Chapter 1039: There Are Sea Creatures in the Sea (4)

What was this? Maybe it was a ranking by favorability?

The eye-catching part was that Nanna had been promoted to Fun Mom, which made Qing think she must have scored surprisingly well somehow.

But Young Lady Moyong had ended up as Hard Mom. Hm. Well, she had added a little padding these days, but she was still hard, after all...

The character Jayeo was writing right now was colossal, the highest word meaning big.

In the Central Plains tongue, something big was big, something bigger than that was gigantic, and something even bigger than that was colossal; in Qing’s homeland’s language, it would have been something like super-colossal.

Super-Colossal Mom, and next to it, Si.

So this was Chunbong.

Well then, super-colossal, yes. That really was, truly, tremendously apt.

After sweeping over the paper for a moment, Qing naturally lowered her ample rear into the seat beside the miraculous writing teacher.

“Hey, long time no see. San, what brings you here? Heh-heh, came to see me? My, my, you really do keep following me around.”

The identity of the writing teacher was none other than Peng Daesan!

Well, of course it was. Was he not the very true teacher who had already achieved the great feat of successfully teaching Jayeo letters before, the benefactor who had at least kept her from being completely illiterate with short words?

Qing poked Peng Daesan in the side with her elbow.

Even though she could not see his face, she could practically picture the expression of utter revulsion and stony seriousness that must be on it.

“I merely stopped by while passing through.”

“Oh, wow, what a coincidence. You just happened to stop by while passing through, and by pure chance you happened to settle into the exact inn I’m staying at. So where exactly are you headed, that this place counts as somewhere you can just casually stop by while passing through?”

“...I just thought I might go look at the sea.”

Peng Daesan’s answer was somehow about two beats slow.

Well, the Hebei Peng Clan, true to the family name, was based in Tianjin in Hebei Province, and Tianjin was one of those places that vaguely touched the sea—not exactly a coastal city, more an estuary city, but in any case it served as the water gate and port leading into the Forbidden City, did it not?

A man who lived by the seaside had left the sea in front of his house behind and come all the way to another sea?

And not even a different sea at that, since Tianjin and Shanghai were both on the same East Sea, so even if he said he had come to look at the East Sea, really...

In other words, it was a terribly shabby excuse.

But that was only a shabby excuse to people who lived in Tianjin. The Central Plains was so vast that people could not understand those from other regions anyway.

Qing was the same.

Was she not already staying in the best inn of whichever city she happened to be in, everywhere she went?

San, rich young master that he was, would naturally do the same.

So if they entered the same city at the same time, running into each other was only to be expected.

Which meant Qing was simply teasing him because she was happy to see him.

“Come on, tell the truth. You came because you wanted to see me, didn’t you? No, San. Surely not? You didn’t stop in Jagwi County, look for me, and then follow me all the way here, did you? Straight across the entire Central Plains?”

“That...”

“Oh-ho, look at that, no immediate answer? It’s true? I mean, no matter how friendless you are, come on, even between friends there’s a limit to how clingy this can get, right? Hm? Hm?”

Qing kept needling him, nudging and nudging with her elbow, and it was right when Peng Daesan had begun to hesitate that—

“San Mom has no friends? No friends?”

Ah, damn.

Was this why they said you had to watch your mouth in front of children?

“No friends? But there’s one right here, isn’t there. Ah-Yeo is that friend.”

“We friends?”

“We weren’t? That’s a little disappointing. I had thought Ah-Yeo was a friend unlike any other under heaven.”

“No, we friends, friends. Hee-hee, hee-hee.”

The laugh sounded a little odd, but in any case, that really was the sound Jayeo made when she got excited.

Hm. Was he unexpectedly good with kids?

Then again, that had to be why he had managed to teach Jayeo her letters in the first place.

“Man, I’m hungry. So, what brings you here? Did you really come to see the sea?”

“I was passing through Nanjing and stopped by the Gongsun Gong Clan Estate to see the Minor Lord. I heard, by chance, that you had already come through, so I stopped in.”

“Ah, right. Same Ten Great Houses and all that. Sure, I guess. Anyway, that means you did come to see me, right?”

“If you’re close by, aren’t we the sort who’d at least see each other’s faces before parting?”

“Well, sure we are, right? Ah, have you eaten dinner? Man, I’m hungry. My stomach’s, hm, huh?”

She was hungry, but not wildly hungry. What was this? She had not eaten anything today, so by this point it ought to have been causing an uproar at nearly the level of the Purple-Spin Witch, growling and rumbling all over the place.

But when she thought about it carefully, ah, she had eaten something, had she not?

It had been a genuinely long time since she had eaten proper Western food, and hm, for all that the Dutch bastards were pieces of shit, they were good at making meals.

