The Hardtack Business
A few days after the Monster Wave ended, I went back into the city of Silbaerin to deliver the hardtack recipe to Duke Kailan and talk business with Calius. Iseria said the fatigue of the past several days had caught up with her, and that she would mind the house. All I wanted was to cook in peace and live quietly, but the world refused to leave me alone.
I turned over in my mind, once again, the venture I had been half-dragged into starting.
The moment Calius proposed the hardtack business, what I felt was pure awkwardness. The offer had bordered on a threat, which was awkward enough on its own, and yet that part, oddly, failed to get under my skin. Calius had vouched for a lie on my behalf. If we were found out, he would not escape a scolding either. But he was already dug deep into Silbaerin's markets, and even if he took the same punishment I did, he was far better equipped to weather the aftermath. That was surely why he could bait the hook with his guarantee and make the pitch so confidently.
Still, there was something else I had to weigh: the price I myself would pay if I were caught. I had lied about belonging to a merchant company and walked into the garrison. And yet? In the end, hadn't it all worked out? I hated to put it like this, but the Duke and I were hardly strangers. And, well... Arthur had eaten my cooking and broken through to Sword Expert. The point was that even if I did pay for what I had done, the penalty would not amount to much.
Then why not refuse the business outright and tell him to do his worst? One might ask. A fair point. Even so, the reason I accepted was Calius's character.
Whenever we spoke at the shelter, he never once lost his good cheer. A little shameless, and also very much a mountain of pure mirth—that was Calius. More than a few people in Silbaerin would tell you the same: that he could be excessively cheerful at times, but that he was, in any case, a man who kept his word. Cheerful or shameless, though, he was a merchant. A man who lived for coin and would die for it. Having caught a true scent of my hardtack, he wanted it, by any means necessary, as a staple of his trade. Once that instinct of his sank its hooks in, my refusal would not shake it loose. If anything, he might latch on more desperately than before.
Since coming to this other world, I certainly do get obsessed over a lot.
First the obsession with dragging me back into the ranks, and now an obsession with a hardtack business? Not one of those obsessions was the sort a man hopes for.
In the end, there was nothing to lose by going into business. I had no particular greed for money, but it never hurt to have some laid by, and there was always the chance of rare ingredients coming my way.
"Hello."
"Oh! Isn't that the Quartermaster?"
"No. That would not be me."
I went first to Duke Kailan's manor, to hand over a hardtack recipe I had simplified so it would be easy to make. The soldier on watch recognized me and called me Quartermaster, but not a chance. They could kill me before I would reenlist.
"Please see that this reaches His Grace. Tell him I sent it, and he'll know what it is."
"Yes, sir. Understood. But you're truly not taking the quartermaster's post?"
"I said I'm not."
Doing my best to ignore the soldier's eyes, which were practically dripping with regret, I turned and left.
The places I usually wandered were the commercial district and, more recently, the castle ward near the northern wall, where I had been in their debt. Because the ground rose the farther north one went, the agricultural district lay at the southernmost edge of Silbaerin. I boarded a carriage bound that way. It was not a distance I could not have walked, but there was no particular need to walk it.
Rocking to the carriage's jolting rhythm, I nodded off, and before I knew it we had arrived. The moment I stepped down, the smell of soil and hay struck my nose. Feeling my heart grow oddly warm, I set off toward the place Calius had described.
Somewhere around here...
"Oh, Jinwoo! Over here!"
I had been walking some twenty minutes and was only just drawing near when Calius, who had arrived ahead of me, spotted me. The closer I came, the clearer the surrounding buildings grew. Hearing it described had not felt real. Seeing it in person, I had to admit it was impressive.
"Well? What do you think? We repaired the old communal oven the village used to share, and built a few more besides."
"Oh... this is more than enough, isn't it?"
"Haha! Isn't it, though?"
I was genuinely impressed by the workshop he had prepared. It was nowhere near the scale of a modern factory, of course, but across a broad open lot he had raised a great canvas roof, enough to keep the rain off. The drainage was finished, so water would not pool, and the fences set exactly where they were needed looked reassuringly sturdy. Beneath that canvas the ovens stood in two rows of three.
They were about the size of the ovens in the knights' mess, and there was one more of them besides, so if we ran the place the way one runs a factory, the output ought to be considerable. He had even thought through the process from the recipe I had given him and laid everything out in order: a space for kneading, a broad flat worktop, and drying racks for the finished hardtack.
Calius... I had taken him for nothing but a mountain of mirth, but he was a far more capable man than I had thought.
"Everyone, introductions. Jinwoo, these are the folks you'll be working with from here on."
"Hello."
Calius presented the workers he had hired only yesterday. There were exactly ten. A few were youngsters just old enough to take up proper work, but most were the village wives. Another world or not, nothing beats a mother's hand in the kitchen. These women had long years of cooking behind them, and the knack that came with those years. A fine choice of people.
I was pleased with them. They, getting their first look at the man who was more or less their employer, were less convinced. Their faces all but asked whether this black-haired fellow could really cook. I had expected even that.
I brought out the hardtack I had prepared, together with a secret weapon I had newly devised, and passed the hardtack around.
"I thought some of you might not find me entirely trustworthy. That's why I brought these. Please, each of you, try one."
"Well, it wasn't that we didn't trust you, exactly..."
"Is this the new hardtack? Goodness, it really does look different from the ordinary kind."
The workers chattered their opinions back and forth, then promptly popped the biscuits into their mouths.
A sharp crack. A bright crunch.
