Only Kazu maintained her always cool expression as she started to clear away Kiyoshi’s cup for Miki, who was still very excited.
‘How was it?’ she asked.
‘So, you’re pregnant?’ he replied.
Crash, clang-clang-clang…
The noisy sound of a tray dropping onto the floor rang through the cafe. The culprit was Nagare.
‘Daddy! Don’t be so noisy!’ Miki scolded him.
‘So sorry…’ he said, quickly picking up the tray.
Kazu’s expression hardly changed.
‘Yes, I am,’ she answered.
‘…How did you know that?’ asked Nagare.
‘I met your mother while she was pregnant with you,’ Kiyoshi explained, looking at Kazu. ‘Your mother told me that she couldn’t act as coffee pourer while she was pregnant.’
‘Oh, did she?’ Kazu said as she walked off to the kitchen to take away the cup that Kiyoshi had used.
At that moment, the woman in the dress, Kaname, appeared from the toilet. Kiyoshi stood up and gave her a short bow. As he gave up the seat, Kazu returned from the kitchen carrying a coffee for Kaname.
As she placed the coffee down in front of her, Kiyoshi said to her softly, ‘Your mother looked happy.’
Kazu stopped moving after she’d placed the cup on the table.
It was for no more than a second. Both Nagare and Kiyoshi waited anxiously for Kazu’s response before Miki saved everyone from an awkward silence.
‘Ah!’ said Miki. ‘Look!’
She crouched down and picked something up from the floor. Clenched between her thumb and index finger was a single cherry blossom petal. It must have been carried in on someone’s head or shoulder.
Glimpsing a single flower petal is another way of noticing spring.
Miki held out the petal in her fingers.
‘Spring is here!’ she announced, and Kazu smiled gently.
‘Ever since that day when Mum never returned from the past…’ Kazu began, in a calm voice. ‘I was always afraid of being happy.’
She spoke as if she was telling this to someone other than those around her. In fact, it seemed as though she was addressing the cafe itself.
‘That was because on that day, when my mother suddenly disappeared… the constant stream of happy days and the happiness of the person most precious to me just came to an end.’
Tears began to stream down her face.
Since the day Kaname had failed to return from the past, Kazu had never made any friends, not even at school. The fear of losing them was too great. She never joined a club or formed part of a clique, not in junior high or high school. Even if she was invited to play, she never went. After school finished, she immediately returned to the cafe, where she would help out. She had no relationship with anyone and showed no interest in others. Behind this all was her thought: I cannot be happy. All her life, this was what she had been telling herself.
She devoted herself to the cafe. She did not ask for anything else, she did not hope for anything else. She only lived to pour coffee. That was her way of punishing herself for what happened to her mother.
Tears sprang from Nagare’s eyes. They were the tears of a man who had been by Kazu’s side constantly since that day, watching over her.
‘I was the same,’ Kiyoshi said. ‘If I had not broken our date, my wife might not have died. I thought that her death was my fault for not meeting her. I didn’t think I deserved to be happy.’
Kiyoshi had likewise become a slave to his work as a detective. He deliberately chose a hard path for himself. He was imprisoned by the thought: I don’t deserve happiness.
‘But I was wrong. I learned this from the people I met through this cafe.’
He hadn’t only interviewed Kaname, and Hirai, who had gone back to see her dead sister. He had also talked to a woman who had gone back to see the boyfriend she had broken up with, and a woman who had gone back to see her husband whose memory was fading. Then there was the man who went back the previous spring to see his close friend who died twenty-two years before, and the man who went back the previous autumn to see his mother who died in hospital. Then in the winter, a man who knew he was dying came from the past to bring happiness to the lover he left behind.
‘I found the words that he left behind particularly touching.’
Kiyoshi brought out his small black notebook and read aloud.
‘ “If you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days towards making you happy. In that case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore, you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child.”
‘In other words, the way I live my life creates happiness for my wife.’
Kiyoshi had read those words over and over so many times, just that one page in his notebook was creased and stained.
These words also seemed to strike a chord with Kazu – a new stream of tears began to flow.
Kiyoshi put the notebook away in his jacket pocket and pulled down his hunting cap to fit more snugly on his head.
‘I do not think it is at all possible that your mother didn’t return so that you would be miserable. So, have your baby… and…’
He took a deep breath and turned to Kazu, who was looking at Kaname.
‘You’re allowed to be happy,’ he added.
Without saying anything, Kazu slowly closed her eyes.
‘Well, thanks for the coffee.’ Kiyoshi placed the money on the counter and walked towards the exit. Nagare gave a small nod in reply.
‘Oh…’ Kiyoshi said, suddenly turning round.
‘Forget something?’ asked Nagare.
‘No…’ he replied and turned to Kazu.
‘That necklace you helped choose, my wife really loved it,’ he said, and with a bow of the head, he went out.
Once again, silence filled the cafe.
Miki, no doubt relieved that her work was done, started nodding off while holding Nagare’s hand.
‘Oh, of course.’
Nagare realized why Miki had suddenly grown so quiet. He picked her up with an ‘alley-oop’.
The cherry blossom petal, released from Miki’s fingers, fluttered to the ground.
‘Spring, huh?’ he muttered.
‘Big brother…’
‘Hmm?’
‘I… I guess I’m allowed to be happy, aren’t I?’
‘Yeah, of course. She can take over from you now…’
Nagare readjusted Miki in his arms.
‘No problem at all…’ he said, walking off into the back room.
‘…Hmm.’
A long winter was about to end.
The interior had remained unchanged since that day.
‘Mum…’
Hanging from the ceiling, the wooden fan rotated slowly.
‘I’m…’
The three large clocks on the wall each showed different times. The shaded lamps tinted the interior with a sepia hue.
Kazu drew in a deep breath in this cafe where time seemed to stand still and placed her hand on her stomach.
‘I am going to be happy,’ she exclaimed.
As she said this, Kaname, while still looking down at her novel, smiled warmly. It was the same smile that Kaname had given Kazu when she was alive.
‘Mum?’ said Kazu, and at that moment Kaname’s body, like vapour rising from freshly poured coffee, rose upwards.
The vapour hung in the air for a moment and then simply vanished into the ceiling.
Kazu slowly closed her eyes.
Kaname had disappeared and a gentleman in his early old age was sitting in the chair. He picked up the novel that was left on the table and turned to the first page.
‘I’ll have a coffee, if I may?’ he said to Kazu.