“That was because on that day, when my mother suddenly disappeared...the constant stream of happy days and the happiness of the person most precious to me just came to an end.”

Tears began to stream down her face.

Since the day Kaname had failed to return from the past, Kazu had never made any friends, not even at school. The fear of losing them was too great. She never joined a club or formed part of a clique, not in junior high or high school. Even if she was invited to play, she never went. After school finished, she immediately returned to the café, where she would help out. She had no relationship with anyone and showed no interest in others. Behind this all was her thought: I cannot be happy. All her life, this was what she had been telling herself.

She devoted herself to the café. She did not ask for anything else, she did not hope for anything else. She only lived to pour coffee. That was her way of punishing herself for what happened to her mother.

Tears sprang from Nagare’s eyes. They were the tears of a man who had been by Kazu’s side constantly since that day, watching over her.

“I was the same,” Kiyoshi said. “If I had not broken our date, my wife might not have died. I thought that her death was my fault for not meeting her. I didn’t think I deserved to be happy.”

Kiyoshi had likewise become a slave to his work as a detective. He deliberately chose a hard path for himself. He was imprisoned by the thought: I don’t deserve happiness.

“But I was wrong. I learned this from the people I met through this café.”

He hadn’t only interviewed Kaname, and Hirai, who had gone back to see her dead sister. He had also talked to a woman who had gone back to see the boyfriend she had broken up with, and a woman who had gone back to see her husband whose memory was fading. Then there was the man who went back the previous spring to see his close friend who died twenty-two years before, and the man who went back the previous autumn to see his mother who died in hospital. Then in the winter, a man who knew he was dying came from the past to bring happiness to the lover he left behind.

“I found the words that he left behind particularly touching.”

Kiyoshi brought out his small black notebook and read aloud.

“‘If you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days toward making you happy. In that case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore, you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child.’

“In other words, the way I live my life creates happiness for my wife.”