clang-dong

“Hello! Welcome,” Nagare called out cheerfully, lifting the café out of its somber mood.

On hearing the bell, Kohtake took the opportunity to get more comfortable. She reached for the coffee.

“Hello. Welcome,” said Kei, coming out from the back room in an apron after hearing the bell. But there was still no one.

It was taking longer than normal for someone to appear in the café but just as Nagare tilted his head questioningly to one side, a familiar voice rang out.

“Nagare! Kei! Someone! I need salt! Bring me salt!”

“Hirai, is that you?”

No one had expected her to have come back so early, even if her sister’s funeral had now taken place. Kei looked at Nagare, her eyes wide in astonishment. Nagare stood there a moment in a daze. Given that he’d just delivered the terrible news about Kumi to Kohtake, to hear Hirai’s usual brisk tone must have been a little disorienting.

Hirai may have wanted the salt for spiritual purification, but it sounded more like yelling coming from a kitchen where someone was frantically making dinner.

“Come on!” This time, her shout had a low, sultry edge to it.

“Okay! Just a sec.”

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 café’s entrance, dressed in her normal flashy attire. To her, Hirai’s behavior 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 jumping jack. Her black handbag swung from her right arm. Nagare, still holding the saltshaker, 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 behavior—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 demeanor, 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 on Kohtake’s brow as she leaned 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 café 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 okay?” Nagare asked, toying with the saltshaker 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 trouble 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 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 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 interior. 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.

When she looked into the altar room, it was open to the veranda. There, she saw her father Yasuo’s small rounded back. He was sitting on the edge, looking out at the lush green garden.

Kumi was lying there silently. She was dressed in a white robe, and had hanging over her the pink kimono worn by the head woman of the inn. Yasuo must have just moved from her side, as his hand was still gripping the white cloth that would normally cover the face of the dead. Her mother Michiko was not there.

Hirai sat down and peered at Kumi’s face. So peaceful was it that it looked like she was merely sleeping. As Hirai gently touched her face, she whispered, Thank God. If her face had been badly cut in the accident, her body would have been laid in the coffin and wrapped up like a mummy. This is what was running through her mind as she looked at Kumi’s pretty face. The thought had been troubling her, having heard that Kumi collided head-on with a truck. Her father, Yasuo, kept gazing out at the courtyard garden.

“Father...” Hirai called out in a stilted voice to Yasuo’s back .

It was to be her first conversation with her father since she left home thirteen years ago.

But Yasuo remained seated with his back to her, his only response being a sniffle. Hirai looked at Kumi’s face a while longer, then slowly rose and quietly left the room.

She went into Sendai town, where preparations for the Tanabata Festival were under way. With curlers still in her hair, she trudged around until dusk, still in her slippers and camisole. She bought something to wear to the funeral and found a hotel.

At the funeral the next day, she saw her mother Michiko putting on a brave face alongside her father, who had broken down in tears. Rather than sitting in the row of seats for the family, she sat with the rest of the mourners. Just once she made eye contact with her mother, but no words passed between them. The funeral went smoothly. Hirai offered incense, but left without speaking to anyone.

The column of ash lengthened on Hirai’s cigarette and fell silently. She watched it fall. “Yes, and that’s that,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette.

Nagare’s head was bowed. Kohtake sat motionless with her cup in her hand.

Kei looked directly at Hirai with concern.

Hirai looked at these three faces and sighed. “I’m no good with all this serious stuff,” she let out in exasperation.

“Hirai...” Kei began, but Hirai waved her hand to stop her.

“So lose the sad faces, and stop asking if I’m all right,” she pleaded .

She could see that there was something that Kei wanted to say. So she kept talking.

“I might not look like it, but I am really upset. But, come on, guys, I need to overcome this by putting my best foot forward, don’t I?”

She spoke as if she was trying to reassure a tearful child. She was that kind of person—inscrutable to the end. If Kei was in her shoes, she would have been crying for days. If it were Kohtake, she would have observed the mourning period, lamented the deceased, and behaved with propriety. But Hirai was neither Kei nor Kohtake.

“I’ll mourn how I mourn. Everyone’s different,” Hirai said, and with that she stood up and picked up her handbag.

“So that’s how things are,” she said, and began to walk to the door.

“So, why visit the café now?” Nagare muttered, as if to himself.

Hirai froze like a stop-motion frame.

“Why come here rather than going directly back to yours?” he asked bluntly, keeping his back to her. Hirai stood there silently for a while.

“Busted.” She sighed. She turned around and walked back to where she had been sitting.

Nagare didn’t look at her. He just carried on staring at the shaker of salt in his hands.

She returned to her seat and sat down in the chair.

“Hirai,” Kei said as she approached holding a letter. “I still have it.”

“You didn’t throw it out?” She recognized it instantly. She was pretty sure it was the one Kumi had written and left at the café three days ago. She had asked Kei to throw it out without having read any of it.

Her hand trembled as she took it: the last letter that Kumi had ever written.

“I never imagined I would hand it to you under such circumstances,” Kei said with her head bowed apologetically.

“No of course not... Thank you,” Hirai replied.

She pulled out a letter folded in half from the unsealed envelope.

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 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 café, 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.”

They were speechless.

“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 café. 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 saltshaker on the counter echoed throughout the café.

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?”

“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, Hirai 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 café’s lighting suddenly seemed reduced to candlelight, flickering in the wind, and an eerie ghostly wailing began reverberating throughout the café, 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 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.

“Okay, 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.

“Okay, 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 traveling 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 restroom.

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 café. 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 behavior 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 Hirai 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 café, 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 centimeters 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—”

“Okay. I know. I understand, okay?”

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 café 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 neighborhood and casually popped into the café 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 café, she hadn’t heard anyone call out “Hello, welcome!” as she might have expected. She got the impression that this café 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 café 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 café 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 café—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 must 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 café 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 café spread and its popularity grew.

But even once Hirai knew about traveling 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 café, 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.

“Hello...” she greeted Kei.

Kei was caught by surprise at having someone she knew suddenly appear in that seat. Looking both startled and intrigued, she addressed Hirai as if it was the first time she had had such a visitor.

“What... You came from the future?”

“Yeah.”

“Really? What on earth for?”

The Kei of the past had no idea about what happened. It was a straight question, innocently asked.

“Oh, I’ve just come to see my sister.” Hirai wasn’t in a position to lie. She tightened her grip on the letter she held in her lap.

“The one who is always coming to persuade you to come home?”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, that makes a change! Aren’t you normally trying to avoid her?”

“Well not today... Today, I’m going to see her.”

Hirai did her best to reply cheerfully. She had meant to laugh, but her eyes were not laughing. She was unable to produce a single twinkle. She didn’t know where to direct her gaze, either. If Kei got a good look at her, she would see straight through her. Even now, she knew that Kei could sense that something was wrong.

“Did something happen?” Kei asked in a whisper.

She couldn’t say anything for a while. Then in an unconvincing tone she said, “Oh nothing. Nothing.”

Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust. Hirai saw Kei as a confidante with whom she could share anything. The emotional gravity was strong. Kei was able to accept anything—forgive anything—that Hirai let flow out. A single kind word from Kei could cut the cords of tension that ran through her.

At that moment, it would have been enough for Kei to say just one more kind thing and the truth would have come pouring out. Kei was looking at her with concern. Hirai could tell, even without looking, and was therefore desperately avoiding looking at her.

Kei came out from behind the counter, bothered by Hirai’s reluctance to look at her.