Chapter 138: Isn't Putting Beans in Songpyeon a Bit Much? (4) At Jinseo's words, the guests who had gathered around the counter seats looked awkward and returned to their original seats.
Meanwhile, the guest who was focused only on eating didn't care whether people gathered around or not and fully enjoyed the stone-bowl bibimbap.
For a first-timer, they really knew how to eat it properly.
Seeing them scrape the scorched rice stuck to the bottom of the stone bowl with their spoon, Jinseo nodded.
"Thanks for the meal! Especially that crispy rice left at the end—it was amazing."
"It's called nurungji. That's also one of the delicacies of stone-bowl bibimbap."
"I'm really sorry for forcing you to cook during break time. But after break time ends, I can order again, right? One serving isn't enough—I'm left wanting more."
"Hahaha, of course."
From a cook's point of view, there was no way he could dislike a customer who wanted to eat more.
Smiling, Jinseo cleared away the stone bowl that had been emptied spotless without a single grain of rice left, and the guest walked toward the vending machine to get a drink.
At that very moment, a Status Window appeared in the center of Jinseo's vision.
{Tourists who come from far away tend to become physically exhausted from walking all over the sightseeing areas. Therefore, tourists need food that has balanced nutrition along with good taste. For them, stone-bowl bibimbap—where they can enjoy various namul and meat together with white rice, and even taste nurungji—is the optimal food.}
{Tourists' base preference for stone-bowl bibimbap: 100.}
{If preference exceeds 50, a special effect activates for the eater. The higher the preference, the stronger the effect becomes.}
{Activated effects: stamina recovery, condition improvement, increased desire to purchase within the sightseeing area for a certain period, etc.}
Huh? This was a preferred food? Well, if it's bibimbap, it's the kind of dish tourists going to Jeonju try at least once, so it made sense. Anyway, that's great.
For Jinseo, stone-bowl bibimbap being designated as a preferred food for tourists was nothing but good news.
He had planned to choose later which menu items among the many ritual foods he had introduced would continue being sold after the festival, but it resolved itself like this.
"So you mix what's inside that hot bowl and eat it?"
"You can't explain it with words! Anyway, you have to taste it yourself!"
The guest who had just eaten stone-bowl bibimbap began enthusiastically talking to other guests.
Hearing him, tourists filled with anticipation parked themselves at tables and started waiting for break time to end.
"This… it feels like we'll be even busier once the break ends. Will it be okay?"
At Jinseo's concern, Jason and Aston looked at each other and smiled.
"It'll be fine!"
"We actually wanted to add it to the menu anyway, because we'd feel bad keeping something this delicious to ourselves."
After finishing their meal, the two started preparing toppings to get ready for the flood of orders, and Jinseo took out additional stone bowls and carried them up to the kitchen.
While everyone focused on preparing stone-bowl bibimbap, time passed quickly, and Jinseo removed the sign that read "Break Time."
"Thanks for waiting. Stone-bowl bibimbap is now open!"
At Jinseo's voice, the guests surged to the counter seats all at once.
"Three servings of stone-bowl bibimbap!"
"I'll take one of the same!"
"Do you do extra-large portions? Ah, you don't? Then two servings!"
Jinseo smoothly took the identical orders pouring in and served the warmly heated stone-bowl bibimbap to the guests.
Stone-bowl bibimbap wasn't difficult to make—a dish where you heat the stone bowl, put in the ingredients prepared in advance, and the customer completes it by mixing.
But an unexpected problem arose: they hadn't prepared many stone bowls, so they couldn't handle all the stone-bowl bibimbap orders flooding in.
"Everyone! If you bring back the stone bowl yourself after you finish eating, we'll give you YaXrt as a service!"
In the end, even with service offered, guests who had finished eating quickly returned their stone bowls to Jinseo.
Even so, there still weren't enough stone bowls to process orders fast enough. So Jinseo served regular bibimbap for customers who wanted it, and that also got a good reaction.
After taking nothing but the same orders in a frenzy, the food truck trio finally managed to catch their breath only after an hour had passed.
"Hey, I really like this."
After scraping up the stone-bowl bibimbap without leaving a single bit of nurungji, Charlotte still wasn't satisfied and even scraped off the grains stuck to her spoon with her front teeth.
