The Bureaucrat by Nature
Whoosh-.
It was the tail end of March, but the weather in the North remained biting.
The shaded areas where the sun couldn't reach were still packed with unmelted snow, and the poorly maintained dirt roads had frozen and thawed so many times they were essentially sheets of ice.
“I’m going to freeze to death, I’m actually going to freeze to death!”
A man walked along the desolate road, his body hunched over against the skin-piercing wind.
“Is this really supposed to be spring? Damn this snow!”
After endless grumbling, his feet finally brought him to a remote shack that looked like it had been thrown together on a whim.
“...Whew.”
The man let out a deep sigh in front of it.
At a glance, the shack didn't look like it could block out the North’s brutal cold at all.
Still, he had a job to do.
Knock, knock-.
“Is anyone home?”
As he cleared his throat and called out to the owner,
Creeeak-.
“...Who is it?”
The door opened.
*Gulp.*
The owner was a man who stood nearly two meters tall, a giant of a man who was, quite literally, like a boulder. His beard was coarse, his hands gripping the wooden door were thick, and his gaze was fierce enough that one might mistake him for a wild beast.
“I asked who you are.”
“Ah, ah! I’m the new administrative officer assigned to the Lord’s Castle. You can call me Aiden.”
“...The Lord’s Castle? Ah! I heard a new manager-lord had arrived. But what brings you here? And are you really an administrative officer?”
The owner’s eyes narrowed.
He was bristling in anticipation, worried that this might be about taxes.
It was called the Lord’s Castle, but there was no actual lord. Unless they were insane, what noble would take the barren North—devoid of resources and population—as their territory and try to develop it?
It was said that a few noble families had been granted the North as a fiefdom, whether by choice or by force, over the last two hundred years, but reality was never that easy. Even though nobles were the type to have their eyes bloodshot for land, once they experienced the North—a bottomless pit where you just kept pouring in money—they would all return it to the Emperor with a submissive bow.
Nevertheless, the Lord’s Castle without a lord had to keep running somehow. The Emperors of the Empire did not want the size of their empire to shrink by even an inch, no matter how desolate the North might be.
In the end, administrative officers were dispatched to the North in place of nobles, but,
—Go to the North? What on earth did I do to deserve this...!
—I’d rather resign and go back to my hometown than go to the North!
—How many years have I served with loyalty, and what? A Northern administrative officer? That son of a—!
The North was, quite literally, a graveyard for administrative officers.
‘Is this like being assigned to a remote mountain village in the 21st century?’
In the 21st century, even if you were assigned to a remote area, you’d have internet and could receive deliveries, but this romanticized otherworld wasn't like that, so maybe it was a bit different?
That’s right. Aiden, the ill-fated administrative officer who came to the North. The one sitting inside that body was a worker of the state who had flown in from 21st-century South Korea.
In other words, he was a reincarnated 9th-grade civil servant.
“I asked what you came here for.”
“Ah...!”
The owner’s voice turned hostile. He had been a bit intimidated by the title of 'administrative officer,' but after glancing around and seeing not a single soldier accompanying him, he started having other thoughts.
‘If he tries to make me pay taxes with some absurd sophistry again...’
Veins bulged on the back of the thick hand gripping the door. It looked like he was contemplating whether to give this 'Administrative Officer' a taste of his own medicine if he caused trouble.
Administrative officers who came to the Lord’s Castle without a lord usually fell into two categories. The losers who lamented their fate of being banished to the frontier and stayed holed up in the castle drinking, or the vermin who, believing in their petty administrative authority, dreamed of becoming corrupt officials in a North where neither law nor order was properly established.
The former usually struggled with depression and became wrecks, while the latter, for some reason, kept disappearing. The central government assumed the officers kept disappearing because they had run off with money extorted from the Northerners, but the truth was anyone’s guess.
‘Should I just say a wolf took him?’
So the owner thought. It hadn't even been three months since he paid his taxes, so if this guy tried to make up some strange new tax and force it on him, he’d make sure to create the cause of death with his own two hands.
“It’s for the census.”
