Water From Nowhere
Good. The stage was more or less set, wasn't it?
Horned Whales began arriving at Naniwa's port from Daehan, several a day, unloading their cargo.
With a full load of 15,000 guan of potato flour, a single Horned Whale could carry enough food to feed over six thousand people for an entire year. With several of them docking daily, goods piled up at the port at an astonishing rate, and a whole class of laborers sprung up to haul it all ashore.
"Wow... I'm so glad I came to the harbor."
"Same here. This is the first time I've ever been fed this well for honest work."
The people who had fled here looking for jobs truly felt they'd made the right choice.
Their gratitude toward the Daehan Company ran just as deep.
"Let's work hard!"
"You bet! If a company like this ever went under, who else would ever take care of us like this?"
There was an easy way to win over foreigners: just spend a little more of the money you were going to make anyway on the people themselves. It was genuinely simple, and the fact that so many European nations had failed to grasp it — earning nothing but curses and, eventually, independence movements — was entirely their own doing.
Slowly but surely, hearts at the port began to open.
Of course, they were Japanese to the bone. But as long as Daehan kept the benefits flowing, they would clearly treasure and protect this arrangement.
Meanwhile, the leadership receiving food and weapons from Daehan got straight to work.
"How are the barracks coming along?"
"Well, my lord. We've gathered the men, armed them, and sent them out."
Their plan was to distribute relief food to the people, starting with the nearby regions, and win their hearts.
And along with it, to spread their banner.
"We rose up for your sake. Please, lend us your strength!"
"We have relief supplies here as well. Come and take what you need."
Winning hearts was fairly easy. Above all else, food did the trick.
Everywhere you looked was a world where people starved — where a single meal could drive a man to kill.
"It's free?"
"Of course! And if you need work, enlist as a soldier and we'll pay you a wage."
"Truly?"
Getting paid to be a soldier? Until now, their lives had consisted of being dragged off by force to serve some nearby daimyo and dying like dogs, hadn't they?
The promise of money for soldiering was irresistible bait. And besides — wouldn't they have weapons of their own?
With a weapon in hand, the people around you thought twice before messing with you.
With food alone, Nakamura's band had managed to win the hearts of thousands.
"We need to secure our legitimacy."
"Yes, my lord."
Nakamura Taro, the leader of this band, felt that things were going smoothly. Food and weapons were what mattered most, and the supplies Daehan provided were of genuinely excellent quality.
Moreover, Daehan gave food freely whenever it was asked for, which did wonders for placating the populace.
"How are the daimyo responding?"
"They don't seem able to move rashly just yet."
"That's to be expected. We have quite the army at the moment."
Since farming would be difficult for a while, they had arranged a large supply of food from Daehan and were focusing on recruiting soldiers first.
"And the samurai?"
"We've gathered some of the well-known ones, and we're selecting promising men from the ranks to train as well."
"Good."
With so many armed soldiers at his command and the surrounding daimyo reduced to watching nervously from the sidelines, Nakamura's faction was growing by the day.
"What about the castle they're building?"
"It's low, but it looks difficult to take by assault."
"Hard to complain, seeing as we're not the ones paying for it."
"Indeed. Still, better than nothing, wouldn't you say? And the castle at the port is quite impressive, isn't it?"
The castle at the heart of the port had been built long ago, its high, thick walls still standing strong. Even bringing cannons up to it wouldn't make breaching those walls an easy task.
"And those light bulbs — truly remarkable things, aren't they?"
What had astonished them was the electric lighting that illuminated the streets at night. When the surroundings suddenly brightened after dark, people walking home were so startled that some tumbled straight to the ground.
"They say Daehan won't supply them with cannons?"
"They claim those are tools of attack rather than defense — the cannons will come later, once the region is stable, and they'll be for sale."
"For sale?"
"Yes."
"Hmm..."
There was only one meaning to that answer. Daehan would help them defend what they held — but anything beyond that would cost them money.
