The Paper Mill - 4
"Improve the treatment of the paper mill workers! Improve it now!"
"Guaranteed days off! Higher wages! Mandatory sick leave! Grant them! Grant them!"
Not bad — they'd learned those chants well. The workers of the paper mill had seized the premises entire and declared the start of a strike.
Most of them were Joseon folk, but laborers from the Central Plains had joined in, along with even the paper artisans who had long felt themselves shortchanged, and the whole thing looked far more formidable than I had expected.
"You bastards! We have to ready the shipment leaving with the escort caravan in five days! What in the world do you think you're doing! Get back to your posts this instant!"
The deputy director and the overseers surged forward bellowing, but the workers held firm.
"Dialogue for dialogue! Struggle for refusal!"
"Rotten barbarian bastards! Say something that makes sense!"
"When the paper mill provokes! The workers unite!"
"You worked just fine all this while, so what on earth is this talk of a strike!"
The first day came to an end with nothing accomplished beyond both sides confirming exactly how far apart they stood.
"Don't tremble in dread — strike and seek the light!"
"How long do you plan on carrying on like this! Because of you, the materials can't get in! Move the materials, and move them now!"
On the second day, carts loaded with raw materials appeared. Ordinarily they would have been rushed into the warehouse, with a portion spread across the hillside to dry.
"Not a single scrap of material shall enter the paper mill!"
But today, there was no one to carry them.
"What did you say?!"
"We have no intention of lifting a finger until our demands are met."
"Then what am I supposed to..."
When the flustered deputy director turned to the laborers who had hauled the materials in, the man at the head of the line answered with a resolute face.
"We charge double for the extra freight and the warehouse fees."
"Nngh!"
And so the second day ended with the anguished deputy director paying men to dump the materials in a disorderly heap at the mill's entrance.
"No return to work without improvement! No labor without negotiation!"
"You bastards, all the way to the very end!!! Fine. If this is how you want it after days upon days, then I have ideas of my own! Get over here, now!"
On the third day, the deputy director appeared leading a troop of men, his face beaming with triumph.
"Wh-what—?!"
The paper mill workers had no choice but to tense up. The men at the deputy director's back were, even at a glance, martial artists with murderous faces.
"What's there to mull over? Just say the word, that's all it takes."
"That's right. Since when was thrashing a few barbarian bastards ever hard?"
The martial artists curled their lips into cruel smiles, the way a hunter smiles at prey that can be dispatched without effort.
"Deputy Director! Martial artists?! Are you truly set on drawing blood?!"
"Let them be the ones begging for their lives!"
The deputy director jabbed a finger at the workers' representative, his expression all but declaring that the tiresome strike was finally at its end.
"Tch. About time I worked up a sweat again."
The paper mill workers were laborers, strong of body. Against mere third-rate martial artists, sheer numbers might have made a fight of it — but there was no chance under heaven that every man the deputy director had brought in was third-rate.
Let this play out, and they would be crushed in a heartbeat.
"Hold it!!! Just what do you all think you're doing?"
...is what you'd all be hearing right now — if I hadn't shown up, that is.
"Constable Kang?"
When I planted myself between the two camps, the deputy director stared at me as if to ask what business this was of mine.
"Just now — are you telling me you intend to cut down innocent subjects in front of constables?"
I asked him with an expression of utter disbelief, as if I could scarcely trust what I'd just heard.
"Those scoundrels are staging an uprising! No — they're running rampant, so they must be disciplined with the rod!"
"Are they beasts?"
"What?"
"Or is it that words simply don't reach them?"
"No, it isn't that, but—"
"Then how can you stand there and so proudly declare you'll swing blades at common folk right in front of the constables?"
What next — a street thug announcing he'll beat citizens half to death with the police standing right there?
"You told us plainly to settle this ourselves, did you not?"
The deputy director asked me as though he'd done nothing wrong at all.
Fair point, really. In this world, laying hands on whoever had occupied your own property was simply the natural order of things.
I had no easy answer myself, but neither was I out of options.
"You there."
I pointed at a martial artist whose face looked villainous even to a casual eye.
"Who, me?"
"Watch your tone."
"Ha. A mere constable dares to... ah. My apologies."
Good. Learn to read the room. Count how many constables are standing around you.
The moment the constables scowled at the insolence and wrapped their hands around their six-cornered truncheons, the man's attitude turned respectful in the space of a breath.
"What's your name? And your alias?"
"W-why do you ask?"
"Hey. Something's off about these bastards. Bag them and verify their identities."
I jerked my chin toward the martial artist and gave the order to the constables.
"No. We're not — we're not that kind of men."
The martial artist denied it with a smile, but the tension in his eyes was plain.
"Not that kind of men, my foot! One look and I can see the priors written all over your face. Hey — these bastards could be fugitives who raised hell in some other province and fled here. Investigate them. Thoroughly."
These were men who had come, in the first place, on a commission to swing violence at commoners. No proper sect would touch such a request even for the sake of its own face, so he must have scraped together some bottom-feeding ronin.
