Chapter 189 - The Patriot II

3

That morning, the members arriving for work at National Road Management Corps headquarters—also known as the Tower of Babel or the Demon King's Castle—felt an inexplicable sense that something was missing.

"Why is it? Coming to work doesn't feel all that annoying today."

"Congratulations. You've finally lost your mind."

"Was the square in front of our workplace always this clean?"

"It's a beautiful day. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. On days like these, adults like us should be resting at home..."

Just as they began wondering whether overwork had given them a mental illness, someone pointed at the square and shouted.

"Oh! That! It's gone!"

"Gone? What is?"

"That crazy guy! Jo Yeongsu's nowhere to be seen!"

"Whoa."

Indeed.

Rain or snow, a cold or an anomalous viral infection, Jo Yeongsu had stood there every day holding his placard and shouting, "Noh Doha, step down!" Now he had vanished.

The Corps members marveled. Just one person was gone, and the Tower of Babel's square was revealing its inherent elegance.

"Wow, it's so nice without that guy here..."

"Even when you just came out to eat a sandwich at lunchtime, he'd come over and start yelling his head off."

For the first time since joining, the members of the National Road Management Corps experienced a quiet walk to work.

Of course, their happiness did not last. Happiness was like ice cream in summer: you couldn't save it to savor later.

Exactly fifteen days later.

"Please take a look at this!"

"Pardon?"

THUMP!

Jo Yeongsu returned to National Road Management Corps headquarters looking positively triumphant. He set a hefty stack of papers on the information desk.

"Uh..."

The receptionist was taken aback.

The National Road Management Corps was not some government body that treated the public as its masters. Naturally, it had no public complaints counter.

(There was a reception desk for patients commissioning assistive devices from Noh Doha personally.)

"Um, Mr. Jo Yeongsu? What is this...?"

"A public opinion poll on whether Commander Noh Doha is fit to govern South Korea!"

Jo Yeongsu's thunderous roar rang out. It immediately drew the attention of Corps members enjoying their lunch break in the lobby.

"A-a public opinion poll?"

"That's right! See for yourself!"

On the first page of the survey, which consisted of four hundred sheets of scrap paper, was written the following.

[South Korea's 1st Public Opinion Poll]

[Question: Do you believe Commander Noh Doha, currently South Korea's de facto sole ruler, was elected through lawful democratic procedures?]

[Entirely lawful - 12.3%]

[Somewhat lawful - 15.1%]

[Somewhat unlawful - 5.5%]

[Entirely unlawful - 1.6%]

[Doesn't matter - 59.7%]

[No response – 5.8%]

The writing was densely packed and in pencil. He must have written it out by hand himself. The scrap paper was tattered from however many times he had corrected the wording.

"Ah..."

The receptionist blinked.

"Um. What exactly is this supposed to...?"

"Survey data I personally collected by going out and speaking to hundreds of Busan residents!"

Jo Yeongsu's clear eyes gleamed.

Incidentally, for reasons that have nothing to do with anything, his head was gleaming every bit as brightly as his eyes at the time.

Just saying.

"Everyone! As you can see, positive responses account for 27.4%, while negative responses reach a staggering 7.1%!"

"Uh, well. Assuming this poll was properly conducted, doesn't that actually indicate an extremely good approval rating...?"

"South Korea is currently all but a dictatorship under Commander Noh Doha! Under such circumstances, over seven percent of the people have expressed their opinions at the risk of death! That is a figure we must never dismiss!"

"Wait, a dictatorship..."

Alarmed, the receptionist looked around.

Fortunately—or unfortunately—the Corps members were already accustomed to Jo Yeongsu's antics and did not blame the receptionist. Their looks merely said, Here he goes again.

"This is the voice of the people, the cry of the masses! The commander of the National Road Management Corps must never ignore public sentiment seething like lava deep underground!"

"... Public sentiment seems to be saying it doesn't particularly matter. With nearly sixty percent responding that way, isn't that what the residents really think...?"

"Are you saying that seven percent have no voice and aren't even citizens?"

"What? No, that's not what..."

"It doesn't matter if we ignore a measly seven percent! Is that the prevailing stance of the National Road Management Corps, whose members should be guiding this country's present and worrying about its future? Isn't this why the foundations of the nation are eroding and minority voices are being silenced?!"

"A-all right. All right, Mr. Jo! I'll pass the data on to the Commander! Will that do?"

"I'm counting on yooou!"

By now, you might reasonably be wondering something.

