Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Not only could you go back in time in this cafe, you could also visit the future. Compared with the number of people who choose to return to the past, however, hardly anyone chooses to venture into the future. Why? Well, whereas you can return to the past and aim to coincide with the person you want to meet, this is simply not possible when heading to the future. The prospects of meeting a particular person at the cafe at a specific time in the future are riddled with uncertainty.

For example, even if you set a date, all kinds of things could happen to hinder that person’s journey to the cafe that day. Their train might simply be delayed. There might be an urgent request from work; a road might be closed; a typhoon might hit; the person might be ill – the point is, no one knows what obstacles are waiting. The chances, therefore, of a person travelling to the future and successfully meeting the right person are extremely low.

Yet, there in the cafe, was a man who had come from the past. His name was Katsuki Kurata. He was in knee-length shorts and a T-shirt with beach sandals on his feet. The cafe, in contrast, was decorated with an artificial Christmas tree that reached nearly to the ceiling. It took pride of place in the centre of the room; the middle table had been moved in order to make room for it in this tiny nine-customer cafe. The tree had been bought by Nagare Tokita’s wife, Kei, before she died, as a sign of her affection for her beloved daughter Miki (she wanted to leave behind something that could be decorated every year).

‘You’re not cold, dressed like that?’ asked Kyoko Kijima, who was sitting alongside Miki at the counter. She was half concerned, half amused at how unsuitable Kurata’s attire was for Christmastime.

‘How about a blanket or something?’ suggested Nagare, popping his head out of the kitchen, but Kurata replied, with a quick wave of his hand, ‘I’m fine. I don’t feel cold at all. But could I have glass of cold water please?’

‘OK, one cold water coming up,’ said Kazu Tokita behind the counter. As she spoke, she spun round, pulled a glass from the shelf, filled it with water and walked briskly over to Kurata.

‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the water from her, and drinking it down all in one go.

‘I’ve finished!’ exclaimed a gleeful Miki, gripping a pen. Sitting at the counter next to Kyoko, she had just finished writing a wish on a vertically-folded piece of paper known as tanzaku.

As Miki held up the paper, Kyoko asked, ‘What did you wish for this time?’ while trying to peek.

‘I wish that Daddy’s feet would start smelling nice,’ Miki read out energetically. Finding that terribly amusing, Kyoko blew a short raspberry. Giggling also, Miki dropped down from the seat, and walked over to hang her tanzaku wish with the other decorations on the Christmas tree. It was an unusual time to be writing tanzaku – something people would normally do on the seventh of July when the Tanabata Festival is held. The tree was already festooned with several such wishes she had written, and their contents varied. Nagare was by far the most common theme among them. Aside from ‘smelly feet’, she wished that he would ‘become shorter’ and that he would ‘stop being so cranky’. Kyoko often had to suppress her laughter.

Writing wishes on tanzaku and hanging them on the Christmas tree was not a regular activity at the cafe. On seeing Miki practising her writing, Kyoko had suggested, ‘Why not write wishes and decorate the tree with them?’

Kazu, who normally didn’t laugh that much, was chuckling too. The cheerful atmosphere even made Kurata, the man from the past, smile.

‘Stop just writing silly things,’ an exasperated Nagare grumbled as he came out from the kitchen holding a square twenty-centimetre box. The box held the Christmas cake, made by him, that Kyoko had ordered.

Miki looked at him and giggled, then turned to the tanzaku hanging from the tree, clapped her hands and prayed in the traditional Shinto way. Was it Christmas, or the Tanabata Festival, or was she pretending to visit a shrine? It was all very confused.

‘Right, next one . . .’ said Miki, far from finished, as she began to write once more.

After putting the cake box in a paper carrier bag, he said, ‘This is for Kinuyo . . .’ and added a takeaway coffee in a smaller paper bag.

‘Huh?’ Kyoko started. Her mother Kinuyo, who died that year in the last days of summer, had always enjoyed drinking Nagare’s coffee – she had gone on drinking it every day while in the hospital too.

‘Thank you,’ Kyoko said softly, tears in her eyes. She was moved by his thoughtful kindness in adding the coffee that Kinuyo had loved, even though she never ordered it.

It’s a part of life, and carrying out acts of mourning allows us not to forget. Perhaps in the case of the large Christmas tree that Kei had left, the tree embodied not only her wish to never be forgotten but was also a sign that she would always be watching over them. As for the way the Christmas tree was used, well, it was unconventional. But if Miki enjoyed it, it was certainly being used in accordance with Kei’s wish.

Nagare narrowed his eyes further, perhaps in embarrassment. ‘Er, two thousand, three hundred and sixty yen,’ he replied softly.

