What Was Truly Necessary
Baek Wontae had given the Dang siblings a taste of luxurious living, and had even helped the Dang family’s eldest son in some measure with his agonizing love life.
The siblings wolfed down the feast before them as if possessed by a starving ghost, picked out fine clothes they had never worn in their lives, and spent the night market enjoying every bit of fun they could find.
Watching all of that, Baek Wontae smiled.
He felt a strange vicarious satisfaction from their happiness.
It was all, purely and simply, for the siblings.
Ironically, he had done nothing for himself.
It wasn’t merely because he was a modern man, and the wonders of this age no longer seemed wondrous to him.
Because Baek Wontae was the sort of man who had never once found happiness or pleasure in anything that benefited only himself.
On the contrary, it was the negative things in other people’s lives—their falls, their despair, their mistakes, their ruin—that sent a shiver of delight up from the very depths of his heart.
That was Baek Wontae.
He knew better than anyone what kind of person he was.
Which was why, even he found it a little unfamiliar that he was now feeling satisfied just from watching the siblings enjoy themselves.
Have I always been capable of feeling this too?
At any rate, he had already saved up half the contract payment.
He had weathered several crises and accumulated a fair amount of credit along the way.
Even he had to admit he’d earned a little breathing room.
And there was something else Baek Wontae wanted to try once he had room to breathe.
Something that rarely sparked his pure curiosity.
Namely—
* * *
“Ihwa, is the lye ready?”
Ihwa carefully took the bucket out of the extractor.
Inside, the lye was a heavy, damp gray.
Baek Wontae poured half of it into another bowl, then cracked the raw egg he’d set aside.
Plop.
The egg sank to the bottom, and the yolk slowly rose before stopping around the middle.
“Good. Alkalinity’s right.”
He muttered it under his breath, then brought over the lump of fat he had gathered from the meat he’d roasted yesterday.
“Ten parts lye, seven parts fat.”
A razor-sharp ratio, with not a hair out of place.
He put the ingredients into the pot and lit the fire.
A little later, smoke began to curl up, and the mixture started to bubble.
As the reaction took hold, the solution turned a milky white.
Baek Wontae rubbed a pinch of salt between his fingers and sprinkled it in.
Then he kept stirring with the spatula.
Once it had thickened enough, he brought over a small wooden mold.
He poured the hot mixture in slowly.
After setting the mold in the shade, he waited for it to cool.
When some time had passed, Baek Wontae muttered as he took the mold apart.
“Please come out well….”
Once the wooden mold was dismantled—
A firm, milky-white hexagonal block emerged.
A thing no one here had ever seen before.
Ihwa poked the white lump with her fingertip, then tilted her head.
“This is… Baekhyang?”
Baek Wontae let out a dumbfounded snort.
“Anything white I make is Baekhyang to you?”
“Then what is it?”
At that question—
Something in Baek Wontae’s mind sparked.
An instinctive line of dialogue, boiling up on its own.
As a bookworm who had devoured every novel and book he could get his hands on, it was the number-one line a modern person who had fallen into another world could never resist, according to Forbes.
Baek Wontae drew in a breath.
All at once, he raised his tone to something solemn and grand.
“Ahhh—this is called soap.”
Ihwa frowned slightly at that.
“…Your way of talking is weird.”
Baek Wontae smirked and waved a hand.
“If you were me, you wouldn’t have been able to hold back either.”
He placed the small white block in Ihwa’s palm.
Ihwa blinked at the unfamiliar texture.
“Soap…?”
That was understandable.
This world did have some concept of cleansing agents, but the little that existed amounted to lye, or the juice of certain plant stems and fruits, and nothing more.
It was only natural that this form was a first for her.
Baek Wontae began his little lecture.
“When the hydroxide ions in the lye break down the ester bonds in the fat, saponification happens. Then you get glycerol and fatty acid metal salts, and what we call soap is the fatty acid metal salt—”
Ihwa’s eyes widened.
Then they began to spin.
“Es… gly…?”
He went on as if nothing were unusual.
“Glycerol. If you separate and refine it, it’s a valuable resource you can use in all kinds of ways.”
Ihwa looked as if steam might start coming out of her head.
“…I don’t understand a single word of that.”
Baek Wontae chuckled.
“Simple chemistry.”
One of his few hobbies and one of his few genuine interests—
was chemistry.
The thing that had kept his miserable life from collapsing entirely had been his own extraordinary brain.
