Chapter 6
――The next day.
Now that I more or less understood how the market worked, I got ready to start doing business. First... I had to build a stall booth.
At first, I'd planned to build a booth that could be assembled on-site, but it was no big deal.
I could do the woodworking in my room at the inn and, once it was finished, shove it into the Item Box.
Before that, my money was starting to get a little tight, so I decided to try topping up my balance with a small square silver coin.
Would it work with local currency? Nervously, I put one in.
The words 【Deposit received】 appeared, and 5,000 yen was added. Apparently, the exchange rate I'd assumed was correct.
All right—I put in one more small square silver coin and deposited 10,000 yen in total. My balance came to a little over 54,000 yen.
For breakfast, I took out bread, milk, and the sour Rinyo I'd bought yesterday and peeled it. Its lemon-like flavor made a good wake-up call.
It seemed rich in vitamin C.
Well, let's make it—first, I needed a blueprint. I took out some paper and bought a pencil for drawing it. I also needed a pencil to mark the wood—six 2B pencils cost 500 yen.
To sharpen the pencils, I bought a box cutter too—200 yen.
I bought thin, square lumber two meters long for 500 yen apiece and decided to assemble a box one meter wide, two meters high, and 1.5 meters deep.
I'd done DIY in my original world, so this much would be easy.
Ten pieces of square lumber cost 5,000 yen, while sixteen L-shaped brackets for reinforcing the corners cost 1,200 yen. A wood screw set was 800 yen.
I could turn the screws by hand, but turning this many would be quite a chore. I'd definitely need a power screwdriver.
But there was no electricity, so I couldn't use a charger; I chose a battery-powered model sold by Shangri-La. It cost 2,000 yen and was toy-like, with a little less power than ideal, but it was surprisingly useful.
I was using screws to hold the wood together, but screws felt like overtechnology...
Still, from a little distance they looked just like nails, so I decided they were safe. Also, if I drove screws straight into the wood, it would split, so I needed to drill pilot holes.
That's another reason I needed a power screwdriver. I bought a set of drill bits for making the holes—1,000 yen.
When I pressed the 【Purchase】 button, a load of things came tumbling down, followed by the square lumber clattering down.
I was a little put off by the usual rough way the deliveries fell.
"Well, let's get started..."
――I thought, but I needed a saw to cut the lumber. I chose a folding model with replaceable blades. It would be convenient—I could just replace the blade when it stopped cutting—1,500 yen.
This replaceable-blade saw wouldn't be suitable for selling, but Shangri-La also sold non-replaceable double-edged ones for around 2,000 yen. Those might sell.
There had to be saws somewhere in the city, since it was full of wooden buildings.
I was about to mark the lumber with a pencil when I realized I didn't have a carpenter's square. A carpenter's square was an L-shaped ruler used to measure dimensions and draw lines on materials.
A carpenter's square cost 500 yen, but for drawing lines on longer pieces, people used an ink line reel.
I measured and marked the lumber with the square, drilled pilot holes, and secured it with screws. Then I fixed L-shaped brackets in place with screws for reinforcement.
Even when I gave the completed box frame a little push, it didn't wobble. But the lumber was thin, so it would break if someone leaned against it.
Next was the roof. The sunlight was pretty strong, so I'd get sunburned if I stayed at the stall for long. Given that, a roof seemed like a good idea.
While searching for suitable material, I found a hemp mat for 1,000 yen. I bought it and fastened it to the top of the wooden frame with straw rope—the rope cost 900 yen.
Seriously, they sold everything.
"Oh! Now it really looks the part."
――But the L-shaped brackets attached to the corners still stood out. They looked rather out of place... Hmm.
I bought another mat and cut it into long, narrow strips with scissors. I wrapped them around the corners to hide the brackets and tied them in place with rope.
"Oh, that's better, isn't it?"
The bare shell was done, so all that remained was the inside. I needed a table to display the goods. I searched for one, but while there were cheap tables made of iron pipes...
I found one that would suit this world, but it cost more than 10,000 yen... a little pricey. ――Which meant I'd have to make one.
So――I searched Shangri-La for a board to use as the tabletop, but couldn't find anything suitable. There was cheap plywood, though: concrete-form plywood.
