Chapter 1: I Will Stage a Coup (1)
“Sigh...My brain isn’t working at all...”
I stared blankly at the monitor, my fingers frozen in place.
Truthfully, I had an absurd amount of translation work due by tomorrow, but I just couldn’t come up with the right phrases.
When translating foreign languages, the translation becomes an utter failure, if you don’t capture the author’s intent and some subtle nuances.
Last time I got chewed to death by my manager because of that.
“Mr Kim! Are you even reading this nonsense? Huh? How come the translation is like this then?!”
Because of that, my confidence and motivation were at rock bottom.
But as a professional who is getting paid to do his job, I couldn’t use my problems as an excuse to delay the deadline.
After adding another cigarette to the ashtray, which was almost full by now, I decided to kill some time surfing the web.
Click-Click.
After a few clicks, a familiar screen of a webtoon popped up.
Reading a webtoon was a way to refresh my brain whenever I became utterly stuck.
Oh? There’s a new series.
If manga and comic books dominated the 20th-century market, the 21st century belonged to webtoons.
Given the sheer amount of webtoons, there were a large number of genres, satisfying a diverse range of readers.
Let’s see what this new webtoon is about...Hm? An alternative history of the Korean Empire?
While I was browsing aimlessly, one webtoon managed to catch my eye.
It depicted a world where Korea became an imperialist nation.
The setting was very interesting, with Korea acting like a great power and starting a war it couldn’t win, meeting the same fate as Imperial Japan.
“Hmm-. It doesn’t look like cheap nationalist propaganda...The author seems to have thrown a lot of curveballs here and there.”
The neighboring countries, altered by the alternative setting, were also intriguing.
Without realizing it, I spent hours reading this webtoon, only snapping out of my trance after reading Chapter 50.
What the...It’s 2 A.M already?!
Just thinking about all the work I had to do almost made me lose my mind.
As much as I liked this damned webtoon, it just wasn’t the moment to binge-read it.
Slap-Slap.
Whew...Get it together, Sung Joon.
Rubbing my tired eyes, I closed the web browser.
Unexpectedly, I managed to finish all my work smoothly.
The phrases that seemed oh so daunting unraveled effortlessly as if they were never a problem.
It felt like I had received an inspiration buff from my webtoon binging and the desperation of meeting the deadline.
If only it was like this all the time...
After 14 hours of frenzied typing, I finished all my work.
“Manager Lee, Please check the manuscript.”
After emailing the manuscript to my manager, a yawn escaped me.
Come to think of it, after not sleeping for two whole days...it is only natural to feel a bit...drowsy.
Finally, there were no more calls, deadlines, or meetings to worry about.
As soon as I turned off my computer and lay on the bed, all my exhaustion caught up to me.
Tomorrow...Let’s just relax and catch up on those dramas...
With a hot cup of coffee, of course.
I couldn’t ask for more.
Then,
Just like that, I buried my face in the pillow and closed my eyes.
*“Your Excellency, are you awake? Your Excellency!”
E-Excellency? What Excellency...?
What kind of joke is this?
Am I being pranked or something?
Your Excellency is a title used for senior officials, generals, or...the President.
But these days even the President is called ‘Mr. President’ and not ‘Your Excellency’.
So why are they calling a good-for-nothing translator like me ‘Your Excellency’?
Opening my eyes, I stared at someone I’d never seen before.
Who the hell are you?
How did you get into my room?!
Just when I was about to scream for help...
Oh...OH...
I recognized who the man was and where I was.
This man is supposed to be my aide, and this was my official residence.
As that information flashed through my mind, I uttered his name, just to check.
“Captain Kim Jong-Gil?”
“Yes, General?”
One after another, memories surfaced in my mind.
As if the information was being downloaded directly into my brain.
Baffled, I asked this...Kim Jong-Gil.
“What happened?”
“We found Your Excellency collapsed in your office and brought you to your bed.”
No way.
The last thing ‘I’ remembered was falling asleep on my bed.
Wait a second...
Who am ‘I’ now?
My head throbbed, as I was filled with confusion.
“Mirror, bring me a mirror.”
As soon as I said this, Kim Jong-Gil fetched a mirror from a nearby desk.
When I looked at my reflection, I almost passed out from shock.
That wasn’t my face.
But this foreign face sparked a memory lodged in my mind.
My name...
When I tried to recall my name, two distinct names surfaced.
Kim Sung Joon and Lee Sung Joon.
The former was an ordinary translator from Earth...while the latter seemed to be the name of this body.
Lee Sung Joon.
The name felt strangely familiar as I rolled it around in my mind.
Where have I heard this before?
Ah!
After thinking for a moment, a thought struck my mind like a lightning bolt.
The webtoon.
