The Dongja–Mari Race (5)
On the twelfth morning of the race, participants began trickling in one by one — even as Dong-ja and Mari were busy giving their children a full day's thorough scolding at home.
"Oh! There's one coming now!"
"Whoa! They really rode all the way here on a single Ddareungi? Incredible!"
Little by little, the crowd grew thicker.
"Ahtchoo!"
"Khh-hngg!"
Cold sufferers were everywhere. They had set out without proper preparations for the cold, and the chill of the north had done its work on them. Honestly, it was a miracle they'd arrived without freezing solid.
"Bwahaha! Look at them all! What a sorry bunch of wretches!"
"Is this a race or a contest to see who can show up looking filthiest? Kahaha!"
Truth be told, the participants were quite a sight. More than half of them hadn't washed in days, sleeping rough by the roadside as they came.
Their hair was matted into knots, grass clung to their clothes here and there, and some — apparently having dozed off and rolled somewhere into a rice paddy — were caked head to toe in dried mud.
"Haaaah… so tired…."
"Ugh. I thought this would be way easier."
"You'd better get inside and rest up a bit."
The reason they didn't so much as flinch at all the jeering was simple: they were too exhausted to care. Every one of them had shadows black as ink under their eyes and faces worn utterly hollow, looking ready to keel over on the spot.
The participants propped their Ddareungis upright in order of arrival, registered their names, and promptly stumbled off to rest.
"I guess that's why they postponed the awards ceremony. Looks like people really suffered out there."
"Good grief, just look at the state of them."
Even the staff checking the rankings at the entrance couldn't help clicking their tongues. And the smell — for that one moment, Europe's streets would have been a step up.
The participants were granted a full week of rest, meant to give stragglers — those who valued simply finishing the course over placing — time to arrive.
Doo-doo-doo-doo!
"Well now, I believe this is the place, old woman?"
"Oh my, my old bones. Let's hurry on, then."
Among all of them, the most eye-catching participants were a couple in their seventies — the oldest entrants of all.
They had entered on an unmodified Ddareungi, declaring they would finish the course at their own pace, treating it like a leisurely trip together.
"Aha, how lovely to see! Bless you both!"
"Yes, thank you, young men. We old folks can finally go wandering wherever we please now!"
Ironically, it was the Ddareungi's leisurely pace that made it such a safe ride for them.
And with that elderly couple, registration officially closed. Anyone who arrived later than the seventy-year-olds, apparently, needn't bother writing down a name at all.
The twentieth morning of the race.
With the week of rest granted to participants, the event was stretching on far longer than anyone had expected.
And today was the day of the awards ceremony.
"Wow~ look at all these people."
"Well, this is the first real festival we've had besides the athletic meets."
"Huh? Is that so?"
Every neighborhood had its little feasts and celebrations, but apparently nothing on this scale. Kids these days just make things and hold events on their own — it's not like anyone has nothing better to do. Good for them.
"Looks like those two are the winners?"
"I heard they're the boss of Daehan Automobile's two eldest."
"What?!"
Not like that couple would have let them in on any tricks. Aren't those kids some kind of geniuses? Impressive stuff.
"But why are they squirming around like that?"
"Ahaha! It's hilarious, actually!"
"What? What is?!"
"They ran away from home to enter the race, got caught at the finish line, and have been standing in punishment ever since, that's what."
"PWAHAHA! Are you serious?"
What remarkable children. Even their mischief operates on a different scale. Extraordinary. Those two are destined for great things.
And the squirming, I suppose, is because their backsides have been smacked so much that the bruises are finally starting to itch. Kkukuk.
"—Now! Let us begin the first-place awards ceremony! Presenting the prize will be the representative of Daehan Automobile!"
Clap clap clap clap!
"Waaah~"
Hee hee. This is good entertainment — the organizer's runaway children taking first place in the very first race. I wonder what people will say about it a few hundred years from now.
"Puhehehehe!"
Dong-ja's hands trembling as he handed over the prize money and plaque was genuinely hilarious.
