Tales from the Café

II Mother and Son

Nothing makes you think, Ah, autumn has arrived, more than hearing the chirp-chirp of the suzumushi, the bell cricket.

Such warm feeling towards insects, however, is a unique cultural phenomenon. Beyond Japan and Polynesia, the chirping of insects tends to be described as a complete racket.

According to one theory, both the Japanese and Polynesian peoples originally travelled south from Mongolia. The phonetics of Samoan, one Polynesian language, are similar to Japanese. Both have vowels comprising the five tones of ‘a’, ‘i’, ‘u’, ‘e’, and ‘o’, and the words of both languages are expressed using consonants and vowels, or vowels alone.

Japanese also has onomatopoeic expressions to communicate sounds, and mimetic expressions to convey states that do not produce sounds. But whether it’s the onomatopoeic sala-sala sloshing of the flowing river and the byuu-byuu blowing of the wind, or the mimetic shin-shin to describe the quiet settling snow and kan-kan that expresses the beating down of the sun’s rays, all these words evoke the mood of the world around us.

These words come alive in the Japanese comics of today, where they appear directly over the illustrations outside the caption bubbles. When a character strikes a dramatic pose, ZUBAAN! is added for emphasis, or DOHN! is added to intensify the crashing of a heavy object. Sulu-sulu adds texture to a slippery surface, and the quality of silence is encapsulated by shi – n. When these comics use glyphs in this way, it heightens the reality of the moment.

There is a song often sung in school music classes that is full of these expressions.

One autumn evening…

Miki Tokita was singing this song, ‘Harmony of the Insects’, in a loud spirited voice. She was keen for her father, Nagare Tokita, to listen to the song she had learned at school that day. And all her singing was making her face quite red.

Nagare was struggling to continue to listen to Miki’s out-of-key and very loud notes. A deep furrow was forming in the middle of his forehead, and his mouth was fast resembling an upside-down ‘U’.

‘Chirping throughout the long autumn night.

Oh, what fun to hear this insect symphony!’

When she finished singing, Miki was met with applause. ‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ said Kyoko Kijima, clapping her hands. Kyoko’s praise left her smiling with a smug sense of achievement.

‘I can hear the pine cricket…’ she started singing again.

‘All right, Miki. Very nice, but enough!’ said Nagare, desperate to stop her song. Having heard it three times already, he was well and truly sick of it. ‘Thank you for sharing your song, now go and put your randoseru away,’ he said, picking up her school bag from the counter and holding it out to her.

Miki, still gloating from Kyoko’s praise, said, ‘OK,’ and disappeared into the back room.

‘Chin-chillo chin-chillo chin-chillo-lin…’

Just as the singing Miki left the room, the cafe’s waitress Kazu Tokita appeared. ‘Well, it certainly feels like autumn has arrived,’ she muttered to Kyoko. Miki’s singing had apparently heralded autumn’s arrival in the cafe, which always looked the same, regardless of the season.

Entering the cafe as the bell rang out was Kiyoshi Manda, a homicide detective at Kanda Police Station who was around sixty. It was early October, and the mornings were beginning to get quite chilly. Kiyoshi removed his trench coat and sat down at the table closest to the entrance.

‘Hello, welcome,’ said Kazu as she served him a glass of water.

‘Coffee, please,’ Kiyoshi replied.

‘Coming straight up,’ Nagare said from behind the counter, and popped into the kitchen.

When Nagare had gone, Kyoko whispered so that only Kazu could hear, ‘Kazu, the other day, I saw you walking in the front of the station with a man! Who was that? You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?’

Smiling mischievously with a playful sparkle in her eyes, Kyoko was no doubt waiting for Kazu to react in some way rarely seen – to blush, or something similar.

But she simply looked Kyoko in the face and replied, ‘Yes, I do.’

Kyoko looked genuinely surprised.

‘Really? I didn’t know you had a boyfriend!’ she bellowed, leaning closer to Kazu standing behind the counter.

‘Well, I do.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘He was a senior student while I was at art school.’

‘You mean you’ve been dating for ten years?’

‘Oh, no. We’ve been dating since spring.’

‘Spring this year?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, really?’ mused Kyoko, leaning back in her seat until she was precariously close to losing her balance. She let out an enormous sigh.

Of the people in the cafe, however, Kyoko was the only one revelling in the surprise. Kiyoshi didn’t appear to have any interest in such gossip. His was only concerned with the black notebook in his hands, which he was staring at, deep in thought.

Kyoko yelled into the kitchen, where Nagare was.

‘Hey, Nagare! Did you know Kazu has a boyfriend?’ It was only a small cafe. After shouting, Kyoko looked at Kazu and shrugged, Maybe that was too loud? and checked Kazu’s face for signs of embarrassment.

Kazu, however, calm as always, was polishing a glass. In her mind, there was nothing to hide. She was simply answering because she was asked.

As there was no reply from Nagare, Kyoko once again called out, ‘Well, did you?’ After a moment, a reply came.

‘Yeah, sort of, I guess.’

Strangely, Nagare appeared far more evasive and bashful than Kazu.

‘Well, I’ll be!’

As Kyoko, once again, turned to stare at Kazu, Nagare came out from the kitchen.

‘Why is it such a surprise?’ Nagare asked Kyoko. He walked over and served Kiyoshi the freshly brewed coffee.

Kiyoshi looked pleased, and smiling broadly, he slowly inhaled over the cup.

Upon observing this, Nagare’s narrow eyes arched in pleasure. That the coffee he served in the cafe was never just ordinary was a source of great pride and joy to him. Getting to see Kiyoshi’s smile was his reward. He puffed out his chest with an air of satisfaction and returned behind the counter.

Caring not one iota about Nagare’s sense of satisfaction, Kyoko went on.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t be, but you know, it’s Kazu. Who would have thought she had a secret romantic life.’

‘Uh-huh,’ Nagare replied with indifference, further narrowing his eyes. He started humming a tune while polishing a silver tray. In terms of importance, it seemed Kiyoshi’s smiling face far outweighed such talk of Kazu’s boyfriend.

Kyoko looked sideways at Nagare.

‘So, what were you doing that day?’ she asked Kazu, probingly.

‘We were looking for a present.’

‘A present?’

‘It was his mother’s birthday.’

‘I see, I see.’

And so, for a little while, Kyoko continued to probe and dig with various questions about Kazu’s boyfriend. Kyoko asked about Kazu’s first impressions of him when they met, about how he went about asking her out, and so on. As Kazu was willing to answer anything Kyoko threw at her, the questions never ended.

Of everything she asked, Kyoko seemed most interested in the number of times that he had asked her to be his girlfriend. Rather than it being a one-off, he had done it three times: soon after they met, three years after that, and lastly, in spring this year. Kazu had been willing to answer all of Kyoko’s questions. But as to why she had refused him twice but said yes on the third time, she replied with a vague ‘I don’t know.’

When she finally ran out of questions, Kyoko rested her cheeks on her hands and asked Nagare for another coffee.

‘So why has the simple news that she has a boyfriend put you in such a good mood?’ Nagare asked as he poured her a refill.

Kyoko replied with a beaming smile. ‘My mother, you see, was always saying that she wished the day when Kazu was happily married would arrive soon.’

Kyoko was referring to her mother Kinuyo, who had passed away the previous month after a long battle with illness.

Kinuyo, who had taught Kazu art since she was a young girl, loved Nagare’s coffee. Right up until she was admitted to the local hospital, she was a regular customer who visited the cafe whenever she had time. Both Kazu and Nagare were incredibly fond of her.

‘Oh, was she?’ Nagare mused solemnly. Kazu made no comment, but her hands had stopped polishing the glass she was holding.

