Business Meeting (2)
“Is that the name of a village?”
“Buy only from the common merchants and pharmacies in the places listed there. Don’t so much as make contact with any other trading house, farm, or apothecary.”
“That’s awfully restrictive.”
“And absolutely do nothing that will draw attention. Especially anything that might make the Dang Clan suspicious—make sure there isn’t even the slightest chance of that.”
Baek Wontae folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket.
“That’s going to put some limits on supply, though...”
Something had been nagging at him, so he asked it outright.
“Just one question. When you say we can’t stand out... is that related to revenge? I’ve been wondering since before—what does this have to do with the Dang Clan? Isn’t this place Dang Clan territory too?”
“It’s a family matter. None of your concern. Just be careful not to attract attention.”
“Ah, right.”
He moved on to the next topic.
“Next is manpower. Do you know what the most important thing in a business like this is?”
“Well... laborers?”
“The muscle, that’s what.”
The siblings tilted their heads.
“Muscle?”
Baek Wontae clenched a fist and held it up.
“This.”
The siblings’ expressions wavered.
They could guess what he meant.
“When a new product sweeps the market, the bastards who don’t like it come swarming in. What do you need then? The guys stirring up trouble, trying to sabotage you, getting in your way... you need the force to handle them.”
His gaze moved back and forth between the two siblings.
“Assuming the clan head stays off the front line, the two of you will be handling the violence. So how strong are you?”
The siblings didn’t answer right away.
They had spent years training, but they’d never actually fought real martial artists from the jianghu.
At best, they’d sparred with each other—or with their father.
It was hard to say exactly where their skills stood.
Dang Hogyeom spoke up.
“I guarantee the strength of those two children.”
His eyes turned to his son.
“Hyeon is so strong that even in the Dang Clan, it would be hard to find someone who could match him. Among his generation in the jianghu, he already possesses top-tier talent. If he had been raised and taught in our main house, he would by now be counted among the very best of the rising generation.”
Then he shifted his gaze to his daughter.
“And Ihwa has a different sort of talent from her brother. In speed alone, she has already surpassed Hyeon. Her gyeonggong is without rival. But that is not all. She, too, has the makings of one of the rising generation.”
Baek Wontae recalled the first day he’d fallen into this forest.
Her footsteps had been silent as she came crashing down on him from behind.
No wonder I didn’t sense a thing in the forest.
Dang Hogyeom let out a sigh.
“Still, my teachings were lacking, and I was unable to fully bring out the children’s potential. That remains my greatest regret.”
“Please don’t say that.”
Dang Ihyeon shook his head.
“No matter where we learned or what we learned, we wouldn’t have grown any more than we did under your instruction.”
Dang Ihwa quietly nodded in agreement.
Baek Wontae watched them.
The bonds of family, the trust they gave each other.
His face slowly hardened.
“...Seeing a family get along so well...”
His words trailed off.
The Dang family looked at Baek Wontae, who had gone quiet.
It was strange.
His eyes had gone unfocused, his lips had stiffened, and the shadow over his face looked ominous.
Sensing something was off, Dang Ihyeon asked, “What’s wrong?”
Baek Wontae blinked hard and snapped himself back to reality.
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
“Nothing.”
He forced a smile.
“It’s nice. ...Then I guess we’re not exactly lacking anything.”
He exhaled and continued.
“Last thing is the market. We need places to sell, and we need intermediaries to move the product. Do you have any connections?”
Dang Ihyeon answered, “I’ve done plenty of odd jobs in the villages around Heokryeonhyang and in the nearby cities. I know quite a few people.”
“Good. Then... do you know anyone on the pleasure-quarter side?”
“......”
The question had come out so abruptly that the whole Dang family froze.
Baek Wontae stopped for a moment too.
To be honest, he hadn’t expected much.
He’d tried imagining this family in connection with the word “pleasure quarter,” but even with the world’s best logic, he couldn’t make the answer appear.
I’m gonna have to hustle this part myself...
Then, unexpectedly, someone else spoke up.
“...I do. There’s a city nearby, Hamwon, where there are a few pleasure houses.”
Thunk.
Everyone turned to look at Dang Ihyeon.
They stared at him with the suspicious eyes of rabbits who’d just discovered a hidden fox.
“Hyeon, you...”
“How do you know that...?”
“Didn’t think you were that kind of guy, but maybe you’ve got some game?”
“W-what do you mean, game!?”
Dang Ihyeon’s face turned bright red. Sweating hard, he raised his voice.
“I went there for odd jobs! Traders pass through there too, and the wages are better!”
Dang Ihwa narrowed her eyes and jabbed at him flatly.
“Suspicious.”
Thwack!
“Ow!”
Too fast for the eye to follow, Dang Ihyeon’s fist landed squarely on top of his younger sister’s head.
“Hyeon isn’t the kind of kid who’d go to a place like that.”
Dang Hogyeom felt quietly relieved.
Baek Wontae chuckled and cut in, “Then do you also know any people connected to pleasure houses, or traders who deal with them?”
“I can’t say I’m close to them, but I can manage a bit of small talk.”
“That’s enough. This is going smoother than I expected.”
Then Ihwa asked hesitantly, “But... why a pleasure house, of all places? Wouldn’t it be a little more... clean to use it as medicine instead?”
Baek Wontae snorted.
“Sure, you can use it as medicine, but... Clan Head, you tried it yourself, didn’t you? Can you really call it medicine?”
Hogyeom nodded gravely.
“It’s less a medicine than... a luxury indulgence.”
