I know I said to others that my university time cuts into my writing time, but Culinary Rivals is so relevant with my university work, I thought, "Why don't I integrate university work into Fanfiction at the same time?" I'm still trying to balance writing and university, nevertheless.

Guest1267, werehogdog, and dawnleaf1234, you each get a freshly baked macaron straight from Cynthia's cafe!

WARNING: the following contains economics I learned from university. It is complicated to understand unless you have the mind for it, I don't even want to bother explaining it in writing. In short, economics "is the social science that studies the choices that individuals, businesses, governments, and entire societies make as they cope with scarcity and the incentives that influence and reconcile those choices". (Parkin, Bade, "Microeconomics: Eighth Edition")

That is a lot of writing to describe economics in the short form.

Chapter three: Love, Hate, and Economics

Around one to two weeks later, Steven Stone began to feel the pressure that Cynthia's Vue sur la Lune was giving him. What the rivalling business was doing was robbing Steven's regular customers to go to her restaurant!

During the second week, James d'Arc reported to Steven's office with more bad news. It was at this time, of course, that Steven Stone had office hours.

"We've seen a huge drop of average revenue, lately," James said. "If this keeps up, we might have to lay off some of our staff. Profits are dangerously low, come to that, and our demand from the consumers has fallen drastically."

He handed Steven a file folder showing some economic information.

"At this rate, we're going to have to reduce the quantities from our supplier," James said. "Sorry, Steven, but these are the consequences. If our demand has dropped and quantity supplied has dropped… well, you know the rest."

Steven did know. Given the circumstances now, he would have to reduce the price of his goods and services. That would mean… less money for the business.

Sitting behind his desk, Steven buried his head into his arms on the desk. What was he going to do now save his business and employees? Obviously, his business wasn't being pushed to bankruptcy, but at the rate things were going, there wouldn't be enough money to pay all his workers… so Steven would have to lay off some workers.

"We'll have to talk to our suppliers sometime next week," he said. "James, make some arrangements with them so we could talk later."

A knock on his office door came, and James went to answer it for Steven.

"Hey, Steven," a receptionist happened to be at the door. "This just came by our front door. It's addressed to you."

"Thank you," Steven said. "Oh, and could you fetch me a coffee, please? I'm rather busy now."

"Of course, sir," the receptionist bowed, and placed a letter on the desk before leaving the room. "I'll go get someone to bring it to you."

Steven nodded as the receptionist left the office and Steven heard the familiar click of the door shut. Now, at last he could have some privacy to open his letter. That is, he had to place the letter on top of a stack of other business letters too. The new letter, however, was a lot smaller compared to the massive business envelopes, however.

Steven could spend a little time to read a letter. Maybe it was a banking statement, or something. With his letter opener (a smooth, blunt, knife) he tore it open and pulled out the paper.

His jaw slightly dropped.

It was another invitation and voucher to Vue sur la Lune. What sort of madness was this? Given the current state of his business right now, Steven's cheeks went red with fury. Was Cynthia trying to assimilate Steven into her business so that he might go bankrupt eventually? Never!

Steven neatly folded the voucher and dropped it in the small trash bin where he normally discarded unwanted papers. What would Martine and James react to this?! Especially Martine.

"Hello, Steven!"

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

Martine Grenadine was at the door of Steven's office.

"Martine!" What the – what are you doing here?" Steven asked. "Aren't you supposed to be working right now?" If his cheeks were red enough already from fury, they turned a deeper shade of red no thanks to his youngest employee.

She brushed her auburn hair so that the locks were behind her ear and dangling on her shoulder. "The receptionists told me to get your coffee, boss. I had a lot of free time, not unlike the others, so I thought… Wait a minute, boss! Why are your cheeks so red?"

Don't push it… Steven begged in his mind. A 19-year old girl… Steven would sometimes wonder how he hired her in the first place.

Martine placed the ceramic cup of coffee in front of her boss and at the same time examined him closely. While uncomfortable, Steven kept his cool and held the cup to his lips.

