WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 1

──────

1933, the Old Man Who Returned to Eighteen

April 1933, Gangwon.

On a spur of Mount Seorak stretching out from Inje, there was a slash-and-burn farming village called Sebeom Valley.

That village had several stories behind its name. The most straightforward one was that it was divided into three tiers: Upper Hamlet, Middle Hamlet, and Lower Hamlet.

Han San lived in Middle Hamlet.

He called himself a "man" because even he did not know what age he ought to count himself as.

He seemed like he should be a youth who had just turned eighteen. His body was this vigorous, and this year was Gyeyu, so counting from his birth year made him eighteen.

But from another angle, he also seemed like a seventy-four-year-old man.

That old man had seen liberation, and he had watched the nation split in two. When the North Korean army came down, he had marched at an age already past thirty, and he had watched dictators get driven out, get shot, and get driven out again.

The last one just had to come to some temple here in Seorak, and because of that, visitors kept trampling all over the mountain slopes, turning the old man's final years into utter chaos.

Fed up with the commotion, he thought about moving. Then he told himself he could not leave, because his parents' graves were here. Then he thought maybe he should visit those graves while he was at it. Then he thought it was pointless; the dead did not come back. Then he thought of his father and mother, especially his mother, one more time, and then...

Han San looked at the Seonangdang shrine tree standing on the border between Middle Hamlet and Upper Hamlet.

A sacred rope was wrapped around a zelkova tree with three great branches.

Old Woman Wangdae, the shaman who held sway over Upper Hamlet, used to say that Mountain Lord Mama with three heads had transformed into that tree...

Whether that was true or not, he had not known back when he was old, and he still did not know now that he was young again.

Only one thing was certain. That zelkova was the last thing the old man saw, and the same thing the young man was seeing now.

"Hoo."

Han San let out a long breath. In the white plume from his mouth, the old man's heart and the young man's heart drifted apart.

That was when it happened.

"San!"

A sharp smack cracked out, and his back caught fire.

"You brat! I was wondering where you'd gone, and you were here? I thought you'd really gone down the mountain. Do you know how scared I was?!"

Han San turned around blankly. His mother, Mrs. Ham Ssang-sim, was standing there, panting with anger.

The world around Han San slowed down.

She seemed to be moving her lips and scolding him more, but none of it reached his ears. His whole vision was filled with that one person.

Ham Ssang-sim was about to smack her son's back a few more times, then noticed something strange in his eyes and hesitated.

"...San, what's wrong with you? You look like your soul's left your body."

Instead of answering, Han San spread both arms. He strode forward. Then he wrapped her tight.

"...Mother."

The rough texture of plain-cotton jeogori. The familiar smell of dirt and sweat mixed together.

It was his mother.

The mother who gave birth to him and raised him. The mother whose body was never even found in the great Gapsul-year flood the following year.

The mother he had longed for, beating his chest in grief well past seventy. The mother he had thought he would never see again.

That very mother was now in his arms, her heart pounding.

The moment he tightened his arms, the youth's body that had felt separate and the old man's mind finally overlapped. Something hot welled up from deep inside and ran down smooth cheeks that no longer had wrinkles.

"W-why is this boy suddenly acting like this...?"

"Can't I do this? A son can hug his mother once."

"You were the one who said things like this were embarrassing..."

"What's embarrassing about it?"

What was truly shameful was pounding the ground in regret with arms that had no one left to hold.

"N-no... ah, let go already! What if everyone in the village sees this?!"

"Let them see."

"Why are you doing things you never do... no, that's not the point! Hey, San! Hurry and go apologize!"

His mother shoved him in the chest. Only then did Han San let her go and step back, wearing a dazed expression.

"What?"

"Go apologize! To your father! Get over there and say you were wrong, can you not?!"

"Why should I...?"

"Seriously, what is wrong with you? You don't remember what you were spewing earlier?!"

"No, I mean, what are you...?"

As he was about to ask again, something from decades ago, no, now from just a little while ago, flashed through Han San's mind like lightning.

[Father! What do you mean, just farm? Do I look like someone who's only worth that?!]

[I'm going to Gyeongseong! I'll earn money there, and study! I'll go study in the Mainland too! Uncle Tae-chon from Lower Hamlet said his relatives already settled in!]

[If not the Mainland, then what should I call it? The whole world says it's those bastards' world now! They even say Manchuria over there has all become their land too, and you ended up like that after running around with that Righteous Army or Independence Army stuff, and you still can't see how the world turns?!]

It felt like his cheeks burst into flames.

Good lord.

What had he been thinking when he spewed all that? No, had there even been any thought in that unripe head of his?

Crazy bastard...

Han San felt like tearing off the face he was covering. Ham Ssang-sim misunderstood that look and softened her voice again.

