Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other 22 (Patreon)

Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other

Chapter 22

-VB-

8CA (Alan’s clone)

The King of Joseon, as we came to find out, was an ambitious man but one hampered by his own country and people. It didn’t look like that from how he was dressed in regal red silk with gold embroidered in a large, solid circle at the center of his abdomen; that solid gold circle also had dragons and other motifs embroidered in different layers of gold and other silk threads and thus made it probably one of the most expensive item on this side of the hemisphere. It made him look like he was in charge, and while he nominally was, we also knew that the Imperial Kingdom of Joseon was a very fragmented and decentralized country where the nobility held more sway in the provinces than the king did over the country. It didn’t use to be this way, but we heard that the current king’s mother, when she was a regent, wore down the central authority for the sake of her family.

She worked for the sake of her parents and not her son, and the result was a country that was being threatened not by whole of China but by a single warlord to the North and also the Akitsushima Dominion across the narrow sea.

“She was the one who wanted me to marry?” we hummed while sitting across from the king.

Sunjong, the 30th King of Joseon, hummed while looking at me with a blank face. He seemed to be studying us (8CA). “Yes,” he replied eventually. “She is… a free-spirited child in a hidebound country that I call home. Is she not a beauty? Does that not suit you?” he asked us in Korean.

What was his angle? It’s obvious he wanted the training and weapons we could provide but what else was he after?

“Personally, I am all for having a beautiful wife,” we replied in Korean. “But we want to know how big of a baggage she comes with, Your Highness. Do you intend to use her to reclaim the lands you say you will give us for our help?”

“No,” he replied. “Those lands are only useful to me as borderlands that they are, nothing more, nothing less. If we have a neighbor who will defend those borders for me, then what difference does it make for me?”

While those words may convince someone who didn’t understand much about how a country might be managed, it didn’t convince us really. At the same time, we came here to accept the deal because we knew that he was making assumptions about our capabilities. No matter how quickly a mercenary band organized itself to become a country, it wasn’t likely to last long without external support. By giving us his daughter, he was trying to give us a way to gain external support.

His support.

His daughter, essentially, was nothing but a way for him to tie us to him.

Crafty, crafty, crafty. It was a good thing then that we weren’t just a regular mercenary band, right?

“Very well,” we replied. “How do you intend for us to train and arm your army?”

“I want to start with what you westerners call a regiment,” he replied as he snapped his fingers. A servant slid the door of this room open and walked in with a box filled with an assortment of items. He set the box down on the table and walked out of the room, closing the rice paper doors behind him. The king picked up one of the items inside the box, a wooden identification stick. It had a few words written on it in Chinese, Korean, and … English.

Hoh… What other foreign advisors did you have, King Sunjong?

“These are called hopae, an identification system we have been using in our country for over five hundred years. These only denote your rank and purpose. You will be the commander of the Foreign Arms Regiment, and we want them to be trained up to par with the western powers within the next five years.”

We blinked before chuckling. “That is a plenty of time.” And then we leaned forward. “Of course, we guarantee this under one condition, Your Highness.”

“Oh? What condition do you have a king?”

“Keep your meddling nobles at bay, please.”

He snorted. “I can only do so much. If you insult them, then that’s on you.”

“Then we have an agreement.”

“Good, good. So when will you marry my daughter?”

We wanted to sigh. Why did we run into these situations at every world we visited?

-VB-

Princess Jaehwa

“... You are marrying me off to foreigners?” she asked in shocked aghast as she stared up at her father. “To foreign mercenaries?”

“Yes,” her father replied. “It is a better life than you would have had once your brother took over.”

Jaehwa bit her lips. She knew better to complain to her father without some kind of leverage. He was a cold bastard who still cared. He … wasn’t wrong about the fact that living abroad would be better for her, even if the very idea of having to abandon her life here sounded too much like giving up.

Because her brother was a bastard just like their father but he had not a single shred of kindness of love that her father had.

“And is that why you are training up an army that he will inherit?” she asked him.

He raised an eyebrow. “So you overheard?”

“No,” she replied. “I guessed.”

He chuckled. “Of course, you are the most fit for the throne … yet cannot be the king.” He sighed. “If only you had been born a boy, hmm?”

“You have been saying that for the past decade, father.”

He sneered, but it wasn’t directed at her. “Why wouldn’t I? All of your brothers are useless FUCKS who can’t even manage a single village if I ever trusted them with one,” he snapped and pounded his fist onto the throne’s armchair, making it crack with the weight of his strike.

It was just as her father said.

“And if it wasn’t them, then it’s Akitsushima. They are set to repeat the wars from two hundred-fifty years ago.”

“Ah, is that why…?”

“Yes,” he sighed as he leaned back. “As much as the thought of leaving your brothers with a powerful army disgusts me, it would be worse to leave the country open to foreign invaders. And you know what happened to my brother* across the West Sea**.”

Jaehwa felt her strength leaving her as her shoulders sagged. “... So I will marry a foreigner. Not a foreign king, prince, or even a lesser noble. A foreign mercenary.”

“Better a rich mercenary than a poor noble,” her father snorted. “The rest of the world out there is not like our country, Jaehwa. I know that you can succeed out there. You can’t here.”

It was the truth.

She held her tears back as she stood up and gave him a bow before leaving his presence.

As she walked away from her father’s room, she couldn’t help but need to know. If she was to marry a foreigner, then shouldn’t she at least get a measure of them?

She stopped when a servant passed by and got their attention.

“Your Grace?” the maid servant asked.

“Where are the foreign mercenaries staying?” she asked. “I must speak with them.”

-VB-

*Korea and China often called each other brothers, but only really when China isn’t being a dick. Kinda hard to call someone stabbing you as your brother.

**Koreans refer to the Yellow Sea as “Suh Hae (West Sea)” because it is west of the Korean Peninsula.