The Academy's Strongest Street-Stall Uncle (3)
The next day, I went back to the Academy with Eilenna.
The original plan had been to buy the stall gear today—equipment, tools, a tent, the whole lot. But buying it all in advance only to have the paperwork rejected would leave me holding a pile of useless junk, so I settled for scouting out where the stuff was sold and came in today strictly to fill out forms.
"Whoa... so this is where the Empire's humans do their learning. It's way bigger than it looked from outside."
"It is big, I'll give it that. But are you really all right working with me?"
"Yeah. I like it. A lot."
When I'd returned to the mansion yesterday, Eilenna had been waiting like a dog left to guard the house. Part of it was curiosity about how the contract had gone, but she'd also come all the way to the imperial capital only to be left alone, and the boredom had clearly gotten to her. I'd assumed she tagged along because she wanted to see the city. She was a gourmet elf, rare even in Nuardel for how forward-looking she was and how badly she wanted to grow—of course she'd want to experience the very peak of human civilization as it stood.
And here I was, not sightseeing with her at all, suddenly announcing I was going to run a street stall. Honestly, I'd been ready to take it in stride if she looked hurt.
Contrary to expectations, though, she had come right out with what she wanted the night before.
"A street stall... that really..."
"I know. If you say you're disappointed, I understand. I'm sorry."
"It's a great idea, though. Let's do it right now."
"Eh."
Maybe making wine had put her in the mood to try making food as well.
"Just the two of us, in a cramped little stall... hehe..."
"Sorry? What was that?"
"Ah, nothing!"
She'd muttered something decidedly sly, but I hadn't caught it cleanly. I couldn't pin down her exact reasons for wanting the stall work, and I had no reason to refuse. The stall was only going to be big enough for one person to run, and even if things got busy, I had years in the restaurant trade behind me.
There was, however, one thing I could never overcome on my own.
The moment I swapped the part-timer for a pretty girl, sales went up.
In advertising there's a thing called the 3B rule. Baby, Beast, and Beauty. Land even one of the three, and whatever you're selling, the promotion will at least bat average. By that measure, Eilenna was the best choice among everyone I knew. A rare elf out of the extremely closed-off Nuardel, with a face that would place no worse than tenth even if you lined up every beauty in this world—and on top of that, a palate sharpened by winemaking and cooking skills that were more than adequate.
In the capital, what was popular was the hardtack, not me. Some black-haired nobody with no background to speak of setting up a stall in front of the Academy might look suspicious enough that customers simply wouldn't come. In self-employment, you always plan for the worst case.
But here—ta-da!
If a blue-eyed, cool, leggy model of an elf noona became the face of the stall? I could probably sell Elskit and elven vegetable soup instead of toast and still move product. Call it an authentic elf eatery and it might sell even better.
Either way, the looks problem I'd been quietly fretting over was solved. I stepped into the Academy building with a lighter heart and went looking for the administration office.
Knock, knock, knock—
Creeeak—
I knocked, then eased the door open, and every clerk on duty turned to look.
"Um... I came to fill out the street-stall paperwork. What do I need to do?"
"Ah, you're the one the head of finance mentioned. Right this way."
Fortunately, the finance director hadn't been slow about it. Then again, he hadn't looked like a man who let work fall behind. Eilenna and I followed the clerk with awkward, hesitant steps and sat down at the desk—and a veritable feast of documents spread out before our eyes.
"This is the temporary business-permit application, and this is the food-hygiene responsibility pledge. Write your name on both of these, and sign your agreement here..."
Beyond those, there was a pile of nuisances: an accident-prevention safety-compliance plan, a revenue-sharing and site-lease contract, and more. I did read the lease with some care, and there was nothing especially predatory in it. No clause about key money, which made sense—I wasn't taking over a storefront to do business. The street was already thriving, so there was hardly any crack for a premium like that to wedge itself into. The monthly stall fee and the taxes were set at amounts I could live with, so I signed without hesitation.
"And the elf here... an employee? Or a partner?"
"A partner."
"Then I'll need the elf's signature on the documents as well."
"Uh, yeah. I mean—yes."
Unlike Nuardel, putting every last thing into writing felt unnatural to Eilenna. She locked up stiff as a robot and worked through the pages with a face tight with nerves. I understood wanting to be careful, but at this rate it would take all day.
I slid in right beside her to help.
"H-huh. Jinwoo, you're too clo—"
"Let's see... this one isn't anything much. Miss Eilenna, you'll wash your hands properly when you cook and keep the stall clean, right?"
"O-of course! But could you just... a little more distance..."
"Then sign here. This one's similar. You're not going to blow the shop up with a fire spirit, are you?"
"Haa... heh..."
What was wrong with her? Was filling out forms really that nerve-racking? Well... stare at a document with clauses lined up in a chaotic row and some instinctive sense of danger does kick in. Eilenna finished the paperwork with her face flushed red, breathing hard. The clerk checked every page, nodded as if nothing was amiss, and gathered them up.
"The approval hasn't been filed yet, but this was already settled with the headmaster under a separate agreement, so it should go through today. Next time you come, you can just bring the stall ready to go in one trip."
"Oh. Thank you."
Set beside Japanese or European bureaucracy, this was S-rank flexibility, wasn't it? We thanked the kind, quick clerk and left the Academy building. Everything that had needed handling in a hurry was done.
The sun was still high overhead. Eilenna, the redness faded now that she'd calmed a little, spoke up.
"Jinwoo. We've got plenty of time left... want to see more of the city? We're finished, aren't we?"
"The urgent things are finished. There's still a lot to do. Sorry, but no."
"Aww... what kind of work?"