"You must be thinking of a certain business rival," Martine said. She didn't need to guess. "Don't worry, boss! She's definitely one of the few stunning people you will ever see in this world. You don't want to get struck out by her, right?!"

Steven choked, and then spit out a spray of coffee.

"Martine!" he scolded.

"I have to work," the 19-year old auburn-head left the office immediately.

Before she closed the office door, Marine could hear Steven shout, "Don't tell this to anyone, ever! I'm warning you!"

Within the next hour, Steven felt like throwing Martine out of the restaurant now. Although he had sternly warned Martine to keep quiet, somehow Martine's 19-year old behaviour was contagious and spread to the other waitresses like fire. Soon enough, curiosity got the best of everyone and the waitresses would have their share of teasing the employer's personal life. Could it get any worse?

At the very least he had gotten rid of the dreaded voucher from Cynthia. Now that would have been the worst-case scenario.

Of course there was always the small minority of waitresses who sympathised with Steven. The waiters and James d'Arc, in the same way, weren't impressed by the lack of business they were getting, and they continued to back Steven.

Martine Grenadine wasn't surprised when she was summoned to Steven's office. She took her respective seat across from her employer. After ten minutes of discussion, with Steven doing most of the talking, Martine felt small.

"You've embarrassed me far enough, Ms. Grenadine," Steven's cheeks were pink with fury. He could feel a pulse beating in his temple.

Martine stared at the floor, but she kind of was pleased with herself, if not enjoying.

"Think of how much damage she's done to the business," Steven reminded her. "There is nothing – nothing, I tell you – that can explore the possibility of a relationship. You may think I may like her, but you're sadly mistaken."

She looked up to examine Steven's eyes. Yep, his eyes were showing frustration, no doubt. Maybe Martine was wrong. Maybe it was only her imagination that led her to think a relationship between her boss and the competition was possible.

"I… think I'll go back to work," Martine got up and left the office.

"Good," Steven said. He opened a business file and read its contents (expenses). He read it as if he had dismissed Martine's presence in a matter of seconds. With a ballpoint pen, he began to write banking statements.

Come to think of it, it is payday today, he thought. With his free hand, Steven picked up his telephone and dialled James' line.

"Hello?"

"Hi, James," Steven said. "It's about that time we write paycheques to everyone."

"Yes, sir," James said from the other line. "We just got a little business spike, but it's cooling down now. I'll be at your office in half an hour, and by the way, I have an idea that might be able to save the company."

That was news to Steven. Well, since James was a business graduate, he shouldn't have been surprised. "Alright, James, let's talk."

Within half an hour, as Steven re-read the depressing news of a loss in usual revenue and thinking of ideas of how to bring it up again, James d'Arc opened the door to the office and walked right in.

"Have a seat, James," Steven greeted.

His sous chef closed the door and sat down at Steven's desk with a laptop in hand. Steven passed James a load of paperwork and the two admins began to write paycheques together. With half the paycheques on his side, James wrote down the name of the employee, the date, and how much pay the specified employee got. After the name, numbers, and date were written, James signed his signature on the cheque and tore the cheque off the chequebook, and had it placed in a sealed envelope, and recorded his entries onto his laptop. In addition, labour records had to be printed in the office and attached with the paycheque before it was sealed in the envelope. Likewise, Steven was working away at his chequebook, writing numbers, dates, names, and his signatures, and recording what he did on his desktop computer, whilst printing off the labour records in his office.

They kept this process going for two hours, given the number of people who worked at the Stone Restaurant and Bistro (cooks, waiters, waitresses, janitors, managers, maintenance, bartenders, and the staff who operated the museum on the ground floor, and more than Steven could name). It was then Steven said, "Didn't you have an idea to bring up, James?"

"Yes, indeed," James said, not looking up from his chequebook. "More than once do I walk past Vue sur la Lune on my way to work, and I always see tens of people lining up at the café over there. That got me thinking, what if we were to make a counterattack?"

Steven stopped writing with this pen, and looked up.

"What are you suggesting?" he asked.

