Sonochihama Ryuuta observed his subject with a distinct interest. Narrowing his eyes and pointing his finger outward while counting invisible points in the air. He scratched in his journal with a fresh pencil Once the last of the lines was completed, he let out a low chuckle. He ripped the page from the journal and crumpled it, throwing the scrap behind him into the house. As he sat on the front veranda of his Mishima home, he began to write his daily journal entry. 

“January 8th, 1948. It’s the fifth day since I first saw the cat. It doesn’t look like any cat I’ve seen before. It's orange with a nearly white head, could it be a mutation?  It doesn’t have a collar, and seems to be stray. I think it may have belonged to the family who lived across the street before they moved to Sendai. My only evidence is that it is old enough to have been around since then, and it seems comfortable around the empty house. The house itself has two floors; however the second floor consists of a single room which takes up a quarter of the area as the floor below it. That room has always reminded me of a tower. 

“I first saw the cat leap from the top of the perimeter wall to the ground, which was roughly three meters. Then from the first floor roof to some point I could not see within the perimeter, I would guess around five meters. Earlier today, the cat jumped from the second floor roof to the nearest section of the perimeter wall, which looked to have been around six meters from my rough estimation. Can cats really jump that far? Or is this one some kind of special case?” 

When he looked up from his journal his agent, Gendo, was already standing there. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be working on a book?” Gendo smiled as he popped off his leather shoes and sat on the veranda by Ryuuta. He was wearing a tan blazer with matching slacks and a white button down shirt like an American. It was the first time, Ryuuta realized, that he had seen Gendo in totally western attire. 

“You’ve been somewhere, haven’t you?” 

Gendo laughed while pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. 

“Yeah, I figured you’d be able to tell. I just got back from talking with a guy from San Francisco, well, technically a guy from Yokohama, but through him I spoke to a guy from San Francisco. Do you remember–but, well, you never met him. You know, you really are a recluse, aren’t you?” Gendo lit a cigarette in his teeth, filling Ryuuta’s precious air with smoke. 

“I go out on walks sometimes.” 

“Doesn’t count, and besides, it doesn’t matter if you never talk to people. That aside, you were right, I went to talk to an American, so I put on my best western clothes. Like it?”

“It makes you look like a piece of wood. What do you have to do with Americans?” 

“No, that’s where you found yourself wrong my friend. The question you should be asking is; What do you have to do with American’s? Remember, my job is proliferating you buddy, so everything I do is because of, and related to, you. How do you feel about translations?”

“In general? I guess they’re fine.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear; there’s a printing shop in Oakland that wants to get your anthology out. It’s near San Francisco, so it might be a good shot. The way I hear it, a lot of Japanese have settled out there, not to mention the second or third generation citizens who probably don’t speak our language too well. Get me? Not too many guys have jumped the pond, especially with the war and all of that.”

His tone did not shift while he spoke. The casual drawl muttered behind a cigarette was the same that Ryuuta was used to by that point. He even un-folded his legs and stretched one out across the floor while groaning. He used his free hand which was not playing with the cigarette to rub his socked foot which remained near his body. Despite having gone to Ryuuta’s house that day to talk shop, Gendo was as relaxed and incredulous as always. 

“You know, you are ambitious, aren’t you? It makes me wonder why you started this whole endeavor to begin with…” Ryuuta hummed, folding his journal and placing it behind him. As Gendo had arrived, it must have been half past one. He had been sitting on his veranda for three hours, and had lost track of the time again. The weather was not terribly cold that day as there was little wind. Ryuuta’s cotton kimono was doing its job keeping him warm. 

“Ambitious? I’m almost hurt that you would say such a thing.” Though he feigned a high pitched dejection in his voice, his pouting lips and widened eyes depicted someone who was only all-too-aware how he appeared to others. A strange thought, considering he had once shown up to Ryuuta’s house wearing mismatched jinbei and those same accursed leather shoes. 