"Fine, San, your pride runs high. Does this omani not know that? You took after your father's mule-headed stubbornness exactly. Still, just shut your eyes and go..."

"Let's go."

Han San said it with a sigh heavy enough to sink the ground. Ham Ssang-sim had been wondering if she needed to coax him more, then brightened.

"Right! Good! Let's go! This omani will go with you too! And your very first words must be, 'Abai, I was wrong'! Got it?"

After being made to promise several times, Han San walked with his mother.

Before he returned, Han San had often thought of the house where he had lived with his family.

Part of it had felt suffocating, and part of it felt like drafts and cutting winds never stopped there. Then another part of it had felt wide in his memory, and then again...

But when he truly came back through time and faced that house again with the eyes of an eighteen-year-old, only one thought came out first.

"...It's small."

Once the nostalgia of old age peeled away, all that remained was an old log cabin.

A cramped patch carved into the mountain slope. Around it stood a sparse bush-clover fence, thin and unsteady. The weathered branches looked too weak to stop even one mutt.

Inside that, past an empty patch too shabby to even call a yard, his mother climbed onto the wooden porch first and called out.

"San, what are you standing there for? Get in, quick."

"Yes."

Han San stepped forward. The wooden boards of the porch by the main room door creaked like a scream.

Under that porch sat a large, flat river stone used as a stepping stone.

Not a rough natural rock, but one chiseled flat by hand. Its surface was worn smooth and glossy.

It was the stone his father, who limped on his left leg, stepped on every time he climbed up or down with his cane.

Han San moved his feet.

He had many thoughts, but the moment he crossed the threshold, he lost his words.

His father was in the room.

A man with a thick beard. Like his mother, his body had never been found in the great Gapsul-year flood.

His clan seat was the Han clan of Deokwon. His name was Man-seok, Han Man-seok.

In his younger days, even among hunters from Hamgyeong Province, he had a powerful frame. After an injury during Independence Army activity, as he called it, [Righteous Army] activity, left him limping, he had grown gaunt all at once.

Still, for some reason, Han San felt the bear-like figure from his father's healthy days overlap that hard face.

[Ssang-sim, let's go. Take San with you. We can't stay here any longer.]

[Gangwon. Elder Imok is heading there too.]

[I'm making you suffer.]

It was the middle of the night. A crescent moon hung above. It must have rained the day before.

They had walked wet grass paths, sometimes on foot, sometimes carrying him, toward Seorak, toward this Sebeom Valley. That solid back had stayed in front of his eyes the whole way. Even while limping on an injured leg, this man never rested. He drove off snakes, cut branches, and made places to sleep that would keep off the night dew.

That was how it had been.

"Why are you standing there like a fool?"

That blunt voice snapped Han San out of his thoughts.

Han San quietly looked at his father.

When he saw his mother, his eyes had reddened at once, but seeing his father now, a breath eased out from deep in his chest.

"I'm sorry."

Han San silently bowed his head.

Now that he had become older than his father, there was something he understood at last. No matter how old a child got, in front of parents that child was still a child.

"I said something truly... shameful."

Silence fell.

Not for long.

"That's enough."

As always, his father did not ask at length. He only knocked out his tobacco pipe once and asked calmly.

"Food."

"Not yet."

"Let's eat."

That was how the morning ended.

Watching with a tense face, Ham Ssang-sim finally rubbed her chest in relief.

"Wait there. I'll bring it quick..."

"I'll do it."

As she turned to the kitchen, Han San moved first. The son who had never gone near the kitchen in his life suddenly offered to carry the table, and Ham Ssang-sim panicked.

"If a man goes into the kitchen, his pecker falls off, you punk..."

"Let it fall."

It was something he had not had use for in over seventy years anyway, so what did it matter.

But there was no way Mrs. Ham Ssang-sim would let a joke like that pass. Her tough palm slammed his back again.

"What do you mean, let it fall?! If it's gonna fall, show me a grandchild first!"

Han San just laughed.

The meal was simple. Boiled potatoes and mugwort doenjang soup. Each person got one potato at most.

Han San had lived through the National Mobilization Order that would come a few years later, the great famine around that time, and even the war after liberation. But one way or another, he survived and lived long enough to see the country host the Olympics.

To his eyes, this 1933 spring-hunger table looked shabby all over again. Whatever happened to him was one thing, but the thought of his family eating this made a sigh escape him.

Maybe she misunderstood that sigh. Ham Ssang-sim looked at his face and fidgeted uneasily.

"What, you don't want to eat? It is a bit poor, but..."

Han San smiled bitterly. Come to think of it, he had complained about food plenty of times too.

Luckily, that ungrateful bastard had grown old and finally grown up.

