Chapter 78: The Bear Opens Shop

Chapter 78:
The Bear Opens Shop

 

WITH OUR NAME SET, Milaine got it put on a sign from the trade guild…or she was going to, but then someone mentioned that a sign for a “Bear Lounge” had to have a bearish sign. Like my bear house, it had to have some immediate big bear energy.

“Am I supposed to make it that way?” (Like usual, I suppose.)

“If we asked a craftsman to do it, it’d take time. Can’t you do it, Yuna?”

Hmm. They already knew I could make a whole bear-themed abode.

“There’s already a building here, so I can’t make it exactly like my house.”

“We’ll leave the details up to you, Yuna, especially since none of us know exactly what you can do using your magic.”

And that was how I was tasked with making my own shop look more “bearish.” Which meant…what, exactly? It already had an exterior, and I wasn’t just about to pull the whole thing down and start again. What a pain.

After the day’s meeting, everyone went back to their jobs or houses—Milaine and Tiermina headed over to the trade guild to negotiate the sign and uniforms, Morin and Karin moved into the kitchen to clean up, Miru and the other orphans took the bread they practiced baking back to the orphanage. Helen went home and the maid Lala came to collect Noa. In the end, Fina and Shuri were the only two left.

“Now that you’re making the shop, you’ll be able to eat pudding any time you want!” Fina exclaimed.

“Not really. It depends on how many eggs we’ve got.”

Since I needed to sell wholesale eggs to the trade guild at fixed intervals, Tiermina and Milaine would be working that out. Fina also knew how to make pudding for herself, so she didn’t need to visit the shop.

“Hey, guys? What do you think a bear shop would look like?”

“Bears!” Shuri cried, jumping up and down.

Fina nodded. “What if you decorate it with bear ornaments?”

Bear ornaments, huh? I had made the bear house, so I suppose I could make something like that using magic?

 

First, I set up two bear statues by the entrance. I gathered mana in my bear puppets and envisioned ’em. In my home world, there are these cute pop culture kinda figures, Nendoroid, with little heads about two-fifths of their entire size.

I used clay as my medium. Some color would be nice, so I used magic to gather various hues of dirt. It wasn’t exactly a pretty rainbow of colors, but it was better than Pure Dirt Color. And bearbity, bobbity, boo, we had a cutesy bear Nendoroid-y statue.

“Th-That’s so cute.”

“Bears!”

The two rushed over to coo at the Nendoroid-like bear.

“You think this looks all right?”

“Yeah. It’s so cute I’m gonna implode!”

And the focus testers go wild! I set up my cute bears on the second floor and outside where they would stand out. But, hmm…yeah, the bear statues were nice and all, but when I took another look at the building from the front, I still couldn’t tell what kind of establishment it was supposed to be. How were the good people supposed to know about our bear bread? I headed back over to the front of the building and made a giant bear holding a huge loaf of bread.

As you do, with bakeries.

 

After decorating the outside of the building, I headed to the garden. We decided on an open-air café; everyone agreed that food just tasted better in the fresh air. I got right to work on making bears for the garden, mixing it up a little for variety’s sake. I made a bear that leaned against a tree, a bear throwing a punch, and a mama bear with her cub. Oh, and you just had to have a cute sleeping bear.

Whoa. Was I an artist now? Did this count?

Shuri rushed over and clung to the sleeping bear.

“Shuri, you’ll get your clothes dirty.” Fina dragged Shuri back over to me.

“But bear,” Shuri pointed out.

Shuri seemed reluctant to leave, but I was finished up with the café terrace and led the two inside.

“Are you making them for inside the shop too?” asked Fina.

“Ehh. Might as well. Where should I make them?”

The shop was filled with tables and it wasn’t like I could make any in the middle of the walkways.

“You don’t have to make them too big. Maybe small ones?”

Not a bad idea. I surveyed the inside of the shop and looked at the tables. Maybe there? I approached a table and summoned up a little chibi Nendoroid-like bear statue at its center.