How on earth had I, the Undertaker, overheard that entire exchange, allowing me to tell this story from such an omniscient perspective?

The answer was simple.

Surprisingly, Jo Yeongsu, the living embodiment of South Korean democracy, had a mysterious sponsor behind him.

["I think he has a point."]

None other than the Saintess... was expressing her support for Jo Yeongsu!

["I don't support restoring South Korea's already fallen government, but I do think there should at least be an institution that listens to public opinion."]

"Don't we have SG Net?"

["Only awakened can access it. It's hard to say it fully reflects ordinary people's opinions as well. Since I can only share the vision of awakened myself, I can't gather a complete picture of public opinion either."]

"Hmm."

["You're always wary of awakened supremacy yourself, Undertaker. I think this would be a good opportunity to listen to ordinary people's voices."]

"If that's what you want, Saintess..."

The Saintess firmly hit the "like and subscribe" buttons for YouTuber Jo Yeongsu, sharing his every move with me, her friend.

Honestly, I wasn't particularly interested.

If you had to pick the one person on the Korean Peninsula with the least nostalgia for South Korea, it would be me.

To avoid any misunderstanding, it wasn't because I was some so-called Korea-hater.

My reason was far simpler than the disputes over political stances that those internet personas fought over so fiercely.

'I don't remember a thing!'

Those memories were from before my fourth run, after all.

I had probably fulfilled my military service obligation as a healthy, able-bodied SCV. I would also have experienced the aimlessness and conflicts typical of people my age. Perhaps I'd had my own views on the country called South Korea—or opinions borrowed from whatever other people were saying.

And all those memories had pulled a Sim Cheong, plunging into the sea of oblivion.

Unless the Dragon King beneath Indangsu suddenly decided to help, there was no chance of them returning.

'I don't even remember my parents' faces or know where my hometown is. How could I feel nostalgic for South Korea?'

Thus, to me, Republic Geezer's... no, Jo Yeongsu's rhetoric sounded like an alien language in the truest sense.

Write a constitution?

I could guarantee, one hundred percent, that anomalies would probably contaminate the text the moment it was written.

There was no way they would pass up such appetizing prey as "a sequence of words every citizen must respect."

I'd stake my wrist on it becoming contaminated right from the first line: "①South Korea is a void. ②The sovereignty of South Korea resides in anomalies, and all death proceeds from anomalies."

Voting? Majority rule?

Oh my, how fascinating! The moment we started putting papers into the ballot box, we discovered ballots cast by "people who absolutely shouldn't exist"!

It was obvious we'd witness the miracle of a voter turnout that somehow totaled 146%.

'Why deliberately create more vulnerabilities for anomalies to exploit? Is he a masochist?'

Vulnerabilities had to be minimized.

Reduce the government apparatus to the National Road Management Corps. Concentrate the Corps' power in Noh Doha.

Then, from my perspective, all I had to do was keep Noh Doha from being infected by an anomaly.

Why did I primarily recruit awakened rather than ordinary people for my guild? Simply because awakened were more capable?

No. It was because the Saintess could monitor awakened twenty-four hours a day.

Even if an anomaly did get to one of them, we could respond immediately thanks to her [Clairvoyance]. With ordinary people, that wasn't possible.

The risk of them falling victim before we could so much as say "Oops" became far too great.

Risk management.

My strategy as a regressor was focused entirely on how to counter anomalies.

"I truly don't understand it."

Out of consideration for the Saintess, I left Jo Yeongsu alone, but I occasionally brought him up while chatting with Noh Doha.

"If he simply missed what life was like when civilization was intact, that would be one thing. But feeling nostalgic for the country of South Korea itself is strange."

"Well. Perhaps that nostalgia comes from a mixture of the two feelings...? 'At least we used to live like human beings,' that sort of thing."

"That's what I'm saying I understand. But Jo Yeongsu goes beyond that, doesn't he? I may not remember it in detail, but was it really a country worth missing that much? It's not some beloved you only start missing once they're gone..."

"Heh."

SNIP.

Noh Doha chuckled softly while trimming his nails.

Whenever the former South Korean civil servant used his nail clippers, he placed a wastebasket on his lap and dropped the clippings straight into it.

"That's the sort of person you are..."

"...?"

What did that mean?

In any case, both the Saintess and Noh Doha were surprisingly tolerant of Jo Yeongsu's troublemaking.

The other awakened weren't much different.

Everyone despised him, yet no one actually made Jo Yeongsu "disappear." They could have done so at any time if they had wanted.

