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Chapter 116: Taming the Copycat (1)

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Rewinding time a little, to when Han San returned from the flag festival known as the Soyang Bridge completion ceremony.

Chaos had already broken out at Han's Myriad Commerce's Chuncheon office.

"sajang[1]! We've got a huge problem!"

Chuk Jae-seok came running up and stopped before Han San.

By then, the Intelli-Red had effectively become Han's Myriad Commerce's vice president, able to make a fair number of company decisions while Han San was away. His face was so red it looked as if someone had taken away the Intelli and left only the Red.

"Myo's Myriad Commerce! It's a company run by a man named Myo San, and he's opening two restaurants! Right in front of ours! Three days from now! And those restaurants are, well..."

"Seeing is believing! sajang, look at this!"

Before Jae-seok could finish his report, Chuk Jun-ha spread a sheet of oil paper across the table. Pieces of fried chicken lay scattered across it, giving off the rich smell of oil and seasoning.

Han San couldn't help admiring how capable his subordinates were.

"No, Chairman Jun-ha. How did you get your hands on food from a place that hasn't even opened yet?"

"I've got my ways! But that's not the important part..."

"Right. Let's have a look."

Han San picked up a piece of plain fried chicken with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth.

Crunch.

Though it had been fried some time ago, the batter was still crisp, and juice seeped out from the meat. The chicken itself was salted just right.

The seasoning was the same. This sweet and spicy flavor...

"W-What do you think, sajang?"

"Hmm." Han San set down his chopsticks. "There's nothing to worry about."

At their sajang's relaxed response, relief quickly spread across the Chuk Brothers' faces.

"So there's no problem?"

"Of course! The sajang always has a plan."

"What a shame. Mr. Lee should've been here. He could've sung the song of Han's Myriad Commerce's grand plans and all."

Just as the office atmosphere was beginning to relax, Han San swallowed the fried chicken he had been chewing and muttered, "But they copied it perfectly."

The Chuk Brothers froze.

Han San continued.

"The thickness of the batter. The way the brine has penetrated right into the chicken. It's perfect. I thought it would take them at least a year, or six months at the absolute earliest, to make a counterfeit this good."

Silence.

A second later, the office was thrown into chaos again.

"Aaaah! We're finished! This is the greatest crisis our company has ever faced, after sailing along with nothing but favorable winds!"

"Why did Heaven create Han San, then go and create Myo San too?!"

"Heaven!!!!!"

Han San stared in disbelief as the Chuk Brothers put on a goddamn shitshow of frenzied antics, clutching their heads, pulling down their cheeks with their eyes bulging, standing on their hands and clapping with their feet.

"Seriously. I said not to worry."

"B-But, sajang...! If the exact same food is sold at the store right across from us, our sales are obviously going to be cut in half... How can we not worry...?"

The Chuk Brothers all dropped to all fours and looked up at him with round, pleading eyes. Han San gave them a broad grin.

"How, you ask?"

With a grunt, Han San pulled out a jar he had kept in the back of the office.

"Fry up a chicken."

The Chuk Brothers looked at one another.

Before long, a chicken dressed with a butcher's skill had been coated in batter, dropped into oil, and pulled back out.

Han San took out a large brush, dipped it into the liquid inside the jar, and began brushing it over the fried chicken.

At the same time, a somewhat different scent began to spread through the office, which had been full of the rich smell of fried chicken.

"Uh... That smell..."

"Something sweet, but this nostalgic scent that's tickling the depths of my chest..."

Han San leisurely played the part of a painter painting chicken.

'We should treat getting copied as a constant.'

Counterfeits on the peninsula, pakuri[2] on the islands. It was an old part of human nature, old enough to have words for it everywhere.

'Instead of trying to stop what can't be stopped, it's better to keep staying one step ahead.'

That was why Han San hadn't settled for maintaining the status quo even while dakgalbi, fried chicken, and seasoned chicken were selling like hotcakes.

Whenever he returned to Sebeom Valley, he spent time in the House of the Taste Magistrate's kitchen with his mother, working on the next product.

This was the result.

'Daegu-Style Soy Sauce Seasoned Chicken!'

He had first tasted it in his previous life when he went down to Daegu over something involving his younger brother Bada. That first taste had been so shocking that he would never have forgotten it, even without the improved memory he had gained after regressing.

The problem was recreating it.

