It’s Apparently Legal
The next day.
The girl’s mother woke up early and bustled about. The atmosphere in the house was different from usual, but the child didn’t dislike it.
“Mom, how do I look? Is this okay?”
“Yes, you look beautiful!”
Unlike the days when she did odd jobs, her mother had put on the cleanest clothes she owned and had even dampened her hair to smooth it down.
“Mom, where are you going?”
“I’m going to learn how to do my job starting today.”
“Then I’ll go play at the village chief’s house!”
Seeing her mother looking a bit excited, the child felt her own spirits lift as well. There is one thing adults sometimes forget: children are incredibly sensitive to the moods of their parents. If the parents are happy, children will giggle at the smallest things. Conversely, if the guardian’s mood sinks, children will read the room and quietly play in a corner, pretending not to exist.
The girl’s mother felt her heart ache as she realized it had been a long time since she’d seen her young daughter smile.
‘I have to do well.’
She vowed and vowed again that she would not let this opportunity slip away.
The people who had visited yesterday, introducing themselves as administrators from the “Livelihood Support Department,” had told her that she had been designated as an emergency relief recipient and would be provided with firewood and food. Furthermore, they had offered her a job at the inn that had opened alongside the trading post.
— I will do it, please let me do it! I beg you, sir!
The girl’s mother slowly pressed her lips to her worn-out necklace. She remembered her husband, who had left the house on a snowy day, saying he would go hunting, and never returned. Now, she would be the one to protect her daughter.
The Administrative Welfare Center had officially opened. The lower-level officials no longer reported to the first floor of the Lord’s Castle but to the Administrative Welfare Center, and it had become natural for residents to head there first whenever they had questions or needed something.
“I do miss the communal cafeteria.”
“Brikal, that man looked like he could beat a bear to death with his bare hands, but his cooking was truly something else.”
Of course, the Lord’s Castle chef didn’t just look like he could beat a bear to death—he actually did—but regardless.
Aiden had, of course, built a cafeteria in the Administrative Welfare Center as well. He had also built a snack bar and a tea house. Since residents visited frequently and outsiders often moved between the trading post and the Administrative Welfare Center to process documents, there was a practical reason for them, too. However, unlike in the modern world, the prices were kept at a reasonable level.
The officials were quite disappointed because the Lord’s Castle cafeteria had originally been free, but Aiden was firm.
— No more. You’ve been receiving your salaries regularly without any delays. By now, you should have put out the immediate fires and stabilized your economic situation, so go buy your own meals.
They said that even in university hospitals, if you lined up the profit margins by department, the funeral home, the cafeteria, and the snack bar would take first, second, and third place.
“Are there still a lot of complaints?”
Aiden had come out to check for himself after Jamie reported that the training for all the Livelihood Support Department officials was finished. Before heading to the department inspection, he first checked on how the welfare center officials were doing these days.
“The atmosphere is that they are slowly accepting it now.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. To begin with, working at the Lord’s Castle was only temporary. It seems everyone thought the free lunch at the castle was just the Administrative Officer’s consideration. Also, the quality of the food at the cafeteria is quite good for the price. Since we provide a monthly menu as you instructed, some officials even pack their own lunches on days when the menu features something they don’t like.”
“It seems to be running better than I thought.”
Fortunately, the backlash didn’t seem to be very large. He would have to save the profits earned from the cafeteria, snack bar, and tea house, as he had other uses for them.
“Would you like to try lunch at the cafeteria later? Or should I have it delivered?”
“Is there a lot of delivery around here, too?”
“Of course. This has developed quite a bit as well.”
Jamie grinned and held up a booklet.
“What is this?”
Something very familiar caught Aiden’s eye.
‘It’s a delivery booklet, isn’t it?’
A relic of the millennium, pushed into extinction by new-age innovations like Delivery of the Nation or Coupang Eats. A delivery booklet. Would the MZ generation these days even know what this is? It was a literal gourmet map where local restaurants pooled their money to create a booklet and distributed it to nearby residential complexes and offices.
“It seems there are even people who specialize in drawing these up now.”
“That’s fast.”
“Hehe. As soon as the autumn harvest ended, quite a few places selling snacks popped up. Even if they can’t run a full-scale food business, it seems those with talent in the neighborhood are making a few things here and there to jump into it as a side job. The response from officials working overtime and travelers staying at the inn next to the trading post is good.”
“Are the prices reasonable?”
“Of course. Would you like to try one?”
As if he had been waiting, Jamie pulled a paper bag from his chest. What came out looked like a flat piece of dough fried in oil; on the outside, it looked exactly like a hotteok. He had no idea why that was being pulled out of his chest.
“What is this?”
He took a bite, expecting a nostalgic, sweet taste, but—
“Huh?”
What he felt in his mouth was savory, seasoned chicken. In other words, it was a type of meat pie.
“There are a lot of houses raising chickens these days, you see. Hehe.”
“Ah.”
It wasn’t the taste he had expected, but this, too, seemed to have its own demand.
“It looks like things are running well enough here.”
“Shall we go straight to the office? The folks in my Livelihood Support Department must all be waiting for the Administrative Officer to arrive.”
“I have work to do; why would they be waiting for me?”
“Hehe. Still, everyone will be energized if the Administrative Officer encourages them in person.”
