Want to be human, but cube-like

"Otherwise, I feel that everyone would just order meat and not tomatoes and cabbage."

Looking at the two euro price tags on the two vegetables, Xiangzi added.

After all, the price of vegetables is indeed a bit expensive.

…………

Volume 1: Chapter 22 Is it a date?

After finalizing the menu, Alex's burger shop finally opened for business.

"Please take care, and welcome to visit again next time."

Xiangzi, who was temporarily acting as a front desk employee at the counter, helped customers take orders and handed the hamburgers packaged in paper bags to the customers with a smile.

"Dingling bell~"

"call……"

Only after the last guest left and the wind chimes at the door fell silent did she finally breathe a sigh of relief.

"I didn't expect to have so many customers so soon after opening."

Rubbing his face, which had become somewhat stiff from maintaining a smile all day, Xiangzi sighed softly.

Before he knew it, it was already night. After dinner, Xiangzi noticed that the food in the refrigerator was almost gone, so he quickly flipped the sign on the door back to the "Rest" side, and that's when he stopped seeing any more customers.

The number of customers visiting the burger shop today was indeed beyond Alex and Xiangzi's expectations.

Xiangzi originally planned to leave at noon. Her original plan was to go home, change her clothes, and see if she could find a part-time job in the afternoon, and then come to Alex's place in the evening.

As a result, the store's customer flow never stopped from noon onwards. At first, she had some leeway and stood aside, amazed at how efficient Alex was, managing to handle both taking orders and making burgers all by herself.

But when the peak mealtime arrived and a small queue had already formed in front of the counter, Xiangzi had no choice but to come over and help.

During this time, Alex even had to temporarily go to the Sky Island to collect a batch of wheat because she ran out of hamburger buns.

However, upon closer reflection, although the variety of ingredients in the burger shop is not yet extensive, it is a newly opened store in a very bustling area. The novelty of custom-made burgers is sufficient, and coupled with the high quality of the ingredients and Alex's excellent cooking skills, it is not difficult to understand why it can attract so many customers.

Moreover, the exterior of this burger shop is indeed very eye-catching...

Xiangzi paused for a moment, recalling the first time he discovered this burger joint and the exterior of the shop he saw when he looked up from the doorway.

"Here you go, Xiangzi, this is your dinner."

Just then, a rich aroma wafted from behind. Xiangzi turned around and saw Alex, who had already taken off her apron, walking up behind her with a plate.

There's a double beef burger on top.

"I remember, the beef was sold out a long time ago, wasn't it?"

Xiangzi blinked in surprise.

After all, looking at the prices of different types of meat, beef and lamb offer the best value for money, so they are naturally the first to be sold.

Ironically, eggs, the cheapest food besides vegetables, are almost never chosen.

"When I went to the Sky Island to harvest wheat, I slaughtered a few cows along the way."

Alex, who was also holding a double beef burger, took a bite and answered while chewing.

This time, Alex was smarter and didn't add too much meat. She finally understood why people never order too much meat when choosing burger toppings, since it's really troublesome to eat a whole burger in one bite.

She never considered the possibility that it was because people simply couldn't finish such a large hamburger.

What was today's sales revenue?

After finishing her hamburger in a few bites, Alex glanced at Xiangzi, who was still hesitating about whether to accept the dinner. She then placed the plate directly on the counter in front of him and asked curiously.

"Let me take a look..."

Having his attention diverted by Alex's question, Xiangzi stopped worrying about the price of the hamburger and looked back at the payment system on the counter, opening today's revenue statistics spreadsheet.

"We sold over three hundred hamburgers today, with a profit of seventy...?!"

She had just opened her mouth when she suddenly froze, paused for a moment, and counted the number of digits in the string of numbers again.

"Seven hundred thousand yen!"

With an excited heart and trembling hands, as if it were the first time he had ever encountered such a large number, Xiangzi's eyes seemed to be shining with golden light.

Perhaps in the past, Toyokawa Shoko wouldn't have thought this amount was so outrageous, after all, the price of the piano she had at home alone was much higher than that.

But over the past few months, she has been waiting at convenience stores for discounted bento boxes almost every day to save those few hundred yen. She has long since realized that even as little as ten yen can accomplish a lot.