His improved memory made the flavor vivid. He knew ganjang was the main ingredient too. Still, even with the answer and clues in hand, getting there hadn't been easy.

In the end, it had only been possible after he used every scrap of future knowledge he had brought with him.

'Then again, how was I supposed to know [that thing] went into it just by tasting it? Good thing it existed in this era too...'

Thinking back on that grueling process of copying the future made Han San feel both wistful and proud. He puffed out his chest.

"Well? What are you all doing? Eat it before it gets cold."

As if possessed, the Chuk Brothers reached out.

Crunch. The thin batter broke apart in their mouths. Then came the sound of swallowing, and all of them opened their mouths wide.

"What is this?! There was a flavor like this in the world?!"

"To be honest, seasoned chicken was a little spicy for me! I really can't handle spicy food at all!"

"I thought it was a little sweet! It gets cloying after a while! But this, wow!"

"How does it cling to your mouth like this?! It's making me want rice too!"

It took only a few minutes for a whole chicken to become nothing but bones. Han San watched contentedly as they sucked every bit of cartilage and skin clean, then sucked their fingers. At last, he gave a light clap.

"They said those counterfeit bastards at Myo's Myriad Commerce were opening in three days, right?"

"Y-Yes, that's what we heard..."

"Then we'll start selling this new menu item in three days. On the very day their stores open."

There was a brief silence, followed by cheers that shook the office.

"As expected! Our sajang had already prepared for this!"

"I'm telling you, the sajang is a remarkable man!"

"What are you doing?! Go bring Mr. Lee here! Let's get some songs ringing through Han's Myriad Commerce! A whole medley!"

"Ho ho. Oh, come on, songs? You people really do make a fuss over everything."

Han San laughed with his hands behind his back. This was the standard North Korean puppet king Kim Il-sung pose when receiving praise from Reds on this peninsula.

A few days later, Han San's clever move ambushed Myo's Fried Chicken.

"A new menu item, you say?!"

Without even pausing to pick up the handkerchief he had dropped, Myo San pulled out a fresh one and vigorously rubbed his cheeks. He was going so fast that faint steam seemed to rise from his face.

"T-The taste and smell are incredible too!"

"It's salty, and it just sticks to your mouth!"

The white-clothed employees who had gone scouting competed to report their findings. This time, they had even bought several pieces of the real thing.

Myo San glared at the chicken drumstick with its soft golden sheen as if it were his mortal enemy, then let out a groan and brought it to his mouth.

There was silence.

'This flavor...'

Crunch, crunch, gulp.

The silence deepened.

'What... is this? How?'

Neither fried chicken nor seasoned chicken had actually been that surprising to Myo San.

They were like Columbus's egg. Fried chicken existed in America, and anyone who had traveled through the Western world would have had a chance to eat it at least once. Sweet and spicy seasoning was also within a category that included chili stew.

But ganjang?

Wasn't ganjang something found in every kitchen across the eight provinces of Joseon? To create this flavor with such an ordinary seasoning.

To think it was even possible.

As the employees held their breath, the silence stretched on.

Then.

"...Heh heh."

Myo San's narrowed eyes curved like crescent moons. His lips followed, and soon he burst into booming laughter.

"Han sajang... Isn't he incredible?"

He honestly hadn't expected this at all.

At most, he thought Han San would come to lodge a complaint.

Or beg the authorities. Start a price war. Hire thugs to cause trouble.

Every host Myo San had devoured before had done exactly that. And those struggles had never stopped him.

But Han San had brought out a new menu item.

"Isn't this good? Isn't it good? Yes, this is how it should be! This is what I'd expect from the young sajang who turned Chuncheon upside down! Isn't he truly worth devouring?"

Myo San laughed, fanning himself with his handkerchief. Still smiling, he picked up another piece of chicken.

"With such tempting prey right before me, now I can bite and tear it apart... Mm, no, no." The moment he was about to say [those words], Myo San got a terrible feeling and immediately corrected himself. "It's time to digest it."

How had Han San created this flavor?

'I can tell ganjang is the base. Garlic too. Garlic was in seasoned chicken and dakgalbi already. There's sugar in it as well, to soften the harsh edges. The problem is this aftertaste.'

Just as the employees had said, where had this flavor that clung to the mouth come from?

'Did he reduce sugar? No. Then it would be much sweeter. Grain syrup... No stickiness. Salted seafood? It almost has the feel of salted shrimp, but... If that were it, it wouldn't be this free of fishiness.'

