Han Seorin Counted the Hammer Blows Before Entering the Workshop

Han Seorin counted the hammer blows before she stepped into the workshop.

Three heats and one strike. The bellows were running but the iron pile hadn't shrunk. On the receipt sheet by the door, ten temporary common screws were listed, and the finished goods column was entirely empty.

She didn't set the sack of silver coins on the workbench. She didn't put it on the floor either. She held it against her chest and read the empty column first.

"A day's wages, a broken blade, wasted iron. So who pays for those?"

The quartermaster officer answered.

"The army agreed to compensate for test losses."

"When?"

"Once the specification is formally adopted."

Seorin closed the ledger.

"That's the most expensive lie I've heard. Paying for today's broken blade after adoption."

Baek Mujeong brought over the scratched-up dimension sheet. The groove angle and depth columns had been scraped away with a knife tip.

"This first."

"Who erased it?"

No one answered.

Seorin didn't go looking for the culprit. She read what remained beneath the erased columns. Three application sites. Ten prototypes. Ten round trips. Compensation for broken blades. The return time for the comparison guns. There were plenty of conditions for passing the test, but not a single line for the share owed to the person who supplied those conditions.

"What do you get for making the dimensions public?"

The old craftsman laughed.

"The word that you were patriotic."

"That's not a form of payment."

The laughter cut short.

Seorin opened the sack. She lined up twenty silver coins in five rows. The craftsmen's eyes went not to the money but to the gaps between the rows.

"First, today's test wages. Second, broken tools and wasted iron. Third, a fair usage fee every time the public dimensions are used. Fourth, a transition period for existing orders cut off because of the new specification. Fifth, treatment for the injured and wages for their days of rest."

The quartermaster officer spoke.

"You're saying we pay every single time for a dimension that's set once?"

"Does the hand only work once because the design is copied once?"

"This is a specification the state will use."

"Then write the state down as the one who pays."

Seorin split the paper into five sheets and put the silver back into the sack.

"Not one coin comes out until the conditions are written down."

In the back, a hammer stopped. Even the slow work came to a complete halt.

Mujeong asked.

"And the guns?"

"Are you going to leave the workshop empty tomorrow just to get ten guns today?"

"The city gate is waiting."

"The craftsmen's households are waiting for their meals too."

There was black grease on Mujeong's fingers. Yesterday he'd thrown away the test sheet for his own method. But it didn't say what a person left holding a discarded tool was supposed to eat while learning the new one.

Seorin handed back the test sheet he'd made.

"You wrote down the margin of error. Why didn't you write down the wages?"

Mujeong had no answer.

Seokbeom stood in a corner of the workshop holding his mentor's old die. It fit none of the eleven specifications. The three marks on the handle had gone faint in the morning light.

Seorin asked.

"How many orders were you filling with that?"

"Eight this month."

"And if you switch to the new specification?"

"I'd have to buy a whole new mold."

"How much?"

Seokbeom looked at his mentor. The old craftsman kept his mouth shut. Another craftsman called out a number instead, and a third said it was double that. The same tool had different purchase routes and different collateral behind it.

Seorin wrote down neither the lowest price nor the highest. She noted that it would be fixed once the three men actually brought their invoices and credit ledgers.

"Why leave a column that says unknown?" the officer asked.

"If you write an unknown price down as cheap, someone pays the difference with their body."

She called the workers out into the yard. Four craftsmen, six apprentices, two children who worked the bellows. People who stood to gain from the public dimensions and people who stood to lose were all mixed together.

"Choose one representative."

The old craftsman stepped forward.

"I'll speak."

Behind him, a left handed apprentice shook his head. It was the child whose groove had come out crooked the day before, because the new female thread jig only fit right handed apprentices.

"He'll only speak about his own mentor's tool prices."

The yard went quiet.

Seorin took no side.

"One craftsman, one apprentice, one person in charge of the fire and hauling. The three of you sign. If two of the three object, publication is held back."

Mujeong lifted his head.

"Even the dimensions I already passed?"

"Yes."

"I'm the one responsible."

"That's exactly why the person responsible doesn't get to publish alone."

At that, the apprentices stirred before the craftsmen did. Mujeong started to object, then closed his mouth. Hiding your own hand skill alone and publishing someone else's hand skill alone only differed in direction.

Seokbeom raised his hand.

"If we withhold something without my mentor's consent, repairs will be delayed."

"Whoever withholds it writes down the reason and a date to review it again. It's not a right to hide it forever."

"And if the guns run short before that date?"

With Park Sangho absent, the quartermaster officer tried to answer for the number of guns at the gate. Seorin stopped him.

"The person who brought the actual available count should be the one to say it. Not the projected number."

The officer sent a soldier to recount the returned comparison guns and the number awaiting repair.

Choosing the representatives took a full watch. The craftsmen wanted it decided by number of tools, the apprentices wanted it decided by headcount. Someone even said the bellows children weren't qualified to have a vote at all.

Seorin waited with the sack of silver coins on her knees. If the ones in a hurry decided the rules first, money would end up buying the vote.

