and the other rabbits — every one of them except I-gito, stuck fast to the sleeping So-eun — came pouring down in a rush.
"Keep your paw right where it is, Cheongho. He ought to be made to understand just whom he has dared to touch, would you not agree."
"You touched the baby? You wish to die-sha!"
"We will not let this stand-sha!"
"The baby hasn't woken, so we won't kill you-sha!"
"We'll correct this ruffian's habits-sha!"
Yubu and the rabbits fixed him with terrifying eyes.
"……Gulp."
Realizing, far too late, that something had gone very wrong, Joe went tense. It changed nothing. He was going to pay, and pay dearly, for what he had done. Cheongho, Yubu, and four of the Tokkiz laid into him together.
"Kwaaaah! P-please spare me!"
Only after taking that beating could he feel something larger than his anger.
"Pull a stunt like this again and I will not let it slide."
"I'm sorryyyyy!"
At Cheongho's low warning, Joe fled without a backward glance.
The whole ordeal had, of course, only stoked the rage in his gut — but that rage had no choice but to die down fast. Every time he dragged it out, something worse than the rage came back at him. He rammed Hanmu, sunning himself, and took the worse of the impact himself; he provoked the geese and got thrashed all over again; he mouthed off at the other dogs and got crushed once more. He couldn't even think about letting his anger out. On top of that, fooling around nearby, he had grated on Namcat's nerves more than once and found himself locked in an ongoing conversation with Namcat conducted entirely in blows. Fear growing larger than anger was only natural.
In the end, from that point on, Joe never expressed his rage again.
"Hehe, Boss. Have you eaten? Y-yes, sir! I'll be going now, sir!"
He had become a little servile, granted.
Anyway. The anger disorder's cured, hasn't it.
I took Joe — now incapable of showing so much as a flicker of rage — and went to find the vice-captain.
"Whoa! Are you really our Joe?"
"Master! I missed you! That place is hell! I'll be good, so please don't ever send me back!"
Whether being tormented by the animals had been that much of a shock, Joe refused to be parted from him. He clung close, even laying on the charm, and the vice-captain looked thoroughly satisfied.
"I had no idea our Joe was such an affectionate boy. Thank you! I'll be sure to pay you back later!"
"Uh……. Sure."
Joe avoided my eyes as if he couldn't stand the sight of me — more precisely, as if he never wanted to follow me and be tormented by the animals again — and I left him there and headed home.