WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 443: Stuffed Paradise (5)
──────
The community of Cumberland County, where Carlisle was located, and by extension the entire state of Pennsylvania, showed tremendous interest in Gyeoul’s stay.
There were especially many institutions and organizations hoping to invite him for lectures. Gyeoul tried to accept as many of those requests as he could. As an active-duty soldier, he could not receive direct payment, but he thought that building ties with a particular community might help in some way someday. Naturally, he had approval from higher command. The residents were delighted by his efforts.
Yura folded the newspaper she had been reading and commented.
“The commander’s photo came out really well. Later, if you ever leave the military, you could get incredibly rich just from lecture fees. You might not even need another job.”
“Surely it wouldn’t be that much?”
The one who answered was Wang Kechai, formerly Bravo Company’s 1st Platoon leader. Yura passed the newspaper to Wang Kechai.
“See for yourself. Here, the part where they compare his potential value to other public figures.”
Between the two of them, there was little distance from belonging to different companies or coming from different backgrounds. They shared a firm sense of belonging and pride as members of the famous Independent Battalion, along with the camaraderie of soldiers who had crossed life-and-death lines together.
“Wow.”
Yura smiled softly at Wang Kechai’s exclamation as Wang Kechai skimmed the article.
“Impressive, right?”
“No, what kind of lecture fee is this? A hundred thousand dollars per minute? Seriously?”
Gyeoul held out a hand.
“Can I see it for a moment too?”
“Ah, yes.”
Wang Kechai handed the newspaper to Gyeoul with crisp, disciplined movements.
Looking at the article, the hundred-thousand-dollars-per-minute story was an anecdote about former President Ronald Reagan. He had received a total of four million dollars for a forty-minute invited lecture hosted by a Japanese company. Since that had happened in 1989, converting it to current value would make the amount even more staggering.
There were plenty of other examples as well. Former public officials such as a former New York mayor, secretaries of state, and secretaries of defense had also earned more from a single lecture after leaving office than their annual salary while in office. Even Gyeoul, who had a rough idea that this culture existed, felt his sense of scale warping as he looked at the list of specific sums.
The article estimated Gyeoul’s potential lecture fee at roughly the same level as President Reagan’s. It also predicted that if he wrote an autobiography, he would receive more than thirty million dollars in advance royalties alone. In an age where there was practically no overseas market, that was an enormous overvaluation.
「Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul chatting warmly with ROTC cadets at Dickinson College」
That was the caption under the photo Yura had said came out well.
Dickinson College, like the U.S. Army War College, was located in Carlisle, and it was only about two kilometers away, making it easy for Gyeoul to visit. Thanks to that, he had already gone twice and had even trained together with the prospective officers.
The local press regarded this as a de facto act of donation.
After receiving the newspaper back, Wang Kechai raised a question.
“But if people who worked in government go around doing this, don’t they get criticized a lot? It looks like they earn money too easily. Ordinary people are bound to see it negatively... and it doesn’t seem like money paid purely for the lectures themselves either...”
At those words, the expressions of those who had actually earned money through improper means turned strange. They were the other platoon leaders of Bravo Company: Sun Xian, Li Ailing, Liu Jianchao, and the others. In the past, they might have thought such things were only natural, but now it was likely nothing more than a past they wanted to erase. Their sense of belonging had been replaced. No, the change had become possible precisely because they had found a new sense of belonging.
Yura nodded.
“Right. As far as I know, this kind of thing gets quite a lot of criticism. Not all of it, of course, but like you said, there must be cases where lobbying is the goal more than the lecture itself. I guess you could see it as a kind of revolving-door privilege.”
“A business selling connections and influence. Then it wouldn’t be entirely good for the battalion commander either.”
“Dummy. Our commander is the exception. How much has he donated so far? And even if he did earn money that way, he’s the type to spend it all helping other people in the end.”
After scolding Wang Kechai, Yura looked at Gyeoul as if to ask, Right? There was faith in that look, as if it were only natural. Human trust. Gyeoul merely shrugged and laughed lightly.
Yura and the other frontline officers of the battalion had followed Gyeoul to the U.S. Army War College because they, too, were part of the local-commissioned officer qualification maintenance program. There were differences depending on rank, though. Even though they had arrived a month later than Gyeoul, they were each scheduled to return two or three months earlier.
Ensign Tatarra of Charlie Company asked.
“Speaking of donations, does Lieutenant Lee still play that game these days?”
“That game? Ah, yeah. I’d stopped for a while, but I heard the commander’s additional promotion had been unlocked, so I started again.”
Gyeoul wondered what on earth that meant, but after listening more closely, it turned out to be the quarantine war mobile game Yura had once shown him on a Net Warrior terminal.
But something still did not add up.
“What does donating have to do with a game?”
Yura smiled and answered Gyeoul’s puzzled question.
“The amount you spend there is treated as a payment into the defense donation fund. You can even deduct it as a donation when you file your taxes.”
“...”
Thinking it over, it was strange for paid content to exist inside works of the U.S. government, which fell under public ownership, or public domain. But if that money went into the defense donation fund, there was no room to call it illegal. Gyeoul found the Department of Defense’s business sense truly impressive...
“Your entree is here.”
