New Employees - 7
"Let's put this applicant on the counter... and send this one out to work the floor, I suppose."
With Lim Hayeon gone from Daseogak, I sat poring over the applicants' paperwork, weighing how best to arrange my new staff.
I'd braced myself for a few to drop out, yet every last one had applied. Which meant headcount was no problem at all.
The plan, then: keep the staff on lighter duties at their regular posts, while those stuck with the heavy work got early dismissals, the occasional full day off, or a rotating schedule between stations.
"And Lim Hayeon should mostly be put to work on the second floor."
I grinned ear to ear as I looked over the file of the biggest free agent in the bookstore-employee market.
Hers was the kind of beauty that, glimpsed even once, would stay in a person's head all day long.
Had she become a fully registered courtesan, it would take a mountain of gold just to buy a single meeting with her — but now, all anyone had to do was walk into Daseogak.
Better still, with a courtesan's training behind her, the service-industry mindset would already be second nature. In short: talent perfectly optimized for selling tea at Daseogak!
Once we reopened, I had a feeling we'd be raking the money in.
"Manager Kang! Thank goodness you were still here at Daseogak!"
I was in the middle of picturing myself sweeping up coins with a rake when a man from the Literary Society pushed open the door and stepped inside.
"What brings you here?"
"The Literary Society Chairman requests your presence."
What could this be about?
I made straight for the Literary Society Chairman's residence.
Things were about to get properly busy again, but when a patron who supplied me with staff — and even subsidized their wages — sent for me, refusal was never an option.
Had I slipped away to another seat while the Chairman sat there sipping his rice wine at the banquet? Or had he noticed me pretending to drink and quietly emptying my cup into my sleeve, afraid I'd make a drunken blunder?
Or perhaps that time I'd secretly topped up my cup with water to outlast the toasts?
I hadn't done a single thing wrong, yet being summoned like this only made me more nervous.
"You've been waiting, I see."
The Chairman entered the room where I'd been waiting and took the seat of honor.
"I arrived only just now."
"You kept your post from the first moment of the Literary Society's event to the very last — truly, well done. As an outsider, you might easily have treated the whole thing as none of your affair."
You let me handpick my own employees — of course I'd see it through.
This wasn't some random pull; I'd gotten to look every candidate in the eye and lock in every pick. That much effort was only proper.
Still, I was busy enough to drop — surely the reason I'd been summoned wasn't just this?
"None of my affair? How could the search for the saplings that will one day grow into Yichang's great trees ever be someone else's affair?"
Contrary to what I actually thought, I smiled with wounded indignation, as if to ask how he could say such a thing about me.
"Heh heh. You certainly have a gift for saying what a man wants to hear. Yes — I didn't call you here merely to commend your efforts. There is something I must apologize for, concerning the work-study students."
The Literary Society Chairman let out a hearty laugh at my words, then continued in a grave voice.
An apology, concerning the work-study students?
Don't tell me he'd taken offense at how the program had burnished Kang Yunho's name, drained talent off to Daseogak, and even covered half the wages.
A bad premonition flashed through my mind.
He wasn't about to announce he was withdrawing his support — scrapping the whole program — was he?
"An apology, you say?"
"When you first proposed the work-study program to me, I confess, I took it as a simple request for help hiring employees."
"..."
He wasn't wrong, though.
"But it seems I misjudged you."
"Misjudged me, you say?"
I tilted my head slightly and regarded the Chairman.
"What you said from that stage struck a deep chord in me. That even a man who must worry over tomorrow's meal wished to give hope to those who dream of becoming writers. It was no empty formality — those words came truly from the heart."
Of course they did. I was the one who'd actually gone hungry.
Dropped into this world with nothing, I had clawed my way up from the very bottom to become a writer — putting genuine feeling into it was no challenge at all.
"As a bookstore owner, I know the plight of impoverished writers well enough. I too lived a destitute life before finally finding my footing, so their circumstances felt anything but distant."
Capturing Lim Hayeon had been my foremost objective, but helping writers in dire straits through employment had been a worthy secondary one.
"Yes. I don't know whether you caught it that day, but one of those selected as a work-study student came to me with tear-filled eyes to offer his thanks. He said that after failing this time he had meant to give it all up — that this had given him the courage to try again. Hearing that, I found myself wondering whether I had been falling short all this while. It gave me a great deal to think about."
Whether yesterday's events still weighed on him, the Chairman wore a conflicted expression.
"How could your merit ever fall short, Chairman? A program to seek out and support new writers — I have never seen its like anywhere in Hubei Province. And you judged with perfect fairness, by skill alone. Surely your winners will grow into the great trees of Yichang in time."
Back in my street-storyteller days, had word of a new-writer competition reached my ears, I would have made for Yichang without a moment's hesitation.
That is how extraordinary the Literary Society's program was.
"...Is that so."
"Of course, some run toward the prize on a full stomach, in fine shoes — while others must run barefoot, a sick loved one on their back. I am in no position to compare myself to you, Chairman. I only wish to help those for whom the race toward their goal is already more than they can bear."
