The reason they had failed to break the cycle of poverty despite piling up furs and hides, luxuries among luxuries, every winter was nothing complicated.
‘There wasn’t even the bare minimum of a safety net.’
If someone had taken pity on the northerners and provided enough food and firewood to get through the two months of the spring famine season.
No, if someone had at least lent them a little money at a low interest rate.
‘Then things would have changed.’
Instead of hearing their young children scream from hunger while they bargained with merchants in something closer to coercion than negotiation, they would have gained the leeway to wait a few more days for a merchant who came with better terms.
And once they gained even that slight bit of leeway,
‘Rather than every family desperately digging the earth and sowing seeds, at least one grown son would have gone out hunting again in search of another opportunity.’
That was what it meant to not have to starve right away.
It meant having the breathing room to dream of the future.
It was common sense that farming in the north would produce extremely poor yields compared to the fertile south. However, one thing was certain. If they farmed, even if they produced less than others, their food would not become “zero.”
But what about hunting?
No matter how naturally gifted the northerners were as hunters, they could not always succeed. Depending on the situation, they might have no choice but to spend days on end chasing prey without any promise of success.
Hunting was something where they could spend all that time and still end with a result of “zero.”
‘That’s why everyone only focuses on hunting once winter comes.’
As soon as Aiden heard that the head cook had caught two bears before winter arrived, he found a way to break through the situation.
The spring famine season.
He would take responsibility for only those two months of poverty.
Aiden could not understand why the administrators until now had failed to discover such a simple solution.
‘Or no. Maybe it isn’t that they failed to discover it, but that they never intended to look for one in the first place.’
Of course. Bastards who lacked any sense of ownership would be like that.
“A-Administrator!”
However, strangely enough, the one most shocked by Aiden’s statement was not the merchants, but his aide, Jamie.
His eyes looked ready to pop out at any moment, and his whole body seemed to be announcing, “I’m flustered!”
A poker face was the foundation of any negotiation table, yet it seemed his aide had not even learned that.
Then again, Aiden should have realized it when Jamie failed to properly finish the work he had assigned and ended up working overtime every day.
It was not as though Aiden had given him that much.
Tsk, tsk.
‘Still, he does work hard.’
If Jamie had not even shown himself working hard, Aiden would have fired him long ago and found someone else.
No matter how hard it was to find talent in the north, rather than spend their already insufficient tax money on someone worse than having no one at all, he would simply do everything himself.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you in advance. Well, it wasn’t anything that important, so I forgot.’
Aiden tried sending that message through telepathy in his own way, though whether that bear-like aide understood was uncertain.
“...It was not anything important?”
But it seemed his telepathic transmission had been received incorrectly.
Kalisa, with her cold gaze, curved her lips and asked back.
In any case, the merchants’ attention shifted back from Jamie to Aiden.
“It is not a particularly impressive solution.”
“You should also consider your authority as the administrator acting in the lord’s stead.”
Her eyes moved toward the stuffed monster decoration hanging on the dining hall wall.
Her gaze seemed to say,
“If you do not even have things like this, who will treat you with respect?”
However, Aiden merely gave a light smile, then tossed out a remark even lighter than the smile itself.
“Goodness. If a civil servant living off the nation’s rice starts hoping for authority and prestige, that would be a serious problem.”
A former ninth-grade civil servant did not expect things like authority or influence in the first place.
***
“Administrator, merchants are beginning to submit completed documents one after another!”
There was so much work that Aiden had no choice but to hold another sandwich in his left hand while reviewing documents with his right. Jamie ran into the office with a flushed face.
“I never thought the merchants would obey so readily! Truly, this is... I mean...!”
For some reason, he seemed a little choked up.
However, Aiden merely gave a small nod.
“Put them over there, and give a bit of convenience to the merchant companies that made their decisions first. It’s fine for public office to do at least that much.”
One might have expected him to at least check the names of the merchant companies, but he looked utterly indifferent.
“Um, Administrator.”
“Why do you keep calling me? Did you finish all the work I gave you? Are you trying to work overtime again today?”
“That is not it....”
“Then what is it?”
“Did you know it would turn out this way?”
Even under Aiden’s scolding, Jamie did not back down and asked his question.
It had already been a month since he began working with his new superior.
By now, he had realized that this peculiar superior’s prickliness was not because he disliked him.
“I never expected the merchants to obey this readily.”
Jamie felt a little ashamed.
Or perhaps he felt conflicted.
‘He achieved this much after only a month in office. What on earth was I doing for five years?’
He had been born and raised in the north.
Even he had not been able to grasp how to break this vicious cycle, so what exactly was this man...?
Click.
After hearing Jamie trail off, Aiden set down his pen and stared at him.
“Where in the world is there such a thing as a hundred percent?”
“Pardon?”
“If something seems all right, you try it first. What do we have anyway? What is there for us to lose by making the move?”
“If it had failed, we really might have had to sell the lord’s castle’s belongings!”
“Then we would have sold them.”
“......!”
Aiden shrugged as though asking what the big deal was.
Jamie felt as though he was going to lose his mind.
