Synopsis

This volume collects two standalone stories. Poppoya: Satou Otomatsu works as a station master at a remote station in Hokkaido—basically the end of the line in a dying village. The place is shutting down come spring, and he's retiring with it. During his final winter there, he meets a young girl one night, and the encounter sets off a chain of events that forces him to reckon with his life as a railroad man and everything it cost him personally. Love Letter: Goro gets released from prison, only to have a cop immediately pull him aside with bad news: his wife is dead, and he needs to go to Chiba to claim her body. Problem is, he doesn't remember being married. Then it clicks—he married a Chinese woman years back. It was transactional on both sides: she needed a Japanese visa to work, he wanted her money. She came to Japan as a sex worker looking for a better life. Goro doesn't particularly care at first, but the money's good, so he makes the trip. Along the way, he finds a letter she wrote him. Reading it, he realizes who she actually was beneath everything—genuinely kind, genuinely loving. Her words reveal her fears, her dreams, her hopes for a future he now knows she'll never get to see. It hits him hard.

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