Summary: If he could return to the past, what would he try to change?
Notes: Incorporates elements from Toshikazu Kawaguchi's brilliant Before the Coffee Gets Cold.
oOo
Masquerade
The first time that he met Yukinoshita Haruno was by complete random happenstance. He had stepped into the cafe by accident: a grade-schooler given an allowance for the first time in his life, ready to buy a hot chocolate or a parfait that he could treat himself to after a particularly rough day at school. There were only two customers when he'd walked in, and he jumped slightly at the loud clang-dong that sounded as he opened the door.
"Welcome," called the single barista from behind the counter, a girl who looked to be freshly graduated out of high school. She gave him only the most cursory of glances.
He took a couple of hesitant steps forward, suddenly more than a little bit fearful and apprehensive of his surroundings. He'd entered a world that he was yet unfamiliar with; this world of adults and secrets that he'd been warned about.
"You'll understand when you're older," had been his mother's constant refrain whenever he asked too many questions.
"Can I help you?" The bored barista had leaned over the counter to give him a questioning look.
Cheeks flushed red, he cleared his throat and said, "I'd like a strawberry parfait please."
The barista tapped a few keys on the large, clunky cash register in front of her.
"That'll be eight hundred and seventy yen, please."
He handed over a thousand yen note, wincing as he did so. Nobody had told him that cafes were so expensive. He'd already spent nearly half of his allowance on one purchase.
"One thousand yen received. One hundred and thirty yen is your change. Your parfait will be out shortly, thank you."
He took a seat by one of the other customers, a crippled man somewhere in his forties with a cane laid across the table. There was a nearly empty coffee cup sitting next to it.
The crippled man didn't seem to take any note of him as he sat down, for his attention seemed entirely focused on the other customer in the cafe; a young woman wearing a white dress that seemed wholly out of place in the winter who was quietly reading a novel.
He'd almost asked the man what was so interesting about the young woman, but bit his tongue at the last second.
"Don't talk to strangers," his dad's constant refrain rang through his head.
The parfait arrived before long, a massive construction of ice cream, strawberries, cream, custard, and more things he couldn't even name piled high inside a tall glass. It was quite a bit bigger than his head and he began to wonder if perhaps he should've stuck to his original plan of some hot chocolate. He was sure that he wouldn't be able to eat dinner if he finished this monstrosity, which would likely upset his parents.
As he was contemplating this, the barista moved to the crippled man.
"Would you like a refill, sir?"
"What time is it?"
"It's just past five, sir."
"You think she'll go to the bathroom anytime soon?"
The barista shrugged, "Who knows? It's almost entirely random."
"I'll take a refill then. I can stay for a couple more hours."
"Coming right up."
He shoveled a mouthful of strawberries and ice cream into his mouth as he wondered what the adults were talking about.
It was something that he liked to do, eavesdropping on all of the adults talking around him. There was always something interesting that cropped up in their conversations; something that he could ask his Mom about as she tucked him into bed before invariably being told that "he would know when he was older."
"Damn ghost," the crippled man was muttering. He strained his ears to try to make out what he was saying, but could only catch snippets
"...probably don't even have a functioning bladder… never leave the seat… just wasting my time."
The loud clang-dong of the door startled him and he inadvertently choked on a strawberry, coughing and hacking as he struggled to breathe.
"Welcome!" The barista returned with a fresh cup of coffee, which she carefully placed in front of the crippled man before she glanced at him still coughing away, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"You okay, kid? Do I need to call an ambulance?"
"I'm…okay," he managed to wheeze out between gasps.
"Excuse me."
It was the new girl that had walked in. Her voice was not very loud, but it contained a certain melodic lilt to it that instantly captured the attention of every single patron in the cafe.
Or well, almost every single one. The young woman in the dress remained unperturbed, carefully turning a page of her novel.
