A Design Ahead Of Its Time

— Grrrunch!

I forced my way into the collapsing structure. A heavy weight bore down on my shoulders and back, but thankfully I was not too late. I caught hold of my man and threw us both clear.

— Rumble! KA-DOOOOM!

The structure came pouring down onto the spot the two of us had just left. A moment later and we would have been crushed flat and killed. Dust billowed up in a white haze.

I looked at the man beside me. His face had gone pale.

“You all right?”

At my question the bastard raised his head blankly, his eyes wavering badly.

“…”
“I asked if you were hurt anywhere.”
“…Sorry? Ah… I’m fine. Are you all right, Boss?”
“I’m fine.”

I brushed off my shoulders and got up. My back stung, but it was no serious injury, only a slight ache. This much did not even count as a wound.

“Be careful when you’re working from now on.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”

He nodded and went to pick up the pickaxe he had flung aside. Around us, it had gone strangely quiet. Every one of the men had stopped work and stood staring at me in a daze.

What is it? What’s got into them?

Accidents were common enough on a work site. Was it because this kind of work was new to them?

I was still gazing blankly at the men when Duho came running.

“Are you mad?! The building’s coming down and you throw your own body at it! You nearly got crushed to death!”
“I’m fine. A few scrapes, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with me, so don’t make a fuss.”
“Hah, honestly… Young Master, please, remember that you’re the boss.”
“What, then? Should I just stand there and watch a man die? If there were nothing to be done that would be one thing, but if he can be saved you do everything you can. I went in because he was worth saving.”
“…Well. Aren’t you just the romantic.”

Duho shook his head.

I looked at the men. Our first meeting had been anything but pleasant. They had been punks under the Great Saber Gang, the sort who made people’s lives a misery. But from the moment I decided to become boss of the Red Headband Gang, they were all my people.

They came inside my fence, so I don’t throw them away.

Unless they bolted of their own accord, protecting them was my duty, the proper business of a man who had become a chief.

The chief protects the men under him, and the men under him give the chief their loyalty. A very simple principle.

“Anyway, it’s nothing. Stop standing there gaping, all of you, and get to work.”
“Yes! Understood!”

The men’s answer rang out twice as loud as usual.

I was reaching for my pickaxe again when an old man came over, one of the craftsmen.

“Boss, I saw what you did there. I’ve rolled around at the bottom of this trade my whole life, and that’s the first time I’ve seen a man throw himself in like that for one of his own men.”
“It was nothing. Only what anyone ought to have done.”
“Hoho. What anyone ought to have done, he says…”

The old man stroked his beard and nodded.

“We were thinking we might help with tearing the buildings down. Would that be all right?”
“I will not refuse. Thank you for the consideration.”
“There’s nothing much for us to do until every building is down anyway, so it’s no trouble. Come, let’s go and help with the demolition.”
“Understood.”

The craftsmen each took up a tool and joined the demolition. I was about to follow them in when Duho snatched the pickaxe out of my hand.

“Demolition, in the state you’re in? Go and get those wounds seen to, now.”
“I keep telling you I’m fine. I can go and get treated after the demolition’s done.”
“Ah, enough. Like I said before — please, remember that you’re the boss. And if the Young Master works with an injury, it’s on everyone’s mind and nothing that needs doing gets done, so go and get treated. Shoo—”

Duho shoved me out of the street.

“All right. I’m going, so stop pushing.”
“You should have said so sooner. Leave this to me and get back quickly.”
“Right.”

I could not hold out against Duho’s badgering, so I turned and went.

Nearly every building on the street had been leveled. That morning they had stood packed in wall to wall, and now there was nothing left but rubble.

Here is where I build the new street.

From here on, this place would be the greatest pleasure district in the Central Plains, sweeping up people’s money. That would give me the grounds to bring my father round, and we would fold up the escort bureau as a matter of course.

Which was why this rebuilding of the territory had to succeed without fail, and I was confident it would. I put a hand to the plans inside my robes.

Once the buildings were down, it would begin.

The Red Headband Gang’s men worked and talked among themselves about what had happened a little while before.

“Wasn’t the Boss magnificent just now?”
“Right?! When he dove in with the building coming down I thought he’d lost his mind.”
“What gets me more is that he came out of a collapsing building alive.”

They were all worked up, and the talk went on.

“I’ve done three full years in the Great Saber Gang, and our Boss is nothing like Black Leopard. Black Leopard would kill you outright if you got on his nerves, your own man or not.”
“If he was in a bad mood his hand came up first, that’s all. I doubt there’s a man among us Black Leopard never hit.”
“And the Boss went and jumped into a collapsing building at his own risk to save one of us. And he took the injury without turning a hair.”

The men who heard it nodded along.

“Honestly, when Black Leopard died and the Boss took over the Great Saber Gang I was a bit frightened, but now I think it turned out well.”
“That’s what I say. I took him for a heartless killing demon. He wrecked a man for talking back, and took one merchant’s head off in a single stroke.”
“That one had it coming, though. They said he sold people to Black Leopard. Good riddance.”
“However far off the rails we go, abducting people crosses the line. Good thing we dragged our feet back then, watching that bastard Black Leopard for his mood.”
“Right. Lucky our consciences pricked us and we did nothing. One slip and it’d have been our necks too. Ugh, damn it. Just thinking about it makes my neck go cold.”

Without realizing they were doing it, the Red Headband Gang’s men rubbed at their necks.

