Arthur Gore, the 3rd Earl of Arran, had never imagined he would feel a happiness like this in the twilight of his life.
To be nearing seventy and only now discovering he had a late-born son… it was, honestly, a little unbecoming.
Of course, the boy hadn't been born now—it had happened about ten years ago—but even then, Arthur had been pushing sixty.
If people found out, they might laugh and say the old man still had plenty of vigor.
To tell the truth, until he saw the child with his own eyes, Arthur had agonized over it to the very end.
At the point when he'd spent over sixty years without an heir, it was practically half-decided already: the title would pass to a nephew.
If he dragged in a child and recognized him as his son—worse, a bastard—he didn't need a prophet to foresee the storm it would cause.
A dying old man, counting the days until the coffin, choosing now to set the whole house ablaze?
Wouldn't it be better to let the title pass quietly to the nephew… and simply give the child enough wealth to live comfortably?
He'd turned the thought over a hundred ways.
But the instant he saw the boy, all such noise melted away like snow under sunlight.
—I'll study hard and become a wonderful noble like you, Father!
A child who had surely never heard English in his life—how much practice had it taken for him to say that?
And to insist that he would greet his father in his own words… to have studied just for that.
How could a father not be moved?
Arthur wanted to give the boy everything.
No—even that wasn't enough.
He wanted to live longer. Long enough for Killian to stand fully on his own, and longer still to expand the house's wealth and influence.
So his son could live with his head held high, and his footsteps heavy wherever he walked.
He had once found it strange—how his friends would lose all reason whenever they spoke of their children.
Now he understood.
Perhaps because it was a late-born son, at an age where "grandson" would've made more sense.
No exaggeration—Arthur felt as if he could place the boy in his eye and still not feel pain.
"James," he said at last, "I don't think I can judge anything objectively right now. You've observed the boy far longer than I have. Tell me plainly. What happened on the journey?"
He had already sent the child upstairs to rest—after such travel, he would be exhausted.
Now, in the garden, Arthur poured wine and listened to James.
"My lord," James began carefully, "you know I'm not a man who invents stories just to please you. So I will say this without a shred of exaggeration: the young master is at minimum a prodigy—perhaps even a genius."
"Heh. Heh-heh…" Arthur laughed, delighted. "So I wasn't wrong? Even speaking to him briefly, I felt it—something extraordinary. And to greet me in English, however clumsily, with barely any learning…"
"It isn't only English," James continued. "He claims fluency in Qing speech, and even in the language of the Wa—Japan—far south of Joseon. And not through formal instruction. He learned it by listening."
"A ten-year-old fluent in three languages?" Arthur frowned. "Come now. Even if he's my son, that's too much."
"I thought so too," James admitted. "But he truly is highly proficient in Qing speech. In conversation, he was at my level—or perhaps even better."
Arthur's mouth fell open.
He had assumed his son wouldn't be foolish.
But this was beyond imagination.
To speak not one, but two foreign tongues fluently, a child would normally need years of education from early childhood.
If he'd accomplished it alone, then "talent" didn't begin to cover it.
"Three languages… no." Arthur's eyes gleamed. "He'll learn English too. That makes four languages at ten. I never even considered this—should I raise him as a diplomat?"
"From the perspective of the future," James said, "a noble who can speak Asian languages will have enormous value. Some aristocrats can speak Qing, yes—but most people don't even recognize the other two nations as real."
"Exactly," Arthur said, immediately energized. "Then start looking for tutors tomorrow. If Killian truly is exceptional, then as his father I must create a proper environment. Once he has the basics, I'll lay the foundation for entrance into the finest school."
"The finest school…" James hesitated. "My lord—are you planning to send him to a public school?"
In Britain, "public school" was a misleading term.
It didn't mean a government school—it meant the elite private academies where the sons of the upper class were educated together.
Some had been ordinary in their earliest years.
But the great public schools of the Empire now stood among the finest institutions in the world.
Not only the children of wealthy families, but the heirs of high nobility studied there.
"Yes," Arthur said without hesitation. "Eton, Harrow, Winchester—I don't care which. If I had to choose, Eton appeals to me."
"My lord," James replied carefully, "you know how few boys Eton admits in a year. Even if the young master begins studying now, can he truly pass? I worry we may only burden him with pressure."
"Then we'll appoint tutors and listen to their judgment," Arthur said firmly. "If they say he's not ready, we can choose another path. No harm done."
Killian had been in London less than a day.
To speak of Eton already was, Arthur knew, excessive.
Still, he couldn't help himself.
Of course he would never let it become a weight on the boy's shoulders.
But if—if—Killian could enter Eton or Harrow, and graduate with distinction…
then even if relatives protested, passing the title to him would become far easier.
