A Helping Hand
A helping hand.
Beyond the western mountains of the great northern plains of China—now part of Daehan's territory—lay the middle reaches of the Yangtze, a region with a gentle climate and soil well suited for farming.
It wasn't administered directly by Daehan; it was land left for the Tibetan peoples and other minority groups to use freely.
It was an evening in the winter of 4019, the hour when people had settled into sleep.
「Rumble, rumble, rumble, rumble」
A sound began to shake the earth in the dead of night.
"What's that?"
"The ground's shaking!"
"Yaaawn... so sleepy..."
The ground really was shaking. It was the middle of the night, and the people were still half-asleep.
「CRACK! CRACK!」
"Get outside—now!"
"Hurry!"
As the tremors grew stronger, those who had woken grumbling and sat up in bed snapped instantly awake.
The shaking of the earth was anything but ordinary.
"If you stay here, you'll all die! Get out, fast!"
The people who lived here made their living digging up and selling loess to Daehan.
Daehan had been buying up enormous quantities of loess to make its yellow plaster, and since simply digging the ground earned money—and the crops grew well too—many people had gathered to live here.
「KWAAAGH!」
"AAAAH! Help us!"
"I can't walk!"
Once the quake began in earnest, it became impossible to keep one's footing, and many people crawled out of their homes on hands and knees.
If they wanted to live, they had to get out of their homes no matter what.
Because the places they lived in were little more than earthen dugouts, hollowed into the soft loess itself.
Utterly vulnerable to earthquakes.
「Crumble, crumble—collapse, collapse」
"AAAAH! Dad!"
"Honey!"
Some families made it out first, while others were delayed tending to the rest of their family.
Homes collapsed on top of them, burying the people inside alive before they could even scream.
「Rumble, rumble」
"AAAAH! The mountain's collapsing!"
"Run!"
"Somebody help!"
Even those who made it outside weren't safe. Years of digging out vast amounts of loess had left pits pockmarking the land everywhere—and many people lived in those very pits.
People ran themselves ragged.
「CRASH!」
"AAAAH! This side's caving in too!"
"No! Where are we supposed to go?!"
As the ground gave way on all sides, entire small villages were swallowed whole.
「Rumble...」
"Is it stopping now?"
"It's settling down."
"Haah... what in the world... *sniff*..."
When the shaking briefly calmed, people finally looked around—and saw nothing but ruin all around them.
Plenty had stumbled out in such a hurry in the dead of night that they weren't even properly dressed.
"*Sob*... Dad!"
"My child is still down there!"
Children crying for their parents; people holding back women who thrashed and wept over the children they'd left behind.
An earthquake in the dead of winter stripped them of everything. Their property, their families, all of it.
「Rumble rumble rumble—KU-KU-KWA-KWA」
"The earth's roaring again!"
"Damn it all! What more do you want to take from us?!"
"AAAAAH!"
The quake, which seemed to be dying down, began to swell again.
「Ku-ku-ku」
"Ah! I can't stand!"
"Get down! Stay flat!"
"There's nothing left to collapse, so just sit tight!"
They had lost family and homes on this barren wasteland, but still, countless people were gathered out in the open.
Across the way, in that small village too, people huddled together in clusters.
That so many people could scratch out a living just by digging and selling loess was a remarkable thing in itself.
"Ha... when is this going to end..."
「SNAP」
"Huh?"
Something off-key reached the ears of the man mid-sigh.
"What?"
Then came the sensation of the ground vanishing beneath his feet, and he began to fall.
"AAAAAAH!"
"KYAAAAH! What's happening?!"
"Waaah!"
The place where they lived sat atop thick layers of loess. The naturally soft soil had shifted and slid somewhere below, and the earth had simply split open.
People were swallowed into the ground—thirteen feet deep.
「THUD. THUD. THUD.」
"AAAAH..."
People fell into the deep pit and writhed in agony. If only that had been the end of it...
「Rumble, rumble, rumble」
"Oh, damn it all..."
