Unexpected Events (1)
“…….”
“You’ll understand once the festival ends. What kind of business this industry really is.”
Jang On-gyu’s eyes glinted with a cold light.
This festival was no ordinary event.
It was a sweet trap meant to herd the rats into one place and wipe them out in a single stroke.
The present boom was nothing more than the condemned’s last supper before the sentence was carried out.
“Things are going to get… a little rough from here on.”
His murmur settled heavily over the office, accompanied by a thin, bitter smile.
Saturday morning. Having finished preparing for business, I looked outside and had to swallow a hollow laugh.
This… is a whole new approach.
The road in front of the shop was completely empty.
More precisely, the access road leading to our place had been blocked off for several meters.
It wasn’t the crude scene of thugs standing around with clubs.
Safety personnel in fluorescent vests and neatly erected safety fencing.
The fence bore messages, one line each:
For safety during the festival period, traffic is restricted!
Safety first!
Let’s create a safe festival together!
Jin-woo, just arriving for work, came running over with a stricken look on his face.
“Hyung! What’s that? People can’t get in!”
From a distance I could see the safety staff politely turning away anyone heading our way.
“We’re sorry. This area is on the outskirts of the festival zone and there’s a risk of accidents, so access is controlled.”
“We’re preparing for the evening program. Please take a detour.”
People turned back with disappointed faces, returning to the main street lined with Jang On-gyu’s shops.
The method is remarkably polished.
I didn’t need anyone to tell me.
This was Jang On-gyu’s handiwork.
No physical violence, no childish spray-paint vandalism.
Administrative isolation, dressed up in the unassailable name of “safety.”
The intent was crystal clear: cut off the natural overflow of festival crowds before any trickle-down effect could reach us.
Even if I filed a complaint with city hall now, they’d just say “for the safety of citizens” and that would be the end of it.
And even if they did accept the complaint, by the time anything happened the festival would already be over.
They’d boxed us in from every side.
Legal, justified, and lethal.
Wow. Who would’ve thought a few fences could pull this off.
I really hadn’t seen this coming.
“They’re trying to starve our place out. Shouldn’t we go give them a piece of our mind?”
“Leave it.”
“What? Hyung!”
“This isn’t the moment to just lose our tempers.”
I took off my apron and walked up to the fence line.
I studied it carefully.
The fencing blocking the main approach had isolated us completely.
Like an island cut off from everything else.
The rough walls of the abandoned factory, and the yellow fence standing in front of them.
Jang On-gyu probably thought this “quarantined” us—excluded us from the festival’s glamour and left us as discarded space.
The first thing you saw was the fence.
They couldn’t seal the road completely, so there was a small gap between sections of fencing.
But to anyone looking, it was blocked.
Doing business here right now looked impossible.
Anyone wanting to reach us would have to squeeze through that narrow space between the safety barriers.
Ordinary customers will never push through something that looks closed off. Turning around is just common sense.
Customers are more sensitive than people realize.
If something feels blocked off psychologically, they simply don’t come.
But wait.
My eyes saw it differently.
This isn’t isolation. Depending how you look at it, it’s a boundary.
That fence was drawing a clear border around our shop.
The noise and chaos of the festival stopped several meters away, on the far side of those barriers.
The only path was that narrow corridor half-blocked by a safety officer.
At a glance it looked closed.
As long as there’s an entrance, it isn’t sealed.
I let out a short laugh.
Back in the apocalypse, the first thing we did when securing a survivor camp was set up barricades.
They kept enemies out, sure—but they were also a marker that said: this place is a safe zone.
To my eyes, the boundary created by these fences looked exactly like those old markers.
Right now that fence is separating our Factory Restaurant from the free-for-all of the festival grounds.
It looked like an entirely separate domain.
Jang On-gyu had aimed for that.
But if you flipped the thought around, it became something else entirely.
“Jin-woo.”
“Yeah? Hyung, how can you even be smiling right now?”
“Look at that.”
“The fence? I don’t even want to look at it.”
“No. Look again.”
I pointed with my chin at the gap between the fence sections.
A narrow path that could barely let one or two people through at a time.
Jin-woo’s gaze settled on it.
I pointed straight at it and said,
“Doesn’t that look like an event entrance gate?”
“……Huh?”
Jin-woo’s eyes went round.
Exactly. Not just any stretch of open road that anyone could wander onto, but a space you could only enter through a controlled entrance.
