And So, Today Is Day One!
Today marks a fresh start! I summoned people because I needed a whole new wardrobe made — my old clothes no longer fit.
It was a shame, but they'd been lovingly crafted for me, so I sent them off to the exhibition hall instead.
"Miss, your outfits have arrived from the costume atelier."
"Mm-hmm~"
What's this? At some point everyone started calling me "Miss." It began with just the Intelligence Bureau girls, but now it's spread to everyone — and honestly, I rather like it.
Hm? Men? Usually only women came, but for the first time a man showed up. Well, I've lived three thousand years; there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Still... a little shy, I suppose!
"Greetings. My name is Andre."
"Hm? You're a foreigner?"
"No?"
Then why is your name like that?
"That's an unusual name. Haha."
"I took it during my studies abroad in Mudo."
Ah. He studied abroad. In Mudo. Well, that is technically foreign.
"I see. Must have studied somewhere nice. Pleasure to have you."
"Then, with your permission."
Snnnlick.
Oh? He even has a measuring tape? Looks like he's treated the fabric with something special, too? He's marked the graduations on it himself — clever fellow, this one.
"First, your height is..."
Tiptoe.
"Miss? Please don't rise onto your toes."
"Ah..."
Quick on the uptake, this one.
"Height, 106. Legs... arms... bust, 54. Underbust, 43. Waist, 37. Hips, 59. Thighs are... calves are..."
Hmm. He's measuring even the most delicate areas with meticulous care. Make me good clothes, please!
"I'd like a lot of skirt-pants."
"Of course. Once everything is ready — from the latest fashions to formal wear for official occasions — I'll send it all over."
Oh, so he's planning to keep making clothes and sending them?
"Yes. Make plenty of comfortable everyday wear. Clothes get dirty and ruined more often than you'd think."
I do tend to wear my clothes rather hard, after all.
"Then I'll make an ample supply of daily wear."
"Keep the ornamentation from getting too excessive."
"We know all of Miss's tastes already. Hahaha."
That's right. I'm a woman with no secrets.
I'd worried it would take ages, but thankfully the everyday wear arrived early. I had no proper undergarments, and dresses were quietly inconvenient, you see.
"Well, what on earth?"
The "clothes" they sent were all shoulderless — nothing but thin straps draping across? So that's why the undergarments turned into these single-loop wraparounds.
And now I have several jacket-like things to throw on over everything! More like coats, maybe? These are actually stylish!
If I just get one hat, I could play lawless outlaw of the Western frontier.
Going out to have fun, my foot. I'm buried in overdue homework.
Ptooey.
Actually spitting felt a touch uncouth, so I've just been letting it dribble out instead.
Ha. Life. I'm not even a snot-nosed kid, yet here I am drooling. Thanks to this cursed Holy Water, medicine as a field seems to have died a quiet death. Even if we don't do anything, someone could just bring a little knowledge back from Mudo and...
CRASH.
"...Miss?"
"Hwah—?!"
"Ah. Were you collecting Holy Water?"
"Uh... uh..."
He said it so naturally? He KNOWS?!
"Do you know what this is?"
"Isn't it Holy Water?"
"How do you know that?"
"Everyone who needs to know, knows?"
Oh... here I thought they were eating and drinking it because it was my drool?
"Since when?"
"If you're asking about something several thousand years past, I'm afraid you'll have to forgive my being flustered?"
So they've known from the very beginning!
"...Doesn't that gross you out?"
"I beg your pardon? Why would it?"
"Because it's still drool, in the end..."
"No one thinks of it that way, so please don't worry yourself."
It's fine, she says? If I ate something covered in someone else's spit, I'm pretty sure I'd feel sick...
"After all, if it produced the effects of Holy Water, one would simply have to drink urine as well, wouldn't one?"
Ah. Now that? That is a line-crossing remark, my friend.
"Besides, I imagine plenty of people would rather like it. Euheheh."
What? Mom... this one's broken! Her eyes have gone round!
"You. Your eyes are getting disrespectful right now!"
"Ohohoho. We're both ladies, Miss — just one little kiss!"
"What are you talking about?!"
Did they hold some kind of audition and only recruit the weird ones? What is this? Seriously, why is she creeping closer like that?
Mwah.