Kyoko pulled the money out of her purse. ‘Here you go,’ she said, handing him a five-thousand-yen note and three hundred and sixty yen in change.

‘By the way,’ he said, then paused. ‘He’s moving back to Tokyo, isn’t he? What’s his name, Yukio, was it?’ he asked Kyoko. Yukio was Kyoko’s younger brother, who had moved to Kyoto to become a studio potter.

‘Yes, he’s coming home! Things were pretty hard for a while, but he’s found himself a job.’

It hadn’t been easy for Yukio to find proper work. He had spent his adult years up until his late thirties solely focused on ceramics, leaving him with no qualifications. He was open to any field of work, so he sought help from HelloWork, the public employment placement service. After eleven unsuccessful applications, he was hired by a small company that sold Western-style tableware. Newly arrived in Tokyo, he chose to live in a company apartment. In this way, he took the first steps towards beginning a second life.

‘Oh, that’s wonderful to hear,’ said Nagare as he handed Kyoko the change. Kazu, who was listening in on the conversation behind Nagare, also bowed her head. Kyoko’s expression, however, darkened a little. She looked over at the man in that chair and let out a small sigh.

‘It never crossed my mind that Yukio was thinking about suicide . . .’ she lamented. ‘I’m really so grateful,’ she said, bowing her head deeply.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Kazu. Her deadpan expression did not change, so it was difficult for Kyoko to know how well she had conveyed her feelings. Nevertheless, Kyoko nodded, seemingly satisfied.

‘I’ve done another one!’ exclaimed a boisterous Miki, who had finished writing another wish.

It was unclear how deeply she had thought about her wish. She might have just wanted an excuse to write the characters for ‘happy’. But on hearing it, Nagare looked almost embarrassed.

‘What nonsense!’ he grumbled and then promptly vanished into the kitchen. Kyoko looked at Kazu and chuckled.

‘I think Daddy is saying he is happy already,’ she told Miki and left the cafe. Miki was smiling, but perhaps she hadn’t noticed the depth of the feelings she had roused.

Miki cheerfully attached the tanzaku to the tree while singing a Christmas song, as the noisy bleating of Nagare blowing his nose droned on in the kitchen.

She walked up to him and peeked at what was on the table. Placed in front of his hands were a pen and a tanzaku, the same materials that Miki had been using. Miki had given them to him so that he could write a wish too.

‘You know you can write anything, OK?’ Miki advised Kurata, who hurriedly grabbed the pen. He looked up at the rotating ceiling fan, as if taking time to think, and then quickly wrote his wish.

‘Shall we try to contact Fumiko again?’ asked Nagare coming out from the kitchen, his nose red from blowing.

Fumiko was a customer who had returned to the past in this very cafe seven years ago. She still visited often.

‘She’s not the sort of person to break a promise.’ Nagare sighed, crossing his arms. He had tried calling her phone a few minutes earlier, and although it rang, she hadn’t answered.

‘Thank you, I appreciate you going out of your way,’ Kurata said to him, with a polite nod.

‘Are you waiting for Fumiko?’ asked Miki, who, at some point, had sat herself down facing Kurata and was now studying his face.

Kurata was praising Miki as if she had answered correctly in a test. She looked pleased and made a peace sign.

‘But Fumiko’s last name is Takaga, isn’t it? It’s Fumiko Takaga, right?’ Miki asked Kazu behind the counter. Kazu smiled warmly, but Nagare was quick to correct her.

‘It’s Ka-Ta-Da! She’ll get cross if you call her Fumiko Takaga, OK?’ he interjected.’

Miki didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between ‘Takaga’ and ‘Katada’. She just tilted her head with a confused expression as if to say, What is Daddy talking about?

‘. . . Oh, that’s amazing news!’ Kurata gasped, instantly recognizing the name Katada. Just the mention of it caused him to sit up excitedly. For a moment it looked dangerously like he was about to stand up from the chair in excitement.

Kurata had heard that Fumiko’s now-husband had postponed the wedding after a job opportunity came up in Germany. On hearing the news that she finally did get married, he seemed so delighted that you would think he was the one getting married.

Fumiko’s decision to travel back in time had been the result of an unfortunate conversation between her and her then boyfriend, Goro Katada. Goro had been hired by an American game company called TIP-G, something he had dreamed of for a long time, and he had gone to America. Fumiko had gone back knowing full well that she could not change the present. And while in the past, Goro had told her that he wanted her to wait three years.

His words were a hint, suggesting after three years they should get married. But upon returning from America three years later, he was immediately sent to work in Germany. Yet they remained engaged and finally, last year, after various obstacles, the path was clear for them to get married. So Fumiko became Mrs Katada.

