The next day, I visited the Academy again with Eilenna.
Originally, I had planned to buy stall equipment, tools, a tent, and so on today.
But if I bought them in advance for no reason and the paperwork happened to be rejected, they would all become useless.
So after merely finding out where the equipment was sold, I came today to fill out the documents.
“Wow... So this is where the Empire’s humans learn. It’s way bigger than it looked from outside.”
“It certainly is big. But are you really okay with this? Working with me, I mean.”
“Yeah, I love it.”
When I returned to the mansion yesterday, Eilenna had been waiting for me like a puppy guarding the house.
She was curious about the result of the contract, but it also seemed that although she had come all the way to the imperial capital, she was bored being alone.
I figured Eilenna had followed me because she wanted to look around the city.
She was a gourmet elf, rare even in Noirudel, who was proactive and full of a desire for progress, so perhaps she wanted to experience the current pinnacle of human civilization.
But instead of sightseeing with her, I suddenly said I was going to run a food stall... Honestly, I was prepared to accept it if she expressed disappointment.
Contrary to my expectations, however, Eilenna readily told me what she thought last night.
‘A food stall... That sounds really,’
‘Yes. I understand if you’re disappointed. I’m sorry.’
‘Really great, though? Let’s do it right away.’
‘Huh.’
Had making wine made her want to try making food too?
‘Just the two of us in a cramped stall... Hehe...’
‘Pardon? What did you say?’
‘N-nothing!’
Eilenna had muttered something with a wicked grin, but I didn’t catch it clearly.
I didn’t know her exact motivation for wanting to work at the stall, but I had no reason to refuse.
I was planning to keep the scale of the stall small enough for one person to run, and even if it got a little busy, I had years of experience in the food business.
However, there was one thing I absolutely couldn’t overcome.
‘When I changed the part-timer to a pretty girl, sales went up.’
There was something in the advertising world called the “3B rule.”
Baby, Beast, and Beauty.
It meant that as long as one of those 3B elements appeared, whatever product you advertised, the promotional effect would at least be decent.
In that sense, Eilenna was the optimal choice among the people I knew.
She was a rare elf from the extremely closed-off Noirudel,
and even if every beauty in this other world were lined up, her looks would place her at least within the top ten.
On top of that, she had a palate honed through wine brewing and decent cooking skills.
Hardtack was what was popular in the capital, not me.
If some black-haired guy with no real background ran a stall in front of the Academy, customers might find it suspicious and not come.
In self-employment, you always had to consider the worst-case scenario.
But then, ta-da!
What if a blue-eyed, cool-beauty, tall-model elf lady became the face of the stall?
‘Game over. Lock them all in.’
It would probably sell even if we served Elskit and elven vegetable soup instead of toast.
It might even sell better if we advertised it as an authentic elven restaurant.
In any case, the appearance problem I had been quietly worrying about was solved as well.
With a lighter heart, I entered the Academy building and found the administrative office.
Knock, knock, knock—
Creeeak—
After knocking, I carefully opened the door and went in, and the gazes of the employees at work turned toward me.
“Um... I’m here to fill out the paperwork for a food stall. What should I do?”
“Ah, you must be the person the head of finance mentioned. Please come this way.”
Fortunately, it seemed the head of finance hadn’t been slow with his work.
Then again, he really didn’t look like the type to let anything interfere with business.
Eilenna and I sat down at the desk, following the employee’s guidance with awkward movements.
And then, a feast of documents unfolded before my eyes.
“This is an application for a temporary business permit, and this is a food hygiene responsibility pledge. Please write your name here on both, and agree here...”
Besides those, there were many troublesome documents, such as an accident prevention safety regulation implementation plan and a revenue-sharing and site rental contract.
I did read the rental contract fairly carefully, but there weren’t any particularly exploitative clauses.
There was no mention of key money, but it wasn’t as if I was moving into a commercial building to do business.
The street was already active to begin with, so there was no real room for the concept of key money to get involved.
The monthly site fee and taxes were set at amounts I could accept, so I gladly finished signing.