Sensing she had brought everyone down, Kyoko added in a hurry, ‘Oh, stupid me, sorry for ruining the atmosphere. I didn’t mean to suggest Mum had died with unfulfilled wishes. Please don’t take it the wrong way.’ But Kazu of course knew that Kyoko hadn’t meant it like that.

‘On the contrary, thank you,’ Kazu replied with a gentle smile that she ordinarily didn’t show.

Kyoko felt she had dampened the mood, but she seemed pleased to have had the chance to share Kinuyo’s wishes with Kazu. ‘Oh, my pleasure,’ she replied with a happy nod.

‘Excuse me, if I might interrupt…’

It was Kiyoshi. He had been quietly sipping his coffee, obviously waiting for a break in the conversation.

‘There is something I would like to ask…’ he said with a terribly apologetic expression.

Who he had directed this question to was unclear, but Kyoko replied instantly, ‘Yes?’ as did Nagare with, ‘What is it?’ And Kazu, rather than responding, simply looked directly at Kiyoshi. Removing his shabby hunting cap, Kiyoshi scratched his head of mostly white hair.

‘Actually, I’m struggling to come up with an idea for what to buy my wife for her birthday,’ he muttered, sounding a little embarrassed.

‘A present for your wife?’ asked Nagare.

‘Yes.’ Kiyoshi nodded. Perhaps, on hearing the conversation about Kazu choosing a present for her boyfriend’s mother, he had thought that he might learn something useful.

‘Aww, how romantic,’ Kyoko said teasingly, but Kazu took the question more seriously.

‘What present did you get her last year?’ she asked.

Kiyoshi again scratched his head of white hair.

‘Well, I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve never actually bought my wife a birthday present. So, I don’t know what to buy her.’

‘What? You’ve never bought her anything? But even so, you suddenly want to now… Why’s that?’ Kyoko asked with wide-eyed curiosity.

‘Oh, I don’t know, there’s no particular reason…’ he replied, pretending to take another sip from the coffee cup he had clearly emptied. Kyoko could, as plain as day, see through his attempt to conceal his embarrassment. She desperately tried to hide her spontaneous chuckle, giving away how adorable she found it.

Nagare had been standing with his arms crossed, listening to the conversation. ‘How I see it…’ he muttered, then went on enthusiastically, his face completely red, ‘…is that she would be pleased with anything.’

Kyoko was quick to dismiss his suggestion. ‘That would have to be the least helpful advice you could give him!’

Feeling well and truly put in his place, Nagare conceded, ‘Er, sorry.’ Then Kazu, with the coffee flask in her hand, refilled Kiyoshi’s cup.

‘What about a necklace?’ she asked.

‘A necklace?’

‘It isn’t the flashiest of things…’ As she spoke Kazu showed her necklace to Kiyoshi. It was so thin, it hadn’t even been noticeable until she held it in her fingers.

‘Which? Show me. Oh, yes! Very nice! Women have a weakness for that type of thing at whatever age,’ said Kyoko, peering at Kazu’s neckline and nodding emphatically.

‘By the way, how old are you now, Kazu?’ asked Kiyoshi.

‘I’m twenty-nine.’

‘…Twenty-nine,’ Kiyoshi muttered as if thinking something over.

Noticing Kiyoshi’s expression, Kyoko sought to reassure him. ‘If you are worried whether it is age-appropriate, don’t worry! It’s a wonderful gesture. I think your wife would be pleased with such a gift.’

Kiyoshi’s face brightened instantly.

‘I see. Thank you very much.’

‘Happy shopping.’

Kyoko was both surprised and impressed. She never would have guessed that a ham-fisted ageing detective like Kiyoshi would be planning a birthday present for his wife. She was fully committed to supporting him in this endeavour.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Kiyoshi replied, returning his shabby hunting cap to his head and reaching again for his cup.

Kazu was also smiling happily.

‘I can hear the lion roar!

Roar-roar, roar-roar ROOAAAARRR! Roar!’

The sound of Miki’s singing drifted from the back room.

‘I don’t remember that verse,’ observed Kyoko with her arms folded as she stared into space.

‘It seems to be her latest thing.’

‘What, replacing the lyrics?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Now that I think about it, kids love doing that, don’t they? When Yohsuke was Miki’s age, it didn’t matter where we were, you wouldn’t believe what he would swap lyrics with, I remember it being so embarrassing.’

Smiling nostalgically, Kyoko looked towards the back room where Miki was.

‘Speaking of Yohsuke, he hasn’t been coming in with you lately,’ Nagare remarked, changing the subject.

Yohsuke was Kyoko’s son. He was in grade four at elementary school and a regular football nut. While Kinuyo was still in hospital, Kyoko and Yohsuke had often come to the cafe together, to take one of Nagare’s coffees to her.

‘Huh?’

‘Yohsuke.’

‘Ah… yeah,’ Kyoko muttered, reaching for her glass.

‘He only came because Mum asked for coffee,’ she explained and downed the remaining water.

Yohsuke had stopped coming to the cafe immediately after Kinuyo had died. After a six-month battle with illness, Kinuyo had wet her mouth with a coffee brewed by Nagare and taken her last breath as if falling asleep.

When Kinuyo passed away, the non-coffee-drinking elementary-school-aged Yohsuke no longer had a reason to come.

At the end of summer, six months after Kinuyo had first been hospitalized, Kyoko had said that she was ‘preparing herself’. But one month had passed since her mother’s death, and she was unable to disguise the grief in her expression.

Nagare hadn’t meant Yohsuke’s not coming to the cafe to lead to the subject of Kinuyo’s death, and he seemed to be regretting bringing it up.

‘Ah. Sorry to mention it,’ he said bowing his head slightly.

Then suddenly…

‘I can hear the cockerel crow!

Cock-a-doodle cock-a-doodle COOCCKK-A-COCKOH!’

Miki’s energetic singing could be heard from the back room.

‘Pmph!’ Kyoko erupted at Miki’s alternative lyrics. The serious atmosphere she had created transformed instantly. Saved by Miki, she probably thought. Kyoko let out a raucous laugh.

‘I think she just crossed a cockerel with a bush warbler, though,’ she said looking at Nagare. He seemed to be thinking the same.

‘Hey, Miki, you’re starting to sing some pretty odd lyrics!’ he said, and, sighing heavily, he headed off to the back room.

‘Miki can be so cute sometimes,’ Kyoko muttered to herself.

‘Well, I must be going… thank you for the coffee,’ said Kiyoshi, taking advantage of the change in atmosphere. He carried his bill to the cash register where he pulled out some change from his coin purse and placed it on the tray, nodding politely.

‘Thanks for the wonderful advice today, it really helped,’ he said, and with that, he left.

Only Kyoko and Kazu remained in the cafe.

‘And how’s Yukio getting along?’ asked Kazu softly as she picked up the coins from the tray and pressed the clunky keys on the cash register. Yukio was Kyoko’s younger brother. He was living in Kyoto, training to become a potter. Surprised that she had raised the topic of Yukio, for a moment Kyoko just stared wide-eyed at Kazu. Kazu simply maintained her usual detached expression and poured some water into Kyoko’s empty glass.

Kazu sees everything.

Kyoko sighed, realizing that she would have to explain.

‘Yukio didn’t know Mum was in hospital. She wouldn’t let me tell him…’

Kyoko reached out for the glass of water, lifted it few centimetres off the counter, but rather than bringing it to her lips, she slowly swirled it.

‘So, I think maybe he’s angry about that? He didn’t even come to the funeral.’

Kyoko’s gaze was concentrated on the surface of the water, which remained level even as she tilted the glass at various angles.

‘I think his phone’s been disconnected…’

In fact, Kyoko hadn’t been able to get in contact with Yukio at all. She rang his phone, but only heard ‘The number you have dialled is currently not being used’ – the announcement that is given when the account has been cancelled. She had tried contacting the pottery studio where he was working, but they said he had quit a few days earlier, and no one knew his whereabouts.

