14-3 Lunchtime

The lunch break was set for two hours.

The reason is that the little ones have naptime.

And it is not only the little ones who are looking forward to mealtime.

The audience is looking forward to it too.

The morning was mainly sweets and light meals, but lunchtime is when the hearty stuff appears.

The little ones get their food for free, so they buy various things in groups, share them, and eat all sorts of food.

They already ate the bread from the bread-eating race earlier, but apparently that was a separate stomach.

Yakisoba, omelet yakisoba, ramen, curry rice, and udon.

Skewers, hot dogs, okonomiyaki, and grilled rice balls.

And then cupcakes and hotcakes.

In our case, I think many of these are dishes that often appear at home, but buying them from festival stalls and eating together noisily probably makes them extra special.

We had a lot of stalls come, so there is plenty to go around.

I paid enough from my own pocket to make it more than worthwhile, so there is no way any stall could end up in the red.

Jenny-chan’s family has come too.

Of course old man Baldos is with them as well.

Apparently the name of his son, the dragon man, is Barry.

He is going around the stalls happily with his wife, Felis.

Old man Baldos is completely doting on his grandchild, holding the child’s hand while getting dragged all over the place by the little one.

Baldos looks happy too.

Grandchildren really are wonderful after all.

His Highness Prince Emilio and the others are enjoying commoner-style food today as well.

I already gave necklace-type God Poison Heal magic tools to every member of the royal family, so I obtained permission for them to eat without taste-testers.

They are made so that recovery magic activates automatically if anything happens.

I also added things like God Heal while I was at it.

At first this too was a version-up spell from Greater Heal, but by now I had already defined it as an independent spell called God Heal.

It is charged with a considerable amount of mana, but if there is not enough mana, the built-in orichalcum battery housed with storage functionality is connected by a mana supply circuit to a Besmagil battery inside my inventory, so I can supply my own mana.

I hesitated to embed Besmagil into bracelets for the royal family.

It would be bad if that caused more troublesome complications.

The matter of Besmagil has already come to light because of that sacred lottery incident, but that was treated as an exception caused by one of Takeshi Funabashi’s artifacts, so the fact that I can freely make it is still being kept secret.

It is a system that transmits power rather than signals, as an application of smartphones, but the problem with this wireless supply method is that the efficiency of mana transmission is not very good.

This too is something that needs improvement.

Frankfurters, corn dogs, crepes, pseudo chocolate bananas, candy apples, and tiny castella cakes are also doing brisk business.

There are also takoyaki, taiyaki, imagawayaki, gohei-mochi, and mitarashi dango.

For the sweet red bean items, I put up banners saying Purveyor to His Majesty the First King.

After exercising and getting our stomachs full, all the children are now sleeping like logs in the rooms of the Beast-Ear Garden.

If they all never woke up, I would not mind just ending things there and then.

His Highness Prince Emilio is napping together with them too.

With the momentum of that, I went to deliver various refreshments to the Crown Prince.

Of course, I entered through the door.

It is not Armon’s place, after all.

I also gave the Crown Prince a necklace-type healing device.

“Hello, Your Highness the Crown Prince. You must be tired. The princesses and His Highness Prince Emilio are enjoying the sports festival too.”

“I see, that is wonderful to hear. Thank you very much for the refreshments. Since this is the kingdom’s first event of its kind, I would really like to take a look myself, but I have work piling up, you see. Now that I have completed the Crown Prince investiture ceremony, even more work has been added on top of it.”

They are as Spartan as ever.

After offering him a few words of sympathy, I left the room.

On the way back, I used my specialty teleportation magic.

During lunchtime, we held various exhibitions.

Things like an arm-wrestling tournament for general participants and street-performance acts.

I have Fal carry a Besmagil battery.

If I keep holding her the whole time, I stop being able to deal with the event side of things.

Since that wedding, spirits have started staying here all the time, so that helps on the security front.

Those fellows probably will not leave the side of the Besmagil battery either.

This old man also fills his stomach with various things.

Once in a while, food from outdoor stalls under the open sky is nice.

Originally, I got into food-related things because I wanted Japanese meals sold in this sort of way.

After procuring food, making the rounds, and going to check on the children.

At the sports ground, the band that often performs in the food court is giving a performance.

This world does not have instruments like guitars, pianos, or organs.

The main instruments are violin-type and wind-type ones.

Maybe I will make a melodica next time.

Personally, I want to try making a glass harmonica.

Since it is made of glass, the making process itself is what appeals to me.

So far, the child-use instruments I have made are things like tambourines, castanets, triangles, cymbals, and xylophones, instruments children would likely enjoy playing.

Those were mainly for music lessons.

They are the same kinds of things I used in music class in elementary school.

I gave up on making a harmonica that you hold and blow into by hand because the structure was a bit difficult.

I would really like to have one for children, and since it is small and easy to carry, it would probably become popular with adventurers too.

I will try again sometime.

Music boxes are nice too.

Not the little tabletop ones, but the big type where you swap out those metal discs with the music punched into them as bumps and dents.

I absolutely love tasteful instruments like that.

I can never get enough of concerts featuring giant antique music boxes.

They produce such a wonderful tone that just listening to them makes me melt.

Even today, products small enough to be placed on a desk are still being made.

But in those too, the “software,” the metal plates processed with raised and recessed protrusions, is so unbelievably complicated that it would be far easier to make a magical phonograph instead.

Smaller music boxes use cylinders, but large ones use discs that can be as much as forty centimeters across.

They make sound by plucking pins, but if it is a real full-scale disc type, the structure is incredibly intricate.

Since those are also old objects from long ago, welding and repairing damaged parts of the discs is an enormous job.

Since they are things no longer sold new, the repair marks all over them have become quite something.

The comb part that plucks the pins is also rather difficult to make.

In the case of music boxes especially, the hardest part seems to be balancing the hardness and softness of the material at the tips of the comb attached to the main body, the part equivalent to a needle on a record player.

I have made various prototypes, but they still somehow feel a little lacking, so I suppose I should keep refining them.

Oops, it looks like the little ones have woken up.

After washing their faces and changing their clothes, it is time for exercises outside.

Suddenly jumping straight into physical activity is not good.

Since it is right after waking up, I made sure the first event of the afternoon was not a hard one.

The sixth event is the scavenger race.

Since I did not hear at all what the scavenger items were, I am a little worried.

“Now then, at last it is time for the much-anticipated scavenger race. Who will draw what?”

“Well, it is a classic among classics.”

The first batter is Miya, the bear beastfolk girl.

Ohhh, and right off the bat, she got ‘prince.’

Well, today we actually do have a real prince here, so that is fine.

His Highness Prince Emilio was loaned over from the guest seats.

And after that, princesses were rented out one after another, and they were soon practically out of stock.

In spite of that, the slips kept forcefully demanding princesses, so even the duke’s daughter and the noble young ladies serving as maids in the guest section ended up being dragged out.

Honestly, Aoi-chan.

Umm, that young lady over there getting dragged off while flustered may be in the distinguished guest section, but she is definitely not some princess, all right.

Headmaster got properly dragged off too.

The one taking him away is little bear girl Sarnya.

This child is actually pretty shy, but lately she has started holding hands with Headmaster too.

After that, there were ordinary things like a person wearing red clothes or an adventurer.

One of them even said Sacred Elion, so Touya, who drew it, carried Fal away.

If this were Earth, it would be as astonishing as having a sheet in a kindergarten sports-festival scavenger race say ‘Jesus Christ,’ and then actually having the real thing prepared.

But in our Beast-Ear Kindergarten, it was just an everyday scene.