The Scoundrel of Florence
Hwi-yeom understood this better than most. Before he was a businessman, he had been a developer, an inventor, an innovator.
The so-called geniuses—those who raced at the very tip of everything humanity had piled up in a single field—shared one trait in common.
First of all, almost none of them were normal people.
It was a realm that those living ordinary lives could never easily enter.
And the second trait of such people was that, having carved out an unrivaled position in their domain, they carried an enormous pride along with it.
Finally, most of them shared this last characteristic: when an achievement they had never imagined—something superior to their own—suddenly burst forth from someone else, the shock hit them far harder than it would an ordinary person.
Because they saw as much as they knew. They could grasp, with brutal clarity, just how difficult that feat truly was—far more nakedly than the vague understanding of everyone else.
Like Zhou Yu coughing up blood in despair and dying, wailing to the heavens why they had to birth both him and Zhuge Liang.
And when these geniuses discovered the traces of someone who had already crossed a wall they themselves had yet to surmount, their reactions split roughly into two camps.
The first was despair—like Zhou Yu in the example above.
Men who, despite being geniuses by any standard, concluded that they were no genius at all and that the true genius had been someone else entirely. They collapsed into hopelessness.
The second was the tenacious bastards who burned even hotter and charged in with the attitude of How the fuck did you do that, you son of a bitch?!
And Michelangelo belonged to the latter.
Even while Leonardo da Vinci was still alive—already ranked among the greats—Michelangelo had constantly picked fights and snapped at him. That was pure competitive fire.
Some claimed Michelangelo simply had a rotten personality and looked down on Leonardo for being older.
But if Michelangelo had held no respect for Leonardo as a rival, he never would have exploded at a hanger-on who mocked Leonardo when the fresco of the Battle of Anghiari was ruined by a failed oil-drying experiment. “You don’t understand a genius’s heart,” he had snarled.
Hwi-yeom pondered.
How could he light a fire under Michelangelo’s competitive spirit and love of a challenge?
Fortunately, he already had the materials.
Hwi-yeom’s hobby had been drawing 3D blueprints of historically famous buildings and objects, then printing them into scale models. He had already built models of most of humanity’s renowned architectural works.
Architecture from the distant future is meaningless. It won’t land.
If he sketched something bristling with advanced technology—the Twin Towers or a Dubai hotel—they would only call it absurd fantasy.
It was the same principle as trying to explain airplanes to people of this era. What kind of reaction would you get?
Something built with technology this age can grasp with its eyes, yet still far beyond what they can reach right now…
While he was turning the problem over, a fine idea suddenly struck him.
…Something made by my future self.
A building the present him could not yet create, but the future him could. Wouldn’t that be the work most certain to ignite the man’s competitive pride?
“That’s it!”
Theme decided, Hwi-yeom began drafting the blueprints in a single fluid rush.
Just drawing the plans alone took more than a fortnight.
And exactly one shichen after Hwi-yeom sent the finished drawings to the Construction Department, an enraged god of destruction stormed into the Young Clan Head’s office.
“Young Clan Head——!! Have you finally lost your mind?!”
“Faster than I expected.”
Hwi-yeom, calmly working through the backlog of documents that had piled up while he drew, offered a bright smile. Construction Department Manager Gwak Do ground his teeth and slapped the blueprints open across the desk.
“How the hell am I supposed to build this kind of nonsense building?!”
“Nonsense? It shouldn’t require any particularly difficult techniques.”
“The scale is the problem! The scale!”
Gwak Do thumped his own chest in frustration.
“It’s already strange enough that you’re telling me to build some Western-style building in a form I’ve never seen or heard of in my life—and now you want it done in this timeframe at this size? Do you honestly think that makes any sense?!”
“Manager, did you check the scale?”
“The scale…?”
Gwak Do had clearly failed to notice the scale bar in the lower right of the drawing. He looked again and his face went blank.
“The units are… chi (about 3.3 cm), pun (about 0.3 cm), li (about 0.03 cm), mo (0.003 cm)…?”
