The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.2

The station is a year older. The cat is a year rounder. And the people who were healed at Hoshizaki Station last year are now standing — a little steadier — on the other side of the bench, holding the tea.

A nurse returns, after twelve years, to give back an umbrella. A delivery man makes his last delivery: the news of his own retirement, by hand, to forty-one doors. A ten-year-old girl counts trains because trains keep their promises. A former radio announcer whose voice stopped live on air is asked to become the voice of the line again — in the voice he has now, pauses included. Two sisters who have not spoken for thirty years inherit two tickets to the sea, side by side. A baker who has never once asked for help faces a festival order twice too big — and a stationmaster, after twelve years of writing down everything his valley lost, begins to write down what it found.

Eight new linked stories, all written for this volume. Nobody from Vol. 1 is healed twice: the healed return as helpers, as the series promised. Nobody is rescued, and nothing is fixed by magic. They are simply met, kindly, at exactly the platform where they stopped.

The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.2 can be read on its own — and readers of Vol. 1 will find it twice as moving. About 70,000 words — one station, eight journeys, and a cat with a brass bell who was there for all of them.