Volume 4 Snippet 1.3
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Translator: Reflet
Editor: Weasalopes
Taking the order, first Haruna handed one of each of the sugar soy sauce/miso sticks (one per leaf) to her before pouring lots of sauce on the fairly heated dango and setting it on its own leaf and handing that to her as well.
「Your cooking never skips a beat, lady. One set for me too.」
「Same here. Also, I’d like that meat wrap onigiri you mentioned and curry bread.」
Things always sped up after the first customer came in. In fact, thanks to yesterdays’ achievements, the idea that there was some rare delicious food around here was quickly seeping into the community, with some oddballs showing up to swipe some for themselves.
「It’s strangely soft……」
「They’re a little sticky, so make sure you eat without getting them stuck in your throat.」
Haruna cautioned the customer who had taken their first bite expressing their thoughts. As the dango weren’t really different from mochi, you had to be careful when digesting.
「Everything’s usually salty sweet, but this is on a whole new level.」
「I like this miso flavor.」
「I like the sauce over here」
「Soy sauce is supreme」
「The meat wrap onigiri’s also crazy good. Soy sauce is really something else, eh?」
The food was getting quite the acclamation. Some customers couldn’t quite handle the softness or stickiness, but even they were highly likely to favor the meat wrap onigiri, with an additional approval of soy sauce.
「Lady, I’d like one more round on the meat wrap onigiri！」
「Coming right up~」
Easily selling out the 45 doma meat wrap onigiri, Haruna had managed to carve her footprints in Forre’s rice culture.
The third day was chinese dumplings.
「And here’s another strange one.」
A customer murmured puzzedly at the bread-like item with steam emanating from it.
「How’s this one differ？」
「The inside is different. I can’t describe anything very well other than the curry bun……」
Haruna went into contemplation as the customer pointed at the four different varieties of steamed meat buns.
「The meat bun here is comprised of ground meat and onion with soy sauce added, and the curry bun is practically the same as the curry bread. But I guess it would be a little smaller inside than the curry bread? The pizza bun is made of ground meat and cheese with tomato sauce, and the seafood bun has its ground meat as shrimp with scallion.」
「What’s the price？」
「It’s 20 doma for a piece of each, all around the board.」
「I’d like a meat and a seafood.」
Hearing about the soy sauce base, the male customer chose the meat bun and seafood bun. He appeared to have taken a real fancy to the soy sauce from the day before.
「Then I guess I’ll go for the curry bun and pizza bun. Maybe we could share half of each of ours？」
「Yeah, why the heck not?」
The other man with him ordered what the first man didn’t order, and the first man agreed to his proposal. They both felt they may as well go for all the varieties if the food was to their liking.
「The bread-like material on the outer area is super fluffy.」
「Oh yeah, the stuffing there is a bit thin. Is there a reason for this？」
「It’s hard to wrap the buns unless I keep the stuffing a bit low, and even if I went through with steaming them up, the outer area would expand a crazy amount, if you can believe it.」
「Ah, that makes sense.」
They nodded at Haruna’s explanation, ripping their shares in half before sampling.
「Hey, this is seriously good！」
「All of them are！」
The customers smacked their lips at the flavor of this food, which could probably sell for double its current price just with the stuffing alone. The moment the meat bun entered their mouths, the meat juices and the sweet taste of the onion matched with the soy sauce, seeping into the dough to create perfect harmony. Words could not express how delicious this was. The same could be said for the pizza bun, with the cheese, ground meat, and tomato sauce combining in perfect harmony, and also for the seafood bun with its flawless seasoning to cancel out the raw stench unique to seafood and bring out its synergy. We needn’t even discuss the curry bun. Everything other than the seafood bun was a staple in Japanese food, and no one said they got any duds.
「Y’know, I get meat, curry, and seafood, but what’s that pizza thing anyhow？」
「Mm～、it would be hard to explain, so I’ll make it for you tomorrow.」
Hearing the two customers’ questions, Haruna casually decided the next day’s menu. Along with the chinese dumplings from the third day and pizza from the fourth day, everything sold out before all the matches had even ended, and faster than anticipated, despite being served during the main event.
「So I made quite the profit from the shop.」
The day all the events were through with, Haruna gave a slightly happy report regarding the overall sales during that time.
「Yeah, it was above average pricing and still managed to sell out before the end of the matches every day, which is quite something.」
「I could have stocked up some more, but it wasn’t like I had to get a ton of money anyway, so I just called it there.」
「Which was a good choice. There are some idiots who don’t know when to throw in the towel.」
Tatsuya glared at Hiroshi, who couldn’t resist the urge to whistle as he faced the opposite direction, pretending to not be involved. Considering how this mannerism seemed to fool Mio, you had to applaud their relationship of master and pupil.
「So how much exactly？」
「About enough to pay off three months’ worth of this workshop’s rent, maybe？」
Haruna puffed her chest out as she answered Makoto’s question, holding out a profit loss statement. Even after extracting the cost of materials, location fee, and taxes, the profit was an astounding sum of money. There was one heck of a labor cost, but this is basically what happens when you put your livelihood first in business.
Thanks to Hiroshi, the situation became extremely disorderly, but Haruna had made sure to make a balance sheet, a profit loss statement, and even a statement of account. This was because the minute they decided on buying out a location for the workshop, she had figured it was best to properly finance everything, or else they likely wouldn’t be able to contrive funds.
That effort on her part had not ended up being very helpful, and because they had gotten their hands on large amounts of capital without a price, the contents of this balance sheet were becoming very questionable, but now that things had already begun, they may as well continue as they always had.
To borrow Hiroshi’s words, this was no doubt a technique comprised of experience, inertia, and tenacity.
「I always am amazed at how Haruna can literally provide for us all.」
「I know right? Just from simple units of hours, Haruna charges ahead of us.」
The two elders felt dejected that they lost to a girl still in her teens at making money. On one hand, they were saved by this unique circumstance of having a tournament, but even deducting from that would only change it from half a day to a whole day. In light of that, they couldn’t even brag about taking down a slightly strong creature.
Then again, even returning to Japan wouldn’t prevent them from losing to Haruna once she had a source of revenue and got serious.
「So what do we do with the earned money？」
「After we stock up on materials and ingredients exclusive to Forre, I was thinking of focusing our research on those delectable dortzens.」
「And we’re back to talking about food again……」
「Not like there’s anything else we can spend our money on.」
The elders just groaned at Haruna’s comment. There was barely a cost to buying equipment for their group, a situation which normal adventurers would kill to gain.
So in the end, thanks to Haruna’s sale-a-thon in Stiren, question after question began rushing into their workshop regarding miso, soy sauce, and curry powder, and then all those condiments increased in demand, if you can believe it.
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