The problem was that there was not only one ungrateful bastard in this house.

"I'm not eating!"

Crash. The clatter of spoon and chopsticks rang out loudly.

It was his younger brother, Han Bada. The kid had just turned eight, and now he was pouting and whining.

"I hate potatoes! They're powdery! They're dry! They choke me!"

Fire lit in Ham Ssang-sim's eyes.

"What are you saying now?! You can't even be grateful there's food?!"

"I don't want it! I want meat! Meat!"

"Where would meat come from, you little-!"

"Hyung said he was going to the Mainland and eat meat! I wanna go to the Mainland too! Give me meat!"

"Where did you even learn to say that?!"

The Mainland again, the Mainland. Ham Ssang-sim had just managed to make peace between her husband and eldest son, and now she was scared the house would turn upside down again, so she swung to smack the youngest's back.

Her hand cut empty air. Bada had dodged quickly and latched onto Han San.

"I learned it from hyung! Hyung, take me to the Mainland too. Yeah? I wanna eat white rice and become a count too!"

Han San was a little dumbfounded.

Not because he realized that he himself had been the first link in the Han family's chain of ingratitude.

It was because over this bright-eyed eight-year-old brat's face, he could see "Teacher Han Bada" from his previous life.

[Hyungnim.]

[I wish you'd die.]

[As painfully as possible. As miserably as possible. If you waste away for a long, long time and then die, that would make me so, so happy.]

That bastard who smiled kindly behind glasses.

That bastard whose snake-like pupils gleamed if you looked into those narrow eyes that seemed half-closed.

His only blood relative left since the great flood, the younger brother he cherished for that reason, and the one who made his karma that much heavier.

Bada...

Right now he was just a hungry little kid whining.

"Bada."

Han San put his hand on his little brother's head. He patted that head, which looked up at him with a small "huh?", then moved his hand away, toward the pot of boiled potatoes.

Then Han San snatched up one steaming-hot potato with his bare hand.

"H-hyung?"

Bada recoiled in shock. Father Han Man-seok raised one eyebrow, and mother Ham Ssang-sim panicked too.

"W-what are you doing, you punk?! Your hand! Your hand will burn!"

But Han San did not even blink. It almost sounded like the skin on his palm was sizzling, yet he silently crushed the potato in his bare hand.

Tap, thud.

Chunks of mashed potato dropped into Bada's empty bowl, steaming.

"It won't be so dry now."

Han San said it while looking into Bada's eyes. He was smiling gently, but Bada still swallowed hard with a hiccup.

Boiled potatoes burned fiercely hot. Watching steam rise from his brother's palm made that heat feel like it was spreading to him.

Right then, smack. Ham Ssang-sim hit Han San's back.

"You idiot, your hand! It's all red from burning!"

"It's fine. It's nothing."

"Oil! Oh no, we have no oil at home... You have to put badger oil on a burn..."

"I said it's fine. This much, I can just spit on it. And it'd be a waste anyway. We should eat it all."

Han San licked the crumbs stuck to his hand. His gaze was on his mother's hands.

It was an era when things like oven gloves would never reach a mountain village like this.

Compared with his mother's hands, thick as cowhide from handling boiling pots wrapped in bits of cloth or her sleeves, his own scholar-soft hand, bright red from touching one potato, only felt embarrassing, like he was making a fuss.

"Come on, let's eat. You too, Bada."

Bada looked back and forth between the potato in front of him, Han San's hand, and Han San's face. His voice dropped to a mumble.

"Hyung..."

Han San gave a thin smile.

"Eat, punk. Tonight I'll make sure you eat till your stomach bursts."

He grabbed the boy's head once with that reddened hand and ruffled it hard. Bada lowered his head, half hesitant, half on the verge of tears.

"Mmm... okay."

Han Man-seok and Ham Ssang-sim watched as the eldest son soothed his younger brother and sat him back at the table. Han Man-seok watched with deeply sunken eyes, and Ham Ssang-sim still could not settle down, so she fetched a dipper of water and made Han San soak his hand in it.

After that, no one spoke at the table; only the clinking of spoons and chopsticks echoed.

That was how Han San's first meal after returning passed.

"Mother, where's the sickle? And a carrying sack. If you have dippers, give me three."

At the eldest son's request right after eating, Ham Ssang-sim widened her eyes.

"What do you need a sickle for?"

"I'm going to find food for dinner."

"It's still April. In weather like this, where would there be anything for dinner...?"

Han San only smiled. If he were just an eighteen-year-old youth, maybe. But the experience piled up by a seventy-four-year-old man said otherwise.

A little later, after getting ready, Han San said,

"Bada, you come too. Let's set tonight's table so full the table legs snap."

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried