Change Your Shoes and Wear Them!
「KUUUUNG! Kwarururung!」
It seemed the explosions had all finished.
“You guys?”
“Yes, ma'am!”
“We didn't miss one of our nine, did we?”
“No! That's right!”
Hold on, do you people not count? Only eight of them just went off, didn't they?
“One of them didn't explode, did it?”
“No! That's right!”
Wait, so you did notice? Then say so properly!
“Should we go set fire to it or something? How else would we find it?”
“Can't we just leave it?”
“Huh?”
Is it really okay to just walk away and leave it?
“Sometimes they just don't go off! It happens!”
Could you not say that so breezily, like it's the most natural thing in the world? I suppose there's nothing to be done about it, but honestly, these defective things of yours.
Come to think of it, the dud over there and the duds standing here are all cut from the same cloth.
“Well, even if it does blow, it'll blow way over there, so it should be fine, right?”
“What was it called again? The core charge? If that one doesn't go off, it won't do anything in a fire anyway — it'll just burn.”
“Wha—?”
Oh? Dynamite doesn't actually explode on its own? I... did not know that part.
“You didn't know?”
“Nope. Not in that much detail.”
“Puhuhu.”
What's with that creepy little laugh, you brat.
“Anyway, let's head home. People are coming out with torches over there, making a whole fuss.”
“Yes! Let's head back quietly!”
We hadn't brought any real weapons with us, so it wasn't exactly a great situation for a fight anyway.
We crawled back along the rice-paddy ridges, being as careful as possible, and by the time we returned our clothes were in absolute beggar's rags.
This is exactly why I carry around several changes of clothes. Everything I wear ends up torn or filthy the moment I do anything.
Then again, isn't the real problem the person who does these things? Well, either way, we made it safely back home.
And then, the very next day, a messenger arrived.
「Sreeek. Ahem.」
“What in the world is this?”
“Whoa...”
Something had arrived in the form of a letter, but from top to bottom it was an ultra-long missive written entirely in dense Chinese characters.
No, seriously, isn't this a bit excessive even for a formal complaint? Is this some new form of torture?
“Isn't there anyone here who's good with hanja?”
“Aren't you the best at it, my lady?”
“I don't know all that much of it either?”
From now on, I'm picking leaders based on brains. Hmm, but would they actually listen to me then? That's another thing to worry about.
After all, if I said "study or you don't get to be leader," they'd all just say "then I don't want to be leader."
Every last one of them is a handful.
“Let's see. So then. This says... 'We gratefully received your gift last night. How cowardly of you. What do you think you're doing. And then—' wait, why am I tripping over this again?”
Every other line is just "we will strip you bare and utterly destroy you" in fancier words. Good grief. They seem to be some kind of envoys, but is it really okay to write like this?
“Hey! We should write back!”
“Yes, ma'am!”
We sent a reply — extremely short and to the point, and written, no less, in the Daehan language. They can figure out the translation themselves. They wrote to us in hanja, so fair's fair. Obviously.
“Tell the residents to stay alert. There's no telling if those people might try something underhanded.”
“Yes! We'll have them work on the opposite side of the site for the time being.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.”
Apparently the approach route those fellows used came from the north. Hmm? Should we go back and level the whole place again?
No — they've got castle walls now, so taking whatever they throw at us and hitting back is the option with the least damage all around!
Let those homeless vagabonds try living like beggars for a change.
And from the next day onward, enormous crowds of people began flooding into the mines every night.
“Truly rotten bastards, aren't they?”
“Nobles really are nothing but wicked creatures, aren't they?”
The story was that they'd been hauled off under the pretext of building some lord's manor, worked without so much as a meal, and had run away because it was simply too much to bear.
“Feed them first. And you know all those hidden mountain valleys around here? There are plenty of people who could farm them. Tell them to settle there, and if anyone wants work, send them to us.”
“Yes. The more hands, the better.”
Somehow or other, it looks like we've ended up feeding Japanese refugees too.
On the Fujiwara side, a truly staggering number of spies had been sent into Iwami. That was precisely why the fleeing residents had been left alone.