In response to Kurata’s reaction, Nagare pulled a long face and looked conflicted. The coffee was not going to stay warm for ever.

‘You were just saying that it wasn’t Fumiko that you were waiting for, is that right?’ Nagare asked, recalling how the conversation had gone sideways because Miki had mistaken Fumiko’s surname.

‘She, um, she’s a work colleague. Her name is Asami Mori,’ Kurata replied, sounding a little flustered. ‘I asked Ms Kiyokawa, I mean Fumiko, to bring her here.’ He looked over to the entrance, despite no one having come in.

The person Kurata had come to see was Asami Mori, a junior work colleague of Fumiko’s. Kurata and Asami had joined at the same time, but Kurata had been in Sales while Asami was assigned to the Development department, where Fumiko worked.

Nagare had no idea why Kurata had come from the past to meet his colleague, and he had no intention of asking.

‘Oh . . . I see. Well, I hope they arrive soon,’ Nagare muttered, and Kurata smiled a little.

‘If they don’t come, they don’t come. I’m fine with that,’ he replied.

‘We got engaged, but it doesn’t look like we will get married now . . .’ he said, looking down glumly.

Kurata’s deflated expression was enough to give Nagare a general idea of the circumstances.

‘But finding out that Ms Kiyokawa got married made it worthwhile coming. I am so, so glad about that.’

Kurata smiled happily. He was not faking it. He looked genuinely pleased. Miki, who was sitting opposite Kurata resting her cheek on her hand, had been listening to the exchange.

‘You change your name when you get married,’ Nagare said, sounding a little irritated, like a parent who is bombarded with similar questions every day.

‘Huh? No way. Hey, Mistress, will you change your name?’ She looked at Kazu.

Recently, Miki had started calling Kazu ‘Mistress’. No one exactly knew why. Several days earlier, it had been ‘Sister Kazu’; before that, ‘Sister’, and before that, simply ‘Kazu’. It was as if Kazu’s rank had been slowly and steadily rising.

‘If I get married.’ Responding to Miki in her usual cool way, she carried on wiping glasses.

It was unclear what Miki ‘saw’, but she nodded and returned to the seat at the counter to start writing some more wishes for the tanzaku.

The phone began ringing from the back room. Kazu was about to go and answer it, but Nagare put his hand up to stop her and disappeared into the back room himself.

Kurata dropped his eyes to the tabletop and stared at what he had written on his tanzaku.

Despite being two years his junior, Asami Mori never spoke to him in the kind of polite language normally used with more senior employees, because they joined the company at the same time. As a person full of smiles who appeared to be completely genuine, she was popular, including within the company.

Fumiko, who worked in the same office as Asami, was popular for her looks, but at work she was called a bitch behind her back. That made Asami’s presence there all the more welcome as she helped soften the war-room atmosphere that would hang in the office when a deadline approached.

Kurata and Asami would often go out drinking with people who had joined at the same time. Conversations would often centre around work grievances, but Kurata never once bad-mouthed the company or his superiors. On the contrary, he always looked on the bright side, and he showed leadership when the going got tough and the situation hopeless.

Asami saw Kurata as an extremely positive guy, but she had a boyfriend when she joined the company and never really thought of him as a ‘man’.

Kurata and Asami grew close, however, when Asami discussed her miscarriage with him. She had miscarried a child just after she had broken up with her boyfriend. She hadn’t known that she was pregnant until after the split, and the miscarriage was unrelated to the shock of breaking up. Asami had a condition which meant she was more likely to suffer a miscarriage.

When she found out that she was pregnant, she had decided to keep the baby, even if it meant being a single mum. Having made this choice, the news that she was more prone to miscarriage came as an even bigger shock. She couldn’t help but feel that it was her fault.

Overwhelmed by guilt, she shared her feelings with her close friends outside work, her parents, and her sister. Although they tried to console and comfort her in her time of sadness, none of them could offer words that dispelled the clouds from her heart.

It was while she was in this state that Kurata came up to her and asked, ‘Is something wrong?’

She didn’t think that he would understand the delicate subject of losing a baby, being a man and all. But she desperately needed a sympathetic ear – it did not matter whose it was. Of the people she had already told, her female friends had cried with her, and her parents had tried to reassure her by telling her it wasn’t her fault. She therefore assumed that Kurata, likewise, would empathize and tell her something to console her. So, she spoke honestly of her feelings.

However, after he listened to her story, his first response was to ask how many days she had carried the baby. After she told him ten weeks, or about seventy days, he asked, ‘Why do you think the child you were carrying was granted life in this world for those seventy days?’

‘Are you really asking why it was given life?’ Her eyes flushed red, she sobbed convulsively. ‘Are you telling me I’m a bad person?’