“It’s a lil’ bear,” Shuri marveled. She scooted forward on her chair and gave it a little poke.

“Shuri,” warned Fina, “No touchy.”

“But…cute bear.”

Maybe too cute. I didn’t want any bear-state-heists here, so I added a smidge of magic to attach the bear to the table. “It’s not going to come off no matter how much you mess with it,” I told Shuri. She gave it a yank and it didn’t move an inch. That should prevent any bear nabbing incidents, right?

I set up a few more bears in fun poses on the other tables, including a standing bear, a fighting bear, a sleeping bear, a running bear, a big bear pile, a dancing bear, a sword-wielding bear, a fish-nomming bear, a honey-guzzling bear, and a bear hug. With the tables done, I got to work on the walls: bears swung down from walls, climbed pillars, sharpened their claws in corners. What do you call this many bears, anyway? A school of bears? A pack? An ursing?

Karin came down from upstairs. “Yuna, what are you doing?”

“Bears,” I said.

Karin looked around at the chibi bears that were decorating the shop. “Yeah, no kidding. Cute ones too. These kinds of bears wouldn’t frighten me even if I ran across them in the woods.” She poked one on a table. “Do you think we’ll get customers?”

Well, this was a brand-new shop in a little-known location serving unfamiliar cuisine. I guess that would be a concern. “I think they’ll come. Besides, I’ve requested a real barnstormer of an advertising campaign. And with Morin’s bread and the pizza, pudding, potato chips, and fries…I think we’re good.”

“The chips and fries were delicious. Oh, and the cheese went very well with the bread.”

I nodded vaguely. “I’m kind of worried about how much cheese we have in stock though. We might not have enough to meet demand.” We needed cheese for both the bread and pizza, so we ended up using piles of it. I was also worried about our potato supply for similar reasons.

“Where are you buying the cheese from?” asked Karin.

“Old cheese guy. He came to the capital to sell it.”

“Wait, he wasn’t from the capital? But then…”

“It’s okay. I asked where he lived, so we can go to his old cheese village if we gotta.”

“And how about the potatoes?”

“Sometime after next month they should be delivered to the orphanage, but I’ll go buy some if we need to.”

Having to go out was a pain, so I hoped the potatoes came on time. Then again, according to Fina, potato sellers sometimes came to the town. I asked Tiermina to check in on that. If all went well, maybe we’d sell out of potatoes just in time for the new batch to arrive.

We were planning on opening ten days from now. The sign and uniforms would be done before then, fortunately. I was battering the merchant and adventurers’ guilds with advertising flyers. All was set.

Now I just had to rely on the kids’ work.

 

Everybody went nuts for the bear figures. Milaine even asked me to make one next to the sign. I couldn’t bring myself to say no, so I ended up sculpting a bear that clung onto the edge of the sign. Sometimes it felt like Milaine was the one who really ran the shop, with how much she took the initiative on handling all the annoying formalities and negotiations. She arranged for the tableware and other stuff, and she’d even gotten ingredients for us on a discount, so I really just couldn’t say no to anything she asked. Not that I minded, considering how helpful she was, but I wondered how her actual job was going.

Whenever I asked about it, she’d say something like: “This all falls under trade guild work, so there’s no problem.”

The kids were ecstatic about the uniforms when they came in. We even had extras and some for Fina and Shuri, who’d be helping out.

I had the kids practice math and memorize the menu names and their prices. From there, they learned how to cook everything and we practiced how to greet customers. My army of cheerful orphans dedicated themselves to studying without a single complaint.

 

And all at once, it was opening day. Everyone was nervous. The kids were fidgety and kept peeking outside. I think Morin and I were the only ones not freaking out. When business hours rolled around, we opened the doors and…nobody.

“No one’s coming.” Karin looked at the entrance. There was no sign of anybody there.

“Well, we only just opened.”

The kids seemed disappointed after they worked themselves up.

