I Only Baked Bread, but I Was Mistaken for the Best - Chapter 104

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 104. The Potato Bread of Truth (3)
Several days had passed since I created the Lumiere Bread of Truth.
The bakery maintained its usual rhythm.
Though rumors had spread, the steady stream of loyal customers meant our sales hadn’t plummeted catastrophically.
Because of their trust, I pledged that morning to bake even more delicious bread in return—an ordinary vow on an ordinary day.
“What? You don’t know me? Hey! I got sick after eating bread here, and I’ve been telling everyone about it!”
I encountered a woman shrieking at the top of her lungs.
This commotion erupted while I was heading to the Witch’s Cottage to tell Gora, who was diligently baking there, that she could take a brief rest.
Yet standing firm before this woman was someone remarkably composed….
“I’m afraid I don’t recall that, ma’am.”
“How dare you play dumb like that!”
“I’m not evading anything. I couldn’t possibly forget. You’ve never visited us before.”
“Ugh!”
It was Haeryang, our S-rank part-time employee at Trèfle de bonheur.
Like Zhang Fei at the Changban Bridge, she faced the troublemaker with an unwavering smile.
Before her composure, such customers typically flushed red and sputtered away in frustration.
But this time was different.
Rather than turning red, she smirked as if she’d anticipated this, then produced a card and receipt.
“I knew you people had rotten character, so I came prepared! Check this out! This receipt is from two weeks ago!”
“Which bread did you happen to purchase….”
“A baguette! I got sick from that baguette over there! Got it?”
It was an absurd claim.
Every baguette we sold was freshly produced daily by Gora at the Witch’s Cottage.
Moreover, we used golden wheat flour stored in our warehouse, so the bread could never spoil.
Since we had no leftover inventory, we couldn’t have sold old stock anyway.
And what made this even more incomprehensible was….
“When exactly did you consume it after purchase?”
“I… uh… probably ate it a day or two later! The taste was so sour! Got it?”
That was also a lie.
Baguettes belong to the “lean dough” category, containing no fat.
Because of this, moisture evaporates rapidly before the bread can even spoil and turn sour.
After just half a day, the crust becomes tough as leather and the crumb turns dry as concrete.
If a day had truly passed as she claimed, the baguette would have hardened like a club—how could it have spoiled?
Yet Haeryang calmly compared the card and receipt before responding.
“According to the receipt, you did purchase one baguette from our store.”
“See! How dare you treat me like this….”
“However, the person who purchased this bread was ‘Lee Gyu-bong,’ a university student living alone nearby.”
“….”
Haeryang’s words rang true.
After the unfortunate incident that had occurred recently, she had told me something about this.
“Owner, from now on I’m going to remember every single customer who visits.”
“Really? Is that even possible?”
“I have a skill for it.”
Through my omnipotent ultra-fine analysis, I had successfully memorized every customer who had ever visited and collected all information about them.
From their muttering to themselves, conversations with friends, phone calls—even how much they perspired and the movements of their pupils.
“You have never purchased this bread before.”
That’s why she could state it so confidently.
But there was one thing Haeryang had overlooked.
A truth that only self-employed business owners could understand.
“Ugh… Anyway! I ate that bread and got sick!”
“But how could someone who came up from Busan and lives alone have bought that bread from us….”
“Enough! Why are you arguing when you’re the one who messed up! Get the owner out here! Owwwner!”
The fact that facts and logic don’t work on unreasonable customers.
Haeryang, bewildered by this bizarre situation where the person looked human but didn’t speak human language, glanced toward where I was standing, so I nodded in acknowledgment.
It meant to just go along with what that unreasonable customer wanted for now.
After understanding my intention, Haeryang approached me and opened her mouth.
“I’m sorry… I think I made things worse….”
“No. You did well. You did nothing wrong, Haeryang.”
“She definitely never came here before.”
“I know. I believe you. This is probably an escalation from attacking through the internet and social media.”
A step further from hiding behind anonymity while attacking with a concealed face.
Now she’s actually showing up at the store as a troublemaker and pulling stunts like this.
It’s truly an unforgivable situation.
“I’ll handle this, so please step outside with me for a moment, Haeryang.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ve prepared for situations like this. There are ways to handle it, so don’t worry.”
After comforting Haeryang, who was trembling with indignation and anger, I headed toward where the troublemaker was.
A woman with her arms crossed, shooting me a high-handed glare.
She appeared to be in her mid-thirties.
Her wrists, fingers, and neck were draped with numerous accessories.
Each piece was likely crafted with considerable care by a designer, but the way she was behaving made them look utterly cheap.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Are you the owner? Huh?”
“Yes. I’m the owner.”
“Ha! Part-timers and owners are all the same! Shouldn’t you apologize immediately when a customer complains?”
The woman threw a fit upon learning I was the owner.
Yet I noticed her glancing around the store, making it clear she had come here deliberately to cause a scene.
But I couldn’t get caught up in this act.
“You say you got sick from eating a stale baguette?”
“Yes! I ate bread here and spent the whole day in the bathroom!”
“Two weeks ago, you said?”
“What! You suspect me too? Seriously!”
“No. Not at all.”
I don’t suspect her.
I’m simply certain.
If she were merely an ordinary troublemaker, she wouldn’t have accumulated such a horrifying amount of karmic debt clinging to her.
Whether her motivation was entertainment or money, this wasn’t someone acting this way for the first time.
“I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you’ve experienced.”
“Owner? But this person is….”
“Haha! Now we’re getting somewhere!”
“Here’s my personal phone number.”
I handed the woman my personal phone number along with my apology.
Haeryang’s eyes widened at this, her indignation evident.
Just bear with me a moment longer.