She found herself unable to stop herself from snapping at him like this. She had already blamed herself for her child never having been born. But to then be told this by someone who had absolutely no businesses in saying such a thing made her even more distraught.

Kurata seemed to understand what she meant and smiled kindly. ‘No, you’ve got it wrong.’

‘What have I got wrong? The child I was carrying could do nothing! I couldn’t even let it be born! It was my fault! I was only able to give that child seventy days of life! Only seventy days!’

With a composed expression, he calmly waited for her to stop crying, and then said, ‘That child used its seventy-day-long life for your happiness.’

‘If you remain devastated like this, then your child will have used those seventy days in vain.’

His message was not one of empathy. He was pointing out a way Asami could change the way she thought about the grief that she was experiencing.

‘But if you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days towards making you happy. In that case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore, you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child.’

On hearing these words, Asami gasped. The deep despair that had been weighing on her heart began to shift, and everything before her appeared a little brighter.

She was unable to hold back tears. She looked up to the heavens and wailed loudly as she sobbed. Her tears were less from sadness than from joy at seeing a way out from the bottomless pit and experiencing something like happiness again.

Kurata suddenly noticed that Nagare was standing next to him with the phone in his hand.

Kurata had said if he didn’t meet her, he would be fine with that. Nevertheless, his expression hardened a little, as if he was nervous to speak to her on the phone.

‘Uh-huh, yes . . . Oh, really? . . . I see . . . No, not at all . . . Thank you so much.’

Based only on witnessing his side of the call, he didn’t seem particularly let down. As he spoke, he sat up with his chest puffed out awkwardly and looked straight ahead, as if Fumiko was sitting there in front of him. Nagare stood observing his unnaturally tense pose with a look of concern.

‘No, no. You have done so much for me . . . That’s quite OK . . . thank you very much.’

‘Right . . . yes . . . OK, uh-huh . . . the coffee will be cold soon, so . . . yes . . .’

Of the three antique clocks on the wall, only the one in the centre showed the right time. Of the other two, one was fast and one was slow. Accordingly, when Nagare, Kazu or any of the regulars wanted to check the time, they would always look at the one in the middle.

Judging by Kurata’s conversation on the phone with Fumiko, Nagare was assuming that the woman he was waiting for, Asami, was not coming.

Kurata took a very deep breath and slowly closed his eyes. Kazu watched him do this, but did nothing.

‘Oh, that reminds me. I heard you got married. Congratulations. Yes, the cafe staff told me . . . believe me, hearing that alone made my trip worth it.’

They weren’t just empty words, he really seemed to mean it. His beaming face was seemingly directed to Fumiko, wherever she was.

Kurata slowly ended the call. Nagare quietly approached the table, and Kurata returned the handset to him.

He was smiling but his voice was faltering. He clearly seemed disappointed that he had come all this way to the future only to miss out on meeting Asami.

Nagare knew he couldn’t offer anything. But he couldn’t help asking. He kept pressing the buttons on the handset pointlessly.

Nagare slowly lifted his head and walked off towards the back room holding on to the handset.

‘Could you put this up for me, please?’ Kurata asked, presenting the tanzaku bearing his wish.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Miki. Because Kurata couldn’t leave his chair, she came and took it from him.

‘Thank you for everything,’ he said, and bowing his head to Kazu behind the counter, he picked up the cup in front of him.

Kurata had been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukaemia. He was told he could start treatment and hope to survive, or forgo it and be left with only six months to live. It was the second summer of his relationship with Asami. He’d got the news of his diagnosis just after deciding to get a ring ready secretly and propose to her.

But he didn’t give up. If it meant the slightest chance of survival, he had no trouble deciding to begin treatment. It was then he decided to carry out his plan, keeping it a secret from Asami. He had heard from Fumiko that in this cafe, not only could you return to the past, but you could also travel to the future. The information he obtained from Fumiko, however, wasn’t detailed enough for him to carry out his plan successfully. So he visited the cafe to find out first-hand whether the plan he had conceived could work.

Getting there was no trouble as he had visited it on two prior occasions when he had tagged along with Fumiko. But just as the weather forecast had predicted, he got caught in sporadic torrential downpours. Even using an umbrella, he was still soaked from the waist down by the time he entered the cafe.

Maybe because of the rain, only the waitress, Kazu, and the woman in the dress were in the cafe. Kurata quickly introduced himself and began explaining his plan to Kazu.

‘I wish to go to the future. Ms Kiyokawa told me that you could also go to the future when you sit on that chair,’ he said, looking at the woman in the dress. He pulled out a notebook on which he had jotted down as much detail on the rules as possible, based on what Fumiko had told him, and then began to check if they were right or not.