“What I commissioned is a small-scale model of a certain building. I am not asking you to construct the real thing.”
“Ah… I had no idea…”
As Gwak Do looked thoroughly embarrassed, Hwi-yeom half-lidded his eyes and spoke flatly.
“Honestly. A man of your experience—how does a master craftsman fail to look at the scale…”
“It’s the Young Clan Head’s fault for always throwing out outrageous, impossible orders! I was certain this time you’d dumped another unreasonable task on me!!”
“Ah, so that’s why the Construction Department Manager forgot the absolute basics of reading a blueprint’s scale?”
“…Urgh…”
Faced with a mistake he could not rebut no matter what he said, Gwak Do finally surrendered.
He protested in a sulky grumble.
“A model this size is nothing compared to actual construction, of course. But it’s far more precise than expected… and every material has to be cut and finished tiny. It’ll take quite a while.”
“How long?”
“At least three months.”
“Finish it within one month. The Arabian merchants in Yunnan will leave once winter ends. It must reach them before then.”
“If you would just give me a little more time, budget, and manpower…”
“If you have enough time and passion to charge into the Young Clan Head’s office screaming without even checking the scale, I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“Urrrgh…”
Having already committed the sin, Gwak Do had no choice but to accept the order with the face of a defeated soldier.
In the end, after a month so dense that no Construction Department employee could recount it without tears, Gwak Do was able to deliver the finished model to Hwi-yeom with a face that looked half-dead.
“We definitely made it to the designed size… but isn’t it a bit large for a model? It’s big enough to fill an entire large cart…”
“No, this size is correct. Any smaller and it would be hard to examine properly with the naked eye.”
This building contained many “Easter eggs” that Hwi-yeom—or more precisely, the architects of that later age—had hidden away.
The whole point was for the recipient to discover them and be stunned. If the size were reduced any further, even a magnifying glass would struggle to find them.
“…We’ve divided it into three sections that can be assembled later, and packed them in crates so they won’t be damaged in transit.”
“As clean and thorough as ever. You’ve worked hard.”
Hwi-yeom sent the crates containing the architectural model off to Yunnan, and in the letter to Ibn al-Nasir he stressed his instructions over and over.
When Ibn al-Nasir received the letter, he tilted his head.
“Take absolute care that the contents are not damaged? Is there something fragile inside? Hmm…”
Still, a commission was a commission.
As the merchant who had earned Hwi-yeom’s full trust and practically monopolized the trade in Sichuan’s Shu brocade, Ibn al-Nasir had no reason to refuse the request.
In the end he crossed the Silk Road with repeated, painstaking care to keep the crates unharmed.
And at last, in the middle of spring, Ibn al-Nasir was able to meet Michelangelo.
“This goddamn—! This dogshit—! Ptooey!!”
A shabby man with an ugly face, wearing an apron blotched with paint, strode out of the cathedral and spat a thick gob of phlegm.
“Hey, you’ve got to pay me if you want the work done! Do you dig paintings out of the ground or what?!”
The man—Michelangelo Buonarroti—was furious to the very top of his head.
At present he was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel under the orders of Pope Julius II.
In truth he harbored a great many grievances about this job.
First, it was forced labor that had nothing to do with his own will.
He considered himself not a painter but an architect and sculptor, and he took tremendous pride in that identity.
Yet Pope Julius II had dragged the unwilling Michelangelo in by force and made him paint—and not just paint, but paint an infernally difficult fresco across the filthy vast and high ceiling of a cathedral.
Resentful at being compelled into work he hated, Michelangelo had begun mouthing off to the Pope.
Just the fact that he dared talk back to a Pope revealed how foul-tempered and manly Michelangelo’s disposition was. Unfortunately, the other party was Julius II.
The master of political intrigue who had brought down the famous Cesare Borgia through cunning, a man so foul-tempered and stubborn that he earned the nickname “Warrior Pope” and was second to none in all of Europe at the time—would such a man simply endure Michelangelo’s insolence?
