Before returning to Earth, the café had already been mostly complete, with only the decoration work and installation remaining unfinished. Henry had instructed the builders to install the lighting fixtures according to his plans, while the responsibility for decoration had largely been left in Alina's hands.
The generators and battery banks, on the other hand, had been installed personally by Henry.
Orianna had mentioned that the generator wasn't actually an industrial unit like the ones used in factories back on Earth, but it was still large enough to comfortably provide electricity for the entire café, including the lighting, refrigeration, air conditioners, and any additional equipment he intended to introduce in the future.
Even though he had already inspected everything only a few minutes earlier, Henry found himself going over the installation one final time. Running generators wasn't something he wanted to be careless about, especially when diesel fuel, electrical wiring, and enclosed spaces were involved. A loose connection could damage equipment, a fuel leak could create entirely different problems, and Henry would very much prefer not to discover any mistakes after customers started filling the building above.
Thankfully, he found no obvious issues.
The fuel tanks remained properly connected to the generators through reinforced fuel lines, the ventilation system was functioning correctly, the wiring appeared secure, and the battery banks had been installed exactly where they were supposed to be.
Most importantly, the basement had been heavily soundproofed during renovation because the constant rumble of industrial machinery would have completely ruined the atmosphere of the café above if customers could hear it through the floor.
Eventually he reached for the starter.
Alina had been studying the unfamiliar machines ever since they entered the basement, and her curiosity had clearly reached the point where she could no longer keep quiet. "You have spent the last ten minutes inspecting these things instead of admiring the café upstairs," she said while glancing between the generators and the battery banks. "Are they really that important, or are you just unusually passionate about large metal boxes?"
"They're more important than the furniture, the decorations, and probably the building itself," Henry replied as he checked the final connection one last time. "Without these machines, the lights don't work, the refrigerators don't work, the air conditioners don't work, and most of the ideas I brought from Earth become expensive decorations that do absolutely nothing."
Alina blinked several times before looking from the generators to Henry and then back toward the generators again. "Lights? You mean lanterns? Why do lanterns need these large machines? And what exactly is a refrig-? More importantly, what is an air condition, and does it actually condition the air somehow?"
The questions came so quickly that Henry barely had time to process one before the next arrived, and by the time she finished speaking he had already forgotten which question she had asked first.
"Whoa, slow down a little," he said with a laugh. "Since when did you become Hermione? You're throwing questions at me faster than I can answer them."
Alina frowned immediately.
"Who is Hermione supposed to be?"
"Someone from my world."
"That doesn't answer the question. Is she a scholar, a researcher, or one of those genius inventors you're always talking about?"
"Something along those lines," Henry replied, deciding that attempting to explain Harry Potter to a resident of Teyvat was probably a bad idea. If he ever intended to introduce literature from Earth here, spoiling one of the most famous stories before people even had a chance to read it seemed almost criminal.
Alina folded her arms across her chest and gave him a suspicious look. "And why exactly are you comparing me to her?"
"Because you're attacking me with questions so aggressively exactly like Hermione."
"That sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do when somebody keeps introducing impossible things and then refuses to explain how any of them work."
Henry opened his mouth, thought about arguing, and then closed it again because she had a point.
"Fine, but you'll understand everything soon enough. Trust me when I say that the demonstration is going to be far more impressive than any explanation I could give right now."
"Now you've made me even more curious, which I suspect was your intention from the beginning."
Henry's grin widened.
"Good. Then watch carefully."
With that, he activated the system.
The generator immediately roared to life, and the sudden explosion of noise echoed throughout the basement so violently that Alina jumped in surprise and instinctively grabbed Henry's arm before she even realized what she was doing.
Henry looked down at the hand clutching his sleeve before looking back toward Alina, and the sight of her startled expression was enough to produce a very unfortunate smirk.
Unfortunately for him, Alina noticed.
A small electro spark jumped from her fingertips and struck his arm.
"OW!"
Henry immediately jerked backward while rubbing the offended area. "What was that for?"
"You were laughing at me."
"I was not laughing."
Alina simply stared at him.
"Henry, I have known you long enough to recognize that face."
"Fine," he admitted. "I was smiling a little, but that is completely different from laughing."