‘When returning to the past, you cannot meet anyone who has not visited the cafe. What about the future? Is it impossible to meet the person you want to meet unless they come to the cafe?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Kazu matter-of-factly while carrying on with her work. Proceeding methodically with his questions while referring to his notebook, Kurata confirmed that the woman in the dress left her seat to go to the toilet once a day and that even when travelling to the future, it was not possible to stand up from the chair.

‘Is the time it takes for the coffee to get cold the same for everyone? Or does the time become longer or shorter depending on the circumstances?’ he asked.

This was a shrewd question. If the time it took for the coffee to get cold was consistently the same, he could check with Fumiko, who had gone back in time, and get a good idea of how long he would have. But if the duration was different each time, in the worst-case scenario, he could get less time than her.

When going to the past, you know exactly when the person you want to meet visited the cafe. That means you can aim for a specific time and go back with pinpoint precision. So even if the time allowed there was short, you’d most likely meet them.

The same doesn’t apply to the future. You can arrange to meet someone, but whether they arrive at that time depends on circumstances you cannot predict. You might end up missing them by only a few seconds.

Any difference in the amount of time you had was therefore quite an important point. Kurata swallowed while waiting for Kazu’s answer.

Kurata didn’t seem overly disappointed, though, as if he had expected such an answer.

‘When you go to the past, there is nothing you can do that will change the present. Would it be right to think that this applies to when you visit the future as well?’

Unlike the previous questions, on this question, Kazu stopped what she was doing and thought for a moment.

‘I think so,’ she replied. Maybe it was because she had some idea why Kurata was asking this question, but it was rare for her to provide such a vague answer. That said, it was the first time anyone had ever asked this question.

Kurata thought that if the rule ‘no matter what you do while in the past, the present won’t change’ applied for going to the future too . . .

. . . if he went to the future and didn’t meet her, then no matter what he did from then on, that future would not change. Or on the other hand, if he did meet her in the future, then no matter what he did from then on, that meeting would still take place.

To simply go to the future and put his trust in meeting by chance was ill-advised. If Asami was a cafe regular, then that might be possible. But she wasn’t. Kurata intended to plan meticulously to get her to visit the cafe at the same time as him in the future.

If the future could be changed, then first he would go from now to the future, and even if he did not meet Asami that time, upon returning, he would just need to work harder so they would meet next time.

This was not a new rule. It was just an extension of the rule that no matter how hard you tried while in the past, you couldn’t change the present. Kurata, who was intending to travel to the future, was the only person ever to have considered it.

‘No, not today,’ he replied. And squeaking and squelching in his still-wet shoes, he left the cafe.

In order to meet Asami in the future, Kurata decided to recruit Fumiko as his co-conspirator. Fumiko frequently visited the cafe, and she was good friends with Asami. He was also impressed with her excellent work as a systems engineer, and was convinced that there was no one better suited to the task.

Kurata called Fumiko, telling her he wanted to meet to discuss something. Then he got straight to the point.

‘I probably only have about six months to live,’ he said. Showing a shocked Fumiko his test results, he explained what his doctor had told him and that he would be going into hospital in a week’s time. Naturally, Fumiko was lost for words, but the seriousness of his face left her no choice but to accept the news.

First he told her, ‘It is something that I can trust only you to do.’ Then he announced, ‘I am going to go to that cafe and travel to two and a half years in the future. If I’m dead, could you bring Asami to the cafe?’

‘However, under either of the following two conditions, you don’t need to ask her to come.’

Fumiko’s expression showed she was clearly struggling with what he was saying. He asked her to bring Asami to the cafe in two and a half years, then he gave her conditions for when she didn’t have to bring her. She couldn’t understand what he had in mind at all.

This made sense. After all, that was the most desirable situation. But when she heard the second condition, Fumiko was lost for words.

‘If, after I die, Asami is married and is living a happy life, then please don’t bring her.’

‘If I don’t meet Asami when I travel to the future, then I will take that to mean she is happily married, and I will return. But if that is not the case, then there is something that I want to say to her . . . that’s why . . .’

Kurata may have been told he had only six months to live, but the one thing he wanted was for Asami to be happy.

‘Ideally, you will never need to do anything, but please, do what you can,’ he said, bowing his head deeply.

But Asami hadn’t turned up. He let out a short breath and brought the cup he held to his lips. Just then . . .

The doorbell rang and soon after, rushing into the cafe, was Asami Mori, wearing a navy-blue duffel coat.

It must have started snowing outside, as there was a scattering of snowflakes on her head and shoulders. Kurata was in short sleeves, having come from summer in the past. When Asami suddenly showed up in a coat bearing the signs of a white Christmas, it wasn’t clear what season their meeting was taking place in. The two regarded each other for a moment in silence.