“...What census?”
But the words that came out of this administrative officer, Aiden, were unexpected.
“What is your family composition? According to the existing documents, there were a husband, wife, and three children.”
Since he wasn't asking for money he didn't have, the owner’s expression softened slightly. The veins on the hand gripping the door retreated quietly back under his skin.
“Four.”
“Pardon?”
“The children. My youngest was born five years ago.”
“...Five years. Ha, damn it.”
The black-haired man who identified himself as an administrative officer muttered like a machine gun,
“Figures, this damn administrative processing! What? Five years ago? Has the census not been updated once in all that time? What on earth have the guys who came here until now been doing?”
He scribbled something down while muttering, then turned back to the owner with a professional smile and continued his questioning.
“Could you also tell me what kind of work your family members do?”
“Why that?”
“Well, such a survey is essential if we want to carry out various administrative projects in the North.”
At the administrative officer’s tone, which was confusingly kind yet not quite kind, the owner answered as if bewitched.
“...I am a hunter. My wife does the housework, and my first and second sons learn hunting from me or gather wood.”
“And the third?”
“That one is still too young to do anything.”
“Aha. Then, since the first and second are still learning, I suppose we can’t consider them hunters yet, right?”
“Of course. They can barely knock down a few deer, so I have to keep an eye on them for a while longer if I want to raise them as hunters.”
“?”
Aiden paused.
‘Wait, if they knock down deer, aren't they already hunters?’
Does this town require a separate hunting license or something?
‘Well. Maybe. I should re-read the administrative law books when I get back to the Lord’s Castle.’
A 21st-century civil servant is this rational.
“Is there anyone in your family who can read or write numbers?”
“I can barely write my own name.”
“And you don’t have any other skills?”
“Skills?”
“It doesn’t have to be anything grand.”
“...I do the leather tanning after I catch the prey.”
“Oh! Tanning. That’s good. Anything else?”
“What else would there be?”
“The clothes you’re wearing now look quite excellent. Did you make them yourself?”
“My wife made them.”
The cheeks of the man, who was subtly showing off his deer-hide vest, turned a little red. Unlike his appearance, he seemed to be quite the doting husband.
“It’s not just because she’s my wife, but she’s famous in our village for being good at making clothes.”
“Oho.”
Aiden kept up the enthusiastic response while writing incessantly.
‘I need data to handle any kind of work.’
He hadn't felt much confusion after waking up in his new body. A civil servant over there, an administrative officer over here. Even if the titles and tasks were slightly different, the fundamental essence was the same.
‘Living off the state’s money and managing the local economy—what does it matter if I’m a 9th-grade official or a Lord’s acting administrative officer?’
For a management simulation otaku who spent all his time playing nothing but tycoon games, this otherworld—somewhere between barbarism and romance—actually suited his tastes better than the 21st century, where all sorts of red tape and jurisdictional issues constantly got in the way.
It felt like he had actually stepped into one of the tycoon games he used to play to death.
“Hum, hum~!”
Naturally, his steps were light as he returned after finishing the village census he had planned for the day.
“I make the proposals~. I sign the approvals~. I do the work myself~!”
If his former colleagues from his past life had seen him, they would have looked at him with eyes full of pity, thinking, ‘He’s finally lost his mind,’ but seeing a madman through the lens of reason doesn't make him any more understandable.
“Is it farming first, then?”
He didn't know if they had rice in this town, but rice farming was probably out of the question anyway due to the cold weather.
“Beans?”
He’d heard that the original home of the soybean was Manchuria, so that might work.
Whoosh-.
“Ah, damn it!”
Aiden’s head might have been in the clouds, but there was one thing: he just couldn't get used to this damn Northern cold.
“Should I build an ondol first?”
It’s an isekai cliché, that is. If you build an ondol, you get that, “Whoa!” reaction.
“...Hold that thought.”
In a town that was dirt poor and didn't have a single proper builder, an ondol was out of the question.
“First, I need to organize this!”
Aiden was happy with the stack of documents he held tightly to his chest.
...People always find happiness in different places, after all.