Looking at Fumiko’s face becoming more and more disappointed, Goro suddenly chuckled.

“What? What are you laughing at?” she demanded as her expression shifted to indignation.

Goro quickly apologized, saying “sorry” several times. After which, he said, “I don’t think it matters. Even if he knew she lied, he returned to the past without saying anything because he knew she would now find happiness and perhaps get married...”

On saying this, Goro held out a Christmas present he had gotten her, to take her mind off the subject.

“You’ve had the same experience, haven’t you?”

“I have?”

“In terms of her unhappiness here in the present, when she came to the café, there was nothing he could have done to change that.”

“But what about the future?”

“Exactly! He knew that her lie had altered how she really felt.”

“You mean she decided right then to be happy?”

“Yes. That’s why he returned to the past without saying anything.”

“I see.”

“So, you can put your mind at ease,” Goro said, spearing a piece of cake with his fork.

“Well, that’s all right, then,” she said, looking relieved as she followed his lead and took a mouthful of cake.

Time passed ever so silently that Christmas night.

After the café was closed...

The lamps were turned off and only the Christmas lights illuminated the room. Kazu, who had closed the cash register and changed into her own clothes, was standing in front of the woman in the dress. She was simply standing there idly, without a reason.

clang-dong

“You’re still here,” observed Nagare with Miki on his back. She had tired herself out and fallen asleep from playing in the snow.

“...Yeah.”

“Were you thinking about Kurata?”

Rather than answering, Kazu just looked at Miki sleeping peacefully on Nagare’s back.

He didn’t ask any more questions. He simply walked by Kazu, and just before leaving the room...

“Kaname feels the same, I think,” he said softly, as if talking to himself, and then disappeared into the back room.

As the only source of illumination, the lights adorning the ceiling-tall Christmas tree shone vividly on Kazu’s back as she lingered in the quiet café.

On the day that Kaname had gone to meet her dead husband, it had been seven-year-old Kazu who had served her the coffee. When Nagare, who had been present in the café on that fateful day, had been asked what happened by an acquaintance who knew Kaname, he had quietly said the following:

“When she heard mention of the coffee being cold, she probably imagined that temperature to be cold like tap water. But there are other people who think a coffee is cold when it is below skin temperature. So, when it comes to that rule, no one really knows what ‘when the coffee gets cold’ means. Kaname probably just thought the coffee hadn’t gone cold yet.”

However, no one knows the truth of the matter. Everyone had told the young Kazu, “Kazu, you’re not to blame.”