The Time We Held a Sports Festival in South America
On a summer day in the thick of a record-breaking heat wave that had refused to break for weeks, I sat reading the weekly report and could not keep the admiration off my face.
Corn: 135% of target — 270,000 tons produced.
Potatoes: 118% of target — 110,000 tons produced.
Notes: Highest yield on record since the farm opened.
"Whoa..."
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. The numbers still refused to look real. Tortilla Farm had been open a little over two years, and it was already putting up figures like these. And this year, of all years, had been hotter than any in recent memory.
"Everyone's been working themselves to the bone. I almost feel guilty sitting here under the air conditioning."
I meant it. Isabella answered without a flicker of expression.
"They are simply doing their jobs, Your Excellency. I see no particular need for concern."
"No. These numbers are proof they went through hell to get here."
I set the report down, looked out the window at the blazing sun, and made up my mind.
"Let's load up some meat and drinks and go pay them a visit. While we're at it, we ought to throw something like a team-building event."
"A team-building... event, Your Excellency? Is it truly necessary to go that far?"
Isabella's face said she did not understand the request in the slightest, and she made no effort to hide her reluctance.
"Chief Isabella. I didn't take you for that kind of person. Don't you think that's a little cold?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"They're out there doing backbreaking labor in this murderous heat. If they hadn't delivered, that would be one thing — but they've been working this hard. We should show them some appreciation. They're people too!"
"That is true, however... I rather suspect the one who would suffer more is Your Excellency, for going there..."
"That settles it. I'll go myself in three days, with the meat and the drinks. Consider it decided."
I gave the order with a rare, unyielding firmness. Looking after your people's welfare — wasn't that the very virtue of a leader?
They'll love it, right?
I was already looking forward to it.
Meanwhile, at the very hour Eugene was arranging for beef and beer to be prepared, a scene of biblical panic was unfolding at Tortilla Farm.
"EMERGENCY! All personnel, assemble! MOVE IT!"
The farm director screamed into a megaphone until the speaker itself sounded ready to split. A man who ordinarily strolled the grounds with his hands folded behind his back was now ashen, foaming at the mouth.
"H-His Excellency is coming! In three days!"
"......?!"
In an instant, the thousands of laborers weeding the cornfields froze where they stood. Even a division commander's visit to a front-line unit was enough to have the men matching the color of the pebbles on the back hill. The living embodiment of power itself — the very man who had sent them here — coming in person was no different from the King of Hell descending upon the earth.
The director's eyes were bloodshot. He bellowed until his voice cracked.
"If anything happens that displeases His Excellency, you won't be working on this farm anymore. You'll all be dragged off to the mines!"
"Ghk...!"
If the farm in the Central Mountain Range was a hellish place, the mines were simply Hell. The laborers of Tortilla Farm had every reason to go white with terror.
"Effective immediately, we begin environmental improvement operations! Drop whatever you're doing and follow instructions! Understood?!"
"Yes, sir!"
And so the war for Tortilla Farm began.
The first order of business was killing the smell.
"Hey! Number 1024! Get those fertilizer sacks out of here! It stinks!"
"Director, where am I supposed to put them? The warehouse is full."
"Dig a hole! Bury them! Dig down to the Earth's core if you have to, and bury them so deep the smell can't crawl back up!"
The overseers tore around like rabid dogs. They flung lime across the dirt until it fell like snow, desperate to smother the compost stench, and they turned the barracks — filthier than a pigsty — inside out.
"Get every blanket out! Wash them down to the cotton stuffing!"
"There's no room left at the stream!"
"Then climb to the top of the mountain and wash them there! Otherwise I'll have you scrub them with your own blood!"
"Eek!"
The second campaign was the grounds themselves.
"Lay gravel on the road! The second His Excellency's car starts bouncing, your lives start bouncing with it!"
The work of grading the access road for the trucks was a monument of blood and sweat. Watering and packing the dirt so no dust would rise was only the beginning. Any stone that stuck up was smashed to pieces with a pick, and every pothole was packed with fine sand until the surface sat perfectly level.
"Hey. Why are all those rocks different colors?"
"Because... they're rocks? Rocks come in different colors..."
"I don't like it. Get over there and paint them with shoe polish if you have to. Unify the color!"
Even the nameless wildflowers blooming along the roadside were ripped out by the roots, on the grounds that they might obstruct His Excellency's view.
But the greatest problem of all remained.
"Sniff, sniff. What is that? Why isn't the smell going away?"
"I believe it's coming from the workers themselves, sir."
"Why the hell hasn't anyone been bathing?!"
The problem was the human beings. Thousands of grown men steeped in sweat, dust, and compost were, in a very literal sense, walking biochemical weapons.
"Showers, effective immediately! Get in the water and scrub like you're washing the dirt out from under your toenails!"
Driven down to the stream with bars of soap, the laborers scoured themselves until the water turned a thick, inky brown in a matter of minutes. The filth was so dense that the freshwater fish living in the current could not survive the sudden flood of protein washing downstream, and floated belly-up to the surface.
That was not the end of it. For the sake of a presentable appearance, overgrown hair was hacked off with scissors, and beards were scraped down to the skin with razors procured from God knows where.
Three days of hell later, Tortilla Farm was the cleanest it had been since the day it was founded.
And then.
Vroooom—
In the distance, kicking up a trail of dust, the black motorcade from the Presidential Palace came into view.
"Oh God, he's here...!"
"All personnel, attention!"
Thousands of laborers stood frozen, not daring even to breathe, as the car door clunked open and the highest power in San Marcos stepped out.
The moment I got out of the car, I looked around and could not help but be impressed.
"Whoa..."