The girl was young, not quite as young as him, but still at least a decade younger than every other person in the cafe. She looked to be in junior high, but despite that it was evident that she would become beautiful. He couldn't help but stare at her raven shoulder-length hair that seemed to shine despite the rather dimly lit interior of the cafe. Her regal features seemed as though they were sculpted by a master, featuring angular sky-blue eyes, a slim nose, and dainty lips curled into a small smile. She wore the winter uniform of a rather prestigious school he recognized, for he himself had had aspirations of applying there.
"Excuse me," the girl repeated herself, despite the fact that it was clear she had become the center of attention in the tiny cafe. She turned to address the barista directly.
"I heard that this place could take you back in time."
He froze.
What had she just said?
Go back in time?
How awesome was that? That sounded pretty awesome. He'd always wanted to go back to historical periods that he'd read about in his Japanese history textbooks. It'd be just like Inuyasha.
"So are the legends true?"
The girl was talking again.
"Can I travel back in time?"
The barista carefully wiped her hands with a cloth.
"It is…possible," she replied at last.
The girl clapped her hands together excitedly. "Great! How do I do it?"
The crippled man who, up until that point had only been silently watching the scene, finally spoke up.
"It's not that simple, little girl. There are rules to be followed."
A frown darkened the girl's face for a brief moment. In the next it was gone; replaced so quickly with the same small smile she had been wearing when she first walked in that he wasn't sure if he had ever seen anything different cross her face.
"Well of course there are! I'm assuming that, if I do travel back, I can't do anything that would create a time paradox right? Like stopping my parents from meeting or something along those lines."
But the barista shook her head.
"No. No, that's not it."
The girl tilted her head cutely, "Oh, then what are the rules, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Too many to count," grunted the crippled man, returning his attention back to the young woman in the dress. It seemed as though he had lost interest in the conversation.
The barista ignored him.
"Well, the first rule is that no matter what happens in the past, nothing about the present will change."
"Huh? How is that possible?" The girl sounded surprised. He was too. The one rule of time travel that he'd always thought was ironclad was that changing the past always changed the future.
The barista shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. But the rule is the rule. Even if you go to the past, you can't change the present."
"Uhm, excuse me," he spoke up, and both the barista and the girl turned to stare at him.
"I was just wondering… if you can't change the present, what would be the point of going back?"
The barista shrugged again.
"Couldn't tell you that either. Most people don't, when they hear that rule."
"I'll still go," the girl spoke up again, a determined look in her eyes. "Nothing I do will change the present anyways, right? So I can do anything I want?."
The barista shook her head.
"That was just the first rule. There's more rules than that."
"More rules? How many more are there?" The girl asked.
The barista began to tick off her fingers.
"One, two, three…four…five…"
"Okay, okay. I understand, there's a lot of rules. What's the second rule?" The girl cut her off, impatient.
"The second rule is that the only people you can meet in the past are people that have visited this cafe."
"What?" The girl's voice had gotten noticeably louder.
"The second rule is that the only people you can meet in-"
"I heard you the first time! But why is that a rule?!"
The barista shrugged once more. "I didn't make the rules. I just make sure that the customer knows them."
"But that's ridiculous! You're saying that if I go back I'm just going to be stuck in this cafe?"
"Err, no, not quite," the barista replied, looking slightly uncomfortable.
She pointed at a table behind him. "Actually, you'd be stuck in that chair."
He turned around to find the barista pointing straight at the woman in the white dress.
"I'd be stuck…in that woman's chair?" The disbelief in the girl's voice was palpable.
"That's right," the barista nodded. "Move an inch from that seat and your time in the past will come to an end immediately. You'll be returned to the present instantly."
"But that makes no sense," the girl complained.
The barista nodded in agreement. "It doesn't. That's why most people don't go back."
The room was quiet. The girl looked dejected, all of the excitement that she'd had when she entered was gone.
"Most people don't have enough of a reason to go. That's why they don't. It's too much hassle, too much of a risk. Only the people that have lost something, or have some regret, will go."
The rough timbre of the crippled man's voice cut through the silence.