“I would think so, you know I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for you. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that trick of yours. Stealing my story while I was sick, publishing it in my name without my permission. You’re a rat to your core Hanasayama Gendo.” Though his words were curses, the corners of his mouth were high and his dimples became red from the cold air. 

“And you should thank me for it! Money when the finances dry up from the war. Connecting you with a builder, connecting you with Kyoto when Tokyo became too competitive. You know, Ryuuta, I think you might be taking me for granted. I’m out there busking and you sit here all day writing in that silly journal of yours. You know what you remind me of? I heard this word the other day and it really does apply; aesthete. How about that?” 

As Gendo spoke with a smile, Ryuuta’s eyes shifted suddenly to movement on the other side of the road. There, atop the second floor rooftop, was the same white headed cat that had appeared before him for those last five days. Why it kept returning to that point on the roof was a total mystery, but his eyes remained focused on it. Gendo noticed the shift in attention and turned, squinting around trying to find the point of interest. Ryuuta raised a finger to the cat and leaned over to his friend. 

“That cat there, have you seen anything like it?” 

Gendo raised his eyes to the roof and let out a breath when he finally noticed. 

“Ah, I see. No, can’t say I have. Is that your latest interest then? I guess that means you’ve taken this long to answer my question. You haven’t made much progress on the novel, have you?”

Part of Ryuuta wanted to say that it was out of his mind because of his research subject, but there was that mature, forty-two year old, man that he had become which kept the excuses from his lips. There were reasons he had yet to write a novel before his most current project. Reasons which he was unaware or unconscious of, granted, but there were reasons. Though he had managed to pull from the depths of his lazy nature some form of drive to write for money, it could only amount to a few thousand characters of near-inconsequentiality. To write a novel, then, would be to put upon a hundred or so pages some kind of thesis. A greater project that was supposed to build to something, some final conclusion on some facet of nature or humanity or cosmic importance. There was too much austerity within the idea of writing a novel. 

“It leapt from that roof to the wall. How far do you think that is?” 

Gendo pulled his leg in, crossing both of them again as he arched his neck and leaned to the left and right as though he were trying to get a better glimpse of the other side of the wall. He flicked his cigarette into the path that led up to Ryuuta’s house and turned back to him. 

“About eight meters from ground to the top I think. That makes the wall, what, two or three meters? So I’ll say six. Brave little rodent, I’ll give him that. Anyway, that’s not important, do you remember Sunokaze? I told you about it before. He was the student who followed around that old guy who delivered the papers, remember?” 

The cat sat on the corner of the roof, staring down at the perimeter wall. Even that feline lacked the confidence to make such a leap, despite having cleared it before. Ryuuta watched it as he continued to engage with Gendo. 

“Yeah, I remember him.”

“Well, our young Sunokaze has grown up, apparently he knows people now, and he speaks English. He connected me with San Francisco and offered to translate the anthology. I was thinking, if you would allow me to let him do so, that I could send him here so he can get started on what you’ve got for the novel so far. The way I see it, if we can dual publish in Kyoto and San Francisco, then the odds of our success are very high.”

The cat stood and stretched, pushing its paws across the tiles of the roof and arching its back low. Then it peered over the edge, walked back and in a circle, and paced while making its decision. For some reason, it had forgotten about the shorter jump to the first floor roof. 

“So, not only do you want to take a chance on my collection doing well, but you want my novel there too. Now I have the privilege of stressing over the novel's quality in my eyes, in Kyoto’s eyes, and then, most enigmatically, the eyes of the Americans.” 

“Japanese Americans. Who cares if the locals don’t like it? It probably won’t leave California anyway. Have I ever steered you wrong before? Need I reiterate how much pushing I’ve already done? This is just business as usual if you ask me, so I say do it, let me send the anthology to Sunokaze, and then I’ll send him over to introduce himself. I don’t think you two have ever actually spoken, if memory serves, that is.” Gendo followed Ryuuta’s eyes again and found the same subject. He shrugged as his eyes turned back to Ryuuta. 