“Anyway, I’m proud we went from the Great Saber Gang to the Red Headband Gang. The training’s brutal, but your body changes, so there’s some satisfaction in doing it.”
“There’s a fair bit of satisfaction in building yourself up, right enough. My thighs have turned into a horse’s lately, I’m telling you.”
“For me it’s the martial arts instruction more than anything. In the Great Saber Gang we all just fought any old way, didn’t we. But the Boss goes over your stance in detail, and you can feel him taking care over it.”
“Same. Training these days, I can see I really was just swinging wildly before.”
“And above all… he treats us like people.”

At the words one of them had tossed out, the boisterous mood turned solemn for a moment. No one said it aloud, but every man there had been keeping the same thought in a corner of his heart.

Plenty of chiefs paid their men. Chiefs who held you down by force were common enough too.

But a chief who called men living at the very bottom ‘my people’ and protected them was the first they had known.

“Right. So let’s show him, then. That we’re not the punks we were in the Great Saber Gang days.”
“Of course! Oi, swing that pickaxe faster! We have to finish before the sun goes down or the Boss won’t be pleased!”
“Oi, I’ll take that side!”

The men’s hands moved visibly faster. This was not labor done under compulsion; they were moving of their own will, for their own boss.

The craftsmen who had been watching could only marvel.

“Hoho. To think those rough brutes would turn into lambs like that. Live long enough and you’ll see anything.”
“You are quite right. The talk about the Yang manor’s eldest having no martial talent and shutting himself up in his room must have been an idle rumor.”
“Rumor was never worth believing to begin with. A man who wiped out the Great Saber Gang and leads the Red Headband Gang at that age, with no martial talent? It must all be talk put about by men eaten up with envy.”
“I agree.”
“Come, there’s not much left. Let’s put our backs into it too.”

The craftsmen fired themselves up and got a fresh grip on their tools.

When I came back from having my wounds treated, every building had been torn down and the men were in the middle of hauling the rubble away.

The work’s going far too fast, isn’t it?

My trip to Doctor Yu’s for treatment had not taken long, yet not a single building was left standing. It had all gone much faster than I expected, enough to make me wonder what had happened while I was away.

Now all that remained was to clear the rubble and raise new buildings on the empty ground.

I called the craftsmen together. Inside a tent thrown up for the purpose, we sat down around a table.

“You have all worked hard. Thanks to you the demolition finished quickly.”
“Your men did nearly all of it. We only lent a hand here and there.”

The old man who had come forward as the craftsmen’s representative went on.

“But, Boss. I hear you mean to put up new buildings across all this wide ground.”
“Yes, I do.”
“This is no ordinary undertaking. Without a concrete plan it could turn into a shambles, every man pulling his own way.”

The other craftsmen nodded and chimed in.

“He’s right. Building it back the way it was would be easy enough, but a pleasure quarter has to be done differently from the design stage on.”
“For instance, where the pleasure houses go, where the inns go, how the roads are laid — all of it has to be decided.”
“We’ve put our heads together over it, but nothing good has come of it. A job on this scale is a first for us too.”

The craftsmen looked troubled, which was exactly the reaction I had expected. Men who have designed and planned an entire city are hardly thick on the ground, and since I had known it would go this way, I had come prepared.

I took the paper out of my robes.

“On that score, do not worry. I have something worked out. Take a look.”

When I spread the plans out on the table, Duho’s eyes and the craftsmen’s fixed on the paper. Drawn on it in fine detail were the whole skeleton and layout of the territory as it was to be raised anew.

“This is…”

The craftsmen’s eyes went wide over the plans.

No wonder they’re startled.

They would never have seen a structure like it anywhere. In the Central Plains as it stood, not a single city so much as resembled it.

Open-mouthed, they could not take their eyes off the plans. The old man who spoke for them swallowed hard and asked.

“Boss, what sort of structure is this? The roads are all curved, and the buildings seem to be crowded into the center alone…”

He pointed at the plans with a trembling hand. At the center stood a huge circular building, and from that point the buildings radiated outward like an enormous cartwheel, or a spiderweb. Nothing in it resembled the grid arrangement everyone knew; the shape had no precedent at all.

“Let me explain.”

I set a finger on the center of the plans, on the huge circular building.

“This is the heart of our territory — the gambling house.”
“A gambling house?”
“Yes. It will be the largest and most splendid building of all. And every road will lead to it.”

I moved my finger slowly outward.

“The first ring, wrapped around the gambling house. Here we place the pleasure houses, the wine houses and the teahouses. So that a man who has won at the tables can step straight out, drink, and look for a woman.”

The craftsmen nodded.

“And in the second ring we put the inns. So that a man drunk and worn out can rest at once.”

My finger moved to the outermost, the third ring.

“And last, at the entrance, we put a bank and a pawnshop.”
“A bank and a pawnshop at the entrance?”
“So that a man who has run out of money can borrow on his way out, or leave his valuables in pledge and have money in his hand again. And when a man has money, where do you suppose he goes?”

I moved my finger back to the gambling house at the center.

“He goes back inside.”
“…”

Not one of the craftsmen could shut his mouth.

“Did you plan all of this yourself, Boss?”
“Yes.”

In this life it was mine, after all. Luckily, I had kept in mind what its designer told me at Blood Sand Plain. Back then I had only listened to the story and envied him; I never thought I would be the one to build it.

“Can you build it as it stands?”

The moment I finished speaking, the old man seized my hand.

“Please, let us have the work!”
“I ask it too!”
“And me, please…!”

Every last one of the craftsmen was clinging to me.

It seems the plan was a good deal more impressive than I had reckoned.