Chapter 3: When Grandpa Was a Bachelor
1
"And that's what happened!"
That evening over dinner, Kouya chuckled as he recounted the day's events at school to his grandfather.
"Oho. It seems innkeeping chores have surprisingly versatile applications," Torame Jurou said, his expression completely serious. "In that case, perhaps I should have you spruce up our shop's arrangements as well."
"Truth be told, I haven't touched the shop's furnishings in decades. I can provide a reasonable budget, so why not use your excellent taste to make the place look lovely, Kiyoko-san?"
Grandpa made the request without a hint of malice. And just like that, Kiyoko and the others found themselves tasked with a mini-renovation of Cafe Cassandra.
☆
"It's beautiful..."
"Huh...?"
At Kouya's sudden words, Kiyoko's heart skipped a beat, and she froze in place.
It was Saturday morning inside Cafe Cassandra. Scanning the shop, Kouya clenched his fist and spoke with absolute conviction.
"Those flowers are seriously beautiful!"
"Flowers...?"
Kouya's gaze had sailed right past Kiyoko, landing squarely on the roses arranged on the table behind her.
They were the flowers Kiyoko had hastily arranged after Jurou had asked her to handle the shop's renovations.
—What do you mean, "beautiful"? My heart skipped a beat... I'm such an idiot.
Heaving a small, stiff smile, Kiyoko forced herself to feign composure while her cheek twitched.
"I tried referencing a local botanical cafe back home, but I merely mimicked what I saw. It is nothing too special."
"That's Kiyoko-san for you!"
"Flattery will get you nowhere. Still, I wonder why all the flowers in this shop used to be artificial? Jurou-ojisama is usually so particular about these things."
Looking around the retro-classic interior, she tilted her head in puzzlement.
It was true. Until today, when Kiyoko had undertaken her mini-renovation of Cafe Cassandra's interior, every single plant in the shop had been fake.
"Beats me. He runs this place solo, so he probably just didn't have the time to deal with real flowers, right?"
Just as Kouya casually tossed out his theory, the master in question called out to him.
"Kouya."
Turning around, they saw Cafe Cassandra's manager, Torame Jurou, walking toward them with a wooden bucket in hand. Inside the bucket were incense sticks and prayer beads. It was, quite obviously, his grave-visiting kit.
"I'm off to visit Nagiko-san. I'm sorry, but I'll leave the shop in your hands for a while."
With a light pat on Kouya's shoulder, Jurou left the cafe.
In other words, while his grandfather went to visit the grave of his late grandmother, Nagiko, Kouya and Kiyoko were put in charge of running the cafe for the Saturday shift.
Naturally, Kouya had no memory of the grandmother who had passed away when his own father was still a young child.
Torame Jurou, the manager of Cafe Cassandra, had a grandson in high school but was approaching eighty years old himself. The significant age gap between grandfather and grandson was simply because Jurou had married quite late in life.
Though he looked young for his age, Jurou was nearing his eightieth birthday, and lately, he had begun to bring up the topic of his own retirement.
"No, but seriously, just 'cause we're family doesn't mean it's okay to pay us Tokyo's bare minimum wage, right?"
Order slip in hand, Kouya vented his frustrations.
"That minimum wage is still considerably higher than Kyoto's, so isn't it perfectly fine?"
Kiyoko shrugged as she placed a freshly made parfait and an iced coffee onto her serving tray. Though she was working for the exact same rate at Cassandra as the currently exploding Kouya, she didn't seem to have any complaints.
For a girl who had been worked to the bone like an unpaid employee back at her family's financially struggling inn, doing a few chores for relatives and actually getting paid for it was likely a luxurious perk.
Kouya scowled, arguing back at her. "Prices in Tokyo and Kyoto are totally different, man."
"In that case, I shall subtly hint to Jurou-ojisama about a small bonus for us later. You have no complaints now, yes? —Here, Kouya-kun, please take these to the ladies by the window."
