Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Tales from the Café

Resembling a still-life object that had been blended into a painting of the cafe, Kazu was completely motionless – except for a single teardrop, running down her cheek.

People tend to feel happy when spring arrives, especially after a cold winter.

When spring begins, however, cannot be pinpointed to one particular moment. There is no one day that clearly marks when winter ends and spring begins. Spring hides inside winter. We notice it emerging with our eyes, our skin and other senses. We find it in new buds, a comfortable breeze and the warmth of the sun. It exists alongside winter.

‘Is your mind still on Kaname?’ asked Nagare Tokita, as if speaking to himself. He was sitting on a counter stool dexterously folding paper napkins into cranes.

Nagare’s muttering was directed at Kazu Tokita, who was behind him. But Kazu continued to wipe the table silently and adjusted the position of the coaster on which the sugar pot sat.

Nagare placed the seventh paper crane on the table.

‘I think you should have the baby,’ he said, directing his thin almond-shaped eyes at Kazu as she went about her work. ‘I think Kaname definitely—’

The sound of the doorbell cut him off mid-sentence, but neither Nagare nor Kazu said, ‘Hello, welcome.’

In this cafe, once a visitor had come through the door with the bell attached to it, they had to cross the hall before entering the room. Nagare watched the entrance in silence.

After a moment, Kiyoshi Manda appeared looking sheepish. Kiyoshi was a detective who had reached retirement age that spring. He wore a trench coat and an old hunting cap, and looked like a detective in a TV police drama from the seventies. Despite being a detective, there was nothing intimidating or hard about him. He was about the same height as Kazu and smiled often. He resembled any other sociable man in his later years, whom you might meet anywhere.

The hands of the clock in the middle of the wall were pointing to ten minutes to eight. The cafe closed at eight.

‘Is it all right?’ he asked tentatively.

Kazu replied as always, ‘Yes, come in,’ but Nagare just nodded in a somewhat subdued manner.

When Kiyoshi visited the cafe, he would always sit at the table closest to the entrance and order a coffee. But today, instead of sitting in his regular chair, he stood in the same place, uncertainly.

‘Please, take a seat,’ offered Kazu from behind the counter as she presented him with a glass of water and gestured for him to sit down.

Kiyoshi raised his tattered hunting cap politely. ‘Thank you,’ he replied and sat on a stool, leaving the one between him and Nagare vacant.

Nagare carefully gathered together the paper cranes and asked, ‘Will it be a coffee as usual?’ as he stood up and started heading for the kitchen.

‘Er, no, actually. Today…’ and as Nagare paused on his way to the kitchen, Kiyoshi looked over at the woman in the dress. Nagare followed Kiyoshi’s gaze and narrowed his eyes.

‘Oh?’

‘Actually, I’ve come to give this…’ he said, pulling out a small box, the kind a pen might come in, wrapped up like a present, ‘…to my wife.’

‘Is that…?’ asked Kazu, recognizing it.

‘Yes. It’s the necklace you helped choose for me,’ replied Kiyoshi bashfully as he scratched his head through his hunting cap.

The previous autumn Kiyoshi had asked for advice on what would make a good birthday present for his wife. Kazu had suggested a necklace. In the end, unable to decide by himself, Kiyoshi took her along with him to help him choose it.

‘I had promised to give it to her here, but when the day came, I was called in for an emergency and I never did…’

Listening to Kiyoshi’s words, Nagare locked eyes with Kazu. ‘So, are you saying you want to return to your wife’s birthday?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

Nagare bit his lip and went silent. Two or three seconds passed with no one saying a word. Sitting in the quiet cafe, it must have seemed a very long stretch of silence to Kiyoshi.

‘Don’t worry, it’s all right. I know the rules well,’ he hastened to add.

Even with that, however, Nagare maintained his silence as the crevices in his brow deepened.

Kiyoshi could tell there was something strange about his reaction.

‘What is it?’ he asked uneasily.

‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t see why you have to return to the past just to give your wife a present,’ he said, in a soft apologetic voice.

Kiyoshi nodded, as if he now understood the reason for Nagare’s awkward silence. ‘Ha, ha, ha. For sure… I see what you are saying…’ he said, scratching his head.

‘I’m sorry.’ Nagare bowed his head hastily.

‘No, no. It’s fine… It’s my fault for not providing a proper explanation,’ Kiyoshi said, reaching out to pick up the glass that Kazu had served him. He took a small sip.

‘Explanation?’

‘Yes,’ Kiyoshi replied. ‘It was exactly one year ago when I found out that you can return to the past in this cafe.’

Kiyoshi’s explanation was going right back to when he first visited this cafe.

When Kiyoshi walked in, a red-faced man was crying at the far table, and a frail elderly woman was sitting opposite him. At the counter was a boy about elementary-school age and behind the counter was a man two metres tall, presumably a staff member.

The tall man did not greet Kiyoshi as he entered the cafe. He was too busy watching the couple at the far table. Only the young boy, who was slurping his orange juice through a straw, was staring at Kiyoshi.

Not being noticed when entering a cafe is nothing to make a fuss about. I’m sure he’ll notice me in a moment… Kiyoshi nodded to the boy in acknowledgement and took a seat at the table closest to the entrance.

As soon as he had sat down, the crying man was suddenly enveloped in a puff of vapour. And then he seemed to vanish, sucked up into the ceiling.

What?

As Kiyoshi stared with bulging eyes, a woman wearing a white dress appeared in the chair that the man had vanished from. These bizarre events seemed like something you might see in a magic show.

What happened just now?

As he watched in amazement, the elderly woman was talking to the woman in the white dress. From what he could pick up, she was saying, ‘Now, if there was only something I could do to make Kazu happy…’

The old woman was Kinuyo Mita and the man who had disappeared was Kinuyo’s son, Yukio. It was upon witnessing this incident that Kiyoshi came to realize that you really could return to the past in this cafe.

When he later learned from Kazu and Nagare about the annoying rules that applied when travelling back in time, he was astonished that anyone would want to make the journey. If it is not possible to change the present no matter how hard you try while in the past, then why bother? He became very interested in learning about the people who, even after knowing the rules, decided to go back.

‘…It was rude of me, I know, but I decided to look into the people who have returned to the past here.’

Kiyoshi bowed his head at Nagare, still paused in the entrance to the kitchen, and Kazu, who was standing behind the counter.

‘I found out from my investigation…’ Kiyoshi brought out a small black notebook before continuing, ‘…that over the last thirty years, forty-one people have sat in that chair and travelled back in time. They each had their own reasons for doing so, to meet a lover, a husband, a daughter, and so forth, but of those forty-one people, four returned to the past to meet someone who had died.