"It is not."
"It absolutely is."
"It absolutely isn't."
Henry continued rubbing his arm before deciding that honesty was probably the safest route forward.
"In my defence, I wasn't smiling because you got scared. I was smiling because you looked cute when you got scared."
For perhaps the first time during the entire conversation, Alina seemed genuinely caught off guard.
She wasn't somebody who blushed easily, nor was she particularly easy to fluster, but Henry still noticed the small smile threatening to appear at the corner of her lips before she quickly regained control of her expression.
"Hmph. You're becoming quite the smooth talker."
Although Alina rolled her eyes, the faint smile never completely disappeared, and Henry privately counted that as a victory.
"That thing is much louder than I expected," Alina admitted as she looked toward the ceiling. "Are you sure people sitting upstairs won't hear it? Because if they can, I think your dream of creating a relaxing café atmosphere is going to die a very quick death."
"We're standing directly beside the engine, so naturally it's loud down here. The whole reason I personally instructed the builders on insulation was so customers wouldn't have to listen to machinery while drinking coffee."
"I sincerely hope you are right."
"So do I."
Henry spent the next few moments checking the readings, verifying the voltage, and confirming that everything appeared normal before finally nodding in satisfaction.
"Everything looks good so far, which means either the installation was successful or the disaster is simply waiting until later to happen."
That answer somehow sounded serious enough that Alina couldn't immediately tell whether he was joking.
Fortunately, the equipment continued functioning normally, and after spending another minute monitoring the readings, Henry finally walked over to the main electrical cabinet and pulled the mains switch. A sharp click echoed through the room as indicator lights illuminated across the control panel, signalling that power was beginning to flow through the building's electrical system.
"Moment of truth," Henry said before reaching for another switch.
The basement flooded with bright white light, causing Alina's head to snap upward so quickly that Henry was briefly worried she might actually hurt her neck.
The existence of light itself wasn't what surprised her. Mondstadt had lanterns, candles, fireplaces, crystal lamps, and countless other methods of illumination. What stunned her was the complete absence of anything producing that light. There was no flame burning inside glass, no smoke drifting toward the ceiling, no oil being consumed, and no visible source anywhere in the room. One moment the basement had been dark and the next it had become brilliantly illuminated without any explanation she could identify.
Alina slowly turned in a circle while examining the ceiling from several different angles before eventually walking over to one of the fixtures. Even after standing directly beneath it, she couldn't find a crystal, a wick, or anything else that might explain how it worked.
"I genuinely don't understand what I'm looking at," she admitted while continuing her inspection. "There isn't a flame, there isn't any oil being burned, and I can't even find an elemental crystal anywhere. The room is bright, but I still can't figure out what's actually producing the light."
"Electricity."
Alina immediately turned toward him.
"What?"
"It explains everything. The problem is that explaining why it explains everything would probably take several hours, and by the end of it you'd either fall asleep or decide you never wanted to hear the word electricity again."
"Then give me the short version."
"The short version is that the machines downstairs generate electricity, the electricity travels through wires hidden inside the walls, and these lights use that electricity to produce illumination."
Alina looked toward the ceiling again before studying the surrounding walls as though she might somehow discover the hidden wires through sheer determination. Several seconds later she looked back at Henry with an expression that suggested she was trying very hard to understand and failing completely.
"So if I'm understanding this correctly, those machines downstairs create something called electricity, that electricity travels through invisible wires hidden throughout the building, and somehow these lights turn it into illumination without requiring flames, oil, crystals, or any other visible source of energy?"
"That's actually a surprisingly accurate summary."
"Henry, I understood every word you just said and somehow ended up even more confused than before."
"You'd be surprised. Most people in my world use electricity every day without actually understanding how it works."
Alina's suspicious stare returned almost immediately.
"You're lying."
"I'm really not. Ask the average person to explain electricity and they'll probably fail just as badly as I would if somebody asked me to explain how a Vision is received"
That comparison seemed to help because Alina considered it for a moment before finally nodding.
"Come on. The lights were only the beginning, and if this impressed you then you're going to like what comes next."
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Drop powerstones please. We need to reach 100 stones before Thursday(2nd chapter drops)
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