They managed to shake off Satoru’s mother and were sprinting down the slope away from the housing complex when all of a sudden there was a roar.
‘Come back here!’
The roar came from Kosuke’s father. It was probably too late now to put anything right. Maybe we should just apologize, Kosuke was thinking, but Satoru shouted: ‘It’s the enemy!’
The story had taken a different turn now.
‘Run for it!’
By now, they’d completely lost sight of the narrative they were supposed to be sticking to. For the time being, all Kosuke could do was chase after Satoru, who was determined to keep running.
His portly and generally sedentary father couldn’t keep up and they lost him after they’d rounded the first corner, but now the street was totally straight. There was nowhere to hide.
‘Kosuke, this way!’
Satoru had raced inside the small supermarket where they’d bought the can of cat food. A smattering of customers were flipping through magazines while the red-haired clerk listlessly restocked a shelf.
‘You have to hide us! We’re being chased!’ Satoru shouted. The clerk looked over at them doubtfully.
‘If they catch us, they’re going to get rid of him!’
Satoru showed the cardboard box to the clerk and a siren-like yowl rang out from it.
The clerk stared at the box for a moment, then headed to the back of the shop, motioning for them to follow. They passed through a door and the clerk pointed to the back exit.
‘You’re a lifesaver!’
Satoru scampered out, followed by Kosuke.
He turned and gave a small bow of thanks, and the clerk wordlessly waved a hand at them.
From there, they scurried from place to place, but they were only children and there was only so far their legs could carry them.
Finally, they ran to their elementary school. Satoru’s odd little plan to run away from home had caused quite a disturbance, so much so that the news had got around the neighbourhood, and as they legged it into the school grounds, all the grown-ups were hot on their heels.
They prised open a window, one that all the pupils knew was out of kilter and didn’t lock properly, and slipped into the school building. The adults had no idea how to get in, so they ran around helplessly outside, while the boys made their way up to the top floor.
They spilled out on to the roof and could at last put down the cardboard box with the kitten inside.
‘I hope he’s okay. He was quite shaken up.’
There was no sound coming from the box so they quickly opened it. The kitten was nestled in a corner. Kosuke hesitantly reached his arm inside to touch it—
Pyaaa—!
The kitten started to howl even louder than before.
‘Sssshhhh! You’ll give us away.’
The two boys tried to calm the kitten, but cats don’t often listen. Crouched down and shushing at each other, they could hear voices calling out.
‘I hear a cat!’
‘It’s coming from the roof!’
The grown-ups had started to gather down below. ‘Kosuke, enough!’
One angry voice rose up from the crowd, that of Kosuke’s father. From his tone, it was easy to guess that his son was in for a beating.
Kosuke, in tears, turned on Satoru.
‘It didn’t work! You lied, Satoru!’
‘It isn’t over yet. We can still pull this off!’
Again, a voice called out from below. ‘Satoru, come down here right this minute!’
Satoru’s father had joined their pursuers.
‘We can go up the fire escape,’ someone piped up, and it became clear that Kosuke’s father, his face burning with rage, was already climbing the stairs.
‘It’s all over now,’ Kosuke mumbled, holding his head in his hands. Satoru ran over to the railing on the roof. He leaned over it and shouted, ‘Stop! If you don’t stop, he’s going to jump!’
A murmur ran through the crowd below.
‘What?’ Kosuke was horrified. ‘What are you doing, Satoru?!’
When he grabbed Satoru’s sleeve, Satoru gave him a blazing grin and a thumbs-up. ‘A comeback!’ he said. It wasn’t what Kosuke had been hoping for, but it did seem to be enough to stop Kosuke’s father dead in his tracks.
‘Satoru, is that true, what you said?’ Satoru’s mother yelled from below.
‘It’s true! It’s true!’ Satoru yelled back. ‘He just took off his trainers!’
‘Oh my god!’ People were screaming from below.
‘Kosuke, calm down now, kid!’ This from Satoru’s father, while Kosuke’s father roared, ‘Stop buggering about!’ Even from up above, it was clear he was furious. ‘Stop whining! I’m coming up, and I’ll drag you down from there if I have to!’
‘Don’t do that, Mr Sawada! Kosuke’s really going to do it!’ Satoru shouted, to stop him. ‘If you come up here, he’ll jump off, and he’ll take the cat with him!’
Satoru turned to Kosuke with a grave expression on his face. ‘Kosuke, could you, like, kind of straddle the railing?’
Kosuke replied that no way was he going to risk his life over all this.
‘But look, you want to keep the cat, don’t you?’
‘Sure, but …’ For the sake of a cat, did you really have to go this far?
For one thing, the story Satoru had read about the boy running away hadn’t ended up with him and the puppy jumping to their deaths.
‘Listen! Can’t we ask first whether it’s okay to keep the cat at your house, Satoru?’
‘What?’ Satoru looked as startled as a pigeon shot with an air rifle. ‘You mean, it’s okay for me to have the cat? Man, if you thought that, you should have said so!’
Beaming, Satoru called out to the crowd down below.
‘Dad! Mum! Kosuke says he wants us to have the cat—!’
‘Okay, okay. But first talk Kosuke out of jumping!’
A storm of misunderstanding still seemed to be swirling through the crowd of grown-ups, who didn’t have a clue what was going on.
SATORU, YOU REALLY weren’t too bright as a child, were you?
I could hear Satoru and Kosuke’s conversation from inside my basket. I’d never heard such a mad story in my life.
‘It was after we came down from the roof that things got heavy.’
‘Your dad thumped us pretty hard, Kosuke. I remember, the next day my head looked like the Great Buddha in Nara.’
The cat that had thrown the whole neighbourhood into such an uproar was my predecessor, that cat Hachi, apparently.
‘Speaking of which, Hachi was a male tabby, wasn’t he? Aren’t male tabbies supposed to be quite rare?’ asked Kosuke.
Is that so? Well, since Hachi and I have the same markings, I must be a pretty rare specimen myself.
I had pricked up my ears to listen in, and Satoru said, smiling, ‘Well, the thing is … I asked a vet about it and he said his markings are too few for him to be classified as a tabby.’
‘Really? Other than his forehead and tail, it’s true – he was pure white.’
Kosuke paused. ‘Man,’ he said, raising his arms then crossing them in front of his chest. I could see all this through the gaps in my basket. ‘I was thinking that if I had told my father it was a valuable male tabby I might have been able to convince him to keep it.’