“This looks so cute,” she said, pointing at some gum with a cat on the wrapping paper, “What is it?”
The pieces were bite-size, and I remembered them fondly from my previous life as “Ten-Yen Gum.”
“Oh, that’s Ten-Yen Gum...”
The moment I focused on the product, information about it flowed into my mind.
Product name: Ten-Rim Gum
Description: Recovers one MP every ten seconds until it loses flavor. Made with artificial strawberry flavoring!
Price: Ten rims
I didn’t know if recovering what amounted to six MP a minute was a lot. I also didn’t know about the price. Back in Japan, even a child could afford ten yen, but I had no idea about ten rims. I guessed I would have to watch and see how this adventurer reacted.
“That’s Ten-Rim Gum,” I corrected myself.
“What is gum?”
Oh, so I have to start from there... Guess gum doesn’t exist in this world.
“It’s a tasty snack meant to be enjoyed by chewing on it without swallowing,” I told her, “and so long as it doesn’t lose its flavor, it restores six MP a minute.”
“Wow, that’s cool!”
Her reaction suggested some surprise, but her socks hadn’t exactly been blown off. There was probably an even better recovery item out there on the market.
“So it’s ten rims?”
“Yep. Would you like to buy one?”
“Yeah, I think I will. It sounds interesting, and it’s cute. I’ll grab one for Mira too.”
It seemed that she was going to buy one for a friend of hers. If she was buying another without even batting an eye, that probably meant ten rims wasn’t crazy high. The girl paid for her purchases with two worn out copper coins. They were a little smaller than ten-yen coins.
So these are what ten-rim coins look like...
They were the first fruits of my labor. When I thought of it that way, I found myself especially grateful for these battered coins.
All right, I’ll just keep this up and aim to build a stable life for myself here!
Afraid to lose my very important profits, I stuck my earnings deep in my pocket.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once the morning rush ended, the dungeon plaza emptied out. The crowd of adventurers had headed underground, so the vendors were beginning to clean up.
Even with all my enthusiasm, the Ten-Rim Gum was the only thing I’d managed to sell in the end, earning me a measly total of twenty rims. A howling wind spun the leaves around, buffeting my body. I felt like I was being frozen right to my core. Overcome by a fierce hunger, I turned to my own goods for a bite to eat.
Product name: Curry Rice Cracker
Description: Restores stamina. Warms you right up in cold conditions.
Price: Twenty rims
It’s delicious... It really was warming up my body, and I was feeling motivated again. Similarly, the Ramune and Odama Candy also had wonderful effects. The reason these things hadn’t sold was likely just that I sucked at marketing them. I made up my mind: once those adventurers came back, I’d be bold and call out to them to promote my dagashi.
The Curry Rice Cracker alone wasn’t enough to fill me up, so I pulled out another type of jarred snack, a Squid Skewer.
Product name: Squid Skewer
Description: Sharpens the senses for a short duration. Makes it easier to detect enemies.
Price: Thirty rims
Perhaps because of the Squid Skewer’s sense-sharpening effect, I became aware that I’d caught the eye of a fellow street vendor. It seemed the Squid Skewer I was eating had piqued his interest. He kept glancing over at me as he cleaned up his own shop. Maybe he’d be willing to buy something off me.
I decided to casually greet him. “Hello.”
“Heya there,” he said in return. “Haven’t seen you ’round here before.”
“I opened up my business for the first time today. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“So you’re a newbie, eh? Right back at ya. Incidentally, whatcha selling there?” The old man was staring at the products on my plates with great curiosity. “I don’t recognize a lot of those goods.”
Evidently it really was hard to tell what I was selling at a glance. The lack of instant product recognition was inconvenient, but it was also proof that I wouldn’t have much competition. I’d try to stay positive!
“These are dagashi.”
“They’re what now?”
He didn’t know what dagashi were? Oh, of course!
“Dagashi” wasn’t a commonly known word here. No wonder everyone had been unmoved by my advertisements; the word didn’t mean anything to them.
“They’re cheap snacks,” I informed him.
“Ah, gotcha. So these are snacks.” The old man nodded.
“Would you like to buy one?”
“Nah, I don’t like sweets.”
“I have ones that aren’t sweet as well,” I offered, “like this Squid Skewer I’m eating, or the Curry Rice Crackers over here.”
The man caught a whiff of the Squid Skewer and scrunched up his face. “Yuck! What’s with that stench? And what the hell is a squid anyway?”
“Huh? A squid is a squid. They live in the ocean.”
“Did you say the ocean?! They’re from that far away?”
Based on this guy’s response, this country must be landlocked.
“Oh, but these smell pretty appetizing,” he said upon sniffing the Curry Rice Crackers.
“Of course,” I replied. “They’re sprinkled with plenty of spices.”
“Well, I’ll be!” he exclaimed, “Spices are luxury items! How much do these go for?”
“Twenty rims.”
“That’s dirt cheap! Are you sure they got spices?”
“Yes, they do. So please try one.”
“Well,” he relented, “at twenty rims, I guess I won’t be too pissed off if it tastes like crap...”
Yep, it was as I had thought. Twenty rims really was cheap here. The old man paid me with two copper coins. With that, I now had forty rims.
Since this was his first time eating dagashi, he appeared to be wary of it. He took a bit of the edge between his teeth and crunched down on it.
“It’s tastier than I expected,” he said after a pause. “Twenty rims was plenty worth it.”
“Right? And it pairs so well with alcohol that even the bar I used to go to had these in stock.”
“I can see it being a good drinking snack,” he agreed. He then finished up his rice cracker and gave a good stretch.
“My body’s all nice and warmed up somehow,” he said. “I’m feeling pretty good, so I guess I’ll close up shop and head on home.”
“That’s thanks to the rice cracker’s special effects!”
“I see. An interesting snack that is.”
Huh? Not much of a reaction there either. To me, a snack that warmed my body up and gave me energy was the stuff of dreams. Wasn’t it so incredible as to make you suspect that it was made with an illicit drug?
Well, considering that this was a world of magic, a product like this might not really be all that. Or was it that he didn’t believe me?
Before the old man got back to work, I made sure to ask him a very important question.
“By the way, is there a place I can get some water around here?”
After eating the rice crackers and the squid, my throat was parched.
“If you want a water station, you gotta head into town.”
Apparently, there was a spring in town which you could freely draw water from. It’d be a while before all the adventurers would return from the dungeon, so I figured I’d take this as an opportunity to gather all the intel I could.
I said the magic words to close up my shop and headed into town.