Home After So Long
Still, it amazed me that they'd somehow scraped together that kind of money even in the middle of all this. What were these people, really? They could have just paid up back then and been done with it.
"Planning to go to war, maybe? Just say the word. This time it won't be a small raiding party coming — it'll be a real army."
"Ghk…."
Such was the sorrow of a weak little nation. But honestly, did I do anything on purpose? They dug their own grave. It's not like I force-fed them anything. I merely nudged things along a bit from the sidelines!
Scramble.
"Grr! I shall take my leave for now!"
"Safe travels~ I won't see you far."
Why was he grinding his teeth like that? What had I done wrong? Had I sworn at him or something?
"You will not live to regret this?"
"The Fujiwara clan and the Hojo clan both used to growl at us like that, didn't they? Do you know how that turned out for them?"
"Ghk…."
Hm? It seemed this gentleman had no idea how frightening I could be.
"You look remarkably like a naive young nobleman's daughter, you know."
"Ahem…."
He was scanning me up and down. So that's what he thought, apparently.
"But you see, the army I could mobilize right this moment outnumbers the entire population of this country."
"Gasp…."
Thinking about it, wouldn't even one percent of ours outnumber all of Japan? I didn't know Japan's actual population, so I couldn't say for certain.
"I do hope you'll actually try something~ If I wiped you all out and brought other people in to live here, I imagine they'd be far more agreeable, wouldn't you say?"
"Heeek…."
Watching the envoy's face turn a lovely shade of blue was quite the treat. He looked like the sort who'd mistake a zombie for a long-lost cousin rather than bite it.
Tremble tremble tremble.
"Th…this is extortion!?"
"Huh? How did I end up extorting a tiny country like this?"
"A…a tiny country, you say!?"
"You're not even a tenth the size of Daehan. Tiny country fits, doesn't it?"
Hold on — wasn't it more like one-fiftieth than one-tenth? Siberia alone was dozens of times bigger, wasn't it?
"I…I shall be going…."
"Take care now."
What kind of report would he give when he got back? If I had a bug planted, I'd love to eavesdrop on that conversation.
Back at the Emperor's residence, the envoy felt bleak indeed, with no idea what he could possibly say.
The money had been scraped together by squeezing his subjects with taxes to the point of shame, and by ransacking the Emperor's storehouse down to the last coin — and even all that, he now understood, was nowhere near enough.
Thud.
"I beg your forgiveness, Your Majesty."
"Don't tell me — it went badly?"
"I… well, you see…."
He relayed his entire conversation with Haneul back to the Emperor. The man's complexion flared red with rage, then drained back to a sickly pallor.
"Is there truly no way to slip free of their grasp?"
"I fear not… unless the nobility sets aside everything and unites as one."
More than anything, it was the talk of the army he simply could not bring himself to believe.
"Very well. Send someone to this land called Daehan."
The Emperor resolved to investigate Daehan, first things first.
"They say there is a trading city, Your Majesty — but not a single soul has ever set foot in their homeland…."
Not one person had ever been there? What on earth was that supposed to mean? Frustration boiled up inside the Emperor.
"And yet we must still pay the tribute, must we not!?"
"Your Majesty, I humbly beg you to calm your wrath and bide your time…."
"Hngh…."
They felt as though they had tumbled into a mire with no bottom in sight. Would there ever be an end to it?
"Phew… Right. Let us gather what we can about Daehan through other nations, and build our strength while we wait for our moment."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Even if that moment lies decades away, I want preparations made well in advance."
"Yes, Your Majesty!"
The future was invisible for now. The imperial family resolved to stake everything on a reckoning that would come someday. Someday, an opportunity would surely present itself — but would it ever be easy?
It was the year 3745 of the Daehan calendar. After visiting the Japanese imperial family, I somehow got the itch to linger for another ten years.
"Those rascals left all cryptic and now they've gone completely quiet?"
"Yes. No unusual movements at all."
Since the imperial residence sat on high ground where it could be seen for miles, I'd sent the kids to scout it out. Apparently their security was so lax that with a little determination we could have blown the whole compound sky-high and strolled away without a hitch.
"Gave up halfway through their investigation, did they?"
