However, it was different with Miki. Her smiling expression was lovely, like a mother looking lovingly at her baby. Her smile radiated warmth and seemed out of place on a seven-year-old girl. If people had auras whose colours were somehow visible, there is no doubt that Kazu would be surrounded by pale aqua, while Miki’s would be orange. This was how warm and welcoming the atmosphere around her was.
When she smiled, it seemed that the temperature had risen slightly.
Her smile is as radiant as the spring sun’s rays, Kiyoshi thought. ‘Yes, let’s,’ he said, nodding.
‘OK,’ replied Miki. ‘REMEMBER, BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD!’
Shouting boisterously, her voice reverberated around the room.
Way too loud… thought Nagare as he gave a wry smile.
Miki held the silver kettle above her head and began pouring. The coffee formed a thin line as it streamed into the bright white cup.
It must have been heavy for seven-year-old Miki to hold up the kettle full of coffee like that. She was doing her best to pour with just one hand, but the spout was swaying from side to side and coffee spilled from the cup, leaving a brown puddle on the saucer.
She was taking it seriously, but her mood was not as serious as when Kazu poured. Her earnest attempt to do her best was heart-warming. While Kiyoshi’s attention was fixed on Miki’s performance, the cup was filled with coffee and a plume of vapour began to rise.
At that moment, Kiyoshi felt his surroundings beginning to warp as they seemed to waver and shimmer. Being sixty, he was worried that the sudden dizziness was a sign that he was unwell.
Of all the times for something like this to happen, he thought. But his concerns were fleeting.
He soon realized that his body was turning into vapour. He was startled, but at the same time, he felt relieved that the dizziness had nothing to do with his health.
His body seemed to billow as his surroundings began flowing past him.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed – not because he was startled, but rather because he suddenly realized that he had not even decided yet what he was going to say to his wife, whom he had not met for thirty years, when he gave her the gift.
I’m sure that Kimiko wouldn’t have known you can return to the past in this cafe…
While his consciousness was fading, he considered how he might give her the necklace.
Kiyoshi’s wife Kimiko was a woman with a strong sense of right and wrong. She and Kiyoshi had known each other since high school, and they shared the ambition of wanting to join the police force.
However, although they both passed the recruitment exam, the number of female recruits taken on was still low back then and Kimiko never became a police officer. Kiyoshi was assigned the role of police-box constable, but his passion for the job did not go unnoticed: he earned a posting in the First Criminal Investigation Division when he was thirty. When this happened, they had been married for two years. Kimiko was genuinely happy to hear that Kiyoshi was to start work as a detective. Kiyoshi, however, began to doubt whether he was cut out for such a role.
He was warm and friendly. His motivation for joining the police was to serve people. And he wanted to please Kimiko, who had dreamed of becoming a police officer. However, once he had become an officer, he found it a struggle. The First Criminal Investigation Division handled homicide and manslaughter cases. He was continuously confronted with the dark side of humanity, where people took the lives of others, spurred on by selfish desires or self-preservation. He never felt mentally tough enough to withstand this reality on the strength of his own beliefs and sense of purpose alone. He often thought, If I go on like this, I’ll have a mental breakdown.
Fearing that he was at breaking point, he had decided to admit to Kimiko that he wanted to quit being a detective. Finding it difficult to bring up the subject at home, he had invited her to the cafe on the pretext of it being her birthday, and was planning to tell her then. But on the chosen date, work came up and he thought, I’ll just tell her another day. Kiyoshi chose the work that he claimed to hate over going to the cafe. As a result, Kimiko got caught up in the incident that took her life.
A tragic incident was really the only way to describe it. When Kiyoshi didn’t turn up at the arranged time, Kimiko waited for him until the cafe closed. After leaving, she turned down a narrow street. It was dark, but it was the shortest route to the station. It was on that street that she encountered a mugger robbing an old woman. Coming face-to-face with a crime taking place, her strong sense of right and wrong made it impossible for her to look the other way. Instead, she decided to try to reason quietly with the mugger, but to do so she had to approach him – carefully. If she gave the mugger cause to panic, he might do anything to the old woman. He had a knife, but she felt confident she could persuade him to stand down once she had his attention. But just at that moment, someone from the other side of the street yelled, ‘Hey you! What do you think you’re doing?’
When the mugger heard this, he pushed the old woman away and started running as fast as he could in Kimiko’s direction. While attempting to run past her, panicking or stumbling, he ended up crashing into her as he held the knife in his hand. It was a box-cutter with a thin disposable type of blade that wouldn’t have made much damage if it struck her coat. But as he fell, the knife struck Kimiko’s bare neck and severed a carotid artery. She died from loss of blood.
If only I had kept my promise and was there to look after her…
The impact of this incident on Kiyoshi was profound. Simply walking past the cafe, he experienced severe palpitations. It was a traumatic shock that scarred his heart deeply. Psychological trauma is not visible on the outside, and such wounds do not easily heal, especially for someone like Kiyoshi, who was left thinking that it was his fault that the person he loved died. After all, nothing will bring that person back.
He thought that by breaking his promise, he had caused Kimiko’s death. Even if his rational brain accepted another version of reality, his heart never would. Finally, he had succumbed to thinking, With Kimiko’s death on my conscience, what right do I have to happiness?
But after interviewing the people who had returned to the past at the cafe, he decided that it was time to change.
‘Wow, it’s true! A man just appeared out of nowhere!’ said a male voice. It was the first thing Kiyoshi heard after coming to. He had lost consciousness while travelling back through time. Behind the counter, a man wearing an apron that didn’t suit him – and looking like a university researcher performing an experiment – was looking at him. When Kiyoshi looked at the man and made a sign of acknowledgement, the man called out, ‘Kaname!’ and then shuffled away into the back room.
He doesn’t look suited for the cafe, even for a casual staff member. He must be new?
While Kiyoshi’s train of thought went on in this vein, he looked around the room. Although he was in the cafe thirty years in the past, the interior was no different from the present. Everything, down to the smallest detail, was the same. Nevertheless, he felt confident that he had indeed gone back: the man had called out for Kaname, and he had heard from Kinuyo that Kaname was the name of Kazu’s mother.
There didn’t seem to be any other customers in the cafe. He was about to sink into his own thoughts when a woman appeared from the back room. She was wearing a reddish-brown apron over a white-collared, floral-patterned dress, and she had an obvious bulge in her stomach.