"—And now, let's hear a few words from our champions, shall we?"
The emcee passed the microphone to the brother and sister. Most of the crowd probably had no idea they were that couple's eldest two.
"Um…."
They're just kids, so they're too busy glancing around nervously to say anything.
"Children, listen well to your parents?"
"…Huh?"
"Everyone, you must always listen to your parents."
"KWAHAHAHA!"
Oh, this is too funny. He glanced at the parents standing beside him, delivered his speech, then nodded along solemnly as he listened to it himself — I nearly died laughing.
"Is it really so funny you're crying?"
"Yeah. PWAHAHAHA!"
Meanwhile the crowd, with no idea what was going on, just blinked in confusion.
Ah, I really should arrange more festivals and things like this~
And so our festival came to a rousing close. It was an absolute blast!
The moment the race ended, Dae-hee was summoned straight to Daehan Automobile.
"Dae-hee, do you enjoy building cars?"
"Yes! My dream is right here!"
A contented smile spread across Dong-ja's face as he brought his daughter into the company. How could he not be proud? His child wanted to chase the very same dream he'd devoted his life to.
"Company life is harder than you think."
"I'm ready for it!"
Dae-hee had already resolved to give her whole life to this work. It had started as half a lark, but preparing for the race in earnest had turned out to be so much fun. Building things with her own hands was even better than talking machines with her father.
"Good. You'll start as an ordinary employee, of course."
"Naturally, Boss!"
"Pfft."
"Heehee."
Father and daughter laughed as they faced each other, each privately thinking that work was about to get a whole lot more entertaining.
"Now, about that transmission — how did you manage it? Tolerance calculations must have been trickier than you expected."
"Oh! That! There's a new set of mathematical formulas that just came out of Mudo!"
Dae-hee chattered away, her little mouth going a mile a minute, and Dong-ja — watching her with pride — found the hours slipping away unnoticed as they talked on. And there was Dae-hee, working through formulas on paper.
"Heh heh. The times really have changed. Solving things like this with math, of all things."
"Ehehet!"
Dong-ja truly felt it was a blessing. What he himself would have worked out by hand, sketching and eyeballing, his daughter now solved with calculation — and he could witness that new world with his own eyes.
Which meant, surely, there was still plenty of work left in him yet.
BANG!
"GAH!"
"KYAAAH!"
Their office door practically burst off its hinges, shattering the lovely atmosphere.
"Why on earth are you not coming home?!"
Mari, who had been waiting at home with the children, had finally marched all the way to the office. It was quite a distance, but with Ddareungis everywhere, the trip took no time at all.
"Ah! Is it that late already?"
"Goodness me?"
One story had led to another, and suddenly it was the middle of the night.
"Unbelievable! Dae-hee, as if your father weren't bad enough — if you turn out just like him, what am I supposed to do? How are you ever planning to get married?!"
"I'll just pick one of the researchers!"
"Ha…."
Mari found herself thinking that hearing her daughter say she'd stayed over at some man's house after playing outside would honestly be easier on her stomach than this.
"Both of you, home. Now!"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Yes, Mother…."
And so the father-and-daughter office went dark early that night — but through the window, the other research labs glowed bright into the small hours. Those lights held the dreams of everyone gathered there to build a better engine and a magnificent automobile.
The future of Daehan was, as always, brilliantly bright.
Doo-doo-doo-doo!
At the race's starting point, a man on a date with his wife watched a Ddareungi pull away — and froze.
"Gasp! That's it! Yes! That's exactly what we've been looking for!"
"Honey? What's wrong?"
"I've found our road forward!"
"…What?"
For the wife — whose soldier husband had finally come home on leave, eating good food and sightseeing with her — it was like a bolt from the blue. The mood had shifted to something very much like reporting back to base.
"Sniff… you don't like being with me?"
"Hm? No, no, it's not that — it's just that now that I'm going back, there's work waiting for me. Hahaha. Thank you, honey, for bringing me here!"
Feeling guilty toward his suddenly relieved wife, the soldier swept her up into his arms.