The plan was for the spies to slip in among them and, at the right moment, open the castle gates from within.
And so the spies infiltrated.
“What! They just give you food for working?”
“They even pay you money when the day's work is done.”
“That can't be real.”
“I don't know — didn't you see the people here? Every one of them has plump, well-fed cheeks.”
Was it possible that these foreigners from some place called Daehan were treating them better than the nobles of their own homeland?
“They're only being generous at the beginning, surely.”
“Could you keep that up for ten years?”
“Gah!”
The spies were finding themselves with more and more to agonize over. The meal they were given was, in the locals' words, something called potato, sliced up with dried meat and seasoned and boiled — and it was impossibly delicious.
What was more, with the money earned from a day's work, they could go down to the harbor and buy even tastier things.
“Maybe I should bring my family here and just settle down instead.”
“I've been thinking the same.”
“What about the others?”
“Who else would I talk to about this, if not you?”
They had been next-door neighbors since childhood, close enough friends that even a conversation like this was possible.
“Haruto. You're due to rotate back soon, aren't you?”
“Yeah.”
“Could you bring both our families out here?”
“Do you really mean it?”
“We could die any day doing this spy work. Even if we survive — don't you want to live like actual human beings, here?”
A spy's life was wretchedly precarious. All too often, masters had their spies killed simply because they knew too much.
“All right. I'll bring your family and mine out, every last one of them.”
“Please do. I'll find out how many of the others have gotten in.”
What a blessing it was, truly, to have a trustworthy friend as a partner in a place like Iwami.
He was going to be busy for a while. He couldn't know exactly who had come in or how many, but he had a decent eye for it.
People who kept glancing around nervously, or who went about asking odd questions — they always gave themselves away. All he had to do was watch what such people did at night.
And then, several months later.
“You're alive! Genji!”
“Good work out there! Haruto!”
It was their first reunion in a long while. Haruto had returned first and smuggled both families out in secret.
With two households combined, there had been so many family members that preparing the escape in silence had taken quite some time.
“They say they'll accept our defection.”
“Really?”
“In exchange, they want us to help deal with the other spies.”
“Isn't that dangerous?”
Haruto had made it out by the skin of his teeth, and he worried they were simply being used again. Some of the spies carried hidden weapons, which made the work genuinely dangerous.
“They said if it ever gets too dangerous, all we have to do is tell them.”
“That's a relief.”
Fortunately, they didn't seem inclined to order them into reckless danger for no reason, and Haruto felt a little easier about it.
From the next day onward, the two of them were busy. Watching their surroundings even while working was now their job.
And at night, the real work began.
“...”
「Shk, shk, shk.」
“...”
「Nod.」
There was no need to put a single word into the air. They were friends who had spent more years together than they had with their own wives. One look in the other's eyes, and the meaning was clear.
「Grab!」
“Mmph! Mmph!”
「Thud. Thud-thud.」
「Wham.」
“Ngh.”
Genji yanked a sack down over the man's head, and Haruto drove a blade in through the cloth. But the man had skill of his own — in the struggle, Genji took an awl-like point to the flesh.
“Kkuh...”
“Are you okay!?”
“Poison... I think it was poison...”
Such was a spy's life: rather than wielding large weapons, you always carried poison instead. At least it seemed they hadn't grabbed some innocent bystander. Genji writhed in agony.
Haruto hurriedly pulled the small jar from his sash — the one the Daehan people had told them to drink from or apply whenever anyone was badly hurt or in danger of dying.
When he'd first cracked it open and sniffed, it had just been water with the faint scent of flowers, and he'd wondered what the point of it was. Now, for the first time, he was about to find out.
“Genji, stay with me! Drink this, quickly!”
“Kkuuuh...”
As his consciousness faded, Genji felt the fragrance of flowers settle over his tongue. Then came a sensation of warmth spreading through his body. He hadn't felt this safe and cozy since he was a child, held against his mother's chest.
“Uuuuh.”
“Are you back with me?”
The coziness lasted only a moment before his senses snapped back. What on earth had just happened?
“That was definitely poison, wasn't it?”
“You're all right?”
