Those Who Help
It was not, of course, a modern pressurized rubber tire—the kind you inflate with air until it swells.
But something like the ancestor of that idea had just taken shape.
Hwiyeom’s eyes lit with interest.
If I give them just a little push, they might pull off a real technological leap…
Hwiyeom regarded Lee Jinmyeong in silence.
Lee Jinmyeong was staring back at him with a desperately earnest face.
Hwiyeom asked,
“This is a bit off-topic, but… Secretary Lee, mind if I ask why you like my aunt so much? Honestly I shouldn’t say this, but… she’s a bit older, and a little… violent, isn’t she?”
When Lee Jinmyeong first confessed his feelings for Dang Su-jeong, some people had whispered behind his back that he was only using her as a ladder for status. Hwiyeom knew better—Jinmyeong was no schemer of that sort—and had been quietly rooting for the two of them. Still, he wanted to hear the answer from the man’s own mouth.
At Hwiyeom’s question, Lee Jinmyeong’s eyes went round.
“Even with the age difference, she doesn’t look it at all, does she? Her martial skill is so high she’ll stay that way for decades yet.”
“Uh… well…”
That much was true.
“And she’s incredibly beautiful. Alluring and proud.”
…Also true?
Hwiyeom tilted his head. Set aside the habit of firing words before thought, and if Dang Su-jeong simply shut her mouth and stood still, she had been spoken of in her youth as a candidate for the Seven Beauties of the Martial World.
…Her temper had earned her the mocking title of “Seven Mad Years of the Martial World” instead, of course.
Hwiyeom pressed on urgently.
“Her personality, though? Her personality? You’ll be under her thumb for life.”
“Hahaha. There are things even the Young Master doesn’t know.”
Lee Jinmyeong looked faintly smug as he answered.
“Sojeong is far more feminine, dainty, gentle, soft, and shy than people think.”
“…………Right. Okay.”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and every straw sandal finds its match. Hwiyeom gave up thinking about it any further.
Still, calling a woman twelve years his senior “Sojeong”—little Su-jeong, my baby—was a bit much…
Hwiyeom shook his head.
“Glad to hear you’re serious.”
“Yes, sir. Dead serious.”
“Good. I’ll tell you how.”
Hwiyeom’s face shifted back into the serious cast he wore when talking business.
“Michelangelo’s idea of using rubber as a cushioning agent for the wheel isn’t wrong. What he has to break free of is the assumption that a single layer of rubber has to do all the cushioning.”
Hwiyeom began sketching rapidly on the paper.
“The outer skin that meets the road needs heavy vulcanization—hard rather than soft. That way pebbles and tree roots won’t scrape it open and tear it.
And before the rubber sets, laying a net of woven wire inside will raise both the strength and the lifespan of the wheel.”
“Ah… that would definitely keep the wheel from tearing. But…”
Lee Jinmyeong’s face clouded with worry.
“Then it’ll be too tough and hard to protect the axle at all…”
“So we make a separate part for that job.”
“Pardon?”
“Same principle as wearing a quilted cotton armor under a hard iron shell.”
Hwiyeom’s brush moved again. This time the sketch looked like a round rubber mass meant to sit over the wheel.
“Inside that rubber mass you pack animal intestines that have been cleaned, preserved, and chemically treated for strength, and you leave a valve so you can blow air into them.”
Animal gut was elastic and swelled beautifully when inflated—an ideal stand-in for a rubber tube. With the Tang family’s current rubber-working techniques they still could not produce rubber flexible enough to stretch freely under high pressure, so this was a necessary compromise.
“Then you seat this rubber wheel on an iron rim, inflate it, seal the valve, wrap it in the hard outer rubber tread, and melt-bond the seams to finish it.
If the join feels weak, lace the internal wire netting through for reinforcement and melt the rubber over it. Trim whatever sticks out.”
What took shape on the page looked uncannily like a modern rubber tire.
Hwiyeom said,
“The surface is hard enough not to tear and has tread for grip. Paved road or dirt track—it’ll run either without trouble.
The middle layer is soft and springy, so it soaks up the shock that would otherwise hit the axle.
The air chamber inside does even more of that work, and when you need it you can simply top up the air and keep the pressure steady.”
“Ah…”
Lee Jinmyeong stared blankly at the design, stunned.
Even Michelangelo himself never came up with this…
Michelangelo had been thinking, We need a wheel that endures impact while absorbing it, yet he had never broken the fixed idea that the wheel had to be a single solid mass.
To Lee Jinmyeong’s eyes, Hwiyeom had taken one look and instantly stepped outside the frame to show the way.
This is… the Young Master’s insight? This is the vision of someone heaven itself has gifted…
All he could do was marvel. Looking at Hwiyeom—six years his junior—Lee Jinmyeong felt a fresh wave of respect.
“Thank you.”
“There may still be technical snags, so check with Michelangelo.”
“Yes, sir!”
Lee Jinmyeong answered with vigor and withdrew.
He sprinted straight for Michelangelo’s workshop and burst through the door.
“Chief Mi! Chief Mi!!”
“You son of a bitch, now you’re rewriting other people’s names too? What the hell is this?!”
“Your name is not the point right now! Look at this!”
Michelangelo glared as if the man had lost his mind—then his gaze locked onto the design Lee Jinmyeong thrust at him.
His eyes, already wide enough to burst, narrowed into a fierce grin as he clenched his teeth.
“That monster… just casually tossing things like this out like it’s nothing. Damn it all!”
“Is it possible?”
“Is it possible?”
Michelangelo bellowed.
