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While any customer can open their own tab at a coffee bar, Yylfordt chooses to do so in Szayel's name. He does this without the slightest bit of remorse or shame. When the owner of the coffee bar - an older, stern-looking woman - comes to the table to collect on the tab, she addresses him in a heavy Scottish accent.
Mrs Birrell - the proprietress of the establishment - instantly recognises the strong resemblance this blond fellow has with one of her regulars, that Professor Grantz up at the university. Knowing how slippery the professor is when it comes to giving straight answers, she sets upon the hapless brother with a barrage of curious enquiries.
He looks up at the old woman as she begins jabbering away at him. He doesn't answer any one of her questions, despite there being quite a lot of them. Yylfordt is still trying to think. He doesn't know how the hell he is supposed to reconcile the sudden interest Szayel showed in having him drop in to see this shiny, new wet, dreary life he's made in the West with those… private photos and everything that seemed to be laid out all-too-readily for one to just simply happen across. He stays quiet while the inquisitorial woman keeps talking and talking.
For all that she spoke in plain English, it mattered not a whit without a response to even a single one of these questions. He doesn't appear to be paying any attention to the owner of the coffee bar. Instead, he has a vacant look in his eyes… as he tries to figure this all out. There's no telling how long he's been silently thinking over this.
Sighing, the old woman eventually gets the hint that this fellow here is incapable of answering her questions. She looks him over with a somewhat puzzled expression. It's like the cat has got his tongue. But behind the stupefied alarm in his eyes, the thoughts keep running a mile a minute in his mind. He has no clue where to even begin with this quandary he's found himself in.
The best reason Mrs Birrell surmises for why Szayel avoids divulging any information about his family must be because this blond brother is in fact a deaf-mute. The coffee bar owner then decides to write her questions down on a piece of paper. Pleased with her brilliance, the old woman scrawling away is thoroughly convinced that anything can be conveyed by means of the written word.
Unfortunately, Yylfordt's aptitude for discerning cursive script is practically zero.
The coffee bar owner is astounded by how incapable the tourist is at reading what she considers to be the most perfunctory of penmanship. She has never seen such a thing in all her years running a coffee bar in St Andrews. This is exactly why she then decides to ask simple questions he might be able to reply in no more than two strokes of a biro.
The questions she starts asking are extremely straightforward - so much so that getting as little as an 'X' for no or 'V' for yes would suffice for this exchange. Her very first question sounds something like this:
― Are. You. Szayel's. Bro-ther?
Her efforts are to no avail. Here and now, the only single thing that matters in Yylfordt's mind is trying to get to the bottom of things. He needs to know how it all fits together. As such, he doesn't even bother looking at the sheet of paper Mrs Birrell has just slid onto his table… Nor did he seem to be aware of the few onlookers who were wondering where in the world someone so peculiar had blown in from. He just keeps staring into the distance, staring and thinking.
Sighing, Mrs Birrell realises that asking questions right now is going to get her absolutely nowhere. She isn't so much as getting even vague answers from this strange mute chappy… so she decides to do the rational thing and leave him alone at the table he's seated at in the corner. She spares him one last look from across the coffee bar, then Mrs Birrell moves on to attend her other (paying!) patrons.
Yylfordt… just sits there. He's managed to say nothing at all to a soul at the coffee bar. He's made zero progress with understanding how everything is connected… and so he continues letting the thoughts loop endlessly around the conclusions he is so desperate to avoid reaching even though they're practically blaring at him.
Yylfordt's single train of thought has been running nonstop for a very long time now. The guy doesn't notice the hour slipping by. Even without taking his eyes off of the coffee shop's floor, his gaze starts to lose focus… and his mind eventually spaces out.