The Grand Opening of the Hot Springs
A few days later, the construction site, fed by enormous amounts of capital and the overwhelming labor of the North’s elite knights, began to take shape at a miracle’s pace.
I stood in the middle of the site with my arms folded, looking up at the skeleton of the huge building rising at its center.
“Wow. Look at that speed. At this rate, it’ll be finished in a month or two.”
With a satisfied smile, I watched the work for a moment before heading into the tent.
“Hmm. Still.”
By now, shouldn’t the imperial court be throwing a fit?
There was no way the imperial side didn’t know that hot springs had broken out in the North, and that I was building a structure on top of them.
At this point, that arrogant old emperor should have been foaming at the mouth and dispatching a second inspection team or the imperial army right away.
But even now, there was nothing. Not a peep.
Honestly, if they were going to send another inspection team, I’d already prepared to bow and scrape and flatter them senseless.
I’d even set aside a cart full of gold bars for bribes and outlined a perfect script full of excuses.
And yet, for whatever reason, the Imperial Capital was quiet as a graveyard. Like the calm before a storm.
Could it be Enoch hyung?
Had he covered for me?
No, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t the sort of man who held any real political power to begin with.
Then who was it?
Were they simply idiots with hollow skulls, the kind who’d let me do whatever I wanted as long as I didn’t make a scene?
But that didn’t fit either. After I’d cut down Baron, they had sent a surveillance team.
...No idea.
Whatever the reason, why were they leaving me and this North alone?
I was frowning at my own mounting suspicions when—
“Your Highness.”
Chloe, who’d been gnawing on a roasted sweet potato beside me, tugged at my sleeve.
“What is it?”
“The foreman’s grandfather is looking for you outside.”
Ah, right. We were supposed to go over the detailed blueprints today.
Well, whatever was going on in the capital, there wasn’t a thing I could do about it right this second.
For now, the reconstruction of my territory in the North was far more important.
“Tell him to come in.”
I cleared my head and spread the blueprints out across the table.
A little while later, the old construction foreman came into the tent.
“Your Highness, you called fer me?”
“Yeah, old man. Take a look at these plans again. I made a few revisions last night.”
Pointing at the drawings, I started explaining.
“Here, we’ll keep the large hot baths and cold baths on the first floor of the bathhouse exactly as planned. The problem is the second floor and the rest area.”
“The rest area, ye say?”
“Right. Like I said before, lay ondol flooring, and next to that, plaster the walls with yellow clay and mana stones so we can make a few bulgama rooms—rooms so hot you’re sweating just from breathing.”
At my words, the foreman widened his eyes and scratched his head.
In this world, nobles were used to filling a tub with warm water and enjoying a private bath. The idea of heating the floor and entering a searing room just to sweat on purpose was bound to seem strange.
“Your Highness, ah understand the ondol on the floor, but what’s the point of these bulgama rooms? Ain’t it just a room with no floor an’ a ridiculous amount of heat?”
“No, there’s a reason. Normally, if a person sweats properly, toxins leave the body, blood circulation improves, and fatigue gets washed away.”
“Is that so?”
“In short, it’s a space where men and women alike can wear sweat suits, sprawl out on a warm floor, and sleep or rest together.”
“S-Sleep on the floor together?”
The foreman looked utterly baffled.
“Noble gentlemen do something so commoner-like... Oh dear, I mean, something so lowbrow... would they really go there?”
Ah, right. Those four ATM fools had apparently been running around telling everyone they were building a VIP casino hot-spring resort here.
The foreman must have assumed the bulgama rooms were for nobles only.
“No, no. We’re loaded now thanks to the investment money they handed over the other day, so we’ll keep the second floor affordable.”
“Aha. Then ye plan to make the third floor and the top floor exclusive areas fer the noble gentlemen?”
“Yep. The third and fourth floors will have private baths made of the finest marble, with expensive wine and food delivered straight to the rooms. We’re going all the way to the summit of luxury.”
I grinned and set my pen down with a tap.
“We’ll charge them a hundred times, no, a thousand times more for admission than the first and second floors. Make it look absolutely premium. Don’t worry about material costs.”
“A-thousand times?! Even if they’re nobles, how in the world are they supposed to pay that much?”
“They will. If you poke at those nobles’ pathetic vanity, the money comes rolling in on its own.”
I leaned back in my chair and snorted.
“Just tell them it’s the empire’s most luxurious hot spring, a place you can’t enter even if you have money unless your status is high enough. They’ll line up and throw their cash at us just to one-up each other. The more expensive it is, the more those fools will like it.”
“Hoo... looks like Your Highness has thought of everything.”
“Of course. Anyway, give me an estimate. Can you build it like this?”
Honestly, I’d just stuffed in everything I wanted like a giant “please do this for me,” but the foreman studied the plans with great seriousness.
Then he nodded.
“...Mm, it ain’t impossible.”
“Really?”
“Aye. The hot spring water’s so hot that if we just route the heat properly through the pipes, heating the second-floor floor is naught but a trifle. And raising the water pressure fer the luxury baths on the third floor should be more than possible if we use a little mana stone!”
“Hah, nice. As expected of the foreman. Your skills really are the best. Go ahead and proceed as planned.”
