Before the Coffee Gets Cold

The café opened in 1874. Although it has undergone a few modernizations, such as electricity in place of oil lamps, the interior looks fundamentally unchanged. There is no air conditioning, but the café remains mysteriously cool even at the height of summer, for reasons known only to the staff.

It is now summer, and a young woman, Kumi Hirai, is busy writing a letter. She is café regular Hirai’s younger sister. Kei stands behind Kumi, her eyes sparkling with curiosity about the contents of the letter. The ghost woman is sitting in her regular place, and Fusagi is there with his magazine at the table. Kumi wants Kei to pass on her letter to Hirai and tell her that their parents are no longer angry with her.

After Kumi leaves, Hirai emerges from hiding and confesses that her parents disowned her. Hirai says that Kumi resents her because the family inn was passed down to her after Hirai was disinherited. Kumi has repeatedly asked Hirai to come home. As Hirai leaves the café, she refuses to accept the letter.

Kazu, who comes in with the shopping, notices that Fusagi appears to be staring at her. Fusagi, who visits the café two or three times a week, asks if she is a new waitress, and Kazu begins to question him with a deadpan expression. She asks whether he knows about the café’s time-traveling reputation. He answers affirmatively and says that he will time travel one day. He produces an unaddressed envelope that resembles a letter. He says that the letter is for his wife and that he never managed to give it to her. He wants to return to the day he was due to give her the letter, before his wife vanished and he forgot her name. Kohtake the nurse appears and comments on Fusagi’s presence in the café. Fusagi has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which means his memories disappear. While he remembers he had a wife, “he [doesn’t] remember that Kohtake, standing before him, [is] his wife” (71).

Fusagi leaves without acknowledging Kohtake, and Kazu comforts her. Kohtake is miserable and accepts Kei’s offer of sake. As Kohtake drinks, she recalls her first visit to the café, during a heat wave. She had entered the café with Fusagi after he wanted to take refuge from the heat. Inside the café, Kohtake was impressed by the lack of a sense of time, given the dim lighting, lack of windows, and incorrect clocks. She also noted that the café was cold despite the hot weather and lack of air conditioning. Kei and Nagare told her that it has “been like this since long ago” (77).

Kohtake tells the others how she has witnessed Fusagi’s Alzheimer’s progressing. His memory of her fading, as he calls her by her maiden name, “Kohtake.” She tries to reassure Kei and Kazu that she will always be part of Fusagi’s life as a nurse. The ghost woman closes her book and walks to the bathroom; only Kohtake is fazed by this. She asks the café staff why Fusagi might want to return to the past, especially as he never used to be “the type of person who believed in such tales” (78). However, as his Alzheimer’s progressed, he began to return to the café as though in expectation of the ghost woman leaving her seat. Kazu says he wants to give Kohtake a letter. Kohtake is confused, as Fusagi was never good at reading or writing. As a child, he had to help his family with the seaweed harvest, so he did not have the privilege of focusing on his schoolwork.

He and Kohtake met via a mutual acquaintance when he was 26. They had to have a long-distance relationship for a while, as Kohtake was a nurse and Fusagi was a landscape gardener. While Kohtake’s letters were descriptive and vivid, Fusagi’s were always short, and Kohtake began to think he was not interested in her. She threatened to stop writing, and Fusagi did not reply for two and a half months. He then sent a letter reading “let’s get married” (81). After they married, she learned that he had only gazed at her long letters because he could not read them properly. However, with her last letter, he sensed he’d missed something important. He read it word by word and asked people to supply the missing information.

Kazu interrupts Kohtake’s reverie, announcing that the envelope Fusagi wanted to send her was brown. Kazu speculates that it is a love letter and although she is not in the habit of interfering, she wants to change the dark mood. Kohtake smiles and says she would want to read such a love letter. Kei encourages Kohtake to go back in time and read the letter. Kohtake takes the seat vacated by the ghost woman. Despite all the frustrating rules of time travel, she decides that she still wants to know what the letter contains. Kazu says that she must make a strong image of the past day she wishes to return to, one before Fusagi’s Alzheimer’s when he brought the letter to the café. Kazu reminds her to drink the coffee before it gets cold. As Kohtake drinks, she notes that “it [seems] as if everything around her [is] unraveling” (88).

Kohtake recalls the start of Fusagi’s Alzheimer’s two years ago, when he did not come home for dinner after work and rang the doorbell three times. He waited at the door and said he got lost. He became increasingly forgetful; when traveling, he wanted to visit the same destination repeatedly. Six months ago, he began calling her by her maiden name.

When Kohtake emerges from her trance, it takes her a while to acknowledge that she has gone back in time. While Kei and Kazu are nowhere to be seen, neither is Fusagi. Then the doorbell rings, and Fusagi enters with a black zippered portfolio. He stares at her. He says that he had not expected to see her here and sounds just as he did three years ago. He even has the same sarcasm and evasiveness around emotions. Kohtake realizes the coffee is getting colder and asks him if he has something for her. He is sulky, but she cherishes his expression as evidence of his old self. He glares at her and demands to know if she is from the future. She admits that she is, and he acknowledges that this means she knows about his illness. Kohtake realizes that “the Fusagi standing before her [knows] he [is] ill” (98). She realizes that the letter must contain the news of the disease. She feels embarrassed at getting caught up in the hope that it was a love letter. He brings her the letter, which is addressed to a version of her that does not yet know about his Alzheimer’s disease. Kohtake wants to return to the present before he can ask her how his condition will progress. He implores her to answer whether he will forget her. She realizes how lonely he has been with his disease and that he wants to be assured he had not forgotten her. Kohtake lies to him and says his illness gets better, thinking it will be worth it to relieve his anxiety for even a moment.

Fusagi is gentle and tender with her and hands her the letter. He tells her to drink the coffee before it gets cold so she can return to the present safely. She does as he says out of respect for him. As her consciousness goes, he seems to be thanking her. In the present, Kazu and Kei have given her the letter; Kohtake bursts into tears. In the letter, Fusagi writes that he is losing his memory. He says that if life becomes too hard for her as his wife, she should leave him because he cannot stand the idea of her staying with him purely out of sympathy. Kohtake thinks Fusagi knew she would use the café’s time-traveling power to visit his past self and that the letter was addressed to his wife of the future. She also realizes that he is still devoted to her, as the gardens he looks at in his travel magazines are the ones he has seen with her.

The ghost woman reclaims her seat and Kohtake is eager to go home, feeling confident rather than lost. She urges the café women not to call her by her maiden name.

After Kohtake is gone, Kei goes to get a refill for the ghost woman and tells her they appreciate her presence this summer. Kei feels that the season is just getting started.