Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

After being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he had struggled each day with the dread and anxiety of losing his memory. Yet she, his wife, had not seen how he had borne these thoughts and feelings alone. On learning that she had come from the future, the first thing he had wanted to know was whether he had forgotten her, his wife. This realization filled her with both joy and sorrow.

“You’re a nurse, so I can only assume you have already noticed. I have an illness where I forget things. “I imagine that as I keep on losing my memory, you will be able to put aside your own feelings and care for me with the detachment of a nurse, and that you can do that no matter what strange things I say or do—even if I forget who you are. “So I ask you never to forget one thing. You are my wife, and if life becomes too hard for you as my wife, I want you to leave me. “You don’t have to stay by me as a nurse. If I am no good as a husband, then I want you to leave me. All I ask is that you can do what you can as my wife. We are husband and wife after all. Even if I lose my memory, I want to be together as husband and wife. I cannot stand the idea of us staying together only out of sympathy. “This is something I cannot say to your face, so I wrote it in a letter.”

Water flows from high places to low places. That is the nature of gravity. Emotions also seem to act according to gravity. When in the presence of someone with whom you have a bond, and to whom you have entrusted your feelings, it is hard to lie and get away with it. The truth just wants to come flowing out. This is especially the case when you are trying to hide your sadness or vulnerability. It is much easier to conceal sadness from a stranger, or from someone you don’t trust.

So Kumi did have her own dreams. She had wanted to do something too. Hirai’s selfishness had robbed her of that—a dream worth crying over. She thought she should know exactly what she had got in the way of. “What dream?” she asked Kumi. With red teary eyes, Kumi looked up and took a deep breath. “To run the inn together. With you,” she replied.

Her little sister Kumi, who had loved her big sis with all her heart, had, time after time, come to persuade her to return to the family, never giving up.