He'd forgotten about him, all caught up as he was with the girl and her insistence on traveling back in time. And that didn't even take into account the fact that apparently, time travel itself really existed.
But it made sense now, why the crippled man was so intensely focused on the woman in the white dress.
"You… you want to go back in time, right?" He asked, hesitantly.
"Of course I do, boy. Why else would I sit here, day after day, hour after hour waiting for that damn ghost to get up?"
"Ghost? What ghost?"
"She's a ghost," the barista said simply. "That woman is a ghost."
He'd heard of ghosts before. Of course he had; ghost stories were everywhere. But ghosts were supposed to be see-through wisps that couldn't interact with the world.
They certainly weren't supposed to be casually reading a novel and sipping coffee in a cafe.
"Sorry but, she doesn't really seem like a ghost," he said hesitantly, standing up and approaching the woman warily.
The woman didn't look up, even when he worked up the courage to stand before her. He gingerly waved his hand in front of the woman's novel and then jumped back in fright, but there was still no reaction.
He gingerly reached out his hand and-.
"Don't!" There was a note of warning in the barista's voice
His finger froze an inch from the woman's shoulder.
"You shouldn't touch her. She might curse you," the barista said rather matter-of-factly, almost as though she were discussing the weather.
"C-curse me?" He stammered out weakly.
"Yeah. She doesn't like it when people try to get her to move."
"B-but I wasn't trying-"
"She doesn't know that, boy," The crippled man cut him off brusquely. "She doesn't interact with the world. You could scream your vocal cords hoarse, and she still wouldn't react. Because she doesn't belong here. She exists in that chair, but she's not a part of our world. Because she's a ghost."
"W-why?" The girl's voice had a slight tremor to it. Barely noticeable, but it was a crack in the confident image that she'd presented thus far.
"Why is she the chair?"
"Ah. That would be because she violated the time limit."
"Time limit? There's a time limit?" The girl seemed to be getting frustrated.
"Indeed," the barista said, unmoved. "Rule number four. You must return to the present before the coffee gets cold."
It seemed as though nothing could perturb the barista. Her tone remained just as bored as she'd looked when he first arrived.
"The what?" He asked.
"The coffee. You travel to the past from the moment the coffee is poured into your cup while sitting in that seat. And you must return to the present before the coffee gets cold. That is all the time that you have."
"And what happens if you forget? What happens if the coffee gets cold?" He asked quietly, almost dreading the answer.
"Then you become the newest occupant of that seat. You become the ghost, forever trapped in a moment of the past."
"And that, princess, is why most people never return to the past." The crippled man's smile revealed yellow, cracked teeth.
oOo
He left the cafe not long afterwards, forcing down as much of the parfait as he could before leaving, even though he had lost what little remained of his appetite. To his surprise, the girl followed after him after a muttered thanks.
The other two occupants of the cafe watched them go without incident. The woman continued to read her novel.
The brisk air of winter in Chiba outside was refreshing, and it felt to him as though all of the anxiety and fear that had been built up in the cafe had slowly melted away. He felt better; he had managed to forget all about everything that had been going on at school, and somehow even the risks of the time travel were melting away, to be replaced only by the romantic notion of returning to the past.
If he could return to the past, what would he try to change?
Given the limitations, there wasn't much he could do. But what if-
"So you also want to travel back in time, eh? What do you want to do?"
He jumped. He'd forgotten that he had a companion.
It seemed as though everything was back to normal with the girl as well. Her small, confident smile was back, and there was no hint that she had ever visited that cafe. It was unnerving to him; how was it possible for someone to wear such a perfect mask?
"Err, no actually," he replied awkwardly. He had never been comfortable with conversation, and it was doubly worse with cute girls that were older than him.
She tilted her head at him. "Really? Then what were you doing at that cafe? It's the time traveling cafe, you know?"
"I didn't actually. I just wanted a parfait."
She stared at him, before her lips curled upwards and she giggled.
"No way! You're telling me that you actually went in there to order that thing? It was twice the size of your head!"
