Chapter 15. The Black Market
The outer town was bustling with activity. Many people were walking around busily, and although there were only a few stores, they were selling goods. Even in the daytime, one could hear laughter from the bars, and at first, there seemed to be no shortage of food.
This disparity is only one wall separates it from the abandoned town. Sakimori is used to walking through crowds of people, so he slogs along, but slows down his walk, chuckling when he sees the children cringing.
“Look, don’t drop the cooler box. It’s an important item to sell.”
“Yes!”
The kids carry small cooler boxes on their backs. I’m empty-handed. I may look like a terrible old man, but I don’t want to carry any extra baggage considering the battle.
A few trucks are parked in the park a short distance away, distributing rations to the people in line.
“Hey, boss. I’m rationing.”
“Hmm? Oh, no, not today. Maybe next time.”
Rationing is the distribution of rations to people in the outer town. The outer town is ostensibly a rationing system. It is a remnant of the old system. The rationing system was put in place to try to save all the people, but it collapsed after less than 10 years. The dungeon monsters overwhelmed the town, depleted its resources, and abandoned the poor.
But in the outer town, it still goes on, if only for comfort. There are bars and restaurants, but rationing is a distorted system, and the rations consist of bread and smoked meat that tastes terrible because of the mixture. Few people in the outer town eat it. In worse cases, there are times when the rations are cold or cold. It was like a ticket for the people of the outer town to use, along with the hard work.
But the people of the abandoned town are still happy to receive the rations.
They’re either building houses or tearing down houses to clear the land. In the midst of it, dirty people are sweating and removing debris, and a little behind them, men in work clothes are laughing and chatting.
The debris is being hauled away by people from the abandoned town. They’re probably working difficult jobs for a single ration coupon. They work in light clothing, even though they have no residency papers and cannot see a doctor in the outer city even if they are injured.
The outer city exploits the people of the ruined city in the name of labor. Similar scenes can be seen in many places.
“Let’s see how long they can keep this up now.”
Sakimori walks on grinning, laughing,
[You look bad, Sakimori-san. You always looked bad, but now you’re mistaken for a criminal.]
[Mmm. I’ll be careful.]
I cough and fool around as Shizuku pretends to peck me on the cheek with a dumbfounded look on her face. But when I thought the stores would change everything. The old man’s mouth loosened up.
The black market. A place where unauthorized people open stalls and sell things. It’s a huge, cluttered marketplace with many stalls, even though they’re unauthorized.
“Well, we need to open a stall in a decent place.”
I look around to find the people I’m looking for. Miscellaneous people are laying out their goals and selling things. They range from places selling smoked meat and black rice, which I hate, to used clothing, miscellaneous goods, and what I can only assume that’s trash.
The children had probably never been to a black market before. They scurry around, looking at the area with open mouths, as if they were curious.
“Um, are you allowed to open a store anywhere?”
Asked the girl next to the leader boy. I wonder what her name is. I shake my head in denial as the girl tugs at my hem with a quirk.
“It’s unauthorized, but the black market has black market rules. That’s him.”
I spot a man in a badly patterned shirt and slacks, red with white vertical stripes, with his hands in his pockets, and approach him.
“Doumo, doumo. I’d like to open a stall. Do you have a good spot open?”
As I approach with one hand raised in a friendly manner, the men, well, the goons, look at our outfit as if it were a rarity, then nod puzzled.
“Oh, oh. The best place is a thousand yen. Plus 20% of all sales.”
“Okay. Is this good?”
After handing over the thousand yen, the hoodlums nodded and indicated the vacant lot at the crossroads with their jaws. Among the miscellaneous stalls lined up. There was unnaturally a good spot available to open a store.
“Well, I’ll see you later.”
With a flutter of his hand, Sakimori takes the children and lays out a stall on the spot.
“Uh, how did you find such a good spot open? Some people have stalls in a corner like that.”
The girl tilted her head curiously, and the other children nodded in unison. Do I need to explain? The girl pointed to a narrow street behind a building, shadowed and poorly lit, where a man with a weedy face was opening a stall.
“This is their territory. There is a set amount of money for the location of the stall. It’s a hassle and costs money. But if you don’t do what they say. They won’t open your stall. If you force them to open up, they’ll harass you in tangible and intangible ways. Keep that in mind.”
“Eh! Because isn’t this place unauthorized?”
The leader boy complains, but he’s so young. In the abandoned town, there were no stalls. So he never knows.
“It means there are rules everywhere. To change those rules, you need money and power. Come on, let’s get to work.”
With a clap of my hands, I urged the children. I put a white tablecloth on a small, assembled table that one of the kids had brought, and opened the cooler box.
There was a cooler box filled with pieces of bread and coupe pans from the store. There were 150 of them.
He had worked hard. Mike and the others hunted giant rats for days on end. The kids were burning sticks and pulling cores out of the rats that Shadow Cat had killed. 50 rats an hour. In total, they killed nearly 800 rats in the past few days. That’s a lot of big rats. I wonder what the pop rate is in the dungeon.
