Chapter 98: Back in town
The road back home was... weird.
Sure, we just took a full night of sleep. And while broken by the guard duty, it still lasted enough for me to recover all my strength.
As such, I could carry that bag of coffee beans all the way to the town while maintaining a good tempo.
But it wasn’t about endurance, not this time.
The weight of our earlier encounter clearly sapped Selia’s mood.
Even after rushing back with the beans to safety and making it out without any needless fighting, her mood didn’t improve.
And within less than an hour of traveling back home in silence, I just couldn’t handle it anymore.
"Do you think they will get back to the city safely?"
As stupid as it was, I asked.
Anything would be better than this accursed silence.
"Beats me."
If Selia changed while she was in the presence of others, now that she started worrying about them...
’That’s an important lesson for me,’ I thought, trying to make the most out of this poor situation by, at least, learning how to handle Selia better. ’I should never give her a reason to worry about me. Not until we figure out how to fix that overworrying issue of hers.’
In the end, I said nothing. And against all odds, this turned out to be the correct thing for me to do.
The silence continued for a little bit longer. And then, as if a dam gave out somewhere in her head, Selia just started to talk.
"I’m really worried that older guy won’t make it."
"Did you see his injuries? He should’ve rested for at least a day more!"
"If only I spotted them earlier..."
"Such is the adventurer’s way. You never know when the danger will come."
Selia’s voice was unusually somber, her eyes not present at all, locked at some undisclosed point in the distance as if she could see the backs of the group that left quite a lot sooner than us.
In the end, however, we never got to catch up with those guys. Thankfully, however, we didn’t see any fresh graves on the way to the town. And when we finally reached the gates, roughly an hour before the final ringing of the bells, the guards confirmed that they indeed saw the group of three wounded adventurers get into the town.
"So they’ve made it..." Selia breathed out a sigh of relief, only to earn two respectful nods from the gate guards. "That’s a relief."
Finally, after a whole day of brooding, Selia started to regain some of her mood. And when we finally reached our room back at the inn, she was almost skipping in excitement.
"Are you going to make it now? Show me!" she demanded, leaving me in quite the uncomfortable position.
I would do everything to help her lift her mood up.
But to get her the coffee from the freshly harvested beans?
’Well, it’s not like it’s not possible...’ I squinted my eyes before picking a small, cloth-based bag and then stuffing it with a handful of beans from the big bag.
Then, without any hesitation, I closed the smaller bag and started to thrash it around, slamming it into the furniture, walls, the floor...
"Wait!" Selia cried out, jumping out and grabbing my arms before I could brutalize the poor beans any further. "What are you doing!? You will destroy them!"
Momentarily stunned, I blinked my eyes a few times while staring at the girl.
"We don’t need the beans, though, only the seeds hidden inside them."
Normally, one would ferment the fruit and its meat away before scrapping them off to leave just the beans behind.
But there was another method.
In the modern world, with all the technological wonders it offered, the beans would be treated with high-pressure water, causing their skin, flesh, and juice to literally rip away from the bean itself.
And if some of the seeds would fracture in the process?
No one cares.
Just like sausages contained more hooves than they did meat, who would even know if a company’s coffee was made from scraps of seeds rather than the actual seeds? As long as it tasted right and had enough caffeine, people mostly wouldn’t care.
And right now, while having no proper tools to do so on an industrial scale, I planned to use the method of physically separating the seeds from the rest of the bean.
Which is exactly why I thrashed around with the bag. Because now that I freed myself from the hold of Selia’s arms and opened up the bag, I could actually pull some of the seeds directly out of the mush inside.
Obviously, I’ve only managed to get a few seeds out before I had no other choice but to start picking up scrapped parts or using my fingers to remove the bits of bean flesh from around its seed.
Having no tools to help me out, I ended up scrapping the beans for quite some time, only shaken awake when I heard the sound of the bells calling for the closing of the town’s gates.
