I Reincarnated into the World of Otome Game with a Cheat Ability - Chapter 7

 The Calculator

On the way home, it finally hit Kent that he had accidentally cancelled a major story event.

(I wonder if this means the flags won't trigger anymore? Could this mess up the whole plot?)

He felt a wave of anxiety, but what was done was done; there was no use crying over spilled milk. Forcing a shift in his mindset, he decided to focus on his evening shift at the bakery. The shop was packed with customers again today, but something seemed off with Catherine, who was handling the register.

"Catherine, what's wrong? Are you feeling under the weather?"

"No... it's not that..." she whimpered, her eyes welling with tears as she looked up at Kent. "I just... I can't calculate the prices of the bread anymore."

Currently, the shop had two items on display: the regular bread for 70G and the tuna bread for 120G. While she could easily handle someone buying multiples of a single type, trying to calculate a combined purchase of multiples of both types threw her mind into a total jam. Kent or Marie could have taken over the register, but that would leave their hands tied, and the actual baking would grind to a halt.

After pondering for a moment, Kent struck upon an idea. Ducking back to his house under the guise of restocking their tuna cans, he accessed his terminal and purchased a large solar-powered calculator for 400G. His remaining cash on hand plummeted to 140G.

Returning to the shop, Kent presented the freshly bought calculator to Catherine.

"Here, Catherine, this is a present for you. With this, your calculations will be a total breeze."

"Thank you, Onii-chan! ...But what is it?"

"It's called a calculator. You can read numbers, right?"

"Uh-huh, I can read them."

"Alright, let's say someone buys three regular breads and two tuna breads. How much is that?"

"Um... let's see..."

"And that's where this handy tool shines."

Kent demonstrated by tapping in 70 + 70 + 70 + 120 + 120. When he finally hit the equals (=) key, the screen flashed 450. As a side note, if you entered 70 × 3 + 120 × 2 into this specific device, it would display 660. It was a cheap calculator that lacked standard algebraic order of operations (which would normally prioritize multiplication and division to get 450). While he could have shown her how to do it properly using the memory functions, he chose to teach her the simplest, most foolproof method: calculating everything strictly through addition.

"Wow! This is so convenient!"

Having watched the entire exchange unfold, Marie looked eager to try her hand at the device as well.

"Here you go, Mommy."

Catherine passed the calculator over to Marie, who promptly made up a random equation and punched it in.

"My goodness, it's true. The answer just pops right out," Marie observed, staring at the device in sheer amazement.

From that point forward, Catherine's calculation speed skyrocketed thanks to the calculator, which drastically improved the customer flow. Before long, the final patron of the day departed, and it was time to close up shop.

"Thank you so much for today. Catherine was absolutely thrilled. Here are your wages for the day, and your bread, of course."

"Thank you. I'll see you tomorrow morning then."

Catherine seemed completely worn out from the rush and had already gone upstairs to sleep.

Returning home, Kent chewed on his complimentary bread while deep in thought.

(Today's wages brought in 500G, making my total savings 640G. At this rate, my money isn't growing fast enough, and I'm still miles away from living a comfortable life.)

He had briefly toyed with the idea of simply reselling the modern goods he purchased from his terminal directly to the public. However, he quickly realized that if someone read the text printed on the packaging, it could easily snowball into a massive problem. To minimize the risk of leaving any tracks, he ultimately concluded that the safest, lowest-risk strategy was to help his neighboring bakery strike it rich, thereby naturally increasing his own income.

With his roadmap laid out, he took a bath and turned in for the night.

The next morning, he headed to the bakery and began his morning shift.

"We have a massive crowd again today, so we're going to need to bake a ton of bread!"

Beads of sweat formed on Marie's forehead as she vigorously kneaded dough. Kent kept a sharp eye on the oven's temperature while kneading his own batch of dough alongside her. Meanwhile, Catherine held down the fort at the front counter, expertly managing the swarm of customers. It was another frantic morning right from the get-go.

Once the morning responsibilities were squared away, Kent made his way to school. When lunch break arrived, he walked to his usual spot behind the school building, only to find that someone had beaten him to it.

Rachel, Josette, and her two lackeys were already there.

(Wait, did an event like this actually exist in the game?)

Kent was under the impression that there wouldn't be any villainess-related events for a while, but he realized his memory might have been slightly off.

"Why did you just run away yesterday? Didn't you boldly declare before that you wouldn't lose to me?!" Rachel demanded, confronting Josette directly.

"Y-Yesterday... Yes, I suddenly remembered I had urgent business to attend to, so I departed!" Josette stammered back.

"Lady Josette just said so herself! Are you deaf?!" one of the lackeys barked, rushing to reinforce Josette's flimsy excuse.

"How dare you speak to Lady Josette, a Duke's daughter, in such an insolent manner? Know your place!" the other lackey spat harshly at Rachel.

Despite her friends defending her, Josette appeared incredibly restless, her eyes darting around as if she were deeply preoccupied with something else.

