Do I Look That Nice?
Trudge. Trudge.
"Haah... what am I going to do..."
With his conversation with Haneul finished and the road home stretching ahead, Nagatoki's footsteps had no strength left in them at all. Eighty thousand ryang of gold due every single year. It had become a sum you would have to grind human beings into paste to scrape together. Because if he didn't, it truly seemed like Japan would be ground into dust instead.
"But seriously, could an army really be that big?"
Twinge of doubt crept over him. What on earth kind of country was this?
"And now that I think of it... I don't actually know anything about Daehan, do I?"
As he turned the matter over in his mind, his face began to drain of color. Not a single soul who had ever crossed into Daehan, by sea or by land, had ever come back. Everyone had always dismissed that as the cowardly excuse of failures.
"Is their army so vast they watch over their entire territory? That must be why no one can get in!"
The borderlands were mostly fortresses that could not be crossed, but one could still slip through by mountain paths or sea routes. That much, at least, was possible. It was everything beyond that mattered — pushing through the countless ferocious beasts lurking in those forests and reaching inhabited land was, realistically, impossible.
Even Daehan's own people were reluctant to enter those forests alone.
Step. Step.
"First, home! Somehow, I'll figure something out."
He steeled himself with the resolution, but his steps remained leaden and his face ashen. And the faces of the countless samurai who had watched him go were on the verge of tears.
He suffered so much out there, all for our sake!
Ah! The bakufu is the only thing we can believe in!
I will lay down my life for the bakufu.
None of them knew the details of what Nagatoki had actually negotiated, and so the misunderstandings only piled higher. A fine thing for the Hojo family — but across Japan as a whole, a calamity was quietly taking root. The order to gather the money would come down soon, and with it, the plundering of their own countrymen would begin.
Passing the saluting samurai, Nagatoki reached the gates of the main residence, where his worried family greeted him at the door.
"Father!"
"Are you all right, my lord?"
"Dad..."
His children and servants crowded around him, anxious.
"Let's go inside first. We'll talk there."
"Yes..."
Hearing the lifeless tone of his voice, the family concluded that something truly terrible had happened. Watching the whole household file glumly through the gates, the samurai outside could only renew their vows — that they would do anything, anything at all, for the bakufu and its family.
The entire household gathered in the central residence of the Hojo clan. The servants and the secret bodyguard samurai were dismissed to a respectful distance, and the family spoke among themselves.
"Does anyone know anything at all about Daehan?"
"Well..."
"They said it was a country that existed somewhere out there?"
"I have heard that on the open sea, no ship may set sail without their permission, whatever its nation."
"Something called Daedo? I understand it is a great trading hub of theirs."
As expected, not one of them knew the slightest thing about Daehan proper.
Brrr...
"Mmm..."
A sudden chill ran down Nagatoki's spine. Could it be true that that colossal nation was hiding itself while ruling this vast ocean?
"We will need to investigate Daehan thoroughly. Look upon those miraculous weapons and ships. They are unquestionably a powerful great power..."
"Yes, my lord. We will look into it."
That could wait for later — the problem was the here and now.
"And. We must pay an indemnity."
"How much is it, Father?"
Still, his family had a right to know, and Nagatoki gingerly named the figure.
"Four million ryang..."
"Gah... th... still, it is possible. Barely."
The imperial court ran the entire country on a mere hundred thousand ryang, and yet a single noble house could raise four million — their family's power was evidently staggering.
"No. Four million ryang of gold."
"Khek..."
"Hah..."
"Kyaa..."
The family members, who had been confident they could manage four million in silver, looked ready to faint at the word gold. Gold was severely undervalued in Japan, wasn't it — worth five to ten times its weight in silver?
"But they have agreed to accept it in installments over fifty years."
"Th... then what of the interest?"
"That's separate. I will have to negotiate with them..."
"Ah..."
His family felt truly, irreversibly ruined. This was not a sum Japan's economy could ever hope to repay.