‘I have no idea where he is right now…’

For the last month, Kyoko hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how Yukio hadn’t known that Kinuyo was in hospital (if it had been her who was kept in the dark, she would have been beside herself with anger, and who knows what she might have said or done). It had been troubling her so much, she hadn’t been able to sleep properly for days.

There was the rumour that this cafe allowed customers to go back in time. Kyoko, of course, had laid eyes on customers who had rolled up wanting to return to the past. But she had never thought that something might happen to make her want to go back to put things right.

There was a ‘but’, however. She wanted to set things right, but she knew all too well that she couldn’t. The reason was that even if she were to travel back, there was the rule that no matter how hard you try while back in the past, present reality cannot be changed.

Hypothetically, even if she returned to the day Kinuyo was hospitalized and wrote a letter to Yukio, the principle of this rule would prevent any letter she sent from being delivered to him. Even if that letter were delivered, for some reason, he would never read it. As a result, he would suddenly learn of Kinuyo’s passing without even having known that she had been hospitalized. Furious, he would not make an appearance at her funeral. Because that is how the rule works. And if she couldn’t change reality, there was no point returning to the past.

‘I really understand Mum’s feelings about not wanting to cause Yukio any worry…’

But it was precisely this reasoning that put Kyoko in the double bind that now caused her such distress.

‘But…’

Kyoko covered her face with both hands and her shoulders started to quake. Kazu stuck to the job of waitress, and without much call for her services right now, time flowed by silently.

‘I can see Daddy coming along!

Poot-poot poot-poot farty bug

Chirping throughout the long autumn night.

Oh, what fun to hear this insect symphony!’

Miki’s odd alternative lyrics could be heard coming from the back room. But this time, Kyoko’s laughter did not echo through the cafe.

That evening…

Kazu was alone in the cafe. Well, strictly speaking, both Kazu and the woman in the dress were there. Kazu was tidying up, and the woman in the dress was, as usual, quietly reading her novel. She seemed to be nearing the end. She was now holding down only a few unread pages with her left hand.

Kazu enjoyed this time in the cafe after it was closed. It wasn’t because she particularly liked tidying up or cleaning, she simply enjoyed completing a task in silence without thinking about anything. This was the same enjoyment she felt when drawing.

In her art, Kazu was particularly skilled at using a pencil to draw something she could see in front of her in photorealistic detail. She enjoyed the technique known as hyperrealism. She didn’t just draw anything, however. If it was something visible in the real world, she would draw it. But she never drew from her imagination and nor did she draw anything that couldn’t exist. Also, her drawings always excluded subjective feeling. She simply enjoyed the process of depicting what she saw on a canvas without thinking about anything.

Flap!

The sound of the woman in the dress shutting the book having finished it reverberated throughout the cafe.

The woman placed the novel in one corner of the table and reached her hand to the coffee cup. Spying this, Kazu pulled out a novel from under the counter and approached the woman.

‘This one probably won’t be completely to your taste…’ Kazu said as she placed the book in front of the woman and collected the one left on the table.

She had carried out this action over and over, so often that each movement was done with procedural swiftness. But while she did, her usual cool expression was temporarily replaced by the look of someone about to pass a carefully chosen present to a special someone with the hope that it will bring them joy. When people choose presents hoping to delight the recipient, they have in mind that special person’s reaction. And as they do, they often find that time has suddenly got away from them.

The woman in the dress was not a particularly fast reader. Despite it being the only thing she did, she would finish a book about once every two days. Kazu would go to the library once a week and borrow a selection of novels. These books weren’t presents, exactly, but for Kazu, supplying them was more than just a ‘task’.

Until a couple of years ago, the woman in the dress read a novel entitled Lovers, over and over again. One day, Miki remarked, ‘Doesn’t she get bored reading the same novel?’ and presented her own picture book to the woman in the dress. Kazu thought, What if I could please her with a novel I chose?… and that’s what led her to start providing novels in this way.

As always, however, without a care for Kazu’s thoughtfulness, the woman in the dress simply reached out, took the book silently and dropped her eyes to the first page.

The expectation disappeared from Kazu’s expression like sand silently falling in an hourglass.

The doorbell rang, which was unusual because it was past closing time and the ‘Closed’ sign hung from the door. But Kazu didn’t worry about who it could be. Instead, she casually returned behind the counter and looked towards the entrance. The person who came in was a man with a tanned complexion who might be in his late thirties. Over a black V-neck shirt, he wore a dark brown jacket. His trousers were a similar colour, and his shoes were black. He glanced around the cafe vaguely, with a dull, melancholy expression.

‘Hello, welcome,’ Kazu greeted him.

‘Er, it seems you’re closed now?’ he enquired tentatively. That the cafe was indeed closed was obvious.

‘I don’t mind,’ Kazu replied, gesturing for him to take a seat at the counter. He sat down as suggested. He seemed exhausted, and his movements were sluggish, as if in slow motion.

‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Um, no…’

Normally if a customer came into a cafe after closing and then didn’t want to order anything, it would be disgruntling to a waitress. But Kazu simply accepted the man’s reply without hesitation. ‘OK.’ She quietly served him a glass of water.

‘Er…’ The man seemed to realize his behaviour was a bit strange and grew agitated. ‘Sorry. On second thoughts, I would like a coffee please.’

‘Certainly,’ replied Kazu, averting her eyes politely, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

The man gave a deep sigh and looked around the sepia-coloured cafe. He noticed the dim lamps, the ceiling fan gently rotating, the large clocks on the wall showing seemingly random times, and the woman in the white dress reading a novel in the corner.

Kazu returned.

‘Um… Is it true that she is a ghost?’ the man enquired abruptly.

‘Yes.’

The man had asked a very strange question. But Kazu had answered it matter-of-factly. Many customers came to the cafe out of sheer curiosity after hearing its legend. Kazu had grown so used to such conversations that now they were like small talk for her.

‘I see…’ replied the man, sounding uninterested.

Kazu started to prepare the coffee in front of him. Ordinarily, she used the siphon. The special feature about coffee brewed by siphon is that boiling hot water in the bottom flask noisily bubbles and rises to the funnel, where it becomes coffee. Then the liquid drops back down into the top flask. Kazu enjoyed watching the siphon brewing in action.

However, for some reason, today she didn’t choose to use the siphon but instead brought the drip-coffee equipment from the kitchen. She brought the mill out with her as well, obviously planning to grind the beans at the counter.

The brewing method of using the dripper was the cafe owner Nagare’s speciality. The filter is set in the dripper and hot water is gently poured over the grounds to extract the coffee bit by bit. Kazu normally thought the dripper was too much trouble.

She silently proceeded to grind the beans. There was no conversation. Revealing himself to be far from outgoing, the man just scratched his head, seemingly unable to strike up any kind of exchange. Soon, the aroma of coffee began to fill the air.

‘Sorry for the wait.’

Kazu placed the lightly steaming coffee in front of the man.

He remained still, just staring at the cup in silence. Kazu began cleaning the apparatus in front of her deftly.

The only sound in the room was the woman in the dress turning the pages of her novel. After a while, the man reached his hand out for the cup. If he had been a coffee-loving customer, at that point he would have inhaled the aroma deeply, but without altering his dull expression, he sipped the coffee with a clumsy slurp. But then…

‘This coffee,’ he moaned quietly. Its sourness seemed to have surprised him. His expression transformed as furrowed lines formed in the centre of his forehead.

The coffee was a variety called mocha, which has a unique blend of pleasant aroma and acid-sour taste. Nagare was obsessed with this taste, and the cafe only served varieties of mocha. However, for people who normally don’t drink coffee, like this man, the strong distinctive flavour of coffee brewed from only mocha or Kilimanjaro beans is often bewildering.

