Free Nan-Core by Mahokaru Numata

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 ofdays 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 leather 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 awork 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