See? I Told You So!
"Damn it, seriously! It still hasn’t come up!"
On one corner of the construction site, Chloe was crouched on her heels, chewing anxiously at her nails and whining under her breath.
It had already been half a day since the foreman and the laborers had started digging.
They’d gone deeper and deeper without end, but all that had come up was dirt, dust, and the occasional shard of cold ice.
Chloe tugged at my sleeve and kept fussing. "What am I supposed to do? What if nothing actually comes out? Can’t you see those old men over there glaring at me like crazy?"
They weren’t glaring at all.
I was lounging in a camping chair, sipping warm cocoa, and enjoying the heat from the stove beside me.
"Hey, jackpots take patience. Fishing’s the same—you cast the line, sit tight, and wait. That’s how you land the big catch."
"How is this anything like fishing?! They’ve already dug up the ground like idiots! Just say I was wrong and fill it back in, okay? I don’t want to look stupid!"
"Tch. Kid, don’t doubt your own talent. In my eyes, I can already see hot spring water gushing out of there."
"Of course it only shows up in Your Highness’s eyes! Ugh, I don’t know anymore! If it doesn’t come out, I’m not even looking back—I’m running! So you’d better deal with it!"
Chloe was huffing, her face bright red with indignation, when—
Clop, clop.
With the sound of hooves, Giselle arrived at the site on horseback with several escorts.
—
"Oh?"
Kael, who had been draped lazily in a camping chair beside the warm stove, tilted his head.
"What’s this? You should be back at the castle, buried in paperwork or something. What brings you all the way out to this shabby little site?"
After dismounting, Giselle gave Kael’s smirking face a sidelong glance and folded her arms.
"My knights are the ones being deployed here. As the lord of this territory, I think I have a right to see with my own eyes how they’re being used."
Half genuine concern, half excuse.
Giselle was simply too curious to stand it. She couldn’t stop wondering what the real purpose of this strange redevelopment project was.
Kael let out a little snort and shrugged. "Ah, the free labor? They work well. Don’t worry—I had them working hard, and I fed them a proper meal."
"...You’re quite good at talking."
Clicking her tongue, Giselle turned her gaze to the enormous sheet of parchment spread out on the table inside the tent.
It was the temporary blueprint for the bathhouse, drawn up by the construction foreman.
As she carelessly skimmed it, Giselle’s eyes slowly widened.
"...What is this?"
"What do you mean, what is it? It’s the blueprint for my personal luxury bathhouse."
Giselle pointed at the parchment with a look of utter disbelief.
"How is this a bathhouse just for you? Judging by the size of the pools and the changing rooms, it’s large enough to hold several hundred people. No matter how much of a decadent fool you are, does it make sense to say you’d use a place this huge all by yourself?"
At her accusation, Kael snorted.
"Seriously, you really do keep thinking I’m an idiot, huh?"
"What?"
"If I built something this massive just for myself, who do you think would pay the maintenance and labor costs later? My ancestors? Obviously, when I’m not using it, I’ve got to pack the place with guests and make money. If you build a bigger facility, you can take in more customers."
He wasn’t wrong.
And yet it was hard to believe that this scoundrel had actually thought things through that far.
Giselle frowned and asked again, "You’re taking in customers? Right in the middle of this impoverished slum? Just how expensive are you planning to make the entrance fee if you’re building it this big?"
"Ha! How many high-end customers do you think would come all the way out to this backwater."
Kael clicked his tongue and tapped the blueprint.
"You’ve got to build up local demand first. That’s how word gets around and business starts moving. Besides, your territory’s people are all scraping by day to day. If you charge poor folks a ridiculous price, who’s going to come here? They’d just wash up at home with cold water instead."
"......"
"The price will be reasonable. Cheap enough that even the beggars will say, ‘Oh, with this kind of money, I could come every day and soak myself warm.’ If the price is low, turnover goes up, and when the place is packed wall-to-wall, the money flowing into my pocket gets bigger too. You don’t even know the basics of running a business."
Kael said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
But listening to him, Giselle’s mind grew increasingly tangled.
'A massive bath large enough for several hundred people.'
'An entrance fee low enough for even the poor to come every day.'
'And an ondol heating system laid beneath the entire floor of the building.'
Call it a personal bathhouse or a business if you wanted, but when she added all those conditions together, what it really amounted to was—
'...A cheap public bathhouse for the poor.'
Giselle was speechless.
She had no idea what this man was really after.
Was this just a lucky coincidence? Or was there something else going on?
Still, she decided not to press him further here.
Whatever the reason, if this plan worked out, it would be an unimaginable blessing—and profit—for the people of the northern territory this winter.
"...Fine. It’s your money and your business, so do whatever you want."
He was already handling the wall repairs for her, after all. Giselle had no room to complain.
Suppressing a strange, unreadable feeling, she turned her head and looked out over the construction site.
"By the way," Giselle asked, puzzled, "why did you start by digging out the ground instead of tearing down the building first?"
Where her eyes landed, dozens of laborers were repeatedly hacking away at the bare earth with pickaxes and shovels.
Kael casually smacked Chloe on the top of the head while she stood there chewing on a roasted sweet potato.
"Oh, that. Our little kid here said she could feel something warm buried under this ground."
"N-no!! I just said it felt that way! It was Your Highness who insisted we dig it up, okay?! It’s not my fault!"
Chloe exploded again, but Kael didn’t even twitch. He just absentmindedly picked his nose.
