Title: Inventions, Invective, and Potential
Fandom: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty (mods: use the Kdrama category tag)
Rating: G-rated
Length: 2,530 words
Notes: Thanks to my partner, Andrew, for beta.
Tags: Jang Chun-Saeng (the inventor) & Yeon Ji-Young (the cook), Jang Chun-Saeng (the inventor) & Yi Heon (the king), Inventions, References to Time Travel, Political Upheaval, Yi Heon needs a good scolding, Missing Scene
Summary:





Jang Chun-Saeng went over the pressure cooker design with Cook Yeon one more time before she left. It was a brilliant concept. It would work! But as she explained using unfamiliar words, her confidence tickled his suspicion. This wasn’t just theory. She must have seen a prototype. “Who really drew these plans? Are they from the Ming? I’m not stealing another inventor’s work!”

For the first time, she fell silent. A sigh. “I know you don’t believe me, but I promise you, what I said before is true—I’m from the future. This appliance is super common in five hundred years’ time. There are factories making hundreds every day. The original idea was conceived by a French physicist, a hundred and fifty years from now. If you make it, you really won’t be stealing from your peers.”

“Are you a shaman?” Chun-Saeng had met plenty of people who maintained they could see the future, but none who claimed to be from there. And Cook Yeon didn’t seem mad, but she was strange. Foreign-seeming, what with the authoritative way she talked to him, a stranger— But that didn’t prove anything.

It was impossible to travel through time. The hours were set in their course, and there was no way to skip forwards or backwards. The deadline for making the pressure cooker was already tight, but he couldn’t just let this matter drop—he had to test her. “How did you travel here, then?”

“I don’t know! It wasn’t on purpose! I know it makes no sense—I barely believe it myself—but there is a magic book.”

Her eyes were wide and candid, but magic? Chun-Saeng scoffed inwardly. What nonsense! Fire was fire, iron was iron. There was no need for gods or celestial intervention. On the other hand, the pressure cooker design was proof of something. Chun-Saeng was sure he knew every inventor in Joseon, and he was the only one working in iron. Either there was a new arrival from a foreign land, or—Cook Yeon really had drawn the plans herself. Extrapolated them from her own experience.

It was almost credible: of all the people he’d met in his life, she alone had a mind that could understand something like this well enough to reproduce it from memory. But even if she were right about the time travel, she could be wrong about the magic. Maybe natural forces had brought her here. “Tell me exactly what happened when you left the future.”

“I was on an aeroplane—” She caught his quizzical glance and clarified. “A flying machine. And I went into the bathroom—”

“After you landed?”

“No, during the flight. There are bathrooms on aeroplanes.”

This seemed an unlikely extravagance; who would think of such a thing? Chun-Saeng had contemplated flight, of course, but never the amenities that might be needed while up in the sky. He quashed his scepticism and made a mental note. “What else?”

“I was cleaning coffee off an antique book, Mangunrok. I ran water into the basin, and I read some words out loud. The book began to glow. The bathroom lights flickered. The plane was shaking like it was being torn apart—I thought we were going to crash, I was going to die. And then there were glowing lights all around me, and I fell a long, long way and landed back in the past, in the king’s hunting ground. I had no idea what had happened. But it’s no use—I lost Mangunrok, so I can’t get back.”

“You want to go back?” Chun-Saeng looked once more at the design she, a woman, had brought him. “Is the future that much better than the present?”

“It’s not perfect,” she said, quickly. “In some ways, it’s worse. But people have choices and modern conveniences. There’s no king. The government is chosen by the people. Everyone goes to school and learns about your uncle’s inventions. We have phones and the internet—communication devices. You can talk to people on the other side of the world. And cooking has advanced enormously. It’s very international now. I mean, then. Also, there are tampons.”

“Tampons?”

She shook her head. “Most importantly, my father is there. I have to go back to him. Why, Teacher Jang, you don’t think you could help me?”

“Maybe.”

She was pitiful in her desperation, and the notion of a kingless future was filling his stomach with curiosity. He’d like to see that for himself. “Tell me again how it happened—is there any detail you’ve left out? Nothing you’ve said explains how you could have been flung so far.”

