Nan-Core

by Mahokaru Numata

  Either way, the address had proved elusive. What little information there was told me I was born in Tokyo’s Kita Ward, but even then the name of the hospital was missing.

  I had already known that our address in Komagawa was listed as our current permanent residence. The transfer had been processed during the move. When I checked in the official copy of the register, the relocation to Komagawa in Nara Prefecture was recorded as being from Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture. Maebashi was Mom’s old house where my grandparents had lived, so there wasn’t anything particularly strange in that.

  I was surprised, however, to find the Maebashi address also listed as the old address on the residency certificate and slips. They’d been living in Tokyo, so why was the Tokyo address not listed?

  At first a number of theories crowded my head. I was suddenly sure of a cover-up, of their doctoring the forms to keep the Tokyo address a secret. Then I remembered the fire. After that they had left the apartment in Tokyo and moved in temporarily with Mom’s parents, so it was possible they listed their residency there at the time. At least the parts fit, if that was the case.

  I was still intent on finding out the Tokyo address, our home before Maebashi. Later in the morning I did some more research online and found out that the Maebashi City Hall had a “Notice of Removal” form that was issued when the family register was moved to Komagawa. If I checked it out, there was a chance I could work out the old address. I was excited, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was a Saturday I would probably have gone straight to Maebashi.

  As things were, there was nothing I could do.

  If it wasn’t for her condition, I could have gone to the nursing home and dropped it into conversation with Gran. Her dementia, however, had gotten so bad she no longer remembered that her daughter, my mother, was dead. The worst thing for me was the fact that my own memory was proving useless. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember a thing from before my hospitalization. Not the house I lived in, not its surroundings, not a single thing. The first memories of my childhood were all from inside the hospital. They were scattered but vivid: the other kids in the ward, the kind nurses, the toy robot Dad brought for me.

  No records, no memories, just a handful of bizarre notebooks …

  With my chin still resting in one hand I picked up the family register. I looked back at the ruthless and businesslike line that had been struck diagonally through the name Misako, my mother’s name. It was painful to see such a stark reminder of the fact of her death, and yet I couldn’t help thinking of what Yohei had said. She had watched me sleeping with a pillow clutched to her chest. I couldn’t find it in my heart to grieve for her death anymore, not properly.

  Whenever I brought her familiar image that I’d absorbed throughout the 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 this time 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 that if I waited here long enough Chie would come back.

  6

  I kept watch from the second-floor window of a coffee shop by the train station, waiting for Dad to show. The area was bustling so I was afraid I might miss him, but at around half past three I caught sight of him in a moss-green polo shirt he often wore. He was making his way towards the station, his back straight, but with less vigor than usual. It seemed demonstrative of his worsening condition. Visiting hours weren’t particularly fixed, but Dad always aimed to get there by five so he could help feed Gran dinner.

  I waited until I was sure he was definitely past the ticket gates before leaving the coffee shop. As I hurried down the road to the house, I kept thinking remorsefully that it still wasn’t too late to turn back. I knew that reading the notebooks to the end could cause irreparable harm. Yet the magnetic allure was still there, in direct conflict with my reservations, powerful enough to physically spur me on.

  Entering through the front door I went directly upstairs and into Dad’s study, without even pausing to put my hands together before Mom’s photograph. The air smelled of cigarettes, so I guessed he’d been smoking there until he went out. When I opened the closet door, everything looked to be just as I’d left it after rushing to put the boxes back a couple of days earlier. I felt weak with relief.

  I pulled out and held the white handbag before retrieving the manila envelope from the bottom of the box. The moment I caught a whiff of the dusty leathe
r I saw the image of the ghost-like woman. The woman wearing the flower-print dress, smiling at me. It was possible she was my mother. My real mother, but probably long dead.

  I didn’t know what to think about her.

  I breathed out, in, out again. I had to stop wasting time.

  I carried the envelope to the window where it was brighter, then took the notebooks out. I chose the one marked with the number two and thumbed quickly through it. I suddenly couldn’t remember how much I’d read, but then I saw the name Mitsuko.

