WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 127: Seonjin Embankment Construction
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April 1934, Meokbawi Valley.
“BLASTING!!”
Boom! Boom!
Construction to prepare for the Great Flood of the Gapsul Year had begun in earnest.
“Get a rock drill over here!”
“More! More!”
Laborers and heavy machinery packed the site, constantly moving from place to place, while the women of Sebeom Valley diligently carried snacks and food around. Meokbawi Valley was as bustling as a marketplace.
Deok-tae, who had taken office as the second chairman of the Meokbawi Valley Gorge Management Council, marveled as he watched such a grand construction project unfold in the valley he had seen all his life.
“Come on, that little San... Do we really need such a huge project?”
Cho Seo-bang, who had narrowly lost to Deok-tae and failed to win another term as chairman before taking the vice chairman’s seat, scratched the back of his head.
“Last year was a complete mess, wasn’t it? He must want to be properly prepared.”
“That was only because our luck was poor then. And even then, would all that have happened if you hadn’t gotten so excited and dug channels all the way up to your homes?”
Deok-tae puffed on his tobacco pipe with a series of disapproving clicks. Cho Seo-bang cleared his throat.
“Ah, why bring up something that’s already over with... We made the council to keep that from happening again, and when you said you wanted in, we let you join without discrimination.
“Is that all? We let you run for chairman too. We even let you become chairman. Where else in the world would you find people like us?”
“Hm. That is a major point.” Deok-tae acknowledged what deserved acknowledgment and puffed on his tobacco pipe. “But little Cho Seo-bang, isn’t that still a bit much? Such a massive project, with experts like those brought in for it.”
“It can’t hurt to be prepared, can it? Another typhoon like that could come this summer.”
“Little San might lose a huge amount of money and be sad, that’s all.”
“That does worry me too.”
There was a reason Deok-tae and Cho Seo-bang were chatting like that.
The simple jobs that could be handled by amateur workers, including the Husband Youth Corps, had already been sorted out.
The people working now were specialists brought in wholesale from Sohlim Mine in Hongcheon.
Of course, they were experts who had followed the mining track, not beaver-men who built dams.
Still, as wuxia novels said, ten thousand techniques eventually converged on a single martial principle.
- Supporting tunnels so they would not collapse.
- Reading the paths of bedrock water and groundwater in advance, then avoiding them.
- Handling flooding accidents when they occurred.
When it came to [flood control], mines and embankments had much in common.
Han San did not sit idle either.
“Over here. This spot looks especially dangerous.”
Drawing on his experience with the flood, he pointed out the most dangerous areas.
“Please use these people too. It would be great if you could teach them.”
He sent several members of the Husband Youth Corps, who had more talent for construction work than business, to train with the specialists.
“Pour it in a little at a time, all right? Lay it down one handspan at a time and compact it. Then lay down another layer and compact it again. Don’t just stack the stones either. Fill carrying sacks with stones and pile those up.”
More than anything, he shared a few pieces of [future knowledge] he had learned while working construction on the Soyang River Dam during middle age in his previous life.
Of course, they were only things an amateur had picked up by watching from the side. Still, experts were the sort who could understand what you meant even when you explained it poorly.
“Ah, like backfilling a tunnel? And the stone-filled carrying sacks, right. A stone wall is finished once it breaks, but stone-filled carrying sacks remain carrying sacks even if they settle.”
The miners’ foreman nodded, then looked Han San up and down.
“Young sajang, you’ve got quite an eye.”
“Oh, no. I just hope it helps even a little.”
“It helps. It does, but...”
The foreman furrowed his brow.
“I have to say this. If we do it the way you described, the construction period will have to be longer. We’ll need more people too. It’ll cost that much more. Can you accept that?”
Han San was not short on money.
He had already gained financial freedom for his household when the Inje-Sokcho auto-hunt was running, and he had secured enough funds to work on Meokbawi Valley as much as he wanted when he stripped Myo’s Myriad Commerce clean.
He nodded readily.
“I can accept it. I’ll cover all the costs, so please give it your all.”
“All right, then. If the person paying our work payment has good advice too, we should listen.”