He was smart.
So when he learned something, he grasped it almost instantly, and the mountains of knowledge in the world had become his only friends, his only family.
And among all of it—
the field that had made his heart beat fastest was the science of transformation.
Chemistry.
He had entered a top university as a chemistry major.
It had been a hellish college life with no value worth remembering beyond the academic side of things.
He had even earned a master’s degree.
And then he became the drug manufacturer who had shaken Korea, and then the whole world.
The process was a little heavily abbreviated…
But in any case, chemistry had been his life itself.
So even something as basic as this, something he’d had no reason to do in modern times, was fun when he could make it with his own hands.
Feels like I’ve become Paracelsus.
Things he never would have bothered with in the modern world, he now had to do himself in this one.
That fact only made it feel more moving.
Because he could feel, firsthand, just how magnificent it was to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Baek Wontae rolled the soap between his fingers, then said to Ihwa, whose eyes were shining with curiosity, “Now, go wash your hands with this and some water.”
He led her outside.
Using a ladle, he scooped water from the jar and carefully poured it over her hands.
Rushing down—
Ihwa kneaded the soap under the falling water, and when foam began to rise over her hands, she inhaled sharply.
“Ah…!”
A small exclamation.
Soft bubbles blooming in the palms of her hands.
She stared at them with sparkling eyes.
“I’ll show you something fun.”
He wet his own hands, then reached out and touched Ihwa’s hands.
More precisely, the soap on Ihwa’s hands.
At that instant—
“—!”
Ihwa jerked in surprise and flinched.
Her shoulders jumped, and she stepped back.
Baek Wontae laughed awkwardly and apologized.
“Ah, sorry. Men and women have to keep a proper distance, right?”
“Ah… no, it’s fine….”
Ihwa lowered her head.
As if trying to hide the redness blooming in her cheeks.
Her long lashes trembled.
Meanwhile, the man responsible for all this—Baek Wontae—casually rubbed his palms together, then formed a tiny circle with his thumb and forefinger.
Whoooosh—
Bubbles rose one by one, catching the sunlight and floating with a luminous sheen.
Red, blue, and yellow shimmered as they drifted slowly between the two of them.
Ihwa stared at the sight, dazed.
In her eyes, it was as if jade beads were floating through the air.
“Those are soap bubbles. The soap reduces water’s surface tension… no, never mind. Just enjoy it.”
The bubbles wavered in the air for a long moment, then—
Pop.
They burst quietly.
“All right, now let’s wash up.”
He poured water over Ihwa’s hands, where some foam still clung.
The white suds slipped away in streams.
“Rub your hands together. How does it feel?”
Ihwa carefully rubbed her palms together.
Squeak, squeak—
That stiff friction, without a trace of stickiness.
“It feels stiff… and clean, I think….”
Baek Wontae nodded.
“It really is clean.”
He held up the soap and continued, “With this, you can increase a person’s lifespan by twenty years.”
Ihwa went blank.
“…Huh? How? By eating it…?”
“No, don’t even think about it.”
He grimaced theatrically and waved his hand.
“I’ll make it simple. What kills most people is infection. Infection means germs invading the body, and germs are these tiny little living things you can’t even see with your eyes. Not all of them are bad, but… let’s just say they all are for now.”
Ihwa’s eyes went round.
“But most germs get into your body through your hands. When you eat with bare hands, or touch a wound with your fingers, or things like that. But if you wash your hands with soap?”
His voice rose gradually as he pointed at her hands.
“You felt that squeaky clean feeling just now, right? That’s because the soap scrubbed away all the oils left on your skin.”
He snapped his fingers.
“And germs cling to that greasy stuff too.”
Ihwa seemed to understand at last.
“So….”
“Right. If you just wash your hands properly, half the ways to die vanish.”
Ihwa looked at him in silence.
This man was truly a magician.
He had appeared out of nowhere and drawn the Dang family’s long-cherished wish, something that had seemed impossibly distant, into reach.
And with knowledge no one had ever heard of, he casually made one strange, wondrous thing after another.
On top of that—
the courage to stand against a Dang family warrior with no inner force to speak of.
The wit to get through countless crises.
He praised the sweat they shed, and at times rewarded them more than generously.
The moment she looked at that man—
Ihwa’s heart thudded for reasons she herself could not explain.
A question suddenly flickered through Ihwa’s mind.
