I Know Way Too Much About Coffee for This World
��That’s impossible! The beans I use are the highest grade from the Southern Continent!”
Kylus cried out, his face completely stunned.
“Why is it impossible? If the beans hadn’t gone bad, there’s no way it would taste like this.”
I asserted my point firmly and sternly.
No matter how indiscriminate my palate is, I lived in Korea where there’s a café every three steps. That’s why.
In ambiguous situations, the person with the louder voice wins.
And right now, my voice is louder.
“You just grind decent beans and pour hot water over them to make coffee, but this tastes like poison!”
In reality there are probably more delicate steps involved, but after watching a friend whose hobby was home café, I learned that making drinkable coffee isn’t actually that difficult, regardless of taste.
When I shouted with as much resentment as one cup and one sip could hold, the expression ‘Could it be…?’ finally appeared on Kylus’s face.
With my momentum at its peak, I made a bold request.
“Show me the beans. Then we’ll know whether they’re spoiled or not.”
Kylus, who had been pondering with a troubled face, soon brought over the sack containing the beans.
I kept a grave expression as I opened the mouth of the sack and examined the contents.
Even someone like me who knew little about them could tell the state was a complete disaster.
They look nothing like the beans you see in coffee commercials!
“They’re definitely spoiled!”
I declared triumphantly.
“I heard green beans don’t spoil easily, so how on earth did they end up like this?”
I dusted my hands and asked Kylus.
“That can’t be… The merchant who immigrated from the south definitely told me these were precious beans even the southern royalty enjoy.”
But as I spoke with such conviction, his confidence seemed to crumble, and his voice grew smaller toward the end.
“He said the flavor of coffee depends on roasting skill, and he even connected me with a famous barista he knows. These are beans roasted by a skilled barista sought after even by the royal family, using the highest-grade beans.”
Kylus added in a pitiful, moist voice.
But it didn’t work on me at all.
“Bring that supposedly famous barista here.”
When I requested a three-way confrontation, Kylus’s face grew even more dejected.
“It would take a year and a half to come from the Southern Continent to the Empire. One way.”
“Why is the barista in the Southern Continent? Did he go there recently?”
“Well, because that’s where his home is.”
“Why?”
“Pardon?”
The more we talked, the more confused it became.
It was a perfect failure of communication.
I started explaining again, slowly and carefully.
“You said the one who roasts the beans is that famous barista.”
“Yes.”
“If that barista is in the Southern Continent, then who roasted these beans?”
“That barista did.”
It was like a repeating loop of questions and answers.
I changed the question slightly and asked again.
“So what I’m asking is, how does that barista who’s supposedly in the Southern Continent supply roasted beans to this café in the Empire?”
Kylus finally seemed to understand the exchange.
“He ships the roasted beans by boat. On a regular basis.”
When I heard Kylus’s answer, I was horrified.
“So these beans were roasted at least a year and a half ago?”
Ugh.
“That’s right?”
Kylus showed no sign of understanding why I looked so disgusted.
“They crossed a hot and humid sea, and trading ships are hardly ever clean. On top of that, the sealing is sloppy, and above all, how can you brew coffee with beans that were roasted nearly two years ago?”
If this were South Korea, Sir Kylus Seymour, you would have been in handcuffs for violating the Food Sanitation Act.
If I could, I would have spat out the coffee I had already swallowed.
My stomach feels upset.
Only then did Kylus seem to realize something had gone terribly wrong.
I spoke while firmly suppressing the resentment from the spoiled coffee.
“That merchant who immigrated from the Southern Continent—he’s still in the Empire, right?”
“Yes.”
“That man is a con artist. Roasted beans spoil easily, so they should be imported as green beans.”
After hearing my words, Kylus’s expression turned frightening.
“I didn’t know any of that and paid five times the price of regular green beans… Ha!”
Kylus swept his hair back with his hand and let out a sigh.
A moment later he returned to his usual smiling face, but somehow the temperature of his smile felt like it had plummeted straight from spring to winter.
He looked like an assassin who had lost his entire fortune to a con artist.
It was the kind of look that said he might quietly dispose of a person out of pure grudge.
I took a small step back from Kylus and said,
“There are a few more cafés in the capital, right? Why don’t you get beans from one of them and try brewing coffee with those?”
It was a suggestion I made because, no matter how much this was a cover business, he couldn’t keep selling spoiled coffee.
