The Necessity of Leisure (2)
A few hours later.
‘I wish someone would just tell me this is all a dream.’
Aiden couldn't believe his eyes.
Drinking cups were scattered everywhere.
The plates looked as if a swarm of locusts had swept through them.
People were completely plastered, arms slung over each other’s shoulders, singing folk songs as if they had become a single, inseparable mass.
“Do I really have to clean this up, too?”
This was the single biggest reason he had hated company dinners in his past life.
The cleanup.
Having to round up people spouting nonsense like, “The fourth round is karaoke!”, shoving them into taxis, sending them to saunas, and even booking motel rooms for those who had completely lost their senses—
‘I never thought I’d have to do this work, which has zero productivity, all over again.’
The evening was already coming to a close, marking the end of the second round. For the first time since starting his second life, Aiden felt the true, crushing weight of exhaustion.
“You’ve arrived, Administrative Officer!”
“……”
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
“…Why are you perfectly fine?”
“Pardon?”
The next day. Aiden arrived at work and was utterly bewildered.
“The other staff, too—why do you all look so fine? After the chaos you caused yesterday?”
Yesterday had turned into a full-scale banquet for the entire Lord’s Castle. It was a night of madness where they hadn't just polished off all the alcohol brought in to be sold at the market, but also consumed a significant portion of the jars fermented by every household in the village.
Naturally, when he opened his eyes this morning, he had thought, ‘Work won’t get done properly today, will it?’
He expected gaps everywhere as people collapsed from hangovers.
“Ayy, we didn’t drink that much.”
“?”
“If a guy were to be hindered by work after drinking just that much, he wouldn’t be able to call himself a true Northerner anywhere. Heh heh.”
Jamie puffed out his chest, looking proud. There truly wasn't a single trace of a hangover on his face.
“…Have you… arrived…?”
“Ah, you scared me!”
Behind the boisterous Jamie, a familiar face appeared. It was Kalisa, looking like a zombie with dark circles under her eyes and deathly pale skin.
“…I thought you said Northerners were fine? Is Kalisa the exception because she’s a woman?”
“Ayy, Kalisa isn’t from the North, Administrative Officer.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“I’ve told you several times that I’m from the capital. Did you not hear me?”
Had she? Now that she mentioned it, it felt like he might have heard it. However, he had always considered a colleague’s hometown a private matter, so he had let it go in one ear and out the other, which was likely why he couldn't remember. He was, after all, a wonderful boss who respected his subordinates' privacy.
“Anyway, you’ve had a rough time getting dragged into the Northerners’ antics.”
“It’s not… Ugh…!”
“…Drink some water, water.”
“…Yes.”
“Ask the chef to make you some honey water. You’ll feel better after that.”
It seemed the Commercial Development Department would be the only one failing to function properly today.
‘This style of company dinner really won’t work.’
Aiden still shuddered at the thought of yesterday, where everything he hated from his past life—the forced toasts, the explosive cocktails—had appeared exactly as they were.
“Leisure, leisure…”
Some might say it was too early for such things. They might argue that when people were barely scraping by, focusing on leisure would only hinder development.
‘But that’s not how human life works.’
Society isn’t a game. This was something Aiden, a fan of management simulations, had realized the moment he first became a civil servant.
Sometimes, maximizing efficiency isn't necessarily the right answer. That’s because people aren’t machines.
‘You can’t live working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week just because life is tough.’
Perhaps the Northerners were quite similar to the Koreans of his past life. To be precise, not the MZ generation of the 21st century, but the generation slightly above them—the generation that spent their youth in a developing South Korea where life was a constant struggle.
‘The purpose of a company dinner is ultimately to strengthen team cohesion and improve intimacy among members.’
So why did they drink until they lost their senses at barbecue restaurants every single day? At the very least, Aiden thought this:
‘They just didn’t know any other way.’
An era of rapid economic growth. Adults who lived through an age where they would be left behind if they didn’t work themselves to the bone. Perhaps they were never given the time to explore what they enjoyed through various leisure activities.
‘Drinking is efficient in that regard.’
It only takes a few hours, you don’t have to go far, and for a few tens of thousands of won per person, you can use the alcohol to loosen your tongue and pour out your inner thoughts. It’s definitely cost-effective in that sense.
“Jamie!”
“Yes!”
“Make a report and submit it right now.”
“A report?”
“A proposal for improving leisure life tailored to Northern living.”
“……?”
“With the drinking culture from yesterday and everything, if we leave it like this, they’ll keep looking for alcohol every chance they get.”
“Ayy, how many times a year do we even have company dinners like that?”
“That may be true now, but what if life becomes more comfortable in the future?”
