So Much Nagging?
Seriously, how much nagging can one person take?
The war was over, but somehow there was more work than ever. We had to look after the land of Joseon, where every king and noble had been cleaned out; we had to take care of the vast Central Plains; and now we had to deal with those island riffraff too.
"So, what are those island rats up to?"
"They're still stalling."
"Four years in, and still?"
"What would you like us to do?"
Soldiers we'd sent into Daehan and China hadn't even made it home yet, so assembling an expeditionary force was out of the question.
"The navy doesn't have anything major on its plate right now, does it?"
"No, ma'am."
"Let's do a lot of burning, then."
Until now we'd only bothered with Kyushu, but if we torched the whole place from top to bottom, surely we'd get a response. It would be even better if the fires spread like wildfire through the mountains.
"How much burning?"
"Well, why not all the way to the capital?"
"Huh? You just want to commit arson, is that it?"
That's right! Let's play a little game of arsonists. Time for the Great Jipan Fire!
"Besides the Horned Whales, the Dolphins can handle this sort of thing just fine, can't they? The distance is short, so we won't need to haul much cargo either."
"In that case... eheheh."
It was a zergling rush, a stampede of beasts. We had more ships than we knew what to do with — those fools wouldn't know what hit them.
"Scare those bastards so badly they never dare come out to the coast or the flatlands again!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
The slingshots had plenty of range, so there'd hardly be any damage to worry about. This should work out nicely.
We'd have to plant a lot of soybeans again this year. What on earth did they put in those mosquito coils? I'd heard they just threw wood tar and this and that into oil, but somehow it worked.
And in this era, there was one surefire way to ruin a country even without going to war with it.
"If there's nothing left worth burning, have a few men quietly go ashore and set the mountains on fire. Work them hard at it."
"The mountains, ma'am? Not the crops?"
Environmental destruction did weigh on my conscience a little, but if the population thinned out, the land would recover eventually, right?
"Even burning mountains can bring a nation down."
They couldn't build houses, they couldn't build ships, and above all the groundwater would shrink, wrecking their agriculture. Then they'd have to rely on foraging in the forests for emergency food — and that would become harder too.
They'd just keep spinning through that vicious cycle until the whole country collapsed.
Huh? Wait — their population probably isn't big enough for that yet, is it? This is the kind of collapse that needs a large population to happen.
"We should be careful once the timber starts running short, then?"
"Yes, exactly. Huh?"
What about us? With all this population, how come I'd barely seen anyone burning coal?
"Is something wrong?"
"Are we not short on firewood?"
Our population had long since passed three hundred million, hadn't it?
"Our problem is the opposite — we have too much... but the deep forests are still off-limits."
Hm, that was a bit of a problem. There were so many resources in eastern Shinsi and the northern reaches of the peninsula...
"Maybe we should just build roads here and there, then..."
The lungs of the Earth was looking less like the Amazon and more like Daehan. The western mountain ranges had an absolutely staggering amount of timber.
On the east side, Moda kept felling trees on a massive scale, so at least there was some hope — but the west was a lost cause.
"More people means fewer trees, doesn't it?"
"Well... I suppose."
Ah, so that's why they didn't use coal. Fine — better safe than sorry about carbon monoxide.
"By the way, why are those Joseon fools making such a fuss?"
So many of their people had been taken that going home was nearly impossible anyway. We'd named the Central Plains the Joseon Autonomous Zone and told them to settle there.
We'd graciously let them live on empty land, and now they had the nerve to whine, "Give us back our country!"
"Wasn't it their country to begin with?"
"What did we ever do to them?"
"Absolutely nothing."
"That place should be far more livable than Joseon proper, shouldn't it?"
No World Tree, sure — but look how much land they got! They could farm three, four times as much.
"Who knows? What do they even think is waiting for them back there?"
"Tell them to go. That land is ours now anyway."
"That's easier said than done, ma'am. They hide out in the mountains and resist — absolutely relentless about it."
Had anyone ever seen such lunatics? It was like those righteous-army guerrillas. I could understand it against an invading force, but why on earth were they snarling at us?
"Do we look like pushovers to them?"
"Perhaps we've been too generous?"
"Then grab anyone who refuses and ship them off to... hmm, where..."
