I commissioned a total of ten moka pots. That was the maximum number we could operate with the two employees included whenever I joined them during business hours.
‘Once they’re finished, we’ll be able to make a much wider variety of coffee.’
With drip coffee, the basic components were coffee and water, so there was only so much variation one could introduce. Espresso-based drinks, on the other hand, allowed for far more possibilities.
Even a latte used milk instead of water, after all.
Making a latte with drip coffee would not only compromise the taste but also be terribly inefficient in terms of time.
‘Of course, a moka pot can’t possibly produce as much pressure as a modern coffee machine....’
But this was already more than enough for now.
Wanting anything beyond that would simply be greed. Once the moka pots were completed, if I could encourage our existing customers to order Americanos, we could cut the time it took to make coffee by more than half.
A fully automatic grinder paired with moka pots.
That combination alone would easily do the work of several people, allowing us to serve even more customers and naturally increasing our sales in the process.
‘Well, Lily will probably make me a coffee machine someday too, right?’
For the time being, I planned to start developing some espresso-based drinks. The shop was running smoothly thanks to Isaac and Yulia, so I should also have no trouble adjusting the Edwell Blend to suit espresso extraction.
‘Speaking of which, I wonder how those two are doing.’
On my way back to the shop, I suddenly remembered Yulia saying that she had something she wanted to ask about coffee. Isaac had said he would teach her properly, but seeing as even the great Yulia was now speaking formally to me, I began to worry that perhaps he was being too hard on her.
‘Yulia has a bit of a temper too. What if she gets angry and draws her sword or something? If they actually get into a fight, Isaac will get destroyed....’
Surely not.
Still somewhat concerned, I quickened my pace toward the shop.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Business had already ended for the day.
Just as he was about to leave work, Isaac belatedly remembered that Yulia had said she had something she wanted to ask about coffee. He must have forgotten while concentrating on running the shop.
“Come to think of it, Miss Yulia. You said you had something you wanted to ask, didn’t you?”
“I did, but you’re supposed to be going home now.”
“Don’t worry about that. Ask me anything you like. In fact, now that there aren’t any customers, I think I can teach you more comfortably.”
At Isaac’s consideration, Yulia nodded.
Then she recalled the taste of the coffee she had brewed and drunk herself while working at the shop.
“The coffee I make tastes different from the coffee Maxim—no, the Boss makes for me.”
“How does it taste different?”
“Hmm. The coffee the Boss makes is definitely less bitter.”
Isaac thought back to the times Maxim had brewed coffee for Yulia. He had a rough idea of what the difference might be. After considering it for a moment, Isaac slowly spoke.
“If you don’t mind, could you brew a cup of coffee for me?”
“Yes. Just a moment.”
Isaac carefully observed every single movement as Yulia brewed the coffee. There was no difference in the amount of coffee or water she used, nor was there any difference in the extraction time.
There was only one thing she did differently from Maxim.
The number of pours.
‘The difference in taste is probably because of how many times she pours the water.’
The hand-drip recipe had been devised by Maxim. Taste was inherently subjective, but this was the shop’s recipe, designed with both Maxim’s preferred flavor profile and the customers’ tastes in mind.
The recipe used a total of 280 grams of water across three pours. The first pour used 120 grams to draw out the coffee’s best aroma and flavor, while the remaining 160 grams were divided between the second and third pours, which determined the concentration.
Splitting the first pour into two could have helped control the sweetness and acidity more precisely, but it had been consolidated into a single pour to save time. Meanwhile, the latter half had been divided into two pours to compensate for the Edwell Blend’s relatively weak body.
“The Young Master once told me that the reason he divides the remaining 160 grams of water between the second and third pours after the first is to make the coffee more concentrated.”
“Yes, that’s what I was taught too!”
“For ordinary customers, we follow the recipe and divide the water into three pours. But when the Young Master makes coffee for you, Miss Yulia, he combines the second and third pours into one.”
“...Why?”
“Obviously, because you dislike bitter coffee, Miss Yulia.”
“...Ah!”
“He must have done it to make the coffee less concentrated.”
Yulia awkwardly scratched her cheek.
The boy had once been notorious as a good-for-nothing, yet every so often he did something surprisingly touching like this.
It only made her feel even guiltier for slapping him.
But she put that sentiment aside for the moment.
There was still a more important “problem” to solve.
“The Young Master says this almost habitually. The care a person puts into making coffee is what creates the finer details in its flavor.”
“Uh, hmm. So you mean the coffee tastes different depending on whether you pour all the water continuously or divide it into two separate pours?”
“Probably. To tell you the truth, perhaps I still lack training, but I can’t tell the difference myself. No matter how many times I drink it, it all tastes the same to me.”
“It tasted completely different to me.”
“From my perspective, the fact that you can even detect such a subtle difference is extraordinary, Miss Yulia....”
As befitted a genius of swordsmanship, all of Yulia’s physical senses were exceptionally sharp, and her sense of taste was on an entirely different level from that of an ordinary person.
Isaac looked at her with some amazement, but Yulia was equally surprised.
‘To think it was only the difference in the number of pours.’
She pursued perfection in everything.
Swordsmanship was no different. Whenever a question arose regarding something she was doing, she could never feel satisfied until she personally determined the cause and witnessed the result with her own eyes.
Only then could she move forward.
Perhaps that was why this felt like a problem to her.
Now that she knew the cause, it was a problem she had to solve herself and verify the result firsthand.
‘If Maxim can do it, so can I.’
Her competitive spirit flared up out of habit.
Yulia prepared to brew coffee again.
She intended to keep making it until she could reproduce the coffee Maxim brewed for her to her own satisfaction.
‘I can’t ask Maxim to make coffee for me every single day, can I?’