If we could make money with this… wouldn’t that be better?
Soap saved people, while Baekhyang ruined them.
That simple contrast pricked at her conscience.
It was easy to make things that killed people, but hard to make things that saved them.
And Baek Wontae was a man who did that hard thing as if it were nothing.
And yet why was it still Baekhyang?
Baek Wontae shrugged.
“Hmm… at first I had swords swinging near my neck and blades flying at my head, so I didn’t exactly have time to think about making things like this.”
“I, I’m sorry about that… back then….”
Sweat gathered on her skin.
It had been for the family’s principles, but now she felt sorry.
“No. Back then, it couldn’t be helped.”
He brushed it off lightly.
But the question in Ihwa’s heart didn’t go away.
She spoke up again, more cautiously this time.
“Now… couldn’t you sell soap too? You have enough money to buy materials, and… I feel like this would sell to more people.”
Baek Wontae rolled the soap between his fingers for a long while and gave a light laugh.
He didn’t seem to be thinking very hard about it.
“Sure, maybe that’s true.”
Then he let out a dry sigh.
“But you know.”
He shrugged and shook his head slightly.
“I’m not all that interested in helping people I’ve never even met.”
Ihwa’s eyes wavered a little.
“And—”
He watched the bubbles forming in his hand and snorted.
“Baekhyang is easier to make, and it comes out in bigger quantities. It sells for more too.”
He tapped the soap lightly with his finger.
“Let’s just keep the good stuff like this for ourselves.”
It was so natural, so matter-of-fact, that the chill in those words could only be felt by Ihwa.
Baek Wontae turned away as if nothing had happened and disappeared into the refining room.
Creak—
The sound of the door closing.
Ihwa stood there for a long time, staring blankly after him.
Alien, cynical, impossible to understand.
And yet strangely—
her feelings hadn’t cooled at all.
Rather, even that side of him had simply been accepted as part of who he was.
* * *
One day.
In a corner of the refining room,
Baek Wontae picked up a lump of ore.
A pale, dull surface.
He asked Ihyeon, “Where did you dig this up?”
“From the cliffs near the Dang family compound. Why?”
Baek Wontae shut his eyes tight and searched his memory.
There was definitely a place in China where this was produced in huge quantities. If I assume it’s similar here….
After comparing the countless scraps of information in his head, he reached a conclusion.
Magnesite.
The corner of Baek Wontae’s mouth curved coldly upward.
Yeah… this is it.
It would be very useful for a plan he had later on.
“Ihyeon.”
“Yeah?”
“How much of this is there?”
“Not much. It’s not a mineral we use often….”
Baek Wontae snapped his fingers.
“Go dig up more. A lot more.”
Ihyeon looked blank, but he grabbed a pickaxe at once and ran outside.
A little later, enough magnesite to fill a basket was piled up before them.
Baek Wontae nodded in satisfaction.
He even called over Ihwa.
“To the smithy!”
The three of them headed for the forge.
Inside was the furnace and pump Baek Wontae had personally modified.
“We’ll need two people here for the twin pulley system.”
“Don’t call it that.”
The siblings shot back in unison.
So they really were siblings.
“All right, all right, ignore the details. First, light the fire. Very hot.”
Ihyeon and Ihwa moved without a word.
As they fed kindling into the furnace and put their hands on the pump handles—
Kwoooaaah—!
The flames surged upward.
The special pump, which not even Ihyeon’s monstrous strength nor Ihwa’s lightning speed could break, was a masterpiece Baek Wontae and Ihyeon had finished after staying up several nights in a row.
Baek Wontae immediately placed the earthenware pot containing the ore into the blaze.
“First step is calcination.”
A little later, he pulled the pot from the furnace.
Inside it, instead of pale ore, there was now a brown lump.
Magnesia remained.
Next he piled coal on top and shoved it back into the furnace.
“More—need more heat!”
The siblings worked the pump again.
The muscles in both their arms swelled hard.
Smoke rose from the top of the furnace.
Baek Wontae nodded.
“Good… here it comes.”
He used tongs to lift a cold iron plate and hold it in the smoke.
“Done.”
The siblings, breathless, let go of the pump.
Ihyeon stared at the white powder on the iron plate in Baek Wontae’s hand.
“What is that?”
“Magnesium.”
“That doesn’t help.”
Baek Wontae laughed and carefully, very carefully, shook the powder into a small jar.
“It’s for something good.”