She dissolved into more peals of laughter as she whacked him on the shoulder.
He shifted uncomfortably; nobody had ever gotten this physically close to him outside of his family.
"I didn't realize it would be so big," he protested. "And then when it arrived I didn't want to waste it."
The girl was still chuckling. Her laughter was pretty, and pleasant to listen to, even if the object of her mirth was him. He found that he didn't mind it as much when she was the one laughing at him.
"I'm just teasing you! Don't get too worked up, okay?" Her smile softened, becoming slightly less devious.
"By the way, I never managed to get your name."
"Oh. I'm Hikigaya. Hikigaya Hachiman."
"Hikigaya-kun eh? Well, I'm Haruno. Yukinoshita Haruno, but you can just call me Haruno."
He nearly did a double take. She was asking him to call her by her given name?
"I…I'm not sure I can do that, Yukinoshita-san."
"No?" She pouted. "Even if I ask you to?"
"...I suppose I could call you Haruno-san, if you really want."
She flashed her signature smile once more. "Progress! I'll take it."
And there it was again. That mask. The fakeness mixed in with just enough emotion and charisma to make it seem real.
"So why do you want to go back in time, Haruno-san? What did you want to change?"
Haruno tapped her chin with a long, slender finger.
"Oh, this and that," she replied vaguely.
"That's not an answer," he protested.
Haruno gave a look of surprise, as if she never expected someone else to be so interested in her secrets. Then she grinned mischievously.
"Well, aren't you a little interested in me? Don't tell me you've fallen for my looks already? Sorry, but I've got a boyfriend already."
"I…that's not…" he spluttered.
She was laughing at him again. "You're too easy to tease, Hikigaya-kun. You should try and fix that, or else the girls will have a field day with you!"
"They already do," he muttered under his breath.
"Huh? Sorry, didn't quite catch that."
"It's nothing."
They continued to chat amiably as they headed towards the station, before splitting off on their own separate ways. She had given him a dimpled smile and a wave.
"It was fun talking to you. Maybe we'll meet again sometime."
He'd stammered back some reply and bolted for the train. And that seemed to be the end of that.
But it wasn't until much later, when he was lying in his bed with the lights off, that he realized that Yukinoshita Haruno had never answered his question.
That was why he approached her that day he found her at the library.
Or at least that's what he told himself.
oOo
It was months later that they met again, this time no longer in a quaint out of the way place like the cafe, but rather the bustling local library during exam season. There was hardly a free table to be found; he wasn't entirely sure why he decided that studying at the library was a better choice than in his own home.
Of course, then he remembered that Komachi had invited over some of her friends; it was her first playdate of sorts and he really didn't want to ruin it for her with his rather dreary presence.
And so there he was, standing at the entrance of the collaboration room of the local library, looking around for an open seat when he saw her, dressed casually in a Chiba t-shirt and jeans and looking for all the world as if she'd just stepped off of the cover of a fashion magazine right down to the bored expression on her face as she stared down at a rather thick-looking textbook.
He hadn't thought of Yukinoshita Haruno for a while. The first couple of weeks after their first meeting, against his better judgment, he'd done his best to try and bump into her again. He knew where her school was located and, although it was a bit far, he'd went and visited that area a couple times, hoping to see if he could maybe catch her after school.
No such luck.
He then also went back to the cafe once, although he ultimately decided against entering. Something about that strange atmosphere within the cafe itself, and the prospect of seeing that strange ghost again, stopped him from going inside.
He wasn't entirely sure why he was so interested in the girl who was years older than him. He'd managed to convince himself that she was just a pretty face that wasn't mean to him and left it at that, but that was flimsy reasoning at best. It didn't explain why his heart started beating like a jackrabbit as he approached her.
She didn't notice him at first, and so he stood next to her silently wondering how exactly he was supposed to say hello. Wasn't it a bit creepy to go up to a girl he'd met only once, months ago, to say hello? After all, his classmates still thought he was creepy when he tried greeting them in the mornings, and they'd known him for years.