“Aye! I’ll grind my bones to dust if it means building it perfectly!”
Burning with enthusiasm, the foreman strode out of the tent.
I leaned back in my chair with a pleased smile.
“Heh. A sweat room right in the middle of this barren North. Just thinking about it makes me feel my fatigue melting away.”
“Your Highness.”
At that moment, Chloe, who had been listening quietly beside me, tilted her head and asked,
“Even if you squeeze money out of the nobles, isn’t this just a bathhouse and a hot room? You wash up and lie down to rest there, that’s all, right? Doesn’t seem like it’d make a crazy amount of profit.”
“Hey, kid. You really don’t get the heart of business.”
I wagged my finger at Chloe.
“The real money doesn’t come from admission fees. It comes from the food, drinks, and extra services we sell inside.”
“Food and drinks? Like to eat?”
At the word food, Chloe’s eyes lit up.
Right. She really was at that age where she’d go wild for anything edible.
“Exactly! You sit in the sweat room, soak up the heat, and pour out every drop of sweat. Then you get thirsty, right? That’s when you gulp down a chilled, bright-yellow bottle of banana milk made with sweet bananas imported from the southern region!”
“B-Banana milk...?”
“And then you crack open a chewy roasted egg cooked by the hot spring’s heat, smack it against your forehead, and peel it off to eat. Roasted eggs and banana milk! That’s the sacred rule!”
...Gulp.
Without realizing it, Chloe swallowed.
“Th-That actually sounds really tasty...”
“Right? The local people will go crazy for it. We’ll sell iced coffee too. The food and drink sales alone will be enormous.”
Growing more and more excited, I shot to my feet.
“And most importantly! The ultimate weapon of our bathhouse! The supreme item!”
“What is it?”
“Have you ever heard of a scrub towel? In this world they call it an Italian towel, that green little miracle you wear on your hand, and—”
I launched into a passionate explanation, miming the motion of scrubbing my arms and torso in the air.
“You take that rough green towel and scrub your whole body with it! Then all the old dead skin and grime stuck on you comes rolling off in long strands like noodles!?”
Water alone doesn’t do everything.
You have to scrub the filth off hard if you want to stay clean.
“...Ugh, disgusting.”
Chloe made a face and stepped back, but I still didn’t stop.
“Hey, what’s disgusting about it! After you scrub all that gunk off nice and thoroughly, you sink into a warm bath and soak there—do you know how that feels?! It’s heaven, I’m telling you. If we sell just this towel like hotcakes, we’ll make back the entire cost of the building and then some, seriously.”
“...”
When my spirited one-man performance came to an end, a strange silence settled in the tent.
Ah. Had I gotten too worked up?
I looked at Chloe.
She was staring at me up and down with a half-dead look in her eyes.
The man known as the empire’s greatest trash, the infamous wastrel Eighth Prince.
And here he was, huffing and puffing while enthusiastically pretending to scrub himself with a green towel at thin air.
Even I had to admit it looked a little pathetic.
“...Come to think of it,”
Chloe muttered with a helpless sigh,
“you really are more childish than I am.”
“What? Hey, do you even understand the exhilarating catharsis of the scrub towel?!”
“Fine, fine. I’ll look forward to your precious green towel, so calm down.”
“Mmph, mmph!”
Clicking her tongue, Chloe stuffed a roasted sweet potato into my mouth.
This brat really had no respect for her lord.
But what could I do? Honestly, I had been far too excited about building a sweat room myself.
“Ahem. Anyway.”
I cleared my throat and straightened my clothes.
“Before long, the empire’s greatest attraction will rise in this backwater of the North.”
With a contented smile, I looked out at the construction site where hot steam drifted into the air.
—
A month and a half passed.
In the middle of the bitter Northern winter, with the piercing wind of the frozen season howling down, a massive, majestic four-story stone building stood on the vacant lot in Slums Districts 3 and 4, a structure utterly out of place against the bleak surroundings.
Its name was the Seolhwa Great Hot Springs.
I’d taken the name from one of the North’s winter flowers.
Of course, I’d originally tried to call it the North 24-Hour Bulgama Spa Land, but Chloe told me it sounded way too much like something an old man would name a place, and the shock was enough to make me change it.
And so the empire’s first large-scale hot spring bathhouse and sweat room complex was finally opening its doors in a grand opening.
“Oho! At last, our luxurious casino has opened!”
On the morning of opening day, four men dressed head to toe in the finest banquet suits climbed down from a carriage.
It was Baron Killian and his entourage.
Full of swagger, their hearts brimming with thoughts of clinking champagne flutes, they flung open the hot spring’s front doors.
But then—
Creak.
“...Huh?”
The moment they stepped inside, their jaws dropped.
Where were the extravagant roulette tables?
Where were the seductive bunny girl dancers?
None of them were there.
So what was there?
A warm ondol floor, radiating heat.
And all across it, hundreds of commoners and poor people wearing the same yellow-brown short-sleeved shirts and shorts, sprawled out and snoring their heads off.
Some of them were even wearing bizarre sheep-head towels on their heads, smashing boiled eggs against one another’s foreheads with a loud thwack before peeling them and eating them.
“W-What in the world is this...?”
Their jaws trembled.