Moreover, if that 700,000 yen were used for living expenses, it would be enough for me to not have to work and eat discounted bento boxes for as long as I wanted.

Moreover, Xiangzi knew that almost all of these sales were pure profit. The ingredients they sold today, apart from the vegetables that were already in the refrigerator warehouse, as well as the meat and hamburger buns, were all obtained by Alex from the Sky Island. It was essentially a business with no initial investment.

Xiangzi was still excited when she suddenly realized that these numbers had absolutely nothing to do with her.

Suddenly, my emotions cooled down as if doused with water.

"Seven hundred thousand...how much is that?"

Alex, who had no concept of money, tilted her head, leaned over, and asked.

Smelling the faint fragrance of Alex's hair mixed with the aroma of the hamburgers on the table, Xiangzi swallowed hard.

"Converted to the unit 'C' you wrote on the menu earlier, it's about five thousand eight hundred."

She quickly did some mental calculations and replied.

"Oh~"

Actually, Alex didn't really have a concept of it. After all, she had only filled in the price unit according to the item's attributes. She hadn't acquired any villagers yet and couldn't see the trade window, so she naturally didn't know the purchasing power of that number.

"Oh, right, Alex."

At this moment, Xiangzi seemed to remember something. As she spoke, she took two steps to the side as if by accident, widening the distance between herself and Alex.

"We received a lot of feedback from customers today. Most of them came to ask why the burgers didn't have sauce or cheese, and some asked why there were no drinks."

Speaking of this, Xiangzi only discovered it when a customer mentioned it. It was mainly because Alex's burgers were so delicious. Even without sauce, the juicy burger patties and the sweet and refreshing tomatoes were enough to satisfy anyone.

However, the lack of beverages is indeed a significant problem, and serving guests only ice water is certainly inappropriate.

Knowing that Alex didn't actually know how to run a hamburger shop, Xiangzi could only come up with an excuse that the new shop was not well-prepared for supply to appease the customer.

But this problem needs to be solved eventually, and the sooner the better. After all, if we can't give customers a satisfactory first impression during the initial period of opening the store, we won't be able to accumulate the first wave of customers, and the business will only become more and more difficult afterward.

"Sauces, cheese, and drinks..."

Upon hearing this, Alex frowned. She opened the task book that she had been using as a recipe. Actually, these problems were not difficult to solve. Tomatoes could be made into tomato sauce, and apples from the Sky Island could be made into applesauce, but that required sugar. Cheese would be made from cows and milk, but it would need to be pickled and fermented. First, she would need to obtain iron ingots to make a bucket. The salt needed for mayonnaise and barbecue sauce also needed to be boiled in a bucket. And cola required iron pellets to make cans.

For more abundant materials later on, you'll need to buy them from the farmer.

"For now, I can only make tomato sauce. I can't unlock anything else yet. It might be a few days before..."

After confirming it several times, she looked up at Xiangzi with some frustration.

"Then tomorrow, I'll go to the supermarket with you. If it's just for a few days, we shouldn't need to buy too much."

Thinking that Alex, with the resources of the Sky Island, shouldn't need to find suppliers specifically, Xiangzi suggested.

"The two of you going out together...?"

Alex, however, was reminded of a term her mother had once used because of her words.

"Is it a date?"

She tilted her head, her eyes clear.

"What...!?...No way!"

Xiangzi, his face flushed red, retorted loudly.

…………

P.S. The ending of the previous chapter was just a rant about how frustrating the AI's sensitive word database was. Please don't exaggerate the topic. Someone went too far and startled me, so I deleted their comment for security reasons. I hope everyone can have a pleasant discussion. I won't post anything like this again. By the way, this is just what the AI ​​identified. If you insist on posting it, you could have it reviewed manually. It's possible that these unambiguous words identified as sensitive words could be included.

Volume 1: Chapter 23 I mean, that's the one.

Afterwards, Alex cleaned up the kitchen, leaving Xiangzi alone in the burger shop, struggling with her double beef burger, while she returned to the Sky Island to see if there was anything she needed to do.

The animals raised and the crops planted will grow naturally even when no one is around. All you need to do is feed and harvest them regularly. However, the efficiency of the monster farm is giving Alex a bit of a headache.

