The World Stage (2)

Never have I ever experienced how terrible cracking eggs can be.

At first, it was normal. Fifty eggs flew through a steady rhythm of tap, crack, pull, and swirl – a solid beat to the disorder of the restaurant repartee. Then came the next fifty. My hands started to dry out, allowing me to feel the bumps and knicks of the uneven shells. It wasn’t enough to break my flow, but my mind kept drifting from the slight winces.

A hundred more, and the downward trend continued. My technique began to falter, causing small bits of eggshells to fall into the yolk. Digging them out with a fork, especially a three-pronged one, was annoyingly difficult. My wrists ached as my muscles screamed. Two hundred later earned me a few cuts. I had to use some paper towels to quickly bandage my wounds. By the time I reached a thousand, my body’s adrenaline took over, dulling the senses in my arms. They had long past their breaking point.

The hours ticked by as the monotony continued, my mind focusing on the task to distract from the lingering pain. My breaths grew ragged as a bit of delirium set in. Then, somewhere between the two thousandth and three thousandth cracked egg (I had long lost count), I finally heard those sweet words of salvation.

“Okay, that’s all! You can stop cracking eggs now.”

My mind took a minute or two to process what he said. When I understood, I immediately collapsed onto the floor. A repetition of deep breaths slowly revealed the unknown tension hidden by the adrenaline. I let out a few coughs as well. There were no thoughts towards decency, I was simply relieved it was all over.

Why did I even agree to help out in the first place? Wait, did I agree?

“Good job today!” Maeva’s father said, leaning over with a smile plastered on. Unlike me, he was alive and well, moving his arm in a circle like it was no big deal. In fact, it looked like he wasn’t tired at all, only wiping the smallest bit of sweat off his face. “Come on and get up. We’re gonna have a staff meal.”

Growwwwllllll.

Now that he mentioned it, I was starving. I didn’t even realize. Languidly, I tried to pull myself up, but…

“I can’t,” I bluntly heaved.

“What do you mean, ‘you can’t’? Just use your arms.”

“I can’t, they won’t move.” They refuse to budge whatsoever. In fact, whenever I tried to, a shooting pain ran up my arm. My face contorted in agony whenever I tried.

“Hmm, one minute,” Maeva’s father left the kitchen, opening the door to a much quieter ambience. He was yelling something, but my mind had trouble focusing on anything but my unfeeling arms. I was on the verge of losing consciousness.

A few… seconds? minutes? hours? later, he came back, the male waiter following behind. “Okay, take the front. I’ll grab the feet,” he said.

“Okay,” the waiter answered in a more feminine tone than his demeanor suggested.

“One, two…” And with that, the two lifted me into the air. My arms flopped down, and the pain immediately knocked me out before I could scream.

By the time I came to, I was already sitting in a chair, lying against the wall. Maeva and her father sat across while the male waiter sat to the left, holding up a piece of omelet.

“Open wide,” he sweetly intoned, moving the piece around like a mother feeding her baby. It was humiliating. That didn’t stop me from eating with my bottomed-out stomach; I just decided not to think about it. There were only a few tables full in the restaurant anyway, barely lit by the light from the spellstone lamps.

“How long was I out,” I managed to ask between bites.

“It’s only been about half an hour. Makes sense with how much work you did.”

“That was sooo exhausting… We need to hire more people immediately,” Maeva complained.

“ I don’t think it’s that easy to find people.”

“If you post something at the job office, it should be filled in a few days. This is now a popular eatery, after all,” the waiter chimed in.

“Okay. Oh, yeah. Thanks for helping out you two. It definitely saved us a lot of trouble.”

“How did this even happen?” I asked.

“Well…”

Maeva explained the entire situation. It first started from their usual two or three customers. After the quality of the food increased, they started taking their colleagues and friends here. That much was manageable, only filling about a quarter of the room during breakfast time.

Sometime around noon, one of the heads of the Smith Company – a large firm that sold general goods – arrived, booking a stay in one of the higher end rooms for the queen’s banquet. After sitting down for a meal and eating the omelet, he started raving and asked to buy the recipe. Apparently, he went on about how smooth and fluffy the eggs were. Maeva’s father was happy to just give it to him, but Maeva stepped in and properly sold it for a fair price. However, with the renown of the Smith Company, word got around about the head’s comments almost instantly. One thing led to another and that culminated into the chaotic scene I arrived at.

“I might have to start limiting customers. We don’t have the kitchen space to do more than that.”

“Why don’t you buy some more equipment? Egg crackers would be great, and probably an automatic whisk. A few dispensers for the mixes would be great as well.”

“Egg cracker?”

“Automatic whisk? Is that even a thing?”

“I don’t remember seeing a dispenser at the store.”

They all looked at me like I was insane.

Do they not have those things in this world yet? An automatic whisk I get, but the other two don't require that much technology at all. Actually… “Why don’t you commission a blacksmith or a craftsman to make them? Magic also works.”

All of a sudden, their faces grew dark.

“What?” They seemed hesitant to answer. It was as though I asked some kind of forbidden question. Eventually though, the waiter spoke up with a concerned yet amused look.

“How much do you know about the world?”