‘Fumiko told me everything. What were you thinking? Making me come and meet a dead person, did you put yourself in my shoes for even a second?’ she said brusquely. Staring into Asami’s face, Kurata began awkwardly needling his forehead with his index finger.

‘. . . Oh sorry, nothing. I have to go back,’ he said softly, as if he had messed up. As he was bringing the cup to his lips, Asami approached him. She held out her left hand for him to see. On her third finger was a sparkling ring.

‘Look, I am married, OK?’ she declared, staring straight into his eyes, pronouncing her words clearly and tersely.

‘Uh-huh.’ Kurata’s eyes were getting red. Asami looked away from him, and sighed.

‘It’s been two years since you died. What were you thinking, getting Fumiko entangled like that? Did you ever consider that you were worrying too much?’ she said accusingly.

‘It certainly seems I didn’t need to be so worried . . .’ Kurata said happily with a bitter-sweet smile. It was unclear what Asami was thinking, showing up like that, but hearing that she was married was all the satisfaction he needed.

After returning to the past, he would have six months left to live. By coming to the future, he hadn’t changed the fact that he would die. But that knowledge had not darkened his expression one little bit. His smiling face was bright, full of cheer and happiness.

He drank all the coffee in one go. Immediately, he began to feel dizzy. His surroundings began to shimmer. As he returned the cup to the saucer, his hands began gradually to turn into vapour. As his body floated in space, Asami spoke.

His consciousness was beginning to cloud and his surroundings were beginning to flow past him.

His hearing was cut off abruptly, and he disappeared as if he had been sucked up into the ceiling.

Suddenly the woman in the dress appeared in the chair that he had been sitting in, like a mirage. Asami just stood there, staring at the space where he had vanished.

Fumiko came in, dressed for winter in a down jacket and wool-lined boots. She had been standing there with the door half open, listening to the conversation between the two former lovers, waiting for it to end.

There were two conditions under which Kurata had asked Fumiko not to bring Asami.

But after he had died, Fumiko had worried about when best to tell Asami, right up until the day before the meeting would take place.

When it came to the condition that she didn’t have to bring Asami if she was married and happy, she interpreted that to mean, if Asami can’t get over Kurata and is unable to marry anyone else, then he wants her to come.

If Asami was doing her best to forget Kurata and put him behind her, however, Fumiko didn’t want to make her meet him just because she wasn’t married.

It would be a meeting with someone who was dead: not something to be taken lightly. Badly handled, it could really mess up Asami’s life. Fumiko mulled over the different possibilities incessantly, but two years went by with no solution to her worries nor any insight into Asami’s feelings.

Asami mourned Kurata after his death, but after about six months, she went on with her life. From what Fumiko could see, Asami had not let his death hold her back.

But based on this alone, Fumiko was unable to decide whether to bring Asami along on the day set for the meeting. Asami hadn’t married, but whether someone was married or not was no measure of their happiness. But Fumiko had not heard anything close to a romantic rumour about Asami since Kurata died. Then, before she knew it, the chosen day was only a week away.

After much agonizing, Fumiko decided to consult her husband, Goro. Although she recognized his prowess as a fellow systems engineer, her faith in him normally didn’t extend to affairs of the heart. However, they had agreed that if either of them had any troubles, they would talk it over as a couple. So, clutching at straws, she sought his advice.

‘I don’t think he considered that you would worry so much over it,’ he pronounced.

‘Think about what he said. The conditions for which he didn’t want you to bring Asami were, one, if he had not died, and two, if after he died she was married and happy.’

‘If you see it simply as a program that judges whether those conditions apply, you can dismiss any other conditions as not in the program . . .’

‘Right. For example, she might be happy, but she is not married. That doesn’t meet his conditions for not bringing her.’

‘Probably, knowing Asami better than you, Kurata set those absolute conditions as part of a way to help her recover from some kind of trauma.’

Now that he mentioned it, Fumiko had an idea what that trauma might be. Asami had had a miscarriage. She had also heard Asami say, It’s so scary to think I might have another.

‘In contrast, there is also the case where she is married but not happy, isn’t there? That case doesn’t meet the conditions of not bringing her either.’

‘OK. I get it now. Thank you!’ she said and immediately set off to meet Asami.

Fumiko always acted swiftly once she knew what needed doing. The agreed day and time of the meeting in the cafe was 7 p.m. on 25 December, Christmas Day. She of course didn’t reveal Kurata’s conditions when she told Asami that he was coming from the past at that time, but on hearing the news, Asami’s voice seemed to fade.

