“Sandwich, dandelion coffee, and…… what?”
The old miner holding the hat was not a man of great learning. He had grown up in a remote mountain village as a child and came to the city as an adult hoping to carve out his own piece of heaven. In the end, because he was illiterate and lacked professional skills, he ended up at fifty years old still doing menial labor like mining, a job that required no qualifications, just brute strength.
“Hamburger and coffee.”
Ye Tang smiled and poured a cup of hot coffee from a wooden cup for the old miner. “You’re my first customer. This cup of coffee is on me.”
The rich aroma of the coffee melted into the smoky breeze. The old miner couldn’t help but take the beverage he had never tasted before. The dandelion coffee’s black-brown color, deeper than muddy water, did not deter him. But looking at the free cup of coffee, the old miner felt a twinge of guilt toward Ye Tang.
“……Sorry, little miss. Though you treated me to this cup of ‘kafei,’ I might not have money to buy your ‘hanbao.’”
“It’s fine! I didn’t give you the coffee just to get you to buy my hamburger! But…… why did you say ‘might’? You either have money or you don’t, right?”
Ye Tang tilted her head slightly.
Seeing Ye Tang’s puzzled expression, the old miner smiled bitterly. “I only have twenty-six pence left on me. A bag of bread rings in Lem Town costs ten shillings!”
“Ten shillings!?”
Ye Tang feigned shock as she covered her mouth.
The old miner did not blame her for being so shocked. In this country, twenty pence made one shilling, and twelve shillings made one pound. Ten shillings was two hundred pence. In the city where the old miner had lived before, a rough loaf of bread as thick as a forearm cost only fifteen pence.
“Your ‘hanbao’ must cost at least thirty pence even if it’s cheap, right? I can smell the bacon.”
The old miner pointed at his nose as he spoke. “I may be old, but this still works fine.”
Ye Tang laughed again. Her eyes curved into crescents, bringing ease to anyone who saw her.
“Your nose is really sharp.”
After praising the old miner, amid his beaming smile, Ye Tang clapped her hands. Suddenly, a massive black shadow rose behind the old miner like a dark cloud.
“But there’s one thing you got wrong. You can definitely afford the hamburger.”
The old miner, whose entire body was shrouded in the black cloud, let out a scream after clearly seeing the giant creature that had suddenly leaped out behind him.
A werewolf! A real, living werewolf!!
The mine boss and his brother had not lied! There really were werewolves here!! Then, this girl was—
In extreme terror, he looked toward Ye Tang, his legs trembling nonstop. The old miner, who had just thought Ye Tang looked like an elf or an angel, now saw her as a vicious witch colluding with beastmen.
In the old miner’s mind, he had already imagined Ye Tang spitting snake-like venom with a wicked grin in the next second: “‘Hanbao’ costs your life~~”
“Our family’s hamburger only costs five pence.”
As soon as Ye Tang finished speaking, Lang handed the small plate with the hamburger to the old miner.
“……Ah……?”
He looked at Ye Tang, then at Lang dressed as a human in front of him, and then at the white bread sandwiched with two slices of bacon and a beef patty as thick as a finger. The old miner was dumbfounded.
It was Lang’s first time working as a waiter, and he was not quite used to it. After Ye Tang clapped for him and he brought the hamburger to the old miner, he realized the man might not even order one.
“You don’t want the hamburger? Then I’ll give you a sandwich?”
His blood basin of a mouth, completely unlike a human’s, opened to reveal sharp fangs underneath. The old miner’s hand went slack, and the plate fell straight from his grasp.
The werewolf’s reaction speed, far superior to a human’s, came into play. In one second, Lang reached out to catch the plate and used it to catch the hamburger. The hamburger looked perfect, not a drop of the sauce on the patty and pickles spilled.
Seeing the old miner still dazed, Lang good-naturedly asked again. “Hamburger or sandwich?”
His throat bobbed, and the old miner said, “‘Han’…… ‘Hanbao’ is fine……”
And so, Ye Tang’s pushcart stall sold its first hamburger.
To be honest, the old miner really wanted to turn and run. But thinking of the speed Lang had shown saving the hamburger, he gave up the idea—in front of a werewolf, running away was tantamount to challenging the werewolf’s speed, wasn’t it?
……Looking at this werewolf, he did not seem to want to bite him to death and swallow him. He really treated him like a customer. With that expectant look in his eyes and his wagging tail, this werewolf’s expression practically said: Eat up! Drink up! Tell me your thoughts on the “hanbao” and “kafei”!
Fine…… No matter what the “hanbao” and “kafei” tasted like, he would praise them lavishly afterward. That way, the werewolf would spare his pathetic life, right?
With that in mind, the old miner finally started eating.
Hamburgers and sandwiches were similar, both eaten by hand with bread holding the fillings. For someone like him, from the lower classes who was often mocked for poor table manners, this kind of food you could eat directly with your hands was perfect—meticulous cutting that wasted time was just pointless to them. After all, no matter how you sliced the food, it all turned to mush in your stomach, didn’t it?
