Gathering the Power of 15 Million
1438. The twentieth year of King Sejong's reign. It had been two and a half years since I regained the memories of my past life in the middle of frost-covered Aoji. It was currently March. Since it was March by the lunar calendar, it was easy to guess that it would be much warmer by the solar calendar.
Whoooooosh. Whoooooooosh.
"...It's cold."
"Why are you whining? It is quite amusing to hear that from a lad who used to live in a thatched cottage during the dead of winter, haha!"
Wow, seriously. How on earth did I ever think of observing the three-year mourning period here? The words of Elder Jeoljae (Kim Jong-seo) snapped me back to reality. I couldn't believe this was spring weather. To think this was what mid-April by the solar calendar felt like. Well, it had gotten warmer, relatively speaking.
"Young Master, please don't stray off the main road. The melting snow and ice have made a complete mess of everything. A cart just got stuck in the mire."
"Right. Thank you."
"Well, I'll be off to gather more firewood then!"
Thud. I could tell just by listening to the news Geobi brought as he dashed over like the wind. Thanks, Geobi. It felt like it was finally around zero degrees Celsius—right at the melting point of water. This was the absolute worst time of the year. The snowfields were melting, the ponds were melting, and even the Tumen River over there was thawing. Torrents of water suddenly rushed down the quiet valleys, and the frozen ground turned into a swamp of mud. Still, this mess wouldn't last as long as it did in places like Russia. The Korean Peninsula had dry winters, after all. Yes, thank goodness the conditions here were better than in Siberia.
"..."
"..."
Wait... what was I thinking about just now? Making this place a livable land? How?
"Are you feeling unwell? I thought it strange when you complained of the cold in this weather. Have you caught a chill?"
"No, sir. I am fine."
"Is that so? For someone who is fine, you seem to keep spacing out and falling silent."
I couldn't exactly tell him that I was worried about the future, so I simply bowed my head.
"Thank you for your concern, Elder."
"If you say so, then very well. At any rate, a warm breeze is starting to blow, which means the time to plant cotton is drawing near."
Warm breeze, my foot. Where in the world is there a "warm breeze" that feels like it's going to freeze you to death? And he's already talking about planting cotton...
"...Elder?"
"What is it?"
"How is the cotton wool being used?"
"Ah, yes. It is exactly the same as when you left."
"..."
"For now, we have gathered it all in one place."
...Ah, cotton. Now I remember.
"Would you like to take a look?"
"Yes, please."
"Then let us go."
Together with the Elder, I inspected the storehouse inside the original village. Not the new storehouse granted by the King, where the wheat and cotton seeds were kept. Since even the wealthiest household in the northernmost part of Hamgil Province couldn't possess much, and everyone in the village—including myself—lived as one big family, most of our assets were pooled together in one place. And the cotton that Yi Hongwi had poured his soul into retrieving from the twenty-first century was...
"..."
"..."
...sitting there, almost entirely unused. To be precise, they had extracted just enough seeds to plant again, so the cultivation itself had gone well. However, after harvesting, the cotton wool had simply been piled up neatly with nowhere else to go. A portion of the cotton on one side hadn't even had its seeds removed due to a shortage of hands. I was momentarily taken aback by the sight, which looked as if someone had kidnapped a bunch of baby clouds. I asked,
"Has... no one made any new clothes out of this yet?"
"How could they?"
"..."
They could have at least made something to wear. It's not like there's any other cotton that grows in this freezing land. I get that they believe heaven was moved by the young master's filial piety to bestow this divine cotton, and even the King and scholars from all eight provinces were astonished by this auspicious An Clan Cotton, but still.
...Well, yes. There was a reason the villagers trembled every time they touched it. Come to think of it, the Elder standing before me probably played a part by threatening them with, "If we ruin this harvest, His Majesty will have all our heads." If a mysterious flower bloomed from a saint's relics and was blessed by the Pope, what medieval peasant would say, "Wow, this flower makes great cooking oil"?
"Still, the villagers have tailored a set of clothes for you. They are kept over there."
