So I Went on a Date with a Beauty in South America
It had been two weeks since they'd started laying out the cornfields at Tortilla Farm.
"...And with that, construction on Tortilla Farm's first-phase fields is currently over seventy percent complete."
"Hmm. That's excellent news."
Good news, first thing in the morning.
Truth be told, even I—the one who'd floated the idea—had been of two minds about the whole thing. And why wouldn't I be? Hiring nearly two thousand criminals and putting them to work on a farm was hardly an ordinary day's policy. There were bound to have been people who wanted no part of it, and given that their previous line of work had been gang life, there were bound to have been a few who put up a vicious fight.
And yet it was going this smoothly.
They must have looked out at all that nature and felt their hearts heal.
The freshness of the open country had clearly mended those darkened souls. Then again, when you were drawing a fat paycheck to farm in a place with good water and clean air, what was there to be stressed about? All you had to do was till the land.
I cleared my throat, swelling with pride as the man who'd proposed the policy. Healing the hearts of two thousand gangsters was satisfying. Putting them to work on a massive farm and raising the nation's food self-sufficiency was satisfying. Driving down unemployment through large-scale hiring was satisfying too.
Now this is what a proper policy looks like.
And as if that weren't enough, the instant the gangs disappeared, street crime all but vanished—as though it had never been real to begin with. Over the past five days, the number of cases, misdemeanors included, had been zero. Apparently, with the gangs gone from the streets, the public's respect for the law had shot right up.
Are you watching, South Korea?
I wanted to show this to the politicians back home. This was politics. This was policy. This was what a government was for.
And the good news kept coming.
"The perpetrator turned himself in?"
"Yes. Three days after entering Tortilla Farm, he confessed to the crime. He's been transferred to the detention center."
They'd caught the man who'd murdered three employees of Tortilla Seafood, stolen the money, and fled.
"That's a relief. I haven't been able to look the victims' families in the eye... You did make sure they were compensated, didn't you?"
"I do question whether compensation was even warranted, but we settled it by paying out ten years' salary."
As Isabella said, they hadn't died on the job, so the company was under no obligation to pay. That said—
"Have the robbery-murderer work in the mines and cover it with that. Simple."
It was a different story if you made the perpetrator pay for it himself.
"Certainly... that would be more productive than simply killing him. I'll assign him somewhere extremely harsh, as a form of punishment."
"Good thinking. Put a man through hard labor and atonement and reform tend to follow naturally. Hmm..."
"Is something the matter?"
"While we're on the subject, I was wondering if we ought to just abolish the death penalty altogether."
"That's rather radical."
"There are diplomatic considerations, you see."
The EU, for instance, was categorically opposed to capital punishment, and they tended to shy away from diplomatic relations with countries that still carried out executions. Isabella seemed to know it too; she nodded.
"Given the current climate, it wouldn't be a bad idea. It's not as though we can't still impose severe punishment. Shall I discuss it with the Ministry of Justice?"
"Please do. It's not something to rush. Take your time, gather a range of opinions, and we'll proceed step by step."
"Understood."
"And what's on the schedule for today?"
Isabella cleared away his empty coffee cup as she answered.
"I haven't booked anything for today."
"Oh, really? So I can actually get some rest for once."
A day off, arriving for the first time in nearly three months, was a more welcome sight than I could say.
I can finally rest.
A smile broke out of me on its own, and while I was sitting there grinning, Isabella asked again.
"Do you have any plans, if I may ask?"
"What does anyone do on a day off? Grab whatever's around to eat, glue myself to my phone, and loaf. Catch up on all the sleep I've been missing, too."
"...I see."
"What do you usually do on your days off, Isabella?"
"I wouldn't know. I've never taken one."
"Wait—you've never taken a day off?"
"No."
"...Isabella, how many years have you been working in San Marcos?"
"Including my time at the SIA, I am in my eighth year and ninth month of service."
Nearly nine years without a single break.
"Hold on. How old are you, that your years of service are already at nine?"
"I turned twenty-nine this year."
The math wasn't adding up. Even if she'd graduated university and gone straight into a job, she'd have to be at least thirty-two. I looked at her, puzzled, and she answered as if it were nothing at all.
"I entered university at seventeen and graduated early in three years. I was looking into graduate school at Stanford to continue my studies when my father passed away, and I returned home."
"I—I see."
I'd never thought of myself as anyone's intellectual inferior, but Isabella was a talent that blew right past my expectations.
"So you haven't taken a single day off since coming back to San Marcos?"
"To be precise, I have not taken a day off since I turned ten."
"I'm sorry?"
How could a human being not take a single day off? She wasn't a robot.
"This really won't do."
"I beg your pardon? What won't—"
"We're spending today together. I'll teach you how people actually enjoy a day off."
"What? But I have to prepare tomorrow's schedule, check on Tortilla's affairs, and review the SIA's work as well. I don't believe I can spare the time."
"Come on. Let's leave that much to tomorrow's version of me."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible. The second-phase supply budget for Tortilla Farm and the additional sentry posts Commander Pedro requested both need to be finalized today. Ah—and I also have to review the draft of the special presidential nomination bill submitted by the Ministry of Justice, so..."
"......"
She really did have a lot on her plate.
"We're still going out. Let's get some air, eat something good, have a cup of coffee someone else brewed, and come back."
"......"
