From past experience, when a customer had not followed this rule, the damage was severe, and rather than thinking of the customer who became a ghost, Nagare was thinking about the people who get left behind. If it happened to Gohtaro, it would be a devastating shock to his daughter Haruka.

Yet for some reason, Gohtaro did not seem to acknowledge the seriousness of it, and throwing around words like spook suggested he wasn’t taking it seriously. But Gohtaro’s eyes looked serious, so rather than simply telling him that was wrong, Nagare’s answer was vaguer.

“Er...nah...” he struggled to reply. But Kazu’s answer was plain.

“That’s right,” she confirmed coolly.

“Eh?” uttered Nagare in surprise at her answer. His almond-shaped eyes opened wide, and his mouth dropped open. Miki, standing next to him, who probably didn’t know what a spook was, looked up at Nagare, her round eyes goggling.

Kazu, however—unbothered by Nagare’s agitation—continued to explain the rules.

“You must not forget. If you do not finish drinking the coffee before it goes cold, it will be your turn to be the spook forever stuck sitting here.”

It was true to Kazu’s relaxed and generous nature to use Gohtaro’s word spook, but she probably just went with the term because it was easier to do so. At any rate, it was clear what she meant: whether you called it a spook or a ghost, it was the same thing.

“So, the woman who has been sitting on the chair up until now?” Gohtaro asked, hinting, She didn’t return from the past, then?

“Yes,” Kazu confirmed.

“I wonder why she didn’t finish her coffee?” Gohtaro asked. He asked purely out of interest. But his question turned Kazu’s face into a Noh mask, and for the first time he found her expression unreadable.

I’ve asked something I was not meant to ask, Gohtaro thought, but Kazu wore this expression only for a moment and continued.

“She went back to meet her husband who had died, but she must have lost track of time and only realized when the coffee had already gone cold,” she stated with an expression that implied that there was no need for her to say what happened next.

“Oh, I see,” Gohtaro replied with a rather sympathetic expression. He looked over to the entrance through which the woman in the dress had disappeared.

He asked no more questions, so Kazu asked, “Shall I serve?”

“Yes please,” he answered with a sigh.

Kazu took the silver kettle that was still on the tray. Gohtaro knew nothing about tableware, but he could see at a glance that this sparkling silver kettle would be worth a substantial sum. Kazu announced, “Then I shall begin.”

As she uttered these words, Gohtaro felt that her aura had changed.

The temperature in the café seemed to suddenly drop by a degree and you could cut the atmosphere with a knife.