Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

On this occasion, night came, but Fusagi had still not come home. This was unusual behaviour, but Kohtake assumed he must have gone out drinking with colleagues.

When, finally, he did come home, it was two hours later than usual. Normally, when he came home he would always ring the doorbell three times. But that night, he didn’t ring. Instead, Kohtake heard the sound of the door knob turning and a voice from outside saying, ‘It’s me.’

On hearing his voice, she rushed and opened the door in a panic. She thought he must have hurt himself in some way that prevented him from ringing the doorbell. But there he was, looking as he always did: dressed simply in his grey gardening smock with his navy breeches. He had taken his tool bag from his shoulder, and, looking a little ashamed of himself, admitted, ‘I got lost.’

That had happened around the end of summer two years ago.

Being a nurse, Kohtake had been trained to recognize early symptoms of a whole range of illnesses. This was more than simply forgetting something. She was sure of it. Soon after he began to forget whether or not he had done a task at work. After the illness had progressed a bit further, he would wake in the night and say out loud, ‘I forgot to do something important.’ When this happened, she wouldn’t argue with him; she focused on calming him and reassuring him that they could check up on it in the morning.

She even consulted a doctor behind his back. She was keen to try anything that might slow the advancement of his disease, even if by just a little.

But as the days went on, he began to forget more and more.

He liked to travel. It wasn’t the travel itself that he liked, but the opportunity to visit gardens in different places. Kohtake always arranged to take her holidays at the same time as him so that they could go together. He would complain and say he was going for work, but that didn’t bother her. While on a trip, his brow seemed permanently furrowed, but she knew that this was how he looked whenever he was doing something he liked.

Even as his illness progressed, he didn’t stop travelling, but he did start visiting the same destination over and over again.

After a while the illness began to affect their daily lives. He often forgot that he had bought things. More and more often, there would be days when he would ask, ‘Who bought this?’ and then spend the rest of the day in a bad mood. They lived in the apartment they had moved to after getting married, but he began not coming home and she would frequently get calls from the police. Then about six months ago, he started calling her by her maiden name, Kohtake.

Finally the dizzy sensation of rippling and shimmering faded. Kohtake opened her eyes. She saw the slowly rotating ceiling fan… her hands, and her feet. She was no longer steam.

However, she didn’t know whether she had actually gone back in time. The cafe had no windows and the lighting was always dim. Unless one looked at a watch, there was no way of knowing whether it was day or night. The three solid-looking clocks on the wall all showed completely different times.

But something was different. Kazu had vanished. Kei was nowhere to be seen either. Kohtake tried to calm herself, but she was unable to stop her heart from beating faster and faster. She once again looked around the cafe.

‘There’s no one here,’ she muttered. The absence of Fusagi, who she had gone back to meet, was a huge disappointment.

She looked at the ceiling fan in a daze and considered her plight.

It was a shame, but perhaps it was for the best. Actually, in some ways she was relieved. Of course she wanted to read the letter. But she couldn’t help feeling guilty that she was sneaking a peek, so to speak. Fusagi would have surely been cross to learn that she had come from the future to read what he had written.

It wasn’t as if anything she did would change the present anyway. It didn’t matter if she never read it. If by reading it his condition would somehow improve, then of course she would – she would give her life for that. But the letter had nothing to do with his condition. It wouldn’t change the fact that he had forgotten her, either.

She coolly and rationally considered her predicament. Just earlier, she had the shock of him asking her whether they’d met before. It had really upset her. She had known this time would come, but it still caught her off balance, and brought her here.

She was beginning to feel more composed.

If this was the past, then it held nothing of use. I should return to the present. Even if I am just a stranger to Fusagi, I can be his nurse. I must do what I can. She remembered her heart’s resolve and reaffirmed it.

‘I doubt it’s a love letter,’ she muttered to herself as she reached out for the cup of coffee.

Someone had entered the cafe. To enter this cafe, one has to descend stairs from the ground level, and go in through a large door about two metres high, made out of solid wood. It’s when this door opens that the bell sounds, but the visitor does not immediately appear at the entrance, as a small patch of flooring must be crossed first. Once the bell rings, there is a time lag of a few seconds before the visitor takes those one or two steps and enters the cafe.

So when the bell rang, Kohtake had no idea who had come in. Was it Nagare? Or Kei? She noticed how nervous the suspense was making her. Her heart was racing in excitement. It wasn’t the kind of thing she normally did – a once in a lifetime experience, to be exact. If it was Kei, she would probably ask me why. Kazu, on the other hand, would just probably deliver her usual customer service… that would probably be a disappointment.

Kohtake played out various scenarios in her mind. But the person who appeared was neither Kei nor Kazu. Standing in the doorway was Fusagi.

‘Oh…’ Kohtake said. His sudden appearance had taken her by surprise. It was him she had come back to see, but she hadn’t been expecting him to walk into the cafe right then.

He was wearing a navy polo shirt and beige knee-length shorts. It was what he often wore on his days off. It must have been hot outside, as he was fanning himself with his black zippered portfolio.

She sat unmoving in her chair. He stood at the entrance for a while, staring at her with an odd look.

‘Hi there,’ she began.

She felt clueless as to how she was going to broach what she had come to talk about. He had never stared at her like this. Not since they met – let alone since they had been married. It was both flattering and embarrassing.

She had formed a hazy image of three years ago but she didn’t know how to make sure that that was where she was. Maybe she hadn’t imagined it right, and if that was the case, what was to say that by some mistake she’d got the three right, but she had only returned to three days ago? Just when she began to think she might have been too vague…

‘Oh hello. I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said matter-of-factly.

Fusagi sounded like he had before he became ill. He was as she had pictured him – that is to say, he was how she remembered him.

‘I was waiting, but you didn’t come home,’ he added.

He looked away from her gaze. He coughed nervously with a furrowed brow, as if uncomfortable with something.

‘So it’s really you?’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘You know who I am?’

‘What?’ He looked at her with bemusement.

But she was, of course, not joking. She had to make sure. It was obvious that she had returned to the past. But when? Before or after the onset of the Alzheimer’s?

‘Just say my name,’ she said.

‘Are you going to stop messing with me?’ he spat out crossly.