Neiiiigh—!
“Ah, looks like another one is coming over there!”
“Goodness, what a mess. What a mess. Move aside there! I told you horses can’t come in here!”
Just as military service time kept passing even if one hung the clock upside down, the flea market they had wondered would ever arrive finally opened its curtains.
People began flocking in from the early dawn, before the sun had even risen.
“I’ve lived all my life and never seen this many people before.”
“Even if there’s nothing special, this sight alone is spectacular.”
The villagers blinked as they watched hundreds of people approach the village where the lord’s castle stood in a long line.
In the north, where it was easier to encounter a beast of prey than another person, there were quite a few people who were seeing such a large group moving together for the first time in their lives.
“Now, now. Ordinary visitors go left, and those who came to sell goods go right.”
“On the right, you’ll be told your stall location in the order you arrived, so come and receive your token!”
“Hey, you there! I said don’t push! Do you want me to shave off that beard?”
The northern soldiers, each easily one and a half times the height and build of an ordinary adult man, glared fiercely as they prepared for any possible disturbance.
They had all been trained by Aiden in advance.
“There will be many excited people. And when people get excited, mistakes are bound to happen. Mistakes give birth to disputes, and disputes create commotions. Now, what should soldiers do?”
“Catch the bastard causing the commotion and hang him on the castle wall as an example....”
“That’s enough.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any other opinions?”
“If simply hanging him is not ideal, there is also the method of hanging him upside down....”
“Why do you keep hanging people? Hanging them! No, you’re supposed to manage things so there’s no commotion in the first place!”
“Ah....”
“Why do you sound disappointed?”
Of course, the process had not been smooth.
“Now, let’s get ready and begin too!”
“Yes, Head Cook!”
On one side, smoke began rising in thick wisps.
It was food zone stall No. 1.
The reason Brikal, the head cook, and several workers from the lord’s castle had been busy at the food stall since dawn was to par-cook the meat in advance.
“I prepared this for today!”
THUD!
A slab of unidentifiable meat landed with a heavy sound on top of the large log table Jamie had split in a single axe blow.
Brikal planned to sell the lord’s castle special meat sandwich.
After Aiden had replaced his meals with sandwiches day after day, making sandwiches had now become Brikal’s specialty.
“Is this bear meat, by any chance?”
Drawn by the smell of charcoal, Aiden sidled over and tossed out a joke.
“I did find one when I went hunting, but bears freshly awakened from hibernation are terribly tough, so I did not catch it. If you wish to eat some, shall we go hunting once this is over?”
“Please don’t.”
However, it seemed that to northerners, this sort of thing was not a joke.
“Then what kind of meat is this?”
“Elk.”
“Elk? The deer with those huge antlers?”
Looking at the elk, which had already become a lump of meat that seemed ready to hang in a butcher’s shop, Aiden tilted his head.
“From the size alone, I thought it was a bear.”
“It would be understandable to mistake a fully grown elk for a bear. Haha!”
“Really?”
“An adult is about as large as a carriage.”
“Come on.”
At Aiden’s expression of utter disbelief, the workers burst into laughter.
Apparently, it amused them that the Lord, whom they thought knew everything, did not know something so utterly “common sense.”
“In any case, I’ll be counting on you today. It’d be nice if you gave plenty of meat.”
“Do not worry. We cannot trade the pride and honor of the lord’s castle for a few coins!”
“Ah. Yes, well. Fighting.”
They seemed to have put in far too much force, but it was still much better than having no motivation.
‘Though I have no idea what the pride and honor of the lord’s castle are.’
The pride of a district office.
The honor of an administrative welfare center.
Those sounded a bit strange, did they not?
Since Aiden still had the mindset of a civil servant more strongly than that of an acting lord, it was difficult for him to fully understand their solemn resolve.
***
“Wow....”
“A bug will fly into your mouth.”
“Eep!”
The simple-looking man with the sun-blackened face had been unable to gather his wits from dawn until now.
“You came to sell goods, did you?”
“Yes, elder.”
When he glanced over, the old man at the stall right beside him seemed to have already arranged everything he had brought.
All sorts of mushrooms were neatly laid out on a wooden tray.
“There are many mushrooms I’ve never seen before.”
The man examined the dried mushrooms with a curious expression.
“Is this one edible too? Somehow, it looks like it might be poisonous....”
“That fellow looks vicious, but in truth, it isn’t. To compare it to a person, it would be like a man who cannot fight but goes around putting on airs because he does not want to be looked down on.”
“Is that so?”
“It tastes good too.”
Perhaps the old man liked the friendly young man, for he tore off a piece of dried mushroom and handed it to him.
“It is best stir-fried, but even if you eat it like this, it has quite a good savory taste.”
“Wow, you’re right!”
“What did you bring?”
“Ah, mine is nothing much....”
Scratching the back of his head, the man untied the bundle he had carried on his back and showed what he had brought.
“It is cheese and butter made from sheep’s milk. I made it myself.”
“Oh. Do you herd sheep?”
“Yes, elder. Would you like a taste?”
“I would!”
The elder’s expression brightened at once when he put the cheese in his mouth.
“The flavor is excellent.”
