With Jia coordinating with Xin Wei and the Qin convoy, and Eui handling the Goryeon trade caravan, it fell to Kaede to prepare for their arrival. There would be chaos once they arrived, and the best way to handle it was to anticipate problems and start solving them in advance.
For the academy dorms, she had initially thought to split the old boys’ dormitory district in half. The original academy had around two hundred students, which fully occupied the dorm districts even with most units hosting two to three students apiece. The town had been built for growth, and even Kaede’s more generous estimation of their first wave of students could easily fit within the allocated area.
That was before Urayama resettled to Jiaguo.
The village alone brought a population of more than two hundred, with the two approaching convoys from Qin and Goryeo bringing that number up to almost four hundred. Twice the academy’s original population.
Of course, those wouldn’t all be students, and they wouldn’t all be staying. Urayama had already built their own remote village away from Jiaguo City, and the Goryeon caravan consisted primarily of traders looking to capitalize on the opportunity presented by a young nation in desperate need of resources.
Nevertheless, Kaede’s plans needed to expand. First, taking cues from Goryeon architecture, she hired workers from Urayama to expand the existing units into two-story buildings, moving the bedroom accommodations to the top floor and clearing out the entire main floor into a common living space. That change alone would more than double the capacity of the dormitory district, allowing four or even five students at a time to share a house.
In addition to this, she converted a number of the vacant houses which had been saved for faculty and visitors into privileged student accommodations.
The intention behind the privileged accommodations was to use them as a reward for those who excelled or contributed to the academy in some meaningful way. They would be the same size as the four to five person apartments, but host only two students at a time. They included private living spaces and more luxury, and notably would not be something that could simply be purchased by wealthier patrons—they were to be earned.
The trade district, luckily, was already perfect for its purpose. There were simple accommodations that visitors could rent cheaply, and a central market square where portable carts and stalls could be set up.
Unfortunately, the road to Urayama wasn’t quite finished yet, which meant that any villagers looking to trade would have to make the journey on foot and do their business in town.
The biggest concern was settler accommodations. Jiaguo City’s walls couldn’t be expanded easily, which put a strict upper limit on how many people could fit within.
In order to avoid the ghetto-like shanty towns that sprung up around Goryeon shield cities, Kaede instead arranged for construction to begin on an official expansion of the town. Additional walls would be put up to protect the settlers from errant beasts, with plenty of space for people to build their new homes.
All of this would take time to build, however, and in the meantime it fell to Ja Yun and Tae In-Su to arrange temporary housing arrangements for nearly four hundred immigrants. Ja Yun was also busy sorting through the old records and crunching numbers to determine maintenance costs and reasonable tuition fees, and she was hard at work with Hyeong Daesung writing a new curriculum for the new academy.
It was this realization that led Kaede to arrange a meeting with the overworked mage, insisting that she take a break to leave her office and meet in a more informal setting. Elder Qin’s garden gazebo was rapidly becoming the de facto location for government meetings, formal or otherwise, but it was the first time Ja Yun had ever visited it.
Kaede was already waiting when Ja Yun arrived, ten minutes early and quaking with anxiety. She stopped just short of the gazebo’s threshold and bowed deeply.
“Y-you wished to see me, Lady General?”
What kind of an address was that? Kaede kept her expression neutral as she responded.
“Just Kaede is fine, Ja Yun. I know that you and I haven’t spoken very much, but I’d like it if you thought of me the same way as Yoshika.”
“Um, o-okay.”
“Please, come have a seat and relax. I want us to meet today as friends, rather than colleagues.”
Ja Yun swallowed nervously and approached the small tea table, wringing her hands. She took a seat and stared down into her lap. Kaede sighed—what had happened to the confident and assertive Ja Yun in her element she’d seen before?
After a moment of awkward silence, Kaede sighed. She’d have to break the ice on her own, then.
“How is Iseul doing?”
Ja Yun blinked.
“Iseul? She’s doing fine, I guess? It’s scary how quickly she learns things.”
“True. Her social development could use some work, though, don’t you think?”
“I guess? I was thinking about having her attend the academy as a student.”
Kaede nodded. That would be interesting—she wondered whether Heian could do the same.
“That’s good to hear. Do you have any plans once Eunae arrives in town?”
“We’ve prepared a suitable residence in the government district for visiting dignitaries, the princesses—”
Kaede held up a hand to stop her and shook her head.
“That’s not what I meant—and you know Eunae hates being treated like royalty. I think she’d probably prefer to just stay with you.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
Ja Yun turned red, waving her hands urgently.
“N-no way! If Rika’s not here, there’s no reason for Eunae to pay any attention to me. Besides, I’ve got so much work to do. Even if Rika was here, I wouldn’t have time to properly serve her.”
Kaede hadn’t said anything about serving, but she politely refrained from comment.
“That’s actually part of what I wanted to talk to you about today.”
“Oh no! What happened? Did I screw something up? Ancestors, I knew I shouldn’t be put in charge of anything, I’m so sorry—”
“Stop!”
Ja Yun flinched back and went perfectly still. Kaede sighed—she wasn’t good at this sort of thing, but Yoshika was. She tried to channel a little bit more of Jia in her approach.
