In truth, Lawrence was certain it would go well, but even so, because it was his first time doing business, there was still some anxiety in one corner of his heart.
But seeing the passerby eat so deliciously like that put him at ease.
He truly ate the pork cutlet in the blink of an eye.
With a little exaggeration, his hand moving to pick up the pork cutlet was almost impossible to see.
Moreover, the portion seemed to have been sufficient as well, because he patted his stomach and wore a satisfied expression.
“This is very delicious. It tasted incredible. The batter is thin, and there is plenty of meat. I ate very well.”
Before leaving, the passerby handed over the payment for the food and added one more sentence.
“With this kind of taste, my son would like it very much too. I should bring him here sometime.”
“Oh, then take some with you.”
“Hm? You do takeout here too?”
“Of course. Then I will pack one for you, so please wait a moment!”
Another thing Lawrence had paid special attention to was packaging.
Since this was a street stall without a proper place to sit and eat, he thought that if takeout was possible, customers would be able to enjoy pork cutlet comfortably at home.
And Lawrence judged that this would soon lead to increased sales.
He had washed and prepared wide leaves he had picked from the mountain in advance.
Then he placed the pork cutlet on one half of the leaf, poured a suitable amount of sauce over it, folded the leaf over to cover it, tied it with a string, and held it out to the customer.
“The pork cutlet may become soggy over time, so it is best to eat it quickly. If you bring a container for sauce next time you come, I will put the sauce separately in that. That way, you can eat it a bit crispier even after some time has passed.”
“Ah~ That is a good idea. I will do that next time.”
After finishing payment, the passerby hurried home, wanting to feed the delicious pork cutlet to his son even a little sooner.
A pleased smile floated on his face as he imagined his son eating it deliciously.
“The effect of sampling is better than I expected.”
Originally, Lawrence had not intended to offer samples at all.
But when he saw the customer hesitating, he had reflexively offered a sample, and after seeing the customer’s reaction afterward, he realized something.
Until now, he had focused only on making the pork cutlet delicious and had not thought particularly hard about how to sell it.
Lawrence had believed that if the food simply tasted good, people would naturally gather.
What Lawrence had overlooked was that because he was confident in its unique taste, which did not exist here, he had not even thought about a sales strategy at all.
However, after offering a sample and seeing the customer’s amazed reaction, he immediately formed a plan.
“Right. Instead of waiting for customers, I will gather them myself. The food cost is not that high either, so the burden of sampling will not be that great.”
Since he was personally hunting wild boars to supply the pork, which made up the largest portion of the ingredient cost, the profit margin on pork cutlet was quite high.
While frying pork cutlets without rest, Lawrence shouted toward the passersby moving along the street.
“Come try the best fried food here, pork cutlet! A delicious pork cutlet sample is free!”
The first to react to the word free were the neighborhood children.
“Mister, can we really eat that?”
Was the child roughly five or six years old?
A young child whose baby fat had not yet disappeared approached hesitantly, twisting the hem of their clothes, and asked carefully.
However, the child did not seem to expect much.
That was only natural, because adults selling food in the plaza were usually busy chasing away children who had no ability to buy anything whenever they looked at the goods.
“Of course! You can try it!”
Lawrence smiled brightly and chose one of the larger pieces of cut pork cutlet, then handed it over.
The child had not expected much, so seeing Lawrence offer the sample as if it was only natural made the child’s face overflow with joy.
“Can I really, really eat it?”
The child’s trembling voice was full of anticipation.
“Yes, really, so hurry and try it. If it is tasty, come buy some with your parents next time.”
“Yes, Mister. Thank you!”
The child smiled brightly, bowed, and quickly accepted a piece of pork cutlet.
When the savory smell of oil wafted up, saliva naturally gathered in the child’s mouth.
A moment later, the child opened their mouth as wide as possible and, with some effort, finally stuffed the piece of pork cutlet, which was larger than their mouth, entirely inside.
The sight of their cheeks puffed out was as cute as a squirrel storing food in its mouth.
Even the way the child chewed was adorable.
“Wow, wow~”
After tasting the pork cutlet, the child’s eyes widened, and exclamations kept bursting out.
Seeing even their arms flap, they seemed to like the taste very much.
