“No way.”

  The patrol boat zooms past the ferry. All Souta and I can do is watch in a daze as it speeds into the distance.

  After a few minutes, I glance behind me. My town’s coast is already far away. The ferry’s wake trails to the wharf like a long umbilical cord, glittering in the setting sun as it breaks apart.

  “I told you—I’m sleeping over at Aya’s tonight… No. Like I said, I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be back tomorrow, so don’t worry about me!”

  In a corner of a dimly lit powder room, I press my phone to my ear. I’m using my palm to cover it and my mouth so Tamaki doesn’t hear the ceaseless roar of the engine below my feet.

  “Hey, wait, Suzume!”

  I can practically see her expression as she holds back tears.

  “It’s okay if you want to stay over, but what were you doing with the first aid box in your room? You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

  “I told you—I’m fine. When we passed in the entryway, nothing was wrong, remember?”

  “And why did you take out the dried sardines? I thought you didn’t like them.”

  My aunt is a very observant person. I imagine her looking at the wall of photos as we talk. School plays, sports festivals, two graduations, three entrance ceremonies. Tamaki is there beside me in all the photos, smiling from ear to ear. My smile is always a bit half-hearted. There are photos like that all over our house.

  “I don’t even want to think about this, but…,” she says, filling the silence as I scramble for an answer. “You aren’t seeing some strange man, are—?”

  “No, I’m fine. It’s nothing like that!” I shout, then hang up. I let out a long sigh. I know I’ve only worried her more. At this rate, I’m just feeding her overprotectiveness. But I tell myself I’ll straighten it out tomorrow and leave the powder room.

  Now that I think about it, this is the first time I’ve taken a night ferry. The sea is endlessly black and seems even deeper than during the day. If I let myself think about it, the knowledge that a force this enormous is roiling beneath me makes me unbearably scared. Turning off my imagination, I climb the stairs and emerge in the exterior corridor. The wind tosses my hair around. At the end of the corridor, by the base of the stairs leading to the viewing deck, Souta sits silently. Moonlight shines faintly on the kiddie chair. But is that chair really him? Anxiety overwhelms me yet again. Then I think about how much more anxious he must be and make up my mind to at least act cheerful.

  “Souta! This boat is going to dock in Ehime in the morning!” I say as I jog over to him, passing on what one of the ferry employees told me. “The boat the cat hopped onto is probably heading for the same place.”

  “Is that so…” Just as I hear Souta’s voice, the chair turns toward me with a clatter. I resist the urge to shrink away and continue in a cheery tone.

  “I bought some bread!”

  I put the bag down next to Souta and sit beside him. There’s a bun stuffed with yakisoba noodles, a milk-custard sandwich, and two cartons of milk—one coffee and one strawberry—all procured from the vending machines in the lobby.

  “Thanks,” he says. His voice sounds like he’s smiling a little. I’m relieved. “But I’m not hungry.”

  “Oh…”

  Makes sense. How can he eat with the body of a chair? I even debated whether to buy him anything myself when I went to the vending machine. To prevent my stomach from grumbling, and to prevent him from hearing it if it does, I hug my knees tight to my chest. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. We sit for a while with the bag of bread between us, looking up at the starry sky as it flows slowly past. The moon, almost full, lights up the peaks of the clouds. The steel corridor is chilly at night.

  “Um…,” I say, knowing I can’t stay silent forever. “What’s up with being a chair?”

  “…I think the cat cursed me.” He laughs a little, self-deprecating.

  “Cursed you…? Are you okay? Does it hurt or anything?”

  “I’m fine,” he answers. Without thinking, I brush my hand against him.

  “You’re warm…”

  The chair is as warm as a person. The word soul pops into my head. If such a thing exists, it must be this temperature. The moonlight glints faintly in the chair’s eyes—or rather, the two indentations carved in its backrest.

  “I have to do something about this,” Souta mutters, gazing at the moon.

  I gather my courage and say, “Um, there’s something I’ve been wondering about—” and tell him about the stone statue at the hotel.