I had expected the place to reek of compost and livestock manure. Instead, it was surprisingly pleasant. The ground was spotless — not a speck of dust — and the laborers standing in formation looked far cleaner than I had imagined.
The place is being run remarkably well.
I smiled with genuine satisfaction and leaned toward Isabella.
"See? Look how neatly this is all being managed."
"I beg your pardon? That's..."
I left her behind and strode up onto the platform. The farm director drew himself up and roared with everything he had.
"COMPA-NYYYY! ATTEN-TION! Salute His Excellency!"
"PRO-DUC-TION!"
The crispness of it made me nod in spite of myself.
"It's good to see you all."
My voice rolled out of the microphone and thundered across the Central Mountain Range.
"I know the weather's brutal, and I know you've all been working incredibly hard! The reason I dropped in like this today is simple — I came to recognize your efforts."
"......"
"I read the latest report. Corn production hit 135 percent of target. Potatoes, 118 percent."
I praised them with complete sincerity.
"The sweat you've poured into this ground has dramatically raised San Marcos's food self-sufficiency."
I spread my hands toward the laborers.
"It's all because of you! You are the true heroes holding this country up!"
"......"
Even after a speech like that, the square remained as silent as a grave.
What? Why is the atmosphere like this?
I cranked my voice up another notch, trying to lift the mood.
"I've prepared a small gift for everyone who's been working so hard."
At my signal, the cargo beds of ten waiting trucks swung open at once. Nested in ice, still perfectly fresh from the journey, were sides of beef — and beside them, bottles of beer that had been kept just as cold.
"Whooooaaa...!"
At last, a gasp broke from the laborers' mouths of its own accord.
"Nobody works today! Eat and drink as much as you want, and shake off all the stress you've been carrying! How does that sound?"
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
The Central Mountain Range vanished under the roar. Satisfied with that feverish response, I shot Isabella a look.
See? I told you they'd like it.
Isabella, for her part, was watching the crowd with an uneasy light in her eyes — whether she agreed with me or not.
"And that's not all!"
I grinned and made the announcement.
"Just eating would be a little boring, wouldn't it? So I prepared something else. The First Annual Tortilla Farm Unity Sports Festival!"
"......?!"
"We'll split you into two teams. The winning side gets a generous bonus — and a full week of special paid leave!"
A silence fell. And then—
"L-leave?"
"We can rest for a whole week?"
"W-we get to breathe the air of the outside world?!"
A fierce light began to kindle in the laborers' eyes.
"Director?"
"Y-yes, Your Excellency!"
"Put together some reasonable teams, please."
"Yes, sir!"
And so the First Annual Tortilla Farm Unity Sports Festival was declared open.
A short while later, the laborers of Tortilla Farm had been split down the middle.
On one side stood the Gang Team, built around former gang members. They had stripped to the waist, and every kind of tattoo crawled across their backs and forearms. The opposing Civil Servant Team was no softer. They might once have been white-collar officials, but a great many of them were ex-military, and the viciousness rolling off them was considerable.
They were all hunting the same thing: one week of leave. And even that was not the whole of it.
"The games are the games, but His Excellency is watching. You run like your lives depend on it. Understood?"
Leave or no leave, jogging through this at half speed was never an option to begin with.
The first event of the festival, decided then and there, was — this being South America — soccer.
"Forty-five minutes each half. No injury time."
Preeeep—!
The whistle cut the air, and the ball rolled toward the center of the pitch. Eleven against eleven. They had been sent out as the representatives of their sides, and yet, strangely, every man on the field was staring only at the men across from him. Not a single pair of eyes was on the ball.
THWACK!
"Gyaaah!"
A scream tore out of someone the instant the match began. The Gang Team's lead striker had kicked the Civil Servant Team's shin — a low kick so precise and so vicious it could only have been practiced.
"You thug bastards!"
The moment their teammate went down, the Civil Servant Team's eyes rolled back in their heads.
"Flatten him!"
A murder-tackle honed in the military soccer leagues detonated across the dirt. A Blue Team defender launched himself with both legs scissored open, aimed squarely at a gang member's ankle.
CRACK!
"Aagh! My ankle!"
A heavy body went tumbling across the dirt. In seconds the pitch was swallowed in a cloud of yellow dust.
"Gouge his eyes! The eyes!"
"You — kick him in the balls!"
The Gang Team answered in the only language they knew: back-alley soccer. They would fake a scrum and drive an elbow into a solar plexus, or pretend to go down and stomp on an opponent's foot — every cheap foul in the book, all of it in the blind spots of the referee's vision.
"RAAAAH! CHARGE!"
But the Civil Servant Team's stubborn meanness was a match for anything. Their entire philosophy was to win with their bodies. If the ball went up, they headed the other man's skull. If it came to a tangle, they hooked a leg and went rolling together into the dirt.
Blood and sweat, spit and curses — a match that was nothing short of a massacre. And the result was decided in the filthiest way possible.
In the dying seconds of the second half, the Gang Team's massive striker drove the ball toward the goal. The Civil Servant keeper came off his line, shrinking the angle.
"Stop him! Stop him, damn it!"
In that instant, the striker did not shoot. He jumped, and drove his knee straight into the keeper's chest.
THUD—!
"Ghhk...!"
The keeper went down with a dull, ugly sound, foam at his lips. It was a blatant charging foul — a sending-off offense — but the referee did not dare stop a match that His Excellency was watching. The loose ball rolled free, and the Gang Team striker smashed it home.
Preeeep—!
"Goal, Red Team!"
Watching the keeper being carried off on a stretcher, Eugene's mouth fell open.
"This... this isn't what I wanted..."