“Um, sir!”
After the trial ended, Aiden stood up feeling refreshed, only for several residents to sidle toward him.
“Did you call for me?”
“Goodness, Administrator! Please speak comfortably!”
Aiden used casual speech with his subordinates without caring much, but because of his past, where he had been thoroughly ground down by the “civil petitions administration that serves the people” campaign, he still used polite, businesslike speech with residents.
“Haha. What brings you here? Is there something you are curious about?”
Still unable to make casual speech toward petitioners feel natural in his mouth, Aiden roughly covered it with a smile and asked what they needed.
“Well, if we catch bad people and bring them in, do you give rewards like you just did?”
“Ah.”
Gulp.
The expressions of the residents waiting for Aiden’s answer somehow looked like children waiting for a gift box full of sweets.
“Not every criminal qualifies, but we have newly revised the reward payment regulations.”
“Reward payment regulations, you say...?”
“Originally, once the Administrative Welfare Office opened next month, we planned to make them available for residents to view whenever they wished. But if you are curious right now, go to the first floor of the lord’s castle.”
“If we go to the first floor of the lord’s castle, can we check when that reward comes out?”
“If you go to the Petition and Dispute Department, they will guide you right away.”
“Thank you, thank you, sir!”
After hearing Aiden’s words, the residents, regardless of age or gender, quietly moved toward the lord’s castle.
‘It seems the residents are becoming interested in the law.’
In the north, where most people were illiterate, it was a little strange that residents were showing interest in the law. But Aiden simply thought that good things were good and turned his attention away.
It was a mistake he made because he still did not accurately understand the temperament of northerners.
***
“Administrator!”
A few days later.
Jamie ran in, pale-faced.
“What happened this time?”
Things had seemed quiet for the past few days, so apparently something had happened again.
“Well, I think you need to come outside right now.”
“Why?”
“It will be faster if you see it with your own eyes!”
“What on earth is it...? Hm?”
When Aiden went outside, he doubted his own eyes.
“...Did a war break out in the north behind my back or something?”
At the strange sight unfolding in the lord’s castle’s front yard, Aiden unconsciously wondered, ‘Is this a dream?’ and rubbed his eyes, but the situation did not change.
A person dragged in with a gag in his mouth and his eyes covered.
A person with his entire body bound tightly in rope, roughly slung over a donkey.
And even a person without any restraints, but unconscious and sprawled flat on the bare ground.
“...What the hell is this?”
At a glance, the scene looked exactly like bandits had raided civilians and enslaved them. But if that were the case, they would not have come to the lord’s castle of their own feet, so Aiden decided to ask out of courtesy.
What on earth was this?
What kind of trouble had they gone around causing, and where?
“Hehe.”
“Heh heh.”
However, the people who had captured slaves—no, civilians—on their own merely laughed sheepishly, one and all.
“They are criminals.”
Kalisa, who had received the situation report in advance, let out a deep sigh and answered in their place.
“Criminals?”
“Yes. It seems the residents personally captured people who committed crimes that match the reward payment regulations.”
“......?”
So this was all because of the rewards?
Aiden’s head throbbed.
Of course, paying rewards or bounties was meant to encourage civilians to voluntarily participate in upholding norms, but residents this proactive?
“That man dragged here with the gag in his mouth is an arsonist.”
“An arsonist?”
“They found and captured a man who set a fire because he did not want to repay money he had borrowed from his neighbor, then lived in hiding.”
“This is driving me mad. Then is the one hanging over that donkey a similar case?”
“He is a man who moved from village to village committing fraud and sucking away his neighbors’ property. He pretended to be a fortune-teller, and apparently even used poison to harm people so they would believe his words.”
“What the hell. Then what about the last one?”
When Aiden frowned at the man still lying spread-eagled and unconscious, Jamie answered this time.
“He is a man who cultivated a prohibited crop.”
“A prohibited crop?”
“It is a mushroom that makes you feel good when eaten, causes hallucinations, and is highly addictive....”
That was a drug.
“You damned bastard! Were you trying to destroy our village?!”
Without realizing it, Aiden slapped the unconscious man on the forehead.
And then he immediately regretted it.
He thought he was apparently being assimilated into the northerners little by little.
“But these criminals were all caught by residents?”
“Yes.”
“They did not simply help with the arrest?”
“They literally caught them and brought them here.”
“......”
“Heh heh. Isn’t it impressive? The spirit of us northerners is this—”
Jamie chattered excitedly, saying this and that, while Aiden and Kalisa, both outsiders, had to look at each other and wonder where exactly this place had gone wrong, and how far.
‘No, does this make sense?’
When a police substation put up a bounty along with a criminal’s sketch, it was meant to encourage reports from residents. It did not mean they should personally beat down the criminal and drag him in front of the court.
“Administrator.”
“...Yes.”
The middle-aged man who had captured the fellow growing hallucinogenic mushrooms quietly asked,
“Does the reward come out right away? If I receive that, I plan to buy a few sheep.”
These people.
They truly treated criminals as walking bonuses.
...In any case, the north’s farm household income was steadily rising.
“The three of them cannot be the only ones who thought of catching criminals and claiming rewards.”
“Yes. It seems the story that the vigilante captain of Bramwood captured Jenkin and received a large reward has been spreading from person to person. In every village that hears the story, people are apparently beginning to finish their work during the day and go out criminal hunting at night.”
“Please do not attach words like hunting to catching people.”