The names of coffee beans mostly derive from where they are grown. In the case of mocha, the beans are grown in Yemen and Ethiopia and named after Yemen’s port city of Mocha, where they were traditionally shipped from. Kilimanjaro beans are grown in Tanzania. Nagare enjoyed using beans grown in Ethiopia, and there were certain people who loved their strong acid-sour taste.

‘It is mocha Harrar. It was Kinuyo sensei’s favourite.’

Upon hearing this suddenly from Kazu, the man gave an involuntary start and looked at her with open hostility.

Of course it wasn’t the name of the coffee that had surprised him; it was the waitress, who he had never met before, mentioning Kinuyo’s name even though he hadn’t even told her his.

His name was Yukio Mita, the aspiring potter, Kinuyo’s son, and Kyoko’s younger brother. Although Kinuyo had been a long-time regular, Yukio had never visited the cafe before. Kyoko, who lived a relatively close fifteen-minute drive away, had started frequenting the cafe after coming to buy coffee when Kinuyo was hospitalized. Yukio eyed Kazu with suspicion, but Kazu was not taken aback in the slightest. That she had been waiting for him was unspoken but made obvious by her silent smile.

‘When…’ began Yukio, scratching his head, ‘did you know I was her son?’ He hadn’t purposely set out to conceal his identity, but it seemed to bother him.

Kazu went on cleaning the coffee mill.

‘I could just tell. You have a similar face,’ she explained.

Not sure how to react to that, Yukio touched his face with his hand. It didn’t seem to be something he had been told before, and he looked unconvinced.

‘It might be a coincidence, but I saw Kyoko today, and our conversation turned to you. So, it was partly intuition, but I thought it might be you…’

Upon hearing Kazu’s explanation, Yukio replied, ‘Oh, I see…’ For a moment, he averted his eyes.

‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Yukio Mita.’ He introduced himself with a nod.

Kazu returned a soft nod of her own. ‘Kazu Tokita. Pleased to meet you,’ she replied.

‘Mum mentioned you in letters. And she wrote about this cafe’s rumour as well…’ Yukio muttered on hearing Kazu’s name. He glanced over at the woman in the dress.

He cleared his throat and stood up from the counter.

‘I would like to return to the past, please. I want to go back to when my mother was still alive,’ he declared with a slight nod.

As a child, Yukio was a serious type who would always persevere with a single task. If he was told to do a job, he would never give up, even when left unsupervised. While on cleaning duties at elementary school, for example, he would carry on with his assigned task even if everyone else was just messing around.

He had a warm personality and treated everyone kindly. Because he associated with the quiet kids in his class all through elementary school, junior high and high school, he never stood out as a student. As a child, he was like dull wallpaper.

Dull Yukio had his epiphany in high school while on a field trip to Kyoto. His assignment was to experience Kyoto’s traditional crafts. He had chosen pottery out of pottery, hand fans, seals or bamboo work. Even though it was his first time turning a wheel, the piece of pottery that he created was shaped far better than those of the other students. The pottery teacher told him, ‘I’ve never seen a piece of pottery turned so beautifully by kids in this class. You’ve got talent!’ These were the first words of praise that Yukio had ever received.

The field trip left him with a vague yearning to be a potter, though he had no idea how to go about becoming one.

This aspiration persisted, even long after returning from the field trip.

Then one day, while watching TV, he saw a studio potter by the name of Yamagishi Katsura. ‘I’ve been making pottery for forty years now, and I am finally satisfied with what I am making,’ the potter said. Looking at the pieces that were shown, Yukio was profoundly moved. It wasn’t that he was dissatisfied with his ordinary life, it was just that from somewhere in his heart he heard, I want to find work that is worth spending a lifetime on. Yamagishi Katsura was someone Yukio could admire and aspire to become.

There were two different paths he could choose to become a studio potter: one was training at a fine arts university or ceramic arts school, the other was becoming an apprentice at a potter’s studio.

Rather than going to a ceramic arts school, Yukio decided to become an apprentice under Yamagishi Katsura. Yukio had liked what Katsura had said on TV. ‘To become top class, you must be in touch with top class.’ However, when he spoke to his father Seiichi about wanting to be a studio potter, he was told, ‘Of the thousands or tens of thousands of people with such an aspiration, only a handful of talented individuals truly put food on the table as a potter, and I don’t see that talent in you.’ Despite his father’s opposition, Yukio didn’t give up. He was acutely aware, though, that if he went to university or a ceramic arts school, his parents would have to pay for his tuition.

He didn’t want his selfish pursuits to be a burden to his parents, so he decided to train to be a potter while living and working at a studio. Seiichi was against the idea, but in the end, it was Kinuyo who persuaded him, and immediately after graduating from high school, Yukio moved to Kyoto. The studio he chose was, of course, Katsura’s.

The day he left for Kyoto, Kinuyo and Kyoko waved him off from the Shinkansen platform. Kinuyo said, ‘It’s not much but…’ and handed him her own bank account passbook and ID stamp. Yukio knew that Kinuyo had been diligently saving that money, saying, Someday, I’d like to travel overseas with your father.

‘I can’t take that,’ he insisted. But she would not take no for an answer. ‘Take it. It’s no problem, really.’

The Shinkansen bell rang, and Yukio had no choice but to accept the stamp and passbook with a small nod, and he departed for Kyoto. Left standing on the platform, Kyoko said, ‘Mum, let’s go now.’ But Kinuyo stood on the platform looking at the diminishing train until it disappeared.

‘You cannot change the present while in the past, no matter how hard you try, OK?’

Kazu had started to explain the never-changing rules. It was particularly important to emphasize that rule when meeting a person who was now dead. Bereavement is thrust upon people suddenly. Having to process the loss of Kinuyo was especially sudden for Yukio as no one had even told him she had been hospitalized. But Kazu’s words left his expression unaltered.

‘Yes, I know,’ he replied.

Kinuyo’s cancer was discovered in spring that year. It was already advanced by the time she was diagnosed, and she was told she had just six months to live. The doctor told Kyoko that had they found it three months earlier, there might have been something they could have done. Because of the rule that said you can’t change the present, though, even if Yukio returned to the past to make them discover it earlier, it would not change the fact of Kinuyo dying.

Kazu assumed that Yukio must have heard a bit about the cafe from Kinuyo, but asked, ‘Should I briefly explain this cafe’s rules?’

Yukio thought for a moment. With a soft voice he replied, ‘Yes, please.’

Kazu stopped cleaning and began to explain.

‘First, the only people who you can meet while in the past are those who have visited the cafe.’

Yukio replied, ‘OK.’

If the person who the customer wants to meet has only visited the cafe once, or if they have shown their face for only a short while before leaving, then the chances of being able to meet them grow slimmer. But in the case of a regular customer like Kinuyo, the chance of meeting her was very high. Considering it was Kinuyo that Yukio was aiming to meet, Kazu didn’t feel the need to elaborate further and moved on.

‘The second is the rule I mentioned earlier. No matter how hard you try, there is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present.’

Yukio had no questions regarding this one either.

‘OK, I understand,’ he answered readily.

‘Which brings us to the third rule. In order to go back to the past, you must sit in that seat, the one she is sitting in…’

Kazu looked directly at the woman in the dress. Yukio followed her gaze.

‘The only time you can sit there is when she goes to the toilet.’

‘When will she do that?’

‘No one knows… But she always does so once a day…’

‘So, I guess I just have to wait?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I see,’ Yukio replied with a stony face.

Kazu was herself a person of few words, but Yukio also offered few questions or remarks. The explanation was going quickly. ‘The fourth rule is that while in the past, you must stay in that seat and never move from it. If you lift your bottom from the chair, you will be forcibly returned to the present.’

If a customer forgets this rule, he or she will face the unhappy consequence of immediately being returned to the present, wasting the chance to go back in time.