The coffee he made certainly tasted better.
She wanted to drink that coffee all the time, but she did not want to depend on him forever.
In the end, she would simply have to learn how to make it herself.
“Manager, you can go home first. I’m going to practice for just a little while longer.”
“No. I’ll help as well. My sense of taste isn’t nearly as refined as yours, so I’m not sure how much help I’ll be, but if my disciple is working this hard, shouldn’t I at least assist where I can?”
“...Yes. Thank you.”
The word disciple did not sit entirely well with her, but if she wanted to wear a silver name tag someday, Yulia needed to concentrate on practicing her coffee-making.
With Isaac washing the equipment beside her and immediately handing it back, she was able to brew far more cups in rapid succession.
Two or three hours passed in the blink of an eye.
At last, a satisfied smile spread across Yulia’s face.
She had succeeded in producing coffee that tasted similar to Maxim’s.
“I finished much faster because you helped me, Manager. Thank you so much.”
“There’s no need to thank me. In the end, all of this effort contributes to the development of our shop, doesn’t it? More importantly, as your master, it was only natural that I should help my disciple.”
“Still, you had to stay late because of me....”
“If anything, this worked out well. I ended up drinking quite a lot of coffee while tasting all the cups you made. Thanks to that, I’m not sleepy at all, so I think I’ll be able to focus even better on my swordsmanship training.”
“Swordsmanship training?”
“Yes. I train in swordsmanship every day after work.”
Yulia thought Isaac was an incredibly diligent person.
He worked himself to the bone at the shop and then continued with swordsmanship training afterward.
Well, in truth, Yulia did the same....
‘Then that means I took away his training time, doesn’t it?’
No one understood the importance of training better than Yulia.
Moreover, Isaac worked longer hours than she did, so naturally he had even less time available for training.
It was the sort of training he had to squeeze into every spare moment he could find.
Perhaps because she realized she had taken away such valuable time, Yulia was suddenly overcome by unnecessary guilt.
Isaac had sacrificed his own time to help her until late at night....
Yet there was nothing she could do to help him in return.
At least, not inside the shop.
Outside the shop, however, things were different.
“Manager.”
“Yes, Miss Yulia?”
“Would you like to train in swordsmanship with me?”
“...Huh? A-are you sure that’s all right?”
And so the disciple became the master, and the master became the disciple.
***
Before I knew it, another month had passed.
‘What in the world happened?’
I stared at Yulia’s and Isaac’s status windows, rubbing my eyes over and over in disbelief.
No matter how many times I looked, I could scarcely believe what had happened.
[ Yulia Aberen ]
― Stamina: 18 > 19 (UP!)
― Dexterity: 13 > 14 (UP!)
― Trait: [Moon-Cleaving Sword LV5 > LV6] (UP!)
Yulia’s stats and Trait level had both increased.
For reference, she was growing even faster than when I had played as Yulia myself.
I had managed to raise her stats at a similar pace back then, but I had never increased her Trait level this quickly.
How was that possible?
The answer could be found in Isaac’s status window.
[ Isaac Turner ]
― Trait: [Moon-Cleaving Sword LV1] (NEW!)
Yulia had taught Isaac the Moon-Cleaving Sword.
The only explanation I could think of was that, through the process of teaching him, Yulia had deepened her own mastery of the Trait while Isaac had succeeded in learning her swordsmanship.
‘I didn’t know something like this was possible....’
Objectively speaking, Isaac’s stats were fairly impressive.
With enough effort, he had the potential to reach the upper ranks of Sword Expert.
But now, perhaps I could afford to be a little more ambitious.
After all, he had learned the Moon-Cleaving Sword, an S-rank Trait.
‘If things go well, he might even be able to aim for Swordmaster.’
Contrary to my worries that they might end up drawing swords on each other, Isaac and Yulia got along extremely well.
I had only learned this recently, but after they began training in swordsmanship together, their bond as master and disciple had grown considerably deeper.
Of course, the arrangement looked somewhat amusing.
Inside the shop, Isaac was the senior employee and Yulia was the junior.
The moment they stepped outside the shop, their positions were completely reversed.
I had worried that their ambiguous hierarchy might eventually cause problems, but the two of them had somehow managed to maintain the proper boundaries, so it had caused no trouble whatsoever for the business.
‘If anything, business is doing even better than I expected.’
Isaac’s and Yulia’s movements had become noticeably faster.
Their motions while brewing coffee were clean and entirely free of wasted movement. To exaggerate only slightly, they could clear and wipe down a table in the blink of an eye.
“Coffee seems to be coming out much faster these days!”
“Before, if you ordered three cups or more, you had to wait a good ten minutes. Now they’re done in five.”
“At this rate, even large group orders shouldn’t be much of a problem anymore!”
The customers’ reactions had changed as well.
They were particularly amazed by how quickly the coffee was prepared, and the reason was that both Isaac and Yulia had become capable of brewing two cups at the same time.
One in each hand.
To be frank, even I could not do that.
‘My balance completely falls apart.’
But Isaac and Yulia could.
Blue mana shimmered around the two of them.
They were applying the delicate and agile movements of their Trait, the Moon-Cleaving Sword, to the motions required to brew coffee.
‘If this isn’t a waste of talent, I don’t know what is....’
But if I was being sincere, I welcomed it with open arms.
They drank coffee, gained energy to train, and then the abilities they developed through that training helped us run the shop more efficiently?
If that was not a virtuous cycle, what was?
I had planned to reduce the time required to prepare coffee by improving our equipment and staffing, but I had never imagined we would shorten it in this manner.
‘I should give these two a generous bonus.’
That night, after closing, the day’s final sales totaled an astonishing 100 gold.
For the first time since opening the business, we had reached three-digit daily sales.