“Yeah. Not a single spot on me hurts!”
Even the old wound on his knee — the one he'd gotten years ago, when he'd been caught infiltrating somewhere else as a spy and had fled for his life — was completely gone. It had throbbed and ached with every step he took.
“Haruto...”
“What is it!? Where does it hurt?”
Haruto panicked at the sorrowful look on Genji's face. Had the jar actually contained poison after all? It felt as though he had driven his own friend to his death. His world was collapsing.
“My knee is healed too.”
“Huh?”
“The knee I hurt five years ago — it's healed, I'm telling you!”
“Seriously!?”
What in the world was going on? He'd drunk a little water, and both the poison and the old injury had been cured?
“What even is this stuff?”
“From what I've heard, they say it's the grace of the god they worship?”
“So a god really does exist?”
The two of them had always believed there were no gods. They raised shrines and visited temples, sure — but they had never once seen anything that resembled an actual god.
“What is this?”
“Do gods really exist after all?”
“Maybe that's why Daehan is so rich!”
Two men whose eyes had just been opened to a truth their countrymen had never known. Once again, when it came to recruiting new believers, nothing beat Holy Water.
“A Japanese spy defected to us?”
“Yes. Apparently life out there has become that hard.”
Aren't spies supposed to be elite personnel? Like our Intelligence Bureau kids?
“Well, whatever. If they want to live here, tell them they can stay.”
“In exchange, they say they'll help us take care of the other spies.”
“Eh? Won't that be dangerous?”
Aren't those ninja-types the ones who train with poison and martial arts and all that?
“Shall we issue them some Holy Water?”
“Yeah. It's not like it's rare — we've got mountains of it, don't we?”
“We have plenty, but it is also precious.”
Did I just put my foot in it? When your eyes light up like that, it scares me, you know. At this rate you'll be telling me you want to beat people healthy next.
“Oh! Right. Let's hand some out to the sick Japanese workers too!”
Fix it before it breaks — that's just proper maintenance! Means they can work even longer, right?
“...”
Hm? Why are you silently shedding tears over there?
“What's wrong?”
Is something wrong at home?
“Your boundless compassion! Caring for the wretched and pitiable of this world! Today I feel as though I've witnessed a new light dawning!”
Hey? That's not it, okay? I just want to work them longer! It's exactly like hammering a straight edge back onto a bent farm tool!
“Uhh...”
But how do you argue with eyes like that? I'm about to get branded a heretic here.
Ugh, these kids scare me so much I can't even get a word in.
“By the way — once this place is done, there's more reeds to harvest. Might as well go rescue the people who are barely surviving out there and bring them back.”
We'll pick up some know-how along the way, and the whole thing will go smoother each time.
“Oh? There are more?”
“Of course. Forget the small stuff — I've got three more big ones lined up!”
“Oh! When will you be going!?”
“Those guys will hand us our pretext soon enough. Just wait for it.”
Three whole gold mines! Sure, there's a lot we'll have to stockpile and sort out separately later.
But if we stash it all underground, it's not going anywhere. Around the modern era or so, we can extract the rest by electrolysis.
“So go easy on the people we're putting to work. And tell the kids to look after them properly.”
“I'll see about winning over the spies as well.”
“Right. They seem to be having a hard time making a living too — tell them to throw in with us. At least for the next few hundred years, they'll never have to worry about where their next meal comes from.”
Mining the gold mines out completely would take a genuinely long time, even with dynamite. We have to clear them one at a time, after all.
Running a mining operation on someone else's land is hard! Honestly.
“Do we really need to dig up that much gold and silver?”
“Yep! Every last bit of it gets dug up and carried out.”
That's the only way Japan stays an agricultural nation. Japan, stripped bare of every grain of gold and silver — I wonder how it'll turn out in the future?
Well, they'll still have land to farm, so they shouldn't starve, at least.
And if a war breaks out around here later on, maybe I'll take some of them on as soldiers. Good pay, after all — I imagine there'll be plenty of volunteers to soak up bullets.
We'll pay them well. Paid, of course, with the gold and silver we're hauling out of here.