Jang On-gyu thought he’d locked us in, but in reality he’d turned our shop into a special zone.
Not the middle of a loud, chaotic festival, but a quiet, comfortable place.
He’d even stationed safety personnel to maintain order for us.
All we had to do was draw customers into this newly cleaned-up space.
“Even safety officers can’t stop customers who come of their own free will, right?”
“But how are they supposed to find us when it’s blocked off like that?”
“There’s always a way.”
Beyond the fence, the safety officers turned around with startled faces.
The road that had been empty moments ago—the so-called controlled zone—had transformed in an instant into a dazzling open-air cooking station.
Might as well use everything we’ve got.
Sizzle—! Clatter, thump!
Three food trucks stood fanned out with the fence as their backdrop.
Center: my ramen truck.
Left: Brother Woo’s coffee truck.
Right: Brother Jang’s fried-food truck.
They stood there as if this were the festival’s true main gate, radiating presence.
“Hyung, are you sure this is okay? What if we get hit for illegal road occupation?”
Jin-woo asked, eyes uneasy.
I kept stirring the broth without concern.
“It’s fine. I already checked.”
“What?”
“It’s festival season. Temporary road-occupation permits for business are already issued. Jang On-gyu must’ve done some lobbying to liven up the street in front of his own shops.”
I gave a short laugh and lifted the ladle.
“So we get to enjoy the benefits too. This whole area is permitted—legally no problem at all.”
This was the board Jang On-gyu had laid out.
The festival he created, the regulations he loosened.
All of it had become our weapon in this moment.
“All right. Get ready for customers.”
“Huh? But there aren’t any customers… They’re still not coming because of that fence.”
“They will.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like that.”
The visual bait was set.
The colorful food trucks visible through the fence gaps.
More than enough to spark curiosity.
—What’s that over there?
—What is it? Are they doing a festival over there too?
But there were no tables.
This wasn’t a place to linger; it was the gateway meant to draw people into the Factory Restaurant.
One solid hit that would seize the feet of people drifting past on the far side of the fence, buried under festival noise!
Sight alone is weak.
The sense that hits human instinct fastest and hardest is smell.
I climbed up onto the truck.
The exact method I’d used in the apocalypse to lure starving monsters for the hunt. Now it was time to hunt customers.
Trap Installation
Trap Type: Continuous Olfactory Lure
I stretched a hand toward the first truck, toward the pot where the ramen broth was boiling.
Fwoooosh!
The fierce spiciness and deep, loofah-root broth aroma amplified at once.
A primitive stimulus that stabbed straight into the salivary glands!
“Hah… Hyung, what did you just do?! The smell is…!”
“This is what we call aroma. Haha.”
“This reminds me of the first time I came to your shop.”
“Does it?”
Sharp kid.
Jin-woo’s five senses really were a natural gift.
This isn’t the end.
Second truck: Brother Jang’s fryer.
The sizzle of hot oil and the savory fragrance of the batter.
I stripped away every trace of greasiness and maximized only the appetite-stirring savoriness.
Last one—the third!
Brother Woo’s coffee machine.
The deep, bittersweet aroma of freshly roasted beans.
An scent that calmly embraced the festival’s excited air and teased people’s instinct for rest.
Sssss—
The fragrance spread gently outward.
You could call it upper, middle, and lower notes.
Coffee, soft and subtle.
The fryer’s nuttiness, rich and deep.
And finally the ramen surging up sharp and strong!
The three scents fused in a single rush.
Trap Installation complete.
Three aromas fuse in harmony.
Lure effect greatly increased.
The instant the skill activated, an invisible wave of fragrance crossed the fence and rolled out into the street.
Fwoooosh—
As if blood had been offered to a starving predator.
The effect was immediate.
“Sniff sniff… Hey, what is that smell?”
“Whoa, insane. Where’s that coming from?”
“Ramen? No—fried food? There’s coffee in there too?”
“Over there!”
Outside the fence, the heads of people milling past all turned this way at once.
That narrow entrance half-blocked by a safety officer.
From it poured an irresistible temptation of flavor.
“Jin-woo.”
“Yeah?”
“They’re coming.”
I could see the eyes of people approaching as if entranced, like a swarm of zombies.
The safety fence was no longer a quarantine wall.
It was about to become the most alluring gate into a famous restaurant.