The Paper Mill — 3
The strike must not be allowed to look like an uprising. The moment it was officially ruled one, the machinery of the state would roll into motion, and every plan I had labored to build would burst like a soap bubble.
A strike is an act by which workers press their demands; an uprising is the people turning their backs on the state. I had to make that distinction unmistakable and block any situation that would call in official force.
And for that, I first needed to grasp the situation with my own eyes.
"It's far too dangerous. Who knows what those enraged Joseon folk might do!"
An elderly bailiff stepped into my path as he spoke.
"I'm the officer in charge of this case. If not me, then who goes in?"
"Do you think only one or two bailiffs have been lost to uprisings? Just put them down and be done with it!"
"Is it not a bailiff's duty to redress the grievances of the people? They asked for me precisely because they feel wronged. I'll go in, have a word, and come back out."
Looking around at the men gathered there, I played the part of a true bailiff whose heart beat for the people and no one else.
"Bailiff Kang. You...!"
"Bailiff Kang!"
Don't look at me like I've moved you to tears. The truth is, I scripted every second of this.
"Bailiff Kang, the man you wished to see, is going in! Clear the way!"
And so, with a handful of constables behind me, I entered the paper mill.
"Bailiff Kang? It's Bailiff Kang!"
Just as I'd heard — black-haired workers made up the overwhelming majority. Central Plains natives were visible too, but not many of them.
"So the Paper Mill Director isn't dead."
The face of the Director, lashed to a pillar, was quite the spectacle. Swollen up like a steamed bun with drool trailing from his lips, he'd have passed for a corpse had I not seen his chest still moving.
What a relief. That had been my biggest worry.
The Director's crimes were grave, but the moment someone died, this whole affair would balloon out of control. Thankfully, among those the workers had taken hostage, not a single soul was dead.
"Even if the Director never treated us as human beings, we are people who know right from wrong. We meant this as a protest — not as an outlet for our rage."
The middle-aged Joseon man who came toward me, dragging his battered body along, wore a familiar face.
Young Lady Hayeon had once looked after his wife through the difficult birth of their youngest child, and I had kept an eye on the family now and then as well. For an instant, a flash of glad recognition passed between our eyes — but as agreed, we buried the feeling and played strangers.
"So you're the representative of the paper mill workers."
We had already settled this beforehand, but I asked again all the same. This was a seat where the slightest misstep could bring terrible suffering — a seat from which he alone would answer if things went wrong. Would he truly volunteer for it?
"Yes. I led this."
The strike had been my plan, but it had gone forward with the mill workers' wholehearted consent. On the face of the man who had volunteered to stand first, there was a resolve that could not be hidden.
"Go on, then. Explain the circumstances, here before the bailiffs and constables."
"We've been wronged! Wronged, I say! An uprising? All that happened was a small quarrel! We raised our objections, and whips came flying at us! We merely stood up to that, and look at the situation we've been driven into!"
The Director's habitual assaults, the starvation wages, the miserable treatment. The workers' representative laid out the whole story of the strike, before and after, with impeccable logic.
"What?! You're holding the Director captive this very moment, and you claim this is no uprising?!"
"Even by my own eyes, this is a far cry from an uprising."
Like a bailiff who had soberly heard out every fact, I delivered my conclusion in a grave voice.
"Bailiff Kang?"
"You say the Director and the Deputy Director made a daily habit of whipping people?"
Paying no mind to the Deputy Director's flustered face, I turned my question on the workers' representative.
"Yes! That's right. Look at the wounds from today, and the wounds from all the days before!"
The representative bared his chest and laid every last scar bare before the bailiffs and constables.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk."
"It was that bad?"
Even the bailiffs who had heard the story clicked their tongues at the sight of those marks.
"Every one of these came from that man! And even so, all we ever did was protest! We killed no one!"
An indictment seething with rage — beautiful. I could see every heart in the crowd tilting toward the workers.
"...No, that was for their education—oof!"
The mood was perfect. Who told you to open your mouth?! Without a moment's hesitation, I slapped the Deputy Director across the face.
"Well, this won't do at all."
"Bailiff Kang! Why are you hitting me?!"
Rubbing his cheek, the Deputy Director asked me as though he genuinely could not fathom the reason.
"It seems I was educating someone myself just now. Tell me — did I ask you, Deputy Director? Or did I ask that thug over there?"
You whipped them to 'educate' them, didn't you? Well, I'm educating you. I asked the workers' representative. When exactly did I hand you the floor?
"..."
"Hah."
When his tongue failed him, I slapped him again — the other cheek this time, naturally, where his guard hung loosest.
"Argh! Why are you hitting me?!"
"Didn't I just ask you a question? Why aren't you answering!"
Does my logic not hold?
"Uwaagh! You didn't ask me anything!"
"If I didn't ask you, why are you answering?!"
"Aaagh!"
"Let me ask once more. Are you angry?"
"I'm n-not angry! Argh! Why do you keep hitting me?!"
I swung a full-force slap at the off-guard Deputy Director, and his head snapped sideways.
"It's written all over your face, and you still dare to lie in front of a bailiff?"
Contempt of a bailiff! Take more!
Covering your face with your arm, are you? Then it's time for a truncheon compress. I swung the Six-Cornered Truncheon at the Deputy Director's shin.
"Agh!"
Does it hurt? The Joseon workers you whipped hurt far more.
Which means I ought to hit him more.
This one's for Mr. Choi! This one's for Mr. Kim! This one's for Mr. Lee! And this one's for Mr. Kang of Daseogak! I had never worked a single day at the paper mill, but I was angry, so I beat him with interest on top.
"Uwaagh! I'm sorry! The truth is, I was angry!"
Whether the agony in his shin had made standing impossible, the Deputy Director dropped to his knees and confessed.
"You dare show anger at a bailiff?!"
"Aagh! Spare me! I'm sorry!"
There I was, swinging the Six-Cornered Truncheon with gleeful abandon — wielding the power of the state however I pleased — and not one bailiff stepped forward to stop me.
Of course not.
"...Bailiff Kang. That's a good twenty years' worth of bailiff-grade discipline right there."
"Exactly. He was born for this. A bailiff. Was the man born clutching a truncheon in hand, or what?"
They were all snickering, plainly entertained.
"With hands that vicious, even those beggars from the Beggar's Sect could stand to learn a thing or two."
"I thought only his head made him a famed bailiff — turns out his hands are famed as well!"
Because in this era, a bailiff is violence backed by the authority of the state, plain and simple. And by the law of the land, when an uprising breaks out, not only are its ringleaders punished — the ones who drove men to it are punished too.
Now that the Deputy Director had been exposed as sharing the Director's guilt in this affair, no one on earth was going to stop the thrashing.
"Uuuuugh..."
In the end, the Deputy Director knelt there in a state hardly distinguishable from the Director tied up inside.
"Right. Men brawling among themselves, and they call it an uprising. What is this, dragging people out here over nothing?"
Everyone on the scene was watching with cheerful faces — all but one man — but I had not been beating him merely to vent.
I have to turn public opinion toward the Joseon workers.
The guilty parties were the Paper Mill Director and his deputy. I had to steer the story until the Joseon workers were seen for what they were: people who had endured and endured until they finally exploded.
"A brawl? This is truly an uprising."
The Deputy Director protested his innocence, but it didn't matter.
Because I, you see, am going to make this incident a strike today. Not an uprising. A strike.
"I'm the most senior man at the paper mill. We all slave away for a pittance, so I asked for our wages to be raised — and was whipped for it! Angry, I spoke one word more, and another whip came flying. Wouldn't that make anyone furious?"
"If people rise up together, that's an uprising..."
"Hey. Was any official hurt? Did anyone die? They're fighting so they can sit down and talk, that's all! If you people had just spoken to each other nicely, this would have ended quietly — how is that an uprising?"
"Well, that's..."
He would have nothing to say.
This was a world that stood by and watched even all-out feuds between villages. When tenant farmers rose together in protest against their landlord, the order handed down — even with a death or two — was merely to disperse of their own accord.
What mattered was whether an official appointed by the state had died. If an official dies, it is an uprising — but in today's incident, not a single person had.
It had never been the sort of affair that qualified as an uprising in the first place.
