As Gohtaro began to struggle with his response, the woman slipped past him and briskly descended the stairs.

clang-dong

The ring of a cowbell hung in the air as she entered the café. She hadn’t exactly twisted his arm, but Gohtaro descended once again. He felt a weird calmness sweep over him, as if the contents of his heart had been laid bare.

He had been stuck walking back and forth because he had no way of being certain that this café was actually the café “where you could return to the past.” He’d come there believing the story, but if the rumor his old friend had told him was completely made up, he would soon be one very embarrassed customer.

If traveling back to the past was indeed real, he had heard there were some annoying conditions that you had to follow. One was that there was nothing you could do while in the past that would change the present, no matter how hard you tried.

When Gohtaro first heard that, he wondered, If you can’t change anything, why would anyone want to go back?

Yet he was now standing at the front door of the café thinking, Even so, I want to go back.

Had the woman read his mind just now? Surely a more conventional thing to say in that situation would be, Would you like to come in? Please feel welcome.

But she had said, Why not stew over it after you come in?

Perhaps she meant: yes, you can return to the past, but why not come inside first before deciding whether to go or not.

The bigger mystery was how the woman could possibly know why he had come. Yet he felt a flicker of hope. The woman’s offhand comment was the trigger for him to make up his mind. He reached out, turned the doorknob, and opened the door.

clang-dong

He stepped into the café where, supposedly, you could travel back in time.

Gohtaro Chiba, aged fifty-one, was of stocky build, which was perhaps not unrelated to him having belonged to the rugby club in high school and at university. Even today, he wore an XXL-sized suit.

He lived with his daughter Haruka, who would be twenty-three this year. Struggling as a single parent, he had raised her alone. She had grown up being told, Your mother died of an illness when you were little. Gohtaro ran the Kamiya Diner, a modest eatery in the city of Hachioji in the Greater Tokyo Area. It served meals with rice, soup and side dishes, and Haruka lent a hand.