Oswin the Pompadour began counting the coins carefully. He took a slow breath, then pulled a quill pen from the pocket of his coat and gently wrote the name Zhang Xuan on the list of customers who had paid.
Zhang Xuan smiled and offered Oswin a seat, inviting him to stay a little longer and enjoy a cup of warm coffee. Oswin paused to think, then looked at Zhang Xuan for quite a while before shaking his head. He opened his bag, revealing that it was filled with stacks of bills.
"I'm sorry, sir. There are many invoices I must finish today," Oswin said softly.
Realizing that, Zhang Xuan remained silent. It didn't bother him much, for they would surely meet again in three months. Oswin rose from his chair, opened the door with his left hand, and the blinding sunlight swallowed the figure of the thirty-two-year-old man as he stepped out toward another house.
Zhang Xuan immediately began tidying the utensils on the table they had used. He wiped them carefully, paying attention to every detail. On the service counter lay two books, one green and one blue. The green one was wide open, filled with a list of regular customers, while the blue one contained the café's menu. The blue book stood neatly at the left corner of the counter.
That day was like any other. Zhang Xuan simply waited for customers to arrive. If none came by late afternoon, he would close the shop early.
His days often felt monotonous. He would sit outside, watering the plants while waiting for uncertain guests. Occasionally, the foolish crow that often perched on the café roof would throw tiny pebbles at his plants.
For the first three years since the café's opening, many people had visited out of curiosity about Zhang Xuan's fabled coffee, rumored to possess an extraordinary taste. They came in droves to try it, yet some ended up vomiting after taking a sip, perhaps because they were not accustomed to such an unfamiliar flavor.
In that region, coffee beans were synonymous with medicinal herbs. The people of the Kingdom of Ledoira and the inhabitants of the Twelve Continents usually used them as ingredients for health tonics. Healers would crush and grind the beans finely, then strain them before brewing with hot water.
Even many adults could not stand the smell or taste of coffee. So when Zhang Xuan opened his café, the villagers and nobles alike assumed it was a clinic. Zhang Xuan denied such claims, insisting that his brewed coffee had a unique sweetness.
However, few could withstand the new sensation it offered. The sweetness in Zhang Xuan's coffee came from sugarcane, a wild plant considered a weed and long ignored by the locals. He had discovered it by accident, at a time when he had nothing to eat.
Back then, Zhang Xuan had not yet opened his café. Most of his savings had been spent on ordering special equipment from a dwarven blacksmith. The order had yet to be completed, and he had only a handful of copper coins left, barely enough for food.
One day, while walking past the market and nearby settlements, Zhang Xuan crossed a gravel road glistening with puddles of water due to the village's poorly built irrigation. Among the patches of wet earth, strange plants grew that were regarded by locals as weeds.
No one dared to touch or eat them. They looked peculiar, similar to bamboo but shorter and rougher in texture. Children were even forbidden to approach them, as it was believed the plants could cause itching or rashes.
In his childhood, Zhang Xuan's parents had also warned him to stay away from such plants. But hunger had now outweighed fear. He dared not steal apples or grapes from nearby orchards, for doing so would brand him a thief and send him to prison. So instead, he decided to try the wild plant.
Zhang Xuan picked one and broke its stalk. To his surprise, the inside was clean and filled with a bit of clear liquid.
"Let's hope I don't die," he murmured quietly.
He stuck out his tongue and tasted a few drops. Cold sweat trickled down his neck, and his heart pounded violently. But after a moment, his expression changed, astonishment replacing fear. The taste was sweet. There was no itching, no allergic reaction, nothing.
Zhang Xuan bit into the stalk's soft core, and his eyes lit up.
"This… this is delicious!" he exclaimed with newfound vigor. He devoured the sugarcane eagerly. From that day forward, sugarcane became his salvation whenever he ran out of money.
Some time later, Zhang Xuan borrowed money from a friend at the academy. He used it to pay off the dwarven blacksmith and finally receive his equipment. He powered the machines using industrial magic stones, then registered himself as an official craftsman.
Through trial and error, he learned to process sugarcane manually until he successfully extracted its syrup into pure sugar. From that discovery, Zhang Xuan finally opened his very own café, one whose taste, born from desperation and curiosity, would later become a legend.