His dilemma was solved for him when she abruptly leaned back and stretched, letting out a long sigh of relief.
Then she noticed him. And nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Jeez, Hikigaya-kun. What are you doing here?! And why are you just silently standing there? If you're going to say hi then at least say it." She looked a touch annoyed.
He was shocked; he had thought that she would have forgotten all about him.
"Ah, I'm sorry Yuki-, err Haruno-san. I just- I didn't think…"
"Didn't think I'd remember you, huh?" She was smiling that mischievous smile again and her mask had fallen perfectly back into place. "Don't worry, Hikigaya-kun, your Onee-san would never forget about you! You made quite the impression last time, after all."
"I uh-thanks I guess," he muttered awkwardly, running his fingers through his hair in embarrassment.
She was quite close. So close that he could make out the cyan of her eyes.
"Aww, you're blushing! I did tell you I had a boyfriend, right? I'm afraid you're going to have to-"
"It's not like that!" He protested loudly, only to be met with stares from everyone around him. He had forgotten it was the library.
He could feel his cheeks burning.
"Sorry," he muttered to the room as a whole, slumping into a seat at the table and burying his arms over his head.
Poke.
He felt the sharp prod of a finger in his side.
"What?" He asked irritably without looking up.
"Hey hey, your Onee-san was just messing with you! Don't be so glum."
"That's not the issue. I just want you to be your normal self. You don't have to always pretend like you're this perfect version of yourself."
The words just slipped out. But he had been observing her carefully, both on that fateful day at the cafe and in their short interactions today at the library. And there was nothing he was more proud of than his observation skills.
Haruno Yukinoshita was so perfect that it bothered him. From the smile, to the makeup, to the accessories, to her personality. It was all crafted into the perfect image of the perfect girl.
And that perfection sickened him. Nobody could possibly be that perfect.
There was a pause that lasted so long he raised his head from his arms to find her staring at him with a strange expression on her face.
"What?"
"Nothing. You're just full of surprises today, aren't you Hikigaya-kun?"
"How was that surprising? I'm just making an observation."
"Well, you're the first to do so," she responded quietly.
He frowned, and opened his mouth to ask exactly what she meant by that, but she quickly changed the subject.
"So time travel."
"I-what? Time travel? Don't tell me you went back to the cafe?"
"No, no I haven't been back since. But I have been thinking, what if the barista was lying to us all along?"
He gave her a look of disbelief. "Seriously? Why would she do that?"
"Well, maybe she just needs to keep up appearances for the cafe. Maybe there's no time travel at all. I went looking; there's an urban legend article on them and everything, but there's nobody that has actually gone back in time. What if she just makes the rules so convoluted that nobody would actually want to go back in time, but they can still keep saying that they offer time traveling services?"
He frowned, "Doesn't seem too likely. I mean, that crippled man looked like he was going to stay for as long as it would take for him to get that seat."
"Ah, but who knows how long he's been there? What if he gives up just like us?"
He shrugged. "Why does it matter so much to you anyways?"
Haruno looked surprised at his question. "They're talking about time travel. Aren't you the least bit curious about how it works?"
He gave her a confused look. "Didn't you just say that you thought it didn't exist?"
She waved her hand airily. "It's just one of many theories. I just want to know why there's so many rules. And all of them are so arbitrary! It just doesn't feel like time travel, you know?"
"Why don't you go back and ask?"
She gave a laugh, "Well, maybe if I had the time. But I've got entrance exams to study for, and some family business to take care of. I haven't had a chance to go back since that day."
That sounded like an excuse, but he didn't press.
She poked him again. "Aren't you the least bit curious about it?"
"Nope."
She gave a noise of protest, "But why?"
"Because I don't want to travel back in time."
"Really? There's nothing you'd want to do?"
"Ignoring the fact that there's nothing I could do or change, according to the rules, I just don't see much of a point. There's no point in dwelling on the past."
"You think so?" Her eyes were far away.
"Yeah. Better to look forward than backward."