"Now that my business here is concluded, I shall take my leave."

"Ah! Wait—!"

Before Rachel could call her back, Josette swept out of the area. Following her lead, the two lackeys immediately scurried after her.

(Normally, the Villainess Josette is always the one on the offensive, but Rachel was completely dominating the conversation just now. It feels like the roles of attacker and defender completely flipped today. I wonder why?)

Since the drama appeared to be over, Kent sat down on his usual bench and began eating the bread he had received the day before. In the end, Josette never showed up, and he spent the remainder of his lunch break entirely alone. Once classes dismissed, Kent made a quick pit stop at home to drop off his belongings before heading straight to his shift.

"Welcome back! Let's have another great day."

"Welcome back, Onii-chan!"

"I'm home. I'll get to work right away."

Kent dove straight into his duties. The shift was incredibly fast-paced, and before he knew it, the workday had flown by.

"Incredible work today. Here are your wages and your bread."

"See you tomorrow, Onii-chan!"

"Thank you for your hard work. I'll see you tomorrow."

Kent returned to his house. Today's wages were another 500G, bringing his total funds to 1,140G. To prepare for the busy day ahead, he finished dinner, took a bath, and went to bed early.

The following morning—a school holiday—meant Kent was scheduled to work a full day at the bakery. Before heading out, Kent operated his terminal to purchase custard cream for 150G, margarine for 300G, and strawberry jam for 130G. His remaining balance dropped to 560G. Armed with his new ingredients, he walked over to the bakery.

"Good morning. I'm looking forward to working with you today."

"Morning! Let's have a great day, Kent-san."

"Morning, Onii-chan!"

"Today, I'm thinking we should try making some brand-new types of bread."

"Yay!"

"I can't wait!" Marie and Catherine cheered in unison, absolutely delighted.

This time, the process was incredibly straightforward: they simply needed to slice open the freshly baked loaves and spread the fillings inside. Kent prepared prototypes for three distinct varieties—custard cream bread, margarine bread, and strawberry jam bread—and offered them to the group for a taste test.

"Well? What do you think?"

"These are marvelous!" Marie beamed. "All three have completely unique flavors, which will give our customers so many more options to choose from. On top of that, they're so easy to assemble that I bet even Catherine could make them."

"I get to help make the bread too? Yay! The taste? It was super-duper yummy!"

In reality, trying to make custard cream, margarine, or strawberry jam entirely from scratch required a mountain of raw ingredients and a massive amount of labor. However, since Kent was providing the finished products directly, that entire exhausting process was skipped entirely. This enabled them to manufacture a diverse lineup of flavored breads that no other bakery in the city could ever hope to replicate.

Marie instantly greenlit the items for mass production. Utilizing the rest of the ingredients Kent had brought, they whipped up a large batch of the three new varieties and displayed them in the storefront. Because the production cost for these was lower than the tuna bread, they decided to retail them at 100G each.

The sudden expansion of their menu by three whole flavors instantly caught the eyes of the public. Since slicing open these specific buns would cause the fillings to spill out, they couldn't cut them into standard sample sizes. Instead, they sliced up pieces of regular bread and spread the custard, margarine, and jam on top for customers to sample. Because the price point was a bit more accessible this time around, patrons who fell in love with the samples bought them up instantly, and the inventory wiped out in the blink of an eye.

Ultimately, they had to dip into the shop's expenses to repeatedly re-order ingredients through Kent, baking extra batches over and over again. Catherine even stepped up to help assemble the breads in between managing the register. While the morning rush was its usual hectic self, the afternoon turned into an absolute madhouse as rumors of the new flavored breads spread like wildfire through the town. People descended upon the shop in droves, driving their sales numbers to astronomical heights.

After the final customer had left, Marie sat at the counter calculating the daily earnings while Kent and Catherine wrapped up cleaning the shop.

"I've finally finished the tally... Today's revenue completely shattered our all-time record!"

"Hooray!" Catherine cheered, jumping for joy.

"Thanks to you, Kent-san, this little shop is absolutely booming. I honestly don't even know how to properly thank you."

"Oh, please don't worry about any thanks. As long as this shop is thriving, it makes me incredibly happy too."

"My, my. Aren't you quite the smooth talker?" Marie teased with a playful smirk. "Careful now, or this old lady might just fall head over heels for you."

"Eh?"

"Hehehe, I'm just joking."

Kent's heart skipped a beat for a fraction of a second. Even though she had a twelve-year-old daughter, Marie looked incredibly young, possessed finely balanced facial features, a stellar figure, and was an undeniably beautiful woman. In the past, a fair portion of the customer base had come solely to catch a glimpse of Marie, but ever since they overhauled the menu, the demographics of their clientele had completely shifted. The shop was now packed with patrons who genuinely cared about high-quality bread, making it a lot harder for the creeps who were just there to ogle Marie to show their faces.

After receiving his wages and his daily bread, Kent headed back to his house.

Prev            TOC            Next