No, what acting lord would sell off the lord’s castle’s belongings so easily?
Those were all part of the administrator acting as lord’s property. They were not.
And status. They were not.
And honor. They were not that either.
‘It’s not as though I said I’d sell the lord’s castle building. What’s the problem with selling a few statues that have been left to gather dust?’
Of course, for a twenty-first-century civil servant who had never once thought of the artworks placed here and there in city hall’s front yard or corridors as “his,” this was only natural.
If he could sell off things that stirred no particular emotion just by existing and resolve one long-cherished issue for the residents, then ah, that was the stabilization of people’s lives. What else would be?
A generation gap—no, a gap between worldviews—was truly terrifying.
“Even so, I never imagined you would present a solution as soon as you discovered the problem.”
In any case, Jamie was deeply moved.
That was enough.
“Ah, among the merchants who submitted documents, there’s a person named Kalisa. Is she here?”
“Of course. She was the first to submit them.”
“Bring her here.”
“Lady Kalisa?”
“Yes. There’s something I want to ask her.”
It seemed he needed to confirm something.
***
“I heard you called for me.”
“First, thank you for cooperating with us.”
“You have seized the leash and shaken it, so what is a powerless merchant to do?”
Her attitude was quite cooperative, yet her words were needlessly chilly.
Then again, it would not be easy for a woman who traveled on rough trade routes to run a merchant company without carrying a few knives on her tongue.
“But why did you call me here? I thought you were not the sort to hold a private meeting.”
“You were the first to follow the will of the lord’s castle, weren’t you? It is only proper that I thank you.”
At Aiden’s smooth answer, Kalisa’s expression turned strange.
Was this not an entirely different appearance from that morning, when he had stubbornly insisted that he would permit no trade whatsoever if they refused to follow his will?
‘I thought he was a single-minded man, but did I misjudge him?’
To organize her thoughts, Kalisa lifted the teacup before her.
Sip.
The aroma and taste were, as expected, poor.
The smell of poverty had a way of suddenly popping up in such trivial parts of daily life.
“More importantly, there is something I would like to ask.”
Before she had even set down the teacup, Aiden’s question came flying.
“Please speak.”
The administrators of the north who came down from the capital were invariably half-mad over manners and formalities.
Perhaps they were putting on airs for no reason in order to hide that they were now cast-offs.
It was the same logic as timid beasts having loud voices.
However, the newly arrived administrator somehow seemed to care even less about upper-class etiquette than she, a commoner, did.
For Kalisa, it was somewhat disconcerting.
“To be precise, it isn’t a question. Ah, what should I call this?”
Aiden chose his words.
“Mm, a threat?”
His voice was pointlessly bright.
“...What did you just say?”
But bright voice or not, it was an extremely uncomfortable word for the listener.
Kalisa’s eyes instantly turned fierce.
“I’ll need you to hand over what you have.”
Regardless of her reaction, Aiden continued saying only what he wanted to say.
“In the end, the better the north lives, the richer those who trade with the north will become, will they not? You can’t keep acting as a peddler forever.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“Ah, perhaps my words were a bit difficult.”
Aiden smiled gently.
“You have a map, don’t you?”
The bomb dropped.
Crash!
The teacup fell from Kalisa’s hand as well.
The fortunate part, perhaps, was that the tea had already gone completely cold.
“Oh dear. That was one of the few porcelain cups we had left, and our head cook treasures them greatly.”
“......”
Before the shameless Aiden, Kalisa quickly clenched her fist.
It was to hide the trembling of her fingers.
“Let’s not say you don’t have one. I haven’t been in the north for long, but I do have an eye for documents.”
Aiden tossed a thick bundle of documents onto the table.
“This is the census. I personally went around on foot for it.”
“......”
“Three thousand two hundred.”
After draining the cold tea in one gulp, Aiden threw out a number.
“That is the population of the north.”
“I-Is that so?”
“But it’s strange, isn’t it?”
With a small laugh, he placed another file on the table.
At the very top was a stack of documents Kalisa herself had written.
They were the documents submitted by the merchant companies seeking trade permits.
“There are only three thousand two hundred people in the north, yet there are four merchant companies trying to obtain trade permits.”
Tsk, tsk. Aiden now even began clicking his tongue.
“If we include the expelled Jenkin and the merchant companies still debating whether or not to submit documents, then this spring, there are as many as nine merchant companies that came to the north for trade.”
Jamie, who had been in one corner of the office with his head buried in his desk while pretending to work, but with his ears wide open, lifted his head as though he had realized something and opened his eyes wide.
“No matter how profitable furs and hides may be, nine merchant companies for a northern region with only three thousand two hundred people....”
A brief pause.
“For that to make sense, there can only be one answer, right?”
Aiden already knew the answer.
“There are an enormous number of northerners whom even the lord’s castle has failed to grasp. And you merchants know the villages where those northerners live.”
It was not a question, but a conviction.
“You failed to report unregistered wanderers and even traded with them? If this goes wrong, it could become treason. Did you not know that?”
Kalisa’s head immediately dropped toward the floor.