And men like that never came up clean as spring water once you shook them down.
"We beg your pardon! F-forgive the discourtesy!"
"It's all a misunderstanding! We only stopped by to watch!"
"You men! Where do you think you're going!"
Despite the deputy director's shouts, the ranks of the martial artists dissolved in an instant.
"They said they only came to watch. It seems you suffered some misunderstanding."
I allowed myself a faint smile and shrugged.
"Wh-what in the world is going on here..."
For the deputy director, it was outrageous. Unjust. But that made no difference to me.
I am the referee — therefore, it is my call.
Who says anyone gets put down by force on my watch? Yellow card. Red card. May this referee's discretion — mine to wield exactly as I please — produce results to my satisfaction.
And I intended to keep abusing that discretion until it did.
"Deputy Director."
I called out to the man, who stood gazing blankly down the road where the ronin had vanished.
"Yes?"
Of course, abusing a referee's discretion carried its own risks. If the deputy director later dragged in martial artists with no disqualifying marks against them, I could find myself facing a genuinely dangerous standoff.
To forestall that unhappy turn of events, I needed to play a small move of my own.
"Doesn't look like this will be settled today either, does it. Why don't we go have a drink?"
"Constable Kang! Are you seriously going to be like this!"
The deputy director exploded at me the moment he took his seat.
"Who flies into a rage the instant he sits down at a table meant for clearing up a misunderstanding?"
Did I drag you here by the collar? Or do you nurse some grudge against me? What's with the scowl before you've even settled into the chair?
"Exactly. Let's order food first. Jeomsoi's been waiting on us."
"And this gentleman beside you would be...?"
The deputy director asked, staring at Jeon Gilsan seated next to me as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Don't ask me why that bastard is here either. The moment I mentioned drinks, he insisted on dragging us to some famous joint he knew.
"...Pay him no mind. He just came to breathe in the fumes. What are you having?"
When I handed over the menu with the magnanimity of a saint dispensing alms, the deputy director answered without so much as glancing at it.
"The nakgopsae, please."
"Jeomsoi! Three portions of nakgopsae over here."
Must be quite the famous spot, if a man can order without even opening the menu.
"And your soju — shall I bring the original, or the fresh?"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
For a moment, I doubted my own ears.
Jeon Gilsan clicked his tongue at my dumbfounded face, then handed the menu straight back to Jeomsoi.
"Tsk, tsk. And you a native son of Joseon — you don't know what 'fresh' means? It's the lower-proof soju, obviously. Two bottles of the fresh."
Two years in, and I'd finally started feeling at home in this world. And still, every now and then, it lunges to bite me when I least expect it.
I barely suppressed a hollow laugh at the green bottle that arrived without delay, and offered it to the deputy director.
"Come now. Let's have that drink."
"..."
The deputy director did not raise his glass.
"Do you hold some grudge against me? Don't tell me a grown man is sulking because I smacked his palm a little."
"It was hardly 'a little,' was it."
I let out a long, deep sigh at the sulking man.
"Oh, come on. You think I enjoyed doing the hitting? In that situation, someone had to play the villain and vent on you — that way, nobody has to bleed."
I wasn't swinging that truncheon out of personal spite. I was keeping the situation from spiraling. It had been, in truth, a grudge-fueled beating through and through — but I stressed that it had been a regrettable necessity in the line of official duty.
"You simply took the Joseon laborers' side, didn't you."
"Honestly. Our little brother-in-law here stays neck-deep in trouble thanks to bastards exactly like you. 'Famous Constable,' betrothed into a great clan — and he still gets looked down on over the color of his hair. Come on, brother-in-law. Must sting, right? Drink up."
"Haha. No harm done, brother — it's fine."
Gilsan certainly had a knack for timing these days. I deliberately pulled a face of profound wounded pride, and accepted the glass.
"The famous Constable Kang Yunho..."
Oh, so now he remembers my reputation.
"Haven't I earned that name solving the Joseon folk's cases? High officials and nobles came all that way just to meet with me — and you alone insist on eyeing me like a charlatan?"
Did he think only one or two dignitaries had begged me, please, to visit their homes during the Shadowless Divine Thief case? That's how much they trusted me — and this paper mill deputy director doubts me?
At my artful appeal to authority, the deputy director heaved a deep sigh and extended his glass.
"...Then pour me one. I'll drink."
"I do understand your grievances. But those people are workers of the paper mill you run, aren't they? Do try to settle this properly. I only stopped you because you insisted on meeting force with force from the very start."
This nakgopsae — octopus, beef tripe, and shrimp stir-fried in a fearsome red sauce — really was delicious. I'd have to ask them to fry up some rice in the leftovers afterward.
Soju glass after soju glass went down, and the deputy director spat out his fury with a bloodshot face.
"Workers? Those bastards are vicious rabble, the lot of them! Ah! Wait — if I declare I'm cutting them all loose, they stop being workers, don't they? Then will you help me?"
"Wonderful idea. Go right ahead."
I nodded with a smile.