“Exactly. Alcohol can be used as medicine too, but its real purpose is to drink and get drunk, right? Same thing here. This is for pleasure and comfort. So it’ll sell well in pleasure houses. Besides, the customers there are mostly rich bastards, which means we can charge a premium.”
Baek Wontae lifted one finger.
“So the first step is simple. Make Baekhyang, and get the traders who supply pleasure houses to take the bait and open a deal.”
Ihwa asked again, “But why not just sell it ourselves? If we go through a trading house, they’ll take a big cut.”
Dang Ihyeon shot back in disbelief, “Are you an idiot?”
“W-what did you say?”
“You think a courtesan house is just going to buy some random outsider’s goods, no questions asked? We’d be the same. If a bunch of odd-job workers suddenly tried to sell merchandise, they’d get suspicious first.”
“Oh...”
Baek Wontae slapped his palm against his other hand.
“Good. That wraps up the basic business briefing. So—shall we get to work now?”
He looked at Dang Hogyeom.
“We need money to buy materials, so first let’s check the finances. How much cash can we actually use?”
For a moment, silence fell.
Then Hogyeom spoke.
“About ten silver nyang.”
Ten silver nyang...
He mentally overlaid that onto the currency values he’d skimmed in the book the night before.
Commoners mostly used copper coins called mun; one thousand mun made one gwan, and one gwan was equivalent to one silver nyang.
A commoner’s monthly income was roughly around one silver nyang.
So, translating that into modern wages, it was about three million won.
In other words, one silver nyang was roughly 3 million won.
Ten nyang was about 30 million won.
What kind of revenge are you even planning with thirty million won?
A bitter laugh slipped out before he could stop it.
At that odd expression, Dang Hogyeom gave a dry cough.
Displeasure hung thick in the air.
Baek Wontae hurriedly lowered his head and straightened his posture.
“What about the price of Hyeonrihwa?”
“About one hundred mun per geun.”
“One hundred mun, huh...”
If all ten silver nyang were poured into Hyeonrihwa, that would buy one hundred geun.
Of course, they couldn’t invest every last coin.
And even then, the places they could source it from were limited.
Mass production was still a long way off.
He moved on immediately.
“Good. Then about making the smoking stand... how much would it cost to commission one from a nearby smithy?”
Dang Ihyeon shook his head.
“No need.”
“Why not?”
“This is the Dang Clan. We make all our hidden weapons and mechanisms ourselves. There’s a smithy behind the main hall.”
Nice. That means we save on labor and can put more into Hyeonrihwa.
“Then I’ll leave the smoking stands to you. We don’t need many. Two will be enough for now. I’ll draw up the plans.”
He turned to Ihwa.
“And Dang Ihwa, I’ll give you one silver nyang. Go down to the village and buy Hyeonrihwa. The kind with no petals—just the pods.”
“One whole nyang?”
Ihwa’s eyes trembled.
It was a fortune she’d never even touched before.
“That should buy about ten geun. Take everything you can get your hands on, wherever you can find it.”
He looked at Dang Hogyeom.
“Clan Head, you’re the backer, so just do what you normally do. Head over to the pharmacy and clock in.”
Baek Wontae stood up.
“All right. Let’s get started.”
* * *
Baek Wontae drew the blueprint on paper with a brush.
It was his first time using one, so the strokes didn’t come easily.
“This is harder than I thought...”
He wrestled with the brush for a long while, crumpling paper, redrawing, and starting over again and again.
At last, he completed the smoking stand’s design.
A long pipe with a dish mounted on the front.
It was the exact structure of a southern Chinese smoking pipe.
How did he know that?
It was the result of intense scholarly enthusiasm for a field that interested him.
Knowledge had been his only family and his only friend.
He handed the blueprint to Dang Ihyeon.
“Here. Think you can make it?”
Dang Ihyeon took the paper and narrowed his eyes.
His gaze slowly traced the black lines.
The brushwork was clumsy.
But the contents were astonishingly precise.
The structure was three-dimensional, and the necessary annotations had been placed exactly where they belonged.
How each section should be carved, how it should be assembled, what materials should be used.
Every dimension was drawn with frightening exactness.
Dang Ihyeon’s expression wavered.
“If you... came from another world, the measurements here would be unfamiliar to you. So... is this all the same?”
Baek Wontae shrugged.
“I just crammed a little before bed yesterday.”
“......”
Standards were the beginning of science.
That was Baek Wontae’s view of the world.
The strange cheok-gwan system, which he’d never seen before, had been awkward and inconvenient.
So he had simply converted it into modern SI units and engraved it into his head.
Length and area, volume and mass.
Once everything was translated, even this unfamiliar world fit inside the palm of his hand.
He read this yesterday... and then turned it into a blueprint today?
Dang Ihyeon stood there, holding the paper and staring at him.
Silence stretched out.
“What?”
“...Nothing.”
Admiration was surging inside him.
With this blueprint, even a three-year-old child would be able to imitate it.
He muttered in a low voice, “So you carve the shaft from bamboo, fit the joints with metal, and insert a ceramic bowl.”
“A little complicated, isn’t it? I wasn’t sure if you could handle it.”
Dang Ihyeon’s brow twitched.
Handle it?
He had spent years in the smithy, refining his casting and mechanism work until he was ready to drop from heatstroke. He couldn’t just let that kind of remark slide.
Baek Wontae knew it too.
He’d been baiting him on purpose.
A mean little smile spread at the corners of his mouth.
Dang Ihyeon drew in a deep breath.
“Compared to the mechanisms I used to make...”
His eyes sharpened like blades.
“This is not even a toy.”
“What about materials?”
“We have everything. Bamboo, brass, and clay.”
“Good. Let’s go make it.”