And so, construction in Meokbawi Valley proceeded with that future knowledge in mind.
They poured concrete over soil compacted one handspan at a time, buried gravel along the base, and stacked stone-filled carrying sacks at every bend in the waterway.
That was how the Meokbawi Valley project went. They had prepared so much beforehand that it progressed smoothly.
Business was doing just as well as construction.
April 15, 1934, Han’s Myriad Commerce Chuncheon office.
Han San stood a narrow-eyed man before the others and spoke.
“This is Myo Gang, who just joined us. He had talent, so I headhunted him.”
Han San looked around the room.
“Uncle Jae-seok is vice president now, right? Chief Hong-cheol and the rest of you are all executives.
“It might feel awkward since you were enemies until before Lunar New Year, but take the lead in welcoming him. No pointless territorial games or power struggles.
“And Uncle Myo Gang, don’t act like a rude brat just because you have some ability either. I can’t stand that sort of thing.
“Stay within your boundaries and solve problems when they come up. We gathered to make money, so let’s combine our strength and make some.”
The Chuk Brothers nodded with uneasy expressions.
“If the sajang wants it, then we have no objection...”
“Honestly, calling that a fight is a stretch. We were just beating them up one-sidedly.”
“Matching promissory notes to choke off our cash flow was fucking annoying, though.”
“Ah. That definitely was.”
While the Chuk Brothers spoke, Chuk Jae-seok did not add anything. His face was especially stiff.
Perhaps sensing the subtle atmosphere, Myo Gang immediately bowed deeply.
“I look forward to working with you, seniors! Vice President Jae-seok!”
Only then did Chuk Jae-seok blink and wave a hand.
“Uh, yeah... All right. Let’s work well together.”
Myo Gang immediately began showing his abilities after joining.
With the skill of a copycat genius, he automated Han’s Chicken, Han’s Dakgalbi, and Han’s Fish Market so they could operate without Han San or the Chuk Brothers present. He also set their expansion strategy on the right course.
“Sajang! About opening Han’s Chicken’s second branch in Cheorwon, I think we should reconsider. Chuncheon and Cheorwon are in the middle of a pride battle, aren’t they? The number two might please people from Chuncheon, but the people that second branch will have to deal with are from Cheorwon.
“How about this instead? We open the first Han’s Fried Chicken branch there. We can offer Pride Fried Chicken and Sauced Fried Chicken, the names I came up with, as well as Soy Sauce Fried Chicken. Did you call it a rebranded spinoff IPO when the same company does the same thing while pretending to be different?”
The lack of a professional manager, a CEO, was a weakness of Han’s Myriad Commerce.
Though Chuk Jae-seok had studied abroad in Tokyo, he had not majored in economics, and there was always a gap between [economics] and [management].
Myo Gang, on the other hand, had less education than Chuk Jae-seok but possessed a natural talent for management.
The Chuk Brothers were impressed.
“He’s fucking capable.”
“Why does he seem stronger as an ally than he ever was as an enemy?”
That was because he had grown by greedily absorbing Han San’s brutal management methods from the future, but honestly, the details did not matter much.
Han’s Myriad Commerce had shored up that weakness. It could now prepare for an even greater leap forward.
Around then, the sequel to The Camellia Heavenly Demon was released in Busan.
“San, San! They say this new book is really popular too!”
At a teahouse in central Chuncheon, Ayame spoke as happily as if it were her own news.
Han San was pleased as well as he accepted a complimentary copy of the sequel to The Camellia Heavenly Demon.
“Oh. That’s great.”
“Mhm, mhm! They say he’s starting the next volume right away too!”
“What, another one already? Is he feeling better now?”
“Yes! I heard he hasn’t been coughing or bringing up blood lately.”
That really was good news. Han San had enjoyed the first volume of The Camellia Heavenly Demon immensely, and he hoped Kim Yu-jeong would continue writing for a long, long time.
‘Spring, Spring became a KBS drama in the eighties, so he must have lived at least until then in my previous life.’
If someone had to live anyway, wouldn’t it be better to live healthily?
