Hiro Arikawa - The Travelling Cat Chronicles

‘I must have put them on their guard.’

Satoru stopped the window and watched their reaction. All three deer were staring at us steadily, then the two parents began to lope away up the hill.

The young deer, left behind, held our gaze, its sense of wariness still not fully developed.

His parents, apparently exasperated, seemed to call down to him from the top of the embankment, and the young deer, flashing its white heart-shaped little rear end at us, bounded up the slope.

‘Ah, it’s gone…’

Satoru stared regretfully after it.

‘But that was amazing. I’ve never seen deer like that beside the road.’

It’s got to be thanks to my tail. Just you wait – my crooked, seven-shaped tail is bound to snag lots more wonderful things.

And the perfect example of this came not long after we had watched the deer disappear.

The scenery was, typically, nothing special for Hokkaido. Gentle hills with softly wooded areas running into one another.

Just as we were heading into a thin layer of grey cloud, it started to rain. The kind of rain you see on a sunny day, just a light scattering of drops.

‘That’s really something. That’s the exact boundary where the rain begins.’

Satoru drove on, happy, but most cats find rain very depressing. I hoped it would stop soon, and, amazingly, it did start to let up and the sun fought its way through the clouds.

In the driver’s seat, Satoru gave a massive gulp. I was napping and twitched my ears at the sound. He braked gradually before pulling over to the side of the road.

In the sky above a hill before us was a vivid rainbow.

One end of the rainbow was rooted in the hill. We followed that arc with our eyes and found the other end rooted in the opposite hill.

I’d never seen the end of a rainbow in my entire life. And Satoru hadn’t either, I gathered, the way he was holding his breath.

We were both seeing something extraordinary together for the first time in our lives.

‘Shall we get out?’

Gingerly, Satoru got out of the car, as though he was afraid any sudden move would disturb the rainbow.

With both hands, fingers widened, he lifted me up out of the passenger seat, and the two of us gazed upwards.

The rainbow’s two ends were firmly anchored in the ground. The top was a little fainter, but the rainbow was entirely whole. It made a perfect arch.

I’d seen these colours somewhere before. I thought about it, and then it dawned on me.

The flowers at the graveyard that morning. The wild purple chrysanthemums, the colour of each slightly different, the bright-yellow goldenrod, and the cosmos.

Cover that bouquet of flowers with some light-coloured gauze and it would be just like a rainbow.

‘We offered a rainbow, didn’t we, at the grave?’

It made me happy when I heard Satoru say this. The two of us were on exactly the same wavelength.

Instead of getting all puffed up about it, I threw my head back and looked directly upwards, and saw one more extraordinary sight.

I gave a long meow, and Satoru looked up to see what had caught my attention.

Above the perfect arc of the rainbow was another – faint, but still continuous – rainbow.

Satoru gulped again. ‘Isn’t it amazing,’ he said again, this time his voice a little husky.

To think that we’d see this kind of thing at the end of our journey.

Satoru and I would remember this rainbow for the rest of our lives.

We stood there for a long time, until the weather cleared and the rainbow evaporated into the sky.

This was our final journey.

On our last journey, let’s see all kinds of amazing things. Let’s spend our time taking in as many wonderful sights as we can . That’s what I had pledged yesterday, when we set off.

And what incredible sights we saw.

Shortly afterwards, we arrived in Sapporo, and our journey drew to an end.

IN HER PREVIOUS job, Noriko had often been posted to new places, so she was used to moving. She would take what she needed out of the cardboard boxes, steadily unpacking, always in the same order. When two or three boxes had been emptied, she would flatten them to give herself more space.

She had never liked to clutter her life with household objects, so she never had many boxes to unpack.

A wall clock emerged from a box she’d just opened. The hands showed it was midday. She hadn’t yet unpacked a hook to hang it on, so she placed it on the sofa in the living room. Every time she unpacked after a move, she reminded herself to pack a hook with the clock next time, but every time she forgot.

Afraid she’d lose it somewhere, whenever she moved, she’d put her phone in her pocket, and now it was vibrating. An email.

It was from Satoru Miyawaki, her nephew. The child her older sister had left behind. Miyawaki had been her sister’s husband’s last name.

I’m Sorry , read the subject heading; it was ornamented with a cute little emoji.

I’d hoped to arrive in the early afternoon, but it looks like it’ll be later. Sorry to leave you to unpack everything yourself.

He said he was going to pay a visit to his mother and father’s graves. He must have lost track of time there.

She typed in a subject for her reply: Understood. In the body of the message she wrote: Everything’s fine here. Drive carefully .

After she sent it, she began to feel a little anxious. Had her reply been a bit curt? It wouldn’t be good for Satoru to think she’d written a cold reply because she was angry with him for arriving late.

She opened the message she’d just sent and re-read it. They were both just short messages but, compared to the warmth in his, hers came across as rather blunt. Maybe she should add something?

She typed PS and was going to add a new message, but nothing light and chatty came to her. Still agonizing over it, she finally typed, Don’t rush, or you’ll have an accident , and sent it. But a moment later she regretted it, just like she had the last one.

Desperate to recover from this second mistake, she sent a third email. PPS , she typed. I’m worried you’ll be concerned about being late and drive too fast . As soon as she sent it, she realized she’d got her priorities all wrong, since sending so many messages to him while he was driving might distract him from driving safely, the opposite of her intention.

Just then, another message came in. From Satoru. The title read (Laughing). She breathed a sigh of relief.

Thank you for being so concerned. I’ll take you up on your offer and take my time.

And another emoji at the end, a waving hand.

Worn out by her own indecisiveness, Noriko plonked herself down on the sofa. Her nephew was more than twenty-five years younger than she was, and how were they going to get on if she forced him to respond to each and every tiny little thing?

But it had always been this way between the two of them. Ever since her older sister and brother-in-law had died and she’d taken on the twelve-year-old boy they had left behind.

Her sister had always done her best for Noriko, and Noriko had tried to do the same for the son. But she could never shake off the feeling that all she’d ever done for him was to provide for him financially.

Her sister had been eight years older than her.

Noriko’s mother had died when she was very young, so she could barely remember her, and her father had passed away when she was in her first year of high school. So, for Noriko, her sister had been her sole guardian.