Darapanan, Mindanao, Philippines.
Edward followed Alex out.
To check the location for the factory.
“How about we build the factory around here?”
“Build a factory?”
“Yeah. We need to make drugs.”
“Here?”
“Yeah. Isn’t this place good? The transportation’s decent, there’s plenty of water, the electricity’s stable. There are lots of farms nearby too, so it looks easy to use as cover. You don’t like it? I think it looks good.”
Edward was flustered by how Alex answered so casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Build a factory?
What kind of nonsense was that?
He had asked him to make healthy drugs, but was he perhaps confusing this with making health supplements, vitamins, or tonics? Edward was worried enough to wonder.
The place Alex pointed out as the factory site was a little ways in from the downtown area.
A place connected to roads, with reliable electricity, and water that came out as soon as you turned on the tap.
If they were really making things like health supplements, it would have been an ideal location.
But what they were making was not that sort of thing.
It was something that had to be hidden, kept secret, and secured.
Something that would cause a huge problem if anyone found out, if any word leaked out.
That was why factories were usually built as far from people as possible.
Deep in the mountains or in remote areas.
Places where no one would come and go.
The roads were controlled so that only the necessary people could enter and leave.
That was how important security was for this sort of thing.
On top of that, he had never even considered building a new factory.
To avoid arousing suspicion, they tried to use existing buildings whenever possible.
Because if someone was putting up a building in a deserted place, anyone would get curious.
They would want to know what kind of building it was.
To cut off that sort of useless curiosity,
they used abandoned factories, warehouses, farm huts, and the like to make factories.
Naturally, the workflow, hygiene, and systems were all bound to be a mess.
They could literally do no more than barely produce the drugs.
Edward had gone all over the place making drugs, but most of the setups had not been very different.
He had thought it strange that this boss asked him to make healthy drugs,
but he had never imagined they would set up a factory in a downtown area.
But this was impossible.
If even a single report came in, they would be caught right away.
There would be no time to run.
If they were in the mountains, someone would be keeping watch and would alert them if a crackdown came.
Then they would abandon the factory and flee.
But here, there was no time to escape.
With this many people around, how could they tell who was enforcement and who was an ally?
They could not build a drug factory in a place like this.
Edward spoke carefully.
“I don’t think this place will work.”
“Why? Is there a problem? The conditions seem pretty good.”
“No, the locational conditions are excellent, but wouldn’t it stand out too much? It’s much more central than I expected, and there are a lot of people passing by.”
“Then it won’t work?”
“It’s not so much that it won’t work… How should I put it? We’re in a line of business where we have to maintain a certain level of security. I think we need to pay more attention to that side of things.”
“Security?”
“Yes. Security.”
“There’s nowhere with better security than here.”
“What? With this many people here, how could the security be good?”
“Every single person here is a radar and a watchtower. Outsiders can’t come in.”
“What?”
“This is a place where only people who are thoroughly known can come and go. If a stranger comes in, they aim their guns first.”
“Where exactly is this place?”
“Here? It’s Darapanan. The rebel headquarters, too. You didn’t know?”
Edward’s face stiffened once again.
.
.
.
Edward followed Alex into a nearby office.
Alex seemed to be a bigger shot than Edward had thought.
Not only did he move through the rebel headquarters as comfortably as if it were his own home,
there were also many people who greeted Alex when they saw him.
Edward grew curious about the man named Alex.
“Come in. Now let’s talk about the details. I’ve called in the people who’ll help.”
“Yes.”
Edward followed Alex into the office.
There would probably be a few people there to help Edward and technicians to build the factory.
Building a factory was unfamiliar to him, but this kind of situation was familiar.
Wherever he went, they always assigned people like that to him.
There were already several people sitting in the office.
But they did not look young.
Most of the kids who ran errands were young.
And everyone was wearing suits.
Was this not what he had expected?
As he tilted his head, all the men in suits who were sitting down greeted Alex respectfully.
“Good day, sir.”
“Have you been well?”
“It’s been a long time, sir.”
“It’s been a while, everyone. Have you all been well?”
“Thanks to you, sir, we’ve been well. Is the gentleman beside you the one we’ll be doing business with this time?”
“Yeah. Say hello. This is Edward, who’ll be in charge of our new health sector.”
“Hello. I’m Edward.”
When Edward introduced himself, everyone looked at him with eyes full of goodwill.