As Han San lost himself in thought, Ayame adjusted her glasses.
“The next volume will be called The Camellia Heavenly Demon, Continued Again. They say it will be set in the lands beyond the Great Wall.”
“Ooh, the martial world beyond the Great Wall...”
“Um. I think he was bothered by a review saying, [This is fun, but doesn’t it feel somewhat anti-government?] So he wants to move it to an even more foreign setting for a while.
“Though I told him he didn’t need to worry too much because it was being published by my grandfather’s company...”
“Perhaps because he’s a writer, Kim is sensitive about those things.” Ayame tipped back her head as she voiced the complaint.
Han San gave a bitter smile. It was the era they lived in, after all.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to cause trouble for you in his own way.”
“Mm...”
“Anyway, if that’s what he wants to write, then that’s what he should write. Is it called royalties? How are those?”
Ayame tilted her head and smiled.
“They’re huge! His previous book sold well, and when we signed for the next volume, we adjusted his advance royalty based on that. We were able to give him a decent lump sum.
“Apparently, the first thing he did was get a proper home for the older sister who had let him stay with her and even sold her own house for him. I heard she’s absolutely delighted.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
“It sounds like his eldest brother’s gambling problem has diminished a lot too. When the first volume of The Camellia Heavenly Demon had just come out, he barged in and yelled for money. But ever since then, nothing like that has happened.
“You know how people talk about positive influence. Good things must make the people around them better too!”
“Looks like it. That’s really good.”
The idealistic young reporter spoke with her glasses gleaming, and Han San smiled and nodded along.
The truth was a little different.
Han San smiled to himself.
‘It was worth getting Malja and Seong-ja to pass the word to the Kim family.’
Gamblers did not change.
Having lived two lives, and especially now that he was close enough with Pi Sun-dae, the great gambling master of Mount Seorak, to call each other brothers, Han San knew that better than anyone.
‘Gamblers don’t change, so you have to change the environment around them.’
Kim Wol-ja, from the Kim family’s main household in Gyeongseong, had begun [controlling] Kim Yu-jeong’s eldest brother. One of the rulers of Gyeongseong’s nightlife would have no trouble picking out a single gambler.
‘Taking care of writers is an editor’s job, but he isn’t a stranger to me.’
In any case, he was a genuine young man of letters who had published a wuxia novel in this era because of Han San’s influence.
Han San thought it only proper, as an elder who knew him, to act as his protector at least once.
As Han San was thinking that, Ayame spoke.
“San?”
“Yes?”
“Kim asked me something. He wanted to know if your company had any plans to start a publishing house.”
“A publishing house?”
That was an unexpected direction, and Han San blinked.
“Yes. He said that if you started one, he would like to publish his next volume through it.
“He said that, when he thought about it, being able to write wuxia novels and getting healthier was all thanks to you. He wants to repay you as much as he can.”
“Uh... It’s very admirable of him to think that, no, well.” Remembering that Kim Yu-jeong was older than Han San’s current physical age, he corrected himself. “It is something I’m grateful for, but...”
Han’s Myriad Commerce entering the publishing business.
It was not a bad idea.
‘It’s not bad, but what did you need to run a publishing house?’
Han San thought it over.
‘You probably need connections with a printing press. Writers who want to publish books. Editors too, people to read manuscripts and proofread them.
‘And as Ayame just said, censorship is simply a fact of life in this era. Worse than under the military regime. You would need someone to deal with that side too, a counterpart or something...’
Was that not too different from Han’s Myriad Commerce’s existing fields of cooking, business, and construction?
‘Or not? Han-ga Academy... We do have a hand in private schools now. That is a cultural business of sorts, I suppose...’
As Han San thought deeply, he noticed the bespectacled young woman sitting before him anew.
A modern woman, a wealthy family’s daughter, a reporter.
With that thought in mind, Han San opened his mouth.
“Ayame.”
“Yes?”
“Would you be interested in starting a publishing house with me?”
Silence fell for a moment.
Once it passed, Ayame’s eyes widened as much as her lenses. She covered her mouth in shock.
“Whaaaat!?”
Footnotes:
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