The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.8

About this book

Winter is the season of keeping. At Hoshizaki, nothing is kept by one pair of hands alone — not any more.

Sumi Takamine has learned how to let things finish, and how to receive what comes back changed. This winter — her second in sole charge — the valley hands her the question underneath both: the keeping itself. The Winter Lights come out of the long cupboard for their second winter, all fifty bulbs, counted and borrowed and modest — and the woman who has counted, mended and stored them since the first winter has told no one that her hands can no longer string the footbridge lights alone. A man from the city keeps a borrowed house by repainting it, and has to learn what lent means. A treasurer has kept the orchard's books kind, for two winters, out of his own pocket. A man of seventy-three climbs before dawn to read a snow stake that no longer needs reading, in service to a duty that already thanked him and let him go. And a lady of eighty-two rides one stop down the line every evening, for the warmth of the carriage, and is given — once she says so — a place in the station's day instead.

Eight new linked stories, all written for this volume. The cat is nine years old and audits the season from the last square of low sun on the waiting-room floor. The lights are counted by more hands than one. The seed envelopes wait in the drawer with nothing promised about them. The book is still in its thirteenth volume — and this winter it learns to record not only what is kept, but who keeps it now. About 79,000 words — one station, one winter, eight keepings shared.

The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.8 can be read on its own — and readers of the earlier volumes will find the autumn's returns kept exactly as they were received, the lights' entry still reading returned, not finished, and the cat, nine years old, in the winter sun, exactly where he was.

Written and produced in Japan by a Japanese author and a Japanese publisher.