"What, you're going to let me go by myself? You, the Chief of Staff?"
Isabella let out a small sigh and nodded.
"Very well. I'll call the agents who will handle security. Please wait a moment."
"Don't. Let's just go, the two of us. If we trail a whole string of bodyguards around, that's an inspection, not a day out."
"Even so, for safety—"
"Come on. We already rehabilitated the gangs and hauled them off to the Central Basin. What's going to happen? If we just wear a hat and sunglasses, nobody will recognize us."
Isabella thought it over for a moment, then nodded.
"...Then at least permit long-range security. I'll have them prepare as discreetly as possible."
"Deal. Let's do that."
A short while later, Eugene waited for Isabella in front of the official residence.
Jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt he hadn't worn in ages, plus a baseball cap and sunglasses. For Eugene, who was pushing his mid-thirties, the look skewed a little young—but it was the only outfit he had that was even remotely presentable for a day out.
I don't look like some guy in his forties trying to dress young, right?
Then Isabella appeared.
Gone was the razor-sharp suit she wore every day. In its place, a simple sky-blue sleeveless dress that fell to her ankles, and a wide white floppy hat that veiled the long hair she'd let down. Eugene very nearly stopped breathing.
"Uh... Isabella. You don't have another appointment today, do you? Besides me?"
"I do not. All I own are suits, so I borrowed this in a hurry."
"Ah. That explains it..."
So that's why it's tight across the chest, Eugene thought, and nodded to himself.
Isabella caught the eye of Ricardo, who was handling security fifty meters back, and tapped her thigh twice to let him know she was carrying a pistol. Then she turned to Eugene.
"Shall we?"
"Yeah."
And so their peculiar day off began.
With Isabella at the wheel, they slipped past the tight security perimeter of the Ministry of National Defense and headed for the outskirts of the capital, Libertad. The wide-open wind of the Caribbean came rushing in.
"Ahh—now this is what I'm talking about. Nothing beats getting outside!"
Eugene stretched, gazing out at the sea. Taking in Libertad's scenery again after so long, he found it genuinely beautiful. The emerald water. The riot of Portuguese-style buildings.
"Isabella. Look at that."
He pointed, marveling, at streets that—unlike a few months ago—hadn't a scrap of trash on them.
"Isn't that a sight?"
"...I beg your pardon?"
"It's clean. At this rate, it's far cleaner than the streets of Singapore, isn't it?"
Watching the proud look on Eugene's face, Isabella was, for a moment, at a loss.
The atmosphere in Libertad right now was as taut as a drawn blade. Not long ago, fifteen hundred gangsters had been packed off to the gulag in the Central Basin, and the word crime had vanished from the city. The streets were clean for the same reason. People weren't just refusing to litter—they were voluntarily forming teams to sweep the roads, terrified their own neighborhood might be mistaken for a den of criminals.
Does His Excellency not understand the atmosphere here?
But the words that followed made her expression settle into something more like of course he does, and she nodded.
"I, for one, am certain this city can become a metropolis on the order of São Paulo or Mexico City."
"Just... because the streets got a little cleaner?"
"Just? This is where it starts. Once the streets are clean, road maintenance gets easier. Once the roads improve, industrial efficiency goes up, and at the same time unemployment falls, so national income..."
Watching Eugene chatter on, Isabella thought:
As I thought. His Excellency is looking higher, and further, than anyone else.
It occurred to her that perhaps he had suggested today's outing precisely to show her that vantage point.
"Shall we walk the beach this time?"
"Yes...!"
And from there, Eugene's lesson continued.
"So? How is it, walking here?"
"I-it's just a beach, isn't it..."
"Hmm. I suppose you wouldn't know, since you don't get out here often, but scenery like this ranks among the best in the world. All of this is a tourism resource, you know."
"Hearing Your Excellency say so, it does seem quite wonderful."
"Right? Imagine if we brought in resorts. It'd be incredible, wouldn't it?"
On the beach, he laid out the future of San Marcos's tourism industry.
"We've had our walk. Shall we go get something to eat?"
"Yes."
"Oh, there's a place over there that sells Marcosnos—the traditional sandwich. Steak and the expensive stuff are fine, but when you're out like this, you ought to try the local food too. Take the waterfront in Incheon, back in Korea—the grilled-clam joints stretch for a good three hundred meters, and the ladies working those stalls, I'm barely exaggerating, number around five hundred..."
And with that, he unrolled a blueprint for the kind of jobs local people could actually work.
"Food is something we eat every day, sure, but in a way it's a form of culture in itself. Eat the usual tourist-trap fare and you forget it by the next morning. But a dish with real character—even if it's polarizing—sticks with you."
"Like Brazil's churrasco, or Argentina's asado, you mean?"
"Exactly! Food culture is the single greatest culture a nation can put forward. If we take a page from that and build a culture worth showing off, the tourists will come. I guarantee it."
"......"
The longer she spoke with Eugene, the less Isabella could hide the thrill running through her.
Just how far ahead is he looking?
She had known he was exceptionally capable. His character was upright, too—that was why she had persuaded Pedro. She had believed there was no better option available.
But looking at Eugene now, she understood. He was not merely an option. He was a savior, sent down from heaven for a San Marcos that had fallen into the abyss.
I need to make His Excellency president for life—as soon as possible...
Isabella's eyes, fixed on Eugene, began to shine.