"That said, I have arranged to have the interest reduced by ceding land development rights."
"Development, Father?"
"Yes. They intend to gather people, set them to work, and dig out the resources that come from it."
"Hmm..."
The eldest son pondered for a moment. He was, after all, the cleverest of them.
"Then the wages paid to the laborers would generate considerable income for us, would they not?"
"Precisely!"
On the surface, it could actually benefit a country like Japan, which had neither the technology nor the means to develop anything itself. They would be handing over land, yes — but the wages flowing to the workers would circulate a respectable amount of money through Japan.
"How much are they paying, exactly?"
"By their account, considerably more than one could earn farming."
"Oh! Then it may well be a profit!"
If the pay exceeded what farming brought in, sending people to the mines would naturally increase the nation's revenue.
"But food will become scarce, won't it..."
"We would have to import it, then."
As the people flooded into the mines, farmers would dwindle, and food would have to come from abroad — and in this whole region, the only place producing and exporting grain on that scale was Daehan.
Would Daehan really carry nothing but food on those ships? Of course not. Everything from daily necessities to luxury goods would pour in, and the miners' hard-earned wages would be spent, down to the last coin, on Daehan's goods. Without anyone intending it, the process of becoming Daehan's economic vassal state had already begun. And if Daehan ever blocked food exports, the country would simply starve to death.
"Even so, we must produce our food with our own hands."
The eldest son had grasped the gravity of the situation after all.
"Why is that?"
"Because if we have no food at all, we will come to depend entirely upon them."
There was reason in his son's words — though whether things would go as they imagined was another matter entirely. They had no way of guessing how generous Daehan's wages would turn out to be.
"That's my son! Magnificent!"
"You honor me..."
Rustle. Clink.
Then Nagatoki's daughter and wives came forward, gingerly offering up a cloth sack.
"Husband, this is what we gathered."
"Dad, we saved up a little at a time."
Jingle.
When the sack was upended, all manner of gold and silver trinkets came pouring out — enough that a single bag of it would have been too heavy for one person to carry.
"Oh? There's this much?"
Even he hadn't known. He had never imagined the gifts he'd handed out here and there over the years would add up to so much.
"And there is far more in the back rooms — gathered from the surrounding estates and noble houses."
Hardly voluntary on the donors' part — semi-coerced, at best — but the bullion collected from the local magnates was already considerable.
Grind.
"Now, in here."
When he slid open the door of the next room, gold and silver lay heaped like mountains. One almost worried the floorboards would give way beneath it.
This much wealth could cover not just the first year, but several of them.
"Gah! There's this much?"
"Yes. And this is only what was hastily gathered from the nearby domains."
Blood had been spilled in the process, of course. How many men sit quietly while their fortunes are stripped from them? Perhaps that was why the treasure before their eyes seemed to shimmer with an undertone of red.
"Well then — we'll hand over only a portion of it?"
"What are you planning, Father?"
"Money must be used to multiply money, mustn't it?"
"Ah!"
He intended to take the plundered and extorted wealth and use it to swell his own coffers further. And so Nagatoki began sorting the treasure — there was so much of it, so heavy, that carts had to be summoned just to haul it all.
What is all this? The man had left that morning half-dead with dread, and now he came back hauling mountains of gold and silver.
"Where in the world did all this come from?"
"We gathered it from the surrounding estates."
Estates? How would I know what counts as an estate around here? Basically, they ransacked the nobles' houses, didn't they? Incredible. If this is what the local area alone yields, they could have paid off the whole debt ages ago by sweeping the entire country.
"Right — let's weigh it first."
Rustle, rustle. Cascade.
The kids poured everything out onto the scales and began sorting the gold from the silver.
"Hmm. The quality's a bit poor, isn't it? We'll only credit seventy percent of the weight."
Was it because the kids had handled so much of this stuff? They were practically professionals — with a sixth sense for spotting the valuable pieces.
"Wh-what! No! Isn't all gold just gold?"