"R-really?! Right this very instant—"
"Do invite me to your funeral, the day after tomorrow."
My expression flipped at once, and I said it with knitted brows and a voice cold as frost.
"Wh-what is that supposed to mean!"
The drunken flush vanished from the deputy director's voice in an instant.
"Why would you pour oil onto an enraged public? They're protesting precisely because they have backing behind them. Back them into a corner until all that's behind them is a pit of fire — do you honestly believe the mill in their hands will come to no harm?"
Strikes, you see. If the boss could simply win every time, they would never exist in the first place. Even the pharaohs of Egypt, armed with godlike power, had to sit down and negotiate with their workers — that is what a strike is. And this fool wants to fire them all?
"The m-mill, you say?"
"They hold the mill entire. What if they put a torch to it? You think this ends with you losing your post overnight? You'd be the scapegoat thrown to the mob — either torn apart where you stand, or hauled before the authorities to answer for it all."
A man of deputy-director rank knew perfectly well how terrifying fire could be. And on top of that, I drove home the fact that every last ounce of responsibility would land on his head alone.
"I—I hadn't thought that far."
The deputy director's voice trembled, as if the thought had truly never crossed his mind.
"That's exactly why I called you out. Whatever they ordered from above — I know, I know! But if this grows into a real crisis, you're the one who bleeds. Follow those orders to the letter, and the entire bill lands on you and you alone."
I drove the knife into his heart on purpose. In the end, the deputy director was nothing more than a steward hired by the Prefectural Magistrate. If disaster struck, who would answer for it — the Magistrate? Or him?
The plain truth was that he was the one in the deepest peril here. I carved it into his chest that he no longer held the upper hand.
Fear, not fury, flickered through the deputy director's eyes.
"...It seems I misjudged you, Constable."
As if he'd only now come to understand, I smiled and refilled his emptied glass.
"I only want to keep this from growing any larger. Go on, talk to them properly. With dialogue! They aren't refusing to talk either, are they?"
"Y-yes! Of course — the famous Constable! I never dreamed you harbored such noble intent! Thank you, truly, for the advice!"
"Let's wipe the slate clean, and do right by each other!"
And above all — don't you dare try to put out my fire. Just stay quietly out of the way.
"I'll give it everything I have!"
Having polished off the fried rice with gusto to boot, the deputy director stumbled out and bowed to me at a full right angle, face flushed with drink.
"Peacefully. Peacefully. End this with everyone smiling — off you go!"
"I-I shall see you tomorrow!"
I saw the deputy director into a carriage and sent him on his way.
"Right. One down. Shall we pay a call on the next?"
I gathered my focus and blew the drunkenness out of my body in a single breath. Hwarin had taught me that trick, but I'd call it an essential martial art for the working man.
"Where are we going?"
I answered Gilsan's puzzled question with a smile.
"Now it's time to go set the fire."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"As you instructed, I have brought the representatives from the other paper mills as well."
The place I slipped away to in secret was the very mill the workers had been occupying for three days now.
I had packed grain rations and medicinal herbs in case anyone had gone hungry or hurt themselves — but mercifully, three days in, everyone seemed to be holding up fine.
After distributing the food among the people, I stood before the workers' representatives.
"By now the deputy director will hesitate to come anywhere near this mill. And he won't be able to hire blades on a whim, either."
If my plan was to bear fruit, the strike could not be allowed to die a meaningless death under a hail of fists. I had not gone to see the deputy director today for nothing.
"Is that true?!"
"Every word."
I nodded, doing my best to set their minds at ease.
"Then from here, we hold the strike as long as it takes and negotiate—"
"No. Now what sort of talk is that?"
I asked the mill representative as if the very idea baffled me.
"I'm sorry?"
Not that the workers' representative was wrong, exactly. They could settle in for a long war of attrition; after stalemate upon stalemate, glacial negotiations might eventually wring out a compromise.
But here was the problem. Less than a fortnight remained before my exams.
This called for a blitz — quick, clean, and decisive.
"Holed up inside the mill, all you manage in the end is to inconvenience a handful of people — isn't that how this finishes? Time to come out swinging much harder!"
The fire was already burning. It simply burned in one place alone — a paper mill.
This was no bustling city center. A ruckus at a mill on the far outskirts of Wuhan would never command the attention it deserved. Even if word of the blaze reached the Prefectural Magistrate's ears, he could simply look the other way — secure in the belief that his underlings would see to the mess themselves.
"Then what would you have us do?"
We had to make looking away impossible.
Turn it into a political affair that would satisfy even an Imperial Inspector. Make it the scandal on every tongue in Wuhan — the story travelers traded over their cups in every inn and teahouse in the city.
And how does one arrange that?
"Start a street march. Let every last soul in this city learn what is happening at the paper mill."
A street march. We would proclaim to all the world that the Prefectural Magistrate ground his own workers down beneath tyranny and cruelty.
In other words — we would give the whole city a front-row seat to the blaze.
A fireworks show guaranteed to leave exactly one man in tears: the Prefectural Magistrate himself.