Pretty Is Pretty, Elf or Not
Pretty is pretty—elf or not, who cares.
Back when Erina had been with our general store for not quite a full month—when she had, in other words, gotten a handle on roughly half of every product we carried—I was already able to leave the daytime trade almost entirely in her hands. The store opening its doors earlier was a bonus. For all that she'd only learned half the merchandise, when it came to running the shop through the day, it was as good as her having mastered nearly all of it.
The remaining half consisted of custom items meant for special noble clientele during the night hours, or goods that sat on the sales list Gort had compiled but that I'd judged premature to release—still sealed in their boxes, tucked away in the warehouse. With as many products as we carried, I'd bought things, buried them in storage, and forgotten about them more often than I cared to admit. But with the breathing room Erina's help had bought me, it was time to start hauling them out one by one and getting them onto the shelves.
The goods that moved steadily during the day were mostly snacks for the children, household items for the housewives, seasonings, and farming supplies. Erina had all of those down perfectly, from their uses to their prices. In fact—perhaps thanks to her soft, sunny smile—certain items actually sold better with Erina holding the reins of the shop than they ever had under my lone watch.
The prime examples were the sanitary pads and women's panties.
I understood perfectly well that, from the local women's point of view, these were wonderful things to have during their time of the month. But perhaps because the person selling them had, until now, been a man, the village women who bought them when I minded the counter alone were few and far between. Even the ones who did buy would sneak in like criminals, murmur, "Give me that. The thing women use," and then—no sooner had I tucked it into a black bag than they'd pay and bolt for the door.
It was enough to bring back the bygone days when my mother's and grandmother's generations, so conservative about such things back in the seventies and eighties, used to slip into pharmacies for sanitary pads on the sly.
Of course, this world wasn't conservative about the act itself. Quite the opposite. In a dairy village lagging behind the big cities, where a growing population was a blessing, the elders were far more likely to shove the young folks out the door, urging them to go have sex and make babies.
It was simply that a religious belief held menstrual blood to be unclean—tainted by indwelling demons—and so the social convention of turning away and avoiding women on those days still stood firm across all of Helion.
"The male boss was nice enough, but honestly, this kind of talk is so much easier with another woman~"
"I've been dying to ask about all this for the longest time, but I was too embarrassed!"
Snippets like these from the female customers would often drift over to me whenever I stepped away and left Erina to it.
"If you're using the pads, you'll want to wear these along with them. These are called panties—special women's undergarments that our store sells. Fasten the pad to the lining and put them on, and even on your heaviest days nothing leaks. You can go about your day exactly as you would any other."
"Something this tiny? Shameless—how would I ever... why, it wouldn't even cover my backside."
"It feels odd at first, but wear them for a few days and you'll find them wonderfully comfortable. As it happens, I have a pair on right now."
And with that, Erina would hitch up the short skirt of her sexy maid uniform—the store's uniform—just enough to show off the pair she had on, and without fail, every woman would walk out with at least one set of panties in her own size.
Don't misunderstand, please. I never once told her to do any of this. It was entirely Erina's own initiative, from start to finish.
But because Erina went so far as to mention the existence of panties to pair with the pads, demand for both skyrocketed, and I had to place an urgent order for women's sanitary pads via rocket-speed express delivery: eighty of each type in bulk—panty liners, regular, large, and overnight—plus twenty pairs of period panties in every size, XS, S, M, and L.
Even that haul didn't last long before I was reordering.
Everyday period panties had been a product that simply would not sell back when I ran the place alone. Seeing it now, how the women of Greenhill had been attaching pads to their shapeless medieval undergarments all this time was honestly a little horrifying.
If I flipped up the skirts of the Greenhill women passing by right now (which, obviously, I could never do), seven out of ten would be wearing panties from our store. Erina had sold every last one of them.
Ridiculous as it looked, that was a genuine achievement. The women of this town refused to wear bras, calling them uncomfortable—but I had gotten them into panties from our general store. Even among the common women of Stonefield's big city, quite a few went without undergarments altogether, so by comparison this was nothing if not a highly hygienic development.
You could call it Erina's first illustrious feat, racked up in under a month since officially joining the shop.
I never spared my praise whenever Erina did well.
"Oh no, no! It's not that I'm anything special—the people here are simply so kind! They listen so attentively to everything I say, even though I'm sure I'm a dreadful bother!"
Modest, on top of it all! That stroke of luck alone was plenty for me. Business had been doing well on its own, after all.
And so I'd settled into a comfortable division of labor: from here on, I would take the male customers, and Erina the female ones. I could feel it myself, too—how she smiled so sweetly and poured her heart into every last person who walked in. Whether they bought something or not, whether a white-haired elder came through the door or a toddling child, whether a customer spent one copper or one silver, Erina was kind without fail.
But now, it seemed, things had exploded in a rather different direction than I'd imagined. A little more than expected... no, a lot more.
Ting-a-ling.
"Welcome!"
"Wow, just like the rumors say. She really is pretty...."
"See? What did I tell you..."
