Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.5

5

With the arrival of the lower sixth hour, the sun god vanished from sight. The festival only got more lively along the street after that.

Some of these folks would undoubtedly be making a commotion all through the night. Yumi had only just opened her stall for business with the setting of the sun.

“The Great Southern Tree’s already opened their stall to the south of here, and since there aren’t any other giba stalls around there, business is supposedly really thriving.”

“I see. Wouldn’t it have been smart to open your stall there too, Yumi?”

“But the farther south you go, the more the spaces cost. We can earn more than enough here, plus we get a boost from your popularity to boot.”

The Westerly Wind’s okonomiyaki had definitely been selling smoothly. Today, they had prepared a whole one hundred orders. Yumi and her friend Luia seemed quite excited, as no matter how quickly they grilled them, they couldn’t get ahead of the demand.

Also, Myme and Mikel had shown up at our restaurant earlier as customers. Even though they weren’t selling anything, they had still hired Bartha to guard them and see them to and from town by wagon. The post town was just too dangerous at night, so Mikel had accompanied Myme today to determine whether or not it would be possible for her to do business in the evening, even with a guard.

“See? There’s nothing to worry about with Asuta and the others right there. And Bartha will be right by my side on the way to and from,” Myme argued, giving Mikel an imploring look.

It had been some time since Mikel had last come by our stalls. As he stood there and ate his tarapa stew, he had an incredibly complex expression on his face.

“But you get bandits and the like out here at night. There’s no guarantee you wouldn’t be attacked on the way back to the Turan lands from the post town.”

“That’s why I’d have a guard!”

“Then what about after that guard leaves? You could be followed back home, and they could come into your house later and threaten not only your money but your very life.”

Myme’s eyebrows drooped as she made a face like a sad puppy.

Bartha patted the girl’s head of dark-brown braided hair. “It’ll be fine as long as we aren’t tailed, right? Despite how I might look, I’m a hunter from Masara. If anyone follows after us on a totos or in a wagon, there’s no way I’d miss it.”

“Yes, but...”

“Mikel, you were born in the castle town, right? I can understand your concern, but even here in the post town with all these ruffians around, there’s nothing to worry about as long as you know how to handle yourself. I mean, those girls there are running a business all on their own, right? Or are you saying I’m less reliable than they are?” Bartha added with a bright grin across her face that looked more manly than the faces of most men. “Besides, I’ve already been making sure to stay attentive enough to prevent bandits from following us during the day too. It’s only natural to be that cautious when you’re pulling in so many coins, right? I swear I won’t lead any troublesome folks to the Turan lands, so please show some trust in my skill.”

With that, Mikel finally relented, and decided to allow Myme to run a stall on the next holiday.

Today, Bartha had only been hired as a guard for an hour, so after eating their meals, they headed right on back to the Turan lands.

After that, the members of the Gamley Troupe showed up. Just like during the day, they brought their own containers so they could take the food back to their tent. The only ones to show up this time, though, were Pino the acrobat, Shantu the beast tamer, and Neeya the minstrel.

“The nighttime show has already started, so we’re the only ones who are free. Sorry that we keep running around here, but we’re going to have to go back and forth a bit.”

Just as she had said, the three of them ended up making several trips between our stalls and the tent.

Each time they came back, Neeya would say a few pointless words to Ai Fa, but naturally, my clan head’s iron will held out against any desire to inflict violence upon a precious customer. However, that didn’t mean she was going to show him any courtesy, instead simply ignoring him while remaining utterly expressionless.

The Gamley Troupe had opened for business with the setting of the sun, and they seemed to be doing quite well. I was constantly seeing folks here and there wandering into the entrance to the tent and the fortuneteller’s booth off to the side.

“So you’re going to come see us again, mister?”

“Yeah. It looks like we’re gonna wrap up work surprisingly early, so there should be nothing stopping us from coming over.”

Sundials weren’t exactly useful after sunset, but it shouldn’t have been any later than six and a half at that point. However, in spite of that, the pot in front of me was running out quickly, and while the other stalls each had a varying amount of food left to sell, we all seemed to have the finish line in sight. Though the number of customers had dropped somewhat, we were still just as short on plates as always, and even our restaurant’s temporary expansion remained full.

We had already purchased more tableware to prepare for tonight. In fact, we had bought enough for each of the customers in our eighty-four seats to use three full sets, or two-hundred-and-fifty-two sets in total.

However, during the peak rush, we ended up using all of them, and our seating went over capacity. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say we used them all because the seating went over capacity. We always had around 130 people in our seating area, so it was only natural that ended up happening.

The myamuu giba and poitan wraps didn’t require plates, so it wasn’t like all 130 customers were using three sets, but even so, we couldn’t keep things as they were. My guesstimate was that we needed another thirty to forty more sets in order to not make the customers wait around for tableware to be available.

This really is an unbelievable number of customers. Next time around, maybe I should make a push to prepare more curry or pasta.

To prepare for today, we had increased the amount of the soups we prepared by fifty portions and the other three dishes aside from the pasta by twenty, but even so, it looked like it would all sell out in less than two hours.

The total numbers for the dishes were 350 giba hot pot stew servings, 120 of the tarapa stew, 160 each of the myamuu giba and poitan wraps, and 200 of giba and nanaar carbonara, added up to 990 servings all together.

With each customer ordering three dishes on average, that would work out to 330 customers, which was less than we got during the day. We just ran out too quickly. I had predicted we would be open for business for 140 minutes at the shortest and 200 minutes at longest, so it was completely unexpected to be done in less than two hours.

Since people primarily get food from the inns at night, I thought that we probably wouldn’t have to worry about customers showing up at a rate any faster than they do in the daytime. I’ll have to rework the plan with everyone from the Ruu clan tomorrow, I thought to myself as the tarapa stew sold out.

Because the pasta took some time to prepare, the stall Toor Deen was in charge of still had a number of customers lined up in front of it. However, she only seemed to have twenty or so servings left.

The giba hot pot stew was the second to sell out, followed by the poitan wraps and the myamuu giba a little while later, and then finally, the pasta followed suit. We had sold everything.

According to my intuition, it hadn’t even been an hour since the sun had set, so we really had wrapped up in less than two hours. We all exchanged dumbfounded looks between us.

“We’ll have to consult with Reina Ruu about how much more to prepare for the next holiday, won’t we?” Sheera Ruu said with a proud smile as she washed some dirty dishes.