Conpane was short for "concrete panel." It was really meant for making forms to pour concrete into, but it was affordable, so people often used it for DIY projects.
Plywood was overtechnology, too, but at a glance it looked like an ordinary board, so it should be fine.
Besides, if I draped a hemp sheet over it like a tablecloth, no one would see the grain――I'd go with that.
I'd settled on a plan, but there wasn't a sheet of form plywood the right size. The closest was a 60-by-90-centimeter one for 1,500 yen. The length was fine, but I wanted it 50 centimeters wide... I'd cut it.
I drew a line with the carpenter's square and started cutting with the saw. A circular saw would have done it in one go, but there was no electricity.
Screech, screech—the saw's loud noise echoed through the room. ――Naturally, Azalea came rushing up from downstairs to see what was going on.
"Kenichi, what are you doing?!"
"Oh, I'm building a shop."
Seeing the wooden frame with its nearly finished roof, she looked surprised.
"Huh? You can do carpentry too, Kenichi?"
I thought the way she put it was a little odd, but I answered.
"Yeah, more or less. I haven't damaged the room or anything, and I'll clean up the sawdust later, so don't worry."
"Wow~ You have all sorts of unusual tools."
She was intensely interested in my carpentry tools.
"They're dangerous, so don't touch them."
I cut the tabletop, added four more pieces of square lumber, cut them to 80 centimeters, and fixed them in place as four legs.
"What's that? Wow~!"
Azalea was thrilled by my power screwdriver.
"It's a tool powered by magic. Don't tell anyone."
――At that, her hand reached out again, so I gave her one Rinyo and one Rinz from yesterday.
"I don't like this one because it's sour. Give me a Linker instead."
Can't be helped. I put the Rinyo into the Item Box and took out a sweet Linker.
"Heehee."
Azalea had a beaming smile, but she was pretty shrewd. In a world like this, perhaps without a little shrewdness, you'd just become an easy mark.
I installed the table inside the booth and bought a chair—a stool with a round seat, as it was called—3,000 yen.
I installed a wooden shelf on the right side of the table—2,000 yen. I ran a round rod through it, then hung the left end from the wooden frame with rope and secured it in place.
I planned to hang products and flyers from it and use them to attract attention.
"Hmm, hmm. This is looking pretty good, isn't it?"
"Amazing! It looks like a shop."
"It doesn't just look like a shop. It is a shop."
Since I already had paper and a pencil out, I drew a picture of a bed and hung it from the round rod.
'TYUKOBETU^DO ARIMASU SS//7'—Used beds available—seven small square silver coins (35,000 yen)
It was almost entirely written in Roman letters, but geminated sounds—like ッ—were marked above the letters. Long vowels were represented by an ordinary bar. SS stood for small square silver coins, S for silver coins, and G for gold coins.
"Where did you get a bed?"
"I bought it from someone."
"Hmm, so you're already doing business. That's amazing. I have no idea how I'd even start..."
Well, mine was based on an incomprehensible ability, so I couldn't exactly offer advice.
I bought wooden clothespins to use for hanging the bed picture—200 for 1,000 yen. As I clipped the picture up with one, Azalea cried out again.
"What's that?! I want one. It's for clipping laundry, right?"
"Yeah. Do you have anything like this?"
According to her, they had something resembling clothespins made by splitting a thin piece of wood and tying the end with string, but they couldn't grip things well and fell off immediately.
"Are you going to sell these too?"
"Yeah, I might—maybe two for one copper coin."
Seeing her reaction, I figured these might sell. Selling two of a 200-for-1,000-yen item for 1,000 yen was quite a rip-off, but if nothing like them existed here, they were worth that much.
They were cheap because they were mass-produced, but making them by hand would cost a fair bit.
Besides, people in this world could probably make them if they tried to copy them, so they weren't really overtechnology.
Looking at Azalea, I saw the look of someone who wanted one.
"Here, hush money. I'll give you four."
"Two more..."
"All right, six, then. It's a business secret, so don't tell anyone."
She hugged the clothespins and nodded silently.
