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…