Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

But why did he want to return to the past?

Kohtake was very curious about this. She had asked him on several occasions, but he just said, ‘It’s a secret.’

‘Apparently he wants to give you a letter,’ Kazu said, as if reading Kohtake’s mind.

‘Give it to me?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘A letter?’

‘Fusagi said it was something he never managed to give you.’

Kohtake was silent. Then she replied matter-of-factly, ‘I see…’

Uncertainty swept across Kazu’s face. Kohtake’s reaction to this news was unexpectedly cool. Was it impertinent to have mentioned it?

But Kohtake’s response wasn’t anything to do with Kazu. The real reason for her curt response was the fact that Fusagi’s having written her a letter didn’t make much sense. After all, he was never any good at reading or writing.

Fusagi had grown up poor in a small derelict town. His family was in the seaweed trade and every member helped out. But helping out affected his schoolwork so badly that he never learned to write anything more than hiragana, and a hundred or so kanji characters – roughly what a child normally learns in the first years of elementary school.

Kohtake and Fusagi were introduced to each other via a mutual acquaintance. Kohtake was twenty-one while Fusagi was twenty-six. This was before everyone had mobile phones, so they communicated by landline and letters. Fusagi wanted to be a landscape gardener, and lived wherever he worked. Kohtake had started nursing college, which further reduced their opportunities to meet. They did communicate, though – by letter.

Kohtake wrote all kinds of things in her letters. She wrote about herself, of course. She wrote about what went on at the nursing college, of good books she had read, and dreams of the future. She wrote of events which ranged from the mundane to the major news of the day, explaining in detail her feelings and reactions. Sometimes the letters were as long as ten pages.

Fusagi’s replies, on the other hand, were always short. There were even times when he would send one-line replies like, ‘Thanks for the interesting letter,’ or, ‘I know just what you mean.’ At first, Kohtake thought he must be busy with work and didn’t have the time to reply, but in letter after letter Fusagi continued to give these brief replies. She took this to mean that he wasn’t very interested in her. Kohtake wrote in her letter that if he wasn’t interested then he shouldn’t bother replying, that with this letter she would stop writing if she didn’t get a reply.

Fusagi normally replied within a week, but not this time. There was still nothing after a month. This was a shock to Kohtake. Certainly, his replies were short. But they never sounded negative, like they had been written out of obligation. On the contrary, they always seemed frank and genuine. So she wouldn’t give up quite yet. In fact, she was still waiting two and a half months after she had sent the ultimatum.

Then one day, after those two months, a letter arrived from Fusagi. All it said was: ‘Let’s get married.’

Those few words managed to move her in a way she had never felt before. But Kohtake found it hard to reply properly to such a letter, Fusagi having opened his heart in such a way. In the end, she simply wrote:

‘Yes, let’s.’

It wasn’t until later that she learned he could barely read or write. When she found out, she asked him how he managed to read all the long letters she wrote to him. Apparently, he just allowed his eyes to wander over them. Then he just wrote in his reply the vague impression he got from this gazing. But with the last letter, after casting his eyes over it, he was overcome with a feeling that he had missed something important. He read it word by word while asking different people to tell him what the words were – hence the long time it took to reply.

Kohtake still looked like she couldn’t believe it.

‘It was a brown envelope, about this size,’ said Kazu drawing in the air with her fingers.

‘A brown envelope?’

Using a brown envelope for a letter sounded like something Fusagi would do, but it still didn’t make sense to Kohtake.

‘A love letter perhaps?’ suggested Kei, her eyes sparkling innocently.

Kohtake smiled wryly. ‘No, not a chance,’ she said, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hands.

‘But if it was a love letter, what will you do?’ Kazu asked with an awkward smile.

She didn’t normally pry into people’s private lives, but perhaps she was running with the idea it was a love letter to help get rid of the dark mood that had until then hung in the air.

Also eager to change the subject, Kohtake willingly accepted the love-letter theory proposed by those who were unaware of how awful Fusagi was at reading and writing. ‘I suppose I would want to read it,’ she replied with a grin.

That was no lie. If he had written her a love letter, of course she wanted to read it.

‘Why not go back and see?’ Kei said.

‘What?’ Kohtake looked at Kei, her face blank with incomprehension.

Kazu responded to Kei’s crazy idea by hurriedly placing her glass on the counter. ‘Sis, seriously?’ she said, bringing her face close to Kei’s.

‘She should read it,’ Kei said, assertively.

‘Kei, my love, hold on,’ Kohtake said, trying hard to slow her down, but it was already too late.

Kei was breathing heavily and was not interested in Kohtake’s effort to restrain her. ‘If it’s a love letter that Fusagi wrote to you, you need to receive it!’

Kei was convinced it was a love letter. And as long as she had this in her mind, she wouldn’t be stopped. Kohtake had known her long enough to realize that.

Kazu didn’t look like she was particularly comfortable with where this was going, but she just sighed and smiled.

Kohtake once again looked at the seat vacated by the woman in the dress. She had heard the rumour about returning to the past. She also knew about the various frustrating rules, and never – not once – had she ever contemplated going back in time herself. She was even uncertain as to whether the rumour was true. But if, say, it was true, she was now definitely interested in trying it. She wanted, more than anything, to know what the letter contained. If what Kazu said was right, if she was able to return to the day that Fusagi had planned to give it to her, she saw a glimmer of hope that she might still get to read it.

She had, however, a dilemma. Now that she knew Fusagi wanted to go back in time to give her a letter, was it right to go back to the past to receive it? She was in two minds – it seemed wrong to get hold of the letter that way. She took a deep breath and took stock of the current situation calmly.

She remembered the rule that going back in time would not change the present, no matter how much you tried. That meant that even if she returned to the past and read that letter, nothing would change.

‘It won’t change,’ Kazu said, bluntly, when Kohtake asked to double check.

Kohtake felt something large stirring in her heart. So, no change to the present meant that even if she went back and took it, Fusagi would, in the present, still be intending to return to the past to give her the letter.

She gulped down her glass of Seven Happinesses. It was just the thing to set her resolve. Exhaling deeply, she put the glass down on the counter. ‘That’s right. That’s right,’ she muttered to herself. ‘If it’s really a love letter written for me, how can it be a problem if I read it?’

Calling it a love letter dispelled her feelings of guilt.

Kei nodded vigorously in agreement, and gulped down the orange juice as if to express solidarity with her. Her nostrils flared excitedly.