Using the contract and papal authority, he had bound Michelangelo so thoroughly that the man could take on no other work until the Sistine Chapel was finished. Then, on top of that, he began playing games by delaying payment of wages and materials costs.
In short, he had sealed off every other source of money and then tightened the purse strings to break the artist to heel.
Michelangelo could no longer pay his assistants properly, and every last one of them had packed up and left for Florence.
He had gone to demand money for new men, paint, and plaster, only to be turned away at the door and driven off.
“Fuuuuuck! I’m not painting this shit! If I don’t paint it, what the hell can a bastard like him do about it?!”
Even as Michelangelo stood in the middle of the main thoroughfare and cursed the Pope loud enough to shake the alleys, the people did not startle or cross themselves in horror. They merely gave him a look that said, “That guy again—what’s he ranting about this time?” and simply walked around him.
If Julius II had not acknowledged that no one but Michelangelo could finish the Sistine ceiling, such words would long ago have reduced the man to a handful of ashes on a pyre.
While he was still fuming and snorting, Ibn al-Nasir approached.
“Master Buonarroti, good day to you. I have come bearing a gift for you.”
“Good day my dogshit asshole! That so-called Pope has a heart the size of a flea! No wonder the Catholic crusades failed! Allahu Akbar, you son of a bitch!”
“Oh…”
Hearing a Catholic Michelangelo denounce the Crusades and bellow “Allah is great,” Ibn al-Nasir hurriedly scanned the surroundings—only to see that no one on the street took the slightest notice and simply went about their business. For a moment he suffered cognitive dissonance.
But he was a professional. He quickly recovered and spoke to Michelangelo.
“Master, please calm yourself. Accept this item, if you would.”
“…What do you want with me?”
Only then did Michelangelo notice Ibn al-Nasir and the cart behind him. He eyed them with wary suspicion.
Ibn al-Nasir smiled.
“I am Ibn al-Nasir, a Silk Road merchant who trades Shu brocade, tea, and pepper with the ‘Jing’ of the East.
A certain powerful man of the Jing country has sent you a gift and a letter.”
“A gift and a letter? For me? From some Jing country I’ve never even heard of? How does he know me?”
To the bewildered Michelangelo, Ibn al-Nasir answered with a smile.
“You will understand once you read the letter. Come now, let’s not stand about in the street. Kindly show us to your workshop—the gift is rather large.”
“…Hmph.”
Though the wariness had not left his face, he seemed to accept the explanation for the moment. Michelangelo led the way.
At present Michelangelo had turned the great hall of the Sistine Chapel itself into his workshop.
Once the wooden barriers meant to keep outsiders out were moved aside and they entered, Ibn al-Nasir’s men grunted and hauled three large crates inside.
“If what’s inside is gold—hell, even silver would be nice. Then I can finish this damn ceiling and get the hell out of here.”
Michelangelo muttered that, then suddenly shouted.
“Hey! Don’t just dump the stuff anywhere! For the love of—! Here! Unpack it right here!”
He watched the objects emerging from the crates with curious eyes.
“This is… a miniature of a building?”
He stared.
“…….”
He stared, lost.
“This… crazy…!”
From the middle onward he had already lost his mind. When the three crates yielded miniature sections that assembled into one single, majestic structure, he was struck speechless.
“Crazy… crazy! Crazy! A building like this…!”
The shifts in his expression were nothing short of dynamic.
First shock, then denial, then shock again, followed by understanding and study and analysis—and then one more round of shock.
His face flushed red and pale by turns until finally, scarlet to the roots, he strode up to Ibn al-Nasir and seized him by the collar in one motion.
The guards drew their scimitars and rushed forward, but Ibn al-Nasir raised a hand and stopped them.
Michelangelo’s eyes had rolled back; he snarled.
“Where’s the bastard who made this?!”
Ibn al-Nasir answered with a leisurely smile.
“Here is the letter he sent.”
“Letter?”
Michelangelo snatched the letter as if seizing prey and tore open the outer seal in a flash.
As he read the lines written inside, his pupils dilated wide.
“This crazy…”