The waitress brought over plates of appetizers on a cart. It was a meal Gyeoul was buying them to wish them well in their education. The Carlisle area was not especially busy, so finding a suitable place had been difficult, but they had managed to find a decent restaurant in the nearby city of Harrisburg. The view of the Susquehanna River flowing outside the window created a pleasant atmosphere.
“Enjoy your meal.”
The waitress could not take her eyes off Gyeoul until the moment she turned away.
At the center of the appetizer was a small, thick halibut steak. The bones had been cleanly removed, the outside seared until crisp, then it had been topped with sliced ham made from a whole aged pork hind leg and served with orzo pasta containing tender crab meat and corn.
“Oh, that looks good. Thank you for the meal.”
Starting with Yura, the other officers each gave a word of thanks and began eating.
‘Everything tastes good to me, but I wonder how it is for everyone else.’
Fortunately, they did not seem to be forcing themselves to pretend it tasted good just because Gyeoul was paying.
In the conversations that continued here and there, Yura showed a natural presence as the second-ranking person at the table. A restrained confidence showed in the way she dealt with subordinates in rank.
It had been the same when she had just become a company commander, before Gyeoul came here. At the brief ceremony where she gave her inaugural speech, Yura had been stern from the start.
“I don’t want to start with unpleasant words the moment I become company commander, but I still have to say this. You’ve all been getting too lax lately, haven’t you?”
At her level, she did not need to raise her voice to make the soldiers tense.
“I know the fighting we went through was terribly hard, and I understand that thinking of dead comrades sometimes makes you feel low. You must have nightmares often too. I do as well. You deserve rest, and you deserve compensation. But that doesn’t mean you can act recklessly like people who have already lived out their lives. It doesn’t.”
Emphasizing the point through repetition, Yura met the soldiers’ eyes for a moment.
“I won’t name anyone. But I’m sure some of you know exactly who I’m talking about.”
When he checked later, it seemed there had been a soldier who had used drugs. Where and how that soldier had gotten cocaine that was no longer even being produced, he had no idea. After Gyeoul asked repeatedly, Yura reluctantly told him the truth and asked him to leave the punishment to her.
“Our company, and our battalion, are receiving many people’s expectations and attention. Do I need to explain how precious and valuable this goodwill is?”
The company members answered in one voice that she did not.
“If something is hard, lean on me. Compared to the Little Captain, I’m nobody, but as your direct superior, I should still be able to do at least that much for you. I’m not someone you can’t trust, am I?”
Once again, the company members answered in one voice that she was not.
“I’m asking you. Don’t disappoint me, the battalion commander, or all the people watching you. If my hair starts falling out, I will personally rip out the hair of whoever made me that way.”
Perhaps taking it as a joke meant to ease the stiff atmosphere, a few soldiers let out small laughs at that plain finish. Yura smiled after them.
“You’re laughing?”
“...”
She had meant it.
Even after Jin-seok stepped down, Alpha Company’s commander still filled the role of senior company commander within the battalion. The other existing company commanders had also all been confirmed for promotion to Captain, but at the same time, they were either having their posts changed or being moved to other units.
Judging from the current situation, Yura seemed to have no trouble handling her role.
“How is everyone finding the education?”
When Gyeoul asked, the refugee-born officers sighed one after another, as if exaggerating how hard it was.
“It isn’t easy.”
Tatarra spoke, and Liu Jianchao added to it.
“At first, I thought of it lightly. I thought we only had to fulfill the promotion requirements...”
“And?”
“Our battalion has its reputation to think about, so wouldn’t mediocre grades be embarrassing? We realized late that if we didn’t want people to think the 201st Independent Battalion was nothing without Lieutenant Colonel Han Gyeoul, we really had to throw ourselves into it with everything we had.”
Although they did not usually get along very well, Li Ailing also frowned and expressed serious agreement. Face, fate, and favor were the three goddesses who ruled the Chinese, and the old saying that face was foremost among them still seemed to hold true.
Of course, the degree differed, but the other officers nodded as well.
Yura poked at her leftover sirloin filet and muttered.
“The commander probably doesn’t have that worry at all...”
Gyeoul only smiled awkwardly and said nothing more.
‘It’s true that the battalion’s image is important.’
It was fortunate that everyone was strengthening their resolve on their own.
The sagging mood changed when the subject of Jin-seok came up.
“「Prayer for Ppakyong」, huh. Captain Park was so angry.”
Ensign Hironobu said it with a chuckle.
Prayer for Ppakyong had started as a fundraising campaign that literally prayed for Jin-seok’s recovery. It had begun when a reporter’s camera caught Jin-seok’s change. Jin-seok had simply shaved his head in a fit of anger, but people who had no way of knowing that misunderstood it as Jin-seok suffering serious aftereffects from radiation exposure.
As one of Gyeoul’s close aides and a key officer of the 201st Independent Battalion, Jin-seok had been well-known since the independent company days, so the citizens’ misunderstanding did not end as just a misunderstanding.
Even Gyeoul could only laugh helplessly at the incident.
“Well, it worked out in the end. They said the donations would be delivered to other soldiers who had been exposed to radiation. How much was it, three hundred thirty thousand dollars?”
Tatarra corrected him.
“Three hundred forty thousand dollars. I heard it was collected in only three days.”
While laughing with his subordinate officers, Gyeoul thought about the weight of that goodwill. The citizens’ support was the freedom of action given to Gyeoul. That freedom was more than generous for one individual, but it was still not enough to contain everything Gyeoul wanted to hold.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