The stall was finished, so I bought a broom and dustpan and cleaned the floor. The dustpan was made of tin—2,000 yen for two.
"I want that too..."
Apparently, she wanted a tin dustpan.
"Here you go."
"Thank you~!"
She hugged me and kissed me, which made me remember what happened that night...
As Azalea pattered down the stairs, I found myself thinking such things despite my age. But over a dustpan, of all things...
No, no! Business first.
When I put the completed wooden frame and table into the Item Box, they were sucked in without a problem.
"All right!"
I steeled myself, but the real question was what to sell. I had to choose things that were cheap and likely to sell. I checked my remaining funds—just over 30,000 yen.
First, plates—four sets of five 500-yen plates, for twenty total. Three deep plates costing 800 yen each. And three more 800-yen plates with blue lines around the rims.
They were otherwise identical, but the patterned ones would probably sell for more.
One 5,000-yen knife and one 6,000-yen knife. Then I'd lay out about thirty sheets of the washi I'd bought the day before yesterday.
What about plain white handkerchiefs? Shangri-La sold ones with simple embroidery for 800 yen, so I bought two.
The more embroidery a white handkerchief had, the more it cost. Maybe I'd try buying one with embroidery all the way around—2,000 yen.
For now, maybe I'd go with these... I put everything into the Item Box.
My remaining funds were... under 10,000 yen! Whoa, this was seriously bad.
Ready, I went down the inn stairs.
"Kenichi, are you going to the market?"
"Yeah. I'm off."
"Good luck~"
I appreciated the encouragement, but I really had to do my best or I'd be out of money. Well, I could get things of my original world's quality at fairly reasonable prices. Surely I could sell at least something.
I had no choice but to believe that. If I really ran out of money, I'd grab that suspicious man from yesterday and take a dangerous gamble.
All I could do was force a wry smile.
------◇◇◇------
The weather was perfectly clear—a fine day for business. First, I had to secure a spot. Almost everyone doing business at the market had a stall.
Once they had their goods, they came in the morning, set up shop, and went home when evening came. Farmers and the like brought in vegetables and fruit they'd harvested that morning, sold them, and went straight home.
They had other farm work to do, so they couldn't stay at the market all day. Hiring someone would cost money, too.
Stall locations weren't assigned, but the veteran merchants and long-established stalls had more or less fixed spots and seemed to occupy the center of the market.
In other words, the veterans filled the market from the center outward, leaving newcomers at the very edge.
Well, it couldn't be helped. Newcomers had to keep their heads down. If I caused trouble, I might not be allowed to do business at the market anymore.
I went to the very edge of the market and prepared to set up shop. To be polite, I called out to the neighboring stall.
"Is this spot taken?"
"It's open."
My neighbor was an older woman. A lot of merchants dressed somewhat flashily, wearing lots of ornaments and accessories.
This woman was wearing a lot of necklaces, too. Maybe they were merchandise as well.
I took the wooden-frame booth I'd made out of the Item Box and positioned it beside the neighboring stall.
"Sir, do you have an Item Box?"
"Yeah, though it's small."
"Lucky you. You can carry all kinds of things around with your hands free, can't you?"
"Yeah."
Of course. Without an Item Box, I'd have had to haul all the stall materials around in a wagon and assemble them every time.
"If you've got an Item Box, why don't you go closer to the center of the market?"
"I just got here. A newcomer shouldn't act like he owns the place."
"You're quite the cautious one, aren't you..."
I set down the table, assembled the stall, used a white sheet as a tablecloth, and began arranging the goods.
But there was a bit of wind, and the paper kept blowing away, so I bought two paperweights for 300 yen each.
"Hey, let me see one of those plates."
The woman beside me called out again, so I handed her one of the cheapest.
"Is this new?"
"Yeah, fresh from the workshop."
"How much are you selling it for?"
"Hmm... three copper coins."
"You could get more than that."
I see. Maybe three copper coins was close to the price of a used plate... but it was a 100-yen plate.
Still, for now I had to sell something, even at bargain prices, to secure some cash.
"I just opened, so I'm offering a special introductory price. First, I need customers to remember me."
Well, everything was ready――time to try my hand at business.