The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa

Author:Hiro Arikawa
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2017-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

SATORU HAD BECOME a mutual friend, but Sugi had been the first one to form a bond with him.

In the spring of their first year in high school, the three of them were all in the same class.

In their new form room, students from their previous junior high tended to group together, weighing up the situation, wondering who to make friends with. Satoru wasn’t hanging out with anyone. There didn’t seem to be anyone else from the school he had just come from.

They learned later that he’d arrived from another prefecture during the spring holidays and had taken the transfer exam, which was why he didn’t know a soul.

It was during one of the periodic exams that they became friends.

Sugi had crammed all night for the exam, and his head was stuffed with mathematical equations and English vocabulary. He was on his bike, heading to school, pedalling as gently as he could, in case some unexpected jolt or vibration drove all the facts he’d memorized from his brain.

Along the road to school, he spied a face he knew. That looks like Satoru from my class, he thought, as he drew closer. Satoru had got off his bike and was standing beside a wide ditch.

The ditch was the width of a stream, an agricultural irrigation channel lined with concrete on both sides, about as deep as a child was tall. Satoru was staring down at it, a serious look on his face.

Sugi wondered what he was up to, but didn’t have much time to spare before school started. Their eyes had met, so he thought he’d just give him a nod and pass on by, but he began to feel that that would make things awkward later, so after he’d gone on a little bit, he stopped.

‘What’re you doing?’ Sugi asked.

Satoru looked over at him, as if surprised. He must have thought Sugi would just cycle by.

‘Um, I found something a little troubling, that’s all.’

Satoru pointed down at the ditch, where Sugi could now see a small dog shivering. The dog had managed to scramble on top of a tiny sandbar where gravel and dirt had piled up, and his thick white-and-brown fur was soaked and plastered to him.

‘It’s a Shih Tzu.’

Sugi knew the breed, because Chikako’s family had one. They ran a fruit orchard, loved animals, and ever since she was a young child they’d had several dogs and cats, which was something that drew customers in. And Sugi had always envied their attitude to animals.

Sugi’s family lived in company housing; his father was a middle-management company employee, and because of his mother’s allergies, the only pets she would allow were hairless ones such as goldfish or turtles. His dream had always been to have a dog, but this was never going to happen in his own house, so being with Chikako’s family at least came close.

‘He must have fallen in.’

‘I guess so,’ Satoru said, nodding. There were no steps down to the ditch that they could see.

‘He’s not the

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