"It's got all sorts of junk mixed in. Are you going to haul it away and refine it yourself?"
"How would we ever..."
They couldn't, obviously. The refining technology for that didn't exist yet. If they'd at least known the cupellation method for silver, they might have been spared the cry of "dross" — too bad.
"...No. We cannot. Do as you say."
"Then we'll continue the measurement."
And so the gold, sorted and stacked to one side, began piling up, terrifyingly,
One ryang.
Two ryang.
...
...
on and on it went.
Huh, so a single ryang weighs less than I expected?
The number climbed with every modest little ingot, and Nagatoki stood watching with bloodshot eyes, terrified the scheming bastard would let even a single one slip past the count.
Why stare like that — planning to pilfer some and do what with it? You'll ruin your eyesight.
"Miss — 230,000 ryang of gold, and 83,000 ryang of silver."
Wow... just what have they been doing over there, that a quick collection yields this much?
"So that's 313,000 ryang paid off?"
"Yes..."
My, that's a hefty payment. Four years' worth?
"No, Miss — only seventy percent, on account of the dross."
"Ah!"
Now, what does that come to? Hmm... hmm...
"Math is a pain, so I'll count it as a generous 220,000!"
"If you could just round up a little more..."
"Then make it 210,000."
He'd rounded up a decimal point in their favor, and now he wanted a tip for it? Had that little bonus really grown that much?
"N-no! Not at all! Thank you kindly!"
"If you ask for more after I've already added extra, it hurts my feelings, you know?"
"Yes! Yes! Of course! My mouth ran away with me. Hehe."
That goat-bearded old goat is a schemer through and through, isn't he? One thing one minute, another the next.
"Ah, right — gold and silver are heavy and a bother to haul, so I'll pay it out in Daehan currency instead."
"Er... we don't have any of that..."
"People will be moving in soon enough. Just sell them goods and collect it that way, no?"
"Aha! Of course! You mean the developers coming in, yes?"
He thinks of them as developers? Haneul had assumed they'd be seen as bandits. He clearly had no idea what was actually coming.
He would probably go down in the history books as the arch-traitor who sold his entire nation.
"And if you need anything, just say the word. There's nothing we don't sell."
"Yes! Thank you!"
I'll get you hooked on luxury goods like a fish on a baited hook — poison with a hole in the bottom of the cup, and you'll never notice.
"Off you go, then."
"Yes! We take our leave!"
"Mm."
Hm? Wasn't he supposed to be the most powerful man in this country? Why is he bowing and scraping so much?
Rattle, rattle.
The face of the man hauling his carts away was absolutely beaming. The kids stared holes into the back of his head as he receded into the distance.
"Frustrating, isn't it?"
Receiving blood money in exchange for lives couldn't possibly sit easy.
"..."
"Think of it this way. The one person hurt this time will save ten thousand, a hundred thousand Daehan children tens or hundreds of years from now."
After all, they couldn't very well let a psycho nation spring up right next door in this era. The poorer this country stayed, the easier everything became for them.
"Miss — do the people of this Japan live well, in the future?"
What they wanted to know, of course, was how much suffering and hardship lay ahead for them.
"No. Because of this, they won't be allowed to do anything but farm from now on. The country will be in constant chaos, and its people will live in suffering."
They would spend eternity gasping in poverty's grip.
"Uhehe. So rather than a single life, you intend to create suffering for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in the future?"
"Do I look that nice to you?"
Try millions. Tens of millions.
"Uahaha! I doubt I'll live to see it with my own eyes, but I'll watch it happen even from beyond the grave!"
"It won't take that long. Give it a few decades, and people will already be saying the country is doomed."
For now, with the debt still small, the nobles would hold their tongues — but to repay it, they would have to strip the entire nation bare. Would they really sit still for that?
A civil war was waiting for them. They'd have to finish paying off every last ryang before they collapsed, too. Wither away slowly, why don't you.
"Let's head back! There's plenty to prepare! You all still have a lot of work to do in this country!"
"Yes!"