The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.18

About this book

Every autumn, the school journeys come to Hoshizaki — and Hoshizaki sends its own young travellers out to the sea.

Eight linked stories of excursion season in a small valley in Japan, where the trains run at :42 and the station cat supervises from the bench. A teacher who has counted one child too many for seventeen years discovers that the extra one is herself — the girl who never went on her own school journey. The class's most trusted child carries the excursion envelope like an office, and must learn to hand it back. The valley's young welcomer, word-perfect and tired of being a noticeboard, adds one sentence of her own. A girl who loves the forest school's days and dreads its one night counts nine beams in the dark. A new girl, kept a guest by everyone's kindness, asks aloud for the window seat. A tour conductor brings party after party home to his own station, where nobody uses his name. A grandfather extends a goodbye from platform to platform, until he learns to stand still. And keeper Sumi Takamine closes the season in the thirteenth volume of the station book: they went home in company, in their own names.

The first train is at 05:42. The last train is at 22:17. The cat, as ever, is on the bench — he is not part of the tour.