The bit about leaving the seat had been met with an “Oh really?” from Gohtaro. But the rules were mostly as he had expected, and nothing he heard drained the color from his face.

“Okay, I understand,” he said.

“Please wait while I remake the coffee,” Kazu instructed him when she had finished her explanation, and went into the kitchen.

She left him sitting there, with Nagare standing in front of him.

“Excuse my nosiness, but she is not your wife, is she?” he asked Nagare.

It wasn’t as if he really needed to know the answer; it was more an attempt to make conversation.

“Her? No, she’s my cousin,” Nagare replied, looking down at Miki.

“Miki’s mum... Well, when she gave birth to her...”

Nagare didn’t continue—not because he was choked with emotion, but simply because he thought he had already conveyed the message.

“I see,” said Gohtaro, and stopped asking questions. He looked at Nagare with his thin eyes, and then at Miki with her round eyes, and concluded that she must take after her mother. Caught up in that thought, he waited for Kazu.

Kazu soon returned. On the tray she was carrying were the same silver kettle and white coffee cup she had taken back into the kitchen. The aroma of the coffee, freshly made, drifted throughout the café and seemed to penetrate Gohtaro’s chest deeply.

Kazu stood beside the table where Gohtaro was seated and continued the explanation.

“I will now serve you the coffee,” she said as she placed the white cup in front of him.

“Okay.”

Gohtaro looked down at the blemish-free cup and was transfixed by its pure almost translucent whiteness. Kazu continued:

“The time you have in the past will only be from when I pour you the coffee until the coffee has gone cold.”

“Okay.”

Perhaps because Gohtaro had been told the rules by Shuichi, the news that he could only return to the past for such a short period did not seem to surprise him.

Kazu gave a small nod.

“That means that you must drink the coffee before it gets cold. If you don’t drink it then...” she continued.

She now had to explain, You will become a ghost and go on sitting in this seat. It was this rule that made returning to the past extremely risky. Compared to the great risk of becoming a ghost, not being able to meet who you wanted to meet, or not being able to change reality, were trifling inconveniences. Yet, if Kazu was careless with her explanation, her words could be misconstrued as just a joke. To ensure she gave these words the gravitas they needed, she paused before she went on.

“You turn into a spook, right?” Gohtaro interrupted with those insane-sounding words.

“Huh?” asked Nagare, who was listening from a distance.

“A spook,” repeated Gohtaro without hesitation.

“When Shuichi told me the rules, that one was so crazy...er, excuse me...it was so difficult to believe, I remembered it clearly.”