My story will be over soon. But it’s not something to be sad about. As we count up the memories from one journey, we head off on another. Remembering those who went ahead. Remembering those who will follow after. And someday, we will meet all those people again, out beyond the horizon.

‘Why didn’t Satoru tell us he was sick?’ That’s disappointing. Just like always, you stammer out things you shouldn’t. You really don’t understand why? ‘I kind of understand why,’ Yoshimine said. ‘He wanted to say farewell with everybody still smiling.’

On New Year’s Day, they gave me some chicken breast, but after sniffing it a few times I kicked sand on top of it. There was no actual sand there, of course, so it was only air sand.

They’d stopped feeding the baby until he was no longer able even to cry, then had wrapped him in a black plastic bag and thrown him out on the day the rubbish was due to be collected.

And yet, no matter how often he went to the hospital, his smell didn’t get any better. As several dogs and cats had told me earlier, that doesn’t smell like he’s got much longer scent was only getting stronger. No creatures ever get better once they have that smell.

Miserably bowing his head, Sugi thought, how shameful can I get? I know very well how miserable I look, yet I still go ahead and beg him.

WE CATS GET all limp and squishy when we have catnip; for humans, wine seems to do the trick.

He began to wonder if his wife, a true cat lover, might actually come home if he took in the cat. Perhaps if he told her he had adopted the animal but didn’t know how to look after it and begged her to help, perhaps she would come back solely out of sympathy for the cat.

Confronted with the fact that neither parent wanted him, he no longer had any idea how he was supposed to behave.