Word had reached me lately that more and more people were nosing around asking about Daehan.
"If they looked into it, they'd have no choice but to give up even faster, wouldn't they?"
"Ah. I suppose so?"
Come to think of it, it might actually be necessary to let the world know a little more about us. I'd have to give that some thought once I got back.
"Your post here is settled now, so I'm heading home. If anything happens, just smash everything to pieces."
"Understood. Don't you worry."
Every employee of the Daehan Company was a former Intelligence Bureau agent — which meant they were terrifyingly good at fighting.
Even the receptionist downstairs, who couldn't swing an axe to save her life, could shoot a gun with uncanny precision. If anything, the girls outshot the boys more often than not.
"Don't just bury yourselves in business. Run training drills on a regular schedule too."
"Of course!"
Not that they'd stop even if I told them to. There was too much work to manage everything, and I'd left home unattended for far too long — time to head back.
"Then I'll leave on the next ship that comes in."
"Will we ever see you again?"
"Hard to say. Your time and mine run a little differently…."
"That's quite all right. It has been an honor to serve you."
"Mm. Take good care of things!"
I'd told myself I'd see them again soon enough, but every time I returned, the faces had all changed. A little sad, that. But we'd meet again someday, surely?
Leaving the Naniwa branch behind, I boarded a ship for the journey back to Sinsi. The voyage took twenty to thirty days from there to the capital.
It seemed we were nearly there. Far in the distance, the colossal tree of Sinsi had begun to rise above the horizon.
"Wouldn't it be nice to live in peace for once? I don't understand why there are so many people forever waiting for a chance to strike."
Once back in Sinsi, I spent my spare time collecting Holy Water and trimming my hair to store away. All of it, of course, was my means of tax collection.
To reclaim this country's astronomical revenues into the national treasury, I had to keep producing hair dye and Holy Water on a steady schedule.
Otherwise too much money would flood the economy, and inflation could very well bankrupt the entire nation.
Knock knock knock.
"It's the Prime Minister."
"Yeah, come in!"
It had been ages since I'd seen him. With me gone in Japan for over twenty years, his hair had gone salt-and-pepper — he'd aged quite a bit.
"A joy to see you after so long. You haven't changed a bit?"
"You, on the other hand, got old."
"Hahaha. There have been rather a lot of headaches to deal with, you see."
"You've gained plenty of staff down below, haven't you? Still swamped?"
When I'd first scooped up the Intelligence Bureau and turned it into the Daehan Company, calling everyone "employees," they'd apparently taken quite a shine to it.
Next thing I knew, they were reorganizing departments and calling everyone beneath them employees too.
"The country is simply that vast, you understand."
"The Eastern Continent runs on its own, though, doesn't it?"
"Even so, there's a great deal to keep track of. The Qajar situation in particular is practically a civil war at this point."
"Ah… right, that."
After Temüjin's passing, the Qajar had expanded their territory in every direction, conquered the entire Middle East, and finally planted their boots in Western Europe itself.
It had gotten so bad that even the Pope had sent a request for mediation, hadn't he?
But beyond the regions bordering us, the descendants of the original Qajar friends of ours had grown swollen with ambition and stopped listening entirely.
"They're actually fighting among themselves now?"
"No swords drawn yet — for now they're just shouting each other down, each insisting he's the rightful heir."
The great empire built in Qajar's name had split into three, each claiming legitimate succession.
The Ilkhanate in the south, dominating the Middle East; the Mongol Khanate, which had seized parts of the Holy Roman Empire in Western Europe;
and Qajar itself — three wayward fragments of a once-unified realm.
"Besides Qajar, the other two might as well count as foreign countries now."
As time went on, the differences would only grow more glaring.
"I'm sorry, why is that?"
"They're a minority in the end. So what do you suppose happens then?"
When a small number of foreigners rules over a far larger population, the outcome is one of two things. Rebellion — or…
"Do you mean they might grow diluted instead, and end up being absorbed themselves?"
"Exactly that."
Much like the case of that country called China, which had been overrun by countless foreign peoples.
The Northern Wei, the Liao, the Jin, the Yuan, the Qing — a staggering number of foreign dynasties ruled them at one time or another, yet in the end their conquerors' distinct character faded away, and before anyone noticed, China had turned back into a Han nation.
