Kohtake (Before the Coffee Gets Cold)

Quick Facts

• Role: A nurse in her early forties; focal character of the second story, “Husband and Wife”
• First appearance: Arrives at Funiculi Funicula after a hospital shift, still in uniform
• Key relationships: Her husband, Fusagi; close friends at the café, Kei Tokita and Kazu Tokita
• Core conflict: Balancing professional care with personal love as Fusagi’s memory erodes
• Story function: Explores how identity and love endure when the past can’t be changed

Who They Are

At her core, Kohtake is a caregiver who tries to bear unbearable loss by turning love into duty. First introduced in a navy cardigan over a nurse’s uniform, then later in an olive-green tunic and capri pants, she is consistently practical, composed, and service-minded. That professionalism becomes both her strength and her shield as she faces her husband’s early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Her arc asks a piercing question: When memory disappears, what remains of a marriage? Kohtake’s answer starts as “clinical caregiving” and ends as “chosen companionship.” The turning point is learning that Fusagi prepared a letter for her—a message from a mind in retreat that proves his love still reaches for her even as his memories recede.

Personality & Traits

Kohtake often leads with competence, but the book peels back how that competence protects a wounded heart. She’s resilient in public, devastated in private, and—crucially—willing to risk hope once she’s sure it will help someone she loves.

• Caring, professional: Her instinct is to keep serving, even if unrecognized—declaring she’ll remain “as a nurse” in Fusagi’s life, clinging to the one role she knows can’t be taken by his illness.
• Resilient, but guarded: She tells Kei and Kazu she has been “mentally preparing” for the day she’s forgotten, projecting stoicism that conceals how much it will hurt.
• Empathetic beyond her own crisis: She inquires after Yaeko Hirai’s situation and mourns the news of Yaeko’s sister, showing her concern isn’t limited to her home life.
• Pragmatic that turns to brave: Initially skeptical of time travel, she reconsiders when she learns about Fusagi’s letter; her practicality makes room for wonder when it serves love.
• Deeply loving: In the past, she lies to comfort Fusagi—not to change fate but to ease his fear—a choice that prioritizes his peace over her need for truth.

Character Journey

Kohtake begins by splitting herself in two: wife in memory, nurse in practice. Determined to survive the coming heartbreak, she resolves to let her professional role outlive her personal one if Fusagi forgets her. The discovery that Fusagi meant to give her a letter upends that strategy. If his love persists even as his mind dims, then reducing herself to “nurse” betrays what he most wanted to protect.

Her visit to the past becomes a test of the café’s rules and her own ethics. She won’t fix the future; she can only hold his fear for a moment and set it down gently. In doing so, she finally accepts what the letter reveals: Fusagi dreaded becoming merely her patient. He wanted a wife or, failing that, her freedom—not a caregiver bound by pity. Reading the letter catalyzes Kohtake’s Healing and Emotional Closure. She returns to the present claiming her marriage anew—asking to be called “Mrs. Fusagi”—a small linguistic shift that enacts the book’s larger idea of Acceptance and The Unchanging Present: fate doesn’t change, but we can choose how to love within it.

Key Relationships

Fusagi With Fusagi, Kohtake confronts the paradox of loving someone who may never remember her. His illness threatens the story of their marriage, but his letter preserves its meaning: he wants partnership, not obligation. Kohtake’s final choice—wife first, nurse second—answers that plea, honoring his dignity and their bond even as memory slips away.

Kei Tokita Kei Tokita is the gentle accelerator of Kohtake’s transformation. Kei’s impulsive encouragement to seek the letter reframes time travel from superstition to lifeline. More than a friend, Kei models compassionate intervention: she knows Kohtake is strong, but she refuses to let that strength harden into isolation.

Kazu Tokita As the café’s steady facilitator, Kazu Tokita provides the crucial information about the letter and conducts Kohtake’s journey. Kazu’s unshowy guidance gives Kohtake structure at the moment she is most emotionally raw; the ritualized rules become a safe container for grief, clarity, and choice.

Defining Moments

Kohtake’s turning points trace a movement from defense to devotion—a sequence of small, decisive acts that reconstitute her identity.

• The moment of forgetting: When Fusagi looks at Kohtake and asks, “Have we met before?”, the future she “mentally prepared” for arrives. Why it matters: Her theoretical coping strategy collides with reality, exposing the insufficiency of professional distance to hold marital pain.
• Choosing the past: Learning about the letter, she agrees to time travel she once dismissed. Why it matters: She trades control for trust, accepting that comfort—not cure—is the real goal.
• The compassionate lie: In the past, she tells Fusagi he will recover. Why it matters: It’s love without leverage—she gains nothing from the lie except his momentary peace, proving her care is not transactional.
• Receiving and reading the letter: Fusagi asks her to be his wife, not merely his nurse, and to leave if staying means pity. Why it matters: The letter names Kohtake’s greatest temptation—hiding in professionalism—and calls her back to mutuality.
• Reclaiming her name: “Starting tomorrow, no more calling me by my maiden name.” Why it matters: Language becomes commitment. By choosing “Mrs. Fusagi,” she enacts the marriage she vows to keep living, regardless of recognition.

Essential Quotes

Hey guys, I’m a nurse. Look, even if my identity is totally erased from his memory, I’ll be part of his life as a nurse. I’ll still be there for him. This is Kohtake’s protective creed: if love can’t be remembered, care can still be delivered. The line dignifies her vocation but also reveals how she hides inside it; later, the letter will challenge this as a partial, not complete, answer to love.

Actually, your illness does get better, you know... It will be all right... You recover. A deliberate untruth that tells the truth of her devotion. Because she cannot fix the future, she heals the present feeling—relieving fear without denying fate—a microcosm of the café’s purpose.

So I ask you never to forget one thing. You are my wife, and if life becomes too hard for you as my wife, I want you to leave me... Even if I lose my memory, I want to be together as husband and wife. I cannot stand the idea of us staying together only out of sympathy. Fusagi’s letter exposes the ethical fault line in caregiving: pity vs. partnership. He blesses her freedom and asks for dignity, reframing “staying” as meaningful only if it is a choice rooted in love.

Starting tomorrow, no more calling me by my maiden name, OK? This quiet request is Kohtake’s vow in miniature. It rejects the safety of neutrality (“nurse,” “maiden name”) and affirms a living marriage—one she will carry even if she must carry it alone.