Kiyoko shoved the tray carrying the parfait and iced coffee into Kouya's hands.
His time to complain about his wages was forcibly terminated without room for debate. Reluctantly taking the customers' orders, Kouya trudged over to the window seats.
"Thank you for waiting."
The customers were two madames, both around sixty years old. They were regulars he saw quite often. The plump madame took the parfait, while the slender madame accepted the iced coffee.
"Oh my. Kouya-kun, perfect timing!"
Just as he delivered the items and tried to slip away, the plump madame called out to him. Since he had helped out at the shop a few times in the past, it seemed they had memorized his face and name.
"Huh?"
As Kouya blinked in surprise, the plump madame thrust a travel magazine right into his face.
"We're currently planning a trip to Kyoto, but we simply can't agree on which inn to choose!"
"Uh, well, you can't exactly take a majority vote with just two people..."
"Exactly! That's exactly it! So, we want you to decide for us. We've already agreed there will be no hard feelings regardless of which one you pick."
"Wait, I'm allowed to decide that?"
"Yes, yes, it's fine. It leaves less bad blood when a third party makes these kinds of decisions."
The slender madame tapped the feature page of the travel magazine.
"This one here is Suimeisou, and this one is Hisagiya. Which do you think is better?"
"............"
He recognized the inn on the right side of the page. It was the inn run by the family who had taken him in for a year when he was six years old.
—That's Kiyoko-san's family home...
Torame Kouya, however, was a true child of Asakusa, bound by humanity and duty. In this moment, he had to fulfill the debt of gratitude he owed them.
"Suimeisou. Suimeisou is definitely the better choice!" Kouya declared without a second's hesitation.
"............"
The two madames exchanged a glance.
"Well, if Kouya-kun recommends it that highly, shall we go with Suimeisou?"
"I suppose so. But isn't Suimeisou currently in the middle of a succession dispute?"
"A succession dispute?" Kouya frowned at their conversation.
"That's right," the plump madame eagerly informed him. "Word is they have two candidates for the next landlady! A stepchild and a biological child. From a customer's perspective, I'd say whoever is more capable should inherit it, regardless of bloodline, but..."
"I'm sure family circumstances don't necessarily affect their hospitality..." Kouya quickly tried to run interference.
Come to think of it, Kiyoko from the Shizuishi family did have a younger sister. A half-sister born from her mother's second marriage, if he recalled correctly. Because the girl had been so young and mostly kept at daycare back when Kouya lived in Kyoto, he didn't have many memories of playing with her. She had been about three years old then, so she had to be decently grown by now.
Since Kiyoko was the current landlady's stepchild, she didn't possess the founding family's bloodline. It was undoubtedly a complicated situation.
"Speaking of which, Kouya-kun, since you're helping out at the shop, does that mean you'll be inheriting it? The Master is getting up there in years, after all."
"Uh, no..."
Suddenly having the conversation thrust onto his own future by the slender madame, Kouya was left floundering.
—Honestly, until this very moment, he had never once considered inheriting Cassandra.
Since Jurou was elderly, the future of the cafe was something that would inevitably need to be addressed. But for Kouya, a guy who hadn't even given serious thought to his own career path, let alone inheriting a cafe, this felt like a massive bolt from the blue.
Yet, just as the regulars said, if he didn't inherit it, Cassandra would end right here.
The slender madame let out a highly exaggerated sigh, throwing a pointed look at Kouya.
"If this place closes down, there are going to be an awful lot of customers with nowhere else to go. Except for that half-year right after his wife passed away, the Master has kept this cafe running non-stop. If it were to suddenly shut its doors..."
"Wait, Grandpa closed the shop after Grandma died?"
Catching onto a completely different part of her statement, Kouya accidentally fired a question back. The madames nodded.
"Oh yes. His wife passed away a mere three years after they married. I imagine it took quite a toll on the Master."
"But I heard the Master married her fully knowing she was harboring an illness."