"Let's secure this region first and worry about the rest later."
"Yes, my lord."
The expansion of their territory proceeded smoothly, but Nakamura worried whether Daehan might become an obstacle down the road.
"If it comes to that, we'll simply deal with them later, won't we?"
For a brief moment, a sinister gleam flickered in the old man's eyes.
But wasn't that a hopeless delusion? Daehan was Daehan — clearly he had yet to taste what that meant.
Hadn't someone once said it? Everyone has a brilliant plan until they get punched in the face.
As their territory broadened, Nakamura began clashing with the surrounding daimyo in earnest.
"Hmm? They want more weapons?"
"Yes, sir. Apparently they've been in more frequent conflict with the neighboring daimyo lately."
"Do they have that many soldiers?"
Weapons alone aren't enough, are they? Past a certain point, what would they even use them for?
"People keep flocking to the port, you see."
Ah. So word of us is drawing people in from other provinces too, is it?
"There's still stock to spare, though, right?"
"Plenty. It's not as if we use swords and spears ourselves."
These kids and their axes — it was axes all the way down. We made swords and spears for situations that called for them, but the only thing that ever seemed to circulate was the axe...
"Ah? What about pistols?"
We had started issuing pistols a while back.
The Company men, you see, often found themselves in sudden close-quarters brawls where lugging a rifle around was impractical.
"Something this good... and you were the only one using them? I'm heartbroken..."
Getting sulky over a pistol, honestly...
"If you needed one, you should have just asked for it and used it. How was I supposed to know you were just letting them sit there?"
These things were, in their own way, a luxury item only the young lady got to use! Exclusive to the young lady! They'd coveted them on those grounds — but never actually asked. Well. Whatever.
"Ugh. I should have requested one much sooner. They're wonderful. So easy to carry in a pocket, too."
The pistols issued to the kids had genuinely short barrels, made strictly for use in fights at arm's length and nothing more.
In exchange, since the kids had such large hands, they carried the seven-shot models.
"Your aim falls apart past a short distance, so keep up your target practice in your spare time. Don't let the feel slip away."
"Yes, ma'am!"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Shooting these things turned out to be far more fun than expected — even now, target practice was in full swing out there.
They never drilled this hard with their rifles, these kids...
"Ha! These are fantastic! One shot, one kill!"
"Good grief... just be careful with them. After thirty rounds or so, you will clean the gun. I once fired one recklessly and it jammed so badly the whole thing was ruined."
The barrel hadn't burst, but the round had wedged itself so tightly that the gun went nowhere no matter what.
And when I asked for repairs, did the scolding ever stop? Good grief...
"Yes, ma'am! That will never, ever happen!"
"Just make sure none of them get leaked out."
They couldn't copy it anyway — no, even if they could, the percussion caps were the real barrier — but better safe than sorry.
Right now, a hundred of our kids could take on a thousand or even ten thousand enemies, but that wouldn't always be the case. I hoped that day would arrive slowly.
We spent a full three years preparing to sweep through this chaotic age of warring states.
"It's safe to say no one's starving to death anymore, don't you think?"
"Yes, ma'am. This place has changed a great deal."
Those three years hadn't been spent piling up castle walls alone, after all.
"Children playing in the streets, everyone filling out nicely. It's a lovely sight."
"People say it's all thanks to us, you know."
The ranks of our allies had grown tremendously. And people really are remarkable creatures — pour enough money into them and they threw up castles at a astonishing pace. It was no small-scale construction either. They built a great deal.
Better still, the castles raised along the river doubled as levees, making the region far more resistant to flooding.
"Lady Haneul? Might I have a word?"
But why had this old man come all this way? Weren't the castles and everything else coming along nicely?
"We're about to begin farming, and I hoped we might receive your assistance."
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Farming — isn't that something we must handle ourselves?"
"We'll need to tear down part of the castle wall to draw in the river water, it seems."
"Ah? You need water for the paddies, then?"
