In junior high, she entered her rebellious phase, which only grew worse with age. Once in high school, he received a phone call from the police after she had been caught shoplifting.

Adolescent Haruka got herself into all kinds of mischief, but however tense the circumstances, Gohtaro never once wavered in his resolve to provide a happy upbringing for her, who had been left alone in this world.

It was just three months earlier that she had brought home a man called Satoshi Obi and announced they were dating with the possibility that it might lead to marriage.

On his third visit, Satoshi asked Gohtaro, “Please give me your blessing to marry Haruka.”

“You have my blessing,” he replied simply.

All he wanted was for her to be happy; he would not stand in the way of that.

After graduating from high school, Haruka became much more reasonable. She decided to go to culinary school to become a chef and that is where she met Obi. After finishing culinary school, Obi found a job in a hotel in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district and Haruka started helping at Gohtaro’s restaurant.

After Haruka’s wedding was announced, Gohtaro started to feel terrible guilt for lying to her.

For twenty-two years he had raised her, telling her that she was his real daughter. In order to hide from her the truth that she had no living blood relatives, he had never shown her the contents of the family register. But now she was to marry, everything was different. When she went to the registry office to file her marriage, she would discover that she was orphaned, revealing the lie that Gohtaro had maintained all these years. After agonizing over it, he finally decided to tell her the truth before the wedding. Then he would say that the real father is meant to be there at the wedding ceremony. The truth will probably hurt her, but it can’t be helped. Although there was nothing that could be done now.

“Ah, excuse me, Sir?”

Gohtaro awoke feeling his shoulder being shaken. A large-framed man stood in front of him. He was wearing jet-black school trousers and a dark brown apron over a white shirt with the sleeves folded to his elbows. Gohtaro recognized the giant as the café’s owner Nagare. But it was a much younger Nagare.

The memory of that day started emerging from the recesses of Gohtaro’s brain.

He was certain that this young version of the owner, Nagare, had been there twenty-two years ago.

The rest of the café, however—the slowly spinning ceiling fan, the dark brown columns and beams and tan-colored walls and the three clocks on the wall each showing a different time—was unchanged. Even twenty-two years in the past, the café had its sepia hue, the result of the only light being given by the shaded lamps. If the young Nagare had not been standing before him, he would not have noticed that he had gone back.