“They abandoned being human first, so what is wrong with treating them a little like beasts?”
“Good grief.”
Aiden also sympathized with Jamie’s words.
Still, there were things a public official could say and things he could not say, so outwardly, he merely let out a sigh.
“But are our correctional facilities all right?”
“The dungeon?”
“Yes.”
Thinking about it, he had never personally seen the dungeon since taking office.
‘Well, the trial with Jenkin was the first one too, so is that only natural?’
It had not been long since he realized that the administrator acting as lord was also in charge of trials.
In truth, the north was still a place where people lived, so how could there be no criminals or trials?
After looking into it after Jenkin’s verdict, he learned that small matters were handled by village councils on their own.
However, serious matters too grave for the councils to handle came to the lord’s castle, and until now, there had not been any serious trials of that kind.
“Major incidents usually do not happen around the start of spring.”
According to Jamie, the time when Aiden had taken office was originally the farming preparation period, so everyone was busy and things passed without much happening.
In any case,
“If residents keep capturing criminals like this, I feel that the dungeon may need maintenance. What do you think?”
“They were dragged here after committing crimes. Do we really need to maintain anything for them?”
“I agree with Jamie on that.”
For once, Jamie and Kalisa’s opinions matched.
Both looked indifferent.
Their faces said that if there was money to spend on dungeon maintenance, they would rather make a few more pickaxes and sickles and distribute them for free.
“Correctional facility maintenance does not necessarily mean making it more comfortable.”
“Ah, it did not?”
Aiden let out a deep sigh and added an explanation.
“No matter how I look at it, it seems the number of people imprisoned will increase. I am saying we should think of a way to manage them more efficiently.”
“Ah!”
“So that is what you mean.”
Aiden had no intention of forcibly grafting twenty-first-century human rights sensibilities onto the romantic north, but he could not give up efficiency either.
“Let’s start with an inspection.”
It was time, though somewhat late, to find out what this neighborhood’s prison looked like and how criminals were being managed.
***
Creeeak.
The sound of rusted iron bars echoed through the dungeon.
‘...Or rather, strictly speaking, a semi-basement?’
It was a rather ambiguous impression for his first impression of a prison.
‘Well, if it were completely underground, they would have to light candles even during the day, so that would be a loss.’
Was giving precious candles to criminals something the north’s household finances could possibly allow?
So the structure passed for now.
‘Consumables add up to hundreds of millions when gathered together.’
Ding, ding, ding.
“It seems it is mealtime.”
It was lunchtime.
In truth, this was the part he had been most curious about.
“I want to see how things normally look, so tell them to proceed as usual.”
Of course, with the head of the institution appearing, there was no way things could be completely the same as usual. Still, there was a difference between saying this and not saying it.
Since he had come suddenly, the criminals also did not know there would be an inspection, so perhaps he could see things closer to their raw state.
Rattle, rattle.
He heard the sound of a cart passing over the uneven stone floor.
“Mealtime! Sit properly, all of you!”
“I hear the lord’s castle’s circumstances have improved lately. It would be nice to have a bowl of hot soup!”
“What about the wheat bread I asked for? I ordered cheese and ham too!”
“Tch! This damned rye bread like a lump of stone again today.”
The jailer bowed his head to Aiden, cleared his throat a few times, and shouted. At once, the prisoners erupted into a commotion.
“What nonsense....”
For a moment, Aiden wondered whether criminals who had sinned and were being punished complained about side dishes in every world, but then,
“They ordered cheese and ham? What kind of bullshit is that?”
Could it be that this place also had something like paid prison meals?
Aiden’s brow furrowed at once.
The jailer, watching his expression, hesitantly approached him.
“Administrator. May I explain a little?”
“Of course.”
“I know it must look strange. However, it is difficult to ban paid prison meals.”
“Why?”
“Paid prison meals are expensive.”
At the jailer’s words, Aiden wondered why he was saying something so obvious.
‘Ah, or is that not it? Paid prison meals are expensive by nature, are they not?’
Now that he thought about it, he felt he had once seen a price list for paid prison meals on an internet community in his previous life.
He could not recall the exact year of the photo, but he remembered being quite shocked because the price list for paid prison meals had been cheaper than expected.
‘Cup noodles were one thousand won, sausage was fifteen hundred won, roughly that much.’
In the middle of that, he had been appalled to see coffee divided into milk coffee, sugar coffee, and sugar-free coffee.
It had seemed better than the break room of a lowly civil servant.
At any rate.
“When you say paid prison meals are expensive, does that mean the prison is doing business with the criminals?”
“Some of that is correct, and some is not.”
Perhaps because the jailer judged that Aiden was not as authoritarian as expected, his face grew a little more comfortable as he continued explaining.
“Forgive my impertinence, but how could there be enough tax money to spend even on criminal bastards?”
“That is true.”
“But we cannot starve the criminals to death either, so we provide expensive paid prison meals to criminals with financial means, and with the money left over....”
“...Haa.”
The jailer trailed off, but Aiden could see the situation clearly without hearing the rest.
This was why being a local government without money made one miserable.
‘Things were so bad that the jailers had to sell paid prison meals because there was no money to feed the criminals.’
But wait.
Was something not a little strange?
“But the prisoners.”
“Yes, Administrator.”
“Do they not perform labor?”
Had he not sentenced Jenkin himself?
Ten years of forced labor.
Forced labor ultimately meant public office swallowing the prisoners’ labor. If there were people working, why was there no income?