"Beg pardon, how much for three of these hoes? I'm buying several—can't you do a bit better on the price?..."
"The wife sent me for something—curry or phlegm or whatever it's called—but where in blazes is it?..."
"You're telling me you just pour boiling water over it and the dish is done? Hearing it secondhand, it sounds like magic. I'll have to see it to believe it."
"Hey, don't shove, now."
"The aisle's narrow, that's why. This place stocks far more goods than anywhere else."
"This is bad. The wife sent me for pepper, but I gambled it all away at the inn's den...."
"Dad, I want chocolate! Buy me chocolate! The other kids get it once a week!"
Jostle, jostle.
My store... my general store had turned into a men's bathhouse.
(Doesn't this sound like the title of some web novel...)
At some point, our general store had filled up with nothing but men. Every soul inside the shop at this moment was male. Twenty of them? Thirty? Huh. So our store could hold this many people after all.
Now, more customers was a good thing—but the congestion had gotten serious. Seriously serious. People kept streaming in, yet strangely, nobody ever streamed out. At this rate the air would go stale, and no one could browse the merchandise properly...
For that matter, the crowd was so thick even I couldn't reach the shop's window, so I couldn't so much as crack it open.
I supposed I'd better make an announcement.
"The store is getting cramped! If you've found what you're looking for, please come to the counter and I'll ring you up!"
A buzz of chatter.
I shouted myself hoarse, but whether they genuinely couldn't hear me or were simply pretending not to, not one man so much as glanced my way.
Erina had probably gone off to the warehouse by now, the curry powder stock having run dry, with Gort helping her haul it out. That sample I'd given the chatterbox Mrs. Hans a while back had spread, and word of mouth had done the rest in no time.
So I laid the counter chair down flat, climbed up on it, and shouted once more.
"The store is congested! If you intend to purchase, please pay first and then make your way outside for the next customer!"
Still a buzz of chatter.
The men went right on minding their own business, still not sparing me a glance.
Bang.
Just then, Erina came in through the side door, hugging a box of curry powder with its packing tape freshly torn open.
Swish.
And in one motion, every head inside turned toward her.
Eek! Children and old men alike whipping their heads in a single direction all at once—it's like something out of a horror film! Don't do that!
Erina, caught off guard by the sudden wall of male attention, stood frozen, unable even to set the box down—but she quickly recovered and flashed her trademark beaming smile.
"U-uhh... w-welcome to the general store. Is there something you're looking for?!"
.....
"Me! Me!"
"Curry powder, if you please!"
"The curry powder is right here. One pack, four servings, is ten copper; two packs, eight servings, is fifteen copper."
"Ah, so it was curry, not phlegm."
"So that's what the wife was on about."
"I'll take some too. Might as well, since I'm here."
"Miss, I want chocolate too—no, wait, curry powder!"
All at once, every male customer in the store began converging on Erina. Not only the ones hunting for curry powder—even the man still picking out hoes, and even the little boy who'd been whining for chocolate, pressed forward to buy the curry powder she'd carried in.
Erina's expression turned faintly helpless.
"Um... I'm terribly sorry, everyone, but might I ask you to please form a line?"
"Of course!" everyone chorused.
And just like that, every man stepped aside with impeccable order, courteously making way for one another, and lined up in a tidy single file before Erina.
"Our stock is limited, so each person may purchase up to two packs at most."
"You heard her! Two packs max per person!"
"Understood."
"Understood!"
"Two packs. Okay."
"I'll have my fifteen copper ready."
I mean... what is even... these people...
I was too flabbergasted to manage a word.
After that, it proceeded like clockwork. Like a fan-signing event, Erina dealt out the curry powder packs, two per customer (not a single soul bought just one), while I stood at her side, receiving the money they handed over, checking it, and tucking it into the pouch.
A fan signing. That was it, exactly. Minus the signatures, "fan-signing event" was the precise term for what was happening—because every man, taking his curry powder, offered Erina a word or two before filing out of the store with a satisfied face.
"You are beautiful, miss."
"Ah... n-no, not at all. Thank you for your kind words."
"Your name is Erina... is it, miss? I'll be coming by often from now on!"
"Yes, I'm Erina Seraphina, the clerk. Please do visit the general store often."
"We cannot tell you how grateful we are that a beauty such as yourself has come to a backwater like Greenhill."
"Such lavish praise... thank you. Greenhill is a wonderful place."
"Miss, you're so pretty!"
"Thank you! Come again!"
Why is it that not one of these men, seeing curry powder for the very first time, asks what the stuff is even for! How much goes into a pot, when to add it, how long to simmer it—isn't any of that worth asking?!
Every gaze in the room traced the exact same arc. While speaking with Erina, they devoured her face without a single blink, and the moment the conversation ended, they'd sidle off sideways with one furtive flick of the eyes down toward her cleavage. And the farther away they drifted, the lower their gazes slid—to the thighs beneath her skirt.
Perhaps out of deference to me, there wasn't a single instance of improper touching. Though Erina did scoop up one small customer—the little boy at the end of the line—in a light hug, and whether because of that or not, the tyke drew the open envy of every other male customer present.