“Thank you for the advice, Miss Diaz.”
Kylus bowed his head in gratitude.
“It’s nothing, really.”
After confirming that Kylus was once again wearing a chilling expression as he thought about the Southern Continent merchant, I dragged Everett outside.
Everett, who had been watching our conversation, followed me out of the café. As we walked, he suddenly asked as if he had just remembered something.
“Miss Diaz, you seem quite knowledgeable about coffee.”
Surprisingly, knowing that ‘leaving beans for two years can cause them to spoil’ counted as considerable expertise in this world.
It’s only been about ten years since coffee started being imported here.
“Coffee reached the area around the Academy faster than the capital.”
After all, the Empire’s Academy was the place that needed coffee’s stimulating properties the most.
I gave an appropriate excuse.
Perhaps the coffee talk had been meant to break the ice, because Everett soon brought up another topic.
And fortunately, this time the conversation barely stopped even while we entered the restaurant and ate.
The knife cut well enough, and the meal had a decent atmosphere.
But once again, I didn’t return the handkerchief.
My excuse was that I had accidentally left it at home.
* * *
After escorting Lina home, Edwin returned to the café.
Kylus, who had changed his clothes in the meantime—who knows what he had been up to—greeted him with a bright face.
“You’ve come at just the right time.”
His attitude was a complete 180 from earlier when he had scolded him for not using the back door connected to the guild.
Kylus approached Edwin holding a freshly brewed cup of coffee.
“Would you please try it just once? This time I brewed it using beans I personally obtained from the café that has been operating the longest in the capital. I even received confirmation from the owner. My coffee no longer tastes like dirty water. So please.”
He looked like he would lie down on the floor if refused.
Edwin gave a twisted smile to his old friend, who was strangely obsessed with his hobby, and accepted the coffee cup.
“I’m not sure who the emperor is anymore.”
As Kylus had said, this time there was no dirty-water smell.
Edwin frowned with one eyebrow and swallowed the coffee.
It was sour and burnt, not to his taste, but it wasn’t as unbearable as before.
When he returned the completely empty cup, Kylus’s face brightened like never before.
Finding the sight strangely unpleasant, Edwin sneered.
“It’s a good thing I’ve been fiercely rejecting the coffee you give me all this time. If I had drunk all that spoiled coffee and gotten sick, you would have been unavoidably guilty of regicide.”
With nothing to say, Kylus simply smiled in response.
After choosing a café as a front for the information guild, the person who had drunk the most of his brewed coffee was the emperor himself, so he felt a bit sorry.
Kylus opened his mouth to change the subject.
“By the way, I gave that con artist a proper thrashing.”
When Edwin showed the slightest interest, Kylus whispered as if boasting about his heroic tale.
“I turned him over to the security forces.”
“That’s it?”
Kylus was not the type to have a mild personality despite his gentle appearance.
When Edwin asked again, Kylus added with a wicked-looking face.
“After making him drink all the coffee brewed from the beans he sold, of course.”
His tone suggested he hadn’t exactly poured it nicely into a cup.
Having identified the problem with his coffee and even succeeded in revenge, Kylus looked truly refreshed.
“It’s all thanks to Miss Diaz.”
Kylus’s eyes sparkled as he praised Lina.
“I thought she was a good person from the first time I saw her. She has refined taste and deep common sense.”
As the endless stream of praise continued, Edwin somehow felt a little annoyed.
Before the irritated Edwin could act pettily, Kylus struck first and asked,
“You’ll be meeting Miss Diaz again, right?”
“Probably. She said she left her handkerchief behind.”
Observing Everett’s already goofy smile, Kylus held out an invitation.
“What’s this?”
Edwin accepted it and asked.
“It’s an invitation to an ancient artifact exhibition. How long do you plan to keep using the handkerchief as an excuse?”
Kylus added that he had prepared it after remembering from past investigation materials that Lina had taken archaeology classes throughout her time at the Academy, even though it wasn’t her major.
Edwin, who had already been worrying about what would come after returning the handkerchief, neatly pocketed the invitation.
“I heard the theme of that exhibition changes every week. It’s a four-part series.”
Kylus smiled with satisfaction.
Come to think of it, Carolina Diaz didn’t seem like a bad candidate for empress at all.
After all, she had refined taste and deep common sense.