"And I like this mu-guk too."
Slurp.
Holding the bowl of clear mu-guk in one hand and downing it, she turned her body and looked down at the children who were still eating.
"But earlier, I noticed the kids didn't really like mu-guk."
Perhaps because they had been taught not to be careless with food, the soup bowls served to the children were cleanly emptied, but Charlotte noticed leftover radish pieces here and there on the low tables.
"It's probably because of the radish inside."
As the name mu-guk implied, radish was an essential ingredient.
However, the texture of radish boiled until it turned soft and mushy divided opinions on the Francia Continent just as it did in Korea.
"Radish? I think radish is the best part of soup."
"A lot of people dislike it when they're young. They'll like it when they get older."
"That's a shame. Isn't there something more like a snack that kids would like?"
"Just a moment."
Jinseo went into the additional trailer and brought out a large basket filled with something, presenting it in front of the children.
"You all ate well, right? This is a snack."
"Wow!"
At the word "snack," the kids rushed to Jinseo, and everyone happily bit into cookies they had never seen before.
Yaksik, yakgwa, and various kinds of hangwa—snacks you couldn't leave out on holidays—fortunately hit the children's tastes perfectly.
"Thanks to you, I really ate until I was full. I wish it were Chuseok all year long."
"Hahaha… that would be a bit…"
"Anyway, isn't there anything fun? It's a festival, so the atmosphere should be lively, but it feels a little lacking when we're only eating."
"Then it seems it's time to bring that out."
"What is it?"
At Charlotte's question, Jinseo grinned and went back into the additional trailer, then came out holding two wireless microphones along with a large, square remote.
"It's karaoke."
If you had to name the entertainment facility Koreans loved most, you couldn't leave out karaoke.
Jinseo had already installed the karaoke upgrade—an S+ grade—several months ago.
But once he upgraded, there were many practical difficulties in using it right away.
The songs included were only the songs from Jinseo's world, so even if the lyrics appeared as subtitles, it wasn't easy for people of this other world to immediately sing along.
Fortunately, there was a function to add new songs, so over several months, with help from Julien and his fellow bards, Jinseo recorded and saved instrumental tracks of songs from this world.
As for the videos that played along with the instrumentals, Jinseo used edited footage he had filmed on his smartphone while traveling around the other world.
For subtitles, there was a built-in feature from the start that converted them into each race's script with a single button on the remote, so there was nothing to worry about. It even allowed selecting the script of elves Jinseo hadn't even met yet.
"Jinseo! Can't I sing just one more song?"
"Sorry, but it's only three songs per person."
At first, everyone found it unfamiliar to sing while watching the large TV screen.
But before long, they became so absorbed in karaoke that they begged to sing just one more song.
Jinseo went further and held an impromptu Chuseok singing contest, and participants showed off their singing skills to win the first prize: a Chuseok Korean beef set.
But when the children's choir that appeared at the end began singing, first place was basically decided.
"Baby kraken~ ddu-ruruddu-ru~."
As the orphanage kids gathered in front of the large TV and sang a children's song together, the adults smiled with mom-and-dad smiles.
A song called "Baby X-eo" that had been popular in Korea and worldwide.
Jinseo adapted that children's song to fit the Francia Continent setting, and instead of video, he registered it in karaoke with cute SD drawings of a kraken made by painters.
As for the dance from the original video, Jinseo had taught it to the kids separately starting a few weeks earlier, and there was no challenger who could beat the children moving adorably in their saekdong jeogori.
As a result, first place in the Chuseok singing contest went to the orphanage children.
"Kids! I'm so proud of you!"
Boom! Kaboom!
Charlotte's fireworks magic decorated the sky brilliantly, and the children, holding the first prize Chuseok Korean beef set Jinseo prepared, ran to her.
"Alright! I'll give you a prize too! If you have a wish, I'll grant anything you want—so tell me."
"I want to see a kraken!"
"A kraken?"
The kids all shouted "kraken" together, and Charlotte scratched the back of her head with a look that said she didn't understand.
"A live one? A dead one? They say kraken tastes best after it's been dead for a while…"
"Huh? You're going to kill a kraken?"
