He patted both cheeks with his hands to untangle his memory. He remembered that Kazu had told him, ‘We don’t know when the chair that you use to return to the past will be empty.’ Then he must have drifted off to sleep.
It seemed odd to him that he would doze off like that, having just made a decision as momentous as returning to the past. But he also couldn’t help having doubts about the waitress who had left him alone in that state.
Gohtaro stood up and called out to the back room.
‘Hello… is anyone there?’
But there was no reply.
He looked at one of the clocks on the wall to check the time, but then immediately checked his watch. The antique clocks in the cafe were the first strange thing one noticed when visiting. Each one showed a different time.
Apparently, the clocks at either end of the room were broken. One of them was fast, and the other, slow. Multiple attempts had been made to fix them, to no avail.
‘8:12 p.m… .’
Gohtaro looked over at where the woman in the white dress was sitting.
Among the tales of this cafe that he had heard from Shuichi, there was one that had stuck in his mind: A ghost is sitting in the chair that returns you to the past.
The notion was quite preposterous and impossible to believe. That was why it had stuck in his mind.
Oblivious to Gohtaro’s gaze, the woman read her novel with unfaltering concentration.
As he looked at her face, he began to feel a strange sense of recognition, as if he had met her somewhere before.
However, he couldn’t see how that was possible if she truly was a ghost, so he simply shrugged it off.
Flap.
Suddenly, the woman in the dress closed the novel, the sound reverberating throughout the silent cafe. At her unexpected move, Gohtaro’s heart nearly leaped out of his mouth, and he almost slipped off his seat at the counter. If she was just a normal human customer, her movement would probably not have shaken him so, but having been told that she was a ghost… He didn’t believe she was, of course, but the image of ‘ghost = creepy’ couldn’t be easily shaken once it had taken hold.
Momentarily petrified, he felt a cold clamminess spread up his spine. Ignoring Gohtaro’s reaction, the woman rose without a sound. She slipped out of her seat and walked silently towards the entrance, clasping the novel she had been reading as if it was precious to her.
Feeling his heart pounding, Gohtaro watched her pass.
She went through the entrance and disappeared to the right. The only thing in that direction was the toilet.
A ghost who goes to the toilet?
Gohtaro tilted his head as he looked at the woman’s chair. The seat that would take him back in time was vacant.
Tentatively taking one step at a time, he went over, constantly wary that the woman in the dress might suddenly reappear with a diabolical grimace.
Inspecting it up close, he saw it was a simple seat with nothing out of the ordinary about it. The chair had elegantly curved cabriole legs, and its seat and back were upholstered with a pale moss-green fabric. He was certainly no expert in antiques, but he could tell it would be worth a lot of money.
If I were to sit on that chair…
As soon as he placed his hand timidly on it, he heard the sound of scuffling slippers coming from the back room.
He turned and saw a girl wearing pyjamas. If he remembered correctly, she was the cafe owner’s daughter, Miki. She stared at him with her big round eyes – she didn’t seem at all shy about making eye contact with adults she didn’t know. Confronted with her straight stare, Gohtaro was the one who felt uncomfortable with the eye contact.
‘Good… good evening,’ he said in a forced, unnatural voice, as he pulled his hand back from the chair. Miki scuffled towards him.
‘Good evening, monsieur, do you want to return to the past?’ she asked, peering at him with her big eyes.
‘Ah, well, you see…’
Gohtaro was floundering, not sure how to answer that question.
‘Why?’
Miki tilted her head inquisitively, ignoring how flustered he seemed.
He was anxious that the woman in the dress would return while he was talking to Miki.
‘Could you call a member of staff?’ he asked her.
Miki, however, completely ignored his request and instead slipped past him and stood in front of the seat in which the woman in the dress had been sitting.
‘Kaname has gone to the toilet,’ she said, shifting her gaze from the empty seat to Gohtaro.
‘Kaname?’
Miki silently looked at the cafe entrance. Gohtaro followed her gaze and understanding, nodded. ‘And her name’s Kaname?’
But instead of answering, Miki pulled on his hand. ‘Sit down,’ she urged.
In a businesslike fashion, she cleared the woman’s coffee cup and scuffled off in her slippers, disappearing into the kitchen and giving him no chance to protest.
He stared after her in blank amazement.
Is she going to help me go back to the past? he wondered. With an anxious expression, he slipped between the chair and the table in front of him and sat down.
He didn’t know what he had to do to go back, but he felt his heart race at the thought that he was sitting in the chair.
After a while, Miki returned carrying a silver kettle and white coffee cup, clattering on a tray she held with both hands.
She stood next to Gohtaro.
‘Now moi will pour you the coffee,’ she said as the tray wobbled.
Can you really do this? Gohtaro almost asked, but he held it in.
‘Um… er,’ he replied with a very anxious expression.
Miki didn’t see the look on his face as she had fixed her big excited eyes on the cup on the tray. She continued with her explanation.
‘In order to go back to the past…’
At that moment, Nagare, wearing a T-shirt, appeared from the back room.
‘Heavens above, Miki, what do you think you’re doing?’ he said with an exasperated sigh. More than angry, his tone conveyed something more along the lines of, Oh no, not again.
‘Moi is serving monsieur his coffee.’
‘There is no way you can do that yet. And stop calling yourself moi.’
‘Moi shall serve it.’
‘Stop it. Now!’
While still holding the wobbling and rattling tray precariously, little Miki blew her cheeks out and looked up at giant Nagare.
Nagare’s thin almond eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth dropped into a frown as he looked down at Miki.
It felt like a standoff between the two, as if whoever spoke next would lose.
Kazu, who had appeared without anyone noticing, walked out from behind Nagare and knelt down in front of Miki.
‘Moi…’
As Kazu looked her straight in her eyes at her level, Miki’s big eyes gradually transformed from angry to teary. In that moment Miki seemed to realize she had lost.
Kazu smiled warmly at her.
‘Your time will come,’ she said as she quietly took the tray.
Miki looked up at Nagare, teary eyed. ‘Uh-huh,’ he simply said, and gently held out his hand. His face looked far less stern now.
‘As you wish,’ said Miki as she took hold of the hand stretched out to her and drew to his side. The defiant expression she had worn until just moments ago had dissipated. When Miki got annoyed and upset like this, she could quickly switch her mood, rather than letting it drag on. Observing her transformation, Nagare thought how like her mother she was, with a melancholic smile.
Based on how Kazu treated Miki, Gohtaro deduced, This waitress is not the girl’s mother. He could also sympathize with how Nagare was struggling to handle a girl of this age – having had, after all, his own experience of raising his daughter Haruka as a single father.