Why Does Business Keep Going So Well?!
A jolt to the peripheral nerves, pitched at a sensitivity not unlike the act of human reproduction.
In plainer words: once I had finished having a delicious meal, I set a pot of the herbal tea I'd brought back from Nuardel to boil.
Trickle—
A sweet, refreshing fragrance rose and tickled my nose.
"Mmm... that's nice."
One warm cup to help a stomach bloated from overeating settle itself. Lay the drowsy hush of late afternoon over that, and there was no holding the languor back.
They say you only realize it was spring once the blossoms have fallen. So this was how happy an uneventful peace could be.
A life with no Monster Wave crashing down out of nowhere, and no elves drugging me and hauling me off. I drank in the spring day beyond the window and, for the first time in ages, simply enjoyed the leisure.
And I made a vow. No matter what happened—absolutely. Absolutely!!!
"I am not leaving this restaurant."
Seeing a decision through to the end was the right way to live. Hadn't I already chosen conviction over coin, and a life spent chasing the dream I'd wanted since I was young?
Of course, neither the Wave nor Nuardel had been messes I'd walked into because I wanted to. Even so, if someone asked whether I bore no blame at all, I couldn't have answered yes with any confidence.
Even if my cook's pride had rebelled at the thought, I could have ignored the corrupt quartermaster's embezzlement. There had always been a choice that would have let me sidestep a troublesome future.
So in the end, the recent disasters had been calamities I'd called down on myself.
The Wave? This year's was already over. When next year's came, I only had to be in some other region. As for the elves, Iseria, Seiran, and Veila had already set a precedent with their punishment. The same thing was not happening twice.
Slurp—
No more sticking my neck out. I would live in Silbaerin, where the water was clean and the air was good. Arthur had promised to tighten the patrols around the house, so even the security had improved.
I was so busy plotting how I meant to live from here on that the tea was gone before I knew it. I stood to clear the cup away.
And that was when it came.
Thud. Thud, thud—!
"Jinwoo! It's me, Calius!"
Ah. Right.
The self-inflicted disaster wasn't finished with me yet.
The other two headaches hadn't been one hundred percent my fault to begin with, but Calius was different. The crime of lying about the merchant company, and of cooking entirely too well. Karma distilled to a purity of one hundred percent Kang Jinwoo.
This was the last of it. Settle this one matter, and I was washing my hands clean.
"Yes! I'm coming!"
Repeating a promise only a gambling addict would believe, I opened the restaurant door.
"Aigoo, it's been ages! Thank goodness you came back in one piece!"
"Haha. Thank you."
It had been a while, and Calius looked exactly the same: that easy, comfortable face, and the generous money pouch stacked in neat layers over his belly.
No—cancel the part about nothing having changed. Now that I looked, the pouch had gotten bigger.
The last time I'd seen him, he'd been loading up on hardtack and preparing to head for the capital. Surely not. Surely not, right?
Even if I set my own bias aside and looked at it objectively, the hardtack I'd made was top-grade. The old stuff had to be hacked apart with an axe, like splitting firewood, and then boiled in water before anyone could eat it. Taste, appearance, and the process of preparing it all failed the basic qualification for being called food.
Into a world where edible bricks were the average combat ration, an invasive species had appeared out of nowhere and thrown the entire battlefield-ration ecosystem into chaos. Overwhelming portability in a small rectangle. The convenience of never needing a soak, provided your salivary glands were still intact. Crisp on the outside, clean and gently sweet within, finished with the nutty richness of milk powder that would not let a hand stop reaching. Combat rations that had smashed in the skull of every ordinary table bread worth mentioning. K-hardtack.
Even I had to admit its competitiveness was formidable.
Even so... even so, it couldn't be, right? However well Calius's company distributed it, the old established players were still out there. They would have kept K-hardtack from running the table all by itself... wouldn't they?
If the hardtack succeeded on top of everything else, they'd tell me to make something else next. I might even end up with business that required a trip to the capital. I wasn't hoping for a miserable, failure-level result. It just couldn't be a smash hit. An average showing would be more than enough to satisfy me!
Clinging to that sliver of hope, I asked Calius.
"Oh, that reminds me. Did the trip to the capital go well?"