"KYAAH! What are you doing? Out in public?"
"Let's hurry home!"
"Already?"
"Yes. I'm liable to commit a crime out here on the street otherwise."
"A what?"
And with that, he went straight home. Come this time next year, the family might well have welcomed a late-arriving little one.
When his leave ended, he returned to his unit and marched directly to his superior's office.
BANG!
"Reporting for duty!"
"Good grief. Do you think the door survives that? Knock gently for once."
Apparently this wasn't a first offense. The senior officer just sighed — there was something deeply backwards about this chain of command.
"Commander, our unit has found its road forward!"
"Ugh… found what, exactly? You're not about to bring up steam tanks again, are you?"
Their unit was cavalry. And now that gunpowder weapons were becoming commonplace, horsemen were a branch slowly headed for extinction. Everyone had been agonizing over where to reassign them long before the day they'd officially disappear.
"We need to ride Ddareungis!"
"You mean that cute little contraption only the womenfolk ride in defiance of the rules?"
The commander knew what a Ddareungi was, at least — they were already fairly widespread across Daehan. Plenty of people rode them along the roadsides every day.
"Yes, sir! Exactly!"
"I'm sure the enemy is trembling in their boots…."
As they talked, the commander apparently came away understanding that his subordinate wanted to use Ddareungis exactly as they were.
"No, sir! We can't ride them in this state! We need to improve and modify them so they're fit for military use!"
"And how do you propose we do that?"
"We commission Daehan Automobile, first of all! And we need to cultivate our own corps of engineers alongside them!"
"Hmmmm."
It didn't sound impossible, actually. Staff the engineering corps with nothing but the officers currently wracking their brains to get their hands on a steam tank, and they'd have more than enough talent.
"And the potential?"
"I saw a Ddareungi with a sidecar mounted on it, sir."
By pure coincidence, it was the Ddareungi of the Dae-il and Dae-hee siblings where he'd glimpsed that potential.
"Go on."
"One man rides at speed — faster than a horse — while the man in the sidecar fires a musket, a cannon, or even a slingshot, say. What if we did that?"
Accuracy couldn't be promised, but with slingshots or scatter-shot weapons, there seemed real promise — they could strike over an area, and tireless mobility was an enormous advantage in itself.
"Not bad."
"Not 'not bad,' sir — it's an absolute must!"
Who was whose superior here, exactly? A junior officer browbeating his commanding officer….
"Then I suppose we'll need to develop a weapon of our own as well?"
"Sir? What kind?"
"If accuracy is low, you simply fire more rounds. No?"
Was the man trying to invent a machine gun? The foundations were certainly already there. Daehan's arsenal had grown from cannons steadily toward smokeless powder — and while the substance was so dangerous that production facilities couldn't expand quickly, steady development from here on would make anything possible.
"Or weapons that fire a lot, or explode. That would work too."
"If only we could use blasting powder… it's such a shame."
"Agreed, sir…."
Blasting powder — dynamite, in other words. The biggest reason it couldn't be used for military purposes was that over time, the ingredients separated and settled to one side. Which meant long-term weapons storage was impossible with it.
"We must gather the chemists and develop a new explosive!"
"Shall I go to the lab and drag a few back by the collar?"
"Is that why you were hauled off to the Temple last time and still haven't recovered your senses?"
He had started trembling violently — apparently the memory had come flooding back.
"Whew…."
Resolution settled over the subordinate's face. What on earth was he planning to do?
"Sir… I'll go back there myself. One more time."
"Good heavens. You really are—!!"
The commander thought the man was absolutely out of his mind. Or else desperate to that exact degree. Then again, with his own retirement drawing near while his subordinate's road stretched open before him, perhaps they were bound to see things differently.
"Whew… I'll give you whatever support I can manage."
"Thank you, sir!"
And so the Daehan army began to take an interest in the Ddareungi — or rather, the internal combustion engine — right alongside its new weapons development.
Though of course, someone might get kidnapped in the dead of night and forced to eat nothing but potato porridge while they researched.