“So then, nothing unusual happened?”

“Nothing unusual? You’re the one who looks like something happened. Decided to become a military officer now, have you?”

“Ah, this? Those damned Dutch barbarians, those fucking sons of bitches—”

Qing stopped short in the middle of cursing.

Because Jayeo’s eyes had already begun to sparkle.

That kid’s eyes only ever lit up like that at times like these.

“Mm, I did a bit of swimming, so my clothes got wet and I borrowed these. Well? Do I look like an officer? What do you think, Iri? You there, woman, do you know your crime! Your crime is, hm, the outrageous fact that your face is pretty. I shall have you arrested at once!”

“No. No. Yes. Yes. Yes.”

No twice to whether she looked like an officer.

But then what were the next three yeses?

Did that mean she was nevertheless willing to submit peacefully to arrest? And even admitted the crime of having a pretty face?

As she said it, Jayeo stuck both wrists out together as though offering them up, like she was ready to be bound and taken away immediately.

What was this, all of a sudden? A burst of cuteness?

At that, Gongsun Yoye, too, looked at Qing with an expression that seemed to be expecting something, but—

“Arresting people is the role of constables, not soldiers.”

“Ah, right. True.”

Constables belonged to the government office, while soldiers—obvious as the term was—belonged to the army.

If you put it in the terms of Qing’s homeland, constables were police and soldiers were the military, so to talk about arresting someone while wearing a military officer’s clothes did not really make sense.

“Anyway, good timing. I was a little disappointed I missed you last time, so if you’re not busy, I’m planning to go see the East Sea tomorrow. Come with us if you can.”

“Hm. Very well. I have nothing in particular to do anyway.”

“Great, then San’s coming too. So, what do you want to eat? Let’s eat. I’m starving. Yoye, what’s good here?”

But instead of answering, Gongsun Yoye hesitated.

Did she not look exactly like someone struggling to say something difficult aloud?

At that, Qing went, ah.

Well, if she asked every single day what was good here, then even a local would eventually run out of answers.

Qing reflected on herself for a moment, but the reason Gongsun Yoye had hesitated was not that she had run out of recommended dishes.

“Um, Miss Seomun. Before, um, I think we agreed to, um, speak more comfortably with each other...”

Gongsun Yoye’s voice grew softer the further it went, until by the end it was almost at the level of mumbling, the kind of thing that, if you wrote it on the page, would look like the letters themselves were shrinking smaller and smaller toward the end.

“Ah, did we? Look at me. I wasn’t sure, so that’s why. You should’ve said so sooner.”

She had kept speaking in a half-polite way because she could not remember whether they had agreed to drop formality or not, so apparently they had.

Anyway, if that was the case, then it was not because the recommended dishes had run out, right?

“So then, what’s today’s recommendation?”

*****

The ships of the Dutch East India Company were not limited to those thirteen ultra-large sailing ships.

Well, of course not.

Those ultra-large sailing ships, grand galleon-class vessels, were warships packed full of cannon, ships admirable in battle, certainly, but not ships with the kind of spare room you would want for hauling trade goods.

So you might ask why in the world they had dragged their latest cannon-packed warships out here for trade. Were they planning to sell off the cannon on the way home and load cargo into the empty space?

But if you asked why they had bothered to bring cannon-packed warships, then naturally the answer was for trade.

Bombarding cities was an utterly standard trade procedure, and since the warships they had brought expressly to fire on cities had, in fact, fired on a city, one might say they had been used perfectly in line with their intended purpose.

This was the average Westerner of this age.

In any case, they had separate warehouse ships for carrying trade goods, and one of them—

the medium sailing ship, the Tulip.

In the chart room aboard the Tulip, the expression on the first mate’s face as he studied the map was despair itself.

Because he had lost every single one of the homeland’s proudly boasted newest ultra-large warships.

The East India Company might have been called a company, but it was practically a state-run navy.

Or pirates, for that matter.

And what kind of era was this?

Even though the War of Independence had ended, that Spain still could not let go and kept probing, its ambitions still alive. Thinking of that, this fleet was indispensable to the republic as well.

And yet he had gone and handed all of it over in one clean sweep, so regardless of personal punishment or reward, the damage inflicted on the republic was catastrophically severe.

So for the first mate, was it possible to calmly return home telling himself that at least he had escaped with his life?

And even if he did return, what kind of treatment awaited him then? He would be put on trial, and with very high probability, a death sentence would be handed down.

Therefore, somehow, he had to get it back.

How?

With the help of friends.

He already had good friends he had contacted in advance, and they had by now arrived in the area and were hard at work at their proper business, had they not?

The first mate’s eyes filled with resolve.