“It was made with a method passed down from my mother’s mother’s mother.”
“So it carries the history of your family.”
What the residents had brought was far more varied than Aiden had expected.
In addition to the used items that had been the original purpose of the flea market, items made by hand seemed to make up more than half of the whole.
All kinds of daily goods woven from vines, personally tanned leather, bowls carved from hard wood and even waterproofed, bulbs and seeds of unknown varieties, lace with beautiful patterns....
This was more than enough to fill out the market.
It was still too early for the market to begin in earnest, but after walking around once in advance, Aiden’s face was filled with a smile.
He had a feeling this flea market would be far more successful than he had expected.
“Administrator. You should head to your place soon. The crowd is beginning to grow.”
“I should.”
Regrettably, his sightseeing ended there.
Civil servants were originally unable to fully enjoy events like this.
‘Because there aren’t enough people.’
He could not leave the central operations room to officials who had no event experience to speak of, so Aiden had no choice but to become fixed in place there.
***
The morning passed in chaos.
Just as things seemed to have finally quieted down a little, lunch was delivered to the operations room.
“Please eat before it gets cold, Administrator!”
“Oh, thank you.”
A young worker under Brikal, the head cook, had brought him a sandwich.
‘He’s taking care of my meals even here.’
It was something to be grateful for.
“How is the food zone looking?”
“It’s thriving! It’s absolute chaos. Even though we started par-cooking from dawn, we’re nearly short on meat.”
“It’s that bad?”
“He said that at this rate, what we prepared may not even last through the lunchtime crowd.”
“Oh dear. What about the other food stalls?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I think they’re about the same.”
It was a failure of demand forecasting.
There was no helping it. None of them had ever experienced an event that drew this large a crowd.
“No choice, then. We’ll have to raid the lord’s castle’s provisions warehouse.”
The situation there was not especially generous either, but it would be better than nothing.
“Ask the merchants if they have any leftover food they can sell us. They’ll be leaving soon anyway, so there’s no real need for them to keep food behind.”
“Yes, I’ll pass that along.”
If the food ran out in the middle, the guests’ dissatisfaction would not be minor. They had to prepare preemptively.
‘The response is better than I expected.’
Aiden had never understood the emotions the northern residents felt toward a ruler who had solved their hunger.
So he merely thought, ‘Had everyone been waiting for an event like this?’
“Why don’t you eat and then go outside for a bit? You haven’t gone out even once since business began in earnest.”
Jamie, who had at some point finished one sandwich as large as a forearm and was quietly reaching for a second, made the suggestion.
“If I’m gone, who will manage the operations room?”
“I’ve watched and learned all morning, so I can handle it alone!”
“...Really?”
“If something happens, I’ll go find you.”
Jamie thumped his chest, telling him to trust him.
‘Well, the urgent fires have all been put out.’
In truth, it was before an event began that things were busiest. Once it started, the operations room tended to grow somewhat quiet.
“Then I’ll take a lap and come back.”
“Heh heh. There are many fascinating things. I bought this much too.”
Using patrol as an excuse, Jamie had already made a round and pointed to the pile of goods stacked on one side.
Even without knowing for certain, it was obvious he had squandered a significant portion of his pay.
‘Is there that much to buy?’
Puzzled, Aiden stepped out of the tent.
A whole other world unfolded before his eyes.
***
“Please lower the price a little!”
“Hmm, I do like it. Say, owner, would you consider trading it for this?”
“Mom, buy this for me! Hm? Please? I’ll be good from now on!”
Aiden, who was not easily surprised by most things, froze for a moment.
‘What is this?’
It was an entirely different scene from the early morning, when people had only just been arranging their stalls.
As expected, a market’s scenery was only complete when it had not only merchants, but customers too.
And for some reason, Aiden found this scenery familiar.
Yes, this sight.
In other words,
‘It’s just like a real simulation game video!’
The heart of the tycoon otaku began to swell.
Was this not exactly like one of those service videos, where people migrated to, worked in, and enjoyed rest in the village, city, or country he had diligently managed?
Aiden had never once imagined that such a scene could unfold in 4D right before his eyes.
‘This is it! This is exactly it!’
That was why the sight moved him even more.
Aiden quietly cheered.
And he slowly walked.
He thought, once again, that affairs of state were truly his calling.
He took the scenery before the lord’s castle, changed by his own hand, into his eyes as though he would not miss a single thing.
And so he walked and walked.
How long had he walked?
Aiden stopped before two merchants who seemed to be getting along quite well.
“Elder, may I draw this?”
“The mushroom?”
“Yes. Many mushrooms grow in the forest near our village as well, but no one knows which ones can be eaten and which ones cannot.”
“Oh dear. Then what did you do when you ran out of food?”
“We might have lost our lives if we made one wrong move, so even while watching mushrooms growing everywhere, we went hungry.”
“Goodness, what a heartbreaking thing...!”
“It is not much in return, but I will teach you a way to preserve butter for a long time.”
“There is such a method? Thank you.”
It was a conversation between the old man who had brought dried mushrooms to sell and the man who had brought butter and cheese he had made himself.
At that moment, Aiden realized something.
‘Goods weren’t the only thing that failed to circulate properly in the north.’