’Huh?’
Deeply immersed in one of the tasks I remembered from my earlier life so fondly, I didn’t even realize when nearly an hour had passed. Yet, as I looked down, my expertise shone through - within that single hour, I managed to clean all the beans that I’d picked for the task, ending up with roughly thirty of them at the ready!
"Are you done?" Selia asked, breaking the silence as she rested her hands down on my shoulders and then leaned over my head, looking at the seeds. "But they don’t look like the ones you used..."
"Valid point," I smiled, "that’s because they are not ready yet. We still have a few more steps to go through."
Selia stared at the seeds for a while before raising up.
"It’s one step after the other," she muttered under her nose, the warmth she had in her eyes when looking at the seeds slowly starting to dissipate. "Just how did your people figure out to use those seeds if the procedure is so damn complicated..."
That, I didn’t have an answer for.
Maybe the earlier humans simply ate the beans before noticing their weird powers of keeping one awake? Or maybe coffee was just a failed result of someone’s attempt at brewing a potion?
Then again, if it really was just that, then would that be a failed attempt, if it led to the creation of arguably the most common drink in the world?
"Honestly, I have no idea how my ancestors came up with it," I answered without holding anything back. Then, I grabbed all the cleaned-out seeds, packed them into a fresh bag before turning to Selia. "What I know, though, is how pretty much the entire world was addicted to this drink."
With the seeds at the ready, it was time to move to the most crucial step of making coffee the long and hard way - roasting the beans.
And while I did quite a bit of roasting back on Earth, it still remained as the one part of the process that I couldn’t fully master.
Just like there was a whole art of brewing, serving, and drinking tea, I believed there was another art regarding coffee. But while, with tea ceremonies, all the care was given to the last few steps, to make good coffee?
For that to happen, one had to put their care mostly into the roasting process. Beyond that, the end result depended only on the quality of the seed and then the selected type of grind.
"Let’s go. I should be able to serve it quite soon," I encouraged Selia before grabbing the small, clean bag and then leaving my room as I hurried downstairs, to the inn’s kitchen.
With the recent ringing of the night’s bells, the hours of peak traffic were upon this establishment. And yet, in all the chaos of constantly arriving new patrons, all of which were ready to finally get something good to eat and something burning to drink...
I directly approached the counter and waved to summon one of the cooks.
"I’m sorry, but I come with an unusual request," I started, "would you mind sparing me one of your hot plates? It won’t take me long, I just need to roast some beans."
When the young cook looked back at me, I could read the answer from his eyes.
’Fuck no.’
For a moment, just the sense of this response lingered between the two of us, unsaid and thus leaving me with nothing to argue about.
Still, I tried... and I failed.
Even though I wanted to bring Selia a cup of coffee freshly made from the beans that we prepared and grew together... It appeared that I would have to wait until the action in the inn would start to die down.
"Wait, Saintess...?!"
Right as I was about to give up, the young cook recoiled, his eyes pinned to the side from where Selia approached only to join me by the counter.
"Come on, just do me this small favor, please?" she asked while beaming a smile at the kid.
"S-s-saintess..." the young cook muttered, so flustered he unknowingly retreated a step.
"What’s going on here?"
The main cook, the owner, appeared from within the kitchen, only to catch his underling reeling while Saintess beamed him with her smile.
The man stared at the Saintess, then looked over at me and finalized the motion by breathing a deep sigh.
"What do you need, girl?"
There was an inherent sense of familiarity in his voice, as if it wasn’t Saintess’s first visit here. Or, to be more precise, as if she was one of the regulars to the antics of which the man had all the time in the world to get used to.
"A hot plate for a short time. We need to roast some beans," Selia repeated my words, this time to a much higher charge.
The man scanned us with his eyes again before breathing another sigh.
"Just do as you wish. But hurry it up. The customers are stacking and we need all the hands and all the hot plates to keep them well-fed!"