clang-dong

“...and that happened one week ago,” said Fumiko Kiyokawa. Her upper body flopped into a heap on the table like a deflating balloon. As she collapsed, she somehow avoided spilling the coffee cup in front of her.

The waitress and the customer seated at the counter who had been listening to Fumiko’s story looked at each other.

Before Fumiko had finished senior high school, she had already mastered six languages. After graduating top of her class from Waseda University, she joined a major medical technology firm in Tokyo. By her second year at the firm, she was already directing numerous projects. She was the epitome of the smart, career-driven woman.

Today, Fumiko was dressed in ordinary business attire: a white blouse and black skirt and jacket. Judging by her appearance, she was on her way home from work .

Fumiko’s looks were better than ordinary. Blessed with well-defined features and petite lips, she had the face of a pop idol. Her midlength black hair shone and crowned her with a glowing halo. Despite her conservative clothes, her exceptional figure was easy to discern. Like a model from a fashion magazine, she was a beautiful woman who would draw anyone’s gaze. Yes, she was a woman who combined intelligence and beauty. But whether she realized this was a different matter.

In the past, Fumiko hadn’t been one to dwell on such things—she had lived only for her work. Of course, this didn’t mean she had never had relationships. It’s just that they never had the same allure for her as work. “ My work is my lover ,” she would say. She had turned down approaches from many men, as though flicking away specks of dust.

The man she had been talking about was Goro Katada. Goro was a systems engineer, and like Fumiko, he was employed by a medical company, though it wasn’t a major one. He was her boyfriend—he was her boyfriend—and three years her junior. They had met two years ago via a client for which they were both doing a project.

One week ago, Goro had asked Fumiko to meet for a “serious conversation.” She had arrived at the meeting place in an elegant pale-pink dress with a beige spring coat and white pumps, having caught the attention of all the men she had passed on the way there. It was a new look for Fumiko. She was such a workaholic that, before her relationship with Goro, she had owned no other clothes but suits. Suits were what she had worn on dates with Goro as well—after all, they mostly met after work .

Goro had said serious conversation , and Fumiko had interpreted this as meaning that the conversation was going to be special. So, filled with expectation, she had bought an outfit especially.

They arrived at their chosen café to find a sign on the window saying it was closed due to unforeseen circumstances. Fumiko and Goro were disappointed. The café would have been ideal for a serious conversation as each table was in a private booth.

Left with no choice but to find another suitable place, they noticed a small sign down a quiet side street. As it was a basement café, they had no way of knowing what it was like inside, but Fumiko was attracted by its name, which came from the lyrics of a song she used to sing as a child, and they agreed to go in.

Fumiko regretted her decision as soon as she peered inside. It was smaller than she had imagined. The café had counter and table seats but with just three seats at the counter and three two-seater tables, it only took nine customers to fill the place.

Unless the serious conversation currently weighing on Fumiko’s mind was to be held in whispers, the entire thing would be overheard. Another negative was the way that everything appeared as in sepia owing to the few shaded lamps...it was not to her taste at all.

A place for shady deals...

That was Fumiko’s first impression of this café. She nervously made her way to the only empty table and sat down. There were three other customers and one waitress in the café. At the furthest table sat a woman in a white short-sleeved dress quietly reading a book. At the table closest to the entrance sat a dull-looking man. A travel magazine was spread open on the table and he was jotting notes in a tiny notebook. The woman seated at the counter wore a bright red camisole and green leggings. A sleeveless kimono jacket hung on the back of her chair, and she still had curlers in her hair. She glanced fleetingly at Fumiko, grinning broadly as she did. At several points during Fumiko and Goro’s conversation, the woman made a remark to the waitress and let off a raucous laugh.

On hearing Fumiko’s explanation a week later, the woman in curlers said, “I see...”

Actually, she didn’t see at all—she was just following up with the appropriate response. Her name was Yaeko Hirai. One of the café regulars, she had just turned thirty and ran a nearby snack, or hostess, bar . She always came in for a cup of coffee before work. Her curlers were in again, but today she was wearing a revealing yellow tube top, a bright red miniskirt and vivid purple leggings. Hirai was sitting cross-legged on the counter chair while listening to Fumiko.

“It was one week ago. You remember, don’t you?” Fumiko stood up and directed her attention across the counter to the waitress.

“Hmm...yeah,” the waitress answered uneasily, not looking at Fumiko’s face.

The waitress’s name was Kazu Tokita. Kazu was a cousin of the proprietor. She was waitressing while attending Tokyo University of the Arts. She had quite a pretty face, a pale complexion and narrow almond-shaped eyes, yet her features were not memorable. It was the type of face that if you glanced at it, closed your eyes and then tried to remember what you saw, nothing would come to mind. In a word, she was inconspicuous. She had no presence. She didn’t have many friends either. Not that she worried about it—Kazu was the sort of person who found interpersonal relationships rather tedious.

“So...what about him? Where is he now?” Hirai asked, playing with the cup in her hand, not seeming very interested.