"Ever since you discovered the writer Hopil, I took you for a merchant with a keen eye and sharp commercial instincts — but you are a young man of far deeper substance than I gave you credit for."
Stroking his beard, the Chairman looked at me as though seeing me anew.
Right. In the Chairman's eyes, I was a bookstore owner with a knack for spotting commercially viable writing. He had probably never thought of me as more than that.
I need to keep my relationship with the Literary Society on good footing from here on out.
They held real influence in Yichang; staying in their good graces could only work in my favor.
Time to bend his image of me in a new direction — without breaking it.
When someone openly declares they are seeing you anew, it means their favorability has risen — but it also means they have lowered their guard, leaving room to raise that favorability even further.
I couldn't let it end with "capable merchant, good eye." I needed to carve my mark into the Literary Society Chairman's memory.
Only then would the Society keep running favorable pieces about me, keep supplying me with manpower, and keep subsidizing my employees' wages.
I opened my mouth to win the Chairman's favor all the more.
"There is a saying in Joseon: earn like a dog, spend like a prime minister."
Open with an unfamiliar Joseon proverb and bait his curiosity.
"What manner of saying is that?"
"It means that when earning money, one must not scorn even the lowliest work — and when spending it, one must spend it on things of true worth."
"Earned lowly, spent nobly?"
At "earn like a dog," the Chairman would think at once of the man before him — the very man he had just praised for his merchant's cunning.
The Chairman's own words had just handed me half the proverb. Across that single bridge, I would now reveal, ever so naturally, the Kang Yunho who spends like a prime minister.
"I am a merchant. I do my utmost in my station and earn my living through trade. But however diligently I earn, I have no intention of piling my money to the heavens, nor of carrying it with me into the afterlife. And so I conduct my business by a single creed."
"And what creed is that?"
"That commerce is the art of leaving behind people."
"Leaving people behind?"
"Because a man named Kang Yunho went into trade, countless writers will be supported in every field; because good books are sold throughout the realm, the joy and the learning of countless people will grow. And the more money I earn, the wider that reach becomes. If that is not commerce leaving people behind, then what is?"
To the literati, the mere accumulation of wealth was an unseemly thing — and the more learned the man, the deeper his distaste for merchants.
No wonder that in Joseon, where men were ranked as scholar, farmer, artisan, and merchant, the merchant stood lowest of all.
Wealth amassed, then bestowed upon others.
The speech I'd given from the stage, the work-study program I'd proposed, and now this very conversation — to the Chairman, I must have seemed a man who truly lived by such a creed.
Besides, I needed to build my reputation while making money anyway.
Doesn't a reputation grow precisely by leaving behind people who look up to you?
"Leaving people behind through commerce... Hah hah hah! It seems the one who ought to have stood before yesterday's attendees and held forth at length was not I, but you."
"How could I ever presume such a thing before a man who served in the Imperial Palace? I only wished to say that, as a bookstore owner of Yichang, I intend to keep working by this creed in the days to come."
In other words: please keep the support coming.
With a grave expression, as though making a solemn vow, I spoke these words to the Literary Society Chairman.
The Chairman studied me for a long moment, then opened his mouth with a deep, searching gaze.
"...The late Baek Clan Head was fond of saying much the same thing."
Tang Hwarin's maternal grandfather?
"You were acquainted with the Baek Clan Head?"
"In my younger days, I once received his patronage."
"I never dreamed the two of you shared such a bond."
"There was a time when I could not afford more than a book or two, and I spent half a day agonizing in the Baek family bookstore. By sundown I had finally settled on a single volume — whereupon the Baek Clan Head gathered up the rest and brought them over himself. 'These books are my gift,' he told me. 'I'll buy you more next time, so come back whenever you wish.'"
"Well, well."
An old man whose stories of virtue came wave after wave without end.
"The reason I retired home and took up supporting new writers is that very memory — of the help the Baek Clan Head gave me in my youth."
"I had no idea it went that deep."
"You said you are promised to the Baek Clan Head's granddaughter, did you not?"
"Yes. Hwarin — his granddaughter, now recuperating at the Tang Clan estate — entrusted Daseogak to me, and I run it in her stead."
"To see his last remaining granddaughter and her betrothed carrying on his will so faithfully — were the late Baek Clan Head to look down upon you, he would be thoroughly pleased."
The Chairman smiled upon me with a satisfied air, as if he were the Baek Clan Head himself. I had meant only to leave an impression — apparently I had stamped my seal straight onto his heart.
Well, it had landed beautifully.
What was the finest answer I could give the Chairman at a moment like this?
"As the owner of the bookstore that represents Yichang, I will devote myself to running Daseogak with all diligence, so that no stain ever falls upon the honor of the late Baek Clan Head, master of the original Daseogak."
As though bearing a heavy resolve upon both shoulders, I bowed my head to the Chairman.
"Yes. For a moment there, looking at you, I felt as though the Baek Clan Head himself had returned. And feeling that, I find I cannot simply sit idle. How best might I help you, I wonder..."
He had already given everything — and now he wanted to help me again?
For an instant, I fought desperately to smother the urge to cheer out loud.
What would he give me this time?
At length the Literary Society Chairman finished his deliberations and declared: