Please Take a Number
"Shall we wait in the waiting room?"
"What did you say!"
"They say weapons and armor are off the table."
"Why!"
"They sell weapons at Aimala, apparently, so they refuse."
Daehan, which had talked as if it would sell anything for gold, flatly turned them down — everything else was fine, but not weapons.
"Oh, come on! Then why is gunpowder allowed!"
"They said it can also be used for starting fires...."
"What! The absolute nerve of this—"
Even a three-year-old could see the excuse made no sense. Had they just slapped any old justification on it?
"Damn them all to hell!"
If ever a situation deserved the words caught between advance and retreat, this was it.
"Those people are in the southern part of the New World, I take it?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"Then first we dispatch an army to occupy the territory and secure our foothold!"
Spain chose avoidance over war.
Angering though it was, and painful to swallow, they were in no position to fight the empire in that New World just yet — and fighting Daehan was utterly out of the question.
"But still? Where on earth is Daehan?"
It was truly a mystery. Daehan was everywhere and yet nowhere.
There were ports wherever you went, and their ships sailed every sea — and yet no one had ever actually visited their homeland.
When inquiries were made, word came back that Qajar, at the far edge of Eastern Europe, shared a land border with them. Mudo, the world's first great trading city, was said to sit on their soil, and at the far end of Asia there was supposedly a Daehan trading port called Daedo.
"So everyone knows the trading ports and the concession zones, but not a soul knows where the land itself is?"
It was enough to make a ghost weep.
There was, unfortunately, a simple explanation: between Europe and Daehan lay nothing but lands of brutal cold and deserts of scorching heat, making contact overland all but impossible.
"So no one at all knows where their mainland is...."
"To borrow the words of the Ming Dynasty — they say it is a land that must never, ever be crossed."
"Ming?"
The only nation to have fought Daehan in a full-scale war.
"Yes. By their account, from an endless wall comes an endless army."
"Hmm? Is that not an exaggeration?"
It did sound roughly plausible, though — during the war, an army had swept across Chinese territory like a flood.
"Even so, they are not to be dismissed. That Ming Dynasty was a vast empire in its own right, they say."
"Hmm...."
People rarely believe what they have not seen with their own eyes. The Spanish king looked distinctly skeptical.
"Well, we've no cause to fight them, so let that be. The real problem is how their influence keeps spreading...."
Even if the powers combined to check them, they didn't even know where the mainland was — and it would all be too far away besides.
Worse still, the quality of the artworks, cotton cloth, and silk Daehan put out into the world was simply too good.
Comparable goods came out of Ming China and the Middle East, but Daehan's were cheaper where cheapness mattered and finer where quality mattered. Finding substitutes was next to impossible.
And by now, the noble classes could hardly get by without Daehan's goods.
"The Papacy has gone limp, Venice has gone limp...."
It was truly staggering. In Christian Europe, no one had ever imagined a heathen power planting itself so brazenly and openly in their midst.
"And it's all thanks to those unsinkable ships."
At the Battle of Venice, they had surrendered under flag of truce through some dirty trick, then blown their own ship up — and it still hadn't sunk. The tale was famous far and wide.
Hence the nickname: the Unsinkable Fleet.
"Have you looked into those ships?"
"They're difficult to approach — observation is possible only from a distance — but it seems they are clad in iron plating."
People who could not begin to imagine a hull built of solid steel all the way through.
"Eh? Is such a thing even possible?"
"To some degree, apparently."
"Woori! We need ships like that!"
"Yes. We are devoting our utmost to their development."
Not only Spain but Venice, Portugal, and England as well were silently kicking their ship development into high gear.
"And those cannons of theirs are strange, I hear?"
"Yes. From a distance they couldn't see in detail, but they say the guns are loaded from the rear, not the front."
"Hmm? How peculiar."
Everything, absolutely everything, was shrouded in mystery.
And the Daehan port up in the New World, the one people traded at, was drowning in strange rumors of its own.
Iron carriages hauling houses behind them, belching smoke as they ran along roads made of iron — who could credit it?
As for the people who went digging for more information, not a single one ever came back. Whether they lived or died, no one knew.