"Mmph!"
What the— did she just suck something?!
THWACK.
"Ow!"
"Wh... what was that for?!"
"Ahh~ tasty~"
"Are you INSANE?!"
She's genuinely deranged. Right. When someone's gone mad, the whip is the best medicine!
And so the secretary and I had a brief conversation with our bodies. In other words, we traded a few blows.
Really, some people only come to their senses after a beating.
"Hahh. Hahh."
"P-please don't do that anymore?"
"I was your first..."
"Don't say things like that!"
Apparently she hasn't fully come back to her senses yet.
"Miss, it's Giyun."
"Oh..."
"Why do you look so drained?"
That deranged woman's eyes wouldn't clear up, so I traded a few blows, that's all.
"Just tired."
"Shall I come back later?"
"No."
Putting things off doesn't make them disappear.
"I came because of Han nation. They've been quietly slipping northward bit by bit — how shall we handle it?"
"Weren't they the ones who promised not to cross the Great Wall they built themselves?"
Those bastards are breaking their word again?
"Shall we send Tibetan mercenaries?"
"There's some rather pleasant land over there, you know. Our people don't want to go?"
"Correct. They rarely venture beyond the Tree."
Ah. Right, and we need to send people to the Eastern Continent too.
"Then ask the mercenaries — tell them the land is pleasant, we'll lend it to them, so farm it and guard the territory well."
"There are many nomads among them. Shall I go?"
"Some of them must want to settle down, surely. Just manage them carefully so they don't splinter into factions."
If I lay the groundwork now, it'll be much easier to build something like an Asian Union later.
The real problem is the Han nation, though...
"Seems those Han bastards have forgotten who built their country for them... Time to loosen the supply of Fist Potatoes."
"Already?"
"Without our engineers, do you really think they can make their own from just the samples?"
I've never once heard of a nomadic tribe sitting down to study chemistry. Unless they kidnap engineers and steal the know-how, that is.
"As it happens, we have already received such a request."
"Let the others do the fighting — we'll just sell the weapons."
"Yes, Ma'am!"
And with those weapons they'll pillage somewhere else, then come back crying that they need more weapons and hand us their money again, no doubt.
"By the way, is that land cursed, or is it the people? Why has it never worked out?"
"The land seems fine. Quite a few Daehan citizens have settled there now."
"Oh? People actually went to those plains?"
I never expected that. A pleasant surprise.
"A great many herders went. And now that they have firearms, hunting beasts is easier, and with trains running in every direction, people who want to live somewhere spacious have started moving out."
Oh. So THIS is what they wanted! It won't be perfectly even, but people spreading out and living in all directions — that's the dream.
The trains are doing the heavy lifting here!
"There are no large predators over there, so quite a few people go looking for it as a hobby-hunting ground."
Hunting as a hobby? Life must have gotten awfully comfortable.
"Things are going well all around. How goes the construction of government offices across the country?"
"Smoothly. They say we could build even taller now — why did you cap it at eleven stories?"
These people, always thinking only of themselves.
"Because climbing up and down all those stairs is exhausting, that's why."
"It's really not that hard!"
"Think of the elderly. Think of the frail."
"Ahh~"
You lot would sprint up thirty or forty stories without breaking a sweat, wouldn't you? You were just talking about doing leg day today.
"We're making the staircases wide, at least?"
"Yes — wide enough to run up."
See? That's exactly why I told you to make them wide.
"Anyway — let's have a revolution!"
"A... revolution?"
"Like what happened this time — when I'm away, you all need to be able to decide major matters among yourselves instead of putting everything off, don't you?"
"It turned out well, though?"
Hmm... did it?
"Including the war. We somehow ended up half-recognizing Joseon's independence without meaning to."
I should have drawn a hard line from the start — it's our land, everyone out.
"Couldn't we just take it back now?"
"That would mean killing every last one of them, wouldn't it?"
"Presumably?"
Everyone's head is so full of killing — but problems don't actually get solved that way.
"It wouldn't be difficult, but what would the rest of the world think of us? They'd whisper behind our backs and start plotting to gang up on us."
If an Asian Union forms without us in it, that's just a headache waiting to happen.
"We are magnanimous."
"I'm sorry?"
"We're graciously lending them our land — so tell them to pay taxes. However little, we take it."
