One day, hearing a dog yelping noisily, he went out casually and found the Chūdōji brandishing a stick about two feet long and chasing a thin shaggy dog with long hair. And he was not simply chasing the dog around. He was running after it crying tauntingly, “Watch out for your nose there! Watch out for your nose there!” The Naigu snatched the stick from his hand and gave him a hard thwack in the face with it. The stick was the one with which his own nose had formerly been held up.
The Naigu came to feel angry regret that he had thoughtlessly shortened his nose.
Then one night the wind seemed to have suddenly begun blowing after sunset and the ringing of the wind-bells on the pagoda came to his pillow annoyingly. Moreover, as the cold increased perceptibly, the old Naigu could not get to sleep, try as he might. Then as he lay blinking in bed, he suddenly became aware of an unaccustomed itching in his nose. When he felt it with his hand, it was swollen as if a little dropsical. There even seemed to be fever in that part only.
“Since I shortened it against nature, it may have got diseased,” he murmured, pressing his nose with his hand as reverently as he was accustomed to offer incense and flowers to the Buddhas.
The next morning when the Naigu awoke early as usual, the leaves of the maidenhair trees and horse chestnuts in the temple grounds had fallen over night, and the garden was as bright as if carpeted with gold. It may have been because of the frost which lay on the roof of the pagoda that the nine metal rings in its spire sparkled dazzlingly in the still faint light of the morning sun. Zenchi Naigu stood on the veranda with the shutters up and drew a deep breath.
It was at just about this moment that a certain sensation which he had all but forgotten came back to him again.