“Nothing.” She sighed and rubbed her brow. Then she looked up, frowning. “Oh, there was a solar eclipse that day. But that wouldn’t have—”

“Heavenly intervention,” said Chun-Saeng, at once satisfied with the explanation and rather annoyed. It made sense the heavens would have had a hand in it, but he himself preferred to discount their influence. Why should the stars care about one person over another? Still, when it came to something as dramatic as being torn from one’s own time and thrust counter to the momentum of the universe, perhaps assistance from celestial bodies was necessary. That might be the only way to break the grip of chronological inertia. Reflexively, he squinted into the sun, then closed his eyes and made some mental calculations. “It should be easier for you to return, since you won’t be fighting the forward flow of time.”

“Then—” Her eyes were wide with hope. “Can you get me home?”

“I have some ideas.” Untested half-theories based on water currents, but it would be intriguing to test and refine them. For now, though, they had other work to do. He tapped her blueprint. “Didn’t you say this was urgent?”

“Oh yes. Yes, of course.” Her attention shifted back easily, into enthusiasm for the project. She truly did love cooking—it was written all over her. You could taste it in the food she made, too: that Dongnae-style pajeon had been the best of Chun-Saeong’s life.

He wanted to help her. He would have to swallow his pride and ask the local shaman if she had heard of this Mangunrok.



Two months later…

After joining with the cooks and others still loyal to the deposed king to take back the palace, Chun-Saeng returned alone to his home. It was the middle of the night. He was tired and aching all over, but invigorated by victory. His sututan had proven themselves, his name would go down in history, and now the palace was at peace. Hopefully, this would spread to the rest of the land, and something would finally be done by the nobles to alleviate the famine. It was about time!

For himself, the only meal he wanted right now was a bowl of rice puffs, and the only peace he wanted was his bed.

But when he opened his gate, a ragged, ghostly figure was pacing his yard in the moonlight. Chun-Saeng gasped and pulled the secret rope which tripped a fuse and, via a series of mechanisms, eventually lit a candle on the house porch.

Meanwhile, the figure rushed up to him and said, rudely, “I need your help!”

Not a ghost. It was the deposed king. The tyrant, who had come here before, with Cook Yeon, pretending to be a royal inspector.

Chun-Saeng snatched the last sututan from his belt and raised it threateningly, but the king cleared his throat and said, politely this time, “Cook Yeon is gone. I need to find her. Help me—please.”

Chun-Saeng lowered his grenade. “Gone where? You went to rescue her from that scoundrel, Prince Jesan. Does he still have her, or has someone else taken her now?”

“Someone else.” The king’s voice broke. “Mangunrok.”

A strange mechanism in Chun-Saeng’s chest flipped: doubt to belief. Until now, a part of him hadn’t truly credited the cook’s story, had been sure there must be another explanation. But the king’s words could only mean one thing. “She’s gone back to her own time.”

“You know about Mangunrok?” The king took a step forward. “Then help me go to her. There’s no one else I can ask.”

“Help you bring her back against her will? Never.”

He shook his head. “I just need to find her.”

He was wounded, smeared with dirt and gunpowder, his clothes torn, his eyes hollow and reddened. A far cry from the snooty noble who had first pushed his way into Chun-Saeng’s yard. But the transformation was only skin deep. “You haven’t even asked if we took back the palace.”

The king straightened, a veil of hauteur descending. “I have confidence in my people. What’s more, you’re here. If you hadn’t won, you’d be dead.”

“I could have run away.” Chun-Saeng glared. “The nation’s governance is in turmoil, Prince Jesan is out of control, and you want to go haring off after your girlfriend. Again.”

“My uncle is dead.” The king raised a bloodied hand. “He was a traitor, and he paid the price.”

“A traitor and a scumbag,” agreed Chun-Saeng, but anger still burned in his tired shoulders and empty belly, and he couldn’t tamp it down. “But he couldn’t have been any worse than you. You’ve let the people starve, you’ve stolen their daughters. It makes no difference who’s on the throne—no one inside the palace walls cares about the people. No one makes any effort to help.”

“How dare you!” The king’s bloodstained hand flew to the his sword hilt. Rage flared in his eyes.

In answer, Chun-Saeng tightened his grip on the last sututan. He could throw it. He’d helped defeat one tyrant today—he could manage another. No one would ever know. Yi Heon would disappear like Cook Yeon. Everyone would assume they’d run off together. Chun-Saeng wanted to do it. “You came here demanding my help, but when have you ever helped anyone? When have you considered a single other person’s needs but your own?”

