The story opens with a flashback to a time when a girl named Lucy was a student at a school called "fairy high school." Lucy is now a year older than her, and she tells us that before she moved to fairy high school, she used to go to a school for girls who were in the upper echelons of society. One day, she asks her friend, "Natsu," if he would like to do a "formal" greeting for the other girls in the class. He refuses, saying that he's too young and inexperienced to do such a thing. Lucy says that she's not a man, and that she doesn't want to be "a man" before she has a chance to win a girl's hand in marriage. She wants to go home and read a book, but she can't find a man to do it for her. So she decides to have a " chugging contest" , where she'll have to drink a certain amount of water in order to get to the bottom of what's going on in her head. Lucy and Natsu start talking about the guy they're going to meet at six o'clock in the morning. Lucy asks Natsu if he'd like to meet her at the same time, and he says that he would, but that he has to leave his clothes on while he does so. She asks him if he thinks this is too bold of a thing to do, but he says it's okay, because he likes to shake people's hands and shake his own clothes. He then asks her if she'd rather have a crowd of people around her, or if she would rather have them all around her. She says she likes anything metal, so she agrees to meet him at six.