“How is it? Pork cutlet is delicious, right?”
Lawrence smiled at the child’s cute appearance and asked.
“Yes! It is my first time eating it, but it is really delicious. I want to eat it every day.”
As expected, pork cutlet was clearly a food that both children and adults liked.
Since it drew such an explosive reaction even here, should he call it a taste that transcended dimensions?
However, perhaps the amount was disappointing, because the child could not take their eyes off the cut pork cutlet.
Finding the child’s appearance lovable, Lawrence skewered one more piece of pork cutlet on a wooden pick and held it out.
“Here, a present from Mister. I am giving you one more because you ate it so deliciously and answered so well.”
“Ah, really? Thank you!”
The child jumped up and down as if they had received a great gift, then accepted the pork cutlet and put it into their mouth.
Starting with that one child tasting the pork cutlet, the children nearby who had only been watching cautiously came rushing over as if a dam had burst.
“Mister, give me one too.”
“Me too. Me too.”
“Hey, do not push! I came first.”
The children made a huge fuss, each trying to receive pork cutlet first.
At the children’s disorderly behavior, Lawrence wore a stern expression and spoke.
“Ahem. If you do this, I will not give any to anyone. Now, good little gentlemen and ladies, line up in the order you arrived.”
At Lawrence’s words, the children stopped fighting, but this time, they began fighting to stand at the front of the line.
“Hey, I came first.”
“Move, I was first.”
“No. I was first.”
“Mister, I lined up.”
They were like baby sparrows chirping to eat first.
Lawrence watched the children with a pleased expression, but worried that an accident might happen, he wore a stern face and clapped his hands with a sharp clap, clap, clap.
Then the startled children all stopped moving and looked at Lawrence.
“Now, now, if you all fight, no one gets any, all right? Then Mister will decide the order. You came first, so you are number 1. You are number 2, number 3…….”
Sharp-eyed Lawrence lined the children up accurately in the order they had arrived.
When Lawrence intervened, the children quickly moved, lined up, and looked at him with bright, round eyes.
It was a cute protest asking him to quickly give them pork cutlet since they had lined up as he told them.
Lawrence told them to wait a moment, then quickly handed out pork cutlet to the children.
Of course, the children would not have the ability to buy pork cutlet, but all of them were potential customers.
If they tried it and found it delicious, they would pester their parents to buy it, and their parents would gladly buy it for their children.
And the children who ate the pork cutlet all wore the same expression.
Their eyes widened, and they briefly forgot how to speak.
“Wow, wow, wow, it is so delicious!”
At one child’s admiration, as if by agreement, all the children shouted.
“That’s right, Mister. It is super delicious!”
Among them, one child who looked especially bright-eyed stepped forward and asked Lawrence.
“Mister, what meat is this?”
“Ah, this is wild boar meat.”
“Wow, then how do you make this sauce?”
“Haha, unfortunately, that is a secret.”
“Aww, I wanted to tell my mom to make it…… Can’t you teach me……?”
The child looked at Lawrence with an adorable expression and asked.
That sight was so cute that Lawrence almost blurted out the entire sauce recipe without realizing it.
“Hahaha, Mister has to make a living too, so I am sorry. Instead, if you come with your mother, Mister will make it very delicious for you!”
Lawrence laughed and stroked the child’s head.
Like that, the pork cutlet sampling event shown to the children was a great success.
The children ran off and told their friends about the sampling event, and every child in the neighborhood who heard the rumor came by at least once.
“Mister, I want to try pork cutlet too.”
“Me too, me too. The others said you give it to us if we come here!”
“Give me pork cutlet. Pork cutlet.”
At the endless procession of children flooding in, Lawrence’s mind went blank for a moment.
“Children, wait just a moment. Mister will fry it deliciously for you right away.”
As if a fire had broken out under his feet, Lawrence hurriedly fried pork cutlet, and it reached the point that the pork cutlets he had prepared ran out from the sampling event alone, as though every child in the entire city had come.
“Wow, I did not think it would be this much…….”
Watching the children return with satisfied expressions, Lawrence felt as if a storm had swept through.
Although it had been a free sample event, so he had not earned money, he was simply grateful that the children liked it this much.