Unlike the former, mob farms require a player to stand within 128 blocks for mobs to spawn inside. This means that if Alex wants to obtain iron ingots using mob farms, she must stay in the vicinity and wait for the mobs to spawn.

But there's a burger shop outside that she needs to run, and Alex also wants to explore the outside world, so she simply doesn't have the time to stay on the Sky Island all day.

So you can stay up at night and come here to grind monsters.

I glanced at the bottom of the mob farm and saw only two or three zombies and skeletons inside. I switched to the puppet, casually drew my sword, and killed it. Two pieces of rotten flesh and bones were sucked into my backpack.

Between last night and today, the only things worth mentioning from the mob farm are the potatoes and carrots dropped by zombies.

Not a single iron ingot was obtained, let alone the gold equipment needed to smelt gold ingots.

After tidying up her backpack, she stuffed in a full twenty nameless knives [Puppets]. The remaining empty spaces were filled with tools such as axes and pickaxes, as well as some food, cobblestones and planks, and an Ender Pearl.

Next, she and Xiangzi will explore Tokyo at night.

Go test what exactly the effect of the witch's kiss on Xiangzi is.

This was also part of the deal between them.

The reason for bringing so many puppets is entirely due to the only major flaw in the sword-drawing module.

That is, the weapon's durability is unusually low.

Especially the most basic unnamed sword [Puppet], if you don't use special combo moves to increase damage and just hack and slash randomly, then even if you kill an ordinary zombie, you will lose at least one-third of its durability.

If you don't enchant your katana with durability and experience repair later on, it's very common for the sword to break halfway through a fight.

Therefore, given the current lack of materials to craft higher-level swords, the only option is to carry multiple weapons.

As for the Ender Pearl, she prepared it for Xiangzi to give him the ability to escape in an emergency. After all, Alex didn't think she was very good at protecting others, and she didn't have any iron ingots to make a shield. If Xiangzi went on an adventure with her and encountered a battle, Xiangzi, who had no ability to protect himself, would be in great danger.

The cobblestones and planks were also prepared to create a safe area for Xiangzi in case of battle. Rather, the teleportation function of the Ender Pearl was just a last resort.

After all, this thing is quite dangerous. Whether it is thrown into a dangerous place or the thrower falls and gets injured when it flashes, these are all situations that are easy to encounter.

Thinking about how to teach Xiangzi how to use the Ender Pearl, Alex walked back to the hamburger shop.

At this time, Xiangzi was already waiting at the shop entrance with a bag in her hand. While she was waiting, she went upstairs and changed her clothes.

"Alex, I'll take your clothes back first, and I'll return them to you after I've washed them."

Xiangzi slightly lifted the bag in his hand and said to Alex.

"Hmm, whatever you like, Xiangzi, here you go."

Not caring about the fate of her clothes, since many of the clothes her mother made for her were only worn once and then discarded. Alex simply walked over, took out a dark green bead, and placed it in Xiangzi's hand.

"this is……?"

Somewhat curiously, Xiangzi pinched it between his index finger and thumb, held it up to his eyes for a closer look, and then turned his puzzled gaze to Alex.

"This thing is called an Ender Pearl. It's the loot that dropped after the Enderman who scared you last night died."

Alex explained.

"If you encounter danger, throw it to a safe place. Wherever the Ender Pearl lands, you will be teleported there. It is a one-time consumable; once you throw it, it's gone. Also, you will get injured when you land after teleporting, so you should only use it in the most urgent situations."

Alex carefully taught Xiangzi how to use it, repeatedly reminding her not to use it unless absolutely necessary.

"Yes, I understand..."

Seeing Alex's serious expression, Xiangzi nodded and put the Ender Pearl in his hand into the inner pocket.

She didn't worry about Alex's safety either, because Xiangzi knew very well that in the face of any unexpected situation, she would be the one who would be dragged down.

"Then, let's go."

Turning around, Xiangzi pushed open the shop door and said to Alex.

It sounds dangerous, but neither of them was actually that nervous. This time, they just planned to drive around Ikebukuro, or rather, the alleys near the burger shop, and then have Alex take Shoko home.

The primary objective was to rule out the possibility that a witch had ever appeared in the vicinity of Xiangzi's house or the surrounding area.

Secondly, we should see if we can resolve the issue of the Witch's Kiss.