Whooooosh.
It was the tail end of March, yet the weather in the north remained bitter. In shaded places where the sun did not reach, unmelted snow lay thick, and the poorly maintained dirt road, having frozen and thawed over and over, was no different from a sheet of ice.
“I’m going to freeze to death. I really am!”
Hunched tightly against the knife-like wind, a man walked down the bleak road.
“Is this really supposed to be spring? Damn this snow!”
Grumbling without pause, his footsteps eventually brought him to a lonely shack thrown together any which way.
“...Good grief.”
Standing before it, the man let out a deep sigh. Even at a glance, the shack before him did not look as though it could keep out the north’s ferocious cold.
Still, work had to be done.
Knock, knock.
“Is anyone home?”
After clearing his throat and calling for the owner,
Creeeak.
“...Who are you?”
The door opened.
‘Gulp.’
The owner of the house was nearly two meters tall, and his build was just as massive. He was, quite literally, a boulder of a man. His beard was rough, the hand gripping the wooden door was thick, and his gaze was fierce enough that one could believe he was a beast of prey.
“I asked who you were.”
“Ah, ah! I’m the new administrator assigned to the lord’s castle over there. You can call me Aiden.”
“...The lord’s castle? Ah! I did hear a new official had arrived. But what brings you here? More importantly, are you really an administrator?”
The homeowner’s eyes narrowed. He was already bristling in advance, as though taxes might be mentioned at any moment.
It was called a lord’s castle, but in truth, there was no lord.
Unless a noble had gone mad, why would any of them choose to make the barren north, with neither resources nor people, their own fief and attempt to develop it?
It was said that over the past two hundred years or so, there had been a few noble families that had been granted the north as a fief, half by choice and half by compulsion. But reality was never so lenient.
Nobles were the sort of creatures whose eyes went bloodshot at the sight of a fief, yet after experiencing the north, which was like pouring water into a bottomless jar, every one of them became meek and returned it to the emperor.
Even so, the lordless lord’s castle still had to function somehow.
The emperors of the empire did not wish to see the empire shrink by even a handspan, no matter how desolate the north was.
In the end, administrators were dispatched to the north in place of nobles, but...
“You want me to go north?! What in the world did I do wrong...!”
“I’d rather resign and return to my hometown than go north!”
“Do you know how many years I have served loyally, and what? Administrator of the north? You damned bastard, even chewing you to pieces would not be enough!”
In other words, the north was the graveyard of administrators.
‘In modern terms, would this be like being assigned to some remote mountain village?’
In the twenty-first century, even if one were assigned to a remote mountain village, the internet would still work and packages could still be delivered. This romantic otherworld, however, was not like that, so perhaps it was somewhat different.
That was right.
Aiden, the unfortunate administrator who had come to the north.
Inside that body sat a servant of the state who had flown in from twenty-first-century South Korea.
In other words, he was a transmigrator who had once been a ninth-grade civil servant.
“I asked what brings you here.”
“Ah...!”
The homeowner’s voice turned savage.
The mention of an administrator had made him flinch slightly, but when he glanced around and saw not even the shadow of any soldiers accompanying the man, other thoughts quietly began to rise.
‘If he starts spouting absurd sophistry and tells me to pay taxes again...’
Veins bulged one after another over the back of the thick hand gripping the door. He seemed to be wondering whether he would suffer hardship if he gave this silent “administrator” a taste of pain.
Administrators assigned to the lordless lord’s castle generally fell into two types.
One was the layabout who lamented his fate after being banished to the frontier and shut himself inside the lord’s castle, drinking himself senseless.
The other was the worm who, trusting in his paltry title as administrator in the north where neither law nor order had been properly established, became a budding corrupt official.
The former usually fought a desperate battle against depression before becoming wrecks, while the latter, for some reason, kept disappearing.
The central authorities believed that the administrators who kept vanishing had gone into hiding with the money they had extorted from northerners, but the truth was unknowable.
‘Should I say wolves dragged him off?’
That was why the homeowner thought it.
If not even three months had passed since he had paid his taxes and yet this man tried to force some ridiculous new tax on him, he would personally create the cause of the bastard’s death.
“I’m here for the census.”
“...What kind of survey?”
But what came from the mouth of this administrator named Aiden was something unexpected.