When the day of Kurata’s visit arrived, Asami was absent from work without notice. People had tried contacting her, but she didn’t answer. Her colleagues started half-jokingly suggesting that she must have thought Christmas was more important than work. Only Fumiko knew the circumstances for her absence. ‘Less talk and more work, if you please,’ she ordered her team in a brisk manner.

Around the station there stood many Christmas trees, decorated with lights that shone and sparkled. The place was bustling with people, and Christmas songs played from all directions. The cafe, however, was located on a side street, nestled among buildings some ten minutes’ walk from the station. Apart from a small wreath attached to the cafe’s sign, it was the same as any other day. The only light came from the main street, making it very dark. Compared to the liveliness of the area around the station, it felt lonely.

‘Has it always been this dark?’ she muttered to herself, watching her foggy white breath.

Snow, which had been coming down in sprinkles since sunset, danced and fluttered, even in this narrow side street. Even an umbrella held to the sky collected only a tiny amount of snow.

She pulled her sleeve back from her glove, far enough to check her watch. It was already a little later than when she had agreed to meet Kurata.

Her train might have been delayed because of the snow, which was also causing congestion on the roads as it settled. Normally, she would have rejoiced at such a romantic white Christmas. But tonight, this snow was a nuisance, causing her brow to furrow.

She felt a little despondent at Asami’s decision, but it was her choice to make.

She was right outside the cafe, but she couldn’t face going in. She decided to talk to Kurata on the phone instead.

‘Er, Kurata, is that you? It’s Fumiko Kiyokawa . . . Uh-huh . . . About Asami . . . It’s all a little complicated . . . I told her that you’re coming today . . . I only told her a week ago . . . Right . . . Yeah, I’m so sorry. I overthought it . . . Anyway, it sounded like she was coming. Yeah . . . Uh-huh . . . Hu-hum, but she’s well. She was really sad for about six months, I guess. But she seems over it now . . . Yes . . . I’m really sorry. I’m thinking now I should have tried harder. I’m regretting it now . . . Huh? . . . Oh, yes. Thank you . . . Oh, you have to go soon? Goodness me . . . Anyway, I’m truly sorry . . . Yes, OK then . . .’

After she ended the call, she couldn’t help a nagging feeling of regret. The snow was cold and falling a little heavier now.

‘Fumiko!’ said a woman’s voice behind her. Fumiko turned around to see a very out-of-breath Asami standing there.

She looked at her watch. He had said he would come at seven and it was now eight minutes past. Even if by good luck his coffee had not gone cold, he might have drunk it after ending the phone call. There wasn’t a second to lose.

‘Let’s go!’ urged Fumiko as she put her hand on Asami’s back and guided her down the stairs.

Not hesitating, she quickly pulled the ring from her finger and presented it to Asami.

‘Thank you!’ Asami nodded her head in thanks and entered the cafe as the doorbell rang.

‘I tried to move on, but I couldn’t forget Kurata . . . I ended up thinking I could never marry anyone else but him,’ she said, as her body shook slightly.

Looking at Asami, Fumiko just said, ‘Uh-huh.’ She could imagine being in her shoes.

She clenched her hand on her chest, she couldn’t find the words to say anything else.

‘But I remembered what he told me when I had my miscarriage. He told me that little baby had used the seventy days of its life to bring happiness into my life. He said that if I couldn’t find a way out of my unhappiness, then that would have been the result of the baby’s seventy days. But if I could find a way to be happy again, that is what the baby’s life would have brought me. Through that choice, I could allow its life to have meaning. I could create a reason for why my child was granted life. He told me that was why I had to try to be happy. He said that no one would have wished that more than my child.’

She stopped and started, relaying what Kurata had told her in a soft and trembling voice.

‘So, it made me think. I might not be able to get married right now, but I absolutely must be happy.’

Asami pulled the borrowed ring from her finger and gave it back to Fumiko. To make Kurata believe that she had got married, she had borrowed Fumiko’s ring and lied.

‘I wish that Asami is happy always,’ read Miki aloud from the tanzaku that Kurata had left.

Asami didn’t know how that tanzaku existed. But as soon as she heard it, she knew they were Kurata’s words. Large tears began to flow down her cheeks all at once, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

Fumiko put her arm around Asami’s shoulder, and Kazu stopped working and looked over at the woman in the dress.

‘I think it’s likely that Kurata knew she was lying,’ he said after she had finished, taking the cake he had bought out of its box.

‘If she had really been happily married, why would there be any need for you to explain it all to her? Based on his conditions, in that scenario, you didn’t have to bring her.’

‘Oh no, I hadn’t thought of that. I told her everything . . . It’s my fault . . .’

Looking at Fumiko’s face becoming more and more disappointed, Goro suddenly chuckled.

