Noble students would each travel to the Duchy of Arnia in carriages provided by their families, but commoner students with fewer resources often rented a large carriage and traveled together in groups.
Six people were riding in the carriage that had departed from Seiron.
After fifteen days of relentless travel, the massive walls of Fence finally came into view outside the carriage, and five of the students simultaneously turned their heads toward the windows.
There was only one exception.
Even as her friends chatted excitedly about the new semester that was now just around the corner, she remained perfectly still inside the swaying carriage, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed.
― Yulia. If you refuse to inherit the family business, then I will no longer support you either.
Yulia’s posture trembled faintly as she concentrated on her mana training. Except when tending to basic necessities, her posture had not wavered once throughout the entire journey, yet for the first time, it faltered as they approached the academy.
‘Damn it. I let myself get distracted. Focus. I need to focus.’
Even so, she did not open her eyes.
Yulia soon steadied her posture again, and the carriage passed through the walls and entered Fence, with its bustling commercial district.
“Wow! Look at all those sparkling signs!”
“What are those? Why does everything look so different? The shops seem much more extravagant than before.”
“Glowing signs? That’s incredible! There definitely wasn’t anything like that last semester!”
The signs illuminating the streets after nightfall filled the students in the carriage with excitement. Perhaps their anticipation for the new semester only heightened the feeling, because they could not take their eyes off the dazzling streets.
Once again, Yulia was the sole exception.
“Yulia! Look at that! The whole street has changed!”
One of her friends made a great fuss, but Yulia did not so much as twitch.
Perhaps she was reproaching herself for allowing a stray thought to disrupt her posture earlier, because she now maintained it even more rigidly than before.
“Yulia really is relentless. How can she not open her eyes even once with all of us making this much noise?”
“She’s always been like that. Just leave her alone. She doesn’t care about anything except swordsmanship and mana training. Do you really think a few signboards are going to catch her attention?”
No matter what her friends said, Yulia remained unchanged.
What mattered to her was learning to sense the flow of mana more clearly, manipulate it more precisely, and use it to perfect a swordsmanship style of her own.
“Huh? There’s a shop over there that I’ve never seen before.”
“What kind of shop is that? Why are so many people gathered around it?”
As the carriage passed the fountain near the academy’s southern gate, a new shop they had never seen before captured the students’ attention, this time instead of the dazzling signs.
A huge crowd had gathered around it.
One student spotted a standing sign through the gaps between the people and barely managed to read the words written on it.
“Free coffee tasting event? Is that a shop that sells coffee? I’ve never seen a place like that before.”
“My goodness. They’re giving coffee away for free?”
A coffee shop.
It was such an unusual business that none of them had ever even heard of one before.
The murmuring inside the carriage grew louder than ever, but Yulia still seemed to have no intention of opening her calmly closed eyes.
“Now that you mention coffee, I just remembered something I heard before. Apparently, coffee has something called caffeine in it, and it’s supposed to help with exercise. Wouldn’t that mean it might help with swordsmanship training too?”
That was when it happened.
The students’ curious gazes all converged on one spot inside the carriage.
“Oh? She opened her eyes.”
With a slightly awkward expression, Yulia looked out the window.
There, the signboard of a coffee shop bearing a familiar name was shining more brightly than anything else around it.
***
The final tasting event came to an end.
With the busy season approaching, even more people than before had crowded into the shop, and we had nearly exhausted all the extra coffee we had prepared.
We postponed cleaning up and collapsed over one of the shop’s tables.
We had started in the morning and worked without rest until nearly midnight. Our bodies were completely exhausted, and we desperately needed even a brief moment to recover.
“I seriously think I’m going to die, Young Master. I never imagined working at a café would be harder than swordsmanship training.”
“You call yourself a knight, and you’re complaining over this little?”
“Good grief. You’re hardly one to talk, Young Master. I saw your legs shaking earlier. Your eyes aren’t even focusing properly anymore.”
Still sprawled over the table, we chuckled and exchanged idle remarks.
I was tired enough that I would have fallen asleep the instant my head touched a pillow, and at some point, I drifted off without even realizing it.
I must have fallen into a very deep sleep despite how brief it was.
If Isaac had not shaken me awake, I might have ended up watching the sunrise from inside the shop.
“Young Master. It seems we have a customer approaching.”
“...A customer? At this hour?”
My head turned toward the window almost automatically.
It was definitely a face I had never seen before in this world.
Even so, it was not difficult to recognize her as someone I knew.
Sword Saint Yulia, one of the protagonists of LotSH.
How could I possibly forget her trademark green hair and eyes?
I had played as Yulia countless times.
“Don’t tell me I’m dreaming.”
“Would you like me to slap you?”
“I don’t think I’m dreaming. But why is she coming here?”
“Why? Is there some sort of problem?”
Yulia was the quintessential homebody.
Aside from her ‘introduction scene’ that was supposed to take place two days from now, she spent nearly all of Chapter 1 training her swordsmanship and rarely left the academy.
And yet, that reclusive girl, who had absolutely no interest in outside activities, was steadily approaching our shop.
How could I not find that strange?
‘Why? What’s the reason?’
The answer came easily enough.
This was a coffee shop.
Obviously, she had come here to drink coffee.
“Actually, this works out perfectly. I should use this opportunity to get closer to her.”
“Young Master. Do you really think becoming close to Lady Yulia is possible?”
“What’s so difficult about it? She’s normally a homebody. And yet that homebody willingly left the academy and came all the way to our shop. What does that mean? Obviously, this is the perfect opportunity to establish some connection with her.”
