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Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 133: Red Mask's Original Sin

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Lee Jae-yu's escape and Professor Miyake Shikanosuke's disappearance sent violent ripples through both the underworld and the surface world of the peninsula.

In a corner of Gyeongseong, the languid-eyed woman known in Sebeom Valley as Mrs. Go, to those close to her as O Anna or Anna Ogai Sokolova, in intelligence circles as Red Widow, and to one particular bastard as Wayfellow, reported to her superior. She was not particularly happy about having so many names.

"Professor Miyake is in the next room."

"Good work. He wouldn't have come willingly. How did you manage it?"

"Persuading him wasn't easy, but it was possible thanks to a local asset called Red Mask."

Along with that physical persuasion, which had saved her considerable time and effort, Anna recalled the conversation she'd had with Professor Miyake after he woke up on the way there.

[ Where did Jae-yu go!? ]

[ ? He must've gone somewhere. I don't know. ]

[ Cough...! I-I see. If I follow you and do as you say, Jae-yu will be safe... right? ]

[ ? ]

'I really said I didn't know because I didn't know...'

The professor seemed to have seriously misunderstood something, but Anna didn't think that was her fault.

'Why would that be my fault? It's Red Mask's fault.'

She had brought him there, and he seemed prepared to work for them. Didn't that mean her mission was complete?

After Anna briefly reported the situation, her superior furrowed his brow.

"Red Mask... What is his identity?"

"I don't know."

Anna answered flatly.

She had said it because she truly didn't know, but her superior gave a grudging smile typical of a Soviet and pressed her for an answer.

"Valuing local assets is a fine quality. But Comrade Krasnaya Vdova, this report will be read by Yan Karlovich as well. Think back."

Anna's expression turned peculiar, as if she had bitten into a camel cricket. Red Mask truly was no ordinary bastard if his mere existence could make her feel this way.

'I really don't know...'

Anna was an experienced spy.

Experienced enough not to believe that people could suddenly become strange.

'People don't suddenly become strange.'

If someone did become strange, it only meant they had always been strange. They had hidden beneath the skin of a normal person until the time was ripe to reveal their true nature.

'Just like me.'

Mrs. Go of Sebeom Valley had not suddenly awakened one day as a Soviet spy. Before that, neither had the woman who worked nights in Chuncheon suddenly opened her eyes to the communist movement.

Even earlier than that.

Before the Soviet Union had officially formed, before she had ever set foot on this peninsula, she had worked for Russia from the moment she opened her eyes. By the time she could walk and talk, it was already her mission.

'Red Mask... Han San.'

In 1929, Lee Beom-ik, a man known for building roads, took office as governor of Gangwon, and new road construction projects opened across the province.

It was around then that Lower Hamlet had been tacked onto Sebeom Valley.

From that time on, under the skin of Mrs. Go, she had carefully identified the people of Middle Hamlet and Upper Hamlet one by one.

Yun Cheom-ji had helped her in that process. His teacher, Yu In-seok, had once gained considerable influence in Primorye, and Yun had connections to his fellow disciples there.

Naturally, she had identified Han Man-seok, a former Inwang Gang executive, and Han San, the eldest son of that household, as well.

'He was just a little brat back then.'

Perhaps thanks to his paternal bloodline as Baekdu Mountain hunters, or perhaps because the Inwang Gang's former connections diligently brought the family meat and rice, the boy had grown up unusually sturdy for a slash-and-burn settler.

'Three lines in the dossier.'

Anna had watched that little brat grow into a sulky loafer for four long years, no, five years now.

'Then, last April...'

The dossier began to grow.

She could understand him gutting a badger in a burst of youthful spirit, and she had privately enjoyed the fine spectacle. Go Tae-chon's whimpering as he clung to her all night had even been cute.

She had even accepted him catching the old wolf.

But after that...

During the wolf uproar, he opened a tavern and raked the half-baked fools dry. He caught the wolf at the center of the chaos himself and pried the bounty out of the military police.