Mrrph.
In an instant, the male customers drained out of the store like an ebbing tide. It felt as though a storm had passed.
"Wow, Master! Look! Another whole box, sold out already!"
Erina beamed, holding up the empty curry powder box for me to see.
Right... well, good. Business thriving is a good thing. That's all that matters...
After closing up following that chaotic stretch of daytime trade, I summoned my two employees. An emergency meeting with Erina and Gort. It was also the first proper meeting our general store had ever held—until now it had been just Gort and me, and there had been nothing worth calling a meeting.
The office had only ever had seats for the two of us, so we set an extra chair in the middle for Erina and got underway.
"From now on, during daytime hours, I'm planning to cap the number of people allowed into the store at any one time. What do you think?"
"You mean controlling the flow of customers coming in?"
"To be precise, it's making them wait their turn. Like a PX. We'll admit at most ten customers inside at a time, and anyone beyond that waits outside. One person leaves, the next comes in."
"P... what's a 'PX'?"
Not only Erina—Gort too, as though the word were new to him as well, pushed up the glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. Ah. That analogy had not been well chosen.
"Like a restaurant, I mean. When the seats are full, you wait outside or run your other errands, and head in once it quiets down."
"Is it truly necessary to go that far?"
Erina's face clouded with worry.
"I only thought there may be quite a few customers who'd like to browse the goods at their leisure."
To be perfectly accurate, what they wanted to browse at their leisure wasn't the merchandise. It was her. But I kept that to myself. The moment she realized the store-packing crisis was happening because of her, she'd only start apologizing all over again.
"With a crowd that thick, browsing doesn't work either. We stock a huge variety of goods, but there's no room for customers to look things over properly. Cram the store wall to wall with people and everyone gets uncomfortable—they buy one item and leave, or just leave outright."
"Then... what if we tried rearranging the displays a little? Though with this many varieties, that might be a tall order..."
"That portion would be difficult on our end."
Erina had made the suggestion, but this time it was Gort who raised the standard of objection.
"The number of products currently displayed in the store, counted against daytime operations, comes to three hundred twenty-one in total—and that figure includes only those items whose cumulative daytime sales reach fifty units or more per month. Items already clearing one hundred units a month are placed near the entrance; those of average movement occupy the center or the wall side; and the roughly ten poor performers are displayed at the rear of the store and on the shelves mounted to the walls. To alter the arrangement now would only sow confusion in the customers' paths through the store."
"Wow, how do you keep all of that in your head?! That's truly amazing!"
Erina marveled at Gort's memory yet again. Lately she was in awe of his abilities every single day. Before she'd started working at the general store, she had thought of him as nothing more than an odd goblin, but now that she was seriously learning the trade, she seemed to have developed a real respect for him as a fellow employee, seeing just how formidable his talents were.
"Hmmm... w-well, if you keep going over the products and the lists, you'll find it's not so difficult...."
Gort was terribly awkward about being praised. To him it was all as natural as breathing, and having it pointed out and applauded item by item made him uncomfortable. Back when it was just the two of us working, I knew this and made a point of never praising him. But given Erina's nature—so openly warm toward everyone—it had proved impossible to stop her entirely.
In a way, I supposed two such perfectly opposite personalities simply had to understand each other, grow accustomed to one another, and learn to fit together.
I turned it over in my mind for a moment, then nodded.
"Still, it's not a bad idea. Let's think about opening the second floor in short order, too. If we move the slow-selling, high-priced items upstairs during daytime hours, we can free up that much more space on the first."
"Shuttling the merchandise between night and day every time will be a chore, though."
"It will. And since they're high-priced goods, something could get broken in transit."
"What you just described—if you decide to go through with it, I'll take responsibility and get everything organized properly."
"Let's sit on this one a while longer. In the meantime, you two, sort out which items could actually be moved up to the second floor without trouble."
"Yes. I'll see to it."
"Understood. Then the matter you mentioned earlier—the so-called PX method of operation—will you be putting it into effect starting tomorrow?"
The PX method of operation... Gort's memory was a truly fearsome thing. He didn't let so much as a phrase I'd tossed off in passing slip by him.
"Yeah. But let's apply it only to the peak time, noon to one, within the daytime hours. That's the only stretch when customers pile up inside."
"'Peak time'? What might that be?"
Gort promptly explained the term to Erina.
Gort had a way of explaining the sales jargon of the modern world better than I ever did—like a living search bar spitting back instant answers—and at some point, once the doors closed for the day, it had become Gort rather than I who played teacher to Erina.
An eager student brimming with questions, and a teacher who couldn't rest easy until he'd taught her everything he knew. Looked at that way, the two of them made a perfect match as well.
"I'm starving. Meeting's over—let's eat."
Having confirmed there were no further items on the agenda, I brought the meeting to a swift close. I had no intention of padding it out with pointless chatter and eating into my employees' rest.
For a first meeting, it had been more satisfying than I'd expected.