It seemed odd to him that he would doze off like that, having just made a decision as momentous as returning to the past. But he also couldn’t help having doubts about the waitress who had left him alone in that state.

Gohtaro stood up and called out to the back room. “Hello...is anyone there?”

But there was no reply.

He looked at one of the clocks on the wall to check the time, but then immediately checked his watch. The antique clocks in the café were the first strange thing one noticed when visiting. Each one showed a different time.

Apparently, the clocks at either end of the room were broken. One of them was fast, and the other, slow. Multiple attempts had been made to fix them, to no avail.

“8:12 p.m.”

Gohtaro looked over at where the woman in the white dress was sitting.

Among the tales of this café that he had heard from Shuichi, there was one that had stuck in his mind: A ghost is sitting in the chair that returns you to the past.

The notion was quite preposterous and impossible to believe. That was why it had stuck in his mind.

Oblivious to Gohtaro’s gaze, the woman read her novel with unfaltering concentration.

As he looked at her face, he began to feel a strange sense of recognition, as if he had met her somewhere before.

However, he couldn’t see how that was possible if she truly was a ghost, so he simply shrugged it off.

Flap.

Suddenly, the woman in the dress closed the novel, the sound reverberating throughout the silent café. At her unexpected move, Gohtaro’s heart nearly leaped out of his mouth, and he almost slipped off his seat at the counter. If she was just a normal human customer, her movement would probably not have shaken him so, but having been told that she was a ghost, he didn’t believe she was, of course, but the image of “ghost equals creepy” couldn’t be easily shaken once it had taken hold.

Momentarily petrified, he felt a cold clamminess spread up his spine. Ignoring Gohtaro’s reaction, the woman rose without a sound. She slipped out of her seat and walked silently toward the entrance, clasping the novel she had been reading as if it was precious to her.

Feeling his heart pounding, Gohtaro watched her pass.

She went through the entrance and disappeared to the right. The only thing in that direction was the toilet.

A ghost who goes to the toilet?

Gohtaro tilted his head as he looked at the woman’s chair.

The seat that would take him back in time was vacant.

Tentatively taking one step at a time, he went over, constantly wary that the woman in the dress might suddenly reappear with a diabolical grimace.

Inspecting it up close, he saw it was a simple seat with nothing out of the ordinary about it. The chair had elegantly curved cabriole legs, and its seat and back were upholstered with a pale moss-green fabric. He was certainly no expert in antiques, but he could tell it would be worth a lot of money.