  “A stone statue at the ruins…!” he nearly shouts when I’m done. “That’s the Keystone! You pulled it up?!”

  “I guess? I just…”

  I just picked it up because I was curious. I try to explain, but he’s rambling on, like he’s talking to himself.

  “Interesting—so that cat must be the Keystone! If it’s abandoned its responsibility and run away, then…”

  “Wait, what do you mean?”

  “You freed the Keystone, and it cursed me!”

  “That can’t be!” I say, confused. But strangely, it makes sense. The face carved in the stone wasn’t a fox’s; it was a cat’s. I remember how it felt when it transformed into an animal in my hands.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know… But what should we do…?”

  The chair’s eyes drop from my face to the floor. Souta sighs quietly.

  “…No, it’s my fault for taking so long to find the door. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But—”

  “Suzume, I’m a Closer.”

  “…A Closer?”

  With a creaking sound, he swivels toward me. He throws his front leg into the air, stands on his two back legs, and uses his front leg to lift the key hanging from his backrest. He holds it up for me to see—it’s the elaborate one I brought from my room. I hung it around his neck after the cat escaped.

  “I lock doors that have opened to prevent disasters from coming out of them.”

  With a tap, his front leg returns to the floor.

  “Sometimes a thing called a Gate opens in places people have disappeared from. Bad things come through those doors. So I lock them and return the land to the cradle—the god who originally possessed it. That’s why I’ve been traveling all over Japan. That is what Closers do.”

  Gate. Closers. Gods of the land. All these things are new to me. But at the same time, I feel like I’ve heard them somewhere before. I don’t know what any of it means, but deep in the back of my mind, part of me understands what he’s saying. As I’m wondering why, he says very kindly, “Suzume. You must be hungry.” He gently pushes the bag of bread over to my knee with his front leg, urging me to eat.

  “Yes…,” I admit.

  I pick up the sweet cream sandwich and tear off the plastic wrapper with both hands. A sweet scent floats up to my nose and is immediately blown away by the sea wind.

  “If I turn the cat back into a Keystone and shut the worm in, I’m sure I’ll change back to my original form,” he says. I bet he’s making his voice extra gentle to reassure me. “There’s nothing to worry about. You should go home tomorrow.”

  The thick sweetness of the bread and cream melds with Souta’s soft voice and seeps into me. It no longer seems strange to hear that voice coming from my familiar old kiddie chair.

  That night, I have the dream again. I’m a lost child. But I’m not in the starry meadow. I think this is a little ways before the meadow. The dream is a long story, and depending on the night, I might be at the beginning, watching the middle, or experiencing the climax. I think this time I’m at the beginning of the story.

  It’s late at night in the middle of winter. I don’t think I’m very far from home, but strangely, all the buildings I recognize have disappeared, and I have no idea where I’m walking. The streets are empty. The ground is covered in slush, and with each step, the cold mud weighs down my shoes. Sadness, loneliness, and worry have become part of me, have accumulated in me so they slosh around in my little body as I walk. It’s cold. Snow is swirling, and the sky and ground are painted over with dark gray. A full pale-yellow moon hangs in the sky like a small hole in the canvas. Below it, I can see a radio tower. It’s the tallest structure around and the only thing I recognize.

  “Mom, where are yooou?”

  As I walk along shouting for her, eventually I see a door. It’s the lone structure standing among snow-covered rubble. The veneer is wet with sleet, glistening in the moonlight.

  My hand reaches for the knob as if I’m being pulled in, and I grab it. The freezing metal sticks to my skin. I turn the knob and push the door. It creaks open. Child-me is surprised by what is inside—yet at the same time, I feel like I know the place well. I’m seeing it for the first time, yet it feels nostalgic. Like it’s rejecting me but also calling to me. I’m both sad and excited.

  I step through the door—into the meadow beneath the brilliant starry sky.

  Bang! I wake to the sound of something falling over.

  “…Souta?”

  The chair is tipped on its back, its three legs in the air.

