When I leave the back to you, I know I’ve got someone I can count on, Shuichi often said before a match.

Then, seven years after they graduated from university, the two met again by chance.

After leaving the café, they headed off to Shuichi’s apartment. There to greet them were Yoko and their newborn daughter, Haruka. Shuichi must have contacted Yoko on the way, as she had run a bath for Gohtaro.

Yoko greeted him—still unwashed and reeking—with a warm smile. “So you are Gohtaro the Fullback? Shuichi has spoken of you countless times.”

Osaka-born Yoko was even more accommodating than Shuichi. It was quite normal for her to spend every waking hour chatting, and she enjoyed making people laugh with her jokes. She was also quick-thinking and proactive. In less than a day she had found Gohtaro a place to live and clothes to wear.

After losing his company, Gohtaro had lost his ability to trust people, but just two months after starting at Shuichi’s restaurant, he was back to his bright and cheerful self.

When the restaurant was filled with regular customers, Yoko would talk Gohtaro up: “Back at university, he was my husband’s most trusted player.”

While he found that embarrassing, it also brought a smile to his face. “My next task is to earn the same reputation working here,” he once added, his newly brightened outlook on the future on display.

Everything seemed to be going well.

One afternoon, Yoko complained of a screaming headache, so it was decided that Shuichi would drive her to the hospital. They didn’t want to close the restaurant, so Gohtaro stayed while minding Haruka. That day, petals from the cherry blossoms were scattering across the cloudless blue sky, silently, like a flurry of snow.

“Look after Haruka for me,” Shuichi said, waving thanks while hurrying out.

That was the last time Gohtaro saw him.

Shuichi’s and Yoko’s parents and grandparents were all dead, so at the age of one, Haruka was left all alone in this world.

When he looked at Haruka’s smiling face at Shuichi’s funeral—too young to comprehend that both her parents had died—he decided there and then to raise her himself.

Dong, dong, dong...

A wall clock chimed eight times.

Startled by the sound, Gohtaro looked up. His eyelids were heavy, and his vision was blurry.

“Where...?”

Looking around, he could see the café interior infused with a sepia hue by the shaded lamps. A fan hanging from the ceiling rotated slowly. The pillars and beams were colored a deep brown. There were three large, and clearly very old, wall clocks.

It took him a while to come to the conclusion that he had been asleep. He was alone in the café, apart from the woman in the dress.

He patted both cheeks with his hands to untangle his memory. He remembered that Kazu had told him, “We don’t know when the chair that you use to return to the past will be empty.” Then he must have drifted off to sleep.