Thinking of this, the old miner’s mood improved a bit. He had roughly washed his hands after work, and now he just rubbed his fingers on his inner shirt before picking up the hamburger. He opened his mouth wide toward it and bit down hard.
The first sensation was the rich, fatty savoriness of the bacon, fried to a crispy edge. The moment his teeth sank in, sweet-and-sour pickle juice and the juices from inside the beef patty burst in his mouth.
Beef patties this juicy were rare. It was as if he could see a cow chasing the refreshing pickles around in his mouth. The old miner’s eyes widened like copper bells, the sparkle in them startling even Xiu, who had only peeked from afar without intending to serve humans.
“Delicious…… So tasty! What in the world is this……!!”
The old miner nearly bit his own tongue off as he spoke. This bite triggered a physiological urge to cough out the food in his mouth. But he couldn’t bear to.
This hamburger was so delicious that even a single crumb of meat lingered on the palate. The moment he realized he was about to cough, the old miner clamped his hand over his mouth, forcing himself to swallow the food before coughing.
Lang was utterly stunned seeing a human eat like this for the first time. Just as the old miner picked up the coffee and Lang was about to warn him that dandelion coffee was very bitter, he saw stars sparkling nonstop in the old miner’s eyes after swallowing a mouthful.
One bite of hamburger, one sip of coffee—the old miner had learned his lesson this time. He said not a single extra word until he finished the hamburger, licked his fingers, drained the coffee, and then lifted the cup high to slurp the last drop clinging to the bottom.
“Five pence! Another hamburger!”
He grandly pulled out ten pence. This time, the old miner firmly remembered the name “hamburger.”
……
When other miners, drawn by the bacon aroma just like the old miner, arrived, he was already chatting amiably with Ye Tang and Lang.
“Werewolf!?”
One miner saw Lang and tried to run, only to trip his left foot over his right and fall flat on the ground.
“Hahaha! Beck, you’re so big and tall, but your courage is only this tiny bit!”
The old miner, now familiar with Ye Tang and Lang, gestured with about a centimeter between his fingers and winked mockingly at the fallen miner. In the end, he smiled and introduced them to the other miners whose faces had paled. “These two are Mary and Lang from Abe Village. They’re the ones here to save us!”
“Mr. Tom, please don’t say things that could mislead people. Lang and I are here to do business. We can’t save you all.”
As Ye Tang spoke, she flipped the bacon sizzling on the griddle.
The bacon, fried to a slight char by the oil, was irresistibly fragrant. It tempted the miners, who had been forced to eat only plain food for days—or couldn’t even afford that—to drool.
If Ye Tang had come alone, she probably would have been robbed of all her food by the hungry miners right then. But standing beside Ye Tang was a werewolf, one with bulging muscles that even a gentleman’s suit could not fully conceal.
No miner dared scheme in front of such a werewolf. So they could only watch the bacon on the griddle go “sizzle” and swallow their saliva madly.
“But to me, Mary, you’re an angel sent from heaven to save us! The sunshine in my life!”
Thinking of Ye Tang’s great cooking skills, the cheap yet rich hot coffee and satisfying hamburgers from the pushcart stall, old miner Tom’s mouth was as sweet as if coated in honey.
He excitedly lavished praise on Ye Tang before saying, “Mary, you don’t know, but the mayor of Lem Town and the mine boss are in cahoots. When the mine boss published the hiring notice in the newspaper promising ten pounds a week, we all thought it was a good job, so we signed contracts with him for the shortest ten years, up to twenty.
“But as soon as we did, the mine boss and Lem Town’s mayor jacked up prices in Lem Town. Even if we get ten pounds a week, a bag of bread rings costs one pound, and it’s not even enough for lunch.”
Tom’s old eyes reddened as he spoke.
“In the week since coming to Lem Mine, many people can’t even afford the cheapest meal once a day. The wild veggies and mushrooms in the forest near the mine have been picked clean. Some are even gnawing tree bark. ……If you and Lang hadn’t shown up, Mary, I’d still be starving right now.”
In the city where old Tom had lived before, workers’ weekly wages were mostly six shillings to one pound. The Lem Mine hiring notice issued in the name of Earl Ulysses Grant stood out as exceptionally generous amid the pleas for workers.
Lem Mine had recruited so many miners in a short time thanks to the salary, of course. Like old Tom, many thought they could save money here to treat family illnesses or send kids to school. Who knew what awaited them were not just dangerous mine shafts, but also a mine boss and mayor who devoured people whole without spitting out the bones.
If Ye Tang and Lang hadn’t come to sell food near the mine, there would soon be deaths in the mine, right? It was just a question of whether someone starved first or got beaten to death by the mine boss’s brother and his thugs for protesting.
Old Tom lacked the courage to resist the mine boss and his brother, but he was also unwilling to starve to death in a place like this. So his praise for Ye Tang was not mere flattery. It came from the heart.
“Thank you, Mary, Lang. Thank you—”
He removed his hat and bowed slightly toward Ye Tang and Lang. Old Tom used the hat to hide the tears in his eyes.