Maybe I hadn’t advertised enough? I at least asked Milaine and Helen to put up more fliers in the merchant and adventurers’ guilds, respectively. We even had friends put them up too.

A little while after the store opened, our first guest finally arrived.

“Hey, so. Ahem. Hello there.” The adventurers’ guild’s master straightened his tie.

“Welcome.” Normally the kids would serve the customers, but since this was the guild master, I decided to be his hostess.

“What a quirky little place you have here,” he said as he looked over the store, full of bear figures and kids in bear uniforms.

“Is it too much?” I asked.

“You mean with the bears outside and in? They’d definitely make some people pause, but I think they’d draw some people in out of curiosity too.”

Well, they did stand out, that’s for sure. Hopefully the bread-bearing bear helped it bear more resemblance to a bakery.

“So, what can I get you?” I asked once we reached the counter.

“Any recommendations?”

“The pizza, hamburger, and breads are meals, and the potato items are meant to be snacks. The pudding is for dessert. Consult your stomach and get back to me.”

We set up a system so you ordered and paid at the back counter, and you’d pick up the food there too. They’d have to wait a little for pizza, though.

“I see. In that case, I’ll have the pizza since I hear it’s good from Helen.”

“And what’ll you have to drink? The pizza is kind of oily, so I recommend something refreshing.”

“The oran juice, then.” He finished his order and paid. A few minutes later, Morin baked the pizza and the kids brought it over straight away.

“Is this a pizza?” The guild master gazed at the pizza like it was some kinda gluten-heavy crime scene. Then he nodded, accepted it and the oran juice, and he headed to a seat.

“It begins,” he said softly, and…took a bite. Then he took another one. A third. Inertia took hold. “Oh dear, this is…what a marvel!” In the blink of an eye he consumed the entire pizza and, seconds later, drained the glass of oran juice.

“I’m glad it was to your liking.”

“Yes, yes. The other stuff. How is it? Just as good?” His eye twitched.

“I’m afraid you’ll need to decide that for yourself. Everyone has their own preferences.”

“All right, how do I add on to my order?”

“You can go back to the counter just the same as earlier to buy more.”

“Glorious.”

The guild master stood up and ordered a hamburger at the counter. He savored every bite and, when he left, he was virtually glowing.

More time passed and—thankfully—people gradually trickled in. Maybe we just opened at a bad time, but we started getting more customers as lunchtime approached.

I probably had the guild master and Helen to thank for a group of adventurers who came by. Some of them laughed at the bear statues, but they shut up after getting a glare from the Bloody Bear herself and quietly placed their orders—pizza and bread. The Bloody Bear recommended chips and fries. They obeyed. After they finished eating, they headed on out looking satisfied with their meal and mostly not terrified of me.

After that, regular customers came in following the advice of Milaine and the fliers. All in all, not a bad start, right?

 

…To say the least. Because instead of having fewer customers after the lunch rush, we were getting more. Apparently, the customers who ate here during lunch had spread word about the shop.

The bear statues invited gossip, the savory bread invited clientele, and the pudding gave our patronage a 1.75× bonus at least. Since I hadn’t known how much we would sell and there was the egg inventory issue, I made three hundred puddings, but the pudding was faltering. Even though eggs were a lot cheaper than before, I still priced the puddings pretty high. No matter, because the patrons (especially girls) kept buying them one after another. No one cared about the one-per-customer limit, either, and some of them snuck thirds or fourths in.

And then came the after (adventuring) work rush. The guild master and Helen completely outdid themselves with their advertising. We ran out of our pudding reserves and ended up with a ton of dejected customers walking out the door. The bread we had on hand immediately sold out, and even as the kids helped Morin bake fresh loaves, there were just too many orders coming in. Even Fina had to tag in and help.

I started to wait on the customers just in case there was trouble. Karin and the kids wouldn’t be able to handle the pudding-hunger of violent adventurers.

I was hoping to let my staff eat after the lunch rush, but we didn’t even have time for that. Without enough ingredients to even serve dinner, we ended up closing early.