The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.11

About this book

Plum blossoms come before the leaves. So, this spring, does almost everything else.

The autumn gathered Hoshizaki's year in at its true size. Now comes the spring after it — a spring that arrives before almost anyone in the valley is ready for it. A grandchild is born three weeks before the date her grandmother had prepared for, entire and labelled. A good man's notebook of the plum trees' order is politely disobeyed by the trees. A birthday letter's reply arrives by telephone before the letter-writer has finished being distant. A tray of seedlings is ready before the market is. A young shop worker has been opening her shop an hour before its hour, in secret, to prove she deserves it. And a retired timetable man is still riding the first train to a halt and back, because a morning with nowhere to be has arrived before he has learned how to spend one.

And Sumi Takamine, thirty-three, keeper of Hoshizaki station — learning the valley's ninth discipline: to welcome what comes early, as early. Neither pushed back to its schedule nor hurried further forward. Simply received, at the hour it came, with the lamp lit and the tea hot.

Eight linked stories of one early spring. The cat, as ever, is on the bench. He is eleven this spring.