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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What color is the dress that Miki choose to wear to pour the coffee?
(a) White.
(b) Black.
(c) Red.
(d) Pink.

2. What illness was Kurata diagnosed with two-and-a-half years previously?
(a) Liver failure.
(b) Heart failure.
(c) Tuberculosis.
(d) Cancer.

3. Who is the startled man who exclaims when Kiyoshi appears in the café in the past?
(a) Nagare's father.
(b) Kazu's father.
(c) Kinuyo's husband.
(d) Nagare.

4. What does Miki find on the café floor after Kiyoshi returns from the past?
(a) A paper with a wish written on it.
(b) A cricket.
(c) A snowflake.
(d) A cherry-blossom petal.

5. Which of the story's motifs is introduced by the Christmas tree and the extra item that Nagare adds to Kyoko's order?
(a) Generosity.
(b) Bereavement.
(c) Missed chances.
(d) Analytical thinking.

Short Answer Questions

1. Whose is Kiyoshi referencing when he talks about the dying man who travels into the future?

2. Where did Kurata meet Asami Mori?

3. What question does Kazu ask Yukio that he refuses to answer?

4. Why is Kiyoshi initially unsure whether he will be welcomed into the café?

5. When he is in the past, what sound startles Yukio just as he is beginning to relax and feel sleepy?

Short Essay Questions

1. What are the conditions that Kurata gives Fumiko for either bringing or not bringing Asami to the café?

2. When Kimiko enters the café, whom does Kiyoshi pretend to be, and why?

3. What larger point about life is the narrator of "Husband and Wife" making in the story's introductory comments about winter and spring?

4. What lies does Yukio tell his mother about taking care of himself, and why does he tell these lies?

5. How do Yukio's actions and emotions during the scene where he first sits down in the time-travel chair foreshadow his plan to not return to the present?

6. What is similar about Asami's decision to meet Kurata and the advice Kurata gave her after her miscarriage?

7. What is so tricky about Kurata's time-travel plans, and how has he tried to plan ahead to overcome this difficulty?

8. What kind gesture does Nagare make when he gives Kyoko her order, and how does Kyoko react?

9. What comparison does Yukio make between his own situation and that of a character in Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird?

10. What is Kurata wearing in the story's opening, and why does it make him seem out of place?

(see the answer keys)

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