"Nagiko-san was her name, wasn't it...? She was a beautiful woman."
"Yes, indeed. I remember thinking back then how true the saying 'the beautiful die young' really is."
"Huh..."
Hearing stories about a grandmother he didn't even know from regulars nearing their sixties was a genuine shock. To Kouya, the grandmother who had died before he was even born was nothing more than a presence in the photograph sitting before the family altar.
She had passed away before his father was old enough to remember her, so Kouya had never heard stories about her from his dad, and his grandfather Jurou rarely spoke of his late spouse.
"That salon apron looks wonderful on you, Kouya-kun. Just like the Master in his younger days."
The slender madame cast a quick glance at Kouya's cafe attire and heaped on the praise. The plump madame nodded with deliberate emphasis.
"The Master's son certainly won't inherit the shop, so you'll just have to do it, Kouya-kun... Look at us, and the elderly folks in the neighborhood—without this place, we wouldn't have anywhere to chat. We'd probably go senile and shorten our lifespans."
They were implicitly pressuring him to take over the shop. Faced with this completely unexpected turn of events, Kouya backed away slightly.
"Uh, well... I'll think about the shop."
Giving a vague, non-committal answer before they could extract a real promise from him, the grandson of Cafe Cassandra's manager hastily beat a retreat from the customers' table.
2
"I'm home. The weather was lovely today. Did anything unusual happen?"
It was already evening by the time his grandfather, Jurou, returned to Cassandra.
"Nothing unusual, but those two ladies who are always together dropped by."
"Ah, Madame Nishizono and Madame Shiikawa, I assume."
"Probably them."
Kouya nodded, and after a moment's hesitation, allowed his curiosity to get the better of him and asked his grandfather what had been on his mind.
"Those ladies were saying that Grandma passed away just three years after you got married. Is that true?"
Prompted by his grandson, Jurou's eyes widened slightly. He tilted his head as he pulled up the old memories.
"...Yes, it was exactly three years, I believe. My, doctors' prognoses really do tend to be accurate."
"Oh, so you really did know she was sick when you married her."
"Well, yes. Or rather, her confession about her life expectancy was what triggered our marriage in the first place."
"Whoa..."
"Nagiko-san was the daughter of the local florist who used to supply our shop," Torame Jurou said, his eyes narrowing as he spoke with fond nostalgia.
This was a tale from far in the past, long before Kouya's father was even born.
"Ever since the very first time she delivered flowers here, she'd bring the arrangements she'd chosen for the shop every Monday, stay for some idle chatter, and go home. We kept up that dynamic for over ten years."
"That just sounds like a regular business acquaintance."
"At the end of the month, Nagiko-san would bring the invoice and collect the payment for the flowers before leaving. —Though I only found this out later, it seems her shop required all their other clients to pay via bank transfer."
"So handing you the invoice in person was just an excuse to come see you?"
"I imagine so. I'd known for quite some time that she harbored feelings for me. But I had no desire to marry back then. Ultimately, the reason I finally married her in my forties was because it was after Nagiko-san had been given her life expectancy by her doctor."
"............"
"Proposing to her was a truly special moment in my life. Somewhere in my heart, I thought that if I did something special, perhaps a miracle would occur. But such unscientific miracles do not happen in reality. Medicine is an accumulation of statistics, and statistics can sometimes be cold-blooded. The doctor informed Nagiko-san that modern medicine could only extend her life, but that she could leave behind a child. So, consulting closely with her physician, she gave birth to Teisuke, and just as the doctor predicted, she passed away three years later."
"And because there was no one left to bring flowers, you used artificial ones..."
Kouya's gaze fell upon the vibrantly colored flowers Kiyoko had arranged.
Ever since his grandmother passed away when his father was young, those vases had been filled with nothing but fake flowers up until yesterday. But now, they held the fresh blooms Kiyoko had arranged this morning.