He swept through the Inje market with salt-cured mackerel, wiped out a gang of robbers, turned Chuncheon upside down with fried chicken, and ultimately brought down a fraudulent religious sect.

'He hasn't been replaced wholesale.'

That much was certain.

Was it because Han San doted on his family?

An imposter might have been acting to maintain a disguise. Love, like any other emotion, could be fabricated.

More importantly, Han San's family could not possibly have failed to recognize an imposter. Above all, Anna believed more firmly than anyone that no one alive possessed enough skill at disguise to fool Han Man-seok's eyes.

Which meant...

In the logic of espionage, only one truth remained.

"He's too deep for me to plumb."

"Hm."

Her superior let out a low sound.

To a man qualified to write reports that would land on GRU[1] Director Yan Berzin's desk, those words could mean only one thing.

"America. Or Britain."

'That doesn't seem right...'

Anna thought so, but kept quiet. After all, those were the only variables that could make Han San's existence make sense.

"What are the Anglo-Americans plotting on this peninsula? And what use do they have for Lee Jae-yu?"

'That doesn't seem right either...'

This time, she said it aloud.

"He tried to hand Lee Jae-yu over to me. That suggests he didn't need Lee Jae-yu."

"Hm!"

Instead, her superior looked even more certain.

"Lee Jae-yu. He tried to hand that bomb over to you, Comrade?"

"I did refuse him, but..."

"Good."

Her superior tapped the desk with his fountain pen.

"Everyone in this line of work knows what kind of man that Red Prince is. He has a knack for breaking down walls, but he's useless at tending shoots. We cannot allow a bomb like that to set foot in the Union."

Her superior felt deeply relieved.

Had he known that bomb was currently being express-delivered to Primorye aboard an Inwang Gang putt-putt boat, he would not have felt so relieved.

Still wearing that relieved expression, he reached his conclusion.

"I understand. Red Mask, that Anglo-American lackey, is targeting our Union."

"...Is that so?"

"His attempt to disguise that bomb as a gift and hand it over is proof. If the vanished Lee Jae-yu is spotted on Union soil, it will be certain."

It would become certain. Very soon.

It was an unfortunate case where certainty and truth had absolutely nothing to do with each other.

"Watch him, but don't touch him."

Putting away his fountain pen, her superior continued.

"On the continent, there is a saying: strike the grass and startle the snake. You must never carelessly stir waters this deep. You don't know what might be lurking beneath."

"Understood."

And so, Red Mask, presumed to be a British or American human asset, was entered into a Soviet intelligence report.

Of course, this had nothing whatsoever to do with Han San, a staunchly conservative elderly native of Gangwon.

Despite feeling that something was off, Anna said what she had to say. Like a professional.

"About Professor Miyake."

"Hm."

"I think it would be best to send him to Japan. They will be able to make better use of his value as a human asset."

"Do that."

Her superior nodded.

"We can hand him over to Jorige in Tokyo. The Japanese Comintern[2] has been weakened ever since Sano and Nabeyama[3] defected."

The stamp was pressed.

After its executives raced to submit conversion pledges and left the Japanese Communist Party at death's door, it received an unexpected transfusion in the form of a fresh new member, an [unwitting self-proclaimed ordinary professor].

It was a historic moment that would raise the shade of red in postwar Japan by one notch. Yet neither the person who stamped the order, nor the one who submitted the report, nor the professor in the next room, lamenting as he traced the tangled web of connections between [Yeong-tae... Miwa... Jae-yu...], knew it at the time.

Therefore, no one could be held to account.

If someone absolutely had to be blamed, it would have to be the vicious Red Mask, spy of the demon Anglo-Americans.

At the very time such things were happening in the red underworld of the peninsula because of Red Mask, lackey of the evil demon Anglo-Americans, the surface world also failed to escape the effects.

No, it was thrown into even greater upheaval.

After all, a sitting professor at Gyeongseong Imperial University had vanished. This time, even the news could not be suppressed, and an article titled [Professor Miyake's Disappearance] appeared in a corner of the newspapers.

The commotion reached Chuncheon as well.

"San! San!"

