North White Chef (3)
Kim Cheolsu of Cheolsu Distribution… no. Zeros of the Zeros Merchant Group was watching the fire climb up his ankles in real time.
The reason was simple.
"…Boss, are we actually going to be able to move all of this?"
"Fuck if I know."
"If you don't know, what are the rest of us supposed to do?! You bought grain in bulk like this and now—!!"
"You want me to go die outside, then? I can barely cover this month's cart-loan payments as it is!"
Crushed under a mountain of debt, they had thrown themselves into an octopus-arm expansion strategy just to stay alive—and the new debt they took on to fund that expansion had called in more debt, snowballing until the whole mass of it came down on top of them.
So why had they ended up buried under debt in the first place?
"Aaaargh!! These northern bastards!!!!"
Obviously, because of the deal with the North a short while back.
"I never should have believed that lunatic who slapped a lockdown order on the place out of nowhere!! He said monopoly!!! He said he'd only deal with us!!!"
The whole mess had begun with a certain mad Second Young Master.
Until then, they had been living as solid working stiffs of industry, linking the distribution networks of the North and the Empire. Through howling blizzards and year-round cold, they had hauled daily bread to northerners who couldn't even get a proper loaf—Zeros Merchant Group, symbol of trust and harmony.
Then the bolt from the blue: a Second Young Master no one had even known existed cut their supply lines and declared the North closed.
It shattered the harmony between the North and the continent, and all the mutual goodwill they had built over the years…
"Boss, have you finally lost it? Sounds to me like you got cleaned out bluffing at the table…"
This little shit?
Zeros felt something surge up from deep in his gut.
Fine. No point hiding it.
They had been played.
And not by some random outfit—by the Second Young Master of one of the Empire's only two Grand Ducal houses.
The Second Young Master of House Wintershield had reeled in Zeros Merchant Group with the sweet bait of a "monopoly."
But was their present crisis entirely that Young Master's fault…? Not quite.
"Well, sure—His Young Lordship talked like he'd give us exclusive trade, shook us down for a so-called Northern Development Fund, and then turned around and pulled some bizarre stunt that was neither monopoly nor anything else… but strictly speaking, isn't this situation mostly because you overextended the business, Boss?"
A monopoly scam?
Half right, half wrong.
The Grand Duchy's Second Young Master had dangled exclusive rights in front of them and then handed the same deal to four other merchant groups—but each group's trade route was theirs alone. The routes didn't overlap, so calling it a monopoly wasn't entirely off the mark either.
The North's share of land fit for human life was a speck, but the territory itself was disgustingly vast. Servicing the villages scattered across it with five merchant groups meant running cart wheels down to the rims.
The real problem was that while the number of clients had ballooned, the margin per client had dropped through the floor.
A merchant is a creature that moves strictly for profit. What used to be the take from a single client now took five just to break even. In exchange, the pool of available clients had exploded, and income scaled with how many you could lock down—so in a way the North had become a land of opportunity where you took home exactly what your skill earned you.
If Zeros had expanded only as far as he could actually handle, the group would have gradually clawed back the losses from that ridiculous "Northern Development Fund" shake-down and grown into a bigger fish.
But when has a human ever been a creature of moderation and contentment?
Zeros decided this was the moment for aggressive investment—grow the sales channels, leap from mid-tier outfit to mid-to-large merchant house.
So he massively increased his transport carts and hired laborers by the score.
If you could earn as much as you sold, the first rule of thin-margin, high-volume business was simple: move more product.
What Zeros failed to foresee was—
—What? You can't supply that much wheat and barley? What do you mean?
—Exactly what I said. We're the ones who ought to be asking. You used to buy ten carts' worth of grain, and now you want over a hundred? I don't know where you opened such a big account, but we don't have the capacity for that.
No matter how wide you open one faucet, the supply from the original pipe is fixed.
Zeros Merchant Group had boldly expanded carts and crews; the suppliers who were supposed to furnish them with wheat, barley, and the rest simply could not keep up.
—This is insane!! How much can you supply, then?
—If we push it to the absolute max… maybe fifteen carts' worth? And that's already a fifty-percent increase over normal volume.
—?!!
Exactly.
They all called themselves merchant groups, but every house had its specialty. A mid-tier outfit like Zeros could really only handle one link in the chain—production, distribution, or delivery. The production-distribution partners they usually dealt with had just announced they could not absorb the explosive spike in demand.
—What kind of bullshit is that?! I'm offering money! Money!!
—Look, do you think wheat and barley just get dug out of the ground? Well—they do come out of the ground, sure. But processing, packing, and turning them into a finished product doesn't happen overnight.
Watching a trading partner wave off a fistful of cash with a string of "etto… muri desu!" left Zeros staring into darkness.
Even with the boss himself running every contact and squeezing every last sack, he couldn't fill half the carts. Lease payments on the carts and wages for the hired hands were already going into arrears in real time. At this rate the whole house was going to collapse.
So Zeros summoned superhuman willpower.