“Whatever you need, just let me know through this number and I’ll handle it immediately.”
“Ha! Now you’re trying to get rid of me like this….”
“If it’s money, I’ll give it. If you want me to close the bakery, I will. Just tell me. And this….”
Rustle.
I grabbed a bag I’d prepared beforehand.
Inside were our bakery’s signature breads—the ones people say are hard to buy even if they want to.
And there was also a pile of potato bread I’d baked earlier.
“This is my apology.”
“Ha! You’re giving bread to someone who got sick from bread? Are you out of your mind!”
But I saw it.
Even as she shouted, she kept glancing at the breads inside the bag.
Of course she would.
She’d heard the rumors about our bakery and was curious about the taste, but her role right now was to cause a scene.
So her next action was predetermined.
Smack!
“Get ready to be sued!”
The woman roughly snatched the bag I offered.
After threatening to sue, she stormed out, slamming the door, displaying the very essence of a troublemaker until the end.
The remaining customers grew uncomfortable and gradually filed outside.
In the now-empty bakery, Haeryang asked while trying to calm her frustration.
“Why did you do that?”
“Ah. You mean giving her the bread?”
“That too! And apologizing like that! That person definitely recorded it! She’ll use it as evidence later and use it against you!”
“Don’t worry. She can’t do that.”
“What?”
Haeryang asked me, unable to comprehend.
But how could I possibly explain this?
The moment I laid eyes on that woman, a Quest had triggered through the Witch’s Cottage.
[Until the Truth is Told]
▷ When there is a truth that must be revealed, endless effort is required. Until every lie is exposed and its roots are completely unearthed.
▷ Deliver ‘Lumiere Bread of Truth’ to ‘the one who spoke falsehoods’ 1/40
▷ Reward: 50,000BP
And the fact that roughly dozens of threads of fate—blackened and rotted—seemed to extend from that woman.
Because of this, I could only say this to Haeryang.
“Don’t worry. Everything is proceeding according to plan.”
* * *
“This is so annoying. For someone just running a shop.”
The woman grumbled as she tossed down a bag filled with bread beside her.
In truth, she had no right to complain, but people all felt things differently, didn’t they?
“Ugh, I should have just revealed that I’m Uni from the start.”
Uni.
A power blogger who operated online under the self-proclaimed concept of being a “bread fanatic.”
She had become famous for traveling to bakeries in various regions, reviewing them, and sharing that valuable information with her followers.
But the way she appeared now was….
“Bread? What frozen bread nonsense. Ugh. Why do people even eat these carbohydrate lumps? Seriously.”
She muttered as if merely looking at it was repulsive.
In her own mind, bread was the perfect food for fattening people up and turning them into pigs.
No, it couldn’t even be called food.
Wasn’t selling such a cursed thing itself a sin?
“And yet she acts like she’s something special. Unbelievable.”
Of course, in reality, during the period when she had been gaining weight, she had consistently eaten ten pieces of bread a day on her own.
Since she had no intention of reflecting on herself in the first place, she decided to blame the bread for her weight gain.
How could someone who claimed to hate bread visit a different bakery every week and post reviews on her blog?
“Hey. Bread fanatic. Did you finish the work I told you to do?”
She burst through a door inside the house and threw out her words carelessly.
Before her sat another woman trembling at a computer.
‘Ugh. That stupid girl.’
Judging by the way she was acting, there was a high probability she hadn’t done the assigned work properly.
How could a person be this lazy?
Couldn’t she churn out several posts like that in a single day?
She couldn’t understand why the girl was sitting there trembling when all she had to do was move her fingers.
“Hey. Kwon Min-ji. Did you finish or not?”
“No… I… that is….”
“You need to write five more posts today, and you also have to do the separate work I assigned. Did you finish?”
“Not yet….”
“Are you insane! This is unbelievable!”
Smack!
A sudden slap came flying through the air.
This was the secret to Uni’s business success.
The reason she—who never ate bread and had never written a word in her life—could become a power blogger.
If she couldn’t do something herself, she’d just make someone else do it.
‘I thought she’d be useful when I first brought her in, but what is this? Seriously.’
She was the one who had saved Min-ji when her father gambled away the family fortune and disappeared, leaving her desperate for money.
At least, that’s what she told herself.
Hadn’t she made sure Min-ji could eat and survive, even if she couldn’t go outside?
Yet she couldn’t even do this simple task properly.
“You, post one more piece this time.”
“H-one more?”
“That Trèfle de bonheur or whatever. Oppa said to do more work on it.”
“B-but… I haven’t even tasted it…”
“Did you forget you got hit by our Oppa last time because you didn’t comment fast enough? Let’s do this right, yeah? Hmm?”
“Y-yes…”
Right.
If only she’d looked down like this before acting out, how much better it would have been.
Truly a righteous business.
Receive hefty payments in exchange for promoting the bakery, have someone else write the posts, and earn revenue from the blog—a perfect structure.
Stupid people didn’t know what lay beneath, so they were simply deceived.
‘I’m doing this because I’m kind. Sigh.’
The woman pulled a piece of bread from the plastic bag she’d set down earlier and tossed it like she was throwing feed.
Selling bread that looked as ugly as a potato, acting like it was something grand.
“Do I really have to go there and buy bread because of your nonsense? Huh?”
“I’m sorry…”
A lie that came naturally, though it had never happened.
She’d done it so often that she’d reached the point where she believed her own lies.
“Do it right. Unless you want to get destroyed.”
“Y-yes…”
Meanwhile, curious herself, the woman unwrapped a piece of bread and popped it into her mouth.
She didn’t know yet.
What awaited her from this moment forward.
What kind of ruin her lies would bring.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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