Startled, the children blinked their big eyes and looked up at Charlotte.
"Ah? Ah… no! I think I mixed it up with something else!"
"Really?"
"Of course! There will never be any killing of krakens! Eating them is even more impossible!"
As Charlotte broke out in a cold sweat and shot looks around, the guests who had been eating fried kraken flinched and hid their plates in a corner so the children wouldn't see.
"Ah, anyway, seeing you all having fun makes me happy. I want to do that too, but… isn't there anything adults can play too?"
Charlotte considered singing a song she had heard thousands of years ago, but there were so many people waiting for karaoke that it was impossible to enjoy it right away.
"If it's adults' play, we have this."
Hayward set the Chuseok hangwa set he had received as second prize on the table, then pulled out hwatu from his clothes.
"It's go-stop."
"Go-stop?"
Hayward started playing matgo with Charlotte, and before long, she understood all the rules at once.
"To a dragon like me, this is nothing. Now, five gwang."
In just five rounds, Charlotte ended it with five gwang, shrugging and lifting her chin.
Without realizing Hayward had deliberately gone easy on her.
"By the way, should we put up prizes for this too, like the singing contest earlier?"
"Rather than betting something, how about taking punishments?"
"Punishments? Instead of giving rewards, the opposite?"
"I heard that's also a way people in Jinseo's country enjoy games."
"Really? What kinds of punishments are there?"
Hayward explained punishments he'd heard from Jinseo—flicking the forehead, hitting the wrist, Indian bap, and so on—and Charlotte snorted.
"What is that? You haven't forgotten it's impossible to make me suffer with any attack, right? I'm a dragon."
"Big sis! Then how about eating this?"
Jason set down a basket filled with something in front of Charlotte.
A festival food that had been left in especially large quantities.
It was songpyeon filled with beans.
"Uh… um…"
Charlotte was particularly weak when it came to bad-tasting food, so she hesitated, her expression conflicted.
"But that seemed too weak. Let's add this too."
"Hey, isn't this a bit much?"
Angelica suddenly cut in and presented curry rice loaded with carrots—a food even centaurs struggled to eat—making Charlotte openly recoil.
"Then I'll put this forward."
"Huh, you… you were still drinking that?"
When Oswald Hamilton brought out SolX Eye, Charlotte freaked out and waved her hands.
"Then I'll go with this. If I drink it too, it's a punishment, so there's no fairness issue, right?"
"That's just bitter… it's not even an Americano—how do you drink that?"
"According to Jinseo, this is the representative of coffee."
When Hayward pulled out a canned espresso coffee, Charlotte's complexion got even worse.
"I'll go with this. I hope this becomes an opportunity for everyone to realize that pain is the path to the closest contact with Him."
"…"
Lastly, when Fedora brought out cup tteokbokki with nuclear buldak sauce, Charlotte shut her mouth tight.
"You lot… you're serious."
Sensing something ominous in the lowly creatures' eyes directed at her, Charlotte started to tense up.
In truth, the foods presented as punishments were things she could eat without issue if she used magic.
But in a situation where the lowly creatures were so earnest, using such a shortcut wasn't something her pride as a dragon could allow.
"Fine. Let's go all the way, then!"
Go-stop proceeded under a harsh rule: total the points earned over twenty rounds, and the person with the lowest score would receive all punishments.
As the rounds went on, the ease vanished from everyone's faces, and tension filled the air.
Meanwhile, regardless of that mood, the singing of guests using the karaoke echoed far into the distance.
Time passed with excitement and blood-drying tension coexisting, and only when the sun dipped toward sunset was the loser who would receive the punishments decided.
"No way…"
Charlotte, who took go-bak, slumped her shoulders and lowered her head.
Meanwhile, Hayward, sitting across from her, looked triumphant.
"You got too greedy. You should've been satisfied at two-go. Haven't you heard: if you aren't sure, don't stake the match?"
"I haven't!"
Of course.
It was a line from a movie Charlotte hadn't watched yet.
As a result of the fiercely played go-stop, Hayward was praised as a god of gambling who even defeated a dragon, and thus the lively second day of Hangawi drew to a close.
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