Instead of bolting for the nearest temple, he heaved himself up like a steamed bun refusing to disappoint its trainer and went back to hounding his old suppliers.
—Give me grain.
—Huh? I told you, there isn't any.
—Doesn't have to be wheat or barley!! As long as a man can chew it, I'll take anything—just give it to me!!
Anything you could chew, he would buy.
The other side was northerners who would dig up grass roots if it filled a belly. If it filled a cart, even horse hay would do…
"…You said you'd buy anything, and then you actually stuffed the carts with this stuff."
"…"
"No matter how fine you mill it, you can't even bake bread with it. How exactly were you planning to sell this?"
Northerners might dig roots if it filled a stomach—but paying money for them was a different story. The long-serving subordinate's look said as much, and Zeros felt the darkness close in again.
Was this finally the moment to sprint for the nearest Pocket Monster Center?
"…We'll sell it. Somehow, we'll sell it."
Zeros prayed.
May the blessing of that legendary ancestor who once sold ice water in the North be with him.
Please—let the North buy grain you couldn't even bake into bread.
He prayed with everything he had.
And the prayer was answered.
"…I'm sorry? Come again?"
"I said I'll buy it. All of it."
What?
Pray hard enough and the power of the middle realm steps in to help—was that actually real?
Zeros blinked at the answer from none other than the Second Young Master of the Northern Grand Duke's house, the same man who had left him high and dry.
About three seconds later he snapped back to himself and scrambled to ask again.
"Y-you're serious?! The Grand Ducal house is purchasing the entire lot?"
It felt wrong for the seller to be the one asking, but given who he was dealing with, he had no choice.
How many nightmare customers bought without reading the product description and then screamed for a refund later? A middling client acting up was headache enough; if that client was a Grand Ducal Second Young Master, a skull splitting in two would not have been surprising.
"That's what I said."
"Ah… um… did you actually read the catalog that came with it? No matter how finely you mill this 'grain,' it's nearly impossible to bake into bread."
So he had to go the extreme route and read aloud the line that would normally have been printed in microscopic type at the tail end of the terms of use.
The Young Master in front of him only tilted his head, unbothered.
"Does it really matter?"
"Pardon?"
"It's not like I'm the one eating it."
"…Ah."
He had forgotten.
This was the same man who had slapped a lockdown order on the North with a shrug of well, I'm not the one who'll starve.
"Anyway, if you boil it you can make a stew. So nobody's going to starve to death."
"Well…"
"In return, I want this grain traded every month at this price and in this quantity. Cheap and good."
"I-if you'll do that, then of course I'm grateful!!"
The unit price on this grain was, in truth, far lower than barley or wheat.
It couldn't be helped. How were you supposed to charge a premium for grain that wouldn't bake into bread?
Down south they cooked it their own way, but from the central provinces northward it was, at best, stew filler—nothing more.
Originally it had been nothing but ballast to keep the carts from riding empty. But—
If I can sell all of this—and dump the entire load right here in the Grand Duchy without hauling it to the far edge of the North…
Extreme thin-margin volume. At least he'd break even!
Zeros signed the contract in high spirits.
Jackpot!!!
"Jackpot."
After Kim Cheolsu of Cheolsu Distribution had left, I surveyed the new "grain" steadily piling up in one corner of the warehouse and gave myself a quiet appraisal.
"Are you certain this will be all right, Young Master?"
Max, standing beside me, asked with open concern.
"I was told it is grain that simply cannot be baked into bread…"
A thoroughly Western man like Max was bound to react that way.
I set him at ease.
"It's fine. That grain was never meant for bread in the first place."
"Pardon? Then if not for bread, what do you use grain for?"
"I'll show you. Grab one of those sacks and come with me—to the hanok we built inside the lord's castle last time."
Living in the lord's castle, I had no real need for an ondol. Magic beyond science kept the place at perfect temperature and humidity twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year.
Even so, I had put up a model hanok inside the castle grounds for various experiments, and the time had come to prove its worth.
"Here—watch."
We stepped not into the warm lower room, but into the kitchen, where the heat source that fed the ondol lived.
An agungi crackled with firewood, and above it sat a specially commissioned iron cauldron.
"You put the grain in here and pour in enough water. For reference, water just deep enough to cover the palm of your hand is enough."
"Oh—you're putting the whole grains in without milling them? If you're making a stew…"
"It's not a stew. And we're not boiling it."
We're cooking it.
Kukukukuku—
After the proper steps and a little time, hot steam began to jet from between the lid and the rim of the cauldron.
We had been chatting about this and that; when it looked ready I lifted the lid and showed him what was inside.
"There. Done."
"This is… there's no broth at all."
"Of course not."
I scooped a generous bowlful with a flat ladle—a rice paddle—and held it out.
"Try a spoonful."
Yes.
The true identity of this grain was something any Korean would recognize on sight: rice.
And what we had cooked from it was—
"It's called rice."
From now on, it would be the staple of every northerner's table.