Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Language: English
- Genre: Time Travel Science Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The Best Friend
Gohtaro Chiba had been lying to his daughter for twenty-two years.
The novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote, ‘The most difficult thing
in life is to live and not lie.’
People lie for different reasons. Some lies are told in order to present
yourself in a more interesting or more favourable light; others are told to
deceive people. Lies can hurt, but they can also save your skin. Regardless
of why they are told, however, lies most often lead to regret.
Gohtaro’s predicament was of that kind. The lie he had told plagued him.
Muttering things to himself, such as ‘I never wanted to lie about it,’ he was
walking back and forth outside the cafe that offered its customers the
chance to travel back in time.
The cafe was a few minutes’ walk from Jimbocho Station in central
Tokyo. Located on a narrow back street in an area of mostly office
buildings, it displayed a small sign bearing its name, ‘Funiculi Funicula’.
The cafe was at basement level, so without this sign, people would walk by
without noticing it.
Descending the stairs, Gohtaro arrived at a door decorated with
engravings. Still muttering to himself, he shook his head, swung round and
began walking back up the stairs. But then he suddenly stopped with a
thoughtful expression on his face. He went back and forth for a while,
climbing the stairs and descending them.
‘Why not stew over it after you come in?’ said a voice abruptly.
Turning around, startled, Gohtaro saw a petite woman standing there.
Over her white shirt she was wearing a black waistcoat and a sommelier’s
apron. He could tell instantly she was the cafe’s waitress.
‘Ah yes, well . . .’
As Gohtaro began to struggle with his response, the woman slipped past
him and briskly descended the stairs.
CLANG-DONG
The ring of a cowbell hung in the air as she entered the cafe. She hadn’t
exactly twisted his arm, but Gohtaro descended once again. He felt a weird
calmness sweep over him, as if the contents of his heart had been laid bare.
He had been stuck walking back and forth because he had no way of
being certain that this cafe was actually the cafe ‘where you could return to
the past’. He’d come there believing the story, but if the rumour his old
friend had told him was completely made up, he would soon be one very
embarrassed customer.
If travelling back to the past was indeed real, he had heard there were
some annoying conditions that you had to follow. One was that there was
nothing you could do while in the past that would change the present, no
matter how hard you tried.
When Gohtaro first heard that, he wondered, If you can’t change
anything, why would anyone want to go back?
Yet he was now standing at the front door of the cafe thinking, Even so, I
want to go back.
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