As Gendo turned away, the cat approached the front facing edge of the roof and peered over. Then, confident, it leapt into the yard. Hidden by the perimeter wall, Ryuuta could not determine the fate of that odd feline creature. 

The jump startled him, as from the second floor roof to the ground must have been at least nine meters. He rose to his feet to try to get a glimpse of the yard and the, certainly, injured animal. Gendo laughed at the gesture and likewise got up to mirror his old friend's concern, albeit sarcastically. The two men put on their shoes and crossed the road to the perimeter of the neighboring house, where Ryuuta rudely peered over the top of the short gate. 

The cat was gone. 

“Since when were you so concerned with stray animals?” Gendo pulled out another cigarette and lit up, relaxing with one hand in the warmth of his pocket. The wind was picking up, and divorced from the sanctity of his house, Ryuuta was suddenly aware of how cold it had been. 

“Alright, go ahead and let Sunokaze do what he will. I’ve made some progress, I have a few dozen pages for him to work on. Who knows, maybe it will give me some motivation to keep pace with his translation.” 

“That’s the way!” Gendo erupted in laughter. “You’re starting to get it. Amazing for someone to not understand their own process as long as you have. You, my friend, have a clear lack of urgency. Even since this became your only income you still need me to come around here and kick you into motion. You’re like an old car that needs to be cranked, if I leave you too long you idle to death.” 

“Spare me the lectures. It’s too cold, let’s get back to the house before I freeze to death.” 

The two men turned with Ryuuta bending his neck down into his hands as they hastily rubbed together for the heat of friction. As he exhaled a hot breath onto his fingers Gendo tapped him on the shoulder and pointed somewhere beyond his house.

“I found your cat friend.”

Far to the northwest the clouds had parted for the sun to lay upon the countryside outside of Mishima. The clouds were likely clear from Numazu to Aokigahara, and because of that a figure rose high above the rooftops and hills of Mishima, higher still above the trees of Aokigahara and above the horizon of the mountains. Fuji stood tall, arrogant. Empyric. Beside those thoughts of it that were normal among Ryuuta’s opinion on the king of all mountains, he picked up on Gendo’s joke almost immediately. The dark lower body of the mountain, and its snow capped summit, had a vague resemblance to his daring subject of study. 

“I might like cats.” Ryuuta sighed as he continued toward the house. 

“Want me to find you one? I know an old lady with a whole herd of the things.”

“Sure, have that guy Sunokaze bring it. It’s been pretty lonely in the house lately.” 

Gendo laughed and smacked Ryuuta’s back with a smile. 

“You know, you never change do you? You’re still as much a pain in the ass as you were in University. Well, I’ll head off then, Sunokaze will be here in about four days if all works out. Do you have a preference?” 

“In cats?” 

“Of course.” 

“One that likes eel.” 

With the final word Gendo turned on his heels and made long strides down the street, disappearing around the edges of house fences. The wind carried his steps somewhere else, and soon it was as though he had never been there at all. Ryuuta took his spot on the veranda again and grabbed his journal. 

“The cat made the jump, else he’d have been lying there in the yard half-broken. I’ll never get used to the ability of cats to make such great leaps of faith and live. There is daring, there is ambition, and then there is foolishness. Which am I?” 

He set the pencil down and looked back at the house across the street as an automobile rolled up before it. A man in a black hat with thin glasses got out and played with the latch before opening the gate and letting himself in. Ryuuta guessed it was the new owner finally arriving to survey the estate. This thought was suddenly distracted, however, by a shout that came from within the property, followed a moment later by a creature leaping to the wall from inside and sprinting to the edge before dropping into the street. Out of sight from the man within. Ryuuta’s subject sat waving its tail before licking a paw and rubbing the top of its head. 

“Does anything scare you little one?” Ryuuta called out, but the cat paid him no mind.