Whooooosh.
The knife-like wind showed no sign of stopping today either.
Rattle, rattle, clatter—!
“That thing’s going to break at this rate. Good grief.”
Aiden was buried in paperwork until late at night, thinking, as expected, that wrestling with documents was when he was happiest. However, the window that looked ready to fall apart at any moment finally managed to disturb his concentration.
Grrrrumble.
‘Ah, right. I need to eat.’
Only after he put down his pen and stretched did hunger come rushing in.
“The dining hall... Tsk. There’s no way the head cook is still around at this hour.”
It had already been thirty years since the last noble lord who had been granted the north as a fief had gently returned this land to the emperor with his own two hands.
After that, the rank of the administrators assigned as acting lord had only continued to fall.
“There are no applicants, for one thing.”
“And in the first place, does the north even have any proper industry?”
“Its population is only two or three thousand at most, is it not?”
“It does not even share a border with another country, so there is no need to send the empire’s talents to such harsh lands, would you not agree?”
“Indeed, of course!”
As a result of the continued tacit approval of the high-ranking gentlemen who had pocketed their bribes, Aiden had been selected as the administrator of the north. He had no power, naturally had no connections, and was not particularly good at currying favor with his superiors. However, he was regarded as moderately competent at his work, so perhaps it had been only natural.
Creeeak.
The thick, unoiled wooden doors creaked wherever he went. The kitchen was no exception.
He looked through the cupboards, but...
“Pathetic. Just pathetic.”
It was still called a lord’s castle, and either way, this was the center of the north, a landmass absurdly vast in size. Yet look at the state of this kitchen.
A few sacks of famine crops, several dry, crumbly loaves of bread of unknown age, and some unidentified smoked meat hanging from one side of the ceiling in a somewhat grotesque shape....
When working overtime, one naturally craved something greasy and strongly seasoned, but no matter where he looked, there was nothing resembling spices, leaving him with nothing but sighs.
“Still, at least there’s protein.”
Aiden was a man quick to accept reality.
“Hum, hum, hum~!”
Before long, he was even humming to himself as he busied his hands making a sandwich.
The bread had a high rye content, making it coarse and crumbly, but once he toasted it golden-brown on a cast-iron pan, a rather convincing smell filled the kitchen.
The smoked meat hanging from the ceiling was not bad either once he sliced the end thinly. The only fresh vegetables were a few leafy greens, but adding pickled vegetables gradually made it come together.
“This is good enough.”
There was no proper sauce, but fortunately, he saw a jar of olive oil.
‘Olive oil and salt are more than enough.’
Was that not the sort of sauce people in the twenty-first century deliberately ate for their health? It would have been perfect if there had been pepper as well, but he could not expect such luxury here. Regrettably, spices seemed precious even in this world.
Chomp.
Even so, Aiden happily took a large bite of the sandwich, enough that anyone watching would have swallowed their saliva without realizing it.
The meat was fattier than expected, but that also meant its gamy smell was rather strong.
‘There’s no helping that.’
Since he was not in a situation where he could obtain enough spices or herbs to control the smell, it was unavoidable. Still, this was more than enough to fill his hungry stomach.
“Was it the Earl of Sandwich? That man had a reason for making this.”
He recalled the origin myth of the sandwich, whether true or false, about a man who had been so absorbed in gambling that even the time spent eating was too precious, so he ate meat between slices of bread.
The reason was simple.
With a sandwich in one hand and a bundle of documents in the other, he had begun another round of self-imposed overtime.
‘If only I had Excel, this would be done in no time!’
As with most administrative work, the beginning was data organization. After arriving in the north, Aiden had spent nearly two weeks completing the census, and the resulting documents would have been enough to make anyone sigh. Yet Aiden was, on the contrary, excited.
‘I heard they still filled out documents by hand in the nineties. This has its own romance too, doesn’t it?’
Scratch, scratch.
Though he had neither a Monami ballpoint pen nor glossy, high-quality paper, he at least had sturdy wrists. That was fortunate enough.
“...Hiss. The occupational structure is even simpler than I thought.”
Aiden had heard so much about the north being desolate from the moment his appointment was decided that calluses had practically formed on his ears, but he had never imagined even the documents would be desolate.
He had had no choice but to begin with a census.
‘Otherwise, I wouldn’t even have the minimum information needed to build administrative infrastructure.’
Those damned predecessors of his seemed to have done literally nothing.
They were said to have acted as though being sent to the north was an exile, so naturally, there was no way they would have felt any desire to work.
The fact that there was no proper administrative system also meant there were no eyes watching the administrator. Even if they did nothing at all, who would have said anything?
‘Idiots.’
Aiden found those predecessors utterly pathetic.
‘It’s more fun precisely because there’s nothing!’
What?
The ironclad rule of tycoon games was that you started from nothing.
“This isn’t the time. Focus!”
He had briefly lost his way after being distracted by idle thoughts. He had resolved to finish the occupational distribution survey by the time dawn broke, but at this rate, it would be impossible.
“Still, there are surprisingly quite a few people who farm.”
That was unexpected.
He had assumed farming would be distant from this region because of its cold climate.
‘Well, I heard even the Jurchens and Khitans tried to farm somehow.’
It seemed that even people who lived on barren lands had a basic human desire to settle down through farming.
Aside from farming, everything was almost exactly as he had expected.