I thought it would be bad if the number of rats had increased by millions. But it’s OK because monsters eat the rats. As for how many rats we need to hunt to wither away, we need to eradicate the big rats in the vicinity before they pop, so we can’t get an accurate figure. ……Yeah, that’s impossible.
“Let’s see. One is 300 yen, and I get three silver coins. What do you do with the bills?”
“When it’s billing, you give them seven silver coins.”
“You’re amazing! You can count?”
“Heh heh, I can count to 10.”
The children are excitedly discussing the precautions they need to take when selling.
They’re children who have never been educated. They can’t even count, so I taught them a thing or two, but will they be okay?
“Okay. Let’s sell. Here, talk to the customers. I’ll show them how good the bread is.”
Customers aren’t going to buy bread easily. After all, it’s black market bread. They don’t know what’s in it.
But they will soon figure it out. I take out about 10 pieces of bread and knead them. With my increased status, I could perform more detailed operations than before.
[Heat]
I simply cloth the bread with heat. It’s easier than creating fire and consumes much less magic power. The temperature is about 60 degrees Celsius, which is slightly hot.
The old man heats the bread with a delicate and precise manipulation of magic that is impossible for other fire magicians.
The cold bread warms up, and the smell of freshly baked bread gets scattered around the area. The neighboring stall, which must be a merchant from the outer town, sells much secondhand clothing, and I twitch at the smell and look over.
“Here’s a little something for you, neighbor.”
A child takes a warm loaf of bread, moves over to the shopkeeper, and hands it to him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. But make sure you eat it well.”
He nods his head slightly and jokingly tells him. You can’t be stingy with these things. If you show your generosity. Many people will think you’re a big shot.
“Hey, what’s this? It’s white bread. No mixture! Yummmm~. Sweet, sweet bread!”
I shrugged my shoulders at the shopkeeper, who was eating enthusiastically as if he didn’t need to act like he was eating deliciously.
The people in the vicinity were watching him closely. The good smell consisting of the bread’s wheat, and the white cross-section the shopkeeper could see as he ate was good. It was not like bread with mixtures.
“Well, a piece of coppepan is 300 yen! Please buy it.”
“It’s delicious!
“It’s hot!”
The children, dressed in neatly dressed clothes that don’t suit the black market, shouted enthusiastically. The customers, who had let their guard down at the sight of their attire, were surprised to hear how much they cost and gathered around.
“Three hundred yen for one? It’s not 300 yen for half, is it?”
A lady who seemed to be a regular black market vendor inquired with a quizzical look, to which the children nodded and smiled prettily.
“That’s right. One is 300 yen!”
“Then give me three!”
The children are puzzled when the lady pulls out a 1,000 yen bill. They can’t do multiple calculations yet.
“Yes, and the change is 100 yen.”
Sakimori takes the 1,000 yen bill and returns the change. The children are less alarmed, but I returned it with an old man’s smile.
A child’s smile is soothing and makes one less cautious. Moreover, it’s rare, if not unheard of, for children to be dressed neatly and not stinky in such a black market. That’s because I have a mysterious reason to believe that if they seem to have money. They won’t cheat me. That’s why I bathed them and washed their clothes.
“Let’s eat one before we take it home.”
The lady breaks the hot loaf of bread in two and looks inside. She’s checking to make sure there is no mixture. The seasoned housewife is scary.
The inside is white and smells faintly sweet, so she gulps, and the aunt takes a bite of the bread.
“It’s delicious, this!”
She chews it with a munch and a surprised expression, and just like the owner earlier, she eats it enthusiastically. The people around her who were watching gulped and swallowed their spit.
“Give me five of those too!”
“Three for me!”
“Give me 10!”
They must have run out of patience. Everyone was fighting to buy bread. The table was piled high with coins, and the children had turned into a smiling, thank-you machine.
Within an hour, our coupe pan was sold out. You can’t find this level of coupe pan in bakeries, even if you wanted to eat it. If they sold them properly, they would cost 1,000 yen each.
Three hundred yen is a little expensive, but it was a nice little luxury.
“We sold out in no time! I wonder if everyone will enjoy them?”
“Of course! It’s such a delicious dish!”
“We did our best, didn’t we!”
The children smile congenially, high-five, and rejoice. I give them a light high-five as they raise their hands to give me a high-five too.
[It’s pure, kids. Even though they’ve been living in an abandoned town.]
[It’s because they’ve lived a life where they didn’t have to play these games. Living a life where they don’t have to eat or drink, they don’t have to look at the nastiness, so in a way, they didn’t lose their purity.]
I know what it means that the drops sold out. The price was too low; whoever bought 20 probably wanted to resell them. But I’m not going to change the price. Money can’t buy trust.
At least I made some money. I sold 45,000 yen and gave 10,000 yen to the shopkeeper and 10,000 yen to the gatekeeper, making a profit of 25,000 yen. I’m not happy with those who take my money without hard work, but that’s fine. At least for now.
Now, let’s feed the kids with this money. They can spend it all. Loyalty is bought with kindness and money.
He was the cunning Sakimorui who gave instructions to start tidying up and plotted his future actions.