“America,” Fumiko said, puffing out her cheeks.

“So your boyfriend chose work, then?” Hirai had a gift for getting to the heart of the matter.

“No, that’s not right!” Fumiko protested.

“Eh? But that is right, isn’t it? He went to America, didn’t he?” Hirai said. She was having a hard time understanding Fumiko.

“Didn’t you understand when I explained?” Fumiko said vehemently.

“What bit?”

“I wanted to scream out don’t go but I was too proud.”

“Not many women would admit that!” Hirai leaned back with a snicker, slipped off balance and nearly fell off the chair.

Fumiko ignored Hirai’s reaction. “You understood, right?” she said, looking for support from Kazu.

Kazu feigned a moment’s contemplation. “Basically you’re saying you didn’t want him to go to America, right?”

Kazu was also one to get straight to the point. “Well basically, I guess...no, I didn’t. But...”

“You’re a difficult one to understand,” Hirai said jovially, after seeing that Fumiko was struggling to reply .

If Hirai had been in Fumiko’s place, she would have just broken down in tears. “ Don’t go!” she would have screamed. Of course, they would have been crocodile tears. Tears are a woman’s weapon. That was Hirai’s philosophy.

Fumiko turned to Kazu at the counter. Her eyes were glistening. “Anyway, I want you to transport me back to that day...that day one week ago!” she pleaded, totally straight-faced.

Hirai was first to respond to the lunacy of requesting to be sent back to one week ago. “Back in time, she says...” She looked to Kazu with raised eyebrows.

Looking uncomfortable, Kazu simply muttered, “Oh...” and didn’t add anything further.

Several years had passed since the café had its moment of fame because of an urban legend that claimed it could transport people back to the past. Uninterested in that kind of thing, Fumiko had allowed it to fade from her memory. Visiting a week ago was complete happenstance. But last night, she had watched a variety program on TV. In the introduction, the host spoke about “urban legends,” and like a bolt of lightning striking inside her head, she remembered the café. The café that transports you back in time. It was an incomplete memory, but she remembered that key phrase clearly.

If I return to the past, I might be able to set things right. I might be able to have a conversation with Goro once more. She replayed this fanciful wish over and over in her mind. She became obsessed and lost any ability to make a levelheaded judgement.

The next morning she went to work, completely forgetting to eat breakfast. There, her mind was not on the job. She sat there, obsessed with the passing time. I just want to make sure. She wanted to find out either way as soon as possible. Her day at work was a long string of careless mistakes. So sporadic was her attention that a colleague asked if she was okay. By the end of the day, she had reached peak scatterbrain.

It took her thirty minutes to get from her company to the café by train. She pretty much ran the last stretch from the station. Entering the café feeling quite breathless, she’d walked up to Kazu.

“Please send me back to the past!” she’d pleaded before Kazu could even finish saying, Hello, welcome.

Her excitement had continued in that vein until she had finished her explanation. But now, looking at the reaction of the two women, she felt ill at ease.

Hirai just continued to stare at her with a smirk on her face, while Kazu wore a deadpan expression and avoided all eye contact.

If it was true about going back in time, I guess the place would be thronging with people, Fumiko thought to herself. But the only people in this café were the woman in the white dress, the man with his travel magazine, and Hirai and Kazu—the same faces that were here a week ago.

“It’s possible to go back, right?” she asked, uneasily.

It may have been prudent to begin with this question . But it was pointless to realize that now.

“Well, is it or not?” she asked, staring directly at Kazu on the other side of the counter.

“Hmm. Ah...” Kazu replied .

Fumiko’s eyes once again lit up. She was not hearing a no .

An air of excitement started to surround her. “Please send me back!”

She pleaded so energetically that she seemed about to leap over the counter.

“You want to go back and do what?” asked Hirai coolly, between sips of her tepid coffee.

“I’d make amends.” Her face was serious.

“I see...” said Hirai with a shrug.

“Please!” She spoke louder; the word reverberated throughout the café.

It was only recently that the idea of marrying Goro had occurred to her. She was turning twenty-eight this year, and she had been interrogated on many occasions by her persistent parents, who lived in Hakodate— Still not thinking of marriage? Haven’t you met any nice men? and so forth. Her parents’ nagging had grown more intense since her twenty-five-year-old sister got married the year before. Now it had reached the point where she was receiving weekly emails. Aside from her younger sister, Fumiko also had a twenty-three-year-old brother. He had married a girl from their hometown following a surprise pregnancy, leaving only Fumiko single.

Fumiko had felt no rush, but after her little sister got married, her mind-set had changed just a little. She had started to think getting married might be okay if it was to Goro.

Hirai plucked a cigarette from her leopard-print pouch. “Perhaps you’d best explain it to her properly...don’t you think?” she said in a businesslike manner to Kazu while lighting up.

“It seems like I should,” Kazu replied in her toneless voice as she walked around the counter and stood before Fumiko .

She looked at her with a soft kindness in her eyes as if she were consoling a crying child.

“Look. I want you to listen, and listen carefully. Okay?”