"I was back ages ago. Heh heh. My eye wasn't wrong. The hardtack you made is a sensation in the capital! Even the noble lords are lined up in a row before the shop so much as opens!"
"Ha... why does it keep—"
"Hm?"
Why?! Why was Kang Jinwoo not allowed to be happy!
I dumped every bit of pent-up resentment right there in front of Calius. He looked briefly taken aback, then broke into a wide grin and answered.
"Haha! So you're delighted because business is booming! Seeing you this pleased makes bringing the news worthwhile!"
"Ah, yes. Think whatever you like... Is there more?"
My devastation was the sort that could not be hidden no matter how I tried. Whether I looked like that or not, Calius went right on beaming.
"Ho ho... don't be startled when you hear this, Jinwoo, my boy."
"W-what is it now?"
Nobles in the imperial capital were already rushing the doors for K-hardtack, and there was something even more shocking than that? The meaningful air around him kept me from relaxing, and I waited.
Then Calius's mouth opened.
"The Academy. The Academy, where every talent in the Empire gathers, has inquired about a bulk contract for the hardtack! At this rate, becoming the foremost merchant company in the Empire isn't a dream!!"
Crash—!
The shock of it drained the strength from my fingers. Only the teacup I'd been holding fell, helpless, struck the floor, and burst apart.
"That's right!!!! It's like a dream!! Bwahahaha!!"
You crazy old man. I am not happy about this.
But a hollow laugh escaped me too, as if I had already given up. Wearing a smile that was not a smile, I forced out an answer.
"Fine. Let's give it a try."
Spilled water. Better to finish it quickly. I let Calius into the restaurant and started in on the details.
This time the sweet scent of herbal tea rose from both sides of the table. I served Calius a cup and unwound the catching-up we'd put off.
"So what exactly happened on the trip up?"
"I couldn't take all that much this time. Sixty kilograms at most, was it? If the departure hadn't been pushed back, I'd have brought more."
"Ah. Right. That did happen."
So much had piled up in the meantime that the day Calius left for the capital felt like the distant past.
If you counted one of those thirty-gram packs people commonly ate back in the modern world as a single serving, sixty kilograms came to about two thousand servings. Honestly, thirty grams wouldn't fill a stomach, so even if I doubled the count it was still a thousand. I had no idea how many nobles in the imperial capital kept adventurers or private soldiers... but even so, it hadn't been enough.
In a society built on rank, nobles lining up for an opening rush said everything that needed saying.
"It's the hardtack you made, isn't it? A fine ration on a completely different level from those old edible bricks. The response was lukewarm at first, but once word got around it sold like it was on fire. And since it keeps, people can stockpile as much as they please."
"Well... that much is true. So how much did you sell a serving for?"
"Ten coppers a serving, and we sold out, so I changed the lot into silver. Two hundred silver coins!"
"Whoa..."
The hardtack I regularly turned over to Duke Kailan came to forty-eight silver, so this was considerably sweeter. Comparing a military supply price to ordinary retail was absurd in the first place, but still—sweet.
I had nothing to feel shortchanged about where money was concerned. Food, clothing, and a roof had been settled from the moment I crossed into this world, and I'd never had much greed to begin with. But this hardtack business was no longer mine alone. From the factory hands to the knights of Silbaerin and on to Calius's company, it belonged to everyone tied into it.
Grow the scale of a business, and the money coming in grows with it. That was only the natural order. Even if it betrayed my wish to live quietly, I had to keep expanding until we could meet the demand. I'd help until the business found its footing, then hand Calius full authority and be done.
"Which is why I'm saying this... Jinwoo. We have to expand the hardtack factory. As things stand, we can't even handle the capital's market."
"I was just about to say the same thing."
"You may not like it, but what if we invest every coin we made this time? The tide is rushing in hard. If we don't row now, we sink where we sit."
"I agree with that. But fifty silver ought to be enough."
Hmm. Or maybe not? It might come to far less than that.
While I turned the figures over in my head, Calius asked in alarm.
"I'm not looking down on you, but... expanding a factory costs a great deal of money. Even if we spread out around the existing Plant One, there won't be enough open ground. Then we'd have to clear forest, and the labor costs..."