"What are you talking about? If your guard has a hunch, then the lord trusts it and pushes ahead. Right?"
"Aaaah! I’m seriously going insane!"
Giselle stared, baffled, at Chloe, who was practically tearing her own hair out.
They were really throwing themselves into this huge project based on nothing but a feeling?
That was when—
"Y-Your Highness..."
The construction foreman walked up to the tent, wiping his neck with a sweat cloth.
"What is it? Not going well? Or did water start showing through?"
"N-no, sir... It’s just that this patch of ground is frozen solid. The regular laborers can’t make any progress with pickaxes alone. At this rate, we might not finish even if spring comes."
The northern permafrost. Its hardness was like steel.
At the foreman’s report, Kael scratched at his brow.
"Huh. Time’s money, so that’s a problem."
Then his gaze fell on the knights over by the wall, grunting as they hauled stone.
"Hey, you there!! Wall team!!"
Kael sprang to his feet and shouted.
"Put that on hold for now! Grab a shovel and come dig this ground out!"
"W-what?!" The captain of the monitoring knights and his men rushed over in shock.
"Your Highness! We can understand wall repairs, but now you want us digging dirt too? That’s really a bit much!"
"We’re knights, not laborers!!"
The knights protested, voice raised in wounded indignation.
Then Kael casually glanced at Giselle standing nearby.
His eyes clearly said, Your knights. Say something.
"......"
Giselle sighed.
She pressed a hand to her forehead, then patted the captain’s shoulder as he looked on the verge of tears.
"...Go dig."
"M-My lady?! Even you, my lady—!"
"I’ll pay your compensation separately. I’m asking you to do this."
When Giselle gave the order, what choice did they have?
The knights finally picked up their shovels with tears in their eyes.
"Ghh... If it’s the lady’s command... Fine. We’ll dig!"
The northern elite knights, wrapping their shovels in aura, were terrifyingly efficient.
BOOM! BOOM-CRASH!
With sounds like bombing raids, the frozen ground was blasted apart and dug down in great chunks. Their progress was astonishingly fast.
But even after digging deep for quite a while, not a single drop of water—much less a trace of steam—rose from beneath the earth.
"...Huff, huff. Your Highness. Any further is impossible. The bottom is solid bedrock."
The knights’ captain leaned on his shovel, panting as he reported.
Kael tilted his head.
"Really? Weird."
Then he turned to Chloe and needled her on purpose.
"Hey, Chloe. You really had a feeling about this, huh? Nothing’s coming out at all."
"See?! I told you not to do it!! You idiot!!"
Chloe was red all over and practically hopping in place.
"Agh, what do we do?! The old men are suffering all because of me... Waaaah, I’m so sorry, what am I supposed to dooo!"
Chloe felt so awful toward the laborers and knights who had been dragged through all this for nothing that she was on the verge of tears, stomping around as if she wanted the ground to swallow her whole.
"Hmm. Too bad, but I guess there’s no helping it. Hey, you lot! Dig a little more, and if nothing happens, pull out!"
Kael shrugged, about to order a retreat.
And then—
KUUUUUGGGGHHH!!!
The ground began to tremble like a full-blown earthquake.
"F-foreman!!"
From the bottom of the pit, one of the laborers shouted in a panic.
"Hot steam’s coming up from the ground!! The dirt’s bubbling like it’s boiling!!"
At that cry, the foreman standing outside the pit screamed in alarm.
"What did you say?! The signs are showing! Everybody evacuate!! Hurry up and get out of there!!"
At his shout, the laborers and knights working inside the pit scrambled upward in terror, climbing the ropes as fast as they could.
Before long, the knights and laborers were all bursting out of the pit in a complete panic.
And then—
CRACK! KWA-AAANG!!!
The fissure in the bedrock split wide open, and with immense pressure, a column of water carrying white steam shot straight up into the sky.
SHHHHAAAAA—!
Hot droplets rained down from above like summer rain.
The air was thick with scorching heat and the sharp smell of sulfur.
"......"
"......"
Everyone on site stood there with their mouths hanging open.
"It, it erupted!! It’s a hot spring!! It’s a jackpot, Your Highness!!"
The foreman dropped to his knees and threw both arms up.
"Waaah!! Long live the hot spring!!"
The laborers and knights hugged each other and cheered, shouting themselves hoarse.
Most shocked of all were Giselle and Chloe.
Giselle stared at the steaming pillar of water, unable to close her mouth, while Chloe, who had been on the verge of tears from guilt a moment ago, completely changed her expression.
"I-I told you!!"
The very Chloe who had been trembling behind Kael’s back just moments ago leaped forward as if she’d never been scared in her life.
"See?! What did I tell you!! I really did have a feeling about it! I’m a genius, right!?"
Her ability to switch gears was pure art.
"Bwahahahaha! Yeah, yeah, our kid’s definitely a genius."
Kael laughed as the hot spring water showered down, ruthlessly ruffling Chloe’s hair with a huge grin on his face.
Then he strode over to Giselle and gave her a smug little shrug.
"So? Told you I was right, didn’t I?"
"......"
Giselle couldn’t even bring herself to answer Kael’s taunt. She just stared at him, dumbfounded.
Kael, oblivious to the turmoil in her mind, only chuckled as he looked at Chloe, who was now cheering with the rest of the laborers.
"All right! The hot spring broke through!! Tear this place down and start putting up the framework, fast! I’m gonna build this thing so damn luxurious it'll hurt!"