"It's the limits of a nomadic empire. Nothing to be done. That's why I told your predecessor's predecessor the same thing — it won't last long."
"I see…."
No nation where a few rule over the many endures forever. There was only one workaround: shrink the other side's population relative to your own until the absorption ran the other way.
Given all the massacres committed by conquering states throughout history, I suspected they'd all sensed this on some instinctive level.
"Keep a quiet eye on Qajar and back them up bit by bit. The other two will be pressing in from both sides — it won't be easy for them."
"Understood."
After all, the only ones we actually needed were the descendants of our original friends in Qajar.
Then again — whether thanks to those Qajar friends of ours or what — my reputation in the West and the Middle East had gotten delightfully strange.
"By the way, I hear they're calling me a witch or a demon out there in the West and the Middle East?"
Apparently the depictions had grown to the point where I sported three breasts and four arms.
"Ah… my apologies. So you heard?"
I'd only told him as a joke — so why was his face curdling like that?
"There's nothing to apologize for. It doesn't bother me at all."
"They are an insolent people, Haneul-nim…."
Oh! So it was because he felt like he was being insulted by proxy? Aww, how sweet. Just like a little boy worrying about his mother.
"It's fine. They're strangers, after all."
"Surely it calls for the hammer of enlightenment?"
No! Absolutely forbidden! Crusades! In the name of God, none of that!
"Let's not do any of that. Let's just keep eating well and living well."
"If not for your word, Haneul-nim, I'd have seized every last one of them and thrown them into the sea."
If it were just us left living on Earth, what fun would the peace be? Life is entertaining precisely because someone wiggles a little here and kicks up a fuss a little there.
"Oh, and — that kingdom over there fell, did it?"
"Yes. Once we invaded from Vietnam, it seems they couldn't hold out long at all."
"Aw, four-way balance was the good balance, though…."
The four-way standoff in China — Song, Jin, Dali, Vietnam — had collapsed. With three left, it becomes all too easy for two to gang up on one. Not a good picture.
"Shall we divide it up again?"
"No need to bother. They'll figure it out little by little, won't they? That picking a fight with us rarely ends well?"
"Yes. People sneaking in from other countries have increased sharply of late."
From the West, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, even those Japanese rascals — everyone was coming and going in a great flurry.
They didn't get much sightseeing done before being caught and hauled off to the mines, but what could anyone do? They'd surely expected at least that much before coming, hadn't they?
Thanks to that, the domestic mines had no shortage of labor lining up. The ore shipped in from Japan was piling up into mountains.
If we hadn't installed steam cranes at the ports, we'd have nearly had a disaster on our hands from the sheer backlog.
"By the way, those pirates still not cleaned up?"
"It's less that we can't clean them up and more that we can't catch them."
"Hm? They can't be stronger than us, surely?"
"That's precisely the problem. They simply never show themselves."
"Ah…."
Right — they had eyes in their heads too, didn't they? They were apparently stashing their ships on some island or scattered islets nearby and only venturing out once we'd passed through.
"Our merchant ships aren't suffering losses, are they?"
"No. And because only we come through unscathed, misunderstandings have been piling up as well."
"You mean rumors that we're hiring the pirates ourselves?"
"Yes."
Rumors telling people not to trade with us? Why would that spread when they were happily taking the goods we brought them?
"Any idea why, exactly?"
"It seems they want exclusive rights to the goods we carry."
Exclusive rights. Of course. Only those irredeemable merchant types could get so worked up over something like that.
"Just trade along with everyone else in peace — what's with the monopoly demands? Who is it?"
"Arab merchants, by all accounts."
"Ignore them. They're a hopeless lot."
Arabs, Mediterranean traders — when you got right down to it, merchants were all the same, weren't they? Daylight robbers, the lot of them.
"Just in case they get bold, order everyone to smash any ship that closes in on us, and increase the number of escorts traveling with each convoy."
"Understood."
If they dared attack, we'd simply blast them to splinters, wouldn't we?
While I fussed over these petty little concerns, the world was changing at a breakneck pace — for word of gunpowder, and how to use it, had just begun to spread outward from Qajar.