Chapter Three

It had been raining since the weekend, and Monday—my day off—was no exception.

I spent the afternoon in the living room, completely absorbed in my pressed-flower art.

My near vision had recently begun to show its age, so whenever I lifted a petal with my tweezers, I had to be careful not to stab straight through it. Every so often, I pinched the bridge of my nose and massaged the space between my eyebrows. Otherwise, I would suddenly realize how badly I had strained my eyes.

I arranged the flowers, petals, and leaves I had prepared between spring and summer, layering them into a composition of gray and blue.

“There. Maybe I should add a yellow pansy here and make it look like the moon.”

One advantage of living alone was that I could talk to myself without lowering my voice.

The disadvantage was that I seemed to be doing it more and more often.

I was making bookmarks as Halloween gifts for the children at the library. We had made pressed flowers together during a summer workshop, so I thought they would probably enjoy receiving them.

I stretched with a low groan and pressed my back hard against the chair.

Just then, the doorbell rang.

When I checked the monitor, I saw that it appeared to be my neighbor.

“Yes, I’ll be right there.”

Before he had even said anything, I was already hurrying down the hallway toward the front door.

When I opened it, Mr. Sasagawa stood beneath an umbrella. Beside him sat a German shepherd wearing a raincoat.

“I’m sorry to bother you in this weather. I came to return the container from the other day.”

“You didn’t have to come all this way. Thank you.”

My eyes were immediately drawn to the dog, who sat beside him with perfect composure in his little raincoat.

“What’s his name?”

“…Minato.”

That was an unusual name for a dog.

Minato meant “harbor” in Japanese. Perhaps he had been born in Yokohama or Kobe—one of Japan’s famous port cities.

“Minato? Is that a boy’s name or a girl’s?”

I crouched down until I was level with the dog’s face.

“Aren’t you a good boy, Minato?”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Minato is…my name.”

A silence of almost unbearable intensity fell between us.

“This one is Rowan. I usually call him Ro…”

My face grew so hot that I could not bring myself to stand.

*Minato.*

I had just crouched down and called a grown man a good boy.

“I’m so sorry. What a terribly embarrassing mistake…”

His flustered, equally embarrassed voice drifted down from above me.

“No, I’m the one who should apologize.”

Still crouching, I bowed my head.

“H-he really is a good dog, though. He’s so calm. He doesn’t make a fuss or bark at all.”

I stood, trying desperately to smooth over the moment.

Mr. Sasagawa’s ears were red, and he refused to meet my eyes.

Mistakes like this were mortifying. But when I realized that he seemed just as embarrassed as I was, some of the tension eased.

“Ro is a rescue dog,” he said. “It seems his previous owner had his vocal cords removed. He can’t bark.”

When Mr. Sasagawa called his name, Ro looked up and gave a small, restrained wag of his tail.

“I see. Losing your voice must have been very hard, Ro.”

At the sound of my voice, Ro turned toward me and panted gently, his tongue hanging out.

“I’m glad,” Mr. Sasagawa said. “I was worried it might be a problem if you didn’t like dogs.”

“No, not at all. We used to have a dog at this house.”

When I came to stay here as a child, my grandmother had kept what was supposedly a guard dog.

His name was Ponta, a mixed-breed dog born at the home of one of her acquaintances. He had a kennel in the garden, but in practice, the earthen-floored space beside the back door had been his territory.

“That’s a relief. Ro is a large dog, so I thought he might frighten anyone who wasn’t comfortable around them. I’d been a little concerned.”

“Is that why you don’t let him out in the garden very often?”

“That isn’t the only reason. If I’m not beside him, loud noises terrify him.”

Ro looked back and forth between Mr. Sasagawa and me. Perhaps he understood that we were talking about him, because his tail swished lightly across the ground.

Before I knew it, we had been talking at the doorway for quite some time.

Mr. Sasagawa was still holding his open umbrella at his side.

“Were you on your way to take him for a walk? I’m sorry—I’ve kept you here for so long.”

The moment I said it, he became flustered again.

“No, I’m the one who should apologize for talking so much. The chestnut quiche was delicious. Thank you very much. Well, then…”

He bowed, raised his umbrella, and encouraged Ro to leave the porch with him.

Once they passed through the gate, Mr. Sasagawa tried to head away from the house.

Ro tried to turn back home.

With the leash stretched between them, the two faced opposite directions, neither willing to yield.

After a while, Mr. Sasagawa gave in. He glanced back at me and bowed, visibly embarrassed, before allowing Ro to lead him home.

Apparently, Ro was not fond of walks in the rain.

A soft laugh escaped me.

◇◇◇

“Next week’s Halloween event is the paper-lantern workshop, right?”

During our morning meeting, Mayumi confirmed the schedule with me and the library’s other staff member, Ms. Hasegawa.

“When should we go and buy the materials?”

“The application deadline was last weekend,” Ms. Hasegawa said, flipping through the registration forms. “We have seven families attending—seven parents and ten children.”

“Oh, that’s more people than I expected. I’ll cover the front desk, but handling that many participants with only you and Haruka might be difficult.”

She was right.

Even with the parents helping their own children, it would be a close thing.

“What should we do?” Ms. Hasegawa asked. “Should we ask Eiko to help?”

Eiko was Mayumi’s mother, who was turning eighty that year.

Whenever we were truly short-staffed, we asked her to lend a hand. She was not a bad person, but she was quite strict with children. Any child who ran around or made too much noise was immediately scolded, so she was not especially popular with parents of younger children.

*She means well, though.*

“Let’s keep asking my mother as a last resort,” Mayumi said with a sigh. “The parents will be there too, so for now, I’ll leave it to you and Haruka.”

Ms. Hasegawa gave her a wry smile.

“I’ll check how much of each material we need before the end of the day.”

With that, I returned to my station.

After straightening the shelves and processing the books returned through the overnight drop box, I began making a list of supplies.

*Tissue paper, Halloween stickers, milk cartons…*

It would have been more authentic to hollow out real pumpkins and turn them into lanterns, but that was hardly practical for preschool children.

As I wrote, I found myself thinking of Mr. Sasagawa’s lanterns.

And then an idea occurred to me.

*Hmm. But that might be asking too much. And it is rather sudden.*

I remembered the way Mr. Sasagawa had hunched beneath his umbrella the day before.

My hand stopped moving altogether.