“And this elf here is... an employee? Or a business partner?”
“She’s my business partner.”
“Then, Ms. Elf, please sign the documents as well.”
“O-okay. I mean, yes.”
Unlike in Noirudel, where everything from one to ten wasn’t put into documents, Eilenna seemed unfamiliar with it.
She stiffened like a robot and carefully read through the documents with a very tense expression.
I understood why she wanted to be careful, but at this rate, it would take all day.
Pop—
I moved over to Eilenna’s side and helped her fill out the documents.
“H-huhh. Jinwoo, you’re too close...”
“Let’s see... There’s nothing much to this one. Lady Eilenna, when you make food, you’ll wash your hands properly and clean the workplace, right?”
“O-of course! But could you give me just a little space...”
“Then sign here. This document is similar too. It’s not like you’re going to blow up the shop with a fire spirit.”
“Haaah, haah...”
What was wrong with her? Had filling out documents made her that nervous?
Well... When you see a document with all sorts of clauses lined up in a dizzying way, you do instinctively feel a sense of danger.
Eilenna also finished filling out the documents while panting, her face flushed red.
The employee checked our documents one by one, then nodded as if there were no problems and gathered them.
“The approval hasn’t been submitted yet, but since this is something already discussed with the principal through another contract, it should pass within today. When you visit next time, I think it would be fine for you to prepare the stall itself and bring everything at once.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Compared to Japanese or European administration, this level of flexibility was S-rank, wasn’t it?
Thankful for the employee’s kind and swift response, we left the Academy building.
With that, everything that urgently needed to be handled was finished.
The sun was still high in the sky, and Eilenna, whose redness had subsided as if she had calmed down a little, said,
“Jinwoo. We still have lots of time left... Want to look around the city a bit more? We finished what we had to do.”
“We finished the urgent business, but there’s still a lot left to do. It’s a shame, but no.”
“Hing... What do we have to do?”
I wanted to do some sightseeing in another world too.
But since I had said I would run a stall, the most important task still remained.
“We have to make our menu. The food.”
“Ah.”
It wasn’t like we were going to sell raw tomatoes and make a profit like those elf brats.
What I first thought of was Korean street toast, but on second thought, it felt a little lacking.
After all, most of the fillings for toast were similar.
The key that determined the taste of toast was the sauce.
Depending on what sauce you used and how... from Myeongdong grandpa-style street toast to Isaac Toast.
Toast was something that could even recreate Egg Sl*t from across the sea.
“Let’s stop by the market on the way and buy groceries.”
“Sigh, fine...”
***
Thud—!
“Ugh, I’m dying. I’m really dying.”
“Uuugh... I’m tired.”
The shopping basket was thrown into the mansion kitchen with a loud sound.
After returning from the market with a full load of groceries, my whole body was exhausted.
“Go rest for a bit. I’ll make a toast prototype and bring it to you.”
“Mmm... Sorry. I’ll rest just a little...”
I was tired too, but Eilenna looked especially worn out.
The influence of the World Tree reached as far as Silbaerin, so she had been fine there, but naturally, the World Tree’s power did not extend to the capital.
Having lived her entire life relying on the World Tree’s power, the absence of that energy seemed to hit her deeply.
Of course, her mana was incomparably superior to mine, but surprisingly, our stamina seemed similar.
Fatigue had piled up on unfamiliar roads, and with the subtly hot sunlight beating down, it seemed she had failed to manage her strength.
‘Should I have just used the [Mana Market]?’
I hadn’t used it because I didn’t want Callius or Eilenna to suspect me for no reason.
But once I started business in earnest, using it while avoiding their eyes would be much harder.
I would have to prepare properly and reveal this matter soon.
It would be nice if I could keep it a secret for life... but at least to people I could trust, it should be fine to tell them.
Still, there was another reason I had looked around the market in person.
It was to find sandwich bread.
From the perspective of a modern Korean, sandwich bread was one of the most common breads, and compared to other breads, its price was manageable.
