The End of Childhood
Every morning, fresh milk was delivered to the Orphanage.
A milk ration. Thanks to the subscription, every child could drink one bottle a day. With most milk programs some inevitably went to waste because kids refused to drink it, but that never happened here.
They all liked milk, and if anyone ever lacked the appetite, the others competed over who got to finish it.
At least no one will go short on nutrition.
In my previous life, school milk programs had stirred up all sorts of controversy…
That was because milk simply did not suit the Korean diet. Most children were lactose intolerant, and culturally they were so unused to it that many recoiled from the raw, milky smell.
In this world, no such problem existed. Fresh milk was simply a nutritious, healthy drink.
"Anyone want the leftover milk?"
"Me! Me!"
"He already had two yesterday!"
"I'll drink it!"
Well, I myself never liked milk all that much. I preferred strawberry milk over plain white any day.
"Alright, alright. Rock-paper-scissors with the Director. Everyone hands on heads. Winners and ties stay in; losers put them down."
Thanks to that, my milk always became the children's share.
"Hey, I can see you twitching your fingers."
"My fingers are just itchy!"
"Liar!"
"I saw him switching fingers too!"
This was an ordinary morning at the Orphanage: drinking fresh milk, enjoying a simple game, and once everyone was properly awake, getting ready to study. That kind of morning.
And even mornings like that could not last forever. People eventually had to become independent.
"Nisha will be an adult in a few months."
"……Yes, Director."
The eldest daughter of the Orphanage. The day Nisha would leave was slowly drawing near. She had always been older than the rest.
"If you want, you can stay at the Orphanage. We need someone to look after and teach the children. I can trust you with that, Nisha."
From my point of view it felt faintly wrong. By this world's standards she was an adult, yet by the standards of my previous life she was still only high-school age. The harsher a society, the earlier children are said to mature—but to an adult it only means endless anxiety and worry.
So I had hoped she would stay if she could…
"It's alright, Director. I'll become independent."
"Are you sure?"
"If I stay at the Orphanage… the other kids who leave later will want to stay forever too. I don't think it's right to act that spoiled. Right now it's only me, but later it will be hundreds."
"……If that's what you think, then there's nothing I can do."
Kids really do grow up fast.
I stared blankly at Nisha. The image of the filthy, listless girl I had once led by the hand to the bathhouse overlapped with the proper young woman standing before me. It struck me anew that she was no longer that little child.
In the end, children must leave their parents' nest. For the parents' sake, for their own sake, for their siblings' sake—they have to throw themselves into this harsh society.
"……Have you decided where you'll live and work?"
"Yes. I found a place near the Orphanage, and I'll work at my little brother's stationery shop. Hehe. It's a bit embarrassing for a big sister to lean on her little brother."
"I see. Good that you've prepared properly."
"I'll come help often, Director."
"You don't have to help. Just come play whenever you like."
"Okay."
"And since there are still a few months until you leave…… until then, I hope you'll act as spoiled as you want."
"……Yes."
Ah. Just as children need to prepare their hearts to leave home, parents need to prepare their hearts to let them go.
"I love you, Nisha."
"……I love you too, Dad."
That single word "Dad" sounded really good.
I knew the children had made their own rule to call me that only on Christmas. And Nisha was a child who valued rules. As the eldest, if she broke them the younger ones would break them easily; she had always set the example.
Yet she was acting spoiled like this—for the sake of her inadequate father figure.
"Thank you always, my daughter."
"……Hehe."
Truly, a good kid.
Tap, tap, tap. I drummed my fingers on the desk.
Nisha would be independent soon. The other children would leave the Orphanage someday too. I had done my best to play the adult, yet when a moment like this arrived I felt terribly inadequate. The world outside the Orphanage was still choked with smoke and filth.
"Engels."
"Yes."
"How do you change the world?"
"Would it not suffice to enter the imperial palace and remove the emperor's head?"
"Bullshit."
You cannot change the world. An individual cannot change the world. I have no status window, no great talent destined for the history books. So I built the Orphanage. Even if I could not change the world, I wanted to change what my hands could reach. I wanted to set an example. I simply wanted to keep my own conscience.
That resolve has never changed. In the end I can only do what I am able to do.
"I should build a… Workhouse."
"Pardon?"
I cannot change the world. But I can change my surroundings. In the end, to keep one's conscience in this mad world, you have to keep thrashing about trying to change something.
"Have you finally decided to take holy orders?"
"No. I'd rather shave my head and become a Buddhist monk."
"What is a monk?"
"A vegetarian."
"Ah. You mean a heretic who refuses to take life?"
"Huh. That's surprisingly accurate."
This world already possessed the concept of a "Workhouse"—charity organizations run by the church. They provided lodging for the homeless and arranged simple labor. The problem was that this "charity" was not especially charitable.
"Anyway, I have no intention of running it the church's way. Those pious bastards who claim to operate Workhouses preach moral purity and believe even survival requires qualification."
"When did you study the church factions?"
"Well, they're the least inhuman of the lot, so I tried to learn a little."
"Though there was hardly anything worth learning."
One of the symbols of the church Workhouses was the chair lodging. In simple terms, it meant allowing people to spend the night sitting upright in the Workhouse chairs.
In this world, sleeping on the floor meant it was perfectly normal for rats to chew off your ears and toes. Shoes could protect the toes, but a hat was never enough to fully protect the ears. So they offered a place to sleep sitting up.
"Is a Workhouse not relatively moral?"
"It's a place that forces the morality of diligence. 'He who does not work shall not eat' is something you can say only when proper jobs exist. Those Workhouse people, however, believe people starve because of laziness."
Workhouses did provide jobs for the homeless, but given the nature of this world the only work they could send them to was the most horrific factories—places that, for various reasons, could not find workers any other way.
They supplied the bare minimum of food, yet withheld even that from anyone unwilling to labor. Of course, refusing to feed those who refuse to work is, from a modern perspective, a somewhat rational policy.
Except that this "labor" meant silently enduring ash-filled air, the whip, and severed fingers inside factories with no ventilation whatsoever. And they called providing barely that "charity."
The maxim "He who does not work shall not eat" had become a political slogan blaming the hunger of workers on their own laziness—uttered by people who had never set foot in a factory themselves.
"First we have to change the working conditions. Eight-hour days, a five-and-a-half-day workweek, regular safety inspections, factory air quality managed through dust collection and ventilation systems—"
"Are you a communist by any chance?"
"These are things absolutely necessary for people to live like human beings."
"No factory owner would accept such conditions. Can a factory even turn a profit that way?"
"Well. Production efficiency itself should rise."
Apply performance systems, raise workers' skill levels, provide a unified labor system, improve the environment and the workers' condition so that efficiency increases. In short, raise productivity. That alone multiplies output per hour.
"Hmm. I do not quite understand."
"Well, it means turning people into parts."
"That sounds rather monstrous."
"Well. It might indeed be monstrous."
The Taylor System and Fordism. Does Fordism turn workers into parts? People were always parts of labor. Then would it not be better to become parts the factory owner is responsible for oiling?
"Still, being well-maintained parts would be better."
At least better than this world.