‘What? What are you laughing at?’ she demanded as her expression shifted to indignation.

Goro quickly apologized, saying sorry several times. After which, he said, ‘I don’t think it matters. Even if he knew she lied, he returned to the past without saying anything because he knew she would now find happiness and perhaps get married . . .’

On saying this, Goro held out a Christmas present he had got her, to take her mind off the subject.

‘In terms of her unhappiness here in the present, when she came to the cafe, there was nothing he could have done to change that . . .’

‘So, you can put your mind at ease,’ Goro said, spearing a piece of cake with his fork.

‘. . . Well, that’s all right, then,’ she said, looking relieved as she followed his lead and took a mouthful of cake.

The lamps were turned off and only the Christmas lights illuminated the room. Kazu, who had closed the cash register and changed into her own clothes, was standing in front of the woman in the dress. She was simply standing there idly, without a reason.

‘You’re still here,’ observed Nagare with Miki on his back, she had tired herself out and fallen asleep from playing in the snow.

Rather than answering, Kazu just looked at Miki sleeping peacefully on Nagare’s back.

He didn’t ask any more questions. He simply walked by Kazu, and just before leaving the room . . .

‘Kaname feels the same, I think,’ he said softly, as if talking to himself, and then disappeared into the back room.

As the only source of illumination, the lights adorning the ceiling-tall Christmas tree shone vividly on Kazu’s back as she lingered in the quiet cafe.

On the day that Kaname had gone to meet her dead husband, it had been seven-year-old Kazu who had served her the coffee. When Nagare, who had been present in the cafe on that fateful day, had been asked what happened by an acquaintance who knew Kaname, he had quietly said the following.

‘When she heard mention of the coffee being cold, she probably imagined that temperature to be cold like tap water. But there are other people who think a coffee is cold when it is below skin temperature. So, when it comes to that rule, no one really knows what “when the coffee gets cold” means. Kaname probably just thought the coffee hadn’t gone cold yet.’

However, no one knows the truth of the matter. Everyone had told the young Kazu, ‘Kazu, you’re not to blame.’

I’m the one who poured Mum the coffee . . .

She could never erase that fact.

As the days passed, she began to feel . . .

I’m the one who killed Mum . . .

The experience took away Kazu’s innocence and robbed her of her smile. She began roaming around aimlessly like a sleepwalker both day and night. Losing the ability to concentrate, she walked in the middle of the road and nearly got hit by a car. Once she was discovered in a river in the middle of winter. However, she never had a conscious death wish. It was subconscious. Kazu continually blamed herself in her subconscious.

One day, three years after the event, she was standing at a railway crossing. Her expression was not of a girl who wished to die. She gazed at the bleating alert system with a cool, unreadable expression as it rang out.

The sinking evening sun gave the town an orange hue. Behind Kazu, also waiting for the crossing gate to open, were a mother and her child coming back from shopping and a group of students on their way home. From the crowd came a voice.

‘Mummy, I’m sorry,’ said a child. It was just a casual good-natured conversation between mother and child.

Then mumbling, ‘Mum . . .’ she started walking towards the crossing gate as if it was pulling her towards it.

The speaker of those words had quietly come up beside her. She was Kinuyo, the teacher at the neighbourhood art school. By chance she had also been at the cafe on the day Kaname returned to the past. It had pained her to see Kazu’s smiling face disappear after that fateful day, and she had constantly been at Kazu’s side, watching out for her.

But up until that day, no matter what she tried saying to her, she couldn’t seem to rescue her heart. When she said, ‘Take me with you,’ she meant that she wanted to stick by this girl who suffered and was so anguished.

The young Kazu was suffering because she felt that her mother’s death was her fault. Kinuyo thought that if Kazu couldn’t escape from these feelings, they would both go to the place where Kaname was, so that they could bow their heads together.

But Kazu’s reaction to those words was unlike anything she expected. Tears flowed from her eyes for the first time since Kaname’s death and she wailed loudly. Kinuyo didn’t know what had permeated Kazu’s heart. She only knew that she had been suffering alone up until then, and that she didn’t want to die.

Standing there together next to the tracks as the trains roared and whooshed past for what seemed like for ever, Kinuyo hugged Kazu tightly and stroked her head until she stopped crying.

After that day, Kazu once again began pouring the coffee for customers who said they wanted to return to the past.

The clock in the centre on the wall in the cafe chimed to announce it was two o’clock in the morning.

In the middle of the night, everything was silent. As the ceiling fan rotated slowly, Kaname was as usual quietly reading the novel that Kazu had provided.

Resembling a still-life object that had been blended into a painting of the cafe, Kazu was completely motionless – except for a single teardrop, running down her cheek.

III

The Lovers