The earthquake hadn't finished. The earth kept roaring, and the soil along the crack began to cave in.
「Grind, grind, grind」
"AAAAH!"
Right beside the fissure, someone watched a person vanish and fall to their death far below—someone who, having survived themselves, breathed a sigh of relief.
"No!"
So did the father who'd tried to pull his tumbling child out of the pit.
The earth around the pit's edge collapsed, and he too was swallowed into the soil.
"God..."
"What is this..."
This loess plateau was vast, and many people lived upon it. The merciless disaster swallowed young and old alike without discrimination, then slowly began to quiet.
"We have to save the people..."
"How would we even know who's where...?"
Rescue was simply beyond imagining.
「FWOOSH」
"Huuuuh!"
Perhaps someone had been buried in a shallow spot? It was soft earth, at least—maybe that was their small mercy.
People began to emerge one or two at a time, shoving aside the dirt and gulping in ragged breaths.
"There's someone down here! Somebody help!"
"Hey! They say there's people over there! Let's go, quick!"
People ran, digging at the earth with their bare hands, doing everything within their power to save lives.
"What sin did we commit to deserve this...?"
"*Sob*..."
These were people who had never harmed a soul, who had lived each day content with what they were given—and in a single morning, they lost their homes, their families, their friends, everything.
「Ku-ku-ku-ku」
"Commander! Something terrible has happened!"
"Yes? What is it!"
On the eastern mountains where the earthquake had struck stood Daehan's watchtowers and fortress walls.
The quake had occurred quite far away, but it was so massive that even the fortress walls had felt it, and countless soldiers were being roused from their beds.
"A colossal earthquake has struck!"
"The damage?"
"The walls are only cracked, but everything down below is a disaster!"
From the high watchtower, once the moon rose, one could see quite a distance. But the mountainside below was shrouded in dust—nothing could be seen at all.
Whatever had happened, it was clear that something tremendous had.
"Send a telegram home immediately, and everyone goes down!"
"All of us, sir?"
"What's the point of staying up here when no one's coming up? Get down there and save some lives!"
"Yes, sir!"
And so the soldiers stationed at the fortress began leaping down the mountain, each carrying a sack stuffed full of food and a single shovel.
There was no proper path, and in their headlong rush down they were scraped by branches and bruised by stones—but the soldiers paid it no mind as they sprinted down the slope.
「Ring, ring. Ring, ring.」
"Hmm? What now?"
There had been tremors, but this was the sound of a telephone ringing. Late at night, the direct line in the Prime Minister's home was ringing.
"Hello?"
The Prime Minister snapped awake and hurried to pick up the receiver. A call at this hour was never good news.
"Mr. Prime Minister! There's been a massive earthquake!"
"What! Where!"
"Beyond the western fortress wall at Bongpyeong!"
"Hm? So not inside Daehan itself? Phew..."
He let out a brief sigh of relief that it seemed to be a distant region.
"Even so, we should probably take some action, sir. It was an absolutely enormous earthquake—the damage is likely to be severe."
"Hmm..."
He deliberated for a moment. This was the zone whose administration had been entrusted to the nearby minority peoples and the Tibetans.
It wasn't a directly governed territory—but it was also recognized as part of Daehan's domain...
"For now, mobilize the city garrison. And contact the Daehan Company—have them secure supplies and food by any means necessary and get them there."
"Yes, sir!"
Crowds gathered from Sinsi and the surrounding regions, boarding trains bound for Bongpyeong.
The trains carried not only crowds of people but wagons and carts as well, since to move supplies over the mountains, they had to be carried on foot or by cart.
"If it were Haneul-nim, she'd have said to just bring the leftover food and shovels over there."
Leftover? There was no such thing. If there wasn't enough, you simply made more and brought it.
"And she'd have said, 'As long as even one person's alive, they'll earn money for your own pockets, so save every last one of them.'"
Because that was the ordinary way Haneul and Daehan treated people.