Fortunately, the sampling strategy worked well, and through the children’s mouths, the rumor quickly spread.
As a result, in less than a week, many people remembered the name of this new food called pork cutlet.
Thanks to that, the business also did well enough that calling it explosive would not be an exaggeration.
“Ugh, busy, busy. It is good that business is going well, but this is so much work that even ten hands would not be enough.”
There were so many customers coming that he could not handle them all.
The speed at which customers flooded in was far faster than the speed at which pork cutlet could be fried.
On top of that, he had to pack orders, put sauce into containers customers brought, calculate payments, and make more pork cutlet whenever the ones he had prepared ran out in the middle.
Because Lawrence was moving back and forth while doing several jobs, he could not keep his head straight.
Right now, it was no joke. He really felt like borrowing even a cat’s paw.
“Two pork cutlets here.”
“Mister, when will my order come out?”
“How long do we have to wait?”
“You are making us wait too long. Does this place not intend to do business?”
“Hurry and take the money.”
“Ah, yes. I am sorry. I will make it for you right away.”
Lawrence moved frantically under the flood of customer demands.
He had known it would go well, but honestly, he had not known it would go this well.
It was a moment when he painfully realized the saying that doing too well could also be a problem.
In the midst of this, there was one more thing bothering Lawrence.
Lawrence’s senses were extremely sharp.
After all, not only did he operate mana, but the Status Window even had a separate Sense stat.
And not long after he began business, he spotted a child watching his stall from far away.
At first, he thought the child was doing that because they had no money to buy pork cutlet.
No matter how economically active this city was compared to other places, it did not mean there were no poor people.
No, rather, it had to be considered that there were more here than in other territories.
As this was a Free Commercial City, many people came here.
But no matter how active the economy was, the number of jobs in the city inevitably had limits.
Lawrence thought the child hiding over there was one of those urban poor, and he had decided that if he ever became a little less busy, he would definitely give them a pork cutlet.
But the moment he happened to see the child’s face one day, that thought disappeared completely.
It was the child who, when he had first come to the city, had deceived him by saying they would guide him to an inn and instead led him to the robbers.
Lawrence wanted to grab the child at once and scold them thoroughly, but for now, he decided to hold back.
Because things like this were common in this era, and even if it had not been him, the child had probably been scolded quite harshly.
Moreover, since Lawrence had thoroughly beaten the group of robbers, it was obvious those bastards had taken revenge on the child.
So he stopped paying attention entirely.
Then one day.
Just as he was about to prepare for business, the child approached hesitantly.
“Um… hello, Mister. I was sorry for that time, and also, thank you.”
The child hesitated for a moment, then lowered their head and apologized loudly.
Considering what had happened before, he understood why the child apologized.
But the words thank you…… he could not understand what they meant.
Lawrence stared intently at the child with a puzzled face.
At Lawrence’s suspicious gaze, wondering whether the child was plotting something again, the child seemed frightened, lowered their head, and trembled.
But as if they had decided something, they raised their lowered head, looked into Lawrence’s eyes, and spoke.
“I-I-I am Ellen. I wanted to apologize for what happened before much sooner, but…… I did not have the courage…… I am sorry for being late.”
Lawrence silently looked at Ellen, who once again lowered his head deeply and apologized.
“You may think of this as an excuse, but please listen to my story for just a moment. The gang you taught a lesson to were thugs who controlled the neighborhood. Those thug bastards used children like me to lure people who had just entered the city for the first time, then committed robbery. They were rotten bastards.”
At Ellen’s words, one scene suddenly came to Lawrence’s mind.
It was the sight Ellen had shown after Lawrence met the thugs, before leaving.
The way he had lowered his head deeply as if sorry and walked away desolately.
Ellen was an orphan.
However, in this era, being an orphan was not particularly special.
Many orphans were created for various reasons, such as parents dying of illness, a family being so poor that they secretly sold a child to slave traders, children leaving home because they could not endure their parents’ violence, or children running away to the city in order to succeed.
However, the reason Ellen became an orphan could be called somewhat special, if one wished to call it that.
His mother was a prostitute.
Every day had continued the same, until she happened to become pregnant, and Ellen was born that way.