A man without family or relatives, without a guild, living in Busan's shantytown, making the rounds of the National Road Management Corps' and Three Thousand Worlds' soup kitchens, and denouncing both organizations' "dictatorship" all the while.

He spent his entire day collecting wastepaper.

He needed paper to make his "public opinion questionnaires."

Even then, resources were scarce, so Jo Yeongsu had to write every survey question out individually in pencil.

[South Korea's 4th Public Opinion Poll]

[Question: A puppet state called the so-called Holy State of the East has been established in South Korea's Pyongyang, and the National Road Management Corps has issued no official comment whatsoever concerning it. Do you believe the Holy State of the East should be recognized as a nation?]

[South Korea's 11th Public Opinion Poll]

[Question: This year, citizens were forcibly relocated from island regions in South Korea's South Sea as a measure against damage from typhoons and monsoon rains. Do you believe the National Road Management Corps may infringe upon citizens' freedom of residence and movement during a national crisis?]

[South Korea's 20th Public Opinion Poll]

[Question: Do you believe guild leaders' authority can be established without democratic consensus or discussion? If so, do you believe guild leaders also have some degree of obligation toward the people?]

I really want to show you these questionnaires. In a sense, they're genuinely entertaining.

The scrap paper bore cross-outs Jo Yeongsu had scratched heavily into it with his pencil again and again. Like this.

Sometimes he'd cover the writing in correction fluid he'd found somewhere, then write it again. □□□(Like this).

At other times, he'd try to erase words, but the quality of the eraser and the quality of the paper did not accord with one another, and the paper tore right open. So he'd add the writing beside the hole. ■■■Like this.

So, to reproduce the public opinion questionnaires I saw as faithfully as possible:

[South Korea's 19th 20th Public Opinion Poll]

[Question: As the gap in infrastructure between cities has recently widened, power is becoming concentrated in ■■an extremely small number of guild leaders. Do you believe guild leaders' authority can be established □□(without) democratic consensus or discussion? If ■■■■■so, do you believe guild leaders also have some some degree of obligation toward the people?]

Tattered rags.

He would circulate the same questionnaire repeatedly to conduct his survey, noting each respondent's answer beside it with tiny tally marks. Like this.

[Their authority is valid] 11111 11111 11111 11111 11111 11111 111

After returning to his shack, Jo Yeongsu counted every mark he had recorded, calculated the statistics, and finally entered the percentages on the "finished version." Like this.

[Their authority is valid – 66.3%]

Jo Yeongsu submitted the resulting "statistical data" and "public opinion" to the National Road Management Corps.

He spent anywhere from fifteen days to more than a hundred conducting each survey.

How many years had passed?

Something curious happened.

"Dictator Noh Doha, step down! Step down! Step down!"

The scene in the Tower of Babel's square changed slightly.

Jo Yeongsu was still there with his protest placard, clad as if in armor in the holy relic bearing South Korea's constitution, howling for Noh Doha to step down.

The Corps members still heaved sighs as they came and went on their way to and from work.

But now, a cardboard box sat at Jo Yeongsu's feet.

"Mister, here's some newsprint for you."

"Dictator Noh Doha, step dooown!"

"Keep up the good work."

Whenever the Corps members left work, they tossed their leftover paper into the cardboard box.

One sheet. One sheet. Another sheet.

Like spectators leaving banknotes for a poor street guitarist.

"Hey. Isn't Team Leader Yu Jiwon kind of creepy sometimes? How does a person go twenty-four hours a day without their expression changing once?"

"Dictator Noh Doha, step down! Step down!"

"That's why she's the operations team leader. I heard she has the exact same expression when she purges troublemakers from the operations team."

"Dictator Noh Doha, step down! Step down!"

"Seriously, I could never join operations, no matter how good the pay and benefits were..."

"Dictator Noh Doha, step down! Step down!"

"How about army stew tonight?"

"Oh. Army stew sounds good. I'm in."

Chattering boisterously, the Corps members crossed the square, talking among themselves, apparently now completely accustomed to Jo Yeongsu.

Jo Yeongsu kept calling for Noh Doha to step down until sunset, when Yu Jiwon was the last to leave work. Of course, she departed without so much as glancing at him.

"Cough. Cough, ugh. My aching bones..."

When night came and Jo Yeongsu headed back to his shack, he carried thick stacks of wastepaper in both hands.

The volume of that wastepaper was the size of the territory currently held by the nation called "South Korea."