“Yun, you haven’t done anything wrong. If anything, you’ve been the lynchpin of this entire town. Everything has been going so smoothly, and while we’ve been focused on the social aspects it’s you who’s kept it all running. The entire country would fall apart without you, and while you’ve risen to the occasion, I can’t help but feel that we’ve saddled you with far more responsibility than we should have.”
“D-don’t be silly! Anybody could do what I do. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but it’s not hard. Still, I won’t blame you if you want to demote or replace me—it’s what I would do.”
Kaede shook her head.
“As always, you sell yourself short. We care about you more than you think—and so does Eunae. I’m not concerned about your ability to meet your responsibilities—only that you’ll put them above your own well-being. Rather than demotion, I’m thinking quite the opposite.”
“What—what do you mean?”
“Once the immigrants arrive, many of them will be looking for work. The first thing I’m going to do is expand your staff. I’ll gather a list of suitable candidates, and you can pick whichever ones you like to work for you.”
Ja Yun looked like she was about to faint, her eyes swimming as she desperately tried to find anything other than Kaede to look at.
“I—work for me? You want me to have a staff?!”
“You already have a staff. Tae In-Su works for you. You have been delegating some of your work to him, right?”
“I thought he was my boss, actually.”
Kaede buried her face in her hands. Ja Yun was a genius, but nowhere did her intellect shine as brightly as when she twisted reality to convince herself that she didn’t matter. Having Rika around to ground her had been invaluable, and in her absence, Ja Yun had been backsliding.
“That settles it, then. Let me make three things perfectly clear for you—First, you are an invaluable asset to our nation and a valued friend. Second, you are the Secretary of Jiaguo’s Treasury, and you have the authority—nay, the duty—to delegate your considerable responsibilities among your staff. Third, you will at the very least invite Eunae to stay with you, and whether she accepts or not, take a few days off work to destress. Spend that time however you like—meditation, training, sleeping, even a date with Eunae—as long as it isn’t work. Is that clear?”
Ja Yun flushed and nodded, squirming in her seat.
“Yes ma’am!”
So much for meeting as friends. It would be too awkward to go back to small talk after that, and Ja Yun’s excitement made acting as her superior even worse.
“That will be all for now, Ja Yun. You’re dismissed.”
Ja Yun stood and bowed.
“Thank you, Lady Kaede.”
As Ja Yun fled, her mood lifted, Kaede wondered whether that conversation had made things better or worse? It was hard to tell with her, sometimes.
----------------------------------------
While Yoshika was asking around for people who might be interested in serving under Ja Yun as administrators, she encountered a particularly unusual respondent. Yang Qiu approached Kaede while she was going over mortal-friendly training regimens with Dae.
“Hey, I heard you’re looking for people to do your shitty, boring office work.”
Kaede blinked up at her. Yang Qiu was as surly as ever, scowling down at them with her arms crossed and the odd cloak of tentacle-like appendages thrashing behind her.
“Are you...volunteering?”
She scoffed.
“Fuck no! I don’t want anything to do with it. I’d rather swallow dirt than work under that spineless weirdo.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I don’t want anything, but you decided that it was my job to represent the demonic prisoners, and since they can’t leave to advocate for themselves, here I fucking am. Do you want to visit the person yourself, or should I just keep playing messenger?”
Kaede exchanged glances with Dae, then shrugged.
“Sorry, Dae, do you mind if we continue this later?”
“Not at all! I have another meeting with Miss Yan on the subject of late spiritual awakenings. We’ve got a few theories that should make spiritual practice for older students more accessible than it was when we were students.”
“Sounds great! Keep me apprised?”
“Of course.”
Excusing herself, Kaede left with Yang Qiu, following her towards the former medical pavilion turned de facto prison. The demons that had survived after the former academy was taken back from its occupiers were an ongoing issue that Yoshika still wasn’t sure how to solve.
She was unwilling to summarily execute them, as many were victims in their own right, but at the same time, demonic hunger carried a very real compulsion to consume souls which made integration into broad society...complicated.
Yang Qiu and the prisoners had been surviving on beast cores and mana stones, but according to Yang Qiu and Jianmo, it wasn’t the same. Mana cores sustained them, but did little to sate the constant hunger they suffered.
“How have you been holding up, Yang Qiu?”
The demon side-eyed Kaede and scoffed.
“I’m alive. That’s enough for me.”
“How did the administrator position come up, anyway?”
Yang Qiu averted her eyes and sneered.
“Tch, do you think I just sit around and brood all day? I talk with the prisoners, sometimes, when I’m not out hunting. Let ‘em out on a leash for a bit now and then—closely supervised—so they can talk to each other.”
Kaede’s eyes widened.
“Really? I mean, that sounds good, but I didn’t think you were the type.”
“Wasn’t my idea. The blonde woman with the heavy aura and the creepy smile suggested it. Said that we had to remember to be people instead of monsters. I figured it couldn’t hurt.”
Kaede frowned, trying to place that description. In the end, there were only so many light-haired people around.
“Lady Tennin’s smile isn’t creepy.”
Yang Qiu shrugged carelessly.
“If you say so. Anyway, we’re here. You want to meet them in the cell, or should I bring ‘em out?”
Kaede cast about for a place to sit, spotting the pavilion for which the former medical center had originally been named.
“Why don’t we meet outside? As people, rather than monsters.”
Yang Qiu turned around before it could show on her face, but Kaede sensed a faint hint of approval from her.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll be right back.”