That probably wasn’t true. Aiden shook his head inwardly. What low-level official would welcome a high-ranking person coming in, acting all dignified with, “Ho ho, you’re working hard. But what is this?” and rummaging through the office?
‘It’s just a waste of time cleaning up for no reason.’
Still, now that he was in the position of that “high-ranking person,” he was curious. He wanted to check if the new department was running well, and he wanted to see the faces of the people who had been selected.
“Still, let’s go see something important before that.”
“Something important?”
“The civil complaints office.”
“Ah. That’s over there.”
Aiden nodded and pulled his robe back over his head. He was worried that if someone recognized him in the civil complaints office, where lower-level officials and residents were mixed together, and someone suddenly started bowing, it would turn into a chaotic mess.
‘It’s a big problem because there are so many people who try to bow the moment they see me these days.’
Ever since he had encountered people kneeling on dirt and snow without hesitation a few times, Aiden had decided not to leave the Lord’s Castle without his robe.
The civil complaints office was larger than he had expected. Since land was the one thing they had in abundance, they had built the welfare center on a large scale from the start, and while the second floor was divided into offices for various departments, the first floor consisted almost entirely of convenience facilities and the civil complaints office.
“Yes, yes. So, this is the third child born this time?”
“The third, ah, that’s right. Congratulations!”
“Thank you, sir. Hahaha! I... I heard you give out birth gifts.”
“Ah, an investigator will be going out soon. We’ll confirm it then, and the birth gift will be sent out.”
Good news reached his ears as soon as he entered. An increase in population was always good news.
‘Should I listen a little more?’
Aiden’s footsteps stopped. The joy overflowing from the face of a father who had just seen his youngest daughter seemed to make everyone around him feel happy as well.
“Have you decided on a name?”
“It’s Amy. Amy Haunter.”
“Haunter? Aren’t you the father of the child?”
“That’s right, but?”
“But the father doesn’t have a surname on the family register—?”
“Ah, I haven’t had one until now, but I’m planning to make one and use it starting next year. Is that not allowed?”
“Uh... I don’t think there’s a law against it, but...”
“Then please make it for me.”
“Well, go ahead then. You’ve all decided that the family will use the surname ‘Haunter,’ right? You have to be careful, because if this changes, you won’t be recognized as a family.”
“Yes, of course. Hehehe.”
However, the conclusion, which should have been heartwarming, was a bit strange.
‘Is this right?’
While he was feeling confused, another conversation reached him.
“Yes, yes. Marriage. We held the ceremony the day before yesterday.”
This time, it seemed to be about a marriage. The bride had flushed cheeks, and the groom also seemed to be unable to stop himself from smiling.
“Here, I’ve also brought the village chief’s certificate.”
“Hmm. It matches.”
“Then, for the bride, Ms. Mary, I’d like to move her family register from her maiden home to her husband’s side—.”
“Ah, actually, about moving the family register. About that, the husband is going to move his register to my maiden home.”
“Pardon?”
“My husband has decided to come and live at my maiden home. That’s okay, right?”
“...Uh... There’s no law saying it’s not allowed, so I suppose it’s possible.”
“Then please do that!”
“Have you both reached an agreement?”
“Of course.”
“Yes, I understand. Then I will move the husband, Mr. Tom’s, family register—, and, uh, also—.”
This, too, was not exactly standard.
“Is it normal to just whip up a family name and freely move family registers between spouses?”
“Isn’t there no law saying it’s not allowed?”
Jamie chuckled, saying, “It’s not illegal, so what’s the problem?” and at that, Aiden also thought, ‘Is that so?’
He felt it once again: the laws in this neighborhood weren’t exactly systematic or tight. Since it was fundamentally a class-based society, even if laws existed, he wondered if it was because, the moment something like insulting the nobility or the imperial family, or treason was involved, a kind of “crime of hurting someone’s feelings” took precedence over all other laws.
‘The Lord decides the verdicts however he wants, anyway.’
If it were theft, it would be imprisonment for up to 6 years or a fine of up to 10 million won; if it were special violence, it would be imprisonment for up to 5 years or a fine of up to 10 million won. Because nothing was clearly codified like that, it was a case of “if you hang it on your nose, it’s a nose ring; if you hang it on your ear, it’s an earring.”
‘Thanks to that, I’m using all the prisoners in the underground dungeon as unpaid labor, though.’
He had no intention of tearing it all down. He didn’t have the ability to, either. Law is a social agreement, and the fact that the laws in this neighborhood were so loose must be the order this society had promised in its own way. It wasn’t something he could touch with his shallow knowledge of how the 21st century was, or what the rule of law was.
“Should I tell them to stop it at the civil complaints office if it doesn’t look good?”
“No, forget it. Why go that far?”
So, Aiden decided to let it slide. In truth, whatever a family decided to name themselves was their own business, not something for others to gossip about.
‘It’s not like only nobles can have surnames.’
Even he was a commoner, yet he had the surname “Blackwood.”
“To avoid confusion with other families, make sure they can’t use the same ones. The same goes for the surnames of nobles in other regions. You have the noble family dictionary, right?”
“Yes. I will pass that on. Then, what about moving the family register between spouses—?”
“If they’ve both agreed to it, let them do what they want. It’s ridiculous for others to interfere in a couple’s business.”
“Hehe. That is true as well.”
Even then, Aiden didn’t know. What kind of repercussions this decision would cause.