Since our house and the storehouse were right next to each other in the center of the village, it was easy to move back and forth. When we returned home, Jageun-i, who had heard the Elder's words, broke into a cold sweat. She swallowed hard and nodded.
"I-I shall bring... 'it' out."
"Sure... but there is no need to be so tense..."
"Shh, shh, shh! You are going to give this humble maid a heart attack, Young Master."
"..."
She was so dead serious that I couldn't even say anything. Meanwhile, Jageun-i's hands trembled violently as she retrieved "the clothes" from the wardrobe. Thud. I turned around to see Geobi, who had come to fetch some tools, staring at us with wide eyes. Before I could even speak to him, he bolted out the door.
"E-Everyone, gather round! The clothes! He's putting on the clothes!!"
And the moment Geobi shouted, people came pouring out from all directions. Suddenly, the courtyard and the space beyond the wall were packed with villagers. With everyone looking up at me with sparkling eyes... I had no choice but to step outside. As I did, the Elder followed me out in a daze, and Jageun-i emerged as well, still trembling as she held the new clothes.
"Jageun-i! Help him put them on!"
"Dress the young master!"
"Finally!!"
Is this... some kind of coronation? It's just a simple cheolik, why are they making such a fuss...
"I shall dress you now!" Slide.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Huh? Wait, no... what? It's huge. They must have made it oversized so I could keep wearing it even after I grow up. Right. I see. I get it. But, uh, that's not the important part here. I hurriedly turned to look at Dolbi. Seriously, Hong-wi, what on earth did you do? What did you bring back? Why is this cotton clothing softer than the silk clothes I received from my teacher's family?
Blehh.
...Whoa. I imagined the shock the villagers must have felt while making these clothes. Cotton bestowed by heaven. Yet it harvests in August by the solar calendar. And the fibers are finer than silk.
"Waaaaah! The young master is wearing it!"
"You are the pride of our village, Young Master!"
"Boohoohoo... He was so young when he said he would perform the memorial services for his late parents... It feels like just yesterday..."
"..."
Amidst the cheers of the villagers, I couldn't help but think: This is going to be huge.
The Elder, the Army Commander, returned to his post. And I remained here with the villagers.
"You look absolutely splendid, Young Master. You will surely return with the royal graduate's paper flowers in your cap."
"Haven't you heard? The teacher who used to instruct our young master took first place in the state exams this time. Surely our master can do at least as well."
"Ah... that hyperactive scholar? If even he could do it, then the young master will easily take first place."
I wondered why my teacher's reputation had taken such a hit among the villagers, but then I nodded in understanding. If a scholar came hopping around the neighborhood shouting, "Heon! I've thought of another topic to discuss with you!" it was only natural they wouldn't take him seriously. More importantly, what do they mean by "splendid"? These clothes were made for me to wear as an adult, so they didn't fit me at all. What were they thinking, putting adult clothes on a kid who was barely old enough to enter elementary school? Still, I kept quiet. Once the Commander left, the villagers took turns lifting me up, hugging me, and weeping. Well, it had been a while. Since they had all chipped in to give me this gift, I decided to hold my tongue even if they said some odd things.
"...You all worked very hard. It must not have been easy dealing with unfamiliar cotton and thread."
Based on what I had seen so far, the message Hong-wi had just retched out through Dolbi, and the physical sensation of wearing it myself, this was indeed an unfamiliar variety of cotton. The fibers were incredibly long, yet exceptionally thin and fine. At the same time, they were remarkably strong and durable, resisting breakage. Normally, cotton wouldn't even bloom in this region. According to the Elder, the King had attempted cotton cultivation in the northern frontier and failed miserably. To make matters worse, the seeds of this particular cotton were tightly bound to the fibers, making them difficult to separate.
"If it is like the tests we ran before, you must have had to run it through the cotton gin several times. Is that not so?"
In other words, even using a hand-cranked cotton gin—a shia—the seeds wouldn't have separated easily. Historically, cotton plantations in the American South exploited slaves the most for picking cotton and separating the seeds. Of course, the villagers hadn't worked under such brutal conditions, but they must have suffered quite a bit...
