Tales from the Café by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot).
Title: Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Café.
Author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi (translated by Geoffrey Trousselot).
Genre: Fiction, fantasy, time travel.
Country: Japan.
Language: Japanese.
Publication Date: 2021.
Summary: In a back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee-the chance to travel back in time. With faces both familiar and new, the book follows the story of four patrons who visit to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula's time-traveling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each one must face up to the past to move on with their lives.
My rating: 8/10.
My review:
♥ 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.
♥ Gohtaro was a sincere kind of guy, but money changes people. It put him in a good mood, and he started squandering it. There was a time in his life when he thought that if you had money, you could do anything.
♥ This was the cafe Funiculi Funicula. The cafe that became the subject of an urban legend some ten years ago as being the one where you could go back in time. Urban legends are made up, but it was said that at this cafe, you could really return to the past.
All sorts of tales are told about it, even today, like the one about the woman who went back to see the boyfriend she had split up from, or the sister who returned to see her younger sister who had been killed in a car crash, and the wife who travelled to see her husband who had lost his memory.
In order to go back to the past, however, you had to obey some very frustrating rules.
The first rule: the only people who you can meet while in the past are those who have visited the cafe. If the person you want to meet has never visited the cafe, you can return to the past, but you cannot meet them. In other words, if visitors came from far and wide across Japan, it would turn out to be a wasted journey for practically all of them.
The second rule: there is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present. Hearing this one is a real let-down for most people and normally they leave in disappointment. That is because most customers who want to return to the past are wishing to fix past deeds. Very few customers still want to travel back after they realize they can’t change reality.
The third rule: there is only one seat that allows you to go back in time. But another customer is sitting on it. The only time you can sit there is when the customer goes to the toilet. That customer always goes once a day, but no one can predict when that will be.
The fourth rule: while in the past, you cannot move from your seat. If you do, you will be pulled back to the present by force. That means that while you are in the past, there is no way to leave the cafe.
The fifth rule: your stay in the past begins when the coffee is poured and must end before the coffee gets cold. Moreover, the coffee cannot be poured by just anybody; it must be poured by Kazu Tokita.
Regardless of these frustrating rules, there were customers who heard the legend and came to the cafe asking to go back in time.
Gohtaro was one such person.
♥ "That means that you must drink the coffee before it gets cold. If you don't drink it then..." she continued.
She now had to explain, You will become a ghost and go on sitting in this seat. It was this rule that made returning to the past extremely risky. Compared to the great risk of becoming a ghost, not being able to meet who you wanted to meet, or not being able to change reality, were trifling inconveniences. Yet, if Kazu was careless with her explanation, her words could be misconstrued as just a joke. To ensure she gave these words the gravitas they needed, she paused before she went on.
..From past experience, when a customer had not followed this rule, the damage was severe, and rather than thinking of the customer who became a ghost, Nagare was thinking about the people who get left behind.
♥ Nothing makes you think, Ah, autumn has arrived, more than hearing the chirp-chirp of the suzumushi, the bell cricket.
Such warm feeling toward insects, however, is a unique cultural phenomenon. Beyond Japan and Polynesia, the chirping of insects tends to be described as a complete racket. According to on theory, both the Japanese and Polynesian peoples originally traveled south from Mongolia. The phonetics of Samoan, one Polynesian language, are similar to Japanese. Both have vowels comprising the five tones of "a," "i," "u," "e," and "o," and the words of both languages are expressed sing consonants and vowels, or vowels alone.
Japanese also has onomatopoeic expressions to communicate sounds, and mimetic expressions to convey states that do not produce sounds. But whether it's the onomatopoeic sala-sala sloshing of the flowing river and the byuu-byuu blowing of the wind, or the mimetic shin-shin to describe the quiet settling snow and kan-kan that expresses the beating down of the sun's rays, all these words evoke the mood of the world around us.
These words come alive in the Japanese comics of today, where they appear directly over the illustrations outside the caption bubbles. When a character strikes a dramatic pose, ZUBAAN! is added for emphasis, or DOHN! is added to intensify the crashing of a heavy object. Sulu-sulu adds texture to a slippery surface, and the quality of silence is encapsulated by shin. When these comics use glyphs in this way, it heightens the reality of the moment.
