CHAPTER 70: A CAFE IN A WORLD WITHOUT COFFEE

Even though this world didn’t have coffee, it didn’t lack places that I would call cafes.

Obviously, they didn’t serve the liquid in question here.

Instead, they were aiming to replicate the style, splendor, and the high-class of the noble tea parties instead.

Rather than offering just tables, as one would expect from a modern cafe back on Earth, they split their building into a set of entire lodges, each furnished with a fancy main table, a number of smaller ones depending on the price one was willing to pay for them, and then even smaller snack tables, always filled to the brim with anything one would want to get with their tea.

It was a perfect place for the rich and nouveau riche to spend their money at, learning the commonplace luxury of a noble’s life, getting to experience something their status wouldn’t normally allow them to.

Or so was the theory behind the appearance of those shops. Right now, though?

The demands of the market had long since led to the modification of all those founding principles, turning said ’cafes’ into a very close copy of what could be found on Earth.

Still, some elements remained.

Like the split of the building into lodges rather than making the most efficient use of the space by just putting the tables into a big, cozy hall. Then, there were the snack tables, filled with fruits, candies, and pastries of all sorts. And ultimately, it was those two factors that made Selia pick the place.

The rich selection of various snacks... And the privacy of a lodge that no one other than the staff could enter, and even they could only do so when called forth or when delivering the orders.

And so, we sat down at a fancy table, a small plate with a fancy square of a cake on it and a tall, porcelain teacup to its right.

I didn’t even want to think just how expensive this place had to be. Not only because it would likely divert my attention from the topic at hand, but also because it would only make me further realize just how far detached I was from the local common sense of money’s value.

For me, the price of this place was something I happily paid for, as it was a mere fraction of what I’d gained in the initial payment for my recipe from Greg.

To the locals?

’I wouldn’t be surprised if a single visit to this place would be worth the equivalent of a several-days-long quest,’ I thought, raising the delicate, intricately painted porcelain cup before taking a sip of the tea.

By all means, the quality of the brew here perfectly fit the price.

The moment I allowed the liquid to wet my lips, its taste already exploded all over my buds while the tannins, barely noticeable in the taste itself, pulled the skin on my lips together.

With the skin of my mouth tensed up, I properly tilted the glass to take a sip, allowing the surface aroma of the drink to get washed by its deeper, richer taste of the actual brew, underlined by an even thicker part of the treat that mixed with the rest of the drink on its way from the bottom of the cup to my mouth.

"Woah..." I muttered as I put the cup away, taken aback by the quality and complexity of the drink.

It wasn’t just a simple brew. Heck, it was nothing like the one-litre teabomb I liked to make myself back at home, by dropping half two teabags and two spoons of sugar into a massive, one-litre cup, drowning it all in half a litre of boiling water and then filling the rest of the cup up with half a litre of filtered cold water.

No, those two, while both made by brewing aromatic leaves, couldn’t be any further apart.

The tea I made was just a trick to cheat my brain into drinking water while not feeling bad about its lack of taste.

The tea here?

I shook my head in amazement.

It was a whole damn experience in and of itself, an art form disguised in the shape of a drink.

’It’s almost as if all those different tastes were a story the artist behind this drink was trying to tell,’ I thought, giving the tea all the respect I believed it was owed.

Then, I used a small fork to cut away a small bite of the cream-and-sponge fruit cake before using it to cleanse my palate from the tangy remains of the slightly citrusy drink.

"Now then," I muttered as I gently placed the fork down to its designated spot on the table.

Looking up, I could see Selia replicating pretty much every one of my movements... Or rather, doing them the proper way, with a level of grace and elegance I could never really achieve even if I trained for years to that end.

By all means, at this table, I was the one imitating her, not the other way around.

Still.

We didn’t come here to treat ourselves. At least, that wasn’t the main purpose.

No, we were here to discuss the topic I raised with my question, the topic of how I suddenly started to better understand Selia’s feelings, almost as if I could feel them myself.

And yet, even after quite some time we spent sitting in silence and just enjoying the treat, Selia still had yet to speak a word of explanation.

’It’s not like I mind getting closer to her...’ I thought, watching how she played, through her fork, with her cake, cutting away small pieces of it only to then further chisel them down, almost as if trying to chisel out a fancy column to support a perfectly square piece of cut fruit at its very top.

I waited a little longer, hoping to get some honest answer without pressuring the girl. And yet, as time went on...?

"If it’s really that hard to talk about it, then we don’t have to..."

At some point, my patience ran dry. Yet, right as I was about to suggest we drop it and just discuss it at a more opportune time, sometime in the future where Selia would be more comfortable answering my questions... Selia herself shook her head and raised her hand to stop me.

"No," she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head a little. "I knew I would have to bring it all up at some point," she stated in a voice full of determination. "I just..." she then shook her head again only to quickly escape with her eyes off to the side. "I just didn’t expect you to notice those changes so insanely soon."

I squinted my eyes.

Not because of Selia’s statement, but the very thing that made her bewildered.

’If someone as knowledgeable and powerful as her didn’t expect for something to happen, it should be safe to say we have an anomaly at hand,’ I thought, only to then forcibly restrain a mocking chuckle directed at no one else but myself.

’Well, I’m from a whole other world. And I hold a corpse of an FFF-rank failure system, so it should only be expected that normal expectations...’ I hesitated for a while before gathering enough courage to face the ugly truth directly, ’they don’t exactly apply to me, do they?’

On the outside, however, I merely shook my head.

"So, then?" I asked, growing more and more restless by the moment. "What exactly did you do? Or maybe it’s something that just happened?"

Yet, seeing how Selia suddenly grew silent again, I felt like it was enough.

This was something that concerned not only her but me too. And while I obviously didn’t really mind somehow having my mind connected to hers, what I wasn’t okay with was how she held back information about this entire thing from me!