Labyrinth Restaurant

One summer morning.

It's in the basement, so the sober and cooler it is at the Demon King's shop.

"... mmm"

She managed to finish her first semester of college exams, and despite the impending summer break, Lisa was somewhat troubled as she roared "mmm".

Customer mode, not employees, by the way.

I also sit in the guest seat on the floor and order...... but it doesn't look very lenient.

"Oh, Lisa. What's wrong with your difficult face?

"Yeah, it's a little troubling..."

"Trouble, is it?

Alice, who brought the iced coffee from the order, also seemed concerned about Lisa's condition.

I'm not even very busy until noon anyway.

I asked if I could help my best friend (competitor) about that problem......

"You know, the eel is delicious and troublesome"

"... Yes?

For a moment, Alice doubted her own ears, but she didn't mishear them.

Lisa was in trouble because of the eel.

"What... are you talking about being alarmed and gaining weight again or something?

Anyway, Lisa is overjoyed because she has more and less extra meat every three months or so. Alice decided from her past memories that it would be such a problem again this time... what a rarity this time it was not.

"Yeah, it's not... no, that's not funny, but now it's not... I'm having trouble with customers not coming to the western restaurant (ours) on a dirt ugly day!

"Yes?"

If you're Japanese, you all know it's a dirt ugly day.

Even though not everyone eats, that day when demand for eels increases the most in a year (* there are also "two ugly" years with earthly ugly days), conversely, it means fewer restaurant customers don't deal with eels.

There is no problem if it overlaps with Saturday and Sunday, which is the closing day of the "One Bridge of Western Food," but it can also overlap with weekdays on business days, depending on the year, because ugly days for civil use are not the type of events for which dates and days of the week are fixed.

If that happens, it's obvious that sales will be less depressing that day than usual. Lisa was worried about it.

"Uh... first of all, that dodo cow? I don't know."

Most importantly, that is not the only way to share problem awareness.

I tend to forget because I interact uncomfortably from time to time, but Alice is not yet so wacky about Japanese customs either.

"Oh, well. Well, there are days in Japan when it's an ugly day for earthly use, and every summer I try to cheer up by eating food with 'uh-huh'."

"Food with 'Ugh'...... does that have to be a eel?

"It's not necessarily that kind of wacky. (...) I don't care if you don't (...) meboshi, but now it's practically like a day to eat eels"

"Well, it's a strange custom."

Eating on ugly days supposedly brings good luck is only a wide range of foods with 'uhh' and doesn't necessarily need to be eels.

"Udon" or "plum stem," as Lisa put it.

Otherwise "cow," "horse," "raven," "udo," "guar," "utubo," "uni" … etc.

The spirit of the event is that if you mouth some food with 'let's' on it, that should be good, but in modern times it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that earthly ugly days are virtually "eel eating days".

"But weren't sea urchins only in winter? No, I don't know how far I'm going with the Earth eel."

But eels are originally seasonal fish in the early winters from autumn to winter.

Alice seems to have thought that some kind of wax has similar organisms in different worlds and on Earth, and that the ecology may be different just because of the similarity in appearance, but winter is the same in both worlds.

Summer eels are somewhat fat and skinny.

That's light and delicious, and it goes without saying that eating eels containing rich groups of vitamins and minerals at a time when they tend to lack nutrition in summer bats is certainly appropriate.

However, nourishment and connections are somewhat subsequent. There was another reason why the habit of eating eels was originally entrenched in the out-of-the-season summer.

"You know, a long time ago, I called Hiraga Yuuchi... someone who was billowing electricity like this was consulted by an eel store and fixed the image of eating eels that day..."

"I see someone who billies the electricity..."

Hiraga Yuuchi, an Edo-era scholar famous for electrostatic generator electrification.

He also showed his talent in non-academic fields, his face as a playwright writing a puppet rugged script, and his face as a potter making baked goods, as well as advertising industries like copywriters in modern times, it seems.

Within such a source, he lent his wisdom to an eel shop where until then sales had fallen in the summer and advertised that it was "good to eat eels on ugly days". In those places, the eel shop supposedly flourished and later began to emulate similar methods of publicity in other stores.

I don't know anything about that. Alice vaguely thought of Gennai, a suspicious sorcerer wearing thunderlights, demonizing the use of eels on people on the road.

Well, I feel slightly off the sidelines along the way.

"So every year on that day, we have fewer customers."

"I see, that's tough"

The point is, that's the thing.

"But then why don't you just get the eel out at Lisa's?

Alice, who finally shared her awareness of the problem, mouthed an idea that came to pass for now, but it's not sweet enough to solve it with a boulder.

"Hmm, there's nothing I wouldn't be able to do, but eels aren't much of an image of western food... and in the first place, all the good stuff about eels from that period is being held down by a full-time eel shop, so they're not going to be able to buy much good quality"

Incidentally, the operation to store sourced eels from different worlds (over here) is rejected.

Anyway, if you want to consume it internally between you, if you serve suspicious ingredients in the store that you can't take great care of your supplier, you can take care of the health center.

"And when it comes to making it western-style, fries and muniels... that wouldn't be a bad idea, but none of them are so pinned"

Aside from the fries and muniels mentioned by Lisa, if you cook them in oil and garlic for a simmering Ajillo or pie wrapped grill, and turn them into stews or omelette utensils, even western-style cooking will taste pretty good.

Yes, only for "quite".

If you are going to fight on the mound of an incumbent eel shop, your opponent cuts off the stained dandelion of a sweet spicy sauce, a legion of stars such as a bowl, a noodle weight, and a famous Nagoya Himaki. They also come with powerful support formations such as white roasting, liver sucking, liver roasting, and urchin rolls.

I can't deny that I have a really small sense of craftsmanship where I served a novel Western-style eel dish, and it would be quite difficult to be honest if a foreign opponent could beat a traditional Japanese-style eel dish with his appeal to the average Japanese anyway.

For many Japanese in the first place, eels eaten on earthly ugly days are an exciting, hands-on hare treat. So there's no such thing as people who dare to go out to a beating and think about changing and getting their hands on Dane.

I just made a small handful of small handiwork and the color is thick.

It's just for one day, and it's not a wack to have a big deficit if you suppress purchases for that day beforehand.

"Mmm... but I still regret it a bit, maybe"

Lisa took a sip of ice coffee, which melted and diluted while she was talking, to zero the potpourri and the real deal. I guess the sales are either pre-built and the essence of the problem is Lisa's mood problem.

Her father and grandfather, who are now bosses, have not bothered to move apart, and I can tell you that she is the figure of a one-person cook who is equally proud to behave with dignity.

Even if Lisa herself knew it should be, would she feel sorry to lose in the culinary field because of her youthfulness or because of her recklessness because of her immaturity?

"Phew."

"Alice?"

"No, nothing"

Alice smiled small.

While I thought it was bad when my friend was troubled, Lisa's childish side seemed kind of preferable when it came to important dishes.

"More than that, if we were talking about eels, I'd want to eat eels. Why don't you ask the Demon King to cook a sea urchin for lunch? We'll have Lisa too, won't we?

"Yeah, of course!

I'm hungry even if I'm worried.

And what a trouble, the eel is so delicious, and even Lisa loves it, of course.