Before the Coffee Gets Cold

A high-school-age girl sits in the time-traveling seat. She is from the future, but apart from her unseasonal cold-weather clothes, nothing makes her stand out. Nagare, who is running the café alone while Kei is at the gynecology clinic, asks who she has come to meet. The girl answers “no one in particular” and refuses to engage with him (111). However, she eats the breakfast he prepares without changing her expression.

Kazu enters, and although she is used to visitors from the future, the girl’s youth and beauty startle her. Nagare wonders if the girl came to meet him. The girl emphatically says this is not the case. When Kei comes back, Nagare asks her how her gynecology appointment went. Kei pats her stomach and gives him the peace sign. Nagare is happy but can’t show it, as he struggles to express his emotions. The girl watches this exchange and says that she wants to take a photo with Kei, whom she has expressly come to see. The girl’s camera is futuristic, transparent, and wafer-thin. The girl drinks the coffee and turns into steam. After the steam rises to the ceiling, the ghost woman in the dress reappears. While such occurrences are regular in the café, the café staff cannot explain how they happen. Kazu is confused by the girl, as it is the first time a customer from the future traveled back in time to meet one of the café staff.

Kohtake returns, and they address her as Mrs. Fusagi. It has been three days since her time-traveling venture. Kohtake comments that Hirai’s snack bar has been inexplicably closed the past two nights. Nagare reveals that Hirai’s sister Kumi was involved in a fatal road accident on her way back from attempting to visit Hirai in Tokyo.

Hirai appears in the café in mourning dress, demanding salt for spiritual purification. Kei thinks that Hirai’s demeanor is too casual for someone who has just been to her sister’s funeral. Hirai describes the accident as “unlucky” and speaks about it as though it occurred to a stranger (128). The others question Hirai’s decision to immediately return to work rather than staying around to support her parents. But Hirai, who knows the accident happened after Kumi tried to visit her, thinks that her parents blame her for Kumi’s death because they did not talk to her.

Hirai does not want the café staff’s sympathy. Instead, she wants to get on with her life. Kei informs Hirai that she still has the letter Kumi wrote for her. Hirai reads the letter; she feels as though she could have predicted its contents, but she cannot help shedding a single tear even so. She is moved by the fact that Kumi never gave up on her, despite the constant rejections. Over the past two years, Hirai had completely avoided her sister, even hiding from Kumi in Part 2 and trying to throw away the letter. Hirai turns to the café staff and asks them to take her back to three days ago, when her sister was in the café. Hirai goes up to the woman in the dress and implores her to give up her seat, taking her arm by force. As a result, she is cursed in the same way that Fumiko was. Kazu is the only one who can lift the curse by asking the woman if she wants more coffee. Hirai, freed from the curse, asks Kazu to get the ghost woman to cooperate. Kazu keeps plying the ghost woman with coffee as though to get her to go to the bathroom sooner. This works and Hirai takes up the seat.

Hirai used to look after Kumi, who would follow her around. While Hirai’s parents thought she would become an excellent inn manager, Hirai was free-spirited and “wanted to do things her own way” (141). Her parents were angry when she left at 18 and refused to manage the inn, so they cut her off. Kumi, then 12, thought that Hirai was selfish to leave.

Kazu places a coffee stirrer in Hirai’s coffee that will warn her just before the coffee gets cold. Hirai wants to go to the past and apologize to Kumi, both for the way she has treated her and for the fact that Kumi had to manage the inn herself and give up on her own dreams.

Hirai recalls coming into the café seven years earlier in early autumn, when she was 24. She was impressed by the easygoing service and Kei’s uninhibited nature. She soon became a regular and learned about the ghost woman. However, she had never been tempted to travel back in time until Kumi’s accident. Hirai finds herself in the past; Kei seems surprised to see her. Hirai says she is there to see her sister and is overcome with sadness, especially as Kei asks if Kumi is the one Hirai is trying to avoid. The bell rings, Kumi enters, and Hirai tries to compose herself, as she has never let herself cry in front of her sister. She wonders if she can tell Kumi that she will have a car crash and warn her to take the train instead; however, as the past cannot change the present, Kumi would still die and simply spend her last hours feeling awful.

Kumi is surprised at how unusually approachable Hirai is. Hirai tries to apologize, but all she wants to do is hug her sister and tell her not to die. Things become awkward between the two of them. Hirai tries telling Kumi what she thinks her sister will want to hear: That she is coming home. Kumi cries because it has always been her dream for the two of them to run the inn together. She looks ecstatically happy at the prospect. Hirai is moved because even though her parents have disowned her, her little sister has not. She is overcome by the fact that she does not want Kumi to die and is full of remorse for abandoning her sister with their parents. Hirai finally says thank you, unsure of “whether that one phrase could contain all these feelings or whether it conveyed how she felt. But every part of her at that moment was invested in those two words” (157). She collapses in tears as Kumi leaves to go to the toilet.

Then, she hears the alarm for the coffee getting cold. As she realizes that she must say goodbye, she blames herself for not going home earlier. She is tempted not to drink the coffee, but Kei grimly reminds her that she promised her sister she would return and run the inn. She must keep that promise beyond today. Hirai realizes that Kei is right and that she cannot act as though the conversation never happened. When she comes back to the present, she is devastated but resolves to return to the inn despite a likely mixed reception from her parents.

Hirai leaves the café, and Nagare sees Kei rubbing her stomach. He thinks, “I wonder if she can give it up” before the bell sounds (164).