Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

So this is where we meet.

Kei nodded in understanding, and folded her arms. On that occasion, she had thought it weird to have a visitor she didn’t recognize, but now it made sense.

‘We had a photo taken together, didn’t we?’ she said to the girl.

But the girl’s face showed a puzzled expression.

‘I’m sorry, what are you talking about?’ she asked tentatively.

Kei realized her error.

Oh, I see…

The girl must come after this meeting. Her question obviously wouldn’t make any sense in that case.

‘Oh, forget I said that, it’s nothing,’ she said smiling to the girl. But the girl seemed unnerved. She gave a polite little nod and disappeared into the back room.

Well, that makes me feel better.

Kei felt much happier now. She had come to the future only to find Kazu and Nagare gone and in their place a man she didn’t recognize. She had begun to feel depressed at the prospect of returning home with nothing having turned out as she’d imagined. But that all changed when the girl appeared.

She touched her cup to check that it was still warm.

We must become friends before this coffee cools.

Thinking this, a heartening feeling of elation filled her chest – an encounter between people ten years apart.

The girl came back into the cafe.

Oh…

She was holding a wine-red apron.

That’s the apron I used!

Kei hadn’t forgotten her original aim. But she wasn’t the type to stew over things that weren’t going to happen. She altered her plan: she would befriend this interesting girl. The man peered out from the kitchen and glanced at the girl with the apron.

‘Oh, you don’t have to help out today. After all… There’s just that one customer.’

But the girl gave no reply and stood behind the counter.

The man didn’t seem intent on pressing the issue and withdrew into the kitchen. The girl began to wipe the counter.

Hey! Look this way!

Kei was desperately trying to attract the girl’s attention by rocking her body left and right, but the girl didn’t look up at her once. This did not douse Kei’s enthusiasm.

If she is helping here, perhaps that means she is the manager’s daughter?

Kei considered such possibilities.

Beep-boop beep-boop… Beep-boop beep-boop

The disruptive sound of a phone ringing could be heard from the back room.

‘I’ve…’ Kei suddenly fought the hard-wired response to answer the phone. It may have been ten years later but the sound of a phone was unchanged.

Oh… Be careful… That was close…

She almost broke the rule and left the seat. She was able to leave the seat but if so would have been forcefully returned to the present.

The man came out from the kitchen calling, ‘I’ve got it,’ and went into the back room to answer the phone. Kei made an exaggerated gesture of wiping her brow and gave a sigh of relief. She heard the man talking.

‘Yes, hello? Oh hi! Yes, she is… Oh, right. OK, hang on. I’ll get her…’

The man suddenly came out from the back room.

Hmm?

The man brought the phone to Kei.

‘Phone,’ he said as he handed Kei the handset.

‘For me?’

‘It’s Nagare.’

On hearing Nagare’s name, she promptly took the phone.

‘Hello! Why are you in Hokkaido? Can you explain to me what’s going on?’ she said, in a voice loud enough to resound throughout the cafe.

The man, still not grasping the situation, tilted his head in confusion and returned to the kitchen.

The girl showed no response, as if she was oblivious to Kei’s loud voice. She simply continued doing what she was doing.

‘What’s that? There’s no time? I’m the one with no time!’ Even as she was talking the coffee was cooling. ‘I can hardly hear you! What?’ She was holding the handset to her left ear while plugging her right ear with her other hand. For some reason, there was a terrible racket in the background on the other end of the line which made it difficult to hear anything.

‘What? A schoolgirl?’ She continued to get Nagare to repeat what he was saying. ‘Yes, she’s here. The one who visited the cafe about two weeks ago; she came from the future to get a photo with me. Yes, yes. What about her?’ she asked looking at the girl, who, while averting her gaze, had stopped what she was doing.

I wonder why she looks so nervous? Kei thought as the conversation continued. It was bothering her, but she had to focus on listening to the important information Nagare was giving her.

‘Like I told you, I can hardly hear what you’re saying. Eh? What? That girl?’

Our daughter.

Just at that moment, the middle wall clock began to chime, dong, dong … ten times.

It was then that Kei first realized what the time was. The time she had arrived at in the future was not three in the afternoon. It was ten in the morning. The smile fell from her face.

‘Oh, OK. Right,’ she replied in a weak voice. She hung up and placed the handset on the table.

She had been looking forward to speaking to the girl. But now her expression was pale and drawn, without any remnants of that bright expectant look that existed just moments before. The girl had stopped what she was doing and also looked completely spooked. Kei slowly reached out and held the cup to check the temperature of the coffee. It was still warm. There was time left before it was completely cold.

She turned and looked at the girl again.

My child…

The realization that she was now face to face with her child hit her suddenly. The static had made the phone call difficult to hear but she had got the gist of it.

You planned to travel ten years into the future, but there was some kind of mistake and you travelled fifteen years. It seems ten years 15.00 and fifteen years 10.00 were mixed up. We heard about it when you returned from the future but right now, we are in Hokkaido for unavoidable reasons that I won’t go into because there’s no time. The girl you see before you is our daughter. You don’t have much time left, so just have a good look at our all-grown-up, fit-and-well daughter and go home.

After having said all that, Nagare must have been worried about the time Kei had left, and he simply hung up on her. Having learned that the girl in front of her was her daughter, Kei suddenly had no idea how to talk to her.

More than confusion and panic, she felt a strong sense of regret.

What she regretted was pretty simple. She was in no doubt that the girl knew she was her mother. But Kei had assumed the girl was someone else’s daughter – the age difference had been too big. Although she didn’t pay any attention to it until now, Kei suddenly heard the sound of the ticking hands of the wall clocks. They seemed to be saying, ‘Tick-tock tick-tock, the coffee is going cold!’ There was indeed no time.

But Kei saw in the girl’s sullen expression an answer to the question she wanted to ask but hadn’t managed to: Can you forgive me that all I could do was to bring you into this world? and it cast a shadow over her heart. She struggled to think what to say.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

But without responding to the simple question, the girl bowed her head in silence.

Kei interpreted this as further proof that she blamed her. Unable to bear the silence, she also bowed her head. Then…

‘Miki…’ The girl offered her name in a small, sad, and weak-sounding voice.

Kei wanted to ask so much. But from hearing how faint Miki’s voice was, she got the impression that she was reluctant to speak to her.

‘Miki, oh, that’s nice…’ was all she managed in response.