‘Next is the fifth rule. Your time in the past only lasts from when the coffee is poured to when it goes cold.’

Kazu reached out and took Yukio’s glass, which he had emptied at some point during her explanation. Yukio certainly seemed thirsty, as he took frequent sips.

The annoying rules did not stop there.

The journey through time can only be attempted once and once only.

It is possible to take photos.

Presents can be given and received.

Even if you find some way to retain the coffee’s heat, it will have no effect and it will get cold anyway.

In addition, in a magazine feature on urban legends, the cafe was made famous as ‘the cafe where you could travel back in time’, but technically, you could travel to the future too. However, hardly anyone wants to travel to the future, the reason being that although you can travel forwards to exactly where you want to go, you can never be sure that the person you want to meet will be there. After all, no one knows what will be going on in the future.

Other than utter desperation, there is no reason even to bother, as the chances of travelling to the future and happening to meet someone in the narrow window of time until the coffee goes cold are slim. The journey will most likely be futile.

Kazu did not, however, explain all of this. She generally only explained five rules. If asked about the others, she provided answers.

Yukio took a sip of his newly poured water. ‘I heard from my mother that if you don’t drink all the coffee before it goes cold, you turn into a ghost. Is that true?’ he asked, looking directly into Kazu’s eyes.

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Kazu replied matter-of-factly.

Yukio averted his gaze and inhaled deeply. ‘So, in other words, you die… is that what you are saying?’ he asked, as if he was just making sure.

No one had ever asked for clarification that becoming a ghost equated to death before.

Until then, Kazu had been able to answer any question without changing her expression. But for that moment only, her expression faltered. And it truly was only for a moment. After letting out a shallow breath, in the time it took for her eyelashes to flutter a couple of times she adopted her usual cool persona again.

‘Yes, that is correct,’ she replied.

Yukio nodded, appearing somehow satisfied with her answer. ‘Right, OK,’ he muttered as if he understood.

Upon finishing explaining the list of rules, Kazu looked over at the woman in the dress.

‘Now all you need to do is to wait for her to leave her seat. Do you plan on waiting?’ she asked. It was her final question to confirm whether Yukio was really going to go through with visiting the past. He did not hesitate.

‘Yes,’ he replied. He reached for the coffee cup. The coffee must have been cold by now but he drank it in one gulp. Kazu reached out and took the empty cup.

‘Would you like a refill?’ she asked.

‘No, I’m fine,’ he said, with a wave of refusal. The coffee that Kinuyo had enjoyed drinking every day didn’t suit his taste buds.

Halfway to the kitchen, carrying Yukio’s empty cup, Kazu stopped in her tracks.

‘Why didn’t you go to the funeral?’ she asked with her back to him.

From the point of view of a son who had not attended his mother’s funeral, it could easily have sounded liked an accusation. It was unusual for Kazu to ask such a question.

Yukio frowned slightly, as if he had indeed taken it that way.

‘Do I have to answer that question?’ he asked, his tone somewhat terse.

‘No,’ Kazu replied with her cool-as-ever look. ‘It’s just that Kyoko believes it is her fault that you didn’t go to the funeral…’ She nodded her head politely and disappeared into the kitchen.

In truth, it wasn’t Kyoko’s fault that Yukio hadn’t gone to the funeral. He had certainly struggled with denial when told of Kinuyo’s death, but the bigger reason was he couldn’t afford the fare from Kyoto to Tokyo. When he was notified of Kinuyo’s death, he owed a lot of money.

Three years ago, Yukio, still in training to become a potter, received an offer for funding if he opened a studio. To own a studio is every aspiring potter’s dream. Naturally, he longed to have his own studio in Kyoto someday. The offer of funding came from the owner of a wholesale company, newly established in Kyoto, which bought from the potter Yukio was working for.

In the seventeen years since he’d left Tokyo, he had been living in a bathroom-less ten-square-metre apartment to save money. Without any luxuries, he was simply focused on his dream.

His overriding motivation was to realize his goal of becoming a studio potter quickly, so that he could show Kinuyo. Upon reaching his late thirties, his impatience had only grown. Accepting the offer, he borrowed the rest of the money from a personal finance company, gave it to the wholesale company owner along with all his savings, and proceeded to prepare to open his studio. All did not end well, however, as the owner of the wholesale company ran off with the money that Yukio had entrusted to him.

He had been cheated, and the result was devastating. Not only did he still not have his pottery studio, but he was now also in enormous debt. It felt like he had fallen into a deep crevasse of financial hell from which he didn’t think he could escape. It was mental torture.

Every day, worry over making repayments overwhelmed his brain, leaving no room for other things, like the future. The only thing he could think of was, How can I raise the money? What can I do tomorrow to raise the money…?

Would I be better off dead?

Many times, this thought entered his mind. But if he died, the burden of repayment would fall to his mother, Kinuyo, and that was something he wanted to avoid at any cost. That possibility alone stood between him and his desperate thoughts of suicide.

This precarious tension was what Yukio was going through when one month earlier he learned of her death. At the news, he heard a tautly stretched string snapping inside his head.

When Kazu was out of sight, Yukio calmly plucked his mobile phone from his jacket pocket, checked the screen and sighed in annoyance.

‘No signal…’ he muttered, looking over at the woman in the dress. A moment later, his eyes shone as if he had suddenly thought of something. He stood up and, quickly assessing that the woman in the dress was not going to the toilet just yet, briskly left the cafe.

The bell rang, and soon after…

Flap!

The sound of the woman’s novel shutting resonated throughout the room. Perhaps Yukio had just left his seat to ring someone, but it was such terrible timing. The woman in the dress tucked her novel under her arm, silently rose from her seat and began walking towards the toilet.

The cafe had a large wooden door at the entrance. On the right was the toilet. Walking slowly, the woman in the dress passed through the entrance arch and turned right.

Clunk.

Just after the toilet door closed softly, Kazu entered the empty room from the kitchen.

Yukio was missing. If it had been Nagare in Kazu’s shoes at this moment, he would have searched for him frantically. Now was the time – the once-daily chance to travel back in time. But it was Kazu.

Far from growing frantic, she stayed completely cool as if the customer’s absence was no big deal. She started clearing away the woman in the dress’s used cup, behaving as if Yukio had never existed. She didn’t seem to have the slightest interest in why he had gone out or whether he was coming back. She wiped the table with a cloth and then disappeared back into the kitchen to wash the cup. The doorbell rang.

Yukio re-entered the room empty-handed, his mobile phone now stowed in his pocket. He sat down at the counter, which meant his back was to the chair. Lifting the glass in front of him, he sipped his water and exhaled a deep sigh, unaware the woman in the dress was gone.

Kazu appeared from the kitchen carrying a silver kettle and a bright white coffee cup upon a tray. Noticing Kazu, Yukio said, ‘I just contacted my sister,’ explaining why he had left his seat. His voice no longer sounded as defensive as it had when he had responded to Kazu’s question about why he didn’t attend the funeral.

‘Oh, really?’ Kazu replied quietly.

Yukio looked up at Kazu standing there and gulped. She seemed to be haloed by dim pale blue flames, and he sensed an unworldly and mysterious atmosphere hanging in the room.

‘The chair’s vacant…’ began Kazu.

He finally noticed that the woman in the dress was no longer there and gasped, ‘Ah!’

Walking up to the now unoccupied chair, Kazu asked him, ‘Will you be sitting down?’

Yukio stared vacantly for a moment, as if still shocked that he had not noticed the woman’s absence. But conscious of Kazu’s patient gaze, with some effort he replied, ‘Yeah, I will.’

He walked over, silently closed his eyes, and after taking a deep breath, he slid between the table and the chair.

Kazu placed the pure white cup in front of him.

‘I shall now pour the coffee,’ she said softly. Her calm voice had a sombre gravitas.

