Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

‘I wish that Asami is happy always,’ read Miki aloud from the tanzaku that Kurata had left.

Asami didn’t know how that tanzaku existed. But as soon as she heard it, she knew they were Kurata’s words. Large tears began to flow down her cheeks all at once, and she collapsed in a heap on the floor.

‘Are you all right, miss?’ Miki asked, peering down at Asami in puzzlement.

Fumiko put her arm around Asami’s shoulder, and Kazu stopped working and looked over at the woman in the dress.

That day, Nagare closed the cafe early.

When she returned home, Fumiko told Goro what had happened.

‘I think it’s likely that Kurata knew she was lying,’ he said after she had finished, taking the cake he had bought out of its box.

‘You think he knew? Why?’ Fumiko asked, frowning a little.

‘She told him that you had told her everything, right?’

‘Yes, she did, but what of it?’

‘If she had really been happily married, why would there be any need for you to explain it all to her? Based on his conditions, in that scenario, you didn’t have to bring her.’

‘Oh…’

‘Do you see?’

‘Oh no, I hadn’t thought of that. I told her everything… It’s my fault…’

Looking at Fumiko’s face becoming more and more disappointed, Goro suddenly chuckled.

‘What? What are you laughing at?’ she demanded as her expression shifted to indignation.

Goro quickly apologized, saying sorry several times. After which, he said, ‘I don’t think it matters. Even if he knew she lied, he returned to the past without saying anything because he knew she would now find happiness and perhaps get married…’

On saying this, Goro held out a Christmas present he had got her, to take her mind off the subject.

‘You’ve had the same experience, haven’t you?’

‘I have?’

‘In terms of her unhappiness here in the present, when she came to the cafe, there was nothing he could have done to change that…’

‘But what about the future?’

‘Exactly! He knew that her lie had altered how she really felt.’

‘You mean she decided right then to be happy?’

‘Yes. That’s why he returned to the past without saying anything.’

‘…I see.’

‘So, you can put your mind at ease,’ Goro said, spearing a piece of cake with his fork.

‘…Well, that’s all right, then,’ she said, looking relieved as she followed his lead and took a mouthful of cake.

Time passed ever so silently that Christmas night.

After the cafe was closed…

The lamps were turned off and only the Christmas lights illuminated the room. Kazu, who had closed the cash register and changed into her own clothes, was standing in front of the woman in the dress. She was simply standing there idly, without a reason.

‘You’re still here,’ observed Nagare with Miki on his back, she had tired herself out and fallen asleep from playing in the snow.

‘…Yeah.’

‘Were you thinking about Kurata?’

Rather than answering, Kazu just looked at Miki sleeping peacefully on Nagare’s back.

He didn’t ask any more questions. He simply walked by Kazu, and just before leaving the room…

‘Kaname feels the same, I think,’ he said softly, as if talking to himself, and then disappeared into the back room.

As the only source of illumination, the lights adorning the ceiling-tall Christmas tree shone vividly on Kazu’s back as she lingered in the quiet cafe.

On the day that Kaname had gone to meet her dead husband, it had been seven-year-old Kazu who had served her the coffee. When Nagare, who had been present in the cafe on that fateful day, had been asked what happened by an acquaintance who knew Kaname, he had quietly said the following.

‘When she heard mention of the coffee being cold, she probably imagined that temperature to be cold like tap water. But there are other people who think a coffee is cold when it is below skin temperature. So, when it comes to that rule, no one really knows what “when the coffee gets cold” means. Kaname probably just thought the coffee hadn’t gone cold yet.’

However, no one knows the truth of the matter. Everyone had told the young Kazu, ‘Kazu, you’re not to blame.’

But in her heart, she felt…

I’m the one who poured Mum the coffee…

She could never erase that fact.

As the days passed, she began to feel…

I’m the one who killed Mum…

The experience took away Kazu’s innocence and robbed her of her smile. She began roaming around aimlessly like a sleepwalker both day and night. Losing the ability to concentrate, she walked in the middle of the road and nearly got hit by a car. Once she was discovered in a river in the middle of winter. However, she never had a conscious death wish. It was subconscious. Kazu continually blamed herself in her subconscious.

One day, three years after the event, she was standing at a railway crossing. Her expression was not of a girl who wished to die. She gazed at the bleating alert system with a cool, unreadable expression as it rang out.

The sinking evening sun gave the town an orange hue. Behind Kazu, also waiting for the crossing gate to open, were a mother and her child coming back from shopping and a group of students on their way home. From the crowd came a voice.

‘Mummy, I’m sorry,’ said a child. It was just a casual good-natured conversation between mother and child.

Kazu stood for a moment looking at the two of them.

Then mumbling, ‘Mum…’ she started walking towards the crossing gate as if it was pulling her towards it.

Just then…

‘Do you mind taking me with you?’

The speaker of those words had quietly come up beside her. She was Kinuyo, the teacher at the neighbourhood art school. By chance she had also been at the cafe on the day Kaname returned to the past. It had pained her to see Kazu’s smiling face disappear after that fateful day, and she had constantly been at Kazu’s side, watching out for her.

But up until that day, no matter what she tried saying to her, she couldn’t seem to rescue her heart. When she said, ‘Take me with you,’ she meant that she wanted to stick by this girl who suffered and was so anguished.

The young Kazu was suffering because she felt that her mother’s death was her fault. Kinuyo thought that if Kazu couldn’t escape from these feelings, they would both go to the place where Kaname was, so that they could bow their heads together.

But Kazu’s reaction to those words was unlike anything she expected. Tears flowed from her eyes for the first time since Kaname’s death and she wailed loudly. Kinuyo didn’t know what had permeated Kazu’s heart. She only knew that she had been suffering alone up until then, and that she didn’t want to die.

Standing there together next to the tracks as the trains roared and whooshed past for what seemed like for ever, Kinuyo hugged Kazu tightly and stroked her head until she stopped crying.

As time passed, the two were swallowed up by the evening darkness.

After that day, Kazu once again began pouring the coffee for customers who said they wanted to return to the past.

Dong… Dong…

The clock in the centre on the wall in the cafe chimed to announce it was two o’clock in the morning.

In the middle of the night, everything was silent. As the ceiling fan rotated slowly, Kaname was as usual quietly reading the novel that Kazu had provided.