Before Your Memory Fades (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #3)

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

“Anyway, you don’t have much time left, so just have a good look at our all-grown-up, fit-and-well daughter and return to your present,” he gently stated and hung up. From

Your journey begins when the coffee is poured and must end before the coffee gets cold.

Pressed to answer, Nanako tilted her head. “Oh, I don’t know,” she stated softly. “Well, maybe if I knew for certain that he loved me, I would. But if I wasn’t sure how he felt, I probably wouldn’t.”

The postcard was from Koku Shintani, her father and Kazu’s husband, who was a world-renowned photographer.

WE FINALLY KNOW KAZU'S HUSBAND.

“Well, surviving alone is much the same as dying alone, don’t you think?”

Nanako and Saki looked at each other with the same thought: Perhaps that girl actually understands those difficult books she reads!

run by Nagare, to ask him if he could somehow help to keep the café open. After

Hakodate and manage the café. In a nutshell, that was the background to Nagare coming to Hakodate and leaving his daughter, Miki, alone at the Tokyo café.

Like Funiculi Funicula, Café Donna Donna had a seat that allowed customers to slip through time. The chair in question was located near the café’s entrance and was occupied by the old gentleman in black.

“Even if you hate your present circumstances and you go back to the past to try your hardest to remedy the situation, you won’t fix your debt problem, you’ll still be jobless, he’ll still be your ex-boyfriend or you still will have been swindled. Nothing will change.”

“No one has any idea who decided it or when the rule was decided.”

No matter how hard one tries while back in the past, one cannot change the present.

...I’d be better off dead than to live life alone.

All Hirai was able to do was thank her sister and promise to reconcile with her parents. Hirai had chosen to go back in time with a full understanding of the rules,

When her mother came from the past to meet her, Miki had told her, “Thank you for having me.”

Their new parenting life was a series of surprises, and they felt unequipped to manage. It brought up feelings other than love and adoration, making them feel guilty. In their heads, they believed they had to love this child in their care properly, but at times it just felt like a chore.

Looking after our own baby is difficult enough! Why do we have to look after someone else’s child?

From her cousins’ perspective, Yayoi had just suddenly appeared as an intruder who was stealing their parents’ affection. To make matters worse, the more equally their parents treated her, the more retaliatory her cousins became.

But there was nowhere else for her to go. There was no one she could talk to, and it chipped away at her heart.

Isolation. The wound in Yayoi’s heart, chiseled by how she felt during her childhood, warped her personality significantly. To her, the words to live life alone were tied to the disparaging notion that nobody needed her. In other words... She couldn’t see the point of living.

“Normally when a customer learns of the possibility of becoming a ghost, they are visibly shocked or find themselves in two minds about returning to the past. It’s not like the other rules, which don’t pose that kind of deterrent to the merits of going to the past.”

There is nothing left for me in this life.

If I could go back to the past, if I could go back and meet my parents... She looked at her happily smiling parents in the photo. Your child became this unhappy all because of you, because you both died! She stifled the urge to scream out her anger. My life is over. There’s no going back now.

“My parents disappeared from my life when I was four, and after that, as I was handed around between my relatives, I never felt there was a place for me.”

“You should be proud of yourself for sticking with it and never giving up. You were impressive in your persistence. It didn’t happen by magic! Remember when I called out to you on that day? Your life didn’t suddenly transform by itself, did it? None of your problems suddenly fixed themselves, did they? But you looked to the future and persevered. You have what you have today because you never gave up telling yourself that you had to be happy.”

My name, given to me by my mother. For what seemed like an extended period of silence but was probably just a split second, Yayoi locked eyes with Yukari.

Miyuki came to be sitting there. She had no clue where she was. Although the café looked the same, she was confused as to why the woman who had been standing in front of her was gone and replaced by a bunch of people she had never seen before.

“It’s not a dream, Mom. Here in our present, it is the twenty-seventh of August, 2030, at eight thirty—” Yayoi looked at the clock that had featured in the photo “—thirty-one.”

“You see? You have to live...” Although I hated you, although I have been despising you for leaving me by my lonesome, now I’m wishing for your happiness.

I will remember this comforting warmth for the rest of my life. She had been told not to cry anymore, but the tears didn’t stop streaming from Yayoi’s eyes. This time together could never be re-created and would only last so long. “The coffee will get cold.”

“Come on, think about it...” Kazu began walking slowing to the café entrance. “If she really hated her parents, don’t you think she would have torn it up and thrown it away by now?”

“Indecisiveness is self-destructive,” warned Sachi to the man in sunglasses, who was indecisive like Hamlet. Having read the entire works of Shakespeare, child prodigy Sachi was probably the only one among them who had some inkling that One Hundred Questions was more than a simple book for light entertainment.

“Five years ago, PORON DORON finally clinched a regular slot on late-night TV and Todoroki proposed to Setsuko. We became regulars on that show, but we were still poor, so they forewent the wedding ceremony. I can still remember how happy Setsuko was at the time. But...”

Burnout syndrome is considered by some to be a type of depression. But while depression begins with stress or fatigue or a large shock like an accident or a loss, burnout syndrome originates with the thought that all of one’s efforts are in vain. It strikes right at a time when life is not turning out as expected, despite devotedly pouring one’s soul into a certain activity, usually one’s work.

You can reverse time and meet the person you most dearly love, but you cannot reverse death.

“I guess this is what happens when you give the gods a good bribe,” Setsuko said with a laugh. “Looks like we’ll be together forever, right?” Yes, we will be together forever...

In the end, I got to see her in such a happy state, I have no regrets.

“Stop pretending I never died.” Todoroki gulped. “If I didn’t die, you wouldn’t have to be coming back to the past to tell me this news.”

“Even though I die, as long as you don’t forget me, I’ll always be in your heart. The reason you kept working hard even after I died was that I was still in your heart, right?” In my heart?

“I’ll accept your proposal tomorrow. I’ve been avoiding it, knowing that I’ll be leaving you alone by dying early. But now I’ve said everything I wanted to say.”

“You work to make me happy until you die, you understand?” “Okay, I will,” he replied and drank the coffee in a single swig.

“Oh, I don’t care. If I caught such a cute germ, it might cure my ugliness.”

“Please pass on our regards to Yukari when she returns,” they said and left the café.

It actually worked; the friend was tracked down living in Hiroshima, and the two were able to reunite after ten-something years.

Reiko’s sister, Yukika, had been told four months ago she had not long to live, and then she died.

It wasn’t the days that were mixed up. Reiko’s sister, Yukika, had died three months ago. Reiko had started to endlessly wait for her sister, who would never walk through the café’s door again.

“I get the sense that Reiko is hounded by the anxiety of death. Like she is struggling with not knowing when or understanding why people die. On top of that, with her strong sense of responsibility, Reiko has a strong sense of mission as the elder sister to raise you as a mother and father would.”

I can’t let Yukika see my face like this. I should be living with a smile as Yukika wishes. I can’t be crying. I’ll need to be smiling as if everything is fine if the lights come on now!

On 28th October at 6:47 p.m., a young woman by the name of Yukika Nunokawa will appear. Make sure that her sister Reiko is there waiting. Ask Dr. Muraoka for details. Yukari. (28th July)

If I was putting Reiko’s interests first, I’m sure it would be best to do as you say... But if I told Reiko I’m sick and will probably die, I will have to spend my last days watching her in despair. I