Alex kindly introduced each person in the office to Edward one by one.
“This is Manager Gang Jae-ho—no, he’s a CEO now. He’s the head of the construction company that’ll build the factory for us.”
“I’m Gang Jae-ho.”
“When we’re putting up the building, if you tell him what you need, CEO Gang will take care of it and make it happen.”
“After hearing what the boss said, I looked up some related materials, but there really weren’t many open resources in that field, so I was at a loss. If you help us, it’ll be a great help. For now, I’m designing it with a pharmaceutical company factory system as the reference, so please take a look after the meeting.”
“What? Yes. Of course.”
“And this is the governor of Darapanan.”
“Hello. I’m Marco.”
“If there’s anything difficult administratively or anything that needs to be resolved, just talk to Marco. You handled the police and the military, right?”
“This is an autonomous district to begin with, so the police don’t come in here, do they? If any problem happens, I’ll handle it. You don’t need to worry.”
“The factory permit?”
“I got it approved as an agricultural and fisheries processing business.”
“Good.”
“Thank you.”
“And this is Patrick, the mayor of Zamboanga and the party leader of Akbayan ng Katarungan.”
“Good to meet you. Let’s do well together.”
“Patrick will procure raw materials, machines, equipment, and things like that. It’s not really the sort of task someone of Patrick’s standing should be doing, but he’s so capable that there’s no helping it. Right now, Patrick is the only person who can handle it. Sorry, Patrick. I’m counting on you.”
“Don’t mention it. If you tell me to, sir, I can go to hell and back. Something like this is easy.”
“Anyway, take good care of whatever this guy asks for.”
“Don’t worry.”
“And this is Simon, the leader of the rebels.”
“Good to meet you.”
“Simon has Mindanao firmly in his grip. If there’s anything that can’t be done, talk to Simon. He could probably move a mountain, or turn the front of this place into the sea, if you asked him.”
“You flatter me. A mountain might be too much, but I think I could manage a hill.”
“Hahahaha. You heard him, right? So if there’s anything you want to ask for, ask Simon.”
Unlike Alex, who introduced them all with a light heart,
and unlike the people, who were friendly toward Edward, Edward’s expression only grew darker.
He could not say a word.
The people he absolutely had to be careful of in this line of work were all gathered here.
Politicians. A rebel leader. An administrator.
They were people who could bring down a factory with a single word.
People who could drag in the police or the army at any time and reduce the factory to ashes.
On top of that, he had heard they were people with violent mood swings, people whose minds could change at any moment.
Those people were gathered together, holding a meeting about building him a factory.
They were all trying to give him more benefits.
It was such a bewildering situation that he had no idea what to do, so he simply stayed still.
If there was one thing to be grateful for, perhaps it was that there were no gangster bastards here?
If gangster bastards were mixed in too, it would be an even bigger mess.
They kindly told him to say anything he needed, but he did not think he could.
He was simply scared.
Before these absolute power holders, Edward felt endlessly small.
Even normally, he was not the type to lose to anyone when it came to guts, but this place was on a different level.
Everyone was smiling, but their eyes were sharp.
It felt as if they could see all the way through Edward to the very bottom, so he found himself being careful with every action.
‘Fine. I’ll make it by myself.’
Edward made up his mind.
As long as he had space and equipment, he could make drugs well enough.
Even if this boss was asking for something strange called healthy drugs.
He did not need these people to make that.
In truth, he was too scared to ask for anything.
Just then, the door opened and another man came in.
“I apologize. I’m late.”
The man bowed respectfully to Alex.
“Ah! Dennis, you’re here?”
“Yes. The firearms deal took longer than expected. I apologize.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. When you’re working, you can be late. I called you to introduce you to someone. This is Edward, who’ll be working with us.”
“H-Hello. I’m Edward.”
“Good to meet you. I’m Dennis.”
“Our Dennis honestly smuggles weapons. No cheating, fixed prices. He throws in plenty of bullets as a service.”
“I merely follow your management philosophy, sir.”
“If you ever need guns, talk to Dennis. He’ll get you good ones.”
“That’s right. If you need anything, just tell me. I’ll get you Grade A stuff.”
Tremble, tremble, tremble, tremble, tremble, tremble.
Edward felt his body shaking.
He sensed that something had gone wrong, but running away from here was impossible.
Edward resolved to somehow make those healthy drugs on his own.
