Fumiko Kiyokawa

Quick Facts

• Role: Protagonist of the first story, “The Lovers,” and the reader’s gateway to the Funiculi Funicula rules
• First appearance: The breakup scene where her boyfriend announces he’s leaving for America
• Occupation: High-achieving project director at a major IT firm; proud Waseda graduate and multilingual prodigy
• Key relationships: Goro Katada (boyfriend), Kazu Tokita (waitress and guide), Yaeko Hirai (cafe regular and skeptic)
• Signature image: “Face of a pop idol,” mid-length black hair “shone… like a glowing halo,” impeccable suits—and, for the ill-fated date, an elegant pale-pink dress with a beige spring coat and white pumps

Who They Are

Bold, brilliant, and buttoned-up, Fumiko Kiyokawa enters the cafe as the “epitome of the smart, career-driven woman” who believes competence can control outcomes—including love. Her story introduces the cafe’s magical logic and the book’s central meditation on Acceptance and The Unchanging Present. What makes Fumiko compelling is the tension between her polished exterior and a private ache she cannot manage away: the regret of a breakup she feels her pride caused.

Her beauty and poise aren’t vanity so much as armor. The carefully chosen pale-pink dress for what she hoped would be a proposal (not a parting) shows how thoroughly she stage-manages feelings—until love resists her script.

Personality & Traits

Fumiko’s defining conflict is between mastery and surrender. She is used to excelling—languages, school, career—and expects love to reward her restraint. When it doesn’t, her pride hardens into silence at the very moment speech would save her.

• Ambitious and intelligent: Mastered six languages before finishing high school; graduated top of her class from Waseda. “My work is my lover” isn’t a quip—it’s a creed that has shaped her identity and her blind spots in intimacy.
• Proud and stubborn: She admits she was “too proud” to ask Goro to stay. Her disbelief in the supernatural leads her to try to move the woman in the white dress by force—inviting a curse and exposing how her willfulness backfires.
• Impulsive under pressure: She rushes into the cafe pleading, “Please send me back to the past!” before absorbing the rules, letting regret drive decisions she normally would analyze.
• Vulnerable beneath the polish: The breakup unmasks her insecurity—she fears not just losing Goro, but being unchosen despite doing everything “right.”

Character Journey

Fumiko begins resolved to change one week of her life: stop Goro from leaving, and the rest will fall in line. Then Kazu Tokita states a limit that rewires the quest: the present cannot be altered. The mission shifts from control to Healing and Emotional Closure. Even with that knowledge, Fumiko’s pride still chokes the simple plea—“Don’t go”—and her time-travel conversation remains stiff, edged by anger she mistakes for self-protection.

The turn doesn’t happen in the past but on the threshold back to now, when she overhears Goro’s unseen confession and promise to return in three years. Nothing in her present changes; everything in her understanding does. She trades regret for patience, discovering that time travel’s true magic is internal. Her arc reframes power: not the power to undo outcomes, but to meet the future without self-sabotage.

Key Relationships

• Goro Katada: Goro is both beloved and misunderstood—by Fumiko and by himself. Learning about his insecurity over his burn scar and feeling “not good enough” reframes their history: her coolness looked like indifference to him, while his withdrawal read as rejection to her. Their love story becomes a study in misread silence and the cost of unspoken tenderness, a central case of Love, Communication, and Regret.
• Kazu Tokita: Kazu’s dry delivery of impossible rules mirrors the book’s ethical stance: boundaries, not miracles, prompt growth. Her rare final smile is not congratulation for changing fate, but recognition that Fumiko has changed herself—proof that guidance sometimes means enforcing limits.
• Yaeko Hirai: Hirai’s cynicism—mocking Fumiko’s plan as a “delusion”—keeps the fantasy grounded. Yet she also clarifies the rules that Fumiko resists, acting as a pragmatic chorus who forces Fumiko to confront consequences instead of clinging to loopholes.

Defining Moments

Fumiko’s story turns on ordinary choices that acquire mythic weight under the cafe’s rules—each moment puncturing her illusion of control and redirecting her toward honesty.

• The initial breakup: Expecting a proposal in her pale-pink dress, she hears Goro’s plan to leave. Her pride clamps her throat shut; the silence becomes the wound she tries to time-travel to heal. Why it matters: it establishes her core flaw—mistaking composure for strength when vulnerability is required.
• Learning the rules: The revelation that “the present won’t change” collapses her goal. Why it matters: it reframes time travel as an interior pilgrimage, not a fix-it button.
• The curse: Trying to force the seated ghost to move curses her on the spot. Why it matters: it literalizes the danger of control; coercion in love or magic carries a price.
• The journey to the past: She gets the week she wanted—but can’t say “Don’t go.” Anger masquerades as self-respect, and the moment slips. Why it matters: access to time doesn’t grant access to courage; character, not chronology, decides outcomes.
• Goro’s promise: “Please wait three years. Then I’ll return, I promise.” Why it matters: the present stands unchanged, yet hope enters. She can now choose patience over panic—acceptance that reshapes her future.

Essential Quotes

I wanted to scream out don’t go but I was too proud.
This confession isolates the story’s hinge: pride as a defense that functions like a gag. By naming the failure, Fumiko begins to convert shame into insight, turning regret into a guide rather than a jailer.

Please send me back to the past!
The plea is impulsive but honest: she finally admits want, not work, is driving her. Its breathless urgency contrasts with her usual control, revealing the depth of her love and the cost of her restraint.

When you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won’t change.
Kazu’s line defines the novel’s metaphysics and its ethics. It redirects agency from events to interpretation, challenging Fumiko to seek transformation where it’s possible—in herself.

Fine then, go . . . Whatever . . . It’s not as if anything I say will stop you going to America.
A shield of sarcasm where a plea should be; the ellipses expose the wobble in her bravado. The line captures how pride sounds in real time: defensive, distancing, and devastatingly ineffective.

Well, as the future hasn’t happened yet, I guess that’s up to you . . .
This is the counterweight to the unchangeable present: the future is plastic. The sentence gives Fumiko ethical permission to act differently going forward, recasting hope as a responsibility, not a wish.