However, the more he looked around the café, the faster his heart beat.

He’s not here.

If he had gone back to the right day, Shuichi should have been there, but he wasn’t.

He thought back to the various rules he had been told and realized he had never been told how to return to the right day. What’s more, his time in the past was only the short period before his coffee went cold. He might have arrived before they arrived, or they may have already left the café.

“Shuichi!” Gohtaro called and without thinking began to stand up. But before he did, he felt Nagare’s big hand on his shoulder keep him in his chair.

“He’s in the toilet,” he muttered.

Gohtaro was fifty-one years old and a large stocky man, but Nagare placed a hand lightly on his shoulder as if was petting the head of a child.

“The guy you came to meet is in the toilet. He’ll come back soon, so rather than getting up like that, you’d be better off waiting.”

Gohtaro became a little calmer. According to the rules, standing up from the chair instantly took you back to the present; if not for Nagare, he would most probably be there now.

“Ah, thank you.”

“No problem,” replied Nagare in rather a clinical manner, and walked away to stand behind the counter with his arms folded. Standing there, he looked less like a waiter and more like a sentry guarding a castle.

No one else was in the café.

But there were people in the café on that day twenty-two years ago, there had been a couple sitting at the table closest to the entrance and one person at the counter.

And where Gohtaro was sitting now, in the seat that returns you to the past, there had been a near-elderly gentleman wearing a tuxedo and boasting a well-groomed moustache.

The gentleman’s look had seemed very old-fashioned. Gohtaro clearly remembered him because he had thought, That guy looks like he has time-traveled from the 1920s.

However, the three other customers had left quickly, perhaps because they could not bear Gohtaro’s filthy state or his odd stench.

Then he remembered. As soon as they had entered, Shuichi had enthusiastically declared that this was a mysterious café where it was possible to go back in time. Then, after listening to his account of what had happened to him, he had gone to the toilet.

Gohtaro wiped sweat from his brow with his palm and drew a deep breath in through his nose. Then, from the back room, a girl of elementary-school age appeared with a brand-new randoseru backpack.

“Come on, Mum, hurry!” the girl yelled as she skipped and pranced around the café.

“I bet you’re happy now, huh?” said young Nagare to the girl circling around in the center of the café, his arms still folded.

“Yeah,” replied the girl with a happy smiling face and she scampered out of the café.

clang-dong