If I were to sit on that chair...

As soon as he placed his hand timidly on it, he heard the sound of scuffling slippers coming from the back room.

He turned and saw a girl wearing pajamas. If he remembered correctly, she was the café owner’s daughter, Miki. She stared at him with her big round eyes—she didn’t seem at all shy about making eye contact with adults she didn’t know. Confronted with her straight stare, Gohtaro was the one who felt uncomfortable with the eye contact.

“Good—good evening,” he said in a forced, unnatural voice, as he pulled his hand back from the chair. Miki scuffled toward him.

“Good evening, monsieur, do you want to return to the past?” she asked, peering at him with her big eyes.

“Ah, well, you see...”

Gohtaro was floundering, not sure how to answer that question.

“Why?”

Miki tilted her head inquisitively, ignoring how flustered he seemed.

He was anxious that the woman in the dress would return while he was talking to Miki.

“Could you call a member of staff?” he asked her.

Miki, however, completely ignored his request and instead slipped past him and stood in front of the seat in which the woman in the dress had been sitting.

“Kaname has gone to the toilet,” she said, shifting her gaze from the empty seat to Gohtaro.

“Kaname?”

Miki silently looked at the café entrance. Gohtaro followed her gaze and understanding, nodded. “And her name’s Kaname?”

But instead of answering, Miki pulled on his hand. “Sit down,” she urged.

In a businesslike fashion, she cleared the woman’s coffee cup and scuffled off in her slippers, disappearing into the kitchen and giving him no chance to protest.

He stared after her in blank amazement.

Is she going to help me go back to the past? he wondered. With an anxious expression, he slipped between the chair and the table in front of him and sat down.

He didn’t know what he had to do to go back, but he felt his heart race at the thought that he was sitting in the chair. After a while, Miki returned carrying a silver kettle and white coffee cup, clattering on a tray she held with both hands.

She stood next to Gohtaro.

“Now moi will pour you the coffee,” she said as the tray wobbled.

Can you really do this? Gohtaro almost asked, but he held it in.

“Um...er,” he replied with a very anxious expression.

Miki didn’t see the look on his face as she had fixed her big excited eyes on the cup on the tray. She continued with her explanation.

“In order to go back to the past...”

At that moment, Nagare, wearing a T-shirt, appeared from the back room.

“Heavens above, Miki, what do you think you’re doing?” he said with an exasperated sigh. More than angry, his tone conveyed something more along the lines of, Oh no, not again.

“Moi is serving monsieur his coffee.”