‘Shuichi!’ he yelled.
‘It’s OK. Don’t worry, I’m OK,’ he replied but it did nothing to dispel Gohtaro’s gloomy expression. He smiled wryly. ‘Hey! Are you planning on attending Haruka’s wedding as a spook or something?’ he asked, patting Gohtaro on the shoulder.
Gohtaro turned his tear-drenched face towards Shuichi.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered.
‘Hey, it’s OK, drink up!’ retorted Shuichi, waving his palms.
Gohtaro took the cup in his hands and, feeling that it had pretty much gone cold, gulped it all down in one.
‘Uh…’
A feeling much like dizziness once again enveloped him.
‘Shuichi—!’ Gohtaro shouted, but he had already begun to vaporize. His voice didn’t seem to have reached Shuichi. Yet, just when he thought his shimmering surroundings would begin to ripple, in his hazy state he clearly heard Shuichi say:
‘Look after Haruka for me.’
These were the same words the twenty-two-year younger Gohtaro had heard one year from then, on a day when the snow-like sakura petals had danced across the clear sky.
Gohtaro suddenly found that, just as on the way back in time, the speed with which he was being returned to the future was increasing, he was being propelled along. He lost consciousness.
‘Monsieur?’
Gohtaro came to, to the voice of Miki. The cafe interior looked exactly the same. But there before him were Miki, Nagare and Kazu.
Was it a dream?
Gohtaro’s focus abruptly shifted to his hand and to the camera in it. He hurriedly tried pressing the play button.
As he was looking at the screen, the woman in the dress returned from the toilet and stood in front of the table.
‘Move!’ she spat out in a frightening, deep, guttural tone.
‘Ah, sorry,’ Gohtaro said, getting up in a hurry to vacate the seat for her.
The woman in the dress sat down with a nonchalant expression and pushed the cup that remained on the table away from her, obviously an order to clear it away.
The unwanted cup was quickly collected up by Miki. Without the aid of a tray, she carried the cup in both hands. She scuffled past Gohtaro and returned to Nagare’s side behind the counter.
She passed the cup to Nagare.
‘Monsieur’s crying, darlings. Moi wonders if he’s OK?’ she asked, adopting her camp tone once again. Nagare looked over at Gohtaro peering into the camera screen while crying hard enough to make his shoulders shake. The sight must have worried him too. ‘Are you OK there?’ he asked.
‘I’m OK,’ Gohtaro answered, glued to the screen.
‘Well… OK then,’ Nagare said, and looked down at Miki. ‘He says he’s OK,’ he whispered. Kazu came out from the kitchen holding a new coffee for the woman in the dress.
‘How did it go?’ she asked Gohtaro as she stood alongside the special chair, wiped the table and served the coffee.
‘Be happy…’ Gohtaro said softly as he looked towards the chair ‘…is what he said.’ He clenched his teeth.
‘Oh really?’ replied Kazu quietly.
The screen was showing Shuichi with his hand around Gohtaro’s shoulder urging him to ‘Smile, smile.’
‘So OK, darlings, when will moi be able to do that?’
Gohtaro had made his way to the cash register and was getting ready to pay. Miki continued to tug at Nagare’s T-shirt sleeve.
‘Well, first of all, you can quit with the moi!’
‘But moi wants to do i – t.’
‘I won’t let a person who says moi do it.’
‘Well, you’re just a yellow-belly.’
‘I’m just a what?’
While Nagare and Miki continued their stand-off, Gohtaro started to leave but stopped mid-step.
‘If I may ask…’ he said to Kazu, looking at the two.
‘Yes?’ replied Kazu.
‘She was your mother, wasn’t she?’ Gohtaro asked looking over at the woman in the dress.
Kazu followed Gohtaro’s gaze.
‘Yes,’ she answered.
Gohtaro wanted to ask why her mother hadn’t come back from the past. But Kazu was giving off an air that barred any further discussion, her expressionless face still looking at the woman in the dress.
When Gohtaro had asked the same question before going back to the past, Kazu had said that the woman had returned to meet her dead husband.
That girl has probably suffered far more than I ever have, thought Gohtaro.
Unable to find any words to express any of that, he said, ‘Thank you very much…’
And with that, he left the cafe.
‘Twenty-two years ago…’ Nagare muttered, sighing.
‘You must have been just seven years old, right?’ he asked from behind the counter, speaking to Kazu, who was looking at Kaname.
‘Yes…’
‘I’m hoping that you too find happiness…’ Nagare muttered softly as if to himself.
‘Well, I—’
Kazu appeared to be about to say something, but Miki didn’t wait for her.
‘Hey darlings… how long before moi is allowed to do it?’ she asked, becoming entwined in Nagare’s legs.
Kazu looked at Miki and smiled warmly.
‘Do you ever let up?’ asked Nagare, letting out a deep sigh. ‘Your time will come!’ he said, attempting to untangle himself from Miki wrapped around him.
‘When will that be? What time, which day?’
‘Your time will come when your time comes!’
‘I don’t understand,’ Miki said, glued to Nagare’s leg, refusing to be separated. ‘When, when, whe – n?’
Just when Nagare’s patience was just about gone…
‘Miki, your turn will come too…’ said Kazu, joining the conversation. She moved close to Miki and crouched down so she was at eye level with her.
‘When you turn seven…’ she whispered gently.
‘Really?’ Miki asked, gawking straight into Kazu’s eyes.
‘Yes, really,’ Kazu confirmed.
Miki looked up at Nagare and waited for his answer.
By his expression, Nagare didn’t seem fond of the idea, but in the end, he let out a sigh of resignation.
‘OK,’ he answered, and nodded a couple of times.
‘Yippee, hooray!’ Miki was instantly over the moon with joy. She skipped and jumped with everything she had, and scuttled away into the back room.
Shaking his head, muttering, ‘What have I gone and said,’ he chased after her.
Left behind, Kazu was silently looking at the woman in the dress reading her novel.
‘I’m sorry, Mum, I still…’ she suddenly whispered.
The ticking of the three wall clocks reverberated loudly as if in tune with Kazu.
Always……
Always……
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.