They had begun with careful bites, braced for the jaw-testing hardness of the hardtack they knew. The moment they realized this was different, they ate with open delight. For a little while the wide lot held no voices at all—only the bright, repeating crunch of the biscuits. The hardtack was nearly gone before I knew it. I shouted in a hurry.
"Stop!!"
"Hm? What's the matter all of a sudden?"
"Were we not supposed to finish it?"
"It's not that. Try it with this sprinkled over the top."
I opened a pouch I had brought separately and gave it a careful tap. This was the secret weapon I had prepared.
"Oh my, oh my! What is that?"
"Magic... is it? Snow is falling out of the pouch."
Now that's a generous reaction.
Fine white powder drifted down and settled in soft mounds over the hardtack still left on the plates. It was powdered sugar, ground by hand.
After accepting the business and returning home, I had done some thinking of my own. However much better my hardtack tasted than the usual sort, it was still hardtack. If I wanted to catch people's eyes, I needed a clearer signature, and what I had come up with was this powdered sugar. I mixed sugar and starch, nine parts to one, then ground the blend in a mortar as fine as I could manage. It was not as fine as a modern blender would make it, but set beside plain sugar, the grains were far softer. Dust that powder lightly over plain hardtack, and it looked like snow falling on brown earth.
"You only sprinkled white powder, and it's so lovely."
"It looks like Silbaerin. Just like Silbaerin!"
One of the wives had hit it exactly. As she said, sweet sugar drifting over barren hardtack called to mind Silbaerin itself, the place that lived closest to the snow. That was the idea. I meant to pair this plain hardtack with powdered sugar and make it a specialty of Silbaerin—a mystical hardtack invented in the harsh north, heaped with white snow.
People in modern Korea would travel all the way to Gangwon Province just to buy bread made from potatoes. Was I supposed to believe the folk of a medieval otherworld could resist hardtack piled with the mysterious snow of the north? Not a chance. I would have bet on it. And this was something I had thought up entirely on my own, without a word to Calius.
I looked at him.
"Well? Not bad, in its own way, wouldn't you say?"
"We're..."
"Yes? What was that?"
"We're going to be rich!!!"
Whoa. Reno Jackson!
"This is a hit, no question! I already thought plain hardtack would sell decently enough, but add a presentation like this and... we could even slip it onto the tables at noble banquets!!"
"Hm. If you say so."
Alone at home, I had thought it a fine idea, which was why I had made the stuff. Watching him carry on like this, though, I found my enthusiasm cooling instead. Well. Calius was a native of this world. There were things, perhaps, that only a merchant's eye could see.
"The name! What name have you settled on for it?"
"Ah... a name?"
Honestly, I had not thought about one at all. Did hardtack with powdered sugar sprinkled on it really need a name of its own? I turned the problem over quickly, searching for something that would do. It ought to sound properly fantastical, too. Simply calling it Snowflower Hardtack would feel a little plain. Silbaerin, the north, snow, hardtack... ah.
"For a name, how does Barren Snowflower sound? Beautiful snow, like flowers, fallen over dry hardtack."
"Barren Snowflower, is it... I like it! Romantic enough that bards and adventurers would take to it!"
Pleased with the name, Calius nodded again and again. Even as the words left my mouth I had wondered if it was a little much, but perhaps this was simply how sensibilities worked in another world.
The workers, having happily finished the hardtack, looked at me with a respect that had not been there before. Mm. Only now were we ready to begin. Calius had surely told them the terms when he hired them, but it was better to be clear about the money.
"As you've probably heard, the daily wage is sixty copper. Lunch is an hour and a half. Eat during that time, rest a little, and then start the afternoon's work. You may bring your own meal, or you may eat the hardtack you make. It's free, after all. Once the sun begins to set, you can head home."
I stood before them and laid the terms out simply. A day laborer in this world earned twenty to thirty copper, so this was about twice the going rate. Even so, by a modern sensibility, it was still cheap labor. I had added the bit about lunch because I felt guilty, and hoped that if nothing else they might take the hardtack.
"Sixty copper? Truly?"
"Lunch for free? Why?"
"We can rest for a whole hour and a half...?"
To the people of this world, though, the terms seemed considerably generous. The workers murmured among themselves, all but casting Is this for real? like a spell. It came back to me then, how Calius had nearly jumped out of his skin when I stated the workers' conditions during our contract talk. I had originally wanted to pay even more, but most of the capital was his money, not mine, so I could not very well throw a fit over it. Truth be told, he had already yielded a great deal to get us even this far.
That much of an announcement ought to be enough. I began explaining the work in earnest—dough ratios, the proper texture, how to shape the dough, the order of baking, and the rest. The process was fussy and complicated, and the workers were soon clutching their heads, but it could not be helped. Unlike Iseria and me, who could skip the delicate steps with a snap of spirit magic, they had no such gift. Every gap would have to be filled with effort. Even so, I had given each of them a copy of the recipe. Make it often enough, and it would become second nature.
Once the handover was finished, I went over the finer points of the business with Calius a while longer, then set off for home.
By then darkness had settled completely over the world. I walked the dim forest path with my nerves pulled tight, and at last the house came into view. Not a single light was on. I had definitely shown Iseria how to light the lamps before I left. Why was it dark? Had she already gone to sleep?
"Iseria. I'm home."
I opened the door and stepped inside without much thought. Just as expected, not a speck of light within. I groped along the wall until I found the switch.
Click.
And in the instant the room flared bright—
Thud!
"Huh."
An ugly crack of impact landed at the back of my neck. There was a crash, and I went straight down onto the floor.
The last thing I saw before consciousness left me was a knot of assailants in great hooded robes, their ears pointed to a suspicious degree.