So people tended to look down on it without realizing it...
‘Never underestimate sandwich bread.’
This thing called sandwich bread had actually not been around in the world for that long.
If you simply meant “bread for meals,” then it had existed alongside humanity’s agriculture, but what I was talking about now was sliced sandwich bread.
The kind of bread you could casually spread jam on during a busy morning and eat conveniently.
Sandwich bread was divided into low-ratio and high-ratio types depending on the recipe proportions,
and the sandwich bread familiar to us belonged to the high-ratio category, with its beginnings in early twentieth-century America...
Ugh, let’s stop.
What did Earth’s history matter?
In any case, the rigged host map of this other world wasn’t America, but Noirudel.
Anyway... In Europe, where hard breads were the mainstream, this kind of sandwich bread was hard to find, and it was a bread created in America.
What mattered was that the eating habits and ecology of this other world resembled Europe’s.
If there were no bakeries that made sandwich bread, I would have to make all of it myself...
Even buying commercial-use toast loaves as long as my outstretched arms wouldn’t be enough, and I was supposed to sit there and make all of that?
‘Then I’d be running a bakery.’
I probably wouldn’t even dream of breakfast sales and would wake up at dawn, bake bread endlessly until morning, do a tiny bit of business at lunch, and be done.
Fortunately, however, there was a bakery that sold bread similar to sandwich bread.
It was in a corner of the market, so it was hard to find, but I found it by walking after being drawn by that distinctive sweet carbohydrate smell of sandwich bread.
‘Everything from here to the end, please.’
‘Huhh!! Thank you!’
I bought out all the sandwich bread left in that bakery and even verbally arranged a future supply contract for the bread.
It wasn’t as if shops like this were common, and if it closed down under the cruelty of the market economy, I would be the only one to lose.
And so, I obtained a pile of sandwich bread.
Aside from the parts called rusk in English and bread crusts in Korean being a little hard, the taste was quite satisfactory.
Now, shall I start cooking in earnest?
There were more menu items I had in mind besides street toast.
Ham and cheese toast imitating the taste of Isaac, and French toast.
They were simple from the eater’s perspective, but surprisingly labor-intensive to make, so if possible, it was better for the ingredients and cooking process to overlap.
Thus, Japanese-style egg sandwiches and old-fashioned salad bread were excluded from the options.
They were tasty, but boiling eggs, mashing them, and mixing them with ingredients was troublesome.
First, I cut an absurd amount of tomatoes into appropriate quarters.
I heard that in the past, Europeans even made ketchup with walnuts or mushrooms, but I had no desire to take such an adventure.
In the first place, the taste of street toast was optimized for tomato ketchup, so I had to follow the standard.
All I had to do was put the cut tomatoes into a large pot with whole peppercorns, onions, cinnamon powder, and bay leaves, then boil them.
More precisely, once this sauce reduced by half, I would season it again with salt, vinegar, and sugar,
then simmer it down until it reached the thickness of the ketchup we knew.
But well... By the time this reduced by half, it would probably already be evening.
Let’s eat street toast tomorrow.
There were still sauces left to make.
‘A light novel protagonist who sprinkles mayonnaise in another world...’
I never thought I would be the one to indulge in the mayonnaise power trip that always felt so difficult whenever I read mass-produced isekai fantasy.
On top of that, I was a manly chef who did not use things like mixers or hand blenders, so...
‘I’ll just be an unmanly guy.’
I don’t care if I become a soft boy, so please, someone invent a mixer.
Whether it was tofu or bread dough, if only there were a machine that mixed ingredients, life would become so much easier.
“Ah, my arm already hurts.”
Still, there was no helping it.
As long as I made it, I should be able to register it in the [Mana Market]...
I rolled up my sleeves and, just like with the tomatoes, cracked a large number of eggs and separated out only the yolks.
Then, with a solemn expression, I took out the whisk as if a knight were drawing his sword.
“Let’s see which of us dies first.”
It was time to bring mayonnaise, a sauce that became tastier the more you stirred it, into this other world.