******
CEO Gang Jae-ho and Edward left to discuss the structure of the factory,
and I remained in the office with Patrick, Simon, and Governor Marco.
Simon said he had something to tell me.
“What is it? What did you want to say?”
“Last time, didn’t we scatter some gold on the riverbed for the operation?”
“We did, didn’t we? Just thinking about it makes me feel like it was such a waste. We literally scattered money on the ground.”
“But how much gold did you scatter back then?”
“Hm? What do you mean?”
“Gold is still coming out.”
“Come on. That makes no sense. How long ago was that? Everything we scattered back then should have been collected already.”
“But it’s still coming out. Even yesterday, we collected quite a bit of placer gold from the river out front.”
“Really?”
Simon showed me a photo.
They really were collecting glittering placer gold.
“There have been rumors for a very long time that there might be a gold vein around here. In fact, long ago, they even carried out surveys and drilling to find one. Though it ended in failure.”
Governor Marco, who had lived here a long time, added.
“Then there really might be an ore vein here?”
“It seems highly likely.”
“Huh… Unbelievable. But won’t it be a problem even if an ore vein is discovered?”
“What? Why?”
“Underground resources belong to the state, don’t they? If it’s discovered, people will start coming and going to mine it, government people will come and go to investigate, and I feel like that’ll be even more troublesome.”
“You don’t need to worry about that part. Our side will handle everything, from permits to mining.”
Patrick spoke as if to tell me not to worry.
“Really?”
“We just need to select a mining company and grant the permit. Simon, do you want to do it?”
“We’re a little busy, though.”
“Right now, yours is the only organization with any manpower to spare. You have other mines too, don’t you? Rotate them around and use them.”
“Looks like we’ll have to hire people again.”
“Hire a lot. That way, you’ll get more tax benefits. If you pay your employees a lot, the benefits increase accordingly, so pay them well. We’ll make up the rest through policy.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Buy lots of equipment and things like that too. Make sure you get proof of purchase. Don’t buy used stuff just because it’s a little cheaper, like last time.”
“I know that much too.”
“Then Simon’s taking charge of the gold mine?”
“For now, we’ll proceed with the exploration work. After the survey, we can see whether a gold mine comes out and proceed from there.”
“Okay. Get it moving.”
.
.
.
“Congratulations.”
“What? Congratulations?”
Edward left the office with CEO Gang and headed to another conference room.
As soon as they sat down, CEO Gang offered his congratulations.
Edward did not know why.
“You’re working with the Totem.”
“The Totem?”
“You don’t know the Totem?”
“No. It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Hehehe. President Alex over there is a lucky totem. If the boss touches something, if the boss sets something in motion, even things that shouldn’t work all turn out well. And when the boss works this hard, it means you’re going to hit the jackpot.”
“Really?”
“Yes. So work hard. I’ll do my best to help you too. Then shall we look at the design proposal I brought first? For now, we plan to manage the research lab and production process separately.”
“What?”
“The research lab is literally a space for research, for testing, mixing, and compounding new drugs. Production, meanwhile, is a system that allows for mass production. The boss asked us to create an environment where you can focus on research in as much comfort as possible.”
“Ah…”
“For the production process, he asked us to maximize automation so that quality would be high and the product’s performance would be consistent. So we’re planning to put a door here and create a system where raw materials can be inserted and mixed from here. On the opposite side, the finished processed goods will come out.”
“You’re saying this is really possible?”
“Of course, this is only a rough sketch. It will change depending on the drug production process. Then shall I show you the laboratory design first? In the laboratory design, we’ll place the equipment here and…”
Even as Edward looked at the sketched design laid out before him, he could not believe it.
He had been making drugs by candlelight in remote mountains, and now this place was offering him a fully automated system.
They were even providing a laboratory.
He felt a desire to do it properly.
He truly wanted to make healthy drugs.
He wanted to test just how far he could go.
“Good. I think the design is fine as it is. I like it.”
“Then we’ll proceed that way. If there are any parts that need to be revised along the way, please let me know.”
“By the way, what kind of person is President Alex?”
“What?”
“I’m working with him because he asked me to, but the more I learn, the more he seems like someone different from what I thought.”
“Hahahaha. Just experience it for yourself. What does it matter what other people say? But you absolutely won’t regret it. Unless you’re planning to betray him.”
Gang Jae-ho smiled good-naturedly.
Even that smile felt frightening to Edward.