The contents were just as she had thought; it was always the same. But though the letter was filled with the same old irritating things, a single teardrop fell from her eyes.
‘I didn’t even meet her and now this happened,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Only she never gave up on me. She came to Tokyo to see me again and again.’
The first time Kumi came to visit Hirai in Tokyo, Hirai was twenty-four and Kumi was eighteen. But back then, Kumi was the cuddly little sister who contacted her every now and then behind her parents’ back. Still only in senior high school, she was already helping at the inn when she wasn’t at school. When Hirai left home, her parents’ expectations were immediately transferred to Kumi. Before she had even come of age, she had become the face of the old inn, the future owner. Kumi’s efforts to persuade Hirai to return to the family began then. Despite always being busy with her responsibilities, Kumi found the time to visit Tokyo once every couple of months. At first, while Hirai still saw Kumi as her cuddly younger sister, she would meet her and listen to what she had to say. But there came a point where Kumi’s requests began to feel like an annoying imposition. For the last year, the last two years for that matter, Hirai had completely avoided her.
The final time, she had hidden from her in this very cafe, and tried to throw away what Kumi had written to her. She put the letter that Kei had rescued back in the envelope.
‘I know the rule. The present doesn’t change no matter how hard you try. I fully understand that. Take me back to that day.’
‘. . .’
‘I’m begging you!’ Hirai’s face was now far more serious than it ever had been. She bowed her head deeply.
Nagare’s narrow eyes narrowed further as he looked down at Hirai bowing deeply. Naturally, Nagare knew the day that Hirai was referring to: three days ago when Kumi had visited the cafe. She was asking to go back and meet her. Kei and Kohtake waited with bated breath for Nagare’s reply. The room became eerily silent. Only the woman in the dress continued to behave as if nothing was wrong, continuing to read her novel.
Plonk.
The sound of Nagare putting the bottle of salt on the counter echoed throughout the cafe.
Then, without a word, he walked away and disappeared into the back room.
Hirai lifted her head, and took a large, deep breath.
From the back room, Nagare’s voice could be faintly heard calling for Kazu.
‘But, Hirai—’
‘Yeah, I know.’
Hirai interrupted Kohtake so she didn’t have to hear what she was going to say. She walked up to the woman in the dress. ‘Um, so like I was just saying to the others. Could I sit there, please?’
‘Hi— Hirai!’ Kei said frantically.
‘Can you do this for me? Please!’ Ignoring Kei, Hirai put her hands together as if she were praying to a god. She looked faintly ridiculous as she did so, but still she seemed genuinely serious.
But the woman in the dress did not even flinch. This made Hirai irate. ‘Hey! Can you hear me? Don’t just ignore me. Can’t you give me the seat?’ she said while putting her hand on the woman’s shoulder.
‘No! Hirai, stop! You mustn’t.’
‘Please!’ She wasn’t listening to Kei. She tried to pull the woman’s arm by force, to take the seat from her.
‘Hirai, stop it!’ Kei yelled.
But at that moment, the woman in the dress’s eyes opened wide, and she glared at Hirai. Instantly, she was overwhelmed by the sensation that she was becoming heavier, many times over. It felt as if the earth’s gravity had begun multiplying. The cafe’s lighting suddenly seemed reduced to candlelight, flickering in the wind, and an eerie ghostly wailing began reverberating throughout the cafe, with no sign of where it was coming from. Unable to move a muscle, she fell to her knees.
‘What the . . . what is this?’
‘Well, you could have listened!’ Kei sighed dramatically, with an air of I-told-you-so.
Hirai was familiar with the rules, but she didn’t know anything about the curse. What she knew had been put together from explanations given to customers who had come wanting to go back to the past, and they had normally given up on the idea after hearing the overly complicated rules.
‘She’s a demon . . . a hag!’ she shouted.
‘No, she’s just a ghost,’ Kei interjected coolly. From the floor, Hirai was hurling insults at the woman in the dress, but such abuse was useless.
