Chapter 3 Episode 36: The Founding Festival Day 1, Part 2
“Fay, one lee miang and one vegetable stir fry, please,” I said.
“Boss, what’s wrong? You look a little tired.”
“Well, I’ve been through a lot.”
After we found the lost kid, Bell and I looked for their parents for a while to no avail, then brought the child to the guard station. But then, a new problem arose. The kid refused to leave Bell’s side. Bell was used to dealing with kids, so she managed to get them to calm down at first, but it didn’t last. I never knew kids could wail so loudly. To make matters worse, all of the guards at the station were like me, in that they had no kids of their own and had no idea what to do. In the end, I had to let Bell take care of the kids while I just placated things by buying food for them.
After a while, though, she looked at the clock and started to panic. The church was running a rummage sale to sell dolls made by the kids and goods donated by the neighborhood, and her shift was coming up soon. But she couldn’t leave this child unattended, and didn’t feel that it was safe to leave them with us. So I ended up working her shift at the rummage sale instead.
“Why did you do that?” Fay asked.
“She said I just had to tell them where she was, but I figured I’d help out a little bit. They got busy as soon as I started to help, for some reason, and some annoying customers showed up.”
Most of the customers were polite while they shopped, but some weren’t. Not only that, but thanks to the festival, some had gotten way too drunk. They sang the praises of Tekun as they tried to enter the chapel, despite it being closed. This wasn’t a bachelor party, so I wished they would have shown a little more restraint towards the bottle.
Most of the clerks at the rummage sale were children that the church took care of. There were adult volunteers and guards present, of course, but for various reasons, there weren’t always enough adults around. I looked like a child, so they saw me as someone who needed to be looked after as well, but the young women volunteering here would have trouble confronting these burly drunks if they didn’t have experience in doing so.
The volunteers and guards were trying to do the sensible thing, and I didn’t want them to lose face, so I kept an eye on the drunks as I stood on the front line with the kids and served the customers. Sometimes I ran to their storage to get more goods, then came back to serve more customers. And when worst came to worst, I leapt into action and subdued the drunks.
But there were children present, so I avoided doing anything too violent. Even if the drunks were a nuisance, I couldn’t treat them the same way as the criminals who attacked my laundromat. To be honest, I was so overly cautious that it took longer to deal with them than it usually would. I’d lived a mostly stress-free life since I came to this world, but this was exhausting in a way I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Maybe this was some indication that I’d been slacking off lately. I was reminded of how I felt back in my days as an office worker, and it was definitely reaffirmation for me that I didn’t want to end up there again.
“In any case, good work,” Fay said. “Here’s your lee miang and vegetable stir fry. Enjoy!”
“Thank you.”
With all that done, it was time to eat. I handed over some money and got a tray of plates in return, then left to find somewhere to sit. The Semroid Troupe was periodically performing on the stage, so there were quite a number of customers coming to the food court. I couldn’t find a seat as easily as I could that morning.
“Master Ryoma!” Someone called out to me.
“Oh, Serge!”
I saw Serge raising his hand. He was eating at one of the regular tables with everyone else.
“If you need a seat, there’s one right here,” he said.
“Thank you.” I took Serge’s offer and sat next to him. “You’re eating too, Serge?”
“Yes, I wanted to check the quality of our food stands, and the food happens to be quite good, thankfully. Most of the workers are eating here too.”
“That’s good to hear. It looks like business is booming on your side too.” I saw a lot of customers at the Morgan Trading Company’s stands as well.
“Indeed, we’ve been getting an endless stream of customers. We did set up where people were going to gather, but more importantly—Oh, perfect timing. Look over there.”
I looked where Serge directed me to and saw a customer arguing with a clerk. A music box sat between them.
“Come on, I’m only asking for one more,” the customer said.
“I’m sorry, but only three per customer for the time being.”
“You can stretch the rules a little, can’t you? I want to give one to my daughter, my son, my brother, and his wife.”
“Sir, if I may ask, how many times have you come to this stand?”
“Huh? This is my first time here.”
“Are you sure? I remember seeing you at least twice before.”
“Maybe you’re imagining things.”
“I’m not so sure.”
The customer paused for a few seconds. “Fine, never mind.”
“Thank you for understanding.”
The customer left the music box and hurried away.
“What was that about?” I asked Serge.
“He most likely intends to resell music boxes. Right around when they went on sale, they drew the attention of men of his ilk. We’ve put a limit on the number of music boxes per customer to prevent anyone from buying them all up, but a number of people have been buying music boxes, waiting a while, and coming back to buy more again.”
“Won’t that cause some problems?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I have a lot of employees on duty to ensure these bad actors don’t get in the way of regular customers’ purchases, and I came up with a plan for when someone tries to resell the music boxes. If resellers spread news of the existence of music boxes, we can use that to our advantage and expand the market.” Serge didn’t elaborate on that because the crowd around us might hear, but he sounded confident.
“So everything’s going according to plan, then?”
“Yes, and I’ve opened a department specifically focused on music boxes. I’m also having Dinome’s workshop ramp up production. They’re very much on board with this venture, and they’ve hired many more craftsmen to assist them.”