So the old earl prayed—again and again—that James's assessment would prove true.
That night, the wine tasted strangely sweet.
And after finishing an entire bottle, Arthur went to bed feeling happier than he had in decades.
After a few days in London, I began to understand what kind of place this era's England truly was.
People threw phrases around—the age of the Industrial Revolution, the opening of capitalism—until they became clichés.
But standing in the middle of it?
This wasn't a cliché.
This was madness.
If I exaggerated slightly, yesterday's street and today's street looked different—because everything was changing at speed.
People flooded into the city like a tide. Roads expanded constantly. Infrastructure was rearranged. New jobs sprouted in proportion.
Wake up and there's a new factory.
Go anywhere and workers overflow the streets.
Even with my modern memories still sharp, after years of crawling through Joseon, London looked like another world.
"Young master," James said as we walked, "this is Soho. It used to be favored by nobles, but most have moved to places like Mayfair. Now it's a common district. It may be the most densely populated area near London."
"It's… packed."
"Many people of poor quality will be here," James warned. "Don't stray from us. Normally we should ride a carriage and only visit clean places, but you insisted on seeing the city's corners…"
"I'm going to live here," I said lightly. "I have to see what the city really looks like. Besides, in Joseon, I saw streets far worse than this. Don't worry."
I spotted women who were clearly prostitutes moving behind music halls and theatres.
James shifted his body slightly, trying to block my view.
He was overreacting.
I was keeping to the role of a ten-year-old boy, and I wasn't even looking.
…Well, maybe I glanced once.
"That aside," I asked, "James, do you know London's population right now?"
"It increases so rapidly no one can say precisely," he answered. "I saw an article saying it surpassed one million some time ago. Perhaps it's around one and a half million now."
"Wow. No wonder there are so many people."
I remembered hearing that Hanyang's population was under two hundred thousand.
The gap was absurd.
Then again, given how quickly London's capital and industrial market were maturing, it made sense that people were being pulled in like iron filings to a magnet.
But explosive population growth always brought side effects.
London wasn't exempt.
"Perhaps we should take the carriage and go elsewhere soon," James suggested. "If we go that way, there's Chelsea—far more beautiful. We can look around there instead."
"Alright," I said. "Just a little more, then we move."
The city's infrastructure couldn't keep up.
Pollution, disease, poverty—signs of them were everywhere.
And when you combined that with the early industrial era's hopelessly crude systems, the gap between rich and poor became brutally visible.
Worse, technology and markets were growing so fast that law couldn't keep pace.
It was a jungle.
A raw, early capitalism where the law of the strong applied without apology.
And that—
that was exactly where I wanted to be.
I needed to see, firsthand, how deeply these "benefits of civilization" had entered the lives of ordinary people.
How far financial services had spread.
Which class could use them freely, and which class could not.
Chelsea could wait.
You could walk Chelsea a hundred times and learn only that London had many rich people and that rich people lived richly.
One rule I'd kept in my modern life—no matter what kind of con man I was:
I never took money from the innocent.
Poor or rich didn't matter.
The poor weren't automatically good, and the rich weren't automatically evil.
The only thing that mattered was whether a person had ever stolen from others through crooked means.
If someone had dirty money, taking it from them had two benefits:
One—less risk of police pursuit.
Two—no need for guilt.
In Joseon, I couldn't use that principle at all.
So the question was:
Could I use it in nineteenth-century London?
I didn't need long to find the answer.
"Someone—someone help me! This bastard stole my money!"
"Stole what?" a man barked back. "You handed it over yourself. If you're wronged, report it to the police. Stop interfering with business."
"You tricked me into giving it!" the victim shouted. "That's a year of my life—fifteen hours a day—my money!"
"Tricked you?" The man sneered. "Listen to yourself—spreading slander that could cause misunderstandings. So you aren't a customer—you're just a malicious pest. Alright. Boys—our customer doesn't seem to understand. Take him somewhere and explain it kindly. Even the police said it's legal, and still there are fools like this."
"AAAAH! Let go! Let go! My money—give me my money back!"
The man was dragged away by several strong-bodied thugs, screaming until his voice tore.
No one lifted a hand to help him.
Walk these crowded streets long enough and you'd see scenes like this.
Not constantly—but often.
This was already the third time I'd seen it in the last three days.
Once a day, on average.
James hurried me into the carriage, as if afraid I'd see more.
It was cruel.
But it was reality.
In a society where capital accumulated and finance developed, fraud would always exist.
And that meant—
food.
Plenty of it.
In that moment, a suspicion that had been hovering at the edge of my mind hardened into certainty.
There was a phrase for this, wasn't there?
Half water, half fish.
My mouth watered.
This place…
was overflowing.