Read Online Nan-Core by Mahokaru Numata - Free Book Online Page B

years to mind, it was overlaid by another, an image of a young woman in a flowery dress, like a double exposure photograph. Short, wavy hair. Pale arms. One arm held that handbag, and she had a folded parasol in her hand. While I could tell she was smiling, her face was hazy: blank, whitish, with no eyes or mouth but looking at me and smiling regardless. At the bottom of my memories undulated a lapping fusion of sadness and fear.
    Had someone really switched with Mom? If so, what had happened to the woman who was my mother until I was four?
    My mind raced in circles, always coming back to these same questions. I let out a sigh. I’d been sighing all day.
    I wondered if I was somehow intent on convincing myself it was all true: the contents of the notebooks, the memory of someone replacing Mom. With my mother dead from a car accident, Chie gone, Dad ill and getting weaker, Gran with dementia, and my business teetering on the brink of collapse, maybe all I wanted to do was lose myself in the fantasy and escape the reality around me.
    One of the dogs had started barking outside. They usually just ran around, so it was rare that they made much noise. I checked the clock and saw it was almost four. I stood up in shock. I had come up saying I’d only take an hour, but I was already long past that.
    Halfway down the stairs, I heard more barking and began to worry. Trouble between the dogs had to be settled before it got out of hand and became a real problem. One time, the hysteria had spread to all the dogs in the field and it had almost reached the point of bloodshed. The excitement had been quick to die down and the dogs went back to being their usual selves, but it had been a different story for the owners. They started to criticize each other for not disciplining their animals properly, and a number wouldn’t let the issue go. A few even cancelled their memberships over it.
    When I got to the field, however, I found that nothing was amiss. The barking was just a pair of Miniature Schnauzers pestering their owner to throw a ball for them to fetch. The sun was still high with interspersed clouds that were dazzlingly white.
    Nachi was off to one side, trying to get a Shiba to run through a thick tube we’d put there as a plaything. The dog’s owner stood next to them, a woman and quite a looker. I supposed Nachi had said goodbye to Clutch for the day.
    The Shiba was frightened to go into the wide bit of collapsible tubing, but Nachi was already an old hand at this—he was part-time staff but had worked at the cafe from the beginning. The dog kept glancing up at him looking for a chance to escape, but Nachi’s quiet assertiveness eventually tamed him.
    Watching the scene I felt a breeze blow softly through my over-heated head. Ms. Hosoya walked over with perfect timing, placing a coffee on the empty table beside me. I took a grateful sip as the Shiba disappeared again into the tubing, spurred on by the taste of his initial success and followed thistime by a succession of dogs, their curiosity piqued.
    The customers with drinks on the tables on the veranda seemed to be enjoying the show, and the pretty owner of the Shiba looked impressed as she thanked Nachi. He replied that it was nothing, pulling a quick salute-like gesture. It seemed clear that she and most of the other customers thought Nachi, with his big frame and even bigger attitude, was the proprietor of Shaggy Head, and to my exasperation he showed no signs of wanting to correct anyone on this.
    A large Retriever ran into the tube, causing the whole thing to wriggle like a worm. One of the customers joked that it was probably stuck, causing everyone to burst out laughing. Most of the other dogs were ambling around the field, looking content with whatever toy they’d been given. They seemed human somehow, perhaps because they looked a bit pathetic.
    Yet everything felt great as it was. To me, the closed-in space full of dogs was a strange kind of utopia. I was certain