“Well, that’s…”
“It will become increasingly frequent.”
This was dangerous. A society riddled with alcoholism? ‘Especially in a place where even children who aren’t adults yet face no restrictions on drinking a few beers, it’s problematic if leisure always ends in alcohol.’
Aiden pushed forward.
“It’ll be too late if we start after the problems are discovered. We have to change the direction before that.”
“Yes, sir.”
Seeing Aiden’s serious expression, Jamie realized that his boss, who simply hated alcohol, wasn't just being difficult for no reason.
“Let’s not think too grandly about improving leisure life. There are a thousand places where money is needed, so we can’t spend too much.”
And then, an idea flashed through his mind.
“While we’re at it, I’d like it to be something that allows the villages that have newly joined the North to naturally blend in with the existing ones.”
The North was highly insular, village by village. It was clear that the various villages that hadn't even been registered in the census until now had almost no sense of homogeneity.
‘That won’t do.’
They needed something that could bind the scattered villages together under the name of the "North." It was a task of creating a sense of national identity.
Meanwhile, in the central village of the North, where the Lord’s Castle was located.
“This is a cultivation calendar?”
Something that looked more like a picture diary than a calendar—with more drawings than text, since many were illiterate—had appeared in front of the village warehouse.
“When to plant rye, when to harvest barley, that sort of thing?”
“Well, that’s all common knowledge.”
“Really? You really know all of it?”
“No, I’ve been farming for years, do you think I wouldn’t know that?”
“Do you really know how to grow parsnips?”
“Th-that’s…”
“And red currants? Watercress? Chard? Really?”
“Ahem!”
“Hehehe.”
Some neighbors giggled, joking about who knew what, but a few stood silently, staring at the calendar, lost in thought. Babe was one of them.
‘Marjoram, huh… I think I saw the trading post buying that.’
The newly established trading post bought and sold various items, and since they made the purchase prices public to everyone, he had dropped by a few times just for fun. It was a sort of window shopping.
He didn’t have anything to sell right away, and even less money to buy, but he found it interesting to look at the various goods and their prices. Among them, the one that caught his interest was the herbs.
“…They said the Lord’s Castle is renting out land at a low price. Should I try growing some there?”
“Grow what?”
“Marjoram. My mother used to grow some, and I have some seeds saved.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. I think it might still sprout. If I remember correctly, it grew quite well. Well, it died in the winter because it couldn’t handle the cold, but if it flowers in the summer and I save the seeds, I think I could grow it again next year.”
“Then why don’t you give it a try? Herbs are specialty crops, so the price is decent, too.”
“That’s true. But who…?”
Babe, the farmer, turned around, realizing only then that the voice agreeing with him didn’t belong to anyone he knew. Standing there was a slender, black-haired man who didn’t look like a Northerner at all.
“A-A-Administrative Officer, sir!”
It was Aiden.
“I came to see if the calendars were distributed properly, and I’ve met the first tenant of the Lord’s Castle’s farmland. Nice to meet you.”
“Ah, y-yes, yes!”
“So, how much land are you thinking of? If it’s herbs, I don’t think you’d need that much. Are you not thinking of planting other crops as well?”
“Ah, th-that is…”
Babe’s eyes darted around, unable to settle.
‘Is it decided this easily?!’
It was true that he had briefly felt the urge to grow the herb called marjoram. However, for a farmer, changing crops wasn't an easy decision.
“I originally grow rye, sir. I was interested in marjoram farming, but that was just interest, and what I was actually going to do was…”
“Oh, come on, the rent is practically non-existent, so what’s the problem? Looking at you, your arms are as strong as my adjutant’s, so I don’t think there would be any issue with growing a small herb patch while farming rye.”
“Ah, I am strong, but…”
Babe couldn't help but grin at the compliment about his muscles. Aiden had learned that complimenting Northern men on their muscles was a surefire way to get halfway through any conversation.
“Still, sir, no matter how low the rent is, what if I work hard on the farming for a year and there’s no one to buy it?”
“That’s why the trading post exists, isn’t it?”
“Oh…?”
The farmer stood still for a long time, calculating back and forth as if a switch had been flipped.
‘Right, the trading post!’
Hadn't the whole reason he became interested in marjoram been because he saw the purchase price at the trading post?
‘Th-then… if I rent farmland from the Lord’s Castle at a low price, plant marjoram, harvest it, and sell it at the trading post…’
The man shuddered.
“I-I’ll do it! I want to rent the farmland, sir! P-please, please rent it to me!”
The neighbors, faced with their friend’s sudden plea, could only blink in confusion, wondering what on earth was going on.