"Yes, precisely."
In that case, I had something far better.
"Then don't worry about any of that — just build the channels first. We'll handle moving the water."
"I beg your pardon?"
What do you mean, pardon? Ah, right — you have no idea how water comes out of the walls on all four sides of this building, do you?
"Just leave it to us and trust."
"Yes..."
He left looking doubtful — well, give it time and he might just faint on the spot.
Having sent Nakamura on his way, we set to work. It wasn't as though we could hand machinery over to those people, after all.
"We had plenty of leftover earth anyway — this works out nicely."
"The water needs somewhere to flow, so let's build a reservoir of decent size."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The branch office sat right along the river, so it was simple enough. As long as we drew the pipe in from upstream, no saltwater would get in, would it?
When word spread that the water would feed the farmland, people set about building the reservoir and channels with real enthusiasm.
Port work was irregular, after all, and the castle walls were in their final stages — people were starting to worry about their daily bread.
"They really are working so hard."
"It's a good thing. When people work hard, isn't it a joy to watch?"
To take a job hauling cargo at the port, a ship had to actually come in — yet far too many people just sat on the beach all day, waiting for exactly that.
The kids deliberately avoided hiring our own and gave the work to the Japanese instead, but these people needed jobs too, didn't they?
"Once the farming gets going, life should keep getting better, won't it?"
"What matters now isn't the people — it's whether the leadership and the administrators run things properly."
No matter how capable the people were, if the administrators were a mess, living well wouldn't last long.
Our kids really are naive. They've traveled to plenty of foreign lands, but they still don't understand why those people live such hard lives.
"Ha... Back home we'd just send the whole lot of them straight to Aoji..."
"That's not so easy here."
The high officials had their own unwritten rules among themselves. No rough treatment — because someday the same thing could happen to them at someone else's hands.
"Oh, and by the way — Aoji's actually a decent place to live these days. The folks there are living far better than the farmers around here."
"Wait, really?"
"Have you never heard of Kim Il-sung?"
"Ah... the man who was the first to ever escape the place?"
The newsletters do circulate, so they'd know roughly — but this kid? They only read the headline, clearly.
"He's in charge of managing Aoji now."
Fewer people were dying, for one, and the ore output had risen noticeably too.
Ha. When you compare them — what do I even call these farmers, living worse than the people of Aoji, the hardest place to survive in all of Daehan...
"You know, we could just haul these farmers off and put them in Aoji."
"Why bother? Just have them dig here and ship the ore straight out."
No need to feed and clothe them on top of it.
There were plenty of mines we'd scouted out around here anyway. Later, once we found them, we'd put the locals to work there.
"Ahh... our mines..."
"Right. These daimyo bastards are going to cough up their entire fortunes..."
While I was gone, they could dig all they liked — nothing would come out of it.
No explosives, no proper picks anymore. Dig away all you want! What do you expect to get?
Just as I was idly chatting with the branch manager in the office, Mose walked in.
"Miss, the construction is finished — they're asking you to open the waterway now?"
"Is that so? Then I suppose we should go."
Time to give them a proper taste of culture shock, wasn't it?
A building constructed against the river embankment — which doubled as a section of the castle wall.
Inside it sat a single steam-powered pump. In an adjoining shed, coal and firewood were piled to the ceiling.
One advantage of external combustion engines: anything that could burn could serve as fuel.
Granted, the residue it left behind meant tedious cleaning, but that was their problem to deal with.
"Mmmmh. Smell that coal!"
"It's not exactly a pleasant smell, Miss."
"Right. We'll need to ventilate this place often."
Yes! That's the stuff! Just look at that furnace blazing scarlet!
HISSSSSSSS
The engine had already been preheated, and excess pressure was bleeding off in a steady shriek of steam.
Waste not, want not — time to get it running, wasn't it?
CLANK-CHUGGA-GRUMBLE-RUMBLE
Hm? That's a rather rough sound coming off it, isn't it?