‘Oh . . .!’ Kazu exclaimed when she appeared from the back room. One look told her what had happened. She darted back into the kitchen and came out carrying a carafe filled with coffee. She walked up to the woman in the dress.
‘Would you care for some more coffee?’ Kazu asked.
‘Yes, please,’ the woman in the dress replied, and Hirai was released. Strangely, Kazu was the only one who could lift the curse; when Kei or Nagare had tried to it hadn’t worked. Now free, Hirai returned to normal. She started panting heavily. Looking very worn out by the ordeal, she turned to Kazu.
‘Kazu love, please say something to her. Get her to move!’ she cried.
‘OK, I understand what you’re going through, Hirai.’
‘So can you do something?’
Kazu looked down at the carafe she was holding in her hands. She thought for a few moments.
‘I can’t say whether this will work or not . . .’
Hirai was desperate enough to try anything.
‘Whatever! Please do this for me!’ she pleaded, holding her hands in prayer.
‘OK, let’s try it.’ Kazu walked up to the woman in the dress. With Kei’s help, Hirai returned to standing and watched to see what was about to happen.
‘Would you care for some more coffee?’ Kazu asked again despite the cup being still full to the brim.
Hirai and Kohtake both tilted their heads sideways, unable to work out what Kazu was doing.
But the woman in the dress responded to the offer of a refill.
‘Yes, please,’ she replied, and drank the entire cup of coffee that had been poured for her just moments before. Kazu then filled the emptied cup with coffee. The woman in the dress then proceeded to read her novel, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
Then, straight afterwards . . .
‘Would you care for some more coffee?’ Kazu asked again.
The woman in the dress still had not touched the coffee since the last refill: the cup remained completely full.
And yet the woman in the dress again replied, ‘Yes, please,’ and proceeded to down the entire coffee.
‘Well, who would have thought . . .’ Kohtake said, her expression slowly changing as she realized what Kazu was doing.
Kazu continued with her outlandish plan. After filling the cup with coffee she would offer again: ‘Would you care for some more coffee?’ She went on doing this, and every time it was offered, the woman in the dress would reply, ‘Yes, please,’ and drink it down. But after a while, the woman began to look uncomfortable.
Rather than drinking the coffee down in one go, she began to take several sips to finish it. Using this method, Kazu managed to get the woman in the dress to drink seven cups of coffee.
‘She looks so uncomfortable. Why doesn’t she just refuse?’ Kohtake commented, sympathizing with the woman in the dress.
‘She can’t refuse,’ Kei whispered in Kohtake’s ear.
‘Why not?’
‘Because apparently that’s the rule.’
‘Goodness . . .’ Kohtake said in surprise to the fact that it wasn’t only those travelling back in time who had to follow annoying rules. She watched on, eager to see what would happen next. Kazu poured an eighth coffee, filling the cup almost to the point of overflowing. The woman in the dress winced. But Kazu was relentless.
‘Would you care for some more coffee?’
When Kazu offered the ninth cup of coffee, the woman in the dress suddenly stood up from her seat.
‘She stood up!’ Kohtake exclaimed in excitement.
‘Toilet,’ the woman in the dress mumbled, glaring directly at Kazu, and headed off to the toilet.
It had taken some coercion, but that seat had been vacated.
‘Thank you,’ Hirai said as she staggered over to the seat where the woman in the dress had been sitting. Hirai’s nervousness seemed to affect everyone in the cafe. She drew in a large, deep breath, slowly exhaled, and slid in between the table and the chair. She sat down and gently closed her eyes.
Kumi Hirai had always been, since she was a young girl, a little sister who followed her big sister around, calling out ‘Big Sis’ this and ‘Big Sis’ that.
The old inn was always very busy, no matter the season. Her father was the proprietor and her mother the proprietress. Her mother Michiko went back to work soon after she was born. Often the task of watching over her, still a young baby, fell to six-year-old Hirai. When she started elementary school, Hirai would give her a piggyback to school. It was a country school, and the teachers were understanding. If she started crying in class, Hirai was able to take her out of class to comfort her. In school Hirai was a reliable big sister, diligent in looking after her little sister.