  Oh, right. The protagonist had dissuaded Mitsuko from stealing, and they had been about to leave the store together.

  The moment I started reading I almost dropped the notebook.

  The narrator, the author was a woman!

  It was right there in the text, as plain as day. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the passage that described what the protagonist was wearing. It no longer made sense that this was something Dad had written, that it was his diary …

  All the thoughts I’d put together shattered into pieces. I leaned against the window for a while, my mind blank. I only came back to myself when my phone chimed with a text alert. It was Yohei: Bumped into Dad at Yamato Koriyama, leaving to see Gran now. I typed “OK” in response, my fingers almost comically shaky.

  If the notebooks weren’t a diary it was possible it was a work of fiction, something Dad had written from the perspective of a female character. But no, I still didn’t believe it was made up. I couldn’t shake the gut feeling that, whatever the story was, it was real.

  It had to be someone’s diary. A confession. And if that someone wasn’t Dad, the only alternative was Mom. Who else could it be?

  Still shaken, I started to devour the text.

  “Just that? Come on, then. This one’s on me.”

  There was an apathetic youth manning the register, and I suspected he would have turned a blind eye even if he had caught her shoplifting.

  I hadn’t really been interested in her before, but I had for a while felt that Mitsuko and I were something like kindred spirits. I wondered if the theatrical, mask-like coating of makeup she wore was the flip side of whatever force it was that compelled me to remain hidden. The familiarity she had just displayed might, I mused, be because she sensed the same about me. For some reason, the thought made my pulse race.

  We were walking down the street, side by side after leaving the store, when Mitsuko ripped open the bag of popcorn she had just bought and plunged her hand in and started to munch away.

  “Want some?”

  She held the bag out, so I took a little. We walked a little more, reaching the fountain in front of the art museum.

  “Want to sit?” Mitsuko asked another question, and we found a bench to sit on. Without warning, she reached over and flicked away some popcorn that was stuck to my top.

  “The frills on your blouse are really cute. Where did you get it?” she asked, but went to throw the empty bag into the bin nearby instead of paying attention to my answer. When she got back she pulled open another bag of candy and began to eat them at a leisurely pace. She held the bag out to me with a questioning hum. “So, got any plans for today?”

  I didn’t know how to respond to a question like that.

  “What was your name? I forget.”

  I told her my name, then guessing it might seem strange to leave it at that, followed by asking the question that had been on my mind the whole time. “What happened to your hand?”

  “Oh, this?” She brought her left wrist to her face and examined the bandage where some blood had seeped through. “This was yesterday. I cut myself again.”

  I didn’t say anything, as I didn’t quite follow her meaning. No one talked about cutting back then—I think the trend was yet to set in, or maybe I was just unaware of it.

  Mitsuko poked out her chin, unimpressed with my ignorance. She started to explain wrist-cutting to me, her voice pitched high, child-like. Her makeup was so thick I couldn’t imagine what she’d look like without it. She didn’t look human, it was like an android or something was talking at me.

  She told me she’d first tried it because it was trendy in America. She said she’d kept it up because it made her feel fashionable, because the bandages were cool, and because the bleeding helped clear her head. And before she realized, she was addicted.

  When she finished talking she jumped to her feet and brushed some candy crumbs from her knees, then said “See ya!” and hurried out of sight.

  After that, whenever we saw each other at school Mitsuko would come over and say hi, sometimes wrapping her arm around mine. We bumped into each other a lot, so I had to assume she was seeking me out on purpose.

  After the third or so invitation, I visited her apartment. It was obvious from the room that she had no problems with money, so I figured she probably had a decent allowance coming in. Everything in the room, from the cushions to the curtains and wall hangings all bore a profusion of flower prints, frills, lamé, and beading, and her cosmetics alone could fill up a clothes trunk. The room was full with the heavy tang of perfume, old clothing, sweat, and blood. It was the first time I visited someone’s room and, more importantly, it was the first time I chatted at length one on one.

