Toshikazu Kawaguchi - Before the Coffee Gets Cold

‘Thank you for the coffee,’ he said, putting the change carefully in his wallet. He stowed the wallet in his bag, having seemingly forgotten that Kohtake was there, and he quickly headed for the door.

Kohtake seemed not in the least bothered by his attitude. ‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and followed on after him.

‘They were rather odd,’ Fumiko muttered.

Kazu cleared the table where Fusagi had sat and disappeared once more into the kitchen.

The sudden appearance of a rival had upset Fumiko, but now that only she and the woman in the dress remained, she felt sure that victory would be hers.

Right, the competition’s gone. Now I just need to wait for her to vacate the seat , she thought. Yet the cafe had no windows and the three wall clocks each showed different times. Without customers coming and going, her sense of time was becoming frozen.

Starting to doze off a little, she reeled off the rules for returning to the past.

The first rule – the only people one may meet while back in the past are those who have visited the cafe . Fumiko’s parting conversation with Goro just happened to have taken place in this cafe.

The second rule – no matter how hard one tries while back in the past, one cannot change the present . In other words, even if Fumiko returned to that day one week earlier and pleaded for Goro not to go, the fact that he had left for America would not change. She didn’t understand why it should be so, and she could feel herself getting upset again thinking about it. But, resigned, she accepted it, given it was the rule.

The third rule – in order to return to the past, you have to sit in that seat and that seat alone . This was the seat occupied by the woman in the dress. If you try to sit there by force, you get cursed.

The fourth rule – while back in the past, you must stay in the seat and never move from it . In other words, for some reason or other, you couldn’t go to the toilet while back in the past.

The fifth rule – there is a time limit . Now that she thought about it, Fumiko still hadn’t been told the details of this one. She had no idea how long or short this time was. Fumiko thought about these rules over and over. Her thoughts went back and forth. She went from thinking that going back in time was going to be rather pointless to thinking that she may as well take charge of that conversation and say everything she wanted to – after all, it couldn’t hurt, could it, if it was not going to change the present? Fumiko went over each rule again and again until finally, slumped on the table, she drifted off to sleep.

The first time Fumiko learned of Goro’s dream future was when she dragged him out on their third date. Goro was a gaming geek. He loved those MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), which he played on a PC. His uncle was one of the developers of an MMORPG called Arm of Magic – a game that was popular around the world. Ever since he was a boy, Goro had looked up to his uncle. It was Goro’s dream to join the game company his uncle ran: TIP-G. To qualify for the selection exam for TIP-G, it was mandatory to have two things: (1) at least five years’ experience working as a systems engineer in the medical industry, and (2) a new unreleased game program that you had personally developed. Human lives depend on the reliability of systems in the medical industry and bugs are not tolerated. In the online gaming industry, on the other hand, people put up with bugs, as it’s possible to apply updates even after the release.

TIP-G was different. It only recruited candidates with experience in the medical industry to ensure that only the best programmers were hired. When Goro was telling Fumiko about this, she thought it was a wonderful dream. But what she didn’t know was that TIP-G had its headquarters in America.

On their seventh date, Fumiko was waiting for Goro to arrive at their meeting point when a couple of men started talking to her. They were chatting her up. They were good-looking, but she was not interested. Men were always trying to pick her up and so she had developed a technique for dealing with this. Before she could put it to use, Goro arrived and stood there, looking uncomfortable. Fumiko rushed up to him, but the two men reacted, sneered at Goro, and asked her why she was with that dweeb . She had no choice but to begin her spiel.

Goro lowered his head and didn’t say anything. But she faced the two men and said (in English), ‘You guys don’t know his appeal,’ (in Russian) ‘He’s brave enough to take on difficult tasks at work,’ (in French) ‘He has the mental discipline not to give up,’ (in Greek) ‘He has the skill to render the impossible possible,’ (in Italian) ‘I also know he has put in extraordinary effort to be able to gain this ability,’ (and in Spanish) ‘His appeal is far greater than any other man I know.’ Then in Japanese, she said, ‘If you understood what I just said, I wouldn’t mind hanging out with you.’

Visibly stunned, the two men at first stood motionless. Then they looked at each other, and moved on awkwardly.

Fumiko smiled broadly at Goro. ‘Naturally, I suppose you understood everything I said,’ she said, this time in Portuguese.

Showing his embarrassment, Goro gave a small nod.

On the tenth date, Goro confessed that he had never been in a relationship with a woman before.

‘Oh, so I’m the first woman who you’ve gone out with,’ Fumiko said happily. It was the first time she had confirmed that they were actually an item, and Goro’s eyes widened at the news.

You could say that night marked the start of their relationship.

Fumiko had been asleep for a while now. Suddenly, the woman in the dress slammed shut the book she was reading and sighed. After pulling out a white handkerchief from her handbag, she slowly stood up, and began walking towards the toilet.

Still asleep, Fumiko hadn’t noticed that she had left. Kazu appeared from the back room. She was still wearing her uniform: a white shirt, black bow tie, waistcoat, black trousers, and an apron. While she was clearing the table, she called out to Fumiko.

‘Madam. Madam.’

‘What? Yes?’ Fumiko sat bolt upright in surprise. She blinked her eyes and looked around the cafe until finally she spotted the change.

The woman in the dress was gone. ‘Oh!’

‘The seat is free now. Do you wish to sit there?’

‘Of course I do!’ Fumiko said.

She got up in a hurry and walked over to the seat that promised to transport her to the past. It looked like a normal chair, nothing out of the ordinary about it. As she stood there, staring at it with intense desire, her heartbeat quickened. Finally, after getting over all the rules and the curse, she had her ticket to the past.

‘OK, now take me back in time by one week.’

Fumiko took a deep breath. She calmed her racing heart and carefully squeezed into the gap between the chair and the table. She had it in her mind that she would travel back to a week ago as soon as her bottom landed on the seat, so her nervousness and excitement were reaching peak levels. She sat down so forcefully, she almost bounced back up again.

‘OK. Go back one week!’ she exclaimed.

Her heart swelled in anticipation. She looked around the cafe. As there were no windows, there was no way of telling night from day. The three old wall clocks with their hands pointing in different directions didn’t tell her the time. But something must have changed. She looked desperately around the cafe, searching for a sign that she had gone back. But she couldn’t spot a single difference. If she had returned to a week earlier, Goro would be there – but he wasn’t anywhere to be seen…