Nakata breathed quietly, shallowly, but he wasn’t afraid. He had a pretty good idea he was face-to-face with a hostile, aggressive animal. (Why this was, he had no idea.) But he didn’t carry this thought one step further and see himself in imminent peril. The concept of death was beyond his powers of imagination. And pain was something he wasn’t aware of until he actually felt it. As an abstract concept pain didn’t mean a thing. The upshot of this was he wasn’t afraid, even with this monstrous dog staring him down. He was merely perplexed.