“You bastard, when someone’s already laid the whole table, put the spoon in your hand, and shoveled the food into your mouth, if you can’t even chew it are you still a craftsman?! Just wait. I’ll bring you something that’ll drop your jaw.”
He shot to his feet and ran for Paracelsus’s workshop.
The laboratory of the physician-chemist-alchemist Paracelsus also occupied one wing of the Innovation Hall in workshop form. After he had safely delivered Hwiyeom’s daughter Dang Woo-ju into the world, his stock had soared through the roof, and the place was now spacious and lavishly equipped.
Michelangelo kicked open the beautiful rosewood door—bearing a plaque that read “Enter Quietly”—and charged inside.
“Paraca, you bastard!! Work with me on one thing!”
As if he had completely forgotten that he himself had just been grumbling about someone mangling his name to “Chief Mi,” Michelangelo delivered a textbook display of double standards. Paracelsus pressed a hand to his forehead, looking as though a headache had just arrived.
“…At least abbreviate it properly, Chief Buonarroti. Paracelsus is a nickname, not my real name.”
“Hohen, you bastard! Work with me on one thing!”
Paracelsus—Van Hohenheim—dropped his head in resignation.
“Why did God give a man like that talent on par with Leonardo…”
“What was that?”
“Nothing. So what do you need me to do?”
“Look at this design first!”
Paracelsus examined the sketch Michelangelo thrust at him. His expression grew steadily more serious.
“Hmm. Rubber hardens under vulcanization, but it loses flexibility in equal measure. Push it too far and it shatters.
The core problem is producing a body that is both firm and elastic. Yes… worth researching.
The Young Master’s idea, you say?”
“That’s right!”
“Then it won’t be empty talk. Something actually worth trying… I’ll look into it.”
“I’m counting on you! I trust you, Van-ga!”
“…I’m not asking for much—just pick one form of address and stick to it, you thunder-brained savage.”
Paracelsus clutched his head.
That was not the end of it.
Michelangelo next hunted down Chief Han of the Blacksmithing Department.
“Han, you bastard! Hand over the coil springs!”
“Did you leave them with me, you son of a bitch?!”
Chief Han Cheol snarled as if ready to seize Michelangelo by the collar.
“The number of springs you’ve already carted off and burned through is past a hundred, you bastard! You think springs grow in a field?! The big ones we can turn on the water-powered lathe, but the small ones our craftsmen wind by hand, stitch by stitch!”
“Oh, a hundred already? Then just give me two hundred more.”
“You lunatic!!”
At Michelangelo’s shameless demand, Chief Han grabbed him by the front of his robe and shook him hard.
“You shameless red-haired devil! You walking disaster! What the hell do you mean, ‘just’?!”
“That’s a racist remark against white people!!”
“White people, my ass! You’re a black-hearted savage!”
In a feat of blackwashing that would have left Disney and Marvel speechless, Chief Han turned the white Michelangelo into a black man on the spot and seized a fistful of his hair. Enraged, Michelangelo reached for Chief Han’s hair in return… paused at the sight of the man’s gleaming bald crown… then grabbed a handful of his luxuriant beard instead.
“Gyaaah, you bastard!!!”
“Let go! Let go, damn you!”
“You let go first!!”
“On three we let go together. Got it?”
“…Fine.”
“One!”
“Two!”
“Three!”
“Why didn’t you let go, you cheating bastard!”
“I’ll throw that right back at you!!”
The watching craftsmen’s eyes went past flat and cold and headed straight for absolute zero as they observed this high-class(?) squabble.
No one moved to stop them.
Ugh… grown men acting like this…
How are people like that the chiefs…
Why did God give genius talent to men like that…
Is that it? You have to be a little crazy to go crazy—maybe going slightly off the rails is a requirement for becoming a master craftsman?
The researchers no longer even flinched at what had become daily scenery; they merely shook their heads.
In the end the two men’s bickering only wound down after the time it took to drink a cup of tea.
Han Cheol ranted that he would never, under any circumstances, make what Michelangelo wanted—until Lee Jinmyeong arrived with the news and immediately flung himself into a full five-point prostration.
“Please help us, Chief Han!!”
Faced with a perfect dogeza that even Japan, land of the dogeza, and Korea, land of the grand bow, would have done well to study, Han Cheol momentarily felt as though he himself were the trash of the earth.
Didn’t this make him look like some wicked father-in-law standing in the way of his daughter’s marriage?
“Ah—no, Secretary Lee, get up, I said get up—”
“I cannot rise until you agree to help Chief Michelangelo build the multi-passenger carriage!”
The original request had been for coil springs; somehow it had quietly ballooned into “help us build the carriage.”
Lee Jinmyeong was the one flat on the floor, so why did Han Cheol feel as if he were the one being threatened?
Cold sweat beading, Han Cheol still tried to refuse. The Blacksmithing Department’s workload was already a mountain; ever since the leave they had received after Dang Woo-ju’s birth ended, the staff had been living without such a thing as going home.
But then…
He saw it.
Far off behind a pillar, only half a face showing like a ghost, a pair of green eyes fixed on him.
—Scraaape…
Her fingernails sank into the pillar as if it were soft tofu; stone dust rained down in a thin cascade.
Staring at Dang Su-jeong in her demonic aspect, Han Cheol swallowed dryly without meaning to.
“I—I’ll do it. Of course I’ll help.”
“Thank you, Chief!”
At that, Dang Su-jeong withdrew her killing intent and beamed.
Cold sweat ran down Han Cheol’s back.
If that’s what it takes to marry her off quickly… no choice…
And so Operation Marry Off Dang Su-jeong—no, wait, the serious production of the multi-passenger carriage (the bus)—began in earnest.