that led up to her death, my usual sense of discomfort melted away, and everything seemed pure and bright, all the trees and stones in the garden, the sky and the whole world beyond it. Mysteriously, I could sense that that was the true form of the world. It felt like a miracle to be standing there, right in the center of the world as it really was. The sensation lasted only until the pond grew quiet.
After the funeral, everyone stopped going to Michiru’s house to play. Sometime later I hugged Nana, the first time I had done so in a while. She had become an elderly woman even though she was still a girl. The red enamel on her lips was faded and patches of her blond hair had come out, revealing her scalp and the pimple-like holes where the bunches had been inserted.
I dropped Nana from a stone bridge into the dirty river that ran by my house. Her arms jutted into the air as she floated away, the thin, white, cord-like reeds that covered the riverbed brushing against her back.
Nobody would pour water through her anymore. She wouldflow through the water as it would flow through her, all the way to the ocean, to a deep, dark hole at its floor.
I threw my doll away because the feeling I’d had when Michiru was dying had become my Nan-Core.
In a world full of hostility like shards of glass, I came to think of myself as special, someone who had been selected to protect a special secret. I still didn’t speak much, but my new, warped sense of confidence allowed me to talk normally with my classmates in middle school. The bodies of the other boys and girls all gave off an odor like raw fish, and I knew that mine did, too. But while they were drawn towards sweet things like romance, my desire was, needless to say, only for Nan-Core.
I want to experience that again
. That was the only thought I couldn’t shake from my mind. I desperately yearned for it again, that miraculous light that had touched me only while the greenish water of the pond had churned. The well in Michiru’s garden had opened a deep, pitch-black void in my chest before I’d even noticed.
So I waited, impatient for the next sacrificial offering to appear. I didn’t understand why, and there was nothing I could do to stop myself. I suppose all I can say is, that’s just the sort of person I am. And if it wasn’t for a series of insignificant coincidences, I might have anxiously craved it for the rest of my life. Even now I believe that might have been a strong possibility. Yet on a Sunday nearing summer vacation during my freshman year of high school, the cogs of chance snapped together in such a way that made it seem more like someone’s design than mere happenstance.
I was sitting on a bench in the park near the train station, reading a book. There was an unseasonably cool breeze, and the park was bustling with people. I looked up for no reason in particular,and saw a couple of kids that appeared to be brother and sister running, hand in hand, down one of the paths towards me. Unwittingly, I gave a small cry from shock—from her age, to the straight hair that fell on her shoulders, it was startling just how much the girl resembled Michiru.
3
The first notebook abruptly ended there.
I panted as I downed deep breaths. It felt as though I had been so absorbed in reading that I’d forgotten to breathe at all. Confused and puzzled, I ended up gazing meaninglessly at the notebook’s cover.
What
is
this thing?
It was clearly pretty old from the way the paper had yellowed. Based on the fact that the author had grown attached to a doll it made me think it was written by a woman—at the same time, however, the mother was also described as being considerably uncomfortable with it, which could imply that she thought,
It’s ridiculous for a boy to be playing with dolls
.
I wondered if Dad had written it. It could have been a draft for a novel. Dad had worked in the field of accounting his whole life, right up until two years ago when the logistics