Hirai’s parents had great hopes for Hirai, who was naturally sociable and likeable. They thought she would become an excellent manager of the inn. But her parents had underestimated the intricacies of her character. Specifically, she was free-spirited. She wanted to do things without having to worry what others thought. It was what made her comfortable enough to give Kumi a piggyback to school. She had no inhibitions. She wanted to do things her own way. Her behaviour meant that her parents didn’t worry about her, but it was precisely this free-spiritedness that ultimately led to her refusal of her parents’ wish that she would someday take over the inn.
She didn’t hate her parents, nor did she hate the inn. She simply lived for her freedom. At eighteen, she left home, when Kumi was twelve. Her parents’ anger at her leaving home was just as intense as the expectation they had held that she would be their successor, and they cut her off. While the shock of her leaving weighed heavy on her parents, Kumi also took it badly.
But Kumi must have sensed that she was going to leave. When she left, Kumi did not cry or appear heartbroken; she just muttered, ‘She’s so selfish,’ when she saw the letter that Hirai had left for her.
Kazu was standing beside Hirai and carrying a white coffee cup and silver kettle on a silver tray. Her face had an elegant, calm expression.
‘You know the rules?’
‘I know the rules . . .’
Kumi had visited the cafe, and while it wouldn’t be possible to change the fact that she died in the accident, Hirai was now sitting in the right seat, and however short the time she would have in the past, if she could see Kumi one last time, it would be worth it.
Hirai gave a deep nod and prepared herself.
But regardless of her preparedness, Kazu continued to speak.
‘People who go back to the past to meet a person now deceased can get caught up in the emotion, so even though they know there is a time limit, they become unable to say goodbye. So I want you to have this . . .’ Kazu placed a small stick about ten centimetres long into Hirai’s cup of coffee – the kind you might use to stir a cocktail. It looked a bit like a spoon.
‘What’s this?’
‘This sounds an alarm just before the coffee gets cold. So if the alarm sounds—’
‘OK. I know. I understand, OK?’
The vagueness of the deadline ‘just before the coffee gets cold’ worried Hirai. Even if she thought the coffee was cold, there still might be time remaining. Or she might think the coffee still had enough heat in it and make the mistake of staying too long and never making it back. An alarm made things much simpler and calmed her anxiety.
All she wanted to do was apologize. Kumi had made the effort to come to visit her time and time again but Hirai saw it only as a nuisance.
Apart from the matter of how she had treated Kumi so unkindly, there was also the matter of Kumi being made the successor to Takakura.
When Hirai left home and was cut off from the family, Kumi automatically became the successor. She was too obliging to betray the expectations of their parents, as Hirai had done.
But what if this had shattered a dream that she held?
If she once had a dream, ruined by Hirai’s selfish decision to run away, it would explain why she had so often visited Hirai to beg her to return home – she would want Hirai to come back so that she could have the freedom to pursue her own ambitions.
If Hirai had found her freedom at Kumi’s expense, then it would only be natural for her to feel resentful. Now there was no way of ending Hirai’s regret.
This was all the more reason for her to apologize. If she could not change the present, then at least she could say, ‘Sorry, please forgive your selfish big sis.’
Hirai looked into Kazu’s eyes and gave a firm, definite nod.
Kazu put the coffee in front of Hirai. She picked up the silver kettle from the tray with her right hand and looked at Hirai from underneath her lowered brow. This was the ceremony. The ceremony did not change, no matter who was sitting in that seat. Kazu’s expressions were part of it.
‘Just remember . . .’ Kazu paused and then whispered, ‘Drink the coffee before it goes cold.’
She began to slowly pour the coffee, which flowed soundlessly from the silver kettle’s narrow spout, like a single black thread. Hirai watched the surface of the liquid as it rose. The longer the coffee took to fill the cup, the more impatient she became. She wanted to go back and meet her little sister without delay. She wanted to see her, to apologize. But the coffee would start cooling the moment the cup was filled – she had precious little time.