“What?” Fumiko’s body tensed up.

“You can go back. It’s true...you can go back, but...”

“But...?”

“When you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won’t change.”

The present won’t change. This was something Fumiko was totally unprepared for—something she couldn’t take in. “Huh?” she said loudly without thinking.

Kazu calmly continued. “Even if you go back to the past and tell your...um, boyfriend who went to America how you feel...”

“Even if I tell him how I feel?”

“The present won’t change.”

“What?” Fumiko desperately covered her ears.

But Kazu casually went on to say the words that Fumiko least wanted to hear. “It won’t change the fact that he’s gone to America.”

A trembling sensation swept through Fumiko’s entire body.

Yet with what seemed like a ruthless disregard for her feelings, Kazu continued with her explanation.

“Even if you return to the past, reveal your feelings, and ask him not to go, it won’t change the present.”

Fumiko reacted impulsively to Kazu’s cold hard words. “That sort of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?” she said defiantly.

“Easy now...let’s not shoot the messenger,” Hirai said. She took a drag of her cigarette, and seemed unsurprised by Fumiko’s reaction.

“Why?” Fumiko asked Kazu, her eyes begging for answers.

“Why? I’ll tell you why,” Kazu began. “Because that’s the rule.” There tends to be, in any movie or novel about time travel, some rule saying, Don’t go meddling in anything that is going to change the present . For example, going back and preventing your parents marrying or meeting would erase the circumstances of your birth and cause your present self to vanish.

This had been the standard state of affairs in most time-travel stories that Fumiko knew, so she believed in the rule: If you change the past, you do change the present. On that basis, she wanted to return to the past and have the chance to do it afresh. Alas, it was a dream that was not to be.

She wanted a convincing explanation for the existence of this unbelievable rule, that there is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present . The only explanation that Kazu would give was to say, Because that’s the rule. Was she trying to tease her in a friendly way, by not telling her the reason? Or was it a difficult concept that she was unable to explain? Or perhaps she didn’t understand the reason either, as her casual expression seemed to suggest.

Hirai seemed to be relishing the sight of Fumiko’s expression. “Tough luck,” she said, exhaling a plume of smoke with obvious pleasure.

She had drafted that line earlier when Fumiko had begun her explanation, and had been waiting to deliver it ever since.

“But...why?” Fumiko felt the energy drain from her body.

As she let herself slouch limply in her chair, a vivid recollection came to her. She had read an article on this café in a magazine. The article had the headline “Uncovering Truth Behind ‘Time-Traveling Café’ Made Famous by Urban Legend.” The gist of the article was as follows.

The café’s name was Funiculi Funicula. It had become famous, with long queues each day, on account of the time-traveling. But it wasn’t possible to find anyone who had actually gone back in time, because of the extremely annoying rules that had to be followed. The first rule was: The only people you can meet while in the past are those who have visited the café. This would usually defeat the purpose of going back. Another rule was: There is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present . The café was asked why that rule existed, but their only comment was that they didn’t know.

As the author of the article was unable to find anyone who had actually visited the past, whether or not it was actually possible to go back in time remained a mystery. Even supposing it was possible, the sticky point of not being able to change the present certainly made the whole idea seem pointless.

The article concluded by stating that it certainly made an interesting urban legend, but it was difficult to see why the legend existed. As a postscript, the article also mentioned there were apparently other rules that had to be followed but it was unclear what these were.

Fumiko’s attention returned to the café. Hirai seated herself opposite her at the table and proceeded to merrily explain the other rules. With her head and shoulders still sprawled on the table, Fumiko fixed her eyes on the sugar pot, wondering why the café didn’t use sugar cubes, and quietly listened .

“It’s not just those rules. There’s only one seat that allows you to go back in time, okay? And, while in the past, you can’t move from that seat,” Hirai said. “What else was there?” she asked Kazu, as she moved her count to her fifth finger.

“There’s a time limit,” Kazu said, keeping her eyes on the glass she was polishing. She mentioned it like an afterthought, as if she were merely talking to herself.

Fumiko raised her head in reaction to this news. “A time limit?”

Kazu showed a slight smile, and nodded.

Hirai gave the table a tap. “Frankly, after hearing just these rules, barely anyone still wants to return to the past,” she said, apparently enjoying herself. And she was indeed taking great delight in observing Fumiko. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a customer like you—someone totally set in your delusion of wanting to go back to the past.”

“Hirai...” Kazu said sternly.

“Life doesn’t get served to you on a plate. Why don’t you just give up?” Hirai blurted out. She looked ready to continue her tirade.

“Hirai...” Kazu repeated, this time with a bit more emphasis.

“No. No, I think it’s best to clearly put it out there, huh?”

Then Hirai guffawed loudly.

The words were all too much for Fumiko. Her strength had entirely drained from her body, and again she collapsed onto the table.

Then, from across the room... “Can I have a refill, please?” said the man sitting at the table closest to the entrance with his travel magazine opened in front of him.

“Okay,” Kazu called back.