3-3 Familiar Faces Yet Again

Day twenty-seven in another world.

I decided to change my approach.

Either way, this family still had to earn money to survive.

So for that part, I’d lean on knowledge-cheat tactics.

Lately I’d been leaning way too hard into the meathead route.

If I was a civilized person, I should act like one!

I had the strongest weapon imaginable here—an internet connection—and I hadn’t used it at all.

Most days I just watched anime or movies.

Or played games.

For an old guy like me, that was… not great.

Alright then—let’s do a food stall.

Food wouldn’t stand out too much in another world, no matter what I did.

I’d put guards on Eri’s family, and once I reached S-rank, I’d crush the street vermin.

A full-course punishment plan.

So early in the morning, I barged into Eri’s house.

“Alright, so—we’re doing a food stall.”

“Al, big brother… what do you mean, ‘so’?”

Eri tilted her head, puzzled.

“Don’t worry about the details. Business, business. Now then, we’re gonna do test batches.”

““Yeah!””

The little ones were fired up.

Heh.

Last night I’d been busy downloading a carefully selected set of recipes from the internet.

We’d start with easy ones.

“Alright, first up—this.”

As I said that, I pulled out pre-made donut dough from storage.

The most basic, simple recipe possible.

Oh yeah… I still hadn’t let Erin try these.

I rolled it out with a rolling pin to a decent thickness.

Then I took out an old-fashioned donut cutter—iron, made via image creation.

The kind we used at home.

Maybe ours had been aluminum.

It had been silver-colored, but for some reason I remembered it as iron.

These days they probably even had plastic ones.

This part was fun.

When I was a kid, my family used to make donuts like this.

We punched them out one after another, everyone together.

And the little round “middle” pieces from the donut holes—yeah, we fried those too and made mini donuts.

I forgot what we did with the leftover scraps around the edges.

But in a household like mine—where Mom was a survivor of the Pacific War—there was no way anything went to waste.

Maybe we cut it up and fried it as-is.

Or we rolled it back together and punched more donuts.

Probably the first… or maybe both.

That was a memory from nearly half a century ago.

We fried them in oil, then dusted them with powdered sugar I’d made by processing regular sugar in my item box.

“Carefully selected recipe,” my ass.

But the kids went crazy for it.

Next was popcorn.

The disposable aluminum-pot kit kind.

So I’d even brought this camping, huh.

That pot set was loud.

I’d only made it once when I was younger, so my memory was fuzzy.

The bagged popping corn you make in a regular pot gets quieter if you seal the lid well.

But this one was noisy—probably not something you should make at a normal campsite.

Not that it mattered.

Back then I had the whole place to myself.

The kids flinched at the pop-pop explosions, but once they started eating, they were completely absorbed.

I got the heat control right today.

Popcorn’s easy to burn, and you end up with lots of half-popped pieces that smell nice and toasty.

Next was “churros.”

Churo… maybe some people called them churoh.

I felt like the name was slightly different at American theme parks compared to Japan.

I’m pretty sure it originally came from Spain.

Thank god I’d brought good extra-virgin olive oil!

And I’d bought something cinnamon-like in the royal capital.

No wonder it was a theme-park staple.

The kids loved it, of course.

The dough took some effort, but shaping it was item-box-assisted.

Maybe I should also make a star-shaped piping nozzle.

If I could make custard cream, I could even do the filled kind.

While we were at it, it became lunchtime.

I went with yakisoba and instant ramen.

And I secretly had just a tiny bit of beer.

Because… it’s yakisoba, okay?

Curry was spicy, so I put it on hold for now.

After eating, the kids got full and went down for a nap.

They were still little, after all.

While they slept, I prepped fried potatoes and karaage for snacks later.

Potato chips, too.

I also wanted to try potato mochi and warabi mochi.

I’d already made starch powder and kinako.

No way I’d brought “warabi mochi specialty flour” on a camping trip, though.

Oh—and homemade pudding might be possible with a recipe.

But for a stall, I’d need proper equipment.

If that’s the case, crepes might be better—quick to make.

Someday it’d be fun to build a kitchen wagon instead of a kitchen car.

Then pancakes and French toast wouldn’t be bad either.

If I was going to make magical tools anyway, I might as well go all the way and build cotton-candy and ice-cream machines too.

Before spreading that kind of thing around, though… I’d need to do a bit of “garbage cleanup.”

Oh—how could I forget okonomiyaki.

I’d even brought a full okonomiyaki set.

I’d made that special okonomiyaki spatula too.

Udon was an option as well.

I’d adjust the flavor to suit local tastes.

I’d never made noodles myself, though!

It might also be fun to make “chimera-yaki,” like ningyo-yaki.

I should make a mold next time.

Not being able to bring Japanese soba was a real tragedy.

Well, nobody does soba on a normal camping trip.

Some people might make it themselves, but usually that’s more like a soba-making class you do on a trip.

Takoyaki and taiyaki… those would be tougher.

I’d need molds for them, and taiyaki especially needed azuki beans for the filling.

That one really couldn’t be substituted.

There was a reason people had used azuki for anko since ancient times—it was too delicious to replace.

Even at the supermarket, frozen obanyaki with anko sells out first.

Strawberry or custard stays behind.

If I had large white beans, I could try white anko, but I didn’t like it much.

I’d eat it in high-end wagashi, though.

Honestly, white anko might actually be easier to substitute.

I’d heard that the classic variety used for it wasn’t used as much anymore—they’d switched to other varieties.

But azuki hadn’t been replaced.

Which tells you everything.

If only I’d had a bag of dried azuki.

I once scattered some in my yard out of curiosity, and this tiny little plant—like ten centimeters tall—grew, and I harvested a few beans. I remember being shocked.

For dinner, we did okonomiyaki.

That was a classic stall food, after all.

If I was going to run an actual stall, I’d have to think about what equipment I could carry.

And what kind of customers I was aiming for.

In a place like the royal capital Alba, targeting girls with a stylish angle might work.

But this was Adros, an adventurer town.

So the target was heavy, filling food for adventurers.

Like Erin—female adventurers with stamina-based jobs had big appetites.

For equipment, I wanted versatile gear with lots of applications.

Which meant… a griddle.

Frankfurters, yakisoba, omusoba, okonomiyaki.

And crepes—depending on the filling—could also be hearty.

Those could run decent turnover.

Pancakes were popular enough on Earth to have specialty shops.

For fried items: karaage and fries.

Donuts and churros were great too.

Once we had more room, we’d expand the equipment.

That was the realistic route.

Meals or snacks.

And drinks, ideally.

If the kids were going to sell, I’d have to teach them arithmetic too—

Crap.

I’d forgotten my own reading and writing studies.

The next morning, I stopped by the royal capital’s Adventurers’ Guild, and the guildmaster summoned me.

He said he’d arranged the guards.

To save time, he introduced us near the guild entrance.

The members he brought were—

“I missed you—puuudding!”

It was you guys.

Honestly… convenient.

These people were absolutely trustworthy.

“Hmph. You smelled me out, Erin? And for the record, my name isn’t Pudding. Long time no see. Ed, Dennis, Lois too. You’re taking this job?”

“Yes. The guildmaster asked us to. Really, we’re supposed to keep an eye on you.”

“Then let’s go. We’re riding this.”

I said that, and thunk, I dropped my car out of the item box.

Pulling out a car was technically a bad idea, but if the guildmaster said I couldn’t use teleportation magic, I had no choice.

That’s what I told myself.

“W-what is this?! This thing!”

They stared into the car in shock, peeking around inside.

“It’s a car. Now get in.”

I shoved the four of them inside and left the guild.

Lois—big as he was—took the passenger seat.

I crammed the other three into the tight back seat by force.

The official capacity was five, after all.

Five adults was rough back there, but they were all slim, which helped.

I was skinny too—if I swapped with Ed, it’d be perfect—but I couldn’t stop driving.

As the car roared off with a deep engine note, the guildmaster was left behind, clutching his head again.

There was a bit of trouble at the royal capital gate because of the car, but I bulldozed it with my B-rank adventurer card and made it “not a problem.”

Then I kicked up sand and reached Adros—twenty kilometers away—in no time, and drove straight into town.

There were no gates, no walls.

No gate guards either.

If anything, every adventurer served as a gate guard.

So people drifted in from around the royal capital, or those who couldn’t enter the capital, or even those who gave up trying.

And of course, the flood of poor people had no decent way to make a living.

Public safety only got worse.

I drove straight down the main road from the entrance.

Then I turned into the back alleys, heading for Eri’s house.

Some of the underworld types who ran this town were around too, but they only stared.

Coming by car was partly meant to show off to them.

My car wasn’t some refined, quiet luxury sedan, nor a silent hybrid.

It was a wild child of a real 4WD off-road vehicle—environmental concerns and noise regulations be damned.

A loud 4-liter gasoline engine, and a flashy, vivid yellow body.

In this poor district of another world, it must have looked insanely bright—and insanely noisy.

“This is it. I want you to build a guard plan centered on this house. Where are you setting up your base?”

“Right. This area is cramped. We’ll use an inn a little farther away. For things like toilets during the job, we’ll borrow the house.”

“I’m thinking of having them run a food stall. Something delicious that doesn’t exist around here. And someone’s going to get stupid and try to mess with them. If you see anyone like that, don’t hold back—crush them.”

“Understood. And what will you do?”

“I have to prepare for the A-rank exam. In between, I’ll help set up the business for these kids. While I’m doing that, protect Eri’s family properly. And Erin—don’t look at me like that. I’ll let you eat pudding!”

“And cake and cream puffs too!”

A glutton said that with sparkling eyes.

“I’m telling you, it’s not just those.”

Erin froze, staring at me like she’d just experienced the greatest shock of her life.

“In the dungeon, cooking is forbidden, so I couldn’t even treat His Highness.”

“I’m going to eat all of it, you know!”

Eriin looked at me with determination.

“Good. Do your job properly. And you’ll be the one making it—for Eri’s family.”

“We shall annihilate all enemies who come for them!”

Ed delivered a congratulatory line with a wry smile.

“Ah—Alphonse-san. A bit late, but congratulations on making B-rank. And what was that last thing during the exam? I thought I was going to die. Some people went flying.”

“Ahahahaha. Because that thing was really tough. Magic armor—how is something that ridiculous even allowed? Well, I properly took it as a skill too.”

When I said that, Ed’s eyes went wide.