“From where?”
“Dinome’s magic item workshop isn’t the only one in Keleban. For one, he’s receiving help from a trusted acquaintance he’s known for ages. On top of that, he bought up some workshops that were struggling financially.”
“That sounds like it’d be chaos for the workers at those workshops.”
“Everything from their workshops to their apprentices have been transferred to him directly, so their jobs and chain of command haven’t changed in any meaningful way. It wasn’t terribly chaotic. Dinome’s workshop has successfully organized for mass production and reduced the average workload for their employees for now. By sharing the work on music boxes with other workshops, they’ve stabilized their operations. And when it comes to sales and financing, we will work with them.”
The agreement between me and Dinome was to have him credited as the creator of the music boxes. If he wanted to hire more craftsmen and merge with other workshops, it wasn’t my place to argue. The agreement benefited both of us, so I couldn’t complain.
“Also, I think his purchase of these workshops will prove beneficial to you, Master Ryoma. Dinome’s own workshop dealt only in fire, water, light, and non-elemental magic items. But the craftsmen from these other workshops should be able to work with other elements as well,” Serge said. It sounded like that could be of some use to me if I took advantage of my agreement with Dinome. “I expect that he’ll contact you asking if there’s anything you want soon enough.”
“Then I’ll have to come up with something. Maybe I’ll have them manufacture some other new product.”
I could give them ideas for new magic items, and those ideas could give birth to new ideas. I would probably run out of material after a while, but this seemed like it could serve as an endless loop for a while. Serge seemed to have the same idea, as he was silently grinning.
I was done eating before I knew it. “Oh? Done already? That was fast,” Serge said.
“I’m an adventurer, after all.”
Taking too long would have wasted my lunch break, so you had to eat fast or not at all. Talking while quickly eating was a crucial skill I cultivated as an office worker on Earth.
“I think I’ll go buy some drinks,” I said. “Do you want anything, Serge?”
“May I ask for some of that barley tea?”
“Got it.”
I ordered two cold cups of barley tea at our food stand, then returned.
“I’m back. Here you go.”
“Thank you. I do quite like this tea. It’s fragrant in a way that black tea and herbal tea aren’t.”
“I’m glad it’s to your liking.”
“By the way,” Serge said and looked at my food stand. “You’re selling quite a number of rare foods.”
Now that he mentioned it, that was true. We were selling the following:
Water
Fruit Juice
Barley Tea
Lee Miang
Vegetable Stir Fry
Dante Seeds
Sesame Pastries
Hot Dogs
The water, juice, and barley tea were things we just already had on hand and decided to sell; the other five products were put on there based on a vote.
As far as which of these were particularly rare, for a start, there’s the barley tea. The black tea and herbal tea that Serge mentioned were the most commonplace varieties in this country, whereas barley tea was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it could be found somewhere, the way that dandelion coffee could, but it wasn’t common, in any case.
Next, there was the lee miang. Due to the danger and cost of travel, trips abroad couldn’t be taken as easily in this world as on Earth. Aside from people in a select few occupations, foreign food was viewed as unusual by most of the population. Fay and Lilyn’s home country of Gilmar also happened to be especially chaotic, and had few diplomatic relations with any other nation, so that made lee miang even rarer. A lot of customers seemed to order it simply out of curiosity.
Dante seeds were apparently a delicacy that was only eaten in certain regions, and sesame pastries were rare as well. That meant that half of our products were seen as rare and fascinating by the general public. That’s thanks in large part to deciding what to sell democratically.
“Everyone is tired of the typical festival fare, I’m sure,” Serge speculated. “From what I can see, many of the customers are indeed ordering the four rare items.”
Looking around, that seemed to be the case. I listened in on what the customers were saying.
“Huh, so this is what food in Gilmar is like.”
“Putting pasta in soup is a pretty exotic idea.”
“Yeowch, it’s hot. But it goes great with this cold barley tea!”
“I never knew that semesa could be made into jam like this.”
From what I could hear, the customers approved.
“What are you doing this afternoon, by the way?” Serge asked.
“I was going to make statues for the stage.”
During my lessons from Sordio, I had many opportunities to mingle with the rest of the Semroid Troupe. One time I brought up how I could make ice statues, and that greatly piqued their curiosity. After I showed them what I could do, it seemed to inspire Prenance and the chief of stage construction. The following day, they showed me a proposal for decorating their stage with ice statues, to my surprise.
The Semroid Troupe was planning to put on a visually spectacular show centered around their sword dancers and acrobats before nightfall, and they wanted the ice statues for that show by the end of the day. The shows at night would be more focused on music, and they wanted to use the ice statues to set the mood.
“We’ll be using some spare magic items for the lighting to make it look like the statues glow,” I said to Serge.
“I received a report of this from a subordinate. Sounds like it’ll be quite the show.”
“The plan is to unveil them tonight, but I don’t know whether people will have the chance to give them a good look.”
“That’s a good point. It would be hard for anyone to take their time here, from the look of it. Not that I can complain about all the business.”
We had a merry chat until our cups were empty.
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