4 — The Delivery Service Conquers Wuhan
“Giosugu? A pigeon that has attained enlightenment? What in the world is that supposed to be?”
The escort asked, staring at the white pigeon with blue feathers perched on his friend's head.
Attained enlightenment. What, does a pigeon practice martial arts now?
“My friend, you truly live under a rock! No matter how busy escort work keeps you, now that you're back in Wuhan you ought to keep up with the news of the world.”
“To live without knowing about the Giosugu, so uncannily clever they seem to have grasped the very qi. Tsk, tsk.”
His friends shook their heads at him as if he were hopeless, clicking their tongues.
“You'd best explain what the pigeon does before I can know anything.”
“That's why you can't make Escort Leader, my friend — no read on things at all. Now hold still! Today I shall show you a whole new world of food. Let's see, now... where is it?”
The friend with the pigeon glanced around the room.
“Looking for the menu? Here it is!”
Another friend immediately caught on what he was searching for and tossed him a wooden menu board from the corner.
“A menu board?”
The escort frowned, unable to grasp the situation.
No. Isn't that what the server hands you at an inn? Do these fellows have some kind of thief streak? Why would they carry an inn's menu all the way here?
It made no sense to him at all.
“Since our friend says he's paying — four jajangmyeon and one large tangsuyuk. Order it up.”
“I'd rather have jjambbong.”
“Too much of a bother to clean up. Four jajang it is.”
The man wrote something on a slip of paper with a fine brush, opened the window, and sent the Giosugu flying off.
“Now sit down and wait!”
“What in the world is—”
Dragged into a seat by his friends, the escort still couldn't make heads or tails of it.
A Giosugu. What on earth is that thing? It looks like a messenger pigeon, the kind only escort leaders use. What could it possibly have to do with food?
It wasn't like the swallow from his childhood bedtime stories, the one that brought food to its hungry master. Surely not.
Are these fellows planning to starve me by claiming it's 'late'? A hungry man can't think straight. Are they trying to make a fool out of me today? Or are they just mocking me?
While the escort was lost in questions he couldn't answer, there came a knock at the door.
“Is this the place that ordered four jajangmyeon and one large tangsuyuk under Giosugu number 53?”
A Joseon man wearing a straw hat knocked on the door of the room where the four men sat.
“Here, here! Bring it this way.”
The escort's friend opened the door to receive the deliveryman and led him to a table where the food could be set down.
Even the escort could figure it out by now.
“D-did you just order food... by messenger pigeon?”
The escort asked, his voice thick with disbelief.
“Quick on the uptake, aren't you. Still haven't caught on?”
“That's impossible—”
The escort couldn't close his mouth.
Ordering food by messenger pigeon. Even I, who traveled through countless cities — not just Wuhan — had never heard of such a thing.
“Where should I put the food down?”
“Right here, on the table.”
The black-haired deliveryman set a strangely shaped black case on the table, lifted up a wooden panel slotted in vertically, and began taking the food out.
“What an unusual case! Never seen anything like it.”
A black case with a handle. The interior was divided into compartments like a drawer. And the food could be lifted right out of it.
The escort examined the wooden case with curious eyes, turning it this way and that.
“Our innkeeper made it himself. We call it the Iron Delivery Box.”
“Iron Delivery Box? You mean to say you carry a case made of iron around?”
Iron would weigh a ton. Is this Joseon man a martial artist? The escort looked at the black-haired deliveryman with surprise.
“It's fine wood coated with many layers of lacquer — as sturdy as iron.”
“Ah-ha. And roomy enough to hold plenty of food inside. Whoever thought this up was a marvel.”
The Iron Delivery Box was novel in shape, but the craftsmanship was far from shoddy. It was unquestionably the work of a skilled artisan.
“Haha. Our innkeeper is quite the remarkable man. Four jajangmyeon and one large tangsuyuk — that'll be four silver.”
“What?! Four jajang and one large tangsuyuk should only cost three silver!”
At the price the deliveryman named, the wonder drained from the escort's face, leaving it full of outrage.
Any inn in town would charge three silver. One extra silver? What a rip-off.
“Oh, come now! Then go eat at the inn — why else would a deliveryman come all this way!”
