Before the Coffee Gets ColdJump to section titled Before the Coffee Gets Cold

You sit on a chair in a small basement café, you can go back or forward in time, but only until your coffee gets cold. The rules are strict: you can't change the past, you cannot get up from your seat, and you can only interact with people who are also in the café at that moment.

At first glance, I thought what is the point of such a time travel experience? What surprised me was how those constraints made the stories more powerful. Each chapter is a quiet exploration of longing, regret, and unresolved feelings. The time travel becomes a device not for fixing the past, but for understanding it better.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

It’s a gentle, meditative book. The kind you read slowly. The kind that lingers. If you're looking for something tender and imaginative, Before the Coffee Gets Cold is worth sitting with—ideally while your own cup is still warm.

Would you go back in time if you cannot change the past?