Chapter 261 – Bear-san Advertises the Shop (1/2)

I was very surprised to find out that Princess Flora had an older sister. I never thought I would be meeting her here, at the school festival, of all places, either.

Not to mention, she was unexpectedly close friends with Shia, but this was most likely because His Majesty and Eleanora-san were close friends as well?

Their families were close, while they were also of the same age. Considering how likely nobles and royalty would interact with each other, I suppose it made sense that they could be friends.

Still, were all royalty in this world this friendly?

Well, it was much better than having a royal family with bad intentions.

「So, how is the stand doing? It looks like you’re not selling much…」

「Well, that’s because we haven’t had any customers yet.」

「They’ll start coming now. Hey kids, you want to try some cotton candy?」

Marcus called out to the kids who I had noticed were staring at me. The children looked at each other, shook their heads, and ran off.

Ah, there goes the customers.

「Marcus, you can’t ask them with such a scary face.」

「What, are you saying my face is scary?」

「You’re not smiling enough.」

Just like Shia said, Marcus’ smile wasn’t what we would consider the best. If a person with a smile like that approached me and asked me to try some food I had never heard of before, I would refuse too.

I, myself, only made food for people I knew and didn’t charge them for it. That was why everybody ate my cooking without running away.

Here, everybody was a stranger, so I didn’t think anybody would try out the cotton candy without knowing what it was, much less pay money for it.

Hmm, Shia’s group was in a bit of a bind. Even if the cotton candy was delicious and novel for this world, it wouldn’t sell if people didn’t know that.

I turned to look at the other stands. Between each of them was a sizeable gap, probably to make use of the practice ground’s wide space and give the stands an open air feel. The shop next to us was selling soup, and the one across was selling drinks.

Had the space between each shop been smaller, the customers from the other shops would have naturally spilled over, and our stand wouldn’t have such a drought. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, so we had to figure something else out.

I turned back to our stand. The first thing to check was the price of the cotton candy. If it was expensive, not many people would buy it, and it might be too much for children, who I expected to be most interested in it. Still, looking at the set price, there didn’t seem to be any problem. Any child should be able to afford it with their pocket money.

Why did I know how much pocket money the children had in this world? Because Terumi-san had warned me that I was giving Fina and Shuri too much money.

I had been giving them that much because I wanted to thank them for all they did for me, but apparently that wasn’t a good idea, especially since the two of them ended up passing the money along to Terumi-san to save it for emergencies.

Terumi-san had given them some pocket money for the school festival from this fund; that was why they had tried to refuse Eleanora-san’s money, but it had been to no avail of course.

Next, I looked at the sign.

The sign only stated ‘Cotton candy’ on it, and I could immediately tell that was a big problem. Our customers had no idea what cotton candy was so a simple sign stating that wasn’t of much use. Without any samples, even if people were interested in what cotton candy was, they wouldn’t even know what the food they would be eating looked like. No wonder people were just passing by and ignoring this stand.

We sadly didn’t have any sample holders. Also, the cotton candy didn’t have a strong aroma like the other foods being sold around here, so we couldn’t attract people that way.

The problem wasn’t the price, but rather the stand’s appearance and lack of advertising.

I didn’t think it was good for an outsider like me to intrude and help them, but knowing how much they had practiced making cotton candy and how motivated they were, it would be so sad if they didn’t even sell anything. Since I was the one who had taught them how to make it, I would feel sad as their teacher as well.

「Why don’t we remodel the stand a bit?」

「Remodel?」

「There’s not enough advertisement.」

「Oh. Okay sure, but we can’t take up too much space.」

「I will keep that in mind.」

Right now, we definitely wanted to show everyone what cotton candy was. Although I couldn’t make elaborate, plastic food samples like the ones found in my former world, I could try something similar.

Gathering my magical power, I used earth magic and began molding a statue. When I finished, I could hear audible gasps from those around us. It was a two meter tall Bear, sitting down next to the stand.

Using some more earth magic, I created another statue in the shape of cotton candy and placed it in the bear’s hand. With this, the Bear statue appeared to be eating the cotton candy, so anybody should be able to figure out that we were selling food.

「Amazing.」

「It’s a Bear-san.」

「A bear made a bear.」

Who? Who just said something dumb like that?

I looked around, but I couldn’t find the culprit.

「Well, maybe this is a little too much.」

「Yeah, but why a bear?」

That was probably because my imagination was too influenced by Bears at this point. I would prefer to make something else of course, but ever since I came to this world, my magic attacks were in the shape of Bears, the golems I created were Bears, my restaurant statues were Bears, my summoned beasts were Bears, the picture books I drew were about Bears, and to top it all off, I myself wore a Bear Suit. Sure enough, my thoughts had become constantly filled with Bears. No matter what I tried to imagine, I would always end up back to a Bear.

Thinking about it like this, it was possible that I had passed the point of no return, wasn’t it?

When surrounded by Bears, it was scientifically proven that anyone’s head would become filled with Bears.

「If you don’t like this, I can make something else, too.」

If I tried my best, I should be able to make something else, right?

「No, it’s fine. This is cute, and you made it for us. It will help advertise our stand perfectly.」

Luckily, nobody had a problem with it.

「Great. I made sure not to reinforce this Bear statue, so it can be broken down easily. Just break it when the festival ends. Be careful though, the whole thing should crumble at once when you do.」

「You want us to break it?」

「Well, it’ll get in the way after the festival ends, won’t it? It’s not like it will be of any additional use after the festival.」

My customer-attracting Bear (not panda for once), stood there in full glory.

I noticed a few children were already staring at the cotton candy in the Bear’s paw. I immediately recognized them as the group of children who had been at the academy entrance.