  I got the strong impression that it was the same for Mitsuko. We had become friends, it seemed, and yet neither of us really knew how one was supposed to handle a friend. She made some tea and we sat for something like half an hour. The whole time she was engrossed in eating popcorn and uncharacteristically laconic. We didn’t do anything else that day, but when I was about to leave she presented me with a spare key.

  “Hey, hey, so after you left I made a really deep cut,” she said the next day, as if it was an afterthought, holding up her hand wrapped in thick bandages. “You’ll come again today?”

  On the way over I got her to wait while I picked up some dried nori seaweed and a few pounds of rice from the local supermarket. With the apparently unused rice cooker in her kitchen, I boiled the rice and rolled it into bite-sized chunks, each as big as half an egg, and wrapped them in thin strips of seaweed before telling Mitsuko to try them. Watching her eat nothing but candy made me feel terrible. She protested at first, saying anything other than candy would make her puke, but I paid no attention.

  “I don’t care if you throw up, just try them.”

  She ate the first of the rice balls with tears in her eyes, making it look like she was swallowing a caterpillar or something.

  “Another,” I said. Then another … and another. After the fifth she began to take a rice ball even when I said nothing, eventually eating about ten. Even after those, she occasionally took one of the rice balls still on the plate and put it in her mouth, as if suddenly noticing they were there. She told me various things about herself.

  “I take these off when I’m at home,” she said, peeling the bandages from her wrist and revealing the incisions to me for the first time. Brown stripes like those on the belly of a tabby cat lined the space between her wrist and the middle of her forearm. Some were old, others were still red and damp. A couple looked quite deep.

  “Does it hurt when you cut yourself?”

  “Of course it does. It’d be pretty dull if it didn’t.” When all the rice balls were gone Mitsuko opened a bag of caramel popcorn and tipped the contents onto the empty plate, then started to pick at that, too. “Sometimes there’s hardly any blood, even when I make a deep cut. It makes me restless so I make even more cuts. Blood’s warm, you know. It feels great when it runs together from a number of cuts and starts to trickle off my arm. I think I hit a vein once. It was amazing, there was so much blood, but I collapsed and passed out when I tried to wash the wound. I’ve been taking iron supplements since that time. I wonder why red, though. Not blue, not green. I think red’s kind of special, more than the other colors. But the blood dries the moment it’s outside. Like, look at the cover of this cushion. Turns into this horrible-looking stain.”

  I was quiet, listening to w
hat she had to say, but she sounded like the narrator of some story, something from a video rented on a whim. The way she spoke didn’t give me any real sense of how it felt to cut oneself.

  The whole time, for some reason I was wondering whether there might be some way to stop Mitsuko from doing this. I didn’t want to let her cut herself anymore, even though I knew she might someday die by my hand.

  Strange men would sometimes call out to us when we were walking together outside. I suppose they regarded a woman who wore heavy makeup as someone that would readily sleep with anybody. For men, the fact that Mitsuko was an odd stick-like thing didn’t bother them so long as they could have sex with her.

  Among those men was a young worker at a ramen joint that was close to Mitsuko’s apartment. We’d never been inside the place, but whenever he saw us, either on his way out or coming back from a delivery, he always tried to flirt with Mitsuko.

  If she caught him watching, she gave a disgusted look. Yet, all of a sudden she’d start walking seductively nonetheless.

  “Oh shit, it’s Ramen again.”

  “Ladies, ladies. How ’bout a drive next time I’m off? I’ve got a pretty good set of wheels.”

  We’d taken to calling him Ramen; he had terrible skin and buckteeth, and from what we could tell he was essentially a walking ball of lust. He would bring his delivery moped to a stop and grin to show he’d had lots of experience with girls, but all the while his gaze would shift restlessly with fear.

  “Ugh, no thanks,” Mitsuko said, after we’d ignored him and walked on. “He’s like a dog in heat. I bet he jerks off ten times a day.”

  “You do that yourself, Mitsuko.” The words slipped from my mouth.