The market lane was now bustling with the lunch hour traffic. Hungry people had put their work routines on hold to go grab a quick bite from a food stall before returning to the grind. Some of the merchant stalls had closed temporarily or sent a runner to grab lunch from the food carts or cafes.

  I had the first batch of popcorn popped and salted with flavacol. I know purists will balk at the addition of a processed seasoning salt with artificial flavors and yellow #5. There is a dye free option, but the system currently has it greyed out. Presumably I will need to accomplish some sort of achievement or quest reward to expand the, already pretty large, system market.

  I refilled the pot with oil and kernels, then started bagging.

  The paper bags had been slightly modified by the system. The iconic red and white bags now had ポップコーン or poppukōn in phonetic Japanese, instead of the english text of popcorn.

  I opened a system window and substituted “The Rare Treat from Distant Shores” instead of “Hot and Fresh.” I did this for two reasons. The first because I planned on selling the remnants cold and didn’t want to haggle because the bag said hot and fresh. The second because the price gouging er. “Market Rate” of rare foreign treats is probably the only way I would afford a reasonable room at an inn.

  People love popcorn. The sound of popping is a siren call that beacons them in. The smell makes them grab their wallets. The crunch and pillowy texture captures them in delight. The buttery taste sprinkled with salt makes the mouth water and hands reach for the next bite. Popcorn is one of those dishes that are not slowly savored, but that disappear before the eater realizes they just swallowed the last bite. Then they want more.

  Business was good. It started with a few curious women. They each purchased a small bag and walked off. They returned a few minutes later with some friends who left and brought others. Soon there was a line stretching down to the stall where I bought the pickling jars.

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  The line was fantastic for sales. They always are. People hate the idea of missing out. If someone balked about the, admittedly high, price, I only had to say “next!” before they either paid or were forced out of the way by the person behind them.

  Lines do have one major drawback, the customers can get upset quickly. To help ease tensions, I turned on the sound system. I opened a system window, selected the “upbeat and chill” playlist. The cart had incorporated my laptop as well as the bluetooth speaker back when this whole crazy trip started. I have access to everything I had saved on the hard drive. I never trusted the streaming services, so I had hard drives full of songs and movies ripped from physical media.

  The cart’s adaptation system had apparently decided that my hi-fidelity speakers and digital music system didn’t fit into this world as they were. It had replaced them with… a music box that had a spinning ninja instead of a ballerina. The songs I selected still played, but with no vocals and instrumentation was the drum and comb. Titanium by Sia was the first song played and it was … haunting, but also chill enough that the people in line calmed down a bit.

  I had a wealthy looking customer comment on the music and wanted to know where I bought such a music box. A song sung by Dean Martin started chiming out, so I could only respond “Somewhere, beyond the Sea” I probably laughed a little too much after that. Hopefully they didn't feel like I was mocking them, but they did storm off eating handfuls of popcorn from the largest size bag. They had servants carrying two more, each.

  That woman bought five of the thirty cup bags. The only reason we had time to talk about the music box is because it took me a minute to fill them all. After she left I threw another batch of kernels into the pot. Each batch makes a lot of popcorn, but that customer emptied the reservoir, and a full batch on top of that.

  I gave my apologies to those left in line. The line had grown shorter now that lunch was two hours into the past. There were only about ten people in it now. So, as an apology for the extra wait I told them that those in line right now would get a twenty percent discount. Apparently that just meant that they all wanted to order more.

  An hour later, market street was empty. I shut down the cart for the day. I folded everything up into the cart and went looking for an inn.