‘The time you can spend in the past will begin from the time the cup is filled, and it must end before the coffee gets cold…’

Although she had explained this rule to him earlier, Yukio didn’t immediately respond. After closing his eyes as if deep in thought, ‘OK, I understand,’ he replied, more to himself than to Kazu. His voice sounded different now, its pitch ever so subtly lower.

Kazu nodded, and she picked up from the tray a ten-centimetre-long silver implement that looked like a stirring stick and slipped it into the cup.

Yukio looked at it curiously. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, cocking his head to one side.

‘Please use this instead of a spoon,’ she explained simply.

Why doesn’t she just give me a spoon? he wondered. But he was conscious that listening to the explanation alone was taking up valuable time.

‘OK, got it,’ he merely replied.

Having finished her explanation, Kazu asked, ‘Shall we begin?’

‘Yes,’ Yukio answered. He downed his glass of water and took a deep breath.

‘Let’s begin now, please,’ he added softly.

Kazu nodded and slowly lifted the silver kettle in her right hand.

‘Pass on my regards to Kinuyo sensei,’ she said and added…

‘Remember, before the coffee gets cold…’

Moving as if in slow motion, Kazu began pouring the coffee into the cup. While still maintaining a casual demeanour, her movements were beautiful, flowing seamlessly like those of a ballerina. The entire cafe around them seemed pregnant with tension, as if a solemn ceremony was underway.

A very thin column of coffee poured from the silver kettle’s spout, resembling a narrow black line. There was no gurgling sound of coffee pouring as one might hear from the wide rim of a carafe. Instead, the coffee flowed silently into the brilliant white cup. As Yukio stared at the striking contrast of black coffee and white cup, a single plume of steam began to rise. Just at that moment, his surroundings began to shimmer and ripple.

In a panic, he tried to rub both his eyes but found he was unable to. As he lifted his hands to his face, they still felt like hands, but they were now vapour. It wasn’t just his hands, it was his body, his legs – all of him.

What’s going on?

At first, he was shocked by the unexpected events, but after considering what would follow, nothing seemed to matter any more. He slowly closed his eyes as his surroundings gradually began falling past him.

Yukio remembered Kinuyo.

As a child, he had as many as three brushes with death. On each of these occasions Kinuyo was by his side.

The first time was when he was two. A bout of pneumonia had given him a fever of nearly forty degrees and a persistent cough. Nowadays, pneumonia is no longer difficult to recover from. Thanks to medical advances, there are now effective antibiotics that will knock it on the head. Today, it is common medical knowledge that the main causes of pneumonia for young children are bacteria, viruses, and mycoplasma, and there are clear methods of treatment for each.

Back then, however, it was not uncommon for a doctor to simply say, ‘There is nothing else I can do. Now it’s up to your son.’ In Yukio’s case, they didn’t know that his pneumonia was bacterial, and when his high fever and severe coughing continued, the doctor said, ‘Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’

The second time he almost drowned. He had been playing at the river’s edge when he was seven. Miraculously, on that occasion, he was revived after both his breathing and heart had stopped. The person who found him had fortuitously worked for the local fire and ambulance station and had the ability to administer life-saving CPR immediately. Kinuyo had been at the river with him, but it all happened in a second she had taken her eyes off him.

The third time was a road accident when he was ten. While riding his brand-new bike, he was rammed by a car that had ignored the traffic lights. The impact sent him flying right in front of Kinuyo’s eyes. He was thrown almost ten metres and had to be carted off in an ambulance with multiple injuries to his whole body. He was on the brink of death but luckily his head was unscathed, and he miraculously regained consciousness.

Parents can’t prevent their child getting ill, being injured, or having an accident. On all three occasions, Kinuyo nursed him without sleep or rest until he recovered. Apart from toilet breaks, she never left his side, holding his hand in both of hers as if she were praying. Her husband and parents were worried that she would burn herself out and urged her to rest, but she wouldn’t listen. A parent’s love for their child is bottomless. Their children remain children, no matter how old they grow. For Kinuyo, that feeling never changed, even when Yukio left home on his quest to become a celebrated potter.

He had become an apprentice to that famous potter. He received free food and board at the potter’s house, but it was agreed that he would work without pay. So, after spending the day at the pottery studio, he would earn some money by working at a convenience store, or places like an izakaya bar at night. He could easily cope with that kind of lifestyle in his twenties, but in his thirties it became physically gruelling. He started receiving a small wage from the pottery studio, but, unable to stand sharing a room for ever, he rented an apartment, which immediately made life much harder.

Despite all this, he always put a little away so that he might own his own pottery studio in the future. Kinuyo would occasionally send a box of instant foods along with a letter, and this helped supplement his meals.

Some weeks he had as little as one thousand yen to spend. Everyone else his age had a proper job and was doing things that adults did, like falling in love and buying new cars. But Yukio was in front of the kiln getting covered in smoke and soot. He would knead his clay and dream of the day when he would be an acclaimed potter with his own studio.

There were many times when he felt like giving up, filled with doubt about his talent. He was in his thirties and couldn’t see how he could go on working in casual jobs. If he wanted to find something decent, he had better quit soon – in this difficult job climate, no company was going to hire him after forty. Even now, he would find it hard. How much longer could he go on like this?

How long would it take him to become a successful potter with his own studio? He felt uneasy about how uncertain his future was. His was a life with no guarantees. With marriage out of the question, each day for him was a battle with the clay.

Yet he still clung to that thin strand of hope that he would fulfil his dream and make his mother proud. As long as he felt that there was someone who would find joy in his success, that was enough for him. Even if he was mocked and laughed at by society, at least he knew that Kinuyo believed in his success.

But… never in his worst nightmare had he imagined being swindled out of every penny and then falling into massive debt.

The news of Kinuyo’s death reached him when he was at his lowest – just when he needed someone’s support the most. It sent him plummeting into the depths of despair. Why this cruel timing? Why was he plagued by such bad luck?

What had all his efforts been for, what had he been living for, all this time? Maurice Maeterlinck’s book The Blue Bird told a similar story. The main characters, the children, Tyltyl and Mytyl, encounter a child in the ‘Kingdom of the Future’ who is destined to bring into this world nothing except three illnesses. This child would catch scarlet fever, whooping cough and measles soon after birth, and die. Yukio remembered the sadness he felt when reading this book as a child. If that kind of fate was unalterable, then how unfair life was! If people didn’t have the power to alter their undeserved fate, then he just couldn’t see their reasons for living.

When Yukio came to, his eyes were flooded. He only realized they were tears when he wiped away those that ran down his cheeks with his hands. His hands, once vapour, had returned to the corporeal world, and his surroundings, which had been flickering past him, had at some point stopped moving.

Whirr, whirr-whirr…

Hearing the sound of grinding coffee beans, he looked around at the counter. The rotating ceiling fan, the shaded lamps, the large wall clocks – none of these had changed from several seconds earlier. But the person behind the counter was different. Yukio had never laid eyes on this giant with almond-shaped eyes who was doing the grinding. Only Yukio and the giant were present in the room. Immediately, he was gripped by doubt.

Have I really returned to the past?

He couldn’t think how to make sure. Certainly, Kazu the waitress was no longer there, and there was a giant he didn’t know behind the counter. His body had turned to vapour, and he had seen his surroundings flowing past him. That alone, however, was not enough to convince him that he had travelled back.

The man behind the counter stood casually grinding beans, unfazed by Yukio’s appearance. Even though Yukio was a stranger to him, and he had suddenly appeared in this chair, he seemed to be acting as if it was all perfectly normal. He didn’t even show any interest in talking to him, which suited Yukio fine. He was in no mood to come to this place and answer a flurry of questions. But he did want to know whether he had returned, as he had wished, to a time when Kinuyo was alive.

Kyoko had said that Kinuyo was hospitalized six months earlier, in spring. He needed to ask what month and year it was.

