Labyrinth Restaurant

"Oh, you're in quite a line."

"You should have come sooner."

One day, Mae and Eliza were in line at a confectionery store that they had recently made a new one.

Their aim is pancakes filled with seasonal fruits and creams.

That's what seems to be gaining a reputation among the youth of labyrinth cities now (...).

Even though it had not yet been as long since opening time, a large group of women and couples had formed a line in front of the store.

"But it must still be delicious to line up so much"

"Right ~"

Eliza dropped her gaze and groaned at the thin bundle of paper in her hand, a sole slightly larger than the surface (notebook).

If you look closely, not many people in the matrix have paper bundles with similar letters printed on them. That should be it, too, and the people in line are lining up to see this confectionery store's reputation on its bundle of paper, The Newspaper.

The new form of reading called 'newspaper', which has emerged at some point and is commonly found in shops and restaurants in the city, is characterised by very cheap prices instead of thin compared to common books.

So with information on reputable shops and potentially interesting monuments while they were there, four-coma comics in a series of novels, and a variety of the latest news and entertaining content in various fields, they were unnaturally rapidly blending in as part of people's lives.

"It's still going to take a while ~"

"I don't have a choice... oh?

"Oh, who are you there?

Some time after they started lining up, Eliza and the others found Cosmos' face, a familiar store associate. There are dozens of homunculus with similar faces within the labyrinth city that are difficult to discern if they are far-sighted, but if you look closely, each has a fine personality, and it's not hard to discern for the Mays, who have been dating for years.

"Is Mr. Cosmos in line too?"

"The line's stretched more than it was earlier, and it's hard to start lining up now, huh?

The queue is even longer than it was when the Mays started to line up, and now that we've lined up, we don't know how many hours we're going to wait.

But there's no problem.

Cosmos doesn't need to be lined up in a hairy, more precise way.

"No, I'm not worried. This is a store I own personally."

""... Yes?

If you are in a customer position, you cannot enter the store without lining up, but if you are a store official, you are not allowed to talk about it. Cosmos with her hands in diverse businesses out of the grasp of the Demon King and Alice, but I guess this store is also her personal possession.

"If you don't mind, how about you and me tasting new products together? Actually, that's why I stopped by today."

"Is that okay?"

"Is that okay?

"It's okay."

Although there were frequent tours, it seemed difficult to refuse the invitation even if you could fly this long queue to the store and even try new products. We headed into the store one foot ahead, in the enviable gaze from around us.

"Hey, is this newspaper also being served by Mr. Cosmos?"

"Yes, I didn't write the article directly though"

Behind the guided store, the Mays were hearing the facts of the shock.

The newspaper they and other customers had in their hands was a thing issued by a company founded and operated by Cosmos, and this store, which is admiring and making popular in that newspaper, is also her property.

I mean, it was a lot of self-admiration, information manipulation via the media.

"Oh, hey... maybe that means you're popping your own store?

"Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh"

"Is that good?

"It's okay. Besides, the quality of the product itself is certain, and I'm not lying."

"Well, it does taste good"

Pancakes served for tasting look good with autumnal and nicely cut chestnuts and pears decorated with fluffy raw cream and have no complaints about flavor. Around the gard of sweethearts will surely line up in Ichi in the morning. Maybe I'll be up all night from the day before.

Because the quality is certain, even a little flashy publicity cannot be said to be fraudulent.

The food and beverage industry doesn't always become popular because it's delicious, but if the information that it seems to be delicious and popular spreads ahead of time, it's something that comes with it later, such as actual popularity.

"Hehe, well, isn't it nice to have details? How about a replacement?

◆ ◆ ◆

Having learned on several occasions about the existence of various mass media and their influence on people as they went to Japan, Cosmos had also decided to introduce them into their own world, where the media industry was still underdeveloped.

Manipulating the popularity of privately owned stores is part of an experiment to measure media impact.

I'm not purposefully clearing my hands just to make a small fortune on anything.

Eventually, it was the aim of Cosmos to penetrate the existence of mass media that breathed into the lives of every city in every country outside the Labyrinth City and the people living there, allowing them to manipulate the tendencies of public opinion as they please. Already in neighbouring countries, securing land and personnel for paper mills and printing workshops is also progressing.

Well, there's no other deep ambition to do that, and the real purpose is to play funny and crazy, sometimes privately, using the speech base that I've created that way. For example, whoever sees it will try to fashion a henchy design garment, or sneak some funny faux news into a serious article... the point is just flirting.

Either way, out of such unpleasant motives, a new industry called mass media was about to emerge in this world, and a media king who secretly controlled it.