“I did—” The king was breathing hard, his knuckles white on the hilt, but he hadn’t drawn his sword. “With Cook Yeon.”

Chun-Saeng huffed. “Pure selfishness. Why do I even bother with you palace types?”

“I love her,” said the king, stiffly. He clearly resented the need to say it aloud to a peasant.

“Your job was to love the country,” shouted Chun-Saeng, suddenly furious beyond reason. He wanted to smack this royal son of a bitch. He wheeled away towards the porch and stashed his sututan safely away before he blew the man up—or got his own neck severed.

He needed a drink. He needed many. After the first flush of excitement he hadn’t enjoyed battle. He’d come close to losing an arm—and even villains had families who would grieve them. He took a deep breath, then another, and forced his heart to slow. He was home. He sat down. It was good to be here, on his humble, creaking porch in sight of his tools and his work. To be alone—nearly.

He leaned across to the corner, poured himself a bowl of makgeolli and gulped it down. The king, who Cook Yeon had cared for and protected, just stood and watched.

Chun-Saeng scowled. “If you’re not going to leave me in peace, do you want a drink?”

The king hesitated. He was probably used to having some poor sod taste everything that passed his lips for fear of poison and treachery. But the treachery had been quelled tonight. He came over, took a graceful seat on the edge of the porch, and released his sword hilt to extend an imperious hand.

Chun-Saeng poured a bowl, placed it on the porch within the king’s reach, and then refilled his own vessel. Cradling his drink, he stared up into the dark trees. He was very conscious of the space between them, but he didn’t move closer. The king was not his responsibility. Chun-Saeng didn’t have any responsibilities—he’d made sure of that.

Rain began to patter onto the cool dirt of his yard and whisper on the roof. The trees rustled with it. Chun-Saeng’s heart gradually unknotted. “I wish Cook Yeon were here to cook pajeon.”

The king said nothing. After a moment, he sniffed—not the arrogant sniff of a lord, but the wet sniff of someone trying not to cry. After all, he was barely more than a youth.

And now there was another child king, and history was doomed to repeat itself. Chun-Saeng took a gulp of wine, and said, “Your brother had been forced onto the throne.”

Still the king didn’t reply. Did he already know, or was he so lost in self-pity he didn’t care?

Chun-Saeng sighed and tried again. “That kid—he must be terrified.”

“His mother will protect him.”

The words were indifferent, the king’s face obscured by shadow. And Chun-Saeng was annoyed past caring. He used the only leverage he had. “Six months. Clear the rot from the palace, find your brother some tutors of good conscience, tutors who care about the people. Make sure the new king is protected and on the right track. Do all that, and come back at Chuseok. Then I’ll help you.”

The king’s face was a pale blur, eyes wide and dark with hope. “Promise me.”

“I’m not a magician,” snapped Chun-Saeng. “I promise to try. Why wouldn’t I? The kingdom will be better off without you. But I can’t do it now—it will take me six months at least to arrange, and then we’d have to wait for an eclipse. Besides, without Mangunrok, there’s not much I can really do.” He was unmaking his own argument, undermining his leverage. He could sense the king biting back threats and orders, but Chun-Saeng was too tired to deceive. “No, I was wrong, I can’t help you. So just go away and make yourself useful.”

“Mangunrok.” The king fished in sleeve and pulled out a scrap of paper. “This page was torn from the book as Cook Yeon left.”

Chun-Saeng snatched it from his hands, exasperated. “Well, why didn’t you say so before?!”

The paper felt completely ordinary, but there must be power in it—the potency of great feeling. Perhaps, with some engineering, enough power to propel a person forward through time.

Perhaps even two people.

A spark of excitement, of adventure flared to life inside Chun-Saeng. Plans bloomed in his head, and his weariness fell away. He needed to be alone to think out how all the pieces would need to fit together. Did he really have to install a bathroom on his glider, or would a bowl of water be enough? He took another gulp of makgeolli and looked sideways at the king.

“Come now, we’ll both do our best,” he said. “I’ll do it for Cook Yeon’s sake. And you do your part—no rampaging, no purges.”

The king scowled. “If I come back at Chuseok, you will still be here.”

Chun-Saeng’s heart beat hard. He could do this. There was a chance he might see that incredible pressure cooker workshop with his very own eyes. “I promise.”



END