"What do you say to asking whether Daehan has any intention of opening its doors?"
Opening its doors, of course, was a polite way of saying: teach us your technology.
"Do you truly think they'd show us?"
"I suppose not.... Still, it costs nothing to ask."
Daehan wasn't pursuing an ironclad policy of isolation, exactly, but curiosity about their mainland had reached a fever pitch abroad.
"They want a look inside our country?"
"Yes. It seems a whole bunch of nations all asked at once — probably coordinated at some meeting somewhere."
"Hmm...."
If we let them look — would they be cowed? Or would they raise a fuss about sending in spies?
Their real plan would be to come in, honey up to the locals or snoop around, and steal the technology, wouldn't it?
"I'd say it's a little early still...."
After all, in his hazy memory, the Scientific Revolution had come only after the Reformation.
"I think it's too early as well."
"Mudo is easy enough to get to, isn't it? Send them to Daedo or Mudo to look around — there's hardly any difference."
Running water, plumbing, electricity — and Mudo even has trains. Are they hoping to ride one?
"Actually, what they seem to want most is to see the capital — to find out where the mainland is."
"Why?"
"Who knows?"
The capital was a bit much, no? There was that shipyard off the coast of Sinsi, after all.
Then again, even before this, trains rolling around had been dismissed as just another curiosity.
What was it with that theology of theirs? Hadn't it been holding back progress for a good thousand years?
"Tell them it's a hundred years too early."
"Yes."
Instead of getting curious about that sort of thing, how about they quit fighting already. Refugees keep flooding into our ports every single day.
Ever since the Papacy got publicly humiliated, our port has been bursting at the seams.
And above all, an insane number of those deranged nobles keep coming for the hospital.
"Greetings. I have come as the envoy of Carlos I of Spain. I wish to invite the Holy Maiden."
"Ahem. I am François I's...."
.
.
.
Word had spread that the Holy Maiden had healed patients, and ever since, crowds came looking for Haneul at the hospital.
Every one of them wanted to take her back to their own country.
"This is a hospital."
"Then where might I meet her?"
"Try the fortress."
Haneul did drop by the hospital from time to time, but she was an impossible figure to pin down — no one could guess what she was up to at any given moment.
"Heh heh. My apologies. Do you also sell the Holy Water?"
"We don't sell it."
"Ahaha.... Then how does one receive treatment?"
"You come to the hospital, of course?"
The hospital in Pyeong-an Naru did not, as a rule, make house calls. If you were sick, the patient was expected to come.
"What! Your Grace, then what am I supposed to do?"
Between matters of security and a whole tangle of political reasons, most kings could never leave their capitals.
That Haneul wandered about wherever she pleased and the country still didn't collapse was the truly remarkable thing.
"You really shouldn't be asking us that!"
"Hmm!...."
In any other era, the great powers would go around saying they'd simply wipe a piddling little port like this off the map — what was going on here?
Beyond the window the envoy glanced through, that infamous Unsinkable ship sat at anchor.
One side of it was crumpled inward, dented and warped — they were still keeping the ship that had crushed itself in its own flag-truce suicide at the Battle of Venice on display.
"Then how must I go about inviting the Holy Maiden?"
"No! This is a hospital, I said!"
"What! The audacity! Do you know who I am?"
"How would I know! Guards!"
The doctor, who had been seeing patients at his desk, finally lost his temper and called for someone.
Clank, clank.
"What now!"
An armored soldier marched in, seized the collar of the noble who'd been lording it over everyone, and began dragging him out.
"You dare! Do you think you'll be safe after treating me like this!"
"You're safe because you're still doing this!"
The noble was hauled away shrieking at the top of his lungs, and the doctor shouted after him as if to say, go ahead, try something.
"Unhand me! Let go!"
Scrape, scrape.
....
The noble put up something of a struggle — perhaps he got some exercise, at least — but the soldier was armored and outweighed him by a wide margin, and hauled him out without so much as breaking a sweat before tossing him into the courtyard.
"Oof! Aigoo!"
"Aigoo, indeed...."
"Huh?"
And then, one after another, more people came tumbling out to join him on the ground. France, England, and so on — faces they all recognized.
"Ahem...."
"Ahem."
Blushing with embarrassment, they brushed the dust from their clothes and rose to their feet.
"Daehan seems to be full of remarkably insolent people."
"You're telling me."
"They appear to have no notion of courtesy whatsoever."
"So what brings you all here?"
"...."
Men who'd eaten courtesy for breakfast and never looked back, hunting for manners here of all places — it was enough to make one weep.
And since they'd all come for the same purpose, this was precisely why they'd all been thrown out on their backsides.
"By the way — is it true the Holy Maiden is the lady of that castle?"
"So it would seem, yes."
"Perhaps we should go to that fortress ourselves...."
"Say, what a curious-looking fortress that is."
Star-shaped forts built to withstand cannon fire were only just beginning to spread through Europe, so the shape was unfamiliar to them.
"Let's all go, then."
"Quite right. My, what a rare sight this is."
At the fortress gate they found a modest window built into one side, just large enough to seat two people — set up to verify and control who came in and out.
"Open the gate!"
"Is there no gatekeeper!"
Not knowing what else to do, they marched up to the gate and started bellowing.
"Quiet down and stand in line over here, please!"
Unable to bear the sight any longer, the clerk at the window called them to order. Left alone, they looked liable to keep shouting until dawn.
"Hmm? I suppose there are people in that building over there."
"Ahem. Someone should come out to receive us. No upbringing at all."
And when they requested an audience at the window, wouldn't you know it — the people inside started handing out numbered tickets.
"Seventy-two?"
"I'm seventy-five."
"What is this?"
Nothing on it but a number. Of course they couldn't make head or tail of it.
"It's your place in the queue. Will you go to the waiting room, or shall you head home?"
"We cannot meet her at once?"
"No. The line is long."
"...."
There were so many people requesting audiences that the queue was genuinely enormous.
In any other country, envoys sent by kings would at least be received ahead of others — but of course such a custom could never exist in Daehan.
Kings and nobles were all treated as exactly the same kind of person.
"Still, we have our dignity! Make us an appointment at once!"
"Everyone else is waiting too. If you cause a disturbance, I'll have no choice but to call the guards."
"Ah...."
Remembering the guards they'd met at the hospital, the envoys wilted just as they were about to raise their voices.
"And where is this waiting room...."
In the end, they had no choice but to file inside and wait.
And in that waiting room sat people sent from countless noble houses and royal courts all around the region.
"Number thirty-two!"
"Here! Me! Me!"
Whenever someone came in and called a number, the foreign envoys sprang up eagerly to follow.
"Wait? Thirty-two? I'm seventy-two!"
"Will we get to meet her today?"
"Who knows...."
Seized by a vague, creeping unease, they sank into their chairs and resolved to wait their turn.
"Number thirty-three!"
"Here!"
"Number thirty-four!"
.
.
.
"Number forty-seven!"
The numbers were steadily ticking upward.
"Damn it. Not today either?"
"Ha.... there's not much time left...."
Outside the window, the sun was sinking, and with it their anxiety climbed higher.
They had already burned past a hundred people in the queue, and the sunset was bleeding across the sky.
"Could it be? That we may not meet her today at all?"
"That's right. Once night falls, everyone clocks out."
"Clocks... out?"
"Work hours end, and they go home to rest. Or so I'm told?"
"What?"
Envoys of kings had come, and they might not be received at all?
For those experiencing this treatment for the first time, it was more than a little baffling.
"So tomorrow we simply continue from the numbers after ours?"
"Is this your first time here?"
"Ahem. It is."
"It's first come, first served...."
Someone who'd arrived even earlier than they had spoke up, his face gloomy.
"What does that mean?"
"It means the doors open again tomorrow, and only those who line up early get the low numbers...."
"What? Where on earth is that a rule! At the very least it should go in order!"
"It is in order, isn't it?"
Not a word of it was wrong, but feeling wronged all the same, the man made to argue the point — then remembered the guards and slumped back into his seat instead.
For some reason he was angry, and cheated, and felt very nearly on the verge of tears.