"Pardon? Oh, heavens, how could we run such precious cotton through a crude shia?"
"Huh?"
"We picked out every single seed by hand."
"..."
"..."
...I was wrong. Why on earth did they subject themselves to a chore that even American slaves had mechanical help to avoid? Were they going to treat these cotton balls like sacred relics forever? If they kept this up, the village women's fingers would be ruined. This was no time to be touched by their gift. Horrified, I ordered them to bring over a shia and some raw cotton immediately. Though Jageun-i and the other village women looked puzzled, they complied.
"We tell you, it wasn't that hard. It's not like we can go out and enjoy the spring flowers in this freezing cold. We have nothing but time anyway..."
"Well, watching you do it is hard on me, so just do as I say."
"My, the young master is so considerate. Look, see? We're turning it now." Clack-clack-clack-clack.
A shia is nothing fancy. It's just two round wooden rollers placed close together and turned with a crank. It's an incredibly simple manual roller; when you feed the cotton into the narrow gap, only the fibers are pulled through, leaving the seeds behind to drop off. Swoosh. Plop.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Except, it wasn't working. Because the fibers of this cotton were so fine and smooth, they didn't catch on the rollers properly. On top of that, the seeds were bound much more tightly to the fibers than in ordinary cotton, so they refused to detach. The whole clump just slid right through the rollers, seeds and all, still firmly attached to each other. Jageun-i and the other village women stared at me with identical expressions, as if to say, See? Right. They hadn't resorted to doing it by hand for no reason. Still, there had to be a way.
"Um... did you see the seal leather I received from the King?"
"Of course we did! Just you wait. We're going to make you a splendid fur coat next—"
"Let's wrap some of the leftover scraps around these rollers."
"..."
They all looked at me as if wanting to ask if I had lost my mind. But looking at it, the issue was clearly a lack of friction preventing the cotton from being pulled in. If we just added a material to increase the friction, it would require far less effort.
"Would it not work? Just cut it into small pieces and..."
"..."
"Ah, whatever! It's mine anyway, so I'll do what I want with it. Cut it and stick it on! If you don't put leather on that shia, I'm not doing anything!"
And so, they cut and pasted it. It took quite a while because they painstakingly searched for the most useless, hardest-to-use scraps. At any rate, we tried it again. Plop.
"..."
"..."
"..."
The village women's eyes widened slightly. They began whispering among themselves, "Oh, how marvelous..." Of course it worked well. It was only natural. ...It was just that I was starting to worry. I had read a few novels dealing with this kind of situation. The protagonists in those stories did exactly what I just did, saying things like, "Ah, do you not know? This is an improved [cotton gin]." It was logical. It was the easiest way to prove one's achievements or utility using future knowledge. But those protagonists were usually kings. Even if they did something strange, no one could harm them. King Sejong had done some bizarre things to me recently, and no one could stop him. But I wasn't a king. I was just a country kid. I was called a prodigy, but even that was a hard-won reputation I had painstakingly built to navigate this situation. If I kept introducing advanced technology, starting from these minor improvements to more sophisticated ones, people would eventually look at me with suspicion. They would wonder, Why is that kid meddling in every little thing? or Where on earth did he learn that? For instance, if I suddenly brought up the ideal ratio for black powder, I'd probably start seeing visions of the State Tribunal officers. If people started looking at me with doubt and suspicion this early on, I'd be done for. I was only eight years old. Perhaps I needed to wait prudently until I was older and possessed solid authority.
"As expected of an educated person. How did the young master know just by looking?" ...Huh?
"This is going to make things so much easier. This old woman was just being stubbornly foolish."
"What about the other gins? Seal leather is too precious to waste on all of them."
"Just use other leather. We can use the wild boar hides the Jurchens bring in."
"That's right. Wild boar leather is nice and rough, so it'll be perfect."
"People of high learning generally know all these things."
Wait, the response is enthusiastic, but it's a bit different from what I expected. And... is that really how they see it? An educated person just knows everything?
"I mean, look at when the Commander visited. When Geobi asked him to tell his fortune, he did, and he even treated people when they were sick."