I wanted a look around this other world too. But once I'd committed to a street stall, the single most important job was still waiting.
"We have to make our menu. The food."
"Ah."
I wasn't about to turn a profit selling raw tomatoes the way the little elves did. My first thought had been Korean-style street toast, but looking at it again, it felt a little thin. The fillings in toast are mostly the same anyway. What actually decides the taste is the sauce. Depending on what you use and how you use it, toast can become anything from a Myeongdong grandpa's street toast to Isaac Toast—even those egg sandos from across the water.
"Let's stop by the market on the way and do the shopping."
"Haah... fine..."
Thud—!
"Aigoo, I'm dying. I'm actually dying."
"Ugh... so tired."
The shopping baskets hit the mansion kitchen in a loud clatter, flung down without ceremony. We'd come back from buying out a mountain of groceries, and I was spent from head to toe.
"Go rest a bit. I'll make a toast prototype and bring it to you."
"Mm... sorry. I'll just lie down for a little..."
I was tired too, but Eilenna looked especially worn out. The World Tree's influence still reached as far as Silbaerin, so that had been fine—but of course its power didn't extend to the capital. She'd lived her whole life leaning on that strength, and its absence seemed to be hitting her in the bones. Her mana was on a level I couldn't begin to compare with, yet her stamina, surprisingly, looked about the same as mine. First time on these roads, fatigue stacking up, a sun that was sneakily hot—she'd botched the stamina management.
Maybe I should have just used Mana Market.
I hadn't, because I didn't want to draw needless suspicion from Calius or Eilenna. Once we started selling in earnest, using it while dodging their eyes would only get harder. I'd have to prepare properly and come clean about this before long. Keeping it a secret forever would be nice... but telling the people I could actually trust ought to be all right.
Still, walking the market myself had another reason. I needed to find sandwich bread.
From a modern Korean's point of view, sliced white bread is the loaf you see most often, and it's cheap compared to other breads, so it tends to get quietly looked down on.
Never look down on sandwich bread.
The stuff hasn't actually been around all that long. If you only mean "bread for a meal," then yes, it showed up alongside human farming—but what I was talking about was the sliced loaf. The kind you slap jam on and eat in a hurry on a busy morning. Depending on the recipe ratios, it splits into low-ratio and high-ratio, and the loaf we're familiar with is the high-ratio kind, which got its start in early twentieth-century America...
Ugh. Enough of that. What does Earth's history matter? The cheat map for an otherworld chef isn't America anyway. It's Nuardel.
The point was that Europe, dominated by hard breads, almost never had a loaf like this—it was an American invention—and this world's eating habits and produce resembled Europe's. If no bakery here made sandwich bread, I'd have to bake every bit of it myself. Even buying commercial loaves as long as my outstretched arms wouldn't be enough, and I was supposed to sit there and make all of that?
At that point I might as well open a bakery.
Morning service would be a dream I never got to have. I'd be up at dawn, baking nothing but bread straight through the morning, scratch out a little business at lunch, and call it a day.
Fortunately—truly fortunately—there was a bakery selling something close to sandwich bread. It sat in a tucked-away corner of the market and was easy to miss, but that sweet, carby smell unique to the loaf pulled me along until I found it.
"From here to the end over there. All of it, please."
"Hah—! Thank you!"
I bought out every loaf they had left and, on top of that, made a verbal deal for future supply. Shops like this weren't common, and if the cruelty of the market put them out of business, the only one who lost was me.
And so I came home with armfuls of the stuff. Aside from the heels—what English calls rusk, and Korean simply the crust of the loaf—being a bit hard, the flavor was more than satisfying.
Time to start cooking for real.
The menu I'd settled on wasn't only street toast. There was also a ham-and-cheese toast chasing the taste of Isaac, and French toast. Simple enough to eat, but surprisingly fussy to make, so it was better if the ingredients and the prep overlapped wherever they could. That struck Japanese-style egg sandwiches and old-school salad bread off the list. Tasty, sure, but boiling eggs, mashing them, and mixing them into the filling is a chore.
First I took an absurd quantity of tomatoes and cut them into rough quarters. I'd heard that old Europe sometimes made ketchup out of walnuts or mushrooms, and I had no desire to attempt that particular adventure. Street toast is optimized for tomato ketchup to begin with. Stick to the orthodox method.
The cut tomatoes went into a big pot with whole peppercorns, onion, ground cinnamon, and bay leaves, and then you boiled them. That was the end of it—more precisely, once the sauce had reduced by about half, you seasoned it with salt, vinegar, and sugar, and kept reducing until it hit the thickness of the ketchup we know. That was the end of it.
Except... by the time this reduced by half, it would probably already be evening. Street toast could wait until tomorrow.
I still had another sauce to make.
The light-novel protagonist who squirts mayonnaise all over another world...
Every time I read one of those cookie-cutter isekai reincarnation novels, the mayonnaise flex had looked anything but easy—and now I was the one about to do it. Piling on, I was a man's-man of a chef who didn't stoop to mixers or hand blenders...
Fine. I'll just be a lesser man.
I don't even care if it turns me into some soft pretty-boy. Somebody please invent a mixer. I'm begging you. Tofu, bread dough, all of it—if a machine that mixed ingredients would only exist, life would get so much easier.
"Ah. My arms already hurt."
Nothing for it, though. Once I made the stuff, I could register it in Mana Market...
I rolled up both sleeves and, same as with the tomatoes, cracked a huge number of eggs and separated out only the yolks. Then, with the grave face of a knight drawing his blade, I took up a whisk.
"Let's see who drops first. You, or me."
It was time to bring mayonnaise—the sauce that only gets better the more you whip it—into this other world.