“That may be true, but....”
“Besides, Yulia is the daughter of the family behind the Aberen Merchant Company, the greatest merchant company in the empire. She may not get along with her mother right now, but they eventually reconcile. If I start building a relationship with her now, I might be able to use the merchant company’s influence someday to secure a distribution network.”
“Th-That’s all well and good. It would be wonderful if Lady Yulia repaired her relationship with her mother, and it would also be wonderful if you could use that connection to secure a distribution network later....”
“It’s all good, but what?”
“The problem is that you and Lady Yulia do not get along.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I only remembered just now. She seemed somehow familiar, so I thought back carefully, and at the end-of-term party, Young Master, you....”
“At the end-of-term party, what? Why did you stop talking?”
“Lady Yulia is standing right beside us, Young Master.”
I turned my head.
Before I knew it, Yulia had spotted me through the doorway and was standing outside hesitantly.
No wonder she should have entered a while ago but still had not come in....
Damn that end-of-term party.
What the hell had happened that day?
.
.
.
.
.
.
Isaac thought I simply could not remember the end-of-term party because I had been drunk, but in truth, I genuinely remembered nothing.
Anything that had happened before the academy term began was information I had no way of knowing.
‘I am curious about what happened that day, but I can hardly keep discussing it while the person involved is standing right there....’
For now, a customer had come, so greeting her had to take priority.
A homebody rarely ventured outside, and I could not afford to let such an opportunity slip away.
“Hello, Yulia.”
“...Maxim Edwell.”
I stepped outside and greeted the hesitant Yulia.
She repeated my name, but fortunately, the look she gave me was not particularly hostile.
“If you came for coffee, you should have some before you leave.”
“No. I’ll just go.”
“You’re going back to the academy to train with your sword anyway, aren’t you? Drinking coffee might help a little with exercise.”
Yulia, who had been about to turn away, stopped abruptly.
Since she had no interest in anything whatsoever beyond swordsmanship training, I had thrown out the bait.
Apparently, it had worked perfectly.
“Was that really true? What they said about coffee helping with swordsmanship training?”
“As far as I know, yes. Apparently, consuming an appropriate amount of caffeine before exercising can have an effect. Of course, too much wouldn’t be good.”
“Hmm....”
Truthfully, I had never noticed much of a difference myself.
But Yulia was exceptionally sensitive to anything involving physical movement, so I thought she would be able to judge for herself after trying it.
If it actually worked for her, she would probably keep coming back to our shop.
“So, what will you do? Leave, or have some coffee first?”
“All right. I’ll have coffee.”
Yulia was not especially talkative, so I had never expected to hold a long conversation with her.
For now, rather than trying to force small talk, I had no choice but to build a small connection through coffee.
‘Still, this feels kind of surreal. Yulia in the flesh....’
The realization struck me anew, and even as I brewed the coffee, I kept sneaking glances at her.
She looked better in person, certainly, but more than that, as someone who had loved playing LotSH, I felt almost as though I were attending a fan meeting.
‘Yulia’s introduction scene is supposed to begin two days from now, right?’
Every protagonist in LotSH had a personal introduction scene.
They did not significantly affect the overall scenario, but before the main episodes began, each protagonist received a sequence introducing them to the player.
In Yulia’s case, she should have arrived in Fence a few days ago.
That day, she was supposed to get into a dispute with some thugs at a restaurant. Those thugs would then return looking for revenge, triggering her introduction scene.
‘Damn, that was a seventeen-on-one fight.’
I had replayed that cinematic countless times.
It was a blatant cliché, but Yulia’s swordsmanship had been so spectacular that I had not cared in the slightest.
Her overwhelming presence as a protagonist had already been on full display from the very beginning.
And now, incredibly, that same Yulia was sitting right in front of me.
Watching me brew coffee with unwavering attention.
“Here you go.”
Eventually, I finished a cup and handed it to Yulia.
She clasped the hot cup in both hands and was just about to take her first sip when—
“Young Master. It looks like we have more customers coming.”
“What? Customers at this hour...?”
“They’re all carrying swords. Something about this doesn’t look good.”
I turned toward the window and saw more than a dozen men approaching the shop from a distance.
When I counted them, there were exactly seventeen.
‘Don’t tell me her introduction scene is starting now?’
The men steadily approached the shop.
The one in front wore an eyepatch, while the others bore scars and tattoos. Their overall appearance closely resembled the thugs from Yulia’s introduction cinematic that I had seen in the game.
‘Her introduction scene isn’t supposed to happen until two days from now. Did it get moved forward? Is it because Yulia came to our shop?’
That was the only explanation I could think of.
The reclusive Yulia was originally supposed to come outside two days from now, but because she had left early to drink coffee at our shop, the event itself must have been dragged forward.
Whether that was truly the reason was difficult to say.
But after seeing what Yulia did next, I became fairly certain I had guessed correctly.
“I’ll be back in a moment.”
“That’s a shame. Coffee tastes best while it’s hot.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be back before it gets cold.”
What are you, Guan Yu?
Yulia set down the cup she had been holding and placed a hand on the sword at her waist.
Then, with her characteristic dignified stride, she left the shop and charged straight toward the seventeen men without the slightest hesitation.
“Y-Young Master. Shouldn’t we help her?”
“No. Just watch. That is helping her.”
This was a chance to witness Sword Saint Yulia’s introduction scene with my own eyes.
A rare spectacle that I might never see again for the rest of my life in this world began unfolding before me.