  “That’s some way to sleep…”

  He is sleeping, right? I sit up. Beyond the handrail, the ocean glows orange. A flock of seagulls is swooping about like a noisy pack of kids on their way to elementary school. A translucent sun hangs immaculately in the grape-colored sky. It’s sunrise. We’ve been sleeping in a corner of the exterior corridor.

  “Souta,” I say, shaking the chair. No answer. But like the night before, the wood is warm. He’s sleeping. Relieved, I stand up. Leaning over the railing, I look in the direction we’re headed. Islands of various sizes surround the ferry. A few boats are on the water. It’s the Uwakai Sea—we’re in the Bungo Channel. Far across the silver-leaf water, I make out a harbor dotted with cranes. The smell of the sea blends with the smell of diesel and plants and fish and human life. Suddenly, the ferry’s horn blares. I feel like the whole world is cheerfully announcing, It’s starting! I don’t know if the thing that’s starting is my journey or my life or just the day. But the important thing is, the sounds, the smells, the light, the warmth of Souta’s body—all of it is whispering to me that something is about to begin.

  “…I’m so excited,” I murmur to as I gaze out at the ocean edged with morning sun.

  Searching for a Cat in Ehime

  I’ve never traveled outside Japan, but I bet that first step onto foreign soil is really something. That’s what I’m thinking as I walk down the narrow ramp attached to the side of the ferry. The second my loafers hit the concrete of the harbor, my heart shouts Shikoku! It’s my first time here. I stop and wait for the crowd of middle-aged men to pass through. Once they’re a safe distance away, I start walking. To be safe, I’m holding the chair behind my back. Since I left my house empty-handed, I’m now a shady character wearing a school uniform and carrying a kiddie chair. I don’t want to draw attention to myself.

  I maintain a steady distance from the men, who are talking noisily: “Today’s another hot one!” “I’m on my way to Osaka from here” and so on. I walk down a bare-bones passage covered with corrugated metal. “We look forward to your next voyage with us,” a voice is telling me through a speaker. I imagined Shikoku would be different from my hometown in Miyazaki, but so far, the sounds, the air, and the run-down look of the harbor are exactly like home. From the blue of the sky and the smell of the sea to the faded color of the concrete, everything is disappointingly similar.

  “…Suzume?”

  With a clatter, the chair behind my back begins to move. I stop at the sound of Souta’s voice.

  “You’re finally up!” I say, sighing with relief. “You wouldn’t wake up, so I was starting to wonder if everything was a dream!”

  We’re outside of the ferry terminal, standing at the edge of a large parking lot. Souta, the lazy bum, had the nerve to stay asleep for the whole two hours since sunrise, even though I tried to wake him up who knows how many times.

  “I…was sleeping…?” he asks groggily. I sigh again, loudly.

  “Oh, never mind. Now, about that cat! How should we search for it? Should we start by asking around at the harbor?”

  “What?”

  “I wonder where we are anyway.”

  I take my phone out of my skirt pocket. I’m glad I brought this, at least. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to pay for the ferry.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  Ignoring Souta’s panicked voice, I turn on my phone. I briskly swipe away the message notifications from Tamaki, open a map, and determine our location. We’re at Yawatahama Harbor, on the western edge of Ehime Prefecture. There’s an urban area to the east of us and a train station within walking distance. Hmm. I wonder how far we are from my house. I pull up my trip log, and the map zooms out to show Shikoku and Kyushu. I’m 219 kilometers from home.

  “Wow, we came a long way,” I say.

  “I wonder if you could get back home by tonight if you took the next ferry. Remember what I told you last night? You need to stop worrying about me and get yourself back—”

  “Aaah!” I blurt out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Look at this!”

  I crouch down and show Souta my social media feed. There’s a picture of the white kitten perched on the seat of a train.

  “I think that’s our cat, isn’t it?!”

  “No way…!”

  I filter my feed so it only shows posts near our current location. It’s full of pictures of the white cat. There’s one from last night of it sitting on the bow of the patrol boat, one at dawn of it sitting on a mooring at the harbor, one from a little later of it on the railing of a bridge, then one from a few hours ago of it on a bench outside a train station. And finally, one from a few minutes ago of it sitting on the ticket box inside a train—and in every one, it’s doing an obnoxiously photogenic innocent kitten pose.