‘Er…’ he began before being interrupted…

‘Hello.’

The layout of the cafe meant that there was a moment, straight after the doorbell rang, when you didn’t know who had entered. But Yukio knew whose voice it was immediately.

Mum…

After a few moments of watching the entrance near the cash register, he saw Kinuyo hobble in, using Yohsuke’s shoulder for support.

‘Ah…’

The moment he saw Kinuyo, he turned his face away so that she would not see him. He bit his lip.

Have I come just before she was hospitalized?

The last time he had seen Kinuyo in the flesh was five years earlier. At that time, she was still fit and well. She hadn’t needed someone’s shoulder to help her walk. But appearing before him now, she had withered terribly. Her eyes were sunken and white hairs covered her head. Her hand gripped by Yohsuke had bulbous veins, and each finger looked like a thin cane. Already, her illness had wasted her body.

She is so frail! I had no idea…

His face was frozen as it was, unable to look up.

The first to notice him was Yohsuke.

‘Grandma…’

Yohsuke spoke softly into Kinuyo’s ear as he slowly helped her turn towards Yukio. Grandma’s boy, Yohsuke had become her hands and feet, and he knew how to support her frailness.

When she saw it was Yukio at whom Yohsuke was looking, her eyes widened.

‘Oh goodness…’ she said softly.

Responding to her voice, Yukio finally looked up.

‘You look well!’ he said.

His voice was brighter than the one he had spoken to Kazu with.

‘What’s up? Why are you here?’

Kinuyo seemed very surprised that Yukio, who was meant to be in Kyoto, had suddenly made an appearance in this cafe. But her eyes were shining joyfully.

‘There’s a little something,’ he said, returning a smile.

Kinuyo whispered in Yohsuke’s ear, ‘Thank you,’ and walked by herself to the table where Yukio was seated.

‘Nagare, one coffee for me if you please. I’ll drink it here,’ she requested politely.

‘One coffee coming up,’ Nagare replied. Before she had even asked, he had already put the beans he had just ground in the filter. He only had to pour over the steaming hot water, and the coffee would be made.

Since Kinuyo always came to the cafe at the same time, he had ground the beans to coincide with her arrival. Yohsuke plonked himself down on a counter seat facing Nagare.

‘And what is young Yohsuke going to have?’

‘Orange juice.’

‘Orange juice it is.’

After taking Yohsuke’s order, Nagare took the pot and began pouring the hot water over the grounds in the filter holder that was in the shape of the letter ‘e’.

The aromatic fragrance of the coffee began to drift through the cafe. Kinuyo’s elated grin made it clear how much she loved this moment. She exhaled a noisy ‘Oof!’ as she sat down in the chair facing Yukio.

Kinuyo had been a regular at this cafe for decades. So, naturally she knew the rules well. It must be clear to her by now, without needing to be told, that he had come from the future. Yukio wanted desperately to avoid telling her the reason he’d come.

I came to see my dead mother…

There was no way to say those words. He hastily felt the need to say something.

‘You look like you’ve lost weight.’

As soon as he blurted it out, he was cursing himself for saying such a thing.

He didn’t know whether she had been diagnosed with cancer, but it was the period leading up to her hospitalization – of course she was thin. Turning the topic of conversation to her illness was the very thing he’d wanted to avoid. A pool of sweat was forming inside his clenched fists.

But Kinuyo simply replied, ‘Oh, really? That’s nice to hear.’ Placing both hands on her cheeks, she looked happy to hear it. On seeing her reaction, he thought, Perhaps she still doesn’t know that she has cancer.

Sometimes people don’t find out until they are in hospital. Her reaction was completely understandable if she didn’t know about her illness. This came to Yukio as a relief.

He relaxed a little. He tried his best to keep the conversation casual and normal.

‘Really? You’re happy to hear me say that, even now?’ he laughed dismissively. But Kinuyo’s expression was earnest.

‘Yes, I am,’ she replied. ‘You’re looking pretty thin, yourself,’ she added.

‘…Oh, you think?’

‘Are you eating properly?’

‘Yeah, of course. Recently I’ve even been making my own meals.’

Yukio hadn’t eaten one proper meal since he’d heard of her death.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yeah, rest assured, Mum, I’ve given up living on cup noodles.’

‘What about washing your clothes?’

‘Sure, I’m washing my clothes.’

He had been wearing the same clothes for nearly a month.

‘No matter how tired you are, you must always make the effort to sleep on a futon.’

‘Yeah, I know that.’

He had already cancelled the lease on his apartment.

‘If you get into money trouble, don’t borrow from people. Speak up about it, OK? I don’t have much myself, but I can give a little.’

‘Money is fine…’

Yesterday, he finished filing for personal bankruptcy. There would be no burdening Kinuyo and Kyoko with massive debt.

Yukio simply wanted to see Kinuyo’s face one last time.

If it was possible to change the present by going back in time, then he probably wouldn’t have chosen this ending. He would have done everything possible to ensure his mother, sitting in front of him, could get the best hospital treatment. He would have explained the circumstances to that large man he didn’t know behind the counter and begged him to take some action.

The reality was, however, that none of his wishes would come true. His life had lost all meaning. Not wanting to break Kinuyo’s heart was his only grip on life. That single powerful feeling inside him kept him going, despite having been cheated into a life of endless hardship. He had resolved not to die while his mother was still alive.

But back in the present, Kinuyo was no longer there…

His face was at peace as he spoke to her.

‘I’m able to open my own studio now. I’m going independent as a potter.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, I’m not lying.’

‘How wonderful.’

Tears began spilling from Kinuyo’s eyes.

‘Hey, that’s not something to cry about,’ he said, handing her a paper napkin.

‘It’s just…’ No more words came from her.

While looking at Kinuyo’s teary face, Yukio calmly pulled out something from inside his jacket.

‘So, anyway, here…’ he said, placing it before her. It was the passbook and stamp that she had given him when he first left for Kyoto.

‘I thought I would need it if things got hard, but I ended up not using it…’

No matter how tough life had become, he could never bring himself to use the money. It was filled with the wishes of his mother, who – never doubting his success – had believed in him as she sent him off. He was planning to return it to her when he succeeded as a potter.

‘But that money…’

‘No, it’s OK. Just knowing it was there enabled me to get through the hard times, no matter how tough things got. It gave me the strength to keep going. I always ploughed on so that I could return it to you, Mum.’ That was not a lie. ‘Please, I want you to take it.’

‘Oh, Yukio…’

‘Thank you.’ He nodded deeply.

Kinuyo took the passbook and stamp from him and held them to her chest.

Well, that’s the last burden gone. Now I just have to wait for the coffee to get cold.

Yukio had never intended to return to the present.

Since hearing of Kinuyo’s death, he had thought only of this moment. He couldn’t just die. If he left debt, it would cause trouble for his family.

For the last month, he had frantically been preparing for personal bankruptcy. Although he didn’t even have the money for the bus or train fare to get to the funeral, he worked as a labourer every day until he had enough to hire a lawyer and to pay to travel to the cafe. It was all for this moment.

As if all the taut lines holding him together had come undone, his body felt completely drained of strength. Not having slept properly for the last month might also have been a factor. His fatigue had reached its limit. Now, everything would end.

Finally.

He felt satisfaction…

Now, it’s all much easier.

… and a sense of having been released.

When suddenly…

Bip-bip-bip-bip bip-bip-bip-bip…

A softly beeping alarm sound was coming from his cup. He didn’t know the purpose of this alarm but when he heard it, he remembered Kazu’s words. He pulled the beeping stirrer from the cup.

‘That reminds me, the waitress here said to pass on her regards…’ He conveyed to Kinuyo the words Kazu entrusted him with.

‘You mean Kazu?’

‘Um, yeah.’