“What are you saying, embarrassing the deliveryman like that! Sorry about him! This friend doesn't think before he speaks!”
His friends scolded him the moment his expression darkened.
“Still, that's going too far—”
“If you don't want to pay, just say so.”
“N-no, that's not it! I'll pay.”
A man cannot take back words already spoken. The escort hurriedly dug into his money pouch and handed the silver to the Joseon man.
The deliveryman felt the trembling in the escort's hand, but said nothing and accepted the four coins of silver.
“Just set the dishes outside when you're done and we'll collect them. And here is your Giosugu, number 53, returned to you.”
Finally, the deliveryman took the pigeon that had just flown in from the inn out of the case and handed it back.
“Much obliged! I'll order again!”
“Yes sir! Order by Giosugu and we'll find you anywhere — the Delivery People! Wungi Inn, run by the Joseon folk! Please use us again!”
The deliveryman boomed out his rehearsed catchphrase with vigor, then promptly left the room.
“So... food really can be delivered.”
Even staring at the spread on the table, the escort could hardly believe what had just happened.
“Amazing, isn't it, the Giosugu? What passed for delivery before was having a servant run errands for some rich household — you had to be a regular with an arrangement at the inn. But now even the likes of us can order food delivered.”
It wasn't that this world had no food delivery at all. But that had always been the exclusive privilege of rich households with servants, or favored regulars who ordered in bulk.
It had never been something four bachelors gathered in a room could arrange.
“So you just send off the Giosugu and the order goes through?”
“That's right. See the number on the pigeon's leg? Apparently they record your Giosugu number and your address at the inn. Write your order, attach it to the pigeon, send it flying, and the deliveryman comes right here.”
“And the food arrives before it goes cold. Remarkable.”
“A bit pricey, granted, but so convenient. Lately everyone in this neighborhood is scrambling to get their hands on a Giosugu.”
“I suppose they don't just hand them out to anyone?”
“There are conditions. You have to be someone who regularly orders food from the inn, and if you go half a month without ordering again, you have to return the Giosugu.”
His friend added that since a dead messenger pigeon would mean paying a penalty, it was better to release the bird than let it starve if you weren't going to order.
“Heh heh. Who on earth thinks up ideas like this?”
Ordering food by messenger pigeon. The escort had prided himself on knowing more of the world than most, but even he couldn't hide his astonishment at this.
“Who knows. Raising messenger pigeons is a craft only a handful of masters can manage.”
“For the likes of us, who cares who did it — so long as it's good, isn't that enough!”
“Now, you two! Surely you aren't planning to play mahjong after we eat?”
“Obviously we eat while we play!”
The four men in the room slurped jajangmyeon and gnawed tangsuyuk while cheerfully clacking their mahjong tiles.
No stamina wasted trekking out for a meal. Food and games at the same time.
Eating without worrying about anyone else's eyes, and playing mahjong on top of it.
Friends laughing, bantering, filling their bellies, and enjoying a game together — for the escort, it was pure bliss.
“Delivery food... this is wonderful.”
He said it while contentedly patting his full belly.
“Once I started ordering delivery, I can't stand the thought of going out to restaurants anymore!”
“Same here!”
“Now that I think about it, once you factor in the delivery fee, the price is actually quite reasonable.”
Full and happy, the escort ran the numbers once more in his head.
He'd paid a lot because he'd ordered for four plus tangsuyuk — but for a single portion, it wasn't such a ruinous sum after all.
Rather than wasting time trudging back and forth to an inn, eating in the room while playing mahjong was the better bargain.
At last, the escort understood the advantage of delivered food.
“There you go. See?”
“Say, about that Giosugu. Could I get one too?”
“Apply by today and you'll get one right away; from tomorrow it takes a few days, I hear.”
“What?! Why didn't you mention that sooner!”
This was no time to sit around.
The escort suddenly shoved back his seat and leapt to his feet.
“Hey, your tiles aren't even going around — where are you going?!”
“I'll be right back!”
The Giosugu pilot program had been a resounding success.
“Branch Master! Another order just came in! Four jajangmyeon and one large tangsuyuk!”
“Careful now. Come down slowly.”