There were hardly any literate people, and not many possessed specialized skills. Since no proper market had formed, they had no choice but to make all necessities through cottage industry, so there were many who had learned basic handicrafts, but...
‘They’re still lacking if I were to call them experts.’
Even so, if there was one fortunate thing, it was that there was a hunter in nearly every other household.
“This seems directly tied to survival.”
There were more farmers than expected, but climate, environment, and technology could not be ignored. In other words, farming alone was not enough to support a family on this harsh land.
‘Still, I thought it would be common for large families to have two or more hunters, but that isn’t the case.’
The lands north of the Korean Peninsula.
Just as legends said that every person who lived on the rough northeastern frontier was a natural warrior and hunter, he had assumed this northern land would be the same.
‘So that was probably just exaggeration from alternate-history novels after all.’
When his thoughts reached that point, a hollow laugh slipped from him.
Scratch, scratch.
In the silent kitchen where no one else was present, only the sound of his pen moving filled the air.
***
Clatter, clatter.
“Mmm.”
“You awake?”
A rough voice.
It was familiar.
“Ah.”
“Why are you sleeping here instead of going inside?”
“Haha, you’re right.”
Sunlight was pouring in through the window. It seemed he had fallen asleep without realizing it while organizing documents through the night.
“Wait just a moment. Breakfast is almost ready.”
Only then did Aiden notice that the head cook was boiling something in a large cast-iron pot.
“I’m sorry. I came into the kitchen without permission last night.”
“...No need to fuss over that. Where in this lord’s castle would be off-limits to you, Administrator?”
“Still. The kitchen is your space, Mr. Brikal.”
“......”
Brikal, the head cook, blinked at Aiden’s words.
The back of his neck even reddened without him realizing it.
‘Why is he acting like that?’
As a born civil servant, Aiden could not understand it.
In civil service, an unlucky bastard ended up doing his own work and everyone else’s work without distinction, but even so, the roles between departments had to be clear. Was that not only natural?
Only then would responsibility be clear as well.
“I ate some bread and meat yesterday.”
“...In the end, you were the one who ate it, Administrator, so there is no need to tell me even that.”
“Still. I thought I should let you know, at least.”
Some might wonder why he bothered reporting even that, but matters like this were never about whether something was large or small. Once one became accustomed to recording and requisitioning even a box of A4 paper, using another department’s supplies without permission felt, in a way, uncomfortable.
“But what kind of meat was that? It was my first time eating it. I don’t think it was beef or pork. And it wasn’t lamb... right?”
Was it something like goat or wild boar?
When Aiden tilted his head, Brikal grinned.
“From the looks of it, you put it between bread and ate it.”
“Yes, as a sandwich.”
“That meat is usually boiled for a long time before eating. Otherwise, it’s rather tough.”
“Ah, it was a little like that.”
“You’re probably the only person in the north who eats bear meat that way, Administrator.”
“...What kind of meat?”
“Bear meat. Around last autumn, I caught one that was about to go into hibernation and smoked it. I caught it myself.”
“......?”
Inside Aiden’s head, Winnie-the-Pooh and the Coca-Cola polar bear began dancing at the same time.
No, more importantly...
“You caught a bear yourself, Mr. Head Cook?”
“Yes. I caught two of them toward the end of last autumn. My family ate one of them throughout this winter, and I butchered the other. I kept half to sell and brought the other half to the lord’s castle. As you know, the kitchen’s operating expenses are not sufficient, so we have no choice but to be self-sufficient.”
At Brikal’s words, Aiden felt as though he had been struck in the head with a hammer.
Rustle—!
Aiden began spreading the bundle of documents he had worked so hard to organize across the large dining table.
“What is the matter all of a sudden?”
Whether Brikal was flustered or not, Aiden’s eyes fell on the occupational survey samples and statistics.
Farmer,
Farmer,
Herb gatherer,
Hunter,
Carpenter,
Woodcutter,
Farmer,
Cook,
Hunter
.
.
.
“Mr. Brikal, what is your occupation?”
“Pardon? I’m a cook, of course.”
“...But you said you caught a bear.”
“Well, I do catch bears, wolves, and sometimes monsters, but I’m still a cook.”
“Why?”
“Pardon? Well, that’s...”
Brikal scratched the back of his head.
He looked as though he had never thought about it before.
‘Wait, maybe this is...’
One assumption surfaced in Aiden’s mind.
‘What if hunting is just something like a passive skill to the people here?’
Just as the yangban of Joseon all knew how to shoot bows but did not call themselves archers, if everyone here hunted but did not consider themselves hunters unless they were fairly serious about it, then it made sense that the number of hunters had been lower than he expected.
“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.”
Now that he thought about it, there had been a resident who said something like that.
‘No, if everyone is a hunter, then why are they so poor?’
Then a question naturally arose.
“Bear hides! Right, if you caught two bears last autumn, what did you do with the hides?”
“I dried them well, of course, to sell them.”
“Who do you sell them to?”
There should not be a market in this area capable of trading hides and furs on that scale.
“When winter is about to end, merchants make the rounds and buy the hides and fur from our hunts. Sometimes, they take meat and bones too.”
“You must make a fortune.”
“Well, every time, they say there are too many flaws, so I’ve never received the proper price. I suppose it’s because I’m not a professional hunter.”
“?”
No, my good man.
People who are not professional hunters do not catch two bears at a time.
In any case, Aiden suppressed his bewilderment and thought.
‘The absurdity is the absurdity.’
There was something here.