Shuichi Nishimura worked at the train station’s Lost & Found office, sorting through the same kinds of items day after day.
Forgotten umbrellas, dropped wallets, single gloves without their pairs.
Each item arrived through someone’s carelessness, and most would disappear again, never reunited with their owners.
One day, however, an unusual item came in.
It was an old key.
Apparently found on a station platform, it came with no name, no contact information, and didn’t match any known locker.
On its worn surface, barely legible letters revealed only one thing: the number “302.”
“Room 302… but where?”
Normally, it would’ve been stored away in the backroom.
But for some reason, Shuichi couldn’t let it go.
When he held it in his hand, it felt strangely familiar—
As though he’d touched it once before.
◆
“Sometimes, lost items carry the memories of those who owned them.”
That’s what one of Shuichi’s old coworkers had once said.
He claimed that when you touched a lost stuffed animal, you could almost see the crying face of the little girl who left it behind.
—Maybe this key held something, too.
The moment that thought crossed his mind, he caught a flash of something out of the corner of his eye.
A worn apartment staircase.
A rain-soaked hallway.
The key sliding into a lock—
Shuichi gasped.
A memory?
◆
Using that fragment as a clue, Shuichi began searching for “Room 302.”
After combing through maps and records of nearby old buildings, he finally found a match:
Shinonome Apartments, about a fifteen-minute walk from the station.
A wooden apartment building over fifty years old, mostly vacant.
When he stood before Room 302, it looked exactly like what he had seen in his vision.
He slid the key into the lock.
—Click.
The door opened silently.
◆
Inside, time had stopped.
A faded photograph sat on the desk.
The calendar was frozen on a date years in the past.
Dust-covered books lined the shelves.
Suddenly, his vision blurred.
—Old memories flooded in.
He had lived in this room as a child.
Just he and his mother, in a small but warm home.
Then one day, without warning, she disappeared—leaving Shuichi behind.
This key… had been the last thing she left him.
Why had he forgotten?
Why had those memories been locked away?
Before he knew it, Shuichi was gripping the key tightly.
Lost items carried memories.
This key was a memory—
one he had “lost” long ago.
◆
The next day, Shuichi quietly slipped the key into his pocket.
His job at the Lost & Found continued.
But now, he had one more item to deliver.
A memory he had long locked away—
One that he could finally return to himself.
And at the station, as always, new lost things kept arriving.
