Prologue

“Ugh, it’s bitter……”

Sitting up on the bed and drinking from the coffee cup, the young girl stuck her tongue out with a contorted face.

She had long beautiful silver hair that came all the way down to her waist. Her big eyes on her small face were aquamarine. Her eyes and nose were sharp like a Western European, but unlike a Western European, she had a slender and small frame. Given such a unique appearance, she looked like she was someone people would call a Celtic fairy.

She was a young girl with a mysterious air around her.

“Aren’t you bad with bitter stuff? How about you stop being stubborn and add milk to it?”

This is a room in a hospital. Though he hasn’t asked the girl what sort of illness she had, she was being allocated a private room where she could even use a portable cooking stove. Next to the bed there were piles of books that seemed to be her reading materials.

Toushirou gave a wry smile as he was washing the coffee dripper at the sink, and the young girl shook her head obstinately.

“You can’t. Using milk for such purposes is a defilement of milk itself.”

“Not to coffee huh?”

“That’s because milk is good for you.”

Puffing up her cheeks, the young girl turned her head away.

She seemed very particular about her height, which is why she drinks milk for all three meals each day without fail.

“If you really love milk so much, I should’ve brought some…”

“I wanted to drink it because Tohshiroh said it was nice”

Originally, it all started when Toushirou heard that having coffee while studying would help increase one’s efficiency and decided to try it out.

Liking it even more than what he had anticipated, it now escalated to him finding the best way to brew delicious coffee through trial and error. On the other hand, his studies were ignored, but that’s a trivial matter.

Thanks to him briefly touching on the subject, the young girl started asking him to make her some coffee.

—With freshly ground beans, however.

Being pestered by such a lovely girl, put Toushirou in a slightly better mood. He ground up the beans just before he left to visit her, but it seems that it didn’t suit her taste buds.

“Well, I’ll bring milk along with me next time. Since they have it in the shop it should be okay for patients to drink it.”

As soon as that was said, the young girl panicked as if she was losing out. Then, she frowned unhappily.

“……This will do.”

“Wait, you can’t handle this right?”

“It’s unfair if Tohshiroh can drink it but I can’t.”

She then drank from the cup once again, cringing as she tried to put up with the bitterness and then sulkily looked down at the book that she was holding.

In the mountain of books next to her pillow, western style books were the most conspicuous, though some Japanese style books could be seen here and there. As he was about to try and ask what sort of books she was reading—

“A story about a helpless world being saved a little by magic.”

That was it.

When Toushirou happened to laugh at it for sounding childish, she remained silent for a while.

While recalling about what just happened, Toushirou tilted his head in doubt.

“Oh wait, it might be a little too late but is it okay for patients to drink coffee?”

This was an incident which took place three years ago.