Having finished all her remaining business in Gyeongseong, Ayame threw open the door to Han's Myriad Commerce's office.

"Weren't you going to visit Professor Miyake's home, San!?"

"I went, but I didn't get to exchange a word with him."

Han San answered. Since he had knocked the professor unconscious before they could exchange a word, it was not a lie.

"I see... I heard that he disappeared."

"Really?"

"Yes! I looked into it."

Ayame sat in the chair Han San pulled out for her and lowered her voice. She had the expression of a reporter who had reached the [truth].

"I heard it directly from the baron. When someone moves, they always leave traces, and these traces point to a Soviet organization."

"The Soviet Union."

"Yes! The Soviet Union. Have you heard of the GRU?"

As expected of the Empire's Silver Fox. He had assessed the situation exactly.

Professor Miyake had, in fact, been taken by the Soviet Union's Wayfellow. Search a hundred times, and that would be the conclusion. Examine that conclusion a hundred times, and it would still be correct.

Red Mask might have given that Wayfellow a little help, but that was Red Mask's fault. What did it have to do with Han San?

"And, and, San! That house. It seems there was an underground hideout left inside Professor Miyake's house. Under the study. They said it was just big enough for one person. What on earth happened there?"

"What troubled times we live in..."

Han San clicked his tongue as though frightened.

Han San of Han's Myriad Commerce, who was definitely not Red Mask, had no way of knowing what Professor Miyake had become entangled in.

People naturally feared what they did not understand, so the seventy-four-year-old, no, seventy-five-year-old man was truly terrified...

"With the world in such a state, miss, let's focus on our own work."

"Yes! Oh, about a printing house we could work with..."

Whatever was going on behind the scenes, Han's Myriad Commerce's business, including preparations to establish a publishing company, settled into its proper course.

Chuk Jae-seok played a major role after casting off his inner demon[4] and ending his double life as an activist and a company man.

"Jae-seok's eyes have been really clear lately."

"Doesn't that just mean he's become a work-crazed lunatic? I've never seen him leave work."

Even the Chuk Brothers clicked their tongues over it.

None of them thought it was strange, though.

"Did you hear? What Jae-seok and the sajang did?"

"Shh, Leader. Have you lost your mind? Why would you say that where someone might hear?"

"No, uh... Anyway, that thing."

At a gathering where all the Chuk Brothers except Jae-seok had come together for the first time in a while, Leader Hong-cheol cleared his throat and lowered his voice.

"Our sajang is really something when it comes to loyalty. It wasn't even for his own friend, but for his friend's friend... Can a person really do that?"

"That's why he's the sajang."

Chuk Myeong-su said it with his eyes gently closed. Hyeong-don sighed.

"When you think about it, Jae-seok is different, but we belonged to the butcher class. The Hyeongpyeongsa movement wasn't anything grand. We just wanted to live like human beings."

That had been true.

"But now... We get paid. Go anywhere and say we're executives of Han's Myriad Commerce, and everyone bows and scrapes."

That was true.

"We're being treated like people and living like people now..."

"Hm."

Chuk Hong-cheol nodded.

Since he was the one currently called Leader, it was only right that he bring the matter to a close.

"Should we quit the movement?"

Red Mask, the mysterious existence who had somehow serialized the smuggling of the Red Prince to Primorye into reality.

His single move brought about the effective dissolution of the Hyeongpyeongsa movement, which had held on for more than ten years.

[1] The GRU was the Soviet Union's military intelligence directorate, responsible for gathering foreign military and political intelligence.

[2] The Comintern, or Communist International, was the Moscow-led organization founded in 1919 to coordinate communist parties and revolutionary movements worldwide.

[3] Sano Manabu and Nabeyama Sadachika were leading Japanese communists whose 1933 public renunciation of communism helped trigger a wave of ideological conversions, or tenko, among Japanese leftists.

[4] An "inner demon" is an East Asian martial-arts and religious-fiction trope for the destructive doubts, obsessions, or traumas within a person that obstruct self-mastery.

Footnotes:

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