And there was exactly one reason anyone wanted it treated as one now.
"Bailiff Kang. This paper mill is the property of the Prefectural Magistrate."
Because they were minding the Prefect's mood.
One of the bailiffs said it while looking at me as if to plead, come on, let's take the easy road. Right. When the Prefect's name enters the conversation, a lowly bailiff is supposed to flatten himself against the ground.
But here's the thing.
I'm Bailiff Kang Yunho. And I have no intention of backing down.
"Hey. So what of it? Is this a government office? This isn't an uprising. It doesn't even deserve the word 'revolt.' It's just the paper mill folk throwing a few punches at each other — why should we be raising this much hell over it in broad daylight?"
I tossed the question out to the bailiffs and constables around me as though the whole thing were beneath absurdity.
"Huh?!"
"...He's not wrong?"
"...It wasn't just one or two of them, after all."
The bailiff who had tried to hold me back spoke with a small sigh.
"Naturally. Hundreds of people work at the mill. If a hundred men each landed a single punch, someone would be dead — yet the Director is alive and breathing."
Barely, anyway.
"Bailiff Kang. It's the Prefect's paper mill, I'm telling you."
Why do you keep doing this? Honestly. The bailiff's gaze fixed on me.
"So if the Prefect ran an inn, you'd slap uprising charges on the murim fighters brawling inside it too? Wonderful. If sects start fighting in my inn, I'll have you tie them up with uprising charges on the spot. You'll take the lead on that? Understood?"
It was never an uprising to begin with, I'm telling you.
"No, sir, if you keep putting it that way..."
Perhaps he had finally sensed how strangely the mood had turned against him. The Deputy Director pointed toward the mill and shouted.
"Look at that man! What those men over there are holding — aren't those bamboo spears?!"
I turned my head and saw a Joseon worker holding a bamboo pole.
"Hey! You there! Is that a bamboo spear?! Planning to go around stabbing people with it?!"
Say no. Say no. I shot him a desperate look.
"It's a walking stick!"
"He uses it as a walking stick because his body's wrecked! You little—! Reporting something this trivial as an uprising! Absolutely shameless!"
I smacked the Deputy Director one more time on the spot.
"Come on, anyone with eyes can see that's a weapon."
"Want me to show you what a real weapon looks like?"
I held out the Six-Cornered Truncheon.
"Eep! N-no, sir!"
"What do the paper mill workers want? Tell me."
The workers' representative, who had been watching the Deputy Director's ordeal with undisguised delight, composed his expression and spoke with grave formality.
"Meals provided. Two rest days guaranteed every fifteen days. A fourfold increase in wages. And guaranteed leave in the event of serious illness."
"These barbarian bastards, spouting nonsense no human mouth would utter!!!"
"What? Are you saying the words I just spoke weren't fit for human ears?"
This bastard Deputy Director. He's got 'barbarian' glued to his lips, doesn't he.
"N-no, sir! Truly not!"
With the Deputy Director on his knees, forehead pressed to the ground, the situation was more or less settled.
Now that things are settled, time to move to the next stage.
How, then, to pry the lead-bottomed Prefect out of his seat?
"Good. From here on, you people settle it amongst yourselves."
First, light the fire.
"Sir?"
"From this moment, the constables are to do nothing but keep watch, so that this dispute does not spread into a revolt. Once negotiations between the two sides conclude amicably, everyone disperses. Understood?"
Second, draw the firebreak.
Not an uprising — a mere dispute. Nothing more than an angry workers' strike. Fight it out among yourselves. And fight as fiercely as you like; I won't say a word.
"Understood!"
"Wh-what in the world is this..."
What's a good spectacle without a fire to watch, after all? The flames won't spread — but within the designated grounds, I've made sure they can burn as bright as they please.
"Inside the paper mill, do as you like. Just don't hurt anyone else. Are we clear?!"
"Of course!"
A fire guaranteed to catch the eye of the Prefect and the Imperial Inspector alike.
"If anything happens, you come find me first! Take orders from no one else! I am the man in charge of this incident!"
And the only person who could put out that fire would be me.
I was going to make certain that the only name attached to this fire would be Kang Yunho.