Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

Of the three antique clocks on the wall, only the one in the centre showed the right time. Of the other two, one was fast and one was slow. Accordingly, when Nagare, Kazu or any of the regulars wanted to check the time, they would always look at the one in the middle.

Judging by Kurata’s conversation on the phone with Fumiko, Nagare was assuming that the woman he was waiting for, Asami, was not coming.

‘Yes, yes…’

He reached out and touched the cup to check the temperature of the coffee.

I’ve hardly any time left…

Kurata took a very deep breath and slowly closed his eyes. Kazu watched him do this, but did nothing.

‘Oh, that reminds me. I heard you got married. Congratulations. Yes, the cafe staff told me… believe me, hearing that alone made my trip worth it.’

They weren’t just empty words, he really seemed to mean it. His beaming face was seemingly directed to Fumiko, wherever she was.

‘…Bye.’

Kurata slowly ended the call. Nagare quietly approached the table, and Kurata returned the handset to him.

‘I’ll go back now,’ he said softly.

He was smiling but his voice was faltering. He clearly seemed disappointed that he had come all this way to the future only to miss out on meeting Asami.

‘Anything we can do before you go?’ Nagare said, observing Kurata.

Nagare knew he couldn’t offer anything. But he couldn’t help asking. He kept pressing the buttons on the handset pointlessly.

Kurata must have noticed how he was feeling.

‘No, everything is fine. Thank you very much,’ he replied with a smile.

Nagare slowly lifted his head and walked off towards the back room holding on to the handset.

‘Could you put this up for me, please?’ Kurata asked, presenting the tanzaku bearing his wish.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Miki. Because Kurata couldn’t leave his chair, she came and took it from him.

‘Thank you for everything,’ he said, and bowing his head to Kazu behind the counter, he picked up the cup in front of him.

In the summer, two and a half years ago…

Kurata had been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukaemia. He was told he could start treatment and hope to survive, or forgo it and be left with only six months to live. It was the second summer of his relationship with Asami. He’d got the news of his diagnosis just after deciding to get a ring ready secretly and propose to her.

But he didn’t give up. If it meant the slightest chance of survival, he had no trouble deciding to begin treatment. It was then he decided to carry out his plan, keeping it a secret from Asami. He had heard from Fumiko that in this cafe, not only could you return to the past, but you could also travel to the future. The information he obtained from Fumiko, however, wasn’t detailed enough for him to carry out his plan successfully. So he visited the cafe to find out first-hand whether the plan he had conceived could work.

Getting there was no trouble as he had visited it on two prior occasions when he had tagged along with Fumiko. But just as the weather forecast had predicted, he got caught in sporadic torrential downpours. Even using an umbrella, he was still soaked from the waist down by the time he entered the cafe.

Maybe because of the rain, only the waitress, Kazu, and the woman in the dress were in the cafe. Kurata quickly introduced himself and began explaining his plan to Kazu.

‘I wish to go to the future. Ms Kiyokawa told me that you could also go to the future when you sit on that chair,’ he said, looking at the woman in the dress. He pulled out a notebook on which he had jotted down as much detail on the rules as possible, based on what Fumiko had told him, and then began to check if they were right or not.

‘When returning to the past, you cannot meet anyone who has not visited the cafe. What about the future? Is it impossible to meet the person you want to meet unless they come to the cafe?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Kazu matter-of-factly while carrying on with her work. Proceeding methodically with his questions while referring to his notebook, Kurata confirmed that the woman in the dress left her seat to go to the toilet once a day and that even when travelling to the future, it was not possible to stand up from the chair.

‘Is the time it takes for the coffee to get cold the same for everyone? Or does the time become longer or shorter depending on the circumstances?’ he asked.

This was a shrewd question. If the time it took for the coffee to get cold was consistently the same, he could check with Fumiko, who had gone back in time, and get a good idea of how long he would have. But if the duration was different each time, in the worst-case scenario, he could get less time than her.

When going to the past, you know exactly when the person you want to meet visited the cafe. That means you can aim for a specific time and go back with pinpoint precision. So even if the time allowed there was short, you’d most likely meet them.

The same doesn’t apply to the future. You can arrange to meet someone, but whether they arrive at that time depends on circumstances you cannot predict. You might end up missing them by only a few seconds.

Any difference in the amount of time you had was therefore quite an important point. Kurata swallowed while waiting for Kazu’s answer.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied bluntly.

Kurata didn’t seem overly disappointed, though, as if he had expected such an answer.

‘Oh, OK,’ he replied simply. Then he asked his last question.

‘When you go to the past, there is nothing you can do that will change the present. Would it be right to think that this applies to when you visit the future as well?’

Unlike the previous questions, on this question, Kazu stopped what she was doing and thought for a moment.

‘I think so,’ she replied. Maybe it was because she had some idea why Kurata was asking this question, but it was rare for her to provide such a vague answer. That said, it was the first time anyone had ever asked this question.

Kurata thought that if the rule ‘no matter what you do while in the past, the present won’t change’ applied for going to the future too…

… if he went to the future and didn’t meet her, then no matter what he did from then on, that future would not change. Or on the other hand, if he did meet her in the future, then no matter what he did from then on, that meeting would still take place.

Of all the rules, this was the rule he had really wanted to clarify.

To simply go to the future and put his trust in meeting by chance was ill-advised. If Asami was a cafe regular, then that might be possible. But she wasn’t. Kurata intended to plan meticulously to get her to visit the cafe at the same time as him in the future.

If the future could be changed, then first he would go from now to the future, and even if he did not meet Asami that time, upon returning, he would just need to work harder so they would meet next time.

But that was not the case.

The future reality of the time you travelled to could not be changed.

This was not a new rule. It was just an extension of the rule that no matter how hard you tried while in the past, you couldn’t change the present. Kurata, who was intending to travel to the future, was the only person ever to have considered it.

He seemed to mull it over for a little while.

‘Hmmm. I see. Thank you very much,’ he said bowing his head.

‘Are you wishing to travel today?’ she asked.

‘No, not today,’ he replied. And squeaking and squelching in his still-wet shoes, he left the cafe.