Coal mines were a bit much. Was there anywhere else?
"Oh! Drop them off on that island over there — it used to be Joseon Territory, didn't it?"
"And let them fight it out on their own?"
"Oh! Come to think of it, aren't those settlers their enemies?"
"Right. Push them in there and tell them to make a living. Problem solved."
These brats had gotten too full of themselves, that was the trouble. When we told them to be careful, they just dawdled around, and now they come crying about it after the fact.
So, was everything settled?
Hm? What's this? Something written in absolutely tiny print?
Railway Expansion Project
What is this supposed to be? There aren't even any locomotives yet — what's the point of expanding railways?
"What's this?"
"W-well, it's..."
I jabbed a finger at it, and the poor thing went pale. Oh, look at this? Written it small on purpose so I'd skim right past it, hadn't they?
"It says here, 'Railway Expansion Project.'"
"Ah~ ahaha. It's really nothing, ma'am."
"Mm-hmm. So what is it?"
"..."
Nobody hid something this casually unless it was serious.
"You know those rails, ma'am? They turned out to be incredibly useful! So everyone thought, let's just lay a little more here, a little more there? And oh dear! It worked so well that we kept going a little further, and a little further, and... hahaha."
Oh? Look at that tongue go. I could hire her as a rapper at this point.
"Goodness, what a long tongue you have. Should I pluck it out for you?"
"No, ma'am."
"Is steel really so abundant that you can just keep laying track? Every new stretch of line needs an army of maintenance workers, you know."
Steel was cheap thanks to Gangcheol's output, but how exactly did they plan to patrol and maintain all of it?
"Ah! That's why we created a Railway Division under the Ministry of Transport, staffed with dedicated professionals!"
So the steel is piling up, and they just keep laying more.
"Do we really have that much spare steel?"
"A fair amount?"
"I don't know how you're running this, but don't overdo it. If the furnaces ever go cold, that's the end of everything."
"We're regulating it very carefully!"
"Fine. Handle it well, then."
And then I gave a pointed little tap-tap to the envelope sitting on the desk, one marked Circular to All Households. This one was still young, after all. There were plenty of elders in the family. Plenty and plenty more.
"Eep!"
The war wasn't actually over yet. The fortress walls still had to be completed and the interior stabilized, and those island rats were still kicking up trouble.
"Why haven't they surrendered yet?"
"We've sent envoys, but there's been no reply."
"Other than their little interior, there's hardly anywhere left worth setting on fire."
"The navy has actually petitioned to advance inland themselves, for what it's worth."
Their numbers would be awfully thin. Would they really be all right?
"No, let's keep the pressure on a little longer."
"Yes, ma'am."
With pollution at this level, global warming surely wouldn't arrive early... right?
"What do those people even live on? Foraging grass in the mountains?"
"It's certainly not fish, ma'am."
"Even the ships heading home do a full lap around that country, I hear?"
Trade was still ongoing, and the ships that went out made a complete circuit of the islands on their way back.
Conditions in Jipan at the time were an absolute shambles.
"What do you mean you still haven't found a single person who speaks Daehan?!"
"That is... we never traded with them at all, Your Majesty."
"Then find one, quickly!"
Daehan had sent envoys several times, but with no way to communicate, they had simply turned around and gone home. So they had scrambled to find anyone who knew the Daehan tongue — but the rot went back to their old policy of treating Daehan as an enemy and trading exclusively with the Sui.
Not a single soul could be found. In a frantic rush, they sent people to the northern island of Dongdo to learn the language, but trying to manage through gestures and pantomime was proving anything but easy.
"Ah, heavens..."
"Our deepest apologies, Your Majesty."
"A great power should act like one! Shouldn't a great power at least know the languages of its neighbors?!"
They'd cut off contact themselves, so heaven only knew what they were going on about. No wonder the Daehan envoys, who probably understood at least the gist of their chatter, had pretended not to.
"Tell them, for the love of all that is holy, to stop! Send the message now!"
"Yes, Your Majesty..."
"At the very least, I want to know why!"
They were being pummeled without even knowing the reason.
At last, a man who had rushed back from Dongdo with the language stammered out Daehan's demands, and only then were they able to learn why this was happening — and receive a reply.