Cassandra hadn't been renovated in a while, but it was a cafe packed with his grandfather's fastidious tastes. Jurou was so particular about everything else, yet for some reason, he had never cared about the flowers, leaving cheap artificial ones—ones that didn't suit the chic interior at all—untouched for years.
Time had simply stopped in that one specific place the moment the grandmother, who used to come deliver flowers every Monday, passed away.
Jurou offered a troubled, bittersweet smile.
"There was a time when I simply couldn't bear to look at withering flowers. I always told myself I'd ask a new florist eventually, but I just kept putting it off. —So, perhaps today was a good opportunity."
"Kiyoko-san is really good at flower arrangement, you know."
"I'll have to thank her. She moved the time that had stopped for me."
"When Kiyoko-san gets back from the register, I'll let her know you were happy about it."
"Thank you for helping out at the shop today too, Kouya."
"Oh, yeah..."
Giving his grandson's head a light pat, Jurou headed to the back of the shop to put away his grave-visiting kit. Watching his grandfather's back, which had grown more stooped than Kouya remembered from his childhood, Kouya unknowingly clenched his fists.
—I don't want this shop to close.
It was a strange emotion that welled up out of nowhere.
He didn't want the cafe his grandfather had woven his entire life into to end with his generation. A desire that hadn't even existed until yesterday had suddenly sprouted within Torame Kouya.
If there was no one else to inherit it, then he should just do it himself.
He had the basic recipes memorized. No, wait, how did management work again? Come to think of it, he knew absolutely zero about stocking, cost calculations, taxes, and all that stuff.
Right on the heels of his newfound resolve, raw, realistic hurdles flashed through his mind. Seeking a lifeline, Kouya turned his eyes toward Kiyoko, who was currently ringing up a customer at the register.
Right beside him was a heroine who had rebuilt a long-established inn burdened with massive debt. Furthermore, she apparently had a younger sister who was also a candidate for succession. This meant Kiyoko was in a position where she didn't necessarily have to inherit her family's business in Kyoto.
"...Kiyoko-san, you wouldn't happen to be interested in opening a shop in Asakusa, would you?"
Making sure the customer who took their receipt had left the shop, Kouya tested the waters.
"By Asakusa, do you mean Cassandra?"
"Yeah, exactly. Grandpa's getting older, so if I start helping out or take over the shop, I was wondering if you'd want to do it together. I'm an amateur, so I'd be a bit nervous doing it alone. You're always making original sweets anyway, right? We could set up a sales corner inside and do an eat-in style. I'd love it if you could look over the management side of things too, you know—"
"That sounds wonderful!"
Kiyoko's face lit up instantly, and she clapped her hands together.
"I've always thought about opening my own sweets shop in Tokyo someday too. And then, I'd gradually expand my stores westward until I finally open a boutique in Ashiya."
"Why Ashiya?"
"Being recognized by the Madames of Ashiya is a massive status symbol, isn't it?" Kiyoko said, her eyes practically sparkling.
It was a sentiment utterly alien to Kouya, a Tokyoite born and bred. Did these "Madames of Ashiya" reign supreme at the very peak of the Kansai hierarchy or something?
"You're surprisingly a shallow trend-chaser, Kiyoko-san."
At Kouya's deadpan observation, Kiyoko's cheek twitched violently.
"A trend-chaser...? Me...? He called me shallow...?"
Shizuishi Kiyoko seemed deeply traumatized by receiving an evaluation that was the polar opposite of her own self-image.
Regardless, it was a stroke of incredible luck that Kiyoko was on board with the idea of future co-management. Even if his grandfather retired as Cassandra's manager, with Kiyoko around, Kouya might be able to avoid running around like a headless chicken and bankrupting the place.
Along with his relief, a pang of guilt over using Kiyoko for his own personal sentiments hit him, and Kouya quietly sighed.
—I'm sorry, Kiyoko-san. I'm trying to use you for my own goals.
But after hearing a story like that, there's no way I can just stand by and watch Grandpa's shop disappear.
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