"Ah... stop."
Uncle Calius, that is a bad answer. A slow, boring, pedantic bad answer.
I lowered the palm I'd raised to cut him off and offered the solution.
"We just have the elves do it."
To think I'd be cashing in the all-access pass I'd brought back from Nuardel this soon. Labor to build a factory, and raw materials for hardtack? With elves—friends of the forest from the day they were born—clearing woodland would be child's play. Every one of them even came with magic and spirit arts baked in as a passive. I might as well hire a few outright and turn them into hardtack machines. They'd handle the fire just fine, and wind magic would dry the biscuits clean as anything.
Getting one free pass and immediately thinking of working them like this might be going too far... So what were they going to do about it?
They shouldn't have kidnapped me in the first place.
Calius, who of course had no way of knowing any of this, still wore a thoroughly lost expression. I made him a bold promise anyway.
"I've got quite a few elves doing unpaid service for me. They can use magic, so they'll be plenty useful. Don't worry—just pick the site."
"I-is that so? I haven't the faintest idea what happened while you were captured, but... I'll trust you for now."
It was only the World Tree's barrier that made it seem otherwise. Nuardel was closer than people thought. Once the construction date was set, I'd simply have to go again. And here I'd been thinking there was no way I'd return... I was going back far too soon.
This time Calius ran some silent calculation of his own, then spoke in a clear voice.
"Mm. Then the big problems are settled. I'll let you know the site and the start date before long. And..."
"Yes. What else is there?"
"The bulk contract with the Academy. It's a rather large one, so I think it would be best if you came along and looked it over yourself."
Ha... so it came to this after all.
I'd expected it from the moment the Academy came up. Another world meant the Middle Ages, the north, elves—and an academy, didn't it? I didn't know who had sent me here, but they clearly meant to serve me the full otherworld course. At this rate I'd end up porter and cook for a hero's party, and walk into a labyrinth or a dungeon besides.
I asked, with a small sigh mixed in.
"Hoo... can't be helped. But how big are we talking? What, they want two thousand servings a month?"
"Higher."
"What?"
"Higher than that. Five thousand. They asked us to supply five thousand servings of hardtack every month for a year."
"I'm sorry—what?"
Five thousand servings... they wanted a hundred and fifty kilograms of hardtack sent every single month? Even the Silbaerin knight order didn't take delivery in numbers that stupid. And in the first place, stockpile that much wartime emergency food and wouldn't the imperial household come knocking with an investigation?
You bastard! You gearing up for a war all by yourself? You some kind of rebel?!
The volume was so far beyond anything I'd imagined that I was genuinely curious what they meant by it.
"Why on earth do they need that much? What, are they preparing for war and taking the students with them?"
"No, nothing like that... It's complicated to explain."
Calius muttered over where he was even supposed to begin.
"In short, every food supply going into the Academy has been cut off."
"What? All of them?"
"Yes. All of them. The Academy's ingredient distribution has been shaky a few times before, but this is the first time it's been severed completely."
"Why would the distribution be shaky? It's where noble children from all over gather. Shouldn't they be serving nothing but the finest food?"
An academy was supposed to be that sort of place. The number-one private university in the world, among private universities. Commoners could get in, but in practice nobles occupied an overwhelming share—a place where equal education was equality in name only. I couldn't understand supply trouble happening somewhere like that.
"Nobles gathered from every corner of the country all insisted the ingredients had to come through their own region's company, their own family's company. They shook the Academy's headmaster so hard that..."
"And because of that?"
"The headmaster simply cut every supply line and decided to give them hardtack."
"What."
So... the headmaster, his wits scrambled by the nobles' turf war and all that shaking, had fallen to the dark side and replaced every meal service with hardtack? That was straight-up military procedure.
A campus where the passion of fresh-faced young people burned bright. Romantic love stories between boys and girls in the spring of their youth. Memories of finishing class and tearing into cream buns, or cheap hamburgers, with friends at the school store...
None of that exists here...
Apparently the academy of another world was nothing like what I had imagined. I hadn't even set foot there yet, and I already had the feeling that things were about to tangle themselves into a magnificent mess.