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

by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

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

photo: it was Yukari Tokita. Yukari owned the café. Nagare, who worked there, was her son, and Kazu’s mother, Kaname Tokita, was her younger sister. Yukari was a free-spirited woman who spontaneously did whatever she wanted. She had the complete opposite personality to Nagare, whose staidness and strong sense of responsibility made him put others first. Two months ago, Yukari had gone to America with an American boy who had visited the café. They had gone in search of the boy’s father, who had vanished.

The details, however, were not so simple. Nagare coming on his own would not have solved every problem. 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. But no coffee poured by Nagare could send visitors to the past. Time travel was only possible when the coffee was poured by a female member of the Tokita bloodline who was at least seven years of age. Currently, there were four such people: Yukari, Kazu, Nagare’s daughter, Miki, who he’d left in Tokyo, and Kazu’s daughter, Sachi. However, when a woman of the Tokita family has a girl, she passes down to her daughter and hence loses the power to pour the coffee. Yukari had gone off to America, Kazu had lost her power to Sachi, and Nagare’s daughter, Miki, had stayed in Tokyo so she would be there when her mother visited from the past. This meant that only Sachi was available to pour the coffee at the Hakodate café.

“This café was established in the late nineteenth century. Even back then, you could travel to the past. But no one knows why you can travel to the past, nor does anyone know the reason for all these annoying rules.”

“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.”

“Well, I read that when you give a gift to someone who is striving to achieve their dreams, you have to give them the most cherished thing you have. Some days, that person who is chasing their dreams will not be able to find the strength to keep going. It will be bitter and painful, and they will have to weigh up their dreams and reality to make a choice. When that happens, the person gifted with the most precious thing will be able to fight on a little more. It apparently helps them to feel they are not alone. So, I’m giving you this book because I want you to fight for your dream.”

Something I strongly believe is that we mustn’t allow the death of a person to be the cause of unhappiness. The reason for that is simple: if we let everyone who dies be a cause for unhappiness, that would mean people are being born to become unhappy. But the opposite in fact is true. People are always born for the sake of happiness.