"No."
The woman shook her head. "You're overthinking it."
"I'm not overthinking anything."
"I just like washbasins, that's all."
The man smiled wryly.
So that was it...
He'd thought he'd finally found a perfectly reasonable explanation for the woman's strange insistence on buying washbasins.
All right, then.
The man shrugged slightly.
The woman liked washbasins...
So she liked washbasins.
By coincidence, it also happened to fit with what she had in mind later.
What a coincidence...
It was rather amusing.
The woman looked around.
Ox-Nose wasn't there.
She turned to the washbasin.
The goldfish inside...
The woman crouched down and counted them one by one...
She had carefully picked out every goldfish, and to keep Ox-Nose from sneaking a bite, she was always keeping an eye on them. She knew each and every one by heart.
"Huh?"
The man crouched down and picked up several broken fish nets from the ground.
"Why are there..."
He looked them over. "Three fish nets?"
Over the past week, the woman's baby had been moving more and more, and she was nearing her due date, so the man had closed the general store and suspended business for the time being.
He didn't want the children who came into the shop to make a racket or act carelessly and startle the woman.
In theory...
There shouldn't have been any broken fish nets beside the washbasin during this time.
For some reason, the man suddenly thought of the missing goldfish.
He was a little surprised.
It had happened so many months ago, nearly a year...
Yet he still remembered it...
Could it be...
Was he unexpectedly...
still so hung up on it?
But it had happened so long ago...
The man shook his head slightly.
The woman looked at the