The Exhibition Has Begun
On the first day of the Royal Capital Exhibition, the opening ceremony was held—Mother presided over the square, while Father opened the market district.
Two days later, the top winners would be announced in the square, so today Father headed to the market area.
Before the gates opened, he gave words of encouragement to the participants and formally declared the event begun.
Before that, Damian and Rosetta explained the popularity voting system: visitors were to write either the product name or the tent number, with one entry each for the Food Stall Division and the Craft Division on a single sheet of paper.
At both the square and the market site, they reminded visitors to receive their ballots upon entry. While guests waited due to crowd limits, staff from the Merchants' Guild took turns giving the same explanation.
This was the same method used in Eminira—most people dropped their completed votes into the boxes as they left, so the format was continued here.
Once the boxes filled up, they were replaced and the full ones sent to the estate for safekeeping.
Brother Chris held the keys and was in charge of tallying the results. Thankfully, Princess Rinaluna, his classmates, Young Lady Diana, Raphael, and the others staying at our mansion had taken on tallying duties for the Eminira and Royal Capital votes, and from what I heard, they were enjoying the task immensely.
We had considered excluding the Souvenir Division and Dining Hall Division from the popularity vote since their items couldn’t be eaten on-site, but since many wanted to vote for stalls they’d already sampled during the preliminaries, the Food Stall Division remained in.
Instead, the Souvenir and Dining Hall winners would be chosen by our family’s chefs, both guilds’ staff, and my relatives.
Atre and the others planned to eat through all the dishes and souvenir foods at home, view the crafts, and cast their votes as well.
They were staying behind while the exhibition ran, but it sounded like they were having a great time.
Despite giving everyone two full days for setup, the cooking stalls were already lined with people.
Especially those from the Dining Hall Division that hadn’t joined the preliminaries—crowds were thick around them.
We’d allowed them to bring in more helpers, but even so, orders were piling up.
Not including those restaurants in the preliminaries had definitely been a misstep.
There wasn’t much I could do now except supply more ingredients.
For the crafts and souvenir sections, we strictly prohibited bulk buying, and patrol staff stepped in to mediate whenever disputes arose—most likely with merchants from other territories.
That sort of trouble was by far the most common issue at the site.
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Day Two
I wouldn’t be going to the venue today. My task was to judge the Craft Division, Souvenir Foods Division, and Dining Hall Division.
For the Food Stall Division, I’d already sampled everything during the preliminaries, so I’d simply vote for my top choice from those results.
Breakfast would be from the Dining Hall Division—there were twenty-six entries, so I’d taste a single bite from thirteen of them, each presenting two new dishes. That meant twenty-six bites total, just for breakfast.
After that, I’d tour the crafts section, stop by the souvenir food section for lunch, then finish the remaining thirteen dining entries for dinner.
A grueling day indeed—but necessary, since the submitted crafts would be returned and cleared for sale by tomorrow.
Guests staying in the city had been sampling the cooking division entries for four days already.
Uncle Davit and Duke Krondale, leading the visiting group, always returned to the mansion for meals, despite the crowding—they were diligently inspecting the venue throughout the day.
They’d already finished touring and tasting both the crafts and souvenir divisions yesterday.
Today they’d complete all their tastings and cast their votes tomorrow morning.
When I asked my brothers why they were voting, they said they’d never experienced anything like this before and wanted to take part too.
There were 141 shops entered in the Craft Division.
Different colors or shapes of the same item counted as one submission, but even then, each shop displayed between three and ten pieces.
Assuming an average of seven, that made nearly a thousand works total.
The large hall in our mansion—rarely used—had been turned into the exhibition space. Each piece was displayed with a small card showing its number and shop name, the number corresponding to its tent number at the fair.
To prevent items from different shops from mixing, displays were spaced thirty centimeters apart, clearly marking each shop’s area.
I carried a price list to verify values as I went.
Starting with woodcrafts, I found many carved animals and small boxes—meticulous, but fairly standard.
Then, one piece caught my eye: about 35 cm tall, 21 cm wide, and 3 cm deep. It had five rows of seven wooden blocks, each 3 × 3 × 2 cm, arranged neatly—almost like a calendar.
This world has seven-day weeks and twelve months, with odd months having 31 days and even ones 30, for a total of 366 days a year.
Though paper is common now, it’s still not cheap enough to use freely. Most homes have wall calendars with either three months per sheet (in four sheets total) or all twelve months printed on one page.
Some people make their own, but a one-month wooden calendar like this was rare.
It would last indefinitely unless the wood broke, and though manually changing the numbers every month might be a bother, it could easily become popular.
Not ideal as a travel souvenir—it’s too large—but it’d sell well as a regular household product.
I came to look for souvenirs, but it seemed I might have found a few truly marketable gems.
What do you think about this chapter?