"The idea is that we open some smaller business within the establishment to counter that café," James suggested. "If they have a café, then why don't we open a bakery? That'll attract some loyal customers back here. I know we have plenty of excess profits, so we could make use of them before we use those to supply our paycheques."

Steven thought about that for a while, and the two of them resumed writing as he said, "I'll get back to you on that, James. In the meantime, when we've finished, go and see if you can find us a carpenter."

Before James went on writing paycheques, he made a side note to contact a known carpenter, as Steven instructed, as well as a reminder to come up with the budget to create a contract.

As he did this, he said, "How's our revenue going."

Steven sighed and passed James a sheet of paper. The latter glanced at it and sighed as well.

(Author's Note and warning: below is based on university economics)

Average Weekly Economic Profit before the arrival of Vue sur la Lune

Revenue: 5,600,000 (weekly average: 800,000*7 days)

Explicit Cost (wages, taxes, etc.): -3,300,000

Depreciation: -5,000

i.e. Accounting Profit: 2,295,000

Implicit Cost: -450,000

i.e. Economic Profit: 1,845,000

Average Weekly Economic Profit after the arrival of Vue sur la Lune

Revenue: 4,200,000 (weekly average: 600,000*7 days)

Explicit Cost (wages, taxes, etc.): -3,300,000

Depreciation: -10,000

i.e. Accounting Profit: 890,000

Implicit Cost: -450,000

i.e. Economic Profit: 440,000

"In short," James concluded, finally accepting the facts, "we have lost a lot of our usual profits. Practically to one-quarter. Sheesh… Steven, this isn't good."

Steven already knew this. Of course, if the revenue stayed like this for the next while, it would be barely sustainable, but he doubted it. This was only the first few weeks since Vue sur la Lune opened. There needed to be a way for Steven to increase his revenue! What was going on?

"They didn't give me top-class reviews for nothing," Steven grimaced. "Get that bakery built, up and running and see how well we'll do. Given we have an advantage in bread these days, we should make the most of it."

James added that as an extra footnote to his existing ones.

Hours later, Steven and James had finished with their office hours, finishing with the remainder of paycheques and stacked them inside a safe in the process, and returned to the main kitchen to begin cooking again, alongside James. As usual, the janitors would arrive to sweep and – should it be necessary – wash the office floor.

Metagross was pressed into service to help serve the food. Of course, Metagross did this completely voluntarily. Martine could only imagine what Team Plasma would've thought if they saw Metagross serving food.

"Hey, Martine!" a fellow waiter shouted. "You brought a cup of coffee to the boss' office, right? The janitors don't know what to do with it, so they're asking someone who does know."

Oh, right, she thought, and then said, "I'm on it!"

Since business was, as it had been for several days, slow, Martine handed the food she was carrying to a fellow waitress and hurried across the Stone Restaurant to find the door to Steven's office. Naturally, it would have been locked, but since there were janitors in there, or so she was told, there was access.

Martine's expectations were without disappointment. Several minutes after she got the call to head to the office, she was now standing at the very office's door with the janitors just finishing their cleaning duties. Knowing that Steven was in the kitchens, she walked in.

Ah, there it is, she thought. As Martine expected, there was the empty ceramic cup behind the head office desk. Quickly, she walked over to retrieve it, and she passed by the side of the desk with Steven's paper trash bin…

…effectively, she couldn't resist noticing the crumpled up paper with the familiar colours of Vue sur la Lune.

Oh…? Martine thought. Brushing some bangs on her forehead, she used her free hand to reach for the crumpled paper and flattened it on the desk. Reading it, Martine smirked as she recognised it to be another voucher from the rival business. Ha. Steven hopes to just dump another invitation from her? He must really hate her that much.

Nevertheless, Martine pocketed the voucher. There was a reason her boss wanted to trash it, and Martine suspected that her boss didn't want anyone to know about it.

That night, Steven received news that he didn't want to hear. At this point in time, anything to do with the auburn-haired Martine Grenadine was bad news to his personal life. Was Cynthia really his love life…? He shuddered and quickly dismissed the thought. Oh, the horror of what could happen to him or his business were that true.