  “Look what I saw on my pilgrimage!”

  “It’s so cute I can’t stand it!”

  “I got on the train and bam, a real-life version of Whisper of the Heart!”

  “Kitty Stationmaster meets Ciao Churu mascot!”

  “Cute…so cute… A kitten is sitting next to me…”

  Each picture has its own caption, though most are pretty simple. It’s like the posters are too overwhelmed to say much beyond how cute the kitten is. Everywhere it goes, it has been craftily, haughtily (I mean, that’s how it looks!) getting its picture taken.

  “They’re calling it Daijin, like a cabinet minister…?” I mutter.

  “That white goatee looks just like the ones ministers had in the old days. Too cute!”

  “The way the fur on its cheeks curls up looks just like a politician!”

  I see a lot of similar posts. There’s even a hashtag: #withDaijin.

  “Are they serious…? Actually, now that I think about it, they’re kind of right…”

  “It’s heading east by train. I have to follow it!” Souta says, walking off noisily. As he goes, he creaks his backrest toward me and says decisively, “We part here. Thanks for everything, Suzume. Take care on your trip home.”

  Where should I buy a ticket to? Might as well go as far as I can, I think, and I press the largest button on the ticket machine. The electronic beep echoes off the yawning ceiling of the station.

  “Hold on, now…”

  Ignoring the voice of protest next to me, I take the ticket from the machine. Then I walk through the ticket gate at Yawatahama Station clasping the little chair to my stomach.

  “If you don’t get home, your family will worry about you!”

  “Not a problem. My family is hands off,” I whisper calmly. I thought I was pulling off this “holding this chair is no big deal” thing pretty well, but kids wearing unfamiliar uniforms are staring at me. “The conductorless train for Matsuyama is now arriving,” a lackadaisical voice announces over the speaker. We get on. At first the train is nearly empty, but after a few stations, it’s packed. We can finally relax.

  “…This trip is going to be dangerous. I can’t have you following me,” the chair says in a troubled voice from its spot on my lap.

  “But, Souta,” I say, turning my phone screen toward his face. “Look!”

  A picture of the chair running down the hill has been posted on social media. The picture is blurry because its subject is moving fast, but that only lends it a kind of dubious reality, like the discovery of some new cryptid. Other pictures show it walking down the pier and strolling around the harbor this morning. Some of them include me, although my face isn’t clear.

  “You won’t believe what I saw!”

  “Me too!”

  “Is it a chair-shaped drone?!”

  “Who’s the mysterious girl?”

  We’re not quite trending, but we’re getting there. There’s another hashtag: #runningchair.

  “No way…!”

  “See? It’s risky for you to walk in front of people! At this rate, you’ll be captured before you reach the cat!”

  Souta appears to be at a loss for words. After a moment, he says gravely, “Suzume, it seems I have no choice. I would like your assistance until we find Daijin.”

  The chair bows its head with a creak. Yesss! I grin and bow in return.

  “The pleasure is mine!”

  He’s finally accepted me. I look up, newly determined, and realize a little kid is staring at me. Fortunately, his mother is absorbed in her phone. Close call! I have a responsibility to get Souta back to his original form. Until he’s human again, I’ve got to protect him!

  The Direction I Need to Run In Now

  I really should have bought some sunscreen at that first station. I glare hatefully at the low-slanting sun and experience regret for the hundredth time today. I have no doubt I’ve been sunburned, and tonight’s bath is gonna sting. Actually, what are the chances I’ll get to take a bath? Where am I even going to sleep tonight if things go on like this? Don’t tell me my first night in Shikoku is also going to be my first night sleeping rough. Two nights in a row without a shower? We’re walking down a mountain road, and I glance over the guardrail running along its edge to look at the big reservoir below. Worst case scenario, if I don’t get a bath tonight, I should at least rinse myself off with cold water, I think despairingly.