The Cat at Platform Zero Vol.3

The stationmaster has changed. The cat has not.

Daichi Mori kept Hoshizaki Station for thirteen years. Now the book is in its thirteenth volume and in new hands — Sumi Takamine, thirty, precise, nervous, kind — and the summer of the repainting is hers to keep. A former ward manager comes down the valley with a paper bag held in both hands, to return three things at their true size. The community persimmon slope holds its first stamp rally, and its young teacher learns what the one stamp nobody can collect is for. A grandfather keeps taking the 07:42 to an office that no longer exists, and his grandson learns how a station can keep a man his dignity. A father tries to stage one perfect week and chooses an ordinary day instead. And when the typhoon comes, the new stationmaster stops a train on her own judgement for the first time.

Eight new linked stories, all written for this volume. Nobody is healed twice: the people Sumis predecessor sat with now do the sitting-with — and Sumi, who was healed by this station herself, learns the difference between keeping Moris station correctly and running her own. 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.3 can be read on its own — and readers of Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 will find the handover completed, the two promises of the last authors note kept, and the cat — eight years old, greying very slightly, entirely unmoved by the change of management — exactly where he was. About 70,000 words — one station, one summer, eight journeys.