The name - Lee Sung Joon - showed up in the webtoon I was reading.
And he wasn’t just a mere extra, but the protagonist.
Could this be a coincidence?
Yet...The fact that the character named Lee Sung Joon held the rank of Major General stood out.
I rose from the bed.
While I was feeling a little dizzy up until a moment ago, I was fine now.
“General, you should lie down a bit longer.”
“No.”
I responded curtly to Captain Jong-Gil who was slightly surprised.
When I had asked for a mirror, I consciously used a commanding tone, but this time I spoke without thinking.
Yet, the authoritative tone still came out naturally.
As if I had become one with this body.
I unfolded the Koryo Ilbo lying on the desk.
The issue date was printed on the front page.
January first...Of...1936?
There was no doubt now.
This was undoubtedly the world of the webtoon I had been reading, ‘End of the Empire’.
All circumstantial evidence pointed to my deduction being correct.
Fucking hell.
How could this be real?!
A translator transmigrated into a webtoon he binge-read?
And in the most hellish world possible?
Ugh-.
With a pained groan, I collapsed again.
“Your Excellency! Your Excellency!”
*Once I got over the initial shock, I managed to accept the situation, coming to terms with the fact that I had indeed become a character in this fucking world.
However, I couldn’t stop my hands from trembling and my heart from feeling constricted.
The future of the ‘Korean Empire’ depicted in the webtoon was anything but rosy.
After the War, the Korean Empire faced a fate worse than the original Korean Peninsula after World War II.
Ko/Re/An/Em/Pi/Re ......This country is spelling its own doom.
Fuck.
I have no idea how I am supposed to deal with this.
First, let’s organize the information.
I racked my brain to piece together a brief summary of the current situation.
1. Lee Sung Joon was not only a Major General in the Korean Empire but also a member of the Imperial Family.
In the Korean military, which has no “Brigadier General” rank, a Major General is the lowest ranking general, but a general’s star is still a star.
Moreover, this place was akin to a pseudo-Prussian Korea, a military powerhouse.
As a Major General with Royal Blood, there were far more doors left open for me than closed.
My status was a positive factor.
After all, being a noble is undeniably better than being a normal peasant.
2. The current year was 1936.
One year before Korea would start a war with China.
In the webtoon’s storyline, I was roughly in the prologue.
This meant that the main events would occur soon.
3. The Korean Empire was a mess, seriously this place was worse than a crippled Germany.
Britain, a traditional ally, had become a potential adversary, and the great power across the Pacific, the U.S., considered the Empire its ‘principal enemy.’
On top of that, border disputes with the neighboring Soviet Union and China were an ongoing issue.
Not to mention, relations with other Nations weren’t better either.
Italy and France, being powers with interests in China, looked unfavorably at the Empire’s ambitions.
At this time, the Korean Empire only had one friendly nation left...
But our ‘allies’ were those bastards...
Those fucking Nazis...
Yes,
Nazi Germany.
We were utterly fucked.
This Empire was doomed.
These motherfuckers don’t know what fucking ‘diplomacy’ even means.
4. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Empire had attempted to reduce its military, but a coup had brought a military regime to power.
As a result, the State had become a bloody military dictatorship with an economy geared towards rearmament that would make even Hitler blush.
Unfortunately, stopping the rearmament economy now would collapse the structure of the Empire’s economy, which was being reorganized around military production.
If the Empire ceased its aggressive stance, we’d collapse internally, and if we invaded China, the domino effect would lead to our doom.
What kind of messed up country is this...
The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous this nation seemed.
Right now, I truly wished I could simply pack up and run to America...
Hell, even South America would be a paradise compared to the Empire.
But that was an impossible option.
There was a noble who had renounced his nationality and emigrated to the U.S., but the poor guy ended up being assassinated by extreme nationalists for being a ‘traitor’.
So, any sort of exile was essentially a death sentence.
Even if nationalist threats were avoided, my position made it difficult to follow such a plan.
Would the Empire stand by idly if a member of the Royal Family and a high-ranking General suddenly defected?
These crazy fuckers would put the mother of all bounties on my head.
And Western society would also despise me for abandoning my duties as an official so I couldn’t blend in there.
I had no real choice from the start.
Exile was off the table, and being dragged along the militarist Empire’s path of destruction was also unacceptable.
Therefore, I would choose the third option.
I will overthrow this crazy Empire with my own hands.
The answer I arrived at was a ‘coup d’état.’
Footnotes
1. The Koryo Ilbo is a newspaper published in Korean and Russian from Almaty, Kazakhstan, for Koryo-saram: ethnic Koreans of the former Soviet Union. 2. So, this is kind of a joke, the Author basically spelled the Hanja for Korean Empire