That was exactly what Martine brought up when he met with her at the restaurant lobby.

"So, boss?" Martine asked. "Are you going?"

"What are you talking about, Martine?"

Knowing Steven wouldn't want this heard, even though she had spread the rumour around the restaurant anyway, Martine brought Steven to one of the quieter waiting lounges to talk about it. She sat down on one lounge chair, and he sat opposite.

"Alright…" Martine started, once again brushing an auburn lock behind her ear and let it dangle to her shoulder before reaching into her pocket and taking out the dark-blue voucher from Vue sur la Lune for Steven to see. Upon seeing it, Steven's eyes became very round.

Silence.

"Where'd you get that? In my office?! You couldn't have gone in there. Give it back!" Steven furiously reached for the paper, but Martine pushed him away.

"Why would you want it back, boss?" she grinned… evilly. "I found this in your trash bin while I was collecting your coffee cup. If you're so keen on getting it back, then why did you throw it out in the first place?"

Steven then realised that his youngest employee, 19-years old, had outflanked him, and trapped him in his own words. No wonder some thought she'd be next to take over the restaurant were Steven to retire.

"Is it because of a special someone…?" she teased. Oh, how Martine loved to torture her boss when it came to a topic like this.

"No," Steven replied, not wanting to go any further. "It's just that if anyone knew about this, they'd think… they'd think I'll be in a relationship… and that I'll betray them. Come on, they'd know I went to Vue sur la Lune last week! Besides… I threw that thing out to show her business isn't welcome around here!"

To his disbelief, Martine didn't seem convinced. Instead, she stood up wearing that same evil grin.

"Let me know when you're up for dinner," she said. "You know you want to head back there."

We'll see about that, Steven thought. I will NOT be moved.

Yet hours into the night, Martine Grenadine had dragged Steven Stone out of the restaurant, whilst telling James d'Arc to close the restaurant and keep the bistro running.

"Going on a date, Ms. Grenadine?" the same male receptionist from the previous week said. "Or is this something more about Mr. Stone? Let me guess: he's off to find the woman of his dreams… like you kindly told us."

"You got it!" Martine grinned. "We're off to find her."

The female receptionist said, "About time, Mr. Stone."

Perhaps this was enough to make Steven crack as he and Martine walked past the front doors.

"Why are we going to support the opposing business…?" he glared at the auburn-head. "Destroying revenue is enough, and that might turn into destroying the business. Besides, I'm not thinking of having a girlfriend anytime soon. If that's more than enough reason to hate her, then we shouldn't go."

They walked the short length from across the Stone Restaurant and Bistro to the competing Vue sur la Lune once more. For once, Steven actually noticed the café up and running near the restaurant corner, and unsurprisingly it was owned by the Vue sur la Lune restaurant itself. Was it a subsidiary?

Likely.

But Steven was still more concerned about Cynthia herself. She simply had to go, otherwise… that would be the end. The end of his business.

"The more you hate her, the more you'll love her!" Martine teased. "This is an example of love-hate relationships! These kinds are rare, and they're classic! Come on, boss…"

"Argh! Martine!" Steven glared. "I'm not in love with her! She's crippling the business! If this goes on, we won't be able to generate sufficient revenue. I'll have to close the restaurant and you won't get your paycheque. Isn't it obvious to hate a woman like her?!"

The 19-year old laughed, as she fixed her blouse and tie.

"I told you," Martine said, and completely disregarded the business talking. "If you hate her, you love her. It's a love-hate relationship, boss. There's no way around that."

She loved the reaction that appeared on her boss' face. How Steven would convince his youngest employee that it was a matter of business and not relationships was beyond him.

Martine Grenadine did manage to drag her boss out of the restaurant after all...

Well, there goes the economics lesson!

More macarons up for grabs! Review and get some!

I also told my economics professor today (Nov 6) about this very fanfic I was writing, and she was impressed by the idea. She even asked if Steven and Cynthia would end up together!

According to Martine Grenadine, they must!