Not far from Bongpyeong, an enormous crowd had gathered, tamping down the earth and carving out a road.
Some were already heading up into the mountains ahead of the rest, carrying A-frame packs on their backs.
"We're blasting—hold on a moment!"
「KWA-BOOM!」
They collapsed whole sections of mountain, sweeping rock and soil down the slopes, and built the road as they went.
From nearby Sinsi to the great northern plains of China, hundreds of millions of people lived.
If even one percent of them gathered, it would be enough to mount a full-scale relief effort for the refugees.
"Faster, everyone!"
"They're short on water on the other side!"
"Medicine and clothing go first!"
It was a long road from the train station over the mountains, yet there was no way anyone could get lost.
There were simply so many people that if you just followed the heels of the person ahead of you, before you knew it, you'd arrived.
"What should we do?"
"I'll help too!"
Old and young, men and women—everyone had gathered to help the victims.
Thanks to the sheer numbers, a route over the mountains was carved out by the second day, and wagons began transporting supplies in earnest.
Once they were over the mountains, the flatlands made moving the supplies remarkably easy.
「Thump. Thump. Thump.」
"Is anybody there?!"
Beneath the deep earth, one family had—by pure luck—survived, hidden between a wooden support beam and their household furniture in the dark underground.
"Honey..."
"No! Don't give up!"
"Mom..."
The family had been fortunate enough to survive, but there wasn't enough room to dig their own way out—and worse, the wife had injured her leg and was bleeding.
They desperately needed someone's help.
"Please, anyone—save us! *Sob*..."
「Thump. Thump. Thump.」
With his young daughter watching, the man had tried so hard not to show his tears—but at last, they spilled from his eyes.
Waiting for a helping hand in utter darkness, unable to see an inch ahead, was almost more than a heart could bear.
The family was coming apart at the seams.
「THUD! THUD! THUD!」
"@#!$!#"
Just as he was about to give up, he heard something—shouts of people, mingled with the sound of earth being dug.
"Huh? I think there are people out there! Honey, stay with me!"
"Mom! They say there are people!"
"..."
A miracle was reaching the family. But the mother had lost consciousness.
"There are people down here! Somebody help us!"
"Please save us! Our mom is hurt!"
「Thump, thump, thump」
The father and his daughter shouted with all their strength and pounded on the cabinet, knowing the thin air might run out—but it didn't matter.
Because they couldn't imagine a world without her—the mother who had always smiled for her family, always cheered them on, always given them courage.
"Somebody, please help us!"
"Huff... huff..."
Perhaps from all the shouting and moving about.
They began to find it hard to breathe.
There was no way to track time, but they'd been underground a long while now, and the oxygen was running thin.
「KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK」
"Oh! There's furniture here!"
"There might be people underneath it. Dig carefully!"
The voices were drawing closer.
The soldiers who had leapt down from the fortress with nothing but a sack and a shovel had been combing the village when they heard the pounding beneath the earth—and started digging.
"Why so quiet down there! Put your backs into it!"
The scene above ground was truly staggering. They had dug down some seven feet by pure manpower alone, and the displaced earth had piled up into a mountain of its own.
"Faster!"
"Working on it!"
Here, rank meant nothing—superior and subordinate alike.
Everyone, with a single heart and a single purpose, dug downward together until at last they uncovered a dust-caked hand.
"They're out!"
"Over here! Quickly!"
The soldiers who dug the family free checked them over for injuries and poured out Holy Water without a moment's hesitation.
"*Cough, cough.*"
"Haa... haa..."
The child woke first, then the injured mother stirred back to life—but the father wasn't waking.
"Wake up! Hey! Come on!"
"You're the only one left—open your eyes!"
"Honey!"
"Daddy!"
People crowded around, all of them staring down at the man.
"Huuuh... *cough!*"
Perhaps it was the weight of everyone's hope—whatever the cause, the man's chest began to rise and fall, and he breathed.
Across the plain that the disaster had torn apart, hope was slowly, steadily beginning to raise its head.