Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

This was how she treated everyone. Her cool disposition when handling customers wishing to go back to the past was her way of saying, ‘Your reasons for going back to the past are none of my business.’ But this was different. She had made a promise. She was encouraging Kei to go to the future, and her actions were having a direct influence on Kei’s future. It crossed Kei’s mind that Kazu must have her reasons for her out-of-character behaviour, but those reasons were not immediately apparent.

‘Sis.’ Kei opened her eyes to Kazu’s voice. Standing next to the table, Kazu was holding a silver tray upon which was set a white coffee cup and a small silver kettle.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, I’m fine.’

Kei corrected her posture and Kazu quietly placed the coffee cup in front of her.

How many years from now? she prompted silently with a small tilt of the head. Kei thought for a moment.

‘I want to make it ten years, on 27 August,’ she declared.

When Kazu heard the date, she gave a little smile.

‘OK then,’ she replied. 27 August was Kei’s birthday: a date that neither Kazu nor Nagare would forget. ‘And the time?’

‘Three in the afternoon,’ Kei replied instantly.

‘In ten years from now, on 27 August, at three in the afternoon.’

‘Yes, please,’ Kei said, smiling.

Kazu gave a small nod and gripped the handle of the silver kettle. ‘Right, then.’ She resumed her normal cool persona.

Kei looked over at Nagare. ‘See you soon,’ she called, sounding clear-minded.

He didn’t look back. ‘Yeah, OK.’

During Kei and Nagare’s exchange, Kazu picked up the kettle and held it still above the coffee cup.

‘Drink the coffee before it goes cold,’ she whispered.

The words sounded throughout the silent cafe. Kei could feel the tension in the room.

Kazu began pouring the coffee. A narrow, black stream flowed from the small opening of the kettle’s spout, slowly filling the cup. Kei’s gaze was fixed not on the cup but on Kazu. When the coffee had reached the top, Kazu noticed her gaze and smiled warmly as if to say, ‘ I will make sure you will meet…’

A shimmering plume of steam rose from the full cup of coffee. Kei felt her body shimmering as if it were steam. In a moment, she had become as light as a cloud and everything around her had begun to flow as if she were in the middle of a film playing on fast-forward.

Normally she would have reacted to this by gazing at the passing scenery with the sparkly eyes of a child at an amusement park. But such was her mood right now that her mind was closed even from appreciating such a weird experience. Nagare had put his foot down in opposition, but Kazu had stepped up to give her a chance. Now she was waiting to meet her child. Surrendering to the shimmering dizziness, she brought to mind her own childhood.

Kei’s father, Michinori Matsuzawa, also had a weak heart. He collapsed at work while Kei was in grade three at elementary school. After that, he was frequently in and out of hospital, until he departed just one year later. Kei was nine years old, a naturally sociable child who was always happy and smiling. And yet at the same time, she was sensitive and highly strung. Her father’s death left her in a dark place emotionally. She had encountered death for the first time, and referred to it as the very dark box. Once you climbed inside that box, you never got out. Her father was trapped in there – a place where you encountered no one, awful and lonely. When she thought of her father, her nights were robbed of sleep. Gradually, her smile faded.

Her mother Tomako’s reaction to her husband’s death was the opposite of Kei’s. She spent her days with a permanent smile. She had never really had a bright disposition. She and Michinori seemed an unexciting and ordinary married couple. Tomako had cried at the funeral but after that day, she never showed a miserable face. She smiled far more than she had done before. Kei couldn’t understand at all why her mother was always smiling. She asked her, ‘Why are you so happy when Dad is dead? Aren’t you sad?’

Tomako, who knew that Kei described death as the very dark box, answered, ‘Well, if your father could see us from that very dark box, what do you suppose he would be thinking?’

With nothing but the kindest of thoughts for Kei’s father, Tomako was trying her best to answer the accusatory question that Kei was asking: ‘ Why are you so happy? ’

‘You father didn’t go in that box because he wanted to. There was a reason. He had to go. If your father could see from his box and see you crying every day, what do you think he would think? I think it would make him sad. You know how much your father loved you. Don’t you think it would be painful for him to see the unhappy face of someone he loved? So why don’t you smile every day so that your father can smile from his box? Our smiles allow him to smile. Our happiness allows your father to be happy in his box.’ On hearing this explanation, Kei’s eyes welled up with tears.

Hugging Kei tightly, Tomako’s eyes glistened with the tears that she had kept hidden since the funeral.

Next it will be my turn to go into the box…

Kei understood for the first time how hard it must have been for her father. Her heart tightened at the thought of how devastated he must have been, knowing that his time was up and that he had to leave his family. But by finally taking into account her father’s feelings, she also understood more fully the greatness of her mother’s words. She realized that only a deep love and understanding of her husband would have allowed her mother to say those things.

After a while, everything around her gradually slowed and settled. She transformed from steam back into bodily form, changing shape back into Kei.

Thanks to Kazu, she had arrived – ten years in the future. The first thing she did was to look around the room carefully.

The thick wall pillars and the wooden beam crossing the ceiling were a lustrous dark brown, the colour of chestnuts. On the walls were the three large wall clocks. The tan walls were made of earthen plaster with the patina left by more than one hundred years; she thought it was wonderful. The dim lighting that coloured the entire cafe with a sepia hue – even during the day – gave no sense of time. The retro atmosphere of the cafe had a comforting effect. Above, there was a wooden ceiling fan, rotating slowly without a sound. There was nothing to tell her that she had arrived ten years into the future.

However, the tear-off calendar next to the cash register showed that it was indeed 27 August, and Kazu, Nagare, and Kohtake, who had been in the cafe with her until moments ago, were now nowhere to be seen.

In their place, a man stood behind the counter, staring at her.

She was confused to see him. He was wearing a white shirt, black waistcoat, and bow tie, and he had a standard, short-back-and-sides hairstyle. It was clear that he worked in the cafe. He was standing behind the counter for one thing, and he didn’t appear surprised that Kei had just suddenly appeared in the chair, so he must have known about the special nature of the seat she was sitting in.

He did not say anything, just kept staring at Kei. To not engage with the person who had appeared was precisely how a staff member would behave. After a while, the man began squeakily polishing the glass he was holding. He looked as if he was in his late thirties, maybe early forties – he just looked like a standard-issue waiter. He didn’t have the friendliest of manners, and there was a large burn scar running from above his right eyebrow to his right ear, which gave him a rather intimidating air.