‘Oh…’

Kinuyo’s expression darkened for a brief moment. But then she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, and quickly looked at Yukio directly again with a smile.

‘Er, Kinuyo…’ Nagare called out from behind the counter.

Kinuyo looked back at him. Smiling broadly, she simply said, ‘I know.’

Mystified at this exchange, Yukio reached out for the cup and took a sip.

‘Hmm, that’s nice,’ he lied. The strongly acidic sour taste was not to his liking.

Kinuyo looked at him with gentle eyes. ‘She is such a kind girl, isn’t she?’

‘Huh, who?’

‘Kazu, silly.’

‘Kazu? Oh, yes, for sure.’

Yukio lied again. He had no room in his head to consider Kazu’s personality.

‘She really sees people’s true feelings. She always thinks about the person who sits in that chair.’

Yukio had no inkling of what Kinuyo was trying to say. But as he was planning to sit it out until the coffee went cold, it didn’t matter what she talked about.

‘There was a woman in the white dress sitting in that chair, right?’

‘A woman? Oh, yes, yes there was.’

‘She went back to see her late husband, but she never returned…’

‘Oh, really?’

‘No one knows what exchange took place. But even so, no one ever considered that she might never return.’

Yukio noticed that behind the counter Nagare was standing slumped with his head hung low.

‘It was Kazu who poured the coffee for her. She had only just turned seven.’

‘…Oh, really,’ Yukio muttered, seemingly uninterested. He didn’t get why Kinuyo wanted to tell him this now.

Her face was sad as she heard his reply.

‘To think, your own mother, of all people!’ she said with a slightly sterner tone.

‘Huh?’

‘The woman who didn’t return was Kazu’s mother!’

The change in his complexion suggested that even Yukio was moved by these words.

It was such a cruel turn of events for a young girl, who still needed her mother’s love, to go through. Just imagining it was painful. But while it stirred some empathy in him, it didn’t make him feel any more like returning to the future.

He wondered how this conversation and the stirrer were connected.

He began considering the question clinically.

Kinuyo picked up the stirrer from the saucer.

‘So, you see, ever since then, Kazu places this in the cup of anyone who goes back to visit someone who has died,’ she explained while waving it. ‘It rings before the coffee gets cold.’

‘…Oh.’

Yukio’s face turned pale.

But that would mean that…

‘That was why Kazu sent her regards.’

She was practically telling Mum that she would die.

‘What? Why did she do that? What right does she have to tell you that? How would that make you feel?’

Yukio still didn’t understand the reason for Kazu’s action.

It was none of her business!

An angry expression clearly formed on Yukio’s face.

Kinuyo, however, remained calm.

‘What Kazu did…’ she explained softly, with a very happy smile that Yukio had never seen before – she certainly showed no trace of fear, or any other emotion that one might expect having been told of her death through Kazu’s message, ‘was to assign me a final task: one that only I can do.’

Yukio remembered that when Kinuyo talked about the times he had nearly died, she used to say with tears in her eyes, ‘I wasn’t able to do anything for you.’ Whether it was illness or accident, she could never forget the torment of waiting helplessly.

‘It’s time you returned to the future…’ Kinuyo said kindly with a smile.

‘No, I don’t want to.’

‘Do it for me. I believe in you.’

‘No.’

Yukio shook his head dramatically.

Kinuyo held the passbook and stamp he had given her against her forehead.

‘I will keep this. It’s filled with your wishes. I’ll take it to my grave without using it,’ she said, bowing her head very deeply.

‘Mum…’

Kinuyo lifted up her head and looked at Yukio with a kind smile.

‘There is no greater suffering than that of a parent who is unable to save their own child who wants to die.’

Yukio’s lips began to tremble.

‘…Sorry.’

‘That’s OK.’

‘Forgive me.’

‘Well now…’ she said, pushing the cup, ever so slightly, to him. ‘Could you say thank you to Kazu for me?’

He tried to say OK, but no words came out. He swallowed and grabbed the cup with trembling hands. He lifted his head to see with his now-blurry vision Kinuyo beaming at him, also weeping.

My sweet boy…

Her voice was too soft for him to hear, but that’s what her lips whispered. As if speaking to a newborn.

For a parent, a child is a child for ever. Never ever expecting anything in return, she was simply a mother who wanted her child to be happy, always, to shower him with love.

Yukio had thought that if he died, everything would be over. He thought that it would have no effect on Kinuyo because she was already dead. But he had been wrong. Even after she died, she was still his mother. The feelings did not change.

I would have upset my dead mother…

Yukio gulped down the coffee. The acidic sour taste unique to mocha filled his mouth. The dizziness returned, and his body began to turn to vapour.

‘Mum!’ he yelled.

He could no longer tell if his voice was carrying to Kinuyo. But her voice reached him clearly.

‘Thank you for coming to see me…’

Yukio’s surroundings began to flow past him. Time began to move from the past to the future.

… If the alarm hadn’t rung at that moment… and I had waited until the coffee went cold, I would have broken Mum’s heart at the very end…

His dream was to become a potter with his own studio. He had endured many long years without recognition, held captive by the dream of success. Then he’d been cheated and fallen into a deep despair, unable to see why only his life was so unhappy. But he had been about to cause his mother even greater suffering than he had experienced…

OK, I’ll live…… no matter what happens……

I’ll live for my mother who never stopped wishing for my happiness, right until the very end…

Yukio’s consciousness gradually faded as he was transported through time.

When he came to, Kazu was the only other person in the cafe. He had returned to the present. A few seconds later, the woman in the dress returned from the toilet. Silently, she slid up close to him, and looked down at him with a scowl.

‘Move!’

Still sniffling, he slowly relinquished the seat to the woman in the dress. She sat down without a word, pushed away the cup that Yukio had used and then proceeded to read her novel as if nothing had happened.

The entire cafe appears to be glowing.

Yukio was beset by a mysterious feeling. The lighting hadn’t got any brighter. Yet everything now looked fresh to his eyes. His despair at life had metamorphosed into hope. His outlook had changed unrecognizably.

The world hasn’t changed, I have…

Staring at the woman in the dress, he mused over what he had just experienced. Kazu cleaned away his cup and served a new coffee to the woman in the dress.

‘Kazu…’ he called out towards Kazu’s back, ‘Mum said to say thanks.’

‘Oh, did she?’

‘Yeah, and I should thank you too…’

Upon saying this, he bowed his head very deeply. Kazu walked off into the kitchen to wash up the cup that he had used. When she was out of sight, he slowly took out his handkerchief to wipe his tear-soaked face and blow his nose.

‘How much is it?’ he called to Kazu. She promptly came out and started reading the bill out loud at the cash register.

‘One coffee plus the after-hours surcharge. That comes to four hundred and twenty yen, please,’ she replied, pressing the heavy keys of the cash register, her deadpan expression not faltering. The woman in the dress continued reading her novel as if nothing had happened.

‘All right then… here you are.’

He passed her a thousand-yen note.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about the alarm?’ he asked.

Kazu took his money, and once again pressed the clunky keys.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I must have forgotten to explain that to you,’ she replied with a cool expression, bowing her head a little. Yukio smiled, looking genuinely happy.

Lin-lin lin-lin li – n-lin…

The chirping of a bell cricket could be heard coming from somewhere.

As if egged on by the chirping, Yukio began speaking as Kazu placed the change into his palm. ‘Kazu… Mum said she hopes you find happiness too,’ he said, and promptly left the cafe.

They weren’t the words that he had heard from Kinuyo. But considering Kazu’s circumstances, he could easily imagine her saying such a thing.

With Yukio gone, Kazu and the woman in the dress were alone. The doorbell was still softly humming. Kazu took a cloth and began to wipe the counter top.

Kazu sang to herself softly. As if in response, lin-lin li – n-lin, chirped the bell cricket.

The quiet autumn night wore slowly on…