‘Let’s go through the rules,’ Kazu said softly next to Gohtaro, who was still sitting in the right seat.
The cafe was silent as always. Gohtaro had heard the rules from Shuichi some twenty-two years ago, but he could barely remember them now.
What he did remember was: that you go back in time, that reality won’t change, no matter what you do, and that there was a ghost sitting on the chair. He was unclear on any other details. That Kazu was going to explain them to him was therefore welcome news.
‘The first rule is that even though you can return to the past, you can only meet people who have visited this cafe.’
This rule didn’t surprise him. It had been Shuichi who had invited him to the cafe. There was no doubt that he had been there.
As Gohtaro’s face showed no sign of worry, Kazu briskly continued. She told him that when he went back he would not be able to change reality, no matter how hard he tried; that the only way to return to the past was by sitting where he sat; that he could not get up from the seat because if he did, he would be forcibly brought back to the present.
The bit about leaving the seat had been met with an ‘Oh really?’ from Gohtaro. But the rules were mostly as he had expected, and nothing drained the colour from his face.
‘OK, I understand,’ he said.
‘Please wait while I remake the coffee,’ Kazu instructed him when she had finished her explanation, and went into the kitchen.
She left him sitting there, with Nagare standing in front of him.
‘Excuse my nosiness, but she is not your wife, is she?’ he asked Nagare.
It wasn’t as if he really needed to know the answer; it was more an attempt to make conversation.
‘Her? No, she’s my cousin,’ Nagare replied, looking down at Miki.
‘Miki’s mum… Well, when she gave birth to her…’
Nagare didn’t continue – not because he was choked with emotion, but simply because he thought he had already conveyed the message.
‘I see…’ said Gohtaro, and stopped asking questions. He looked at Nagare with his thin eyes, and then at Miki with her round eyes, and concluded that she must take after her mother. Caught up in that thought, he waited for Kazu.
Kazu soon returned. On the tray she was carrying were the same silver kettle and white coffee cup she had taken back into the kitchen. The aroma of the coffee, freshly made, drifted throughout the cafe and seemed to penetrate Gohtaro’s chest deeply.
Kazu stood beside the table where Gohtaro was seated and continued the explanation.
‘I will now serve you the coffee,’ she said as she placed the white cup in front of him.
‘OK.’
Gohtaro looked down at the blemish-free cup and was transfixed by its pure almost translucent whiteness. Kazu continued.
‘The time you have in the past will only be from when I pour you the coffee until the coffee has gone cold.’
‘OK.’
Perhaps because Gohtaro had been told the rules by Shuichi, the news that he could only return to the past for such a short period did not seem to surprise him.
Kazu gave a small nod.
‘That means that you must drink the coffee before it gets cold. If you don’t drink it then…’ she continued.
She now had to explain, You will become a ghost and go on sitting in this seat. It was this rule that made returning to the past extremely risky. Compared to the great risk of becoming a ghost, not being able to meet who you wanted to meet, or not being able to change reality, were trifling inconveniences.
Yet, if Kazu was careless with her explanation, her words could be misconstrued as just a joke. To ensure she gave these words the gravitas they needed, she paused before she went on.
‘You turn into a spook, right?’ Gohtaro interrupted with those insane-sounding words.
‘Huh?’ asked Nagare, who was listening from a distance.
‘A spook,’ repeated Gohtaro without hesitation.
‘When Shuichi told me the rules, that one was so crazy… er, excuse me… it was so difficult to believe, I remembered it clearly.’
From past experience, when a customer had not followed this rule, the damage was severe, and rather than thinking of the customer who became a ghost, Nagare was thinking about the people who get left behind. If it happened to Gohtaro, it would be a devastating shock to his daughter Haruka.
Yet for some reason, Gohtaro did not seem to acknowledge the seriousness of it, and throwing around words like spook suggested he wasn’t taking it seriously. But Gohtaro’s eyes looked serious, so rather than simply telling him that was wrong, Nagare’s answer was vaguer.
‘Er… nah…’ he struggled to reply.
But Kazu’s answer was plain.
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed coolly.
‘Eh?’ uttered Nagare in surprise at her answer. His almond-shaped eyes opened wide, and his mouth dropped open. Miki standing next to him, who probably didn’t know what a spook was, looked up at Nagare, her round eyes goggling.
Kazu, however – unbothered by Nagare’s agitation – continued to explain the rules.
‘You must not forget. If you do not finish drinking the coffee before it goes cold, it will be your turn to be the spook for ever stuck sitting here.’
It was true to Kazu’s relaxed and generous nature to use Gohtaro’s word spook, but she probably just went with the term because it was easier to do so. At any rate, it was clear what she meant: whether you called it a spook or a ghost, it was the same thing.
‘So, the woman who has been sitting on the chair up until now?’ Gohtaro asked, hinting, She didn’t return from the past, then?
‘…Yes,’ Kazu confirmed.
‘I wonder why she didn’t finish her coffee?’ Gohtaro asked. He asked purely out of interest. But his question turned Kazu’s face into a Noh mask, and for the first time he found her expression unreadable.
I’ve asked something I was not meant to ask, Gohtaro thought, but Kazu wore this expression only for a moment and continued.
‘She went back to meet her husband who had died, but she must have lost track of time and only realized when the coffee had already gone cold,’ she stated with an expression that implied that there was no need for her to say what happened next.
‘Oh, I see,’ Gohtaro replied with a rather sympathetic expression. He looked over to the entrance through which the woman in the dress had disappeared.
He asked no more questions, so Kazu asked, ‘Shall I serve?’
‘Yes please,’ he answered with a sigh.
Kazu took the silver kettle that was still on the tray. Gohtaro knew nothing about tableware, but he could see at a glance that this sparkling silver kettle would be worth a substantial sum. Kazu announced, ‘Then I shall begin.’
As she uttered these words, Gohtaro felt that her aura had changed.
The temperature in the cafe seemed to suddenly drop by a degree and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Kazu lifted the silver kettle up a little higher and uttered the words, ‘Drink the coffee before it goes cold,’ and then slowly began lowering the spout towards the cup. She moved with an impenetrable beauty, as if she was performing a solemn ritual.
When the spout was just a few centimetres from the cup, a threadlike column of black coffee appeared. It was soundless, and it didn’t appear to be moving; only the surface of the liquid in the cup rose. The coffee that filled the vessel resembled a pitch-black shadow.
Transfixed by this beautiful sequence of movements, Gohtaro saw a plume of steam rise from the cup.