Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Nagare finally got moving. He grabbed a small bottle of cooking salt from the kitchen and shuffled hastily to the entrance. Kohtake pictured Hirai standing beyond the cafe’s entrance, dressed in her normal flashy attire. To her, Hirai’s behaviour wasn’t quite what one might expect. How could it be that her sister had just died? She and Kei exchanged glances – Kei seemed to be thinking the same thing.

‘I’m so exhausted,’ Hirai said, coming in dragging her feet.

Her walk was the same as normal, but she was dressed rather differently. Rather than wearing her usual loud clothes in red and pink, she was in mourning dress. Rather than a head full of curlers, her hair was done up in a tight bun. Anyone would agree that she looked like a different person. Dressed in her mourning black, she dropped herself down at the middle table seat and raised her right arm.

‘Sorry to be a bother, but could I have a glass of water, please?’ she asked Kei.

‘Of course,’ Kei said.

With a somewhat exaggerated sense of urgency, she scuttled off to the kitchen to find some water.

‘Phew,’ Hirai exclaimed.

She stretched out her arms and legs like she was doing a star jump. Her black handbag swung from her right arm. Nagare, still holding the bottle of salt, and Kohtake, seated at the counter, stared at her like she was behaving oddly. Kei came back with a glass of water.

‘Thank you.’ Hirai put her handbag on the table, took the glass in her hand, and to Kei’s amazement, drank it down in one gulp. She let out an exhausted sigh.

‘Another one, please,’ she said, presenting Kei with the glass. Kei took the glass and disappeared into the kitchen. Wiping perspiration from her brow, Hirai let out another sigh. Nagare stood there watching her.

‘Hirai?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘How do I put it?’

‘Put what?’

‘How do I say it? That…’

‘What?’

‘I’m sorry for your loss…’

Hirai’s strange behaviour – so unlike someone in mourning – had made Nagare struggle to remember an appropriate thing to say. Kohtake was also lost for words and bowed her head.

‘You mean Kumi?’

‘Yes. Of course…’

‘Well it was certainly unexpected. Unlucky, I guess you’d say,’ Hirai said, shrugging her shoulders.

Kei returned with another glass of water. Worried about Hirai’s demeanour, Kei handed her the glass and also bowed her head, revealing her discomfort.

‘I’m sorry. Thanks.’ Hirai downed the new glass of water as well. ‘They said she got hit in the wrong place… so she was unlucky,’ she said.

It sounded like she was talking about something that had happened to a stranger. The crease deepened between Kohtake’s brows as she leant forward.

‘Was it today?’

‘What today?’

‘The funeral, of course,’ Kohtake replied, betraying her uneasiness with Hirai’s attitude.

‘Yeah. Look,’ Hirai said as she stood up and spun round to show her funeral attire. ‘It kind of suits me, don’t you think? Do you think it makes me look a bit subdued?’ Hirai made some model-like poses, adopting a proud face.

Her sister was dead. Unless the people in the cafe were mistaken about that, her irreverence seemed over the top.

As she became increasingly irritated at Hirai’s blasé attitude, Kohtake strengthened her words. ‘Why on earth did you come home so early…?’ she asked, her face showing signs of disgust as if she was biting her tongue, trying not to say, A little disrespectful to your dead sister, don’t you think?

Hirai dropped her exaggerated pose and sat down again lazily.

She held up her hands.

‘Oh, it’s not like that. I’ve got the bar to think about too…’ she answered, clearly knowing what Kohtake wanted to say.

‘But still…’

‘Please. Let it go.’

She reached over to her black handbag and took a cigarette from inside.

‘So, are you OK?’ Nagare asked, toying with the salt bottle in his hands.

‘With what?’ Hirai was reluctant to open up. With a cigarette in her mouth, she was peering into her black handbag again. She was rummaging around for her lighter, which she seemed to be having a job finding.

Nagare pulled a lighter from his pocket and presented it to her. ‘But your parents must be very upset over the death of your sister. Shouldn’t you have stayed to be with them for a while?’

Hirai took the lighter from Nagare and lit her cigarette. ‘Well, sure… Normally that would be the case.’

Her cigarette glowed and burnt to a column of ash. She tapped the ash in the ashtray. The cigarette smoke rose and disappeared. Hirai watched the smoke rise.

‘But there was nowhere for me to be,’ she said, expressionless.

For a moment, what she had said did not sink in. Both Nagare and Kohtake looked at her uncomprehendingly.

Hirai saw how the two were looking at her. ‘I didn’t have a place where I could be,’ she added, and took another drag of her cigarette.

‘What do you mean?’ Kei asked with a look of concern.

In answer to Kei’s question, Hirai replied as if talking about any ordinary thing. ‘The accident happened on her way home from seeing me, right? So naturally my parents blame me for her death.’

‘How could they think that?’ Kei asked with her mouth agape.

Hirai blew a plume of smoke into the air. ‘Well they do… And in a way it’s true,’ she muttered dismissively. ‘She kept coming down to Tokyo, time and time again… And each time, I would turn her away.’

The last time, Kei had helped Hirai avoid Kumi by hiding. She now looked down with a look of regret. Hirai continued talking, taking no notice of Kei.

‘Both my parents refused to talk to me.’ Hirai’s smile faded from her face. ‘Not one word.’

Hirai had heard of Kumi’s death from the head waitress who had worked at her parents’ inn for many years. It had been years since Hirai had answered a call coming from the inn. But two days ago, early in the morning, the inn’s number flashed up on her phone. When she saw who it was, her heart skipped a beat and she answered it. The only thing she could say in response to the teary head waitress who was calling was, ‘ I see ,’ and she hung up. Then she picked up her handbag and headed to her family home by taxi.

The taxi driver claimed to be a former entertainer. On their journey, he gave her an unsolicited sample of his comedic act. His stories were unexpectedly funny and she rolled around in the confines of the back seat roaring with laughter. She laughed long and hard, with tears streaming down her face. Finally the taxi pulled up in front of the inn, Takakura, Hirai’s family home.

It was five hours from the city and the taxi fare was over 150,000 yen, but as she was paying in cash the driver said a nice round number was fine and drove off in high spirits.

When she got out of the taxi, she realized she was still wearing slippers. She also had curlers in her hair. Wearing only her camisole, she felt the hot morning sun hit her with its full force. When large beads of sweat began dripping down her body, she wished she had a handkerchief. She began to walk up the gravel path to her family home at the rear of the inn. Where her family lived was designed in Japanese-style and had not been altered in any way since it was built at the same time as the inn.

She passed the large-roofed gate and came to the front entrance. It had been thirteen years since she was last there, but nothing had changed. To her, it seemed a place where time stood still. She tried opening the sliding door. It was unlocked. The door rattled open and she stepped into the concrete inside. It was cold. The chill of the air was enough to send a shiver down her spine. She walked from the entrance down the hallway to the living room. The room was completely dark with no sign of life. This was quite normal. Rooms in old Japanese houses tended to be dark, but she found the darkness oppressive. The hallway was completely quiet except for the creaking of her footsteps. The family altar was in a room at the end of the hallway.