In the end, the craftsmen's representative wasn't the old craftsman but a middle aged craftsman who had been the first to hand over his own dimension ledger. The apprentices chose Seokbeom. For hauling and fire, they put forward the adult hauler who traded shifts with the fourteen year old bellows child, instead of the child himself. The child got no vote, but Seorin wrote in a separate right to testify about accidents.

Seokbeom asked.

"Only a say in testimony, no vote?"

Seorin paused with her pen.

On the back of the fourteen year old's left hand was an old burn scar. No one had ever asked whether it came from being late to pump the bellows or from something at home.

"In accidents and work stoppages, whoever speaks up first gets priority. Age is not subtracted."

Separately from the representative vote, she wrote that anyone who saw danger could put out the fire and hang the red tag, regardless of who they were. If false stoppages became repeated, the three representatives would review it, but Mujeong alone could not punish anyone.

Mujeong looked at that clause for a long time.

"Even if I say to raise the fire again?"

"The injured hand comes first."

He asked the fourteen year old.

"That burn, here?"

The child nodded.

Mujeong tore off the first line of his own test sheet. Next to the column that only read "bellows, three times," he wrote the child's name and the day of the injury. There was no treatment record. No days off.

"That's my margin of error."

It was a short line. The child couldn't answer, and hid the back of his hand inside his sleeve.

Setting the fair usage fee took longer than the accident clause. The craftsmen wanted one silver coin for every screw made, while the officer wanted to settle it once, with a single handover of the dimension sheet.

Seorin set one temporary screw on the scale plate.

"How many times do you pay for the iron?"

"Every time one is made."

"And the charcoal?"

"Every time one is made."

"But the process itself is paid for only once?"

The officer tapped the dimension sheet.

"Knowledge doesn't wear down."

Seokbeom set his mentor's die on the other side of the scale.

"This has worn down."

The edge really was dull. While learning the new specification, existing orders had been delayed, and iron and charcoal had gone into cutting the test pieces. Seorin split the payment between a per unit share and a one time fee for the initial disclosure of the dimensions. The disclosure fee would go toward the new tool costs confirmed by invoice, and the per unit fee would be set aside for retraining time and tool repair.

"What if someone hides how many they used?" the hauling representative asked.

Seorin created a blank comparison column between the quartermaster's receipt sheet and the workshop's outgoing sheet. Money wouldn't be released on either number alone, only on the actual matched quantity that went out through the city gate. That also blocked a structure where a craftsman could earn more by making more defective pieces.

The craftsmen's representative asked.

"What if the office hands the dimensions to another workshop?"

"That workshop uses the same outgoing sheet."

"And if they copy it in secret?"

"Payment on the next round of army supplies stops. My own trading house won't carry their shipments either."

Seorin's money alone couldn't bind the entire state. She wrote that limit into the contract as well. This clause applies only to her own trading house, this workshop, and the army supplies signed today. It made no promise to automatically bind any other government office.

"Isn't that a half contract, then?"

"It's a half we can actually keep. That's worth more than a whole we can't."

The restriction on layoffs ran into trouble right away too. The craftsmen asked how they were supposed to pay wages with no work coming in, and the apprentices said if they got thrown out before even learning the new jig, the standard would end up changing only for the mentors.

Seorin wrote down thirty days. She couldn't guarantee full existing wages for that whole period. Instead, retraining days would be paid at the same rate as test wages, and on days when work dropped and people rested, half would come from the tool transition reserve fund. If that wasn't enough, she made public what share the craftsmen, the quartermaster, and the trading house would each contribute.

No one was satisfied. So Seorin didn't erase the line.

Seorin read the contract aloud.

Two of the three representatives must agree before disclosure. No apprentice will be dismissed within thirty days on grounds of the new specification. Accident treatment costs will be paid before any ruling on liability.

The officer balked at the last clause.

"You pay before you even know who's liable?"

"Blood doesn't wait for a ruling."

"If it turns out false, get it back. Just don't delay the treatment."

Seorin took out ten silver coins. Advance payment for test wages, broken blades, and wasted iron. She didn't hand the money to Mujeong. She put it in a box the three representatives would lock together. Since a single key couldn't be split three ways, she had three separate locks fitted.

The craftsmen's representative locked the first, Seokbeom the second, and the hauling representative the third.

The remaining ten coins stayed in Seorin's sack.

"Why release only half?" the officer asked.

"The copies of the labor contract and the accident compensation ledger haven't come through yet."

"We need ten made today."

"You've been given today's money. The second payment comes after the names of the people involved are written down."

The scratched dimension sheet went back up on the wall. This time a paper cover was fixed over the empty groove angle and depth columns. The dimensions beneath the cover would not be published until the three representatives reviewed them again. Mujeong didn't pull it off.

The bellows started moving again. The hammer rang out once, twice, three times.

But inside Seorin's sack, the remaining ten silver coins still knocked against each other.

Not a single line of the conditions for opening the second sack had been met yet.