"Is there a reason?"
Oh, there's a very important reason.
"It absolutely must be called a tax. What is a tax? It's what a nation's own citizens pay to their state. If they pay taxes to us... well then, what does that make them?"
"Ah!"
"THIS is what you call justification."
"Understood!"
Huh? We were in the middle of one conversation and it just veered off somewhere?
"No, anyway — the point is that you all need to deliberate and make decisions like this yourselves!"
"I see!"
"And so we're founding a council!"
"What is that, exactly?"
Hmm. Not quite a democracy, I suppose? I wonder how many people would even want the job?
"From each city, we pick people who are clever and who care about that city, gather them together, and they table proposals and debate what we ought to do next."
"And then who decides?"
In principle they should decide right there, but that won't fly, will it?
"Then we form a separate advisory council, and we ask them whether a given approach is the right one. Scholars should make up the bulk of that one."
"They'll hate it — it cuts into their research time."
"Then we simply stop their research funding if they refuse."
"Gasp! As expected! Truly diabolical!"
Excuse me? You revere me as a living god and then call me diabolical? What am I, a demon?
"The advisors' findings get brought to a final meeting — the ministers, and you — and that's where the decision is made."
"Oh!"
"That's what the government offices are for — so all of this can happen in one place, as much as possible."
Once communications technology advances, it'd be better to split them apart again, I suppose? They'd clearly squabble every single day until something came crashing down, and I'd feel sorry for the building.
"And what about you, Haneul-nim?"
Me? Don't know? I'm supposed to play, obviously.
"I'll be watching over everything! Checking whether you make bad decisions, that's all."
"Hm? Only checking?"
"You expect me to keep ordering people around at MY age?"
Stop working this old woman to the bone!
"You look younger than I do, though?"
"And how old do you think I am?"
"Er? Thirty-four hundred?"
"At my age, I should still be running around on the front lines? I want to be fastened to the Temple, gazing at the sky and napping, you know?"
"..."
I was going to do that anyway, so why the complaints?
"I'm not saying I'll let go of the reins. I'll still be here — but I have to come and go to the Eastern Continent too, don't I? So when I'm gone, is no one allowed to decide anything?"
"Ah!"
Wow. My quick thinking? Honestly, I just want to travel and play, but the Eastern Continent excuse sprang to mind out of nowhere!
This is going to go over smoothly. That guy's already bought half of it.
"And one more thing — gather opinions from as many people as possible. More people means more useless chatter, but it also means better ideas."
"Yes, Ma'am! Understood!"
"Then as of today, you're the Prime Minister!"
That's right — our Prime Minister's Day One starts today!
"Prime... Minister?"
"Yes. You manage everything, so: Prime Minister. Has a nice ring to it, no?"
"Oh! It does feel... empowering!"
Enjoy that feeling while you're still blissfully ignorant. Your workload is about to multiply.
"Don't try to shoulder everything alone — create positions with real responsibility and delegate. It'll be easier on you."
You'll have to, if you want to survive this. If that one runs away, the work really does land on me.
"Oh!!!"
He can be a bit dim sometimes, but moments like this, it's a virtue.
I, the undersigned... do hereby swear... for generations unbroken...
...until such time as my successor is duly appointed...
...to serve faithfully and with devotion in the office of Prime Minister...
"Come, come — sign here!"
"Yes, Ma'am!"
Scribble.
Is he an idiot? He didn't even read it before slapping his signature down!
"There — congratulations!"
"Thank you!"
"Anything you'd like? A gift?"
"I would like the weapon you carry, Haneul-nim!"
A pistol? Seriously? Who exactly is he planning to shoot? That thing genuinely kills people — surely he wouldn't fire it inside the office...
"That thing has an expiration date, you know. You'd have to keep making primers and such on a regular basis."
"Our chemists are researching it diligently."
Click.
Of my pair of revolvers — one gold, one silver — I handed over the golden one. One was plenty for him anyway. Besides, with all that gold ornamentation, he'd feel awkward firing it in public.
"There! In honor of your premiership. Hang it in your office and put it to good use!"
"Thank you!"
Well, I suppose the family motto of the Prime Minister's house just changed. Whether asleep or awake, sign nothing without reading it.