Holding the order slip attached to the messenger pigeon, I gently cautioned Jeomsoi as she hurried down from the third floor to the first.
“Yes, sir!”
The third floor of the inn had been fully converted so the messenger pigeons could come and go freely. Pointlessly separating the pigeon station from the inn itself would only waste time.
“It really works. How on earth did you come up with this idea?”
Im Hayeon asked me, watching Jeomsoi descend, sounding newly astonished all over again.
“Wuhan is the capital of Hubei Province. The biggest city in the province, sitting right on the Yangtze — jobs here are overflowing.”
“What does an abundance of jobs have to do with the Giosugu?”
“Men come streaming into Wuhan alone from all over, hunting for work. Good jobs mean purchasing power, and men with money to spend mostly buy their meals.”
It had been barely a few decades back in Korea that the elders of a household would declare any boy wandering into the kitchen ought to have it cut off.
Unless one cooked for a living, no ordinary man in that world cooked at home — so the moment delivery food appeared, demand was inevitable.
“How can a human mind reach that far?”
“All thanks to Miss Hayeon's Giosugu.”
The brilliant encirclement-and-annihilation strategy of facing five thousand enemies with three hundred men was impossible unless those three hundred could wield six-kilogram daggers.
Without Im Hayeon's messenger pigeons, it couldn't have been attempted at all.
True to form for the vermin of the skies as they're known back in Korea, the Giosugu mature quickly and breed prolifically.
As messenger pigeons built for long-distance flight, they can survive long fasts — meaning they can endure even neglectful owners.
In other words, the perfect medium for a delivery network.
“And these were birds you were going to release anyway. Turns out they had a use after all.”
The Giosugu had originally been birds we could have freed without a second thought.
It was rare for a truly intelligent beast like Gugu — one that understood human speech — to be born; most were just somewhat clever pigeons. The real asset was Im Hayeon's skill in training messenger pigeons.
Besides, once released into the wild they'd promptly devolve into barnyard chickens, so Im Hayeon hadn't been particularly reluctant to let them go.
“When a customer sends an order, the deliveryman returns the Giosugu, and if no orders come within the set period, we simply take the bird back. That way we can keep losses of Giosugu to a minimum.”
“Losing a few wouldn't matter at all. Keep just the likes of Gugu around and they multiply in no time.”
Every single bird was revenue — I couldn't allow that.
“Then the customers should believe the Giosugu are precious, so they won't treat them carelessly. We'll keep that a secret.”
“Fair enough. And the Joseon folk have been a huge help too.”
Im Hayeon looked at the Joseon workers laboring hard in the inn and spoke to me.
“It wasn't for nothing that I took the Branch Master's seat.”
By order of the Branch Master. Joseon Assembly! One shout of that, and finding the workforce I wanted was absurdly easy.
I hired Joseon men skilled with wood to build the Iron Delivery Boxes and remodel the inn. Worried we'd be short on kitchen staff, I hired Joseon cooks as well.
For the Joseon folk working as servers or with connections around Wuhan, I pressed a bit of coin into their hands and had them spread word of the Giosugu.
And with deliverymen chosen through a rigorous selection process, delivery food took root with remarkable ease.
“The profits certainly look substantial, but... can this really grow into more than the principal within the deadline?”
For all her astonishment at my idea, Im Hayeon couldn't entirely hide a thread of anxiety.
Whether the business was good was one thing; whether it could pass the Mangeum Lord's test within the deadline was quite another.
“This cannot fail.”
Don't worry. I said it with conviction, then looked down at the ground floor, where the crowd stretched in a long line.
“Th-this is the inn handing out the Giosugu?!”
At some point the first floor had become packed with people hoping to receive a Giosugu.
“Give me a Giosugu too!”
“Applications are taken here. If your identity is verified and your place of residence is clear, then after confirmation—”
“I'm applying first!”
“Out of my way!”
“I'll pay extra for mine! Give me one first!”
My idea. Im Hayeon's skill. The strength of the Joseon folk — a food delivery system built from all three.
The more customers used the Giosugu, the more they would feel its overwhelming convenience.
And once a person tastes convenience, they come to realize one simple truth.
“Once you've experienced delivery, there's no going back to the days without it.”
Now was the time to rake in the money.