There is a song often sung in school music classes that is full of these expressions.
I can hear the pine cricket chirp!
Chin-chillo chin-chillo chin-chillo-lin
I can hear the bell cricket chirp!
Lin-lin lin-lin lin-lin.
♥ 'This one probably won't be completely to your taste," Kazu said as she placed the book in front of the woman and collected the one left on the table.
She had carried out this action over and over, so often that each movement was done with procedural swiftness. But while she did, her usual cool expression was temporarily replaced by the look of someone about to pass a carefully chosen present to a special someone with the hope that it will bring them joy. When people choose presents hoping to delight the recipient, they have in mind that special person's reaction. And as they do, they often find that time has suddenly got away from them.
♥ The coffee was a variety called mocha, which has a unique blend of pleasant aroma and acid-sour taste. Nagare was obsessed with this taste, and the café only served varieties of mocha. However, for people who normally don't drink coffee, like this man, the strong distinctive flavor of coffee brewed from only mocha or Kilimanjaro beans is often bewildering.
The names of coffee beans mostly derive from where they are grown. In case of mocha, the beans are grown in Yemen and Ethiopia and named after Yemen's city of Mocha, where they were traditionally shipped from. Kilimanjaro beans are grown in Tanzania.
♥ The field trip left him with a vague yearning to be a potter, though he had no idea how to go about becoming one. This aspiration persisted, even long after returning from the field trip.
Then one day, wile watching TV, he saw a studio potter by the name of Yamagishi Katsura. "I've been making pottery for forty years now, and I am finally satisfied with what I am making," the potter said Looking at the pieces that were shown, Yukio was profoundly moved. It wasn't that he was dissatisfied with his ordinary life, it was just that from somewhere in his heart he heard, I want to find work that is worth spending a lifetime on. Yamagishi Katsura was someone Yukio could admire and aspire to become.
♥ Even if you find some way to retain the coffee's heat, it will have no effect and it will get cold anyway.
In addition, in a magazine feature on urban legends, the café was made famous as "the café were you could travel back in time," but technically, you could travel to the future too. However, hardly anyone wants to travel to the future, the reason being that although you can travel forwards to exactly where you want to go, you can never be sure that the person you want to meet will be there. After all, no one knows what will be going on in the future.
Other than utter desperation, there is nor reason even to bother, as the chances of traveling to the future and happening to meet someone in the narrow window of time until the coffee goes cold are slim. The journey will most likely be futile.
♥ A parent's love for their child is bottomless. Their children remain children, no matter how old they grow.
♥ The reality was, however, that none of his wishes would come true. His life had lost all meaning. Not wanting to break Kinuyo's heart was his only grip on life. That single powerful feeling inside him kept him going, despite having been cheated into a life of endless hardship. He had resolved not to die while his mother was still alive.
But back in the present, Kinuyo was no longer there...
.."Mum..."
Kinuyo lifted up her head and looked at Yukio with a kind smile.
"There is no greater suffering than that of a parent who is unable to save their own child who wants to die."
Yukio's lips began to tremble. "...Sorry."
"That's okay."
"Forgive me."
"Well now..." she said, pushing the cup, ever so slightly, to him. "Could you say thank you to Kazu for me?"
He tried to say okay, but no words came out. He swallowed and grabbed the cup with trembling hands. He lifted his head to see, with his now-blurry vision, Kinuyo beaming at him, and also weeping.
My sweet boy...
Her voice was too soft for him to hear, but that's what her lips whispered. As if speaking to a newborn.
For a parent, a child is a child forever. Never ever expecting anything in return, she was simply a mother who wanted her child to be happy, always, to shower him with love.
Yukio had thought that if he died, everything would be over. He thought that it would have no effect on Kinuyo because she was already dead. But he had been wrong. Even after she died, she was still his mother. The feelings did not change.
I would have upset my dead mother...
..His dream was to become a potter with his own studio. He had endured many long years without recognition, held captive by the dream of success. Then he'd been cheated and fallen into a deep despair, unable to see why only his life was so unhappy. But he had been about to cause his mother even greater suffering than he had experienced...
Okay, I'll live... no matter what happens...
I'll live for my mother who never stopped wishing for my happiness, right until the very end...
..The entire café appears to be glowing.
Yukio was beset by a mysterious feeling. The lighting hadn't gotten any brighter. Yet everything now looked fresh to his eyes. His despair at life had metamorphosed into hope. His outlook had changed unrecognizably.
The world hasn't changed, I have...
♥ After putting the cake box in a paper paper bag, he said, "This is for Kinuyo..." and added a takeaway coffee in a smaller paper bag.
"Huh?" Kyoko started. Her mother Kinuyo, who died that year in the last days of summer, had always enjoyed drinking Nagare's coffee-she had gone on drinking it every day while in the hospital too.
"Thank you," Kyoko said softly, tears in her eyes. She was moved by his thoughtful kindness in adding the coffee that Kinuyo had loved, even though she never ordered it.
Bereavement.
It's a part of life, and carrying out acts of mourning allows us not to forget.
♥ When she found out that she was pregnant, she had decided to keep the baby, even if it meant being a single mum. Having made this choice, the news that she was more prone to miscarriage came as an even bigger shock. She couldn't help but feel that it was her fault.
Overwhelmed by guilt, she shared her feelings with her close friends outside work, her parents, and her sister. Although they tried to console and comfort her in her time of sadness, none of them could offer words that dispelled the clouds from her heart.
It was while she was in this state that Kirata came up to her and asked, "Is something wrong?"
She didn't think that he would understand the delicate subject of losing a baby, being a man and all. But she desperately needed a sympathetic ear-it did not matter whose it was. Of the people she had already told, her female friends had cried with her, and her parents had tried to reassure her by telling her it wasn't her fault. She therefore assumed that Kurata, likewise, would empathize and tell her something to console her. So, she spoke honestly of her feelings.
However, after he listened to her story, his first response was to ask how many days she had carried the baby. After she told him ten weeks, or about seventy days, he asked, "Why do you think the child you were carrying was granted life in this world for those seventy days?"
This sparked so much anger in Asami, her lips began to tremble.
"Are you really asking why it was given life?" Her eyes flushed red, she sobbed convulsively. "Are you telling me I'm a bad person?"
She found herself unable to stop herself from snapping at him like this. She had already blamed herself for her child never having been born. But to then be told by someone who had absolutely no business in saying such a thing made her even more distraught.
Kurata seemed to understand what she meant and smiled kindly. "No, you've got it wrong."
"What have I got wrong? The child I was carrying could do nothing! I couldn't even let it be born! It was my fault! I was only able to give that child seventy days of life! Only seventy days!"
With a composed expression, he calmly waited for her to stop crying, and then said, "That child used its seventy-day-long life for your happiness."
He spoke gently, but with unwavering certainty.
"If you remain devastated like this, then your child will have used those seventy days in vain."
His message was not one of empathy. He was pointing out a way Asami could change the way she thought about the grief that she was expecting.
"But if you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days toward making you happy. In tat case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore, you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child."
On hearing these words, Asami gasped. The deep despair that had been weighing on her heart began to shift, and everything before her appeared a little brighter.
By trying to be happy, I can give meaning to this child's life.
That was the clear answer.
She was unable to hold back tears. She looked up to the heavens and wailed out as she sobbed. Her tears were less from sadness than from joy at seeing a way out from the bottomless pit and experiencing something like happiness again.
That was the moment that Kurata became more than just a very positive guy.
♥ If the future could be changed, then first he would go from now to the future, and even if he did not meet Asami that time, upon returning, he would just need to work harder so they would meet next time.
But that was not the case.
The future reality of the time you traveled to could not be changed.
This was not a new rule. It was just an extension of the rule that no matter how hard you tried while in the past you couldn't change the present. Kurata, who was intending to travel to the future, was the only person ever to have considered it.
♥ Time passed every so silently that Christmas night.
♥ On the day that Kaname had gone to meet her dead husband, it had been seven-year-old Kazu who had served her the coffee. When Nagare, who had been present in the café on that fateful day, had been asked what happened by an acquaintance who knew Kaname, he had quietly said the following:
"When she heard mention of the coffee being cold, she probably imagined that temperature to be cold like tap water. But there are other people who think a coffee is cold when it is below skin temperature. So, when it comes to that rule, no one really knows what 'when the coffee gets cold' means. Kamame probably just thought the coffee hadn't gone cold yet."
However, no one knows the truth of the matter. Everyone had told the young Kazu, "Kazu, you're not to blame."
But in her heart, she felt...
I'm the one who poured Mum the coffee...
She could never erase tat fact.
I'm the one who killed Mum...
The experience took away Kazu's innocence and robbed her of her smile. She began roaming around aimlessly like a sleepwalker both day and night. Losing the ability to concentrate, she walked in the middle of the road and nearly got hit by a car. Once she was discovered in a river in the middle of winter. However, she never had a conscious death wish. It was subconscious. Kazu continually blamed herself in her subconscious.
One day, three years after the event, she was standing at a railway crossing. Her expression was not of a girl who wished to die. She gazed at the bleating alert system with a cool, unreadable expression as it rang out.
The sinking evening sun gave the town an orange hue. Behind Kazu, also waiting for the crossing gate to open, were a mother and her child coming back from shopping and a group of students on their way home. From the crowd came a voice.
"Mummy, I'm sorry," said a child. It was just a casual good-natured conversation between mother and child.
Kazu stood for a moment looking at the two of them. Then mumbling, "Mum," she started walking toward the crossing gate as if it was pulling her toward it.
Just then...
"Do you mind taking me with you?"
The speaker of those words had quietly come up beside her. She was Kinuyo, the teacher at the neighborhood art school. By chance she had also been at the café on the day Kaname returned to the past. It had pained her to see Kazu's smiling face disappear after that fateful day, and she had constantly been at Kazu's side, watching out for her.
But up until that day, no matter what she tried saying to her, she couldn't seem to rescue her heart. When she said, "Take me with you," she meant that she wanted to stick by this girl who suffered and was so anguished.
The young Kazu was suffering because she felt that her mother's death was her fault. Kinuyo thought that if Kazu couldn't escape from these feelings, they would both go to the place where Kamame was, so that they could bow their heads together.
But Kazu's reaction to those words was unlike anything she expected. Tears flowed from her eyes for the first time since Kaname's death and she wailed loudly. Kinuyo didn't know what had permeated Kazu's heart. She only knew that she had been suffering alone up until then, and that she didn't want to die.
Standing there together next to the tracks as the trains roared and whooshed past for what seemed like forever, Kinuyo hugged Kazu tightly and stroked her head until she stopped crying.
As time passed, the two were swallowed up by the evening darkness.
♥ Dong... Dong...
The clock in the center on the wall in the café chimed to announce it was two o'clock in the morning.
In the middle of the night, everything was silent. As the ceiling fan rotated slowly, Kaname was as usual quietly reading the novel that Kazu had provided.
Resembling a still-life object that had been blended into a painting of the café, Kazu was completely motionless-except for a single teardrop, running down her cheek.
♥ "...It was rude of me, I know, but I decided to look into the people who have returned to the past here."
Kiyoshi bowed his head at Nagare, still paused in the entrance to the kitchen, and Kazu, who was standing behind the counter.
"I found out from my investigation-" Kiyoshi brought out a small black notebook before continuing "-that over the last thirty years, forty-one people have sat in that chair and traveled back in time. They each had their own reasons for doing so, to meet a lover, a husband, a daughter, and so forth, but of those forty-one people, four returned to the past to meet someone who had died.
"There were two last year, one seven years ago, and then there was your mother twenty-two years ago... four people. ..I was very curious. I wondered why there were four people who, despite knowing the rule that you cannot change the present no matter how hard you try, were able to go and meet people who had died." Kiyoshi turned the page of his notebook.
"There was one woman who went back to meet her younger sister, who had died in a road accident. Her name was Yaeko Hirai."
..Hirai's family ran an old travelers' inn in Sendai, and as the eldest child had had been meant to take over. But she didn't want to, and when she was eighteen, she left to make her own life. Her parents disinherited her. Only her sister stayed in contact. Year after year, she had visited Hirai, trying to persuade her to return home. Then, tragically, she had died in a road accident on the way home from one such visit.
Hirai traveled to the past to meet her sister.
"After visiting her sister in the past, she immediately returned to the inn and took it over. I wanted to hear her side of the story, so I went to Sendai."
Seven years had passed. Hirai was now thriving as the manager of the inn.
"I asked her, 'Why did you go and meet your dead sister, even though you knew that the present would not change?' She laughed at my rude and nosy question, and then said this:
"'If I had led a sad life as a result of my sister's death, then it would have been as if her death had caused it. So, I thought I mustn't allow that to happen. I swore to myself that I would make sure that I was happy. My joy would be the legacy of my sister's life.
"On hearing this it occurred to me what I had been missing. I had always thought that because my wife had died, I, on my own, should never be happy."
..He thought that by breaking his promise, he had caused Kimiko's death. Even if his rational brain accepted another version of reality, his heart never would. Finally, he had succumbed to thinking, With Kimiko's death on my conscience, what right do I have to happiness?
But after interviewing the people who had returned to the past at the café, he decided that it was time to change.
♥ Over the last year, Kiyoshi had become well versed in the rules for returning to the past. One of the things he had learned was that only the women of the Tokita family were able to pour the coffee for returning to the past.
..The pourer of the coffee not only had to be a woman of the Tokita family, but she also had to be at least seven years of age.
♥ "Miki," he began, "from now on, you will take Kazu's place in serving coffee to the customers who sit in this chair. Are you willing to do this?"
He spoke with a reverent tone.
Finally, this day had arrived.
His innocent little girl was going to take on a special role. Judging by his serious expression, he felt like a father giving away the bride at a wedding. Miki, however, was taking no notice of what he might be thinking. She was putting all her concentration in not letting the cup and kettle on the tray fall. "Uh? What?" she replied impatiently. She neither understood Nagare's sentiment, nor grasped the importance of the task at hand.
Observing that she was struggling with all her might to do the job of pouring the coffee, Nagare realized that she was still a child-a thought that made him happy.
♥ Fearing that he was at breaking point, he had decided to admit to Kimiko that he wanted to quit being a detective. Finding it difficult to bring up the subject at home, he had invited her to the café on the pretext of it being her birthday, and was planning to tell her then. But on the chosen date, work came up and he thought, I'll just tell her another day. Kiyoshi chose the work that he claimed to hate over going to the café. As a result, Kimiko got caught up in the incident that took her life.
♥ "Also, it is currently no loner possible to return to the past under my pouring," she replied.
That's the same expression that Kazu used.
"It is not possible to return to the past when you pour the coffee? Why is that?" Kiyoshi asked. It was like the detective in him had been switched on. In his mind, he was smiling at his inability to refrain from asking questions whenever he was the slightest bit unclear on anything.
In reply, Kaname placed her hand on her stomach. "Because of my baby." She smiled happily.
"Really? What is that?"
"When a pourer becomes pregnant with a girl, the pourer's power is transferred to the baby."
♥ Until then, Kiyoshi had never given her a present. Partly this was because he was always too busy to find the time, but it was also because Kimiko had been mildly traumatized by birthdays in the past.
Her birthday was on the first of April: April Fool's Day. When she was a child, friends would often give her a present, say Happy birthday, then immediately say, April fool, and take the present away. They probably didn't mean to be nasty, but Kimiko found being called an April fool right after the elation of thinking she was about to receive a present very upsetting. Kiyoshi had witnessed her in such a state back in high school.
It was the first of April, the cherry blossoms were in bloom and school was on spring break. Her class friends had met to wish Kimiko happy birthday. Upon giving her a present, they shouted, April fool! Of course, her friends didn't do it to be mean, and they immediately handed the present back to her after the joke.
Kimiko said, Thank you, with a smile, but for a moment Kiyoshi had glimpsed the sadness that she was attempting to hide. If he hadn't been so fond of her, he probably would not have noticed. Even after they were going steady, Kimiko made other arrangements and avoided being in a position where she might receive a birthday present. Despite that, Kiyoshi wanted to wish her happy birthday properly, on her last one at least, and decided to travel back in time to do it.