“What does your family relationship look like? According to the existing documents, it says there’s a husband and wife and three children.”
Since it was not a demand for money that he did not have even if he wanted to eat it and die, the homeowner’s expression quietly softened. The veins on the hand gripping the door also obediently sank back beneath his skin.
“Four.”
“Pardon?”
“The children, I mean. The youngest was born five years ago.”
“...Five years. Ha, shit.”
The black-haired man who had identified himself as the administrator muttered in a rapid stream while writing something down.
“Of course. Of course it’s like this, damn this administrative processing! What? Five years ago? The census hasn’t been updated even once all this time? What the hell were the bastards who came and went until now doing with their work?”
Then he turned back toward the homeowner with a businesslike smile and continued with his next question.
“Could you also tell me what kind of work your family members do?”
“Why?”
“Well, if we’re going to carry out various administrative projects in the north, this sort of survey is essential.”
The administrator’s tone sounded both kind and not quite kind, leaving the homeowner confused enough that he answered as though bewitched.
“...I’m a hunter. My wife takes care of the house, and my first and second children learn hunting from me or gather firewood.”
“What about the third?”
“That one’s still too young to do anything.”
“Ah. Then since the first and second are still learning, I suppose it would be difficult to call them hunters yet, correct?”
“Of course. At most, they can beat down a few deer, so I’ll have to watch them for a long while yet if I’m going to raise them as hunters.”
“?”
Aiden paused.
‘Wait, if they can beat down deer, aren’t they already hunters?’
Did this neighborhood require something like a hunter’s license?
‘Well, that could be the case. I should reread the administrative law books when I get back to the lord’s castle.’
This was how rational a twenty-first-century civil servant could be.
“Is there anyone in your family who can read or write numbers?”
“I can barely write my own name.”
“Does anyone have any other skills?”
“Skills?”
“It doesn’t have to be anything grand.”
“...After I catch game, I do know how to dress the hides.”
“Oh! Tanning. That’s good. Anything else?”
“What else would there be?”
“The clothes you’re wearing look quite fine. Did you make them yourself?”
“My wife made them.”
The man’s cheeks reddened a little as he subtly showed off the vest made from deer hide. Contrary to his appearance, he seemed to be quite devoted to his wife.
“I’m not saying this just because she’s my wife, but she’s famous in our village for making clothes well.”
“Oho.”
Aiden kept nodding along diligently while continuing to take notes.
‘Whatever work I want to do, I need data first.’
Even after waking up in a new body, there had not been much confusion.
On that side, he had been a civil servant. On this side, he was an administrator.
Though the titles and the duties were slightly different, the essential nature was ultimately the same.
‘If I’m living off the nation’s money and managing local affairs, what does it matter whether I’m a ninth-grade civil servant or an acting administrator for a lord?’
For an operations-simulation otaku who played all kinds of tycoon games without end, this otherworld, somewhere between barbarism and romance, actually suited his tastes better than the twenty-first century, where every matter came with obstacles over departments, authority, and all sorts of other things.
It was as if he had actually entered one of the tycoon games he had once played to death.
“Hum, hum~!”
That was why, after finishing the census of the village he had planned for the day, his steps on the way back were light beyond measure.
“I make the proposal~ I approve the proposal~ I do the work too~!”
Though he could not know for certain, if his fellow civil servants from his previous life had seen him, they would surely have looked at him with eyes full of pity, thinking, ‘He’s finally lost his mind.’
But one could not understand a madman simply by observing him with reason.
“Should I start with farming after all?”
He did not know whether rice existed in this place as well, but with this cold weather, rice farming was out of the question anyway.
“Beans?”
He had heard that beans originally came from Manchuria, so that might be possible.
Whooooosh.
“Ah, shit!”
However, even though Aiden’s head was full of flowers, there was one thing and one thing alone. He simply could not get used to this damned cold of the north.
“Should I make ondol first?”
That was an otherworld cliché, was it not?
If he made ondol, then everyone would go,
Waaaaah!
Something like that.
“...For now, that’s on hold.”
In a dirt-poor region with not even a proper builder, ondol was out of the question.
“I should organize these first!”
Aiden was happy as he hugged the stack of documents tightly to his chest.
...People, after all, found happiness in all sorts of places.