The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.10

About this book

Autumn comes to Hoshizaki, and the valley gathers in its year.

In the spring, the little station on the valley line changed its map for the first time in years — trains began running through to the coast, a small halt opened down the line, and nothing was taken away. Now comes the first autumn of the changed map: the leaf trains run their Saturdays with an extra carriage and a paper headmark, the persimmon harvest comes down off the south slope crate by crate, and the co-operative's book is opened to read the year aloud, at its true size.

A son who has come home for three days of harvest every year for twenty-six years — and never once stayed for the supper. A walking-club organiser who has planned six Leaf Days to the minute and never once seen the leaves. A young farmer whose row bore nothing in the year everything else bore. A granddaughter whose journey home has been easy since March, and unmade for two seasons. An old cook being thanked, kindly and completely, out of her own kitchen. A retired librarian who always leaves before the lamps — until the leaves on the line keep her for the dusk. A maker of dried persimmons who has given the valley its winters for fifty years and never eaten one.

And Sumi Takamine, thirty-three, keeper of Hoshizaki station, in her second autumn in sole charge — learning the plainest and hardest discipline of the valley: to gather a year in at its true size. The full rows and the barren one, in the same hand.

Eight linked stories of one autumn. The cat, as ever, is on the bench.