Ah, right. An educated person can do anything. I had forgotten what a Joseon scholar truly was. Contrary to popular belief, scholars were not just pale-faced bookworms. People who didn't know any better often joked that Joseon was a nation of mere literary bureaucrats, but that was far from the truth. That misconception arose from taking a century-old educational classification system—originally created in Japan due to budget constraints—too seriously. In the twenty-first century, Confucian classics are usually regarded merely as philosophical texts. But if you actually look at their contents, they encompass medicine, management, history, metaphysics, mathematics, natural philosophy, ethics, theology, linguistics, and more. To be precise, they represent a raw, unrefined state of knowledge before these fields were compartmentalized. Does that seem strange? It wasn't just Joseon; that was how things had always been. Plato wrote "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter" at the entrance of his academy, and Aristotle dissected dolphins. Newton and Leibniz spent sleepless nights debating theology, and the Cartesian coordinate system is famous. In other words, in the eyes of the Joseon people, a highly learned scholar was a manager, doctor, mathematician, politician, historian, priest, cleric, philosopher, physicist, astronomer... all rolled into one. So, when a "learned person" arrived, it was only natural that they knew everything. Because they were "learned."
"..."
Besides, come to think of it, even if I built a state-of-the-art cotton gin here, I doubted anyone would find it strange. Actually... they probably wouldn't even care. At most, they'd think, Oh, cool, it's easier to remove the seeds. They'd use it for a bit, discard it if it became a hassle, or throw it away if it broke. Can we remove cotton seeds easily? Nice. The end. After all, they were just using it to make their own clothes. A machine that twists straw ropes? Great. But peasants had plenty of time anyway. Sure, a machine would get it done faster, but what were they going to do with the extra time? It might seem bizarre to a twenty-first-century person. In that era, self-help books boasting "200% increase in work efficiency" sold tens of thousands of copies. Yet, even in the twenty-first century, people save "dishwashing life hacks" videos to their "Watch Later" playlist and never look at them again. There are plenty of college students living on their own who don't know they should wipe greasy dishes with a paper towel and wash them with warm water. Because everyone thinks: Sure, it's convenient if you do it. But does it really change anything if you don't? That was exactly how the people of this era lived. Since they mostly relied on self-sufficiency, if a machine that made work easier broke down, they simply stopped using it. Just like how twenty-first-century people might prop a door open with a brick if the doorstop breaks. The fundamentally indifferent people of the Joseon Dynasty. And me, treated as an intellectual who "knows just about everything." Hmm. Maybe... I can be a bit more reckless than I thought?
Soon, the women left, carrying the leather-wrapped shia with fascinated expressions. Now, I was alone in the room. It was time to make a decision.
"Dolbi."
Purrrrr.
"Is Hong-wi listening to me?"
Nod, nod.
"Hong-wi, can you hear me? How well do you think the movie will do in the future?"
At my words, Dolbi paused. The deep blue tiger cub spun its tail around in circles, pacing back and forth, before finally opening its mouth. Blehh.
Right. Ten million... Wait, what?
"C-Come on... let's calm down and talk about this. There are only two movies in the history of Korean cinema that have surpassed fifteen million viewers."
One was blessed by the heroic spirit of Admiral Yi Sun-sin, and the other was accompanied by the majesty of Suwon Galbi Chicken. Since Silmido, numerous films had reached the ten-million mark. However, the feat of breaking fifteen million had not been achieved by any other than those two. Even up until last year, many people were talking about the crisis of Korean cinema, so there was no way it would be that easy...
"..."
Silence ensued. Hong-wi offered no excuses or further explanations. I stared at Dolbi. Dolbi stared back at me. Hong-wi was likely looking at me through Dolbi as well, using some sort of divine power. He had probably been watching over me all this time. Ever since I regained my past life's memories in Joseon, we had been together, if only indirectly, through every moment of eating, sleeping, washing, and working. Thus, I could sense Hong-wi's sincerity. And I made my decision.
"By any chance, even if it's a bit of a stretch... can you attach an image to your messages?"