What was it?

What could it be?

The more his questions grew, the more fiercely Myo San's eyes burned.

'I'll copy it!'

From that day on, the kitchen at Myo's Fried Chicken never went dark.

They simmered ganjang, stir-fried it, reduced it, even burned it. They added every conceivable ingredient, then took them back out.

They minced garlic and added it. They boiled whole cloves in ganjang. They mixed grain syrup and sugar half and half. They even tried every kind of salted seafood they had once dismissed.

Yet every result was the same.

"No."

A flavor that was close, but not it.

"No!"

A flavor that seemed the same, yet wasn't.

"No! This isn't the flavor!"

Thump!

Myo San clutched his head and ground his teeth. Beside him, an open notebook and the writing within caught the moonlight pouring in through the window.

The white-clothed employees groaned.

"Yeongchunsa... No, sajang. It's gotten pretty close. Why don't we just..."

"Pretty close isn't enough! It has to be exactly the same! Only then can we eat into their pie! If people decide it's an inferior product, they won't even look at it!"

"B-But..."

"Damn it!"

He was falling behind.

Until now, Myo San's process of turning something into a copy had taken one day at the fastest, and three or four days at the latest. Whether it was a product, dish, or idea, the field didn't matter. If the original was in front of him, Myo San could reproduce it within days.

Dakgalbi, fried chicken, and seasoned chicken had all taken no longer than that.

Yet with this ganjang chicken, the final piece of the puzzle had remained out of reach for nearly ten days!

His sales figures were being torn to shreds in the meantime. Every day, the line of people wanting ganjang chicken grew longer outside Han's Chicken across the street, while Myo's Fried Chicken's profits hadn't even reached half of what he had initially expected.

'Ten days have already passed... There aren't even fifty days left until Lunar New Year...!'

Then, one day.

One night during the final week of 1933.

"sajang!"

One of the white-clothed employees rushed in.

"You know the Kaesong Merchants' Fellowship? We got word through them that Han's Myriad Commerce has been bringing in goods from Hong Kong!"

"Hong Kong?"

Myo San stopped wringing an innocent handkerchief.

Hong Kong. Macau. Guangdong. The products of southern China flashed through his mind.

'Ganjang, hoisin sauce, and...'

Myo San shot to his feet.

"Oyster sauce!"

It was 1888, nearly fifty years earlier.

There was a merchant in Guangdong named Lee Geum-sang. He had forgotten a pot of oyster soup he had been cooking, and when he returned, the broth had reduced and stuck to the bottom of the pot. Reluctant to throw it away, he tasted a spoonful and his eyes flew open.

That mishap was the beginning of Lee Kum Kee Limited, which would one day become Hong Kong's sauce empire.

As time passed, it had spread quietly among overseas Chinese and was even being exported across the Pacific to America. Then, in 1932, a turning point came that spurred its growth.

'Showa 7... Just last year. They built a factory in Hong Kong and began mass-producing it in earnest...'

Myo San, the successful young sajang of Chuncheon, Gangwon's central city, had built up a broad business empire by moving from one host to the next. In a flash, he recalled all that information and roared, "Find it! Oyster sauce! I don't care how much it costs, get one bottle! No, even a half-used bottle will do! Bring it to me! Right now! Before the day is over!"

"Y-Yes!"

Money traveled along roads, but it also created roads of its own.

Before that night had even passed, in a back alley of Chuncheon.

"...Huh. You're really going to buy it for exactly that price? I didn't hear wrong, did I?"

"I thought the same thing! I thought the exact same thing!"

Two bundle peddlers with harmless-looking faces asked again in the dimness at the end of 1933. From their clothes to their faces, they were strangers Chuncheon had never seen before.

The white-clothed employee of Myo's Myriad Commerce gritted his teeth and nodded.

"I'll buy it!"

"No, really? At that price for one bottle of sauce?"

"Yes! Give it to me!"

A wad of bills changed hands, followed by a bottle of sauce.

The white-clothed employee ran toward Myo's Fried Chicken as if he had obtained a treasure.

"Huh. Our sajang's words were exactly right."

"I thought the exact same thing!"

Of course, the white-clothed employee never heard the two harmless-looking bundle peddlers murmuring cheerfully behind him.

[1] Sajang is a Korean form of address for a company president, business owner, or shop proprietor.

[2] Pakuri is Japanese slang for copying or imitating another person's product, idea, or work.

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