Dog

Dog, whom Tomoyasu has named Takeshi, is the beloved companion at the center of a planned electrical experiment that exposes Prince’s power over the schoolchildren around him. The students intend to use a prototype defibrillator on Dog, but the episode is not simply about a device being turned against an animal: Prince has made Tomoyasu’s attachment to his lifelong pet part of the coercion. Kimura’s intervention breaks into that arrangement before the experiment proceeds, making Dog’s immediate rescue the point at which his understanding of learned helplessness gives way to action.

Identity and Bond with Tomoyasu

Dog is Tomoyasu’s pet and, according to a classmate who explains the situation to Kimura, has been with him for his whole life. Tomoyasu loves Dog deeply. That history gives the proposed test its particular force: Dog is not an interchangeable object selected for a demonstration, but the companion Prince knows Tomoyasu most wants to protect.

The story introduces Dog through the students’ attempt to explain why Kimura should get involved. At first, he understands that they are describing a test involving a dog, but he does not yet grasp that the animal is Tomoyasu’s. Learning the relationship changes his response. He leaves Wataru at home watching television and asks the students to explain what is happening, shifting from dismissal to attention because the danger now concerns a specific animal and the bond between Dog and Tomoyasu.

Prince’s Proposed Test

The students explain that Prince has had the doctor’s child steal a device for use in the park. It is a prototype defibrillator, more powerful than an automatic external defibrillator. Kimura recognizes that the plan involves using it on Dog, though the students’ account reveals a more disturbing sequence: Prince had initially selected Tomoyasu as the test subject.

Tomoyasu did not want to undergo the experiment. He begged Prince to spare him, and Prince appeared to offer that reprieve on the condition that Tomoyasu bring Dog instead. The exchange makes Dog’s selection inseparable from Tomoyasu’s fear and attachment. Kimura understands that demonstrating the device is secondary to Prince’s purpose. By making Tomoyasu supply the beloved pet in his place, Prince can turn Tomoyasu’s attempt to save himself into a test of loyalty and a means of breaking his spirit.

Kimura finds the plan intelligible precisely because its cruelty follows a clear logic: Prince is exploiting what matters most to Tomoyasu. But recognizing that pattern does not make the situation safe or predictable. The classmate accompanying Kimura cautions him against assuming that he can anticipate Prince, and the warning follows him toward the park.

The Park Scene

Kimura finds roughly ten students in a wooded hollow. They have bound Dog to Tomoyasu with duct tape, preparing them together for the experiment. Tomoyasu tries to calm Dog while the others continue; the sight of him attending to his pet affects Kimura. Dog is muzzled with fabric, and the students attach the defibrillator pads to the animal. The quiet, concentrated preparation is not presented as a game. The students are frightened and are participating under pressure.

Their exchanges reveal that the group does not trust itself. One student challenges another’s willingness to carry out the plan and threatens to report him to Prince; the other denies having objected. Kimura connects this mutual suspicion to rule by fear. In his view, a despot’s followers turn their anger and anxiety against potential allies, each trying to avoid being the person punished. The students’ treatment of Dog and Tomoyasu is therefore part of a wider structure of self-protection: they are harming someone else because they fear what refusal might bring.

Tomoyasu’s distress does not stop the preparations. His appeal for the students to leave Dog alone instead appears to intensify the group’s response. Kimura then steps out from behind a tree and approaches them. He presents himself as someone who has come to rescue the dog, placing the animal’s safety plainly at the center of his intervention.

Kimura’s Intervention

The device lies on the ground, with its cords leading to pads attached to Dog. While the students stand uncertainly, Kimura enters the group and pulls the pads away. He then tears the tape binding Dog to Tomoyasu. The adhesive catches in Dog’s fur and the animal struggles as Kimura works it loose, but Kimura succeeds in separating them.

This action marks a change from Kimura’s earlier reluctance to interfere. He had told himself that the students would have to work out their own situation, even as he recognized that fear had taught them to believe resistance was impossible. At the park, that analysis becomes practical: he does not wait for the students to overcome their fear collectively before acting. He interrupts the procedure himself, first removing the instrument and then undoing the restraint that joins Dog to Tomoyasu. The students’ immediate response is to say that Kimura must be stopped; the evidence does not establish what happens next.

Learned Helplessness and Narrative Significance

Dog’s role resonates with Kimura’s recollection of an earlier job guarding a kidnapped man. The man was not tied up and the door was unlocked, yet he remained dazed and did not leave. A relieving guard explained the condition through an experiment in which a dog repeatedly received shocks regardless of its actions; later, even when jumping could avoid the shock, it did not try. The lesson, as Kimura understands it, is that repeated experiences of unavoidable punishment can teach a person—or an animal—to stop attempting escape even when escape becomes possible.

Kimura applies that reasoning to the schoolchildren. They have seen classmates and adults suffer under Prince, and the electric shocks are part of the pressure that has convinced them they are powerless. Dog’s presence makes the connection concrete without making the animal and the students identical: Dog is a real target of the planned test, while Kimura’s earlier example gives him a way to understand how repeated punishment can suppress action. At the park, Dog is physically restrained and exposed to the device; the students, though not bound in the same way, are constrained by their expectation of punishment and by their distrust of one another.

The episode gives Dog importance both as Tomoyasu’s companion and as the immediate life placed at risk by Prince’s plan. The animal’s bond with Tomoyasu supplies the leverage Prince exploits, while the physical preparations make the threatened harm impossible for Kimura to treat as an abstract exercise in school politics. His intervention does not resolve the wider system of fear, and the scene ends with the students turning their attention toward him. It does, however, interrupt the experiment and separate Dog from the procedure that Prince has arranged.