Shimmering steam rose from the filled cup. Looking at it, Hirai began to experience an overwhelming dizziness. Her body became one with the steam that engulfed her, and she felt like she was beginning to rise. Although it was the first time experiencing this, she didn’t find it at all frightening. Feeling her impatience subside, she gently closed her eyes.
Hirai first visited the cafe seven years before. She was twenty-four and had been running her bar for about three months. One Sunday at the end of autumn she was strolling around the neighbourhood and casually popped into the cafe to check it out. The only customers were a woman in a white dress and herself. It was the time of the year when people started wearing scarves, but the woman in the dress was in short sleeves. Thinking that she must be a little chilly, even if she was inside, Hirai sat down at the counter.
She looked around the room, but there were no staff members in sight. When the bell had rung as she entered the cafe, she hadn’t heard anyone call out ‘Hello, welcome!’ as she might have expected. She got the impression that this cafe was not big on customer service, but this didn’t put her off. The kind of place that didn’t follow conventions appealed to her. She decided to wait to see if anyone who worked there would make an appearance. Perhaps sometimes the bell went unnoticed? She was suddenly curious as to whether this often happened. Also, the woman in the dress had not even noticed her; she just kept on reading her book. Hirai got the feeling that she had mistakenly stumbled into the cafe on a day when it was closed. After about five minutes, the bell rang and in came a girl who looked like she might be in junior high school. She casually said, ‘Hello, welcome,’ without any sense of urgency and walked off into the back room. Hirai was overjoyed by this: she had found a cafe that didn’t pander to customers. That meant freedom. There was no way of anticipating just when one would get served. She liked this kind of cafe – it was a refreshing change from the places that treated you in the same old predictable way. She lit a cigarette and waited leisurely.
After a short while, a woman appeared from the back room. By this time, Hirai was smoking her second cigarette. The woman was wearing a beige knit cardigan and a long white skirt with a wine-red apron over it. She had big round eyes.
The schoolgirl mu
st have told her that they had a customer, but she entered the room in a laid-back, casual manner.
The woman with the big round eyes showed no sense of hurry. She poured some water into a glass and set it in front of Hirai. ‘Hello, welcome.’ She smiled as if everything was normal. A customer who expected to be treated in a special manner might have expected an apology for the slow service at least. But Hirai didn’t want or expect such service. The woman didn’t show any sign that she had behaved wrongly but instead smiled warmly. Hirai had never met another uninhibited woman who did things at her own pace, as she always did herself. She took an instant liking to her. Treat them mean, keep them keen, that was Hirai’s motto.
From then on, Hirai started visiting Funiculi Funicula every day. During that winter she discovered that the cafe could return you to the past. She thought it was odd that the woman in the dress was always in short sleeves. When she asked, ‘She must be cold, don’t you think?’ Kei explained about the woman in the dress, and how you could return to the past if you sat in that seat.
Hirai replied, ‘You don’t say?’ though it sounded unbelievable to her. But as she didn’t think Kei would tell a lie like that, she let it go for the time being. It was about six months later that the urban legend surrounding the cafe spread and its popularity grew.
But even once Hirai knew about travelling to the past, she never once considered doing so herself. She lived life in the fast lane and had no regrets. And what was the point anyway, she thought, if the rules meant that you couldn’t change the present, no matter how hard you tried?
That was, until Kumi died in a traffic accident.
Amidst the shimmering, Hirai suddenly heard her name being called. When she heard this familiar voice, she opened her eyes with a start. Looking in the direction of the voice, she saw Kei standing there, wearing a wine-red apron. Her big round eyes showed she was surprised to see Hirai. Fusagi was in the cafe, sitting at the table closest to the entrance. It was exactly the scene that Hirai remembered. She had returned to that day – the day when Kumi was still alive.
Hirai felt her heartbeat quicken. She had to relax. The tension felt like cords stretched as far as they would go as she struggled to maintain her fragile composure. She pictured her eyes becoming red and swollen with tears and becoming choked up. That was not at all how she wanted to look when she met Kumi. She placed her hand on her heart, inhaled slowly and deeply to settle herself.
Before the Coffee Gets Cold Page 12