"Withdraw from the islands we occupied?"
"Yes. That is the message they passed along."
"When was this demand made?"
"They say it was sent when the Sui dynasty fell."
"What?"
The Sui had fallen? That enormous nation — not defeated in war, but simply gone?
"Is that true?"
"We... we cannot cross the sea to verify it, Your Majesty..."
"Hmm..."
He considered whether it might be false intelligence, but judging by everything Daehan had been doing, it rang painfully true.
On any given day, Daehan ships passed by the coast in droves. No one dared approach the shoreline anymore, so the crews would come ashore just long enough to set the mountains alight before sailing off again — and now wildfires raged across the entire country without pause.
"So if we only withdraw from the islands, they'll leave us be?"
"They also demand that we launch no ships into the inland sea..."
"The inland sea? You mean the waters toward their lands?"
The king could scarcely believe it — those waters were so vast that calling them an "inland sea" seemed absurd.
"Yes. From that island down below, every last stretch of it is said to be their territory."
"Just how enormous is this nation...?"
Come to think of it, he was beginning to fear they had charged at Daehan knowing nothing about the country, trusting blindly in the Sui.
And now even the Sui, the one pillar they'd leaned on, appeared to have crumbled.
"Send word at once that we will pull our troops off the islands. Tell them we have no intention of fighting."
"Yes, Your Majesty. I will send word immediately."
"Ah, heavens..."
It was a large island, true — but by occupying a single island, they had brought their entire nation to the brink of ruin.
The forests were damp, so the fires hadn't spread into infernos, but wind-blown embers had scorched the rice paddies and fields, and now they faced the coming winter with dread.
The mountains might be full of trees, but most were towering old growth, and with barely passable roads, hauling timber down was no simple matter.
And then there were the mountain beasts, their meat surely spoiled with poison from the long-burning fires.
"Just who are we supposed to be talking to, in the end?"
"Daehan, or... perhaps Hansim, Your Majesty?"
"What did you say?!"
"My apologies, Your Majesty!"
If this was what passed for a king, the future of this country was as good as finished. One day, when Daehan's ships ran on steam, these people would still be rowing out to meet them in galleys.
"Oh? So they kept quiet because they couldn't understand a word we said?"
"They claim so, and they're begging to withdraw quickly."
How curious. My people at least understood the languages of all the neighboring countries, didn't they? Scheming little islanders, the lot of them! They'd just been lying low, waiting to change their tune.
"Are the Joseon folk settling into life on the islands?"
"I imagine they'll manage well enough on their own."
"It's our land, so build the ports anyway — I won't have them whining about it later."
We'd loaned them the land to live on, after all. We hadn't handed it over outright.
"And once the plains empty out, release plenty of animals there. Let's just turn it into a livestock ranch."
"Yes, ma'am. Heh heh heh."
The Central Plains we'd just taken were officially designated as a ranch.
People were migrating north into it, but only a handful at a time.
Meat would be had without end. With fortress walls and fences all around, the animals couldn't run off anywhere far, could they?
"Oh, and there's a request from Hana."
"Why is that country called Hana too?"
Using the name of a fallen country — how strange.
"They say it's a different character with the same sound — apparently there's another 'Han' that reads the same as ours."
Oh, right. Of course. Chinese characters were absolutely stuffed with homophones!
"What do they need?"
"A trade route, apparently. They're hemmed in on all sides and can't manage otherwise."
That's right — we'd agreed nothing would come south of Jangseong, hadn't we?
"Tell them to loop around to the north and try their luck at trade out west. A country's got to eat, after all."
"They're also asking us to open a market for them. What should we do?"
"That's for the Merchant Guild to sort out on its own. Just pass the request along."
Something like an early chaebol federation — a council of merchants had formed, mediating their own internal squabbles and running things decently enough, so we'd been keeping a watchful eye on them.
"We do have someone planted in the Merchant Guild, yes?"
"Yes, ma'am. One of our girls is embedded there."
"We have women in the Bureau too?"
"Why wouldn't we?"
Ah. Goodness. And here I was, the one harboring sexist assumptions...
The Intelligence Bureau really did dabble in everything — running trade, pulling off highway robbery, cultivating spies...