Author's Statement

For forty years I have written stories about a boy and his robot cat, about children reaching for impossible things with gadgets that fit in a pocket. My readers grew up. I wanted to follow them.

This story asks what happens when those children become middle-aged salarymen with bad knees and worse regrets. The gadgets are still here -- but now they sit on convenience store shelves beside the rice balls and canned coffee, and the price tags show costs that cannot be paid in yen.

I have never written for adults. I have never let a story end without rescue. This is new territory for me: a world where the magical helper cannot solve the problem, because the problem is time itself, and time does not accept returns.

This is the Doraemon story I was always afraid to tell.