Kimiko looked at the necklace.
"Happy birthday," said Kiyoshi softly.
♥ I feel terrible that I gave that impression...
We can never truly see into the hearts of others. When people get lost in their own worries, they can be blind to the feelings of those most important to them.
♥ "Ah!" said Miki. "Look!"
She crouched down and picked something up from the floor. Clenched between her thumb and index finger was a single cherry-blossom petal. It must have been carried in on someone's head or shoulder.
Glimpsing a single flower petal is another way of noticing spring.
♥ "Ever since that day when Mum never returned from her past..." Kazu began, in a calm voice. "I was always afraid of being happy."
She spoke as if she was telling this to someone other than those around her. In fact, it seemed as though she was addressing the café itself.
"That was because on that day, when my mother suddenly disappeared... the constant stream of happy days and the happiness of the person most precious to me just came to an end."
Tears began to stream down her face.
Since the day Kaname had failed to return from the past, Kazu had never made any friends, not even at school. The fear of losing them was too great. She never joined a club or formed part of a clique, not in junior high or high school. Even if she was invited to play, she never went. After school finished, she immediately returned to the café, where she would help out. She had no relationship with anyone and showed no interest in others. Behind this all was her thought: I cannot be happy. All her life, this was what she had been telling herself.
She devoted herself to the café. She did not ask for anything else, she did not hope for anything else. She only lived to pour coffee. That was her way of punishing herself for what happened to her mother.
Tears sprang from Nagare's eyes. They were the tears of a man who had been by Kazu's side constantly since that day, watching over her.
"I was the same," Kiyoshi said. "If I had not broken our date, my wife might not have died. I thought that her death was my fault for not meeting her. I didn't think I deserved to be happy."
Kiyoshi had likewise become a slave to his work as a detective. He deliberately chose a hard path for a himself. He was imprisoned by the thought: I don't deserve happiness.
"But I was wrong. I learned this from the people I met through the café."
He hadn't only interviewed Kaname, and Hirai, who had gone back to see her dead sister. He had also talked to a woman who had gone back to see the boyfriend she had broken up with, and a woman who had gone back to see her husband whose memory was fading. Then there was the man who went back the previous spring to see his close friend who died twenty-two years before, and the man who went back the previous autumn to see his mother who died in hospital. Then in the winter, a man who knew he was dying came from the past to bring happiness to the lover he left behind.
"I found the words that he left behind particularly touching."
Kiyoshi brought out his small black notebook and read aloud.
"'If you try to find happiness after this, then this child will have put those seventy days toward making you happy. In that case, its life has meaning. You are the one who is able to create meaning for why that child was granted life. Therefore, you absolutely must try to be happy. The one person who would want that for you the most is that child.'
"In other words, the way I live my life creates happiness for my wife."
Kiyoshi had read those words over and over so may times, just that one page in his notebook was creased and stained.
These words also seemed to strike a chord with Kazu-a new stream of tears began to flow.
Kiyoshi put the notebook away in his jacket pocket and pulled down his hunting cap to fit more snugly on his head. "I do not think it is at all possible that your mother didn't return so that you would be miserable. So, have your baby... and..."
He took a deep breath and turned to Kazu, who was looking at Kaname.
"You're allowed to be happy," he added.
♥ A long winter was about to end.
The interior had remained unchanged since that day. "Mum..."
Hanging from the ceiling, the wooden fan rotated slowly. "I'm..."
The three large clocks on the wall each showed different times. The shaded lamps tinted the interior with a sepia hue.
Kazu drew in a deep breath in this café where time seemed to stand still and placed her hand on her stomach.
"I am going to be happy," she exclaimed.
As she said this, Kaname, while still looking down at her novel, smiled warmly. It was the same smile that Kaname had given Kazu when she was alive.
"Mum?" said Kazu, and at that moment Kaname's body, like vapor rising from freshly poured coffee, rose upward.
The vapor hung in the air for a moment and then simply vanished into the ceiling.
Kazu slowly closed her eyes.
..Seasons flow in a cycle.
Life too, passes through difficult winters. But after any winter, spring will follow. Here, one spring had arrived.
Kazu's spring had just begun.