WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 139: Great Calamity 【Great Floo■ of the Gap■ Year】 (5)

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-There would be no landslide.

-He would catch the tiger.

-He and his father would catch it together.

Once he had settled on a course of action, Han San felt at ease.

Han Man-seok asked his son,

“If there's anything else bothering you, tell me.”

“Hmm.”

Han San smiled. It was so clear and bright that even he was surprised he could smile that way.

“Those people.”

Han San's gaze rested beyond the window. Han Man-seok knew where his son was looking.

He was talking about somewhere much farther away than Sebeom Valley.

“Do you want to do more for them?”

Han San smiled.

“I've done all I can.”

“Right.”

Han Man-seok smiled as well.

“If you want to do more for them, then do it.”

Han San was still smiling, so broadly that he could not have smiled any wider.

“Yes. Hmm, but what do I do? I need to stay here and protect this place with you, Father...”

Once again, Han Man-seok reduced the situation to a single sentence.

“You'll have to send someone else.”

“Yes. I should send someone I can trust.”

Just as Han San had told himself time and again.

He had done all he could.

-And he could do that much more.

Because he had his father.

And because there were people around him who could do that much more.

While the father-and-son hunters spoke in the Meokbawi Valley guard post, Middle Hamlet was utterly peaceful.

Whoosh, rainwater streamed down the tiled roof and poured into the yard. It never pooled there, instead slipping away through drainage channels laid in advance.

“Ha. The rain sounds just perfect.”

“Me too! That's exactly what I was thinking.”

Choi Seo-bang sat cross-legged on the wooden porch, watching the water make its journey. Beside him, Park Seo-bang sat in the same position, gazing blankly at the water as he yawned.

“How long does our break last again?”

“Until August. Though it isn't a break, it's home standby.”

“What's home standby?”

“You don't know? It means we should stay ready to come out right away if something happens.”

That was probably it. He did not really understand how it differed from a break, though.

“You know, Park Seo-bang, we've heard a lot of strange new words in the past year. Salary, bonus, vacation, home standby, all that stuff... A few years ago, I thought we'd just farm potatoes, go into town for day labor, then grow old and die.”

“Me too! That's exactly what I was thinking. But now... Is Manbok at school right now?”

“Yeah. In Mogok. They said he'll be there until around August too.”

“The flowers in Mogok bloom so beautifully. He must be properly cultivating his sensibilities while watching the rain fall over the flower gardens.”

Just then, Choi Seo-bang's wife came out of the kitchen carrying a small table. There were scallion pancakes to suit the sound of rain, a bowl of makgeolli, and freshly cooked white rice.

“Ah! Honey, thank you! This is the life!”

Choi Seo-bang marveled at the crisp scallion pancake crumbling in his mouth. Park Seo-bang marveled at the rich flavor of oil mixed with lightly charred scallions.

“Mrs. Choi, your cooking gets better every day!”

“Why else would my wife get called into the House of the Taste Magistrate's kitchen every holiday?”

“True. Han San took you two along when he first opened that mackerel set-meal restaurant in Inje too, right?”

“Mm.”

Choi Seo-bang had been looking proud, but at that remark, he gave an awkward cough. Things had not exactly gone well back then.

Now, when the restaurant was busy, his wife helped in the kitchen. When it was slow, she went wherever she was needed between Inje, Sokcho, and Chuncheon, functioning as a versatile hybrid worker. Back then, though, it had been their first time doing that sort of work, and the couple had both been completely out of their depth.

Park Seo-bang seemed to remember it too. Scratching the back of his head awkwardly, he turned the conversation back to the food.

“Hey, but this really is delicious. I only came to visit. Is it all right for me to eat like this?”

“Eat up, eat up. The sajang told us to prepare properly because a flood was coming this time. The pantry, cupboards, jars, everything is packed full. We need to eat it diligently before it spoils.”

“Our house too! Ours was the same. Come by ours for dinner later. We can play janggi[1] and eat together.”

Choi Seo-bang laughed and waved a hand.

“Hey, I'll eat with you, but I won't play janggi. You're godawful at janggi, Park Seo-bang.”

“What? You begged and begged me to take off a chariot, cannon, and horse, then you won one game like that and have been saying it ever since!”

“Excuses. Anyway, the only [truth] that remains forever is that I won and Park Seo-bang lost.”

“Let's play again! A proper match!”

“Hmmm... No, forget it. Because... you're godawful at janggi, Park Seo-bang.”

“Ah! Damn it! Seriously! Ah!”

They had no worries about food or rain leaking into their houses. Their only concern was finding some way to pass the day.

That was what the Husband Youth Corps of Middle Hamlet did these days.

That day, though, they did not need to worry about how to pass the time.

“The sajang says to assemble! Pack your backpacks in Form 3!”

Mr. Lee's shout came from beyond the wall.

The two husbands leaped to their feet.

“See you later!”

“Right!”

Park Seo-bang hurried home next door. In the meantime, Choi Seo-bang quickly put on his raincoat and rubber boots, both issued by Han's Myriad Commerce.

“Honey! What goes in Form 3 again?”

Choi Seo-bang's wife picked up a sheet printed in Korean and read from it.

“A change of underwear, socks, one towel, and one day's worth of preserved food.”

“Pack it for me!”

“I'm already doing it.”

In barely twenty minutes, the fully equipped Husband Youth Corps had gathered in the yard of the Han family house, their captain's home.

They soon blinked in surprise.

The person standing on the porch was not their sajang, Han San.

“Mm! As expected of our employees. Very reassuring!”

It was Chuk Hong-cheol, leader of the Chuk Brothers. His name was scheduled to change after August.

“Everyone's here.”

Chuk Jae-seok, vice president of Han's Myriad Commerce, stood beside him.

“Vice President! And Director... Where's the sajang?”

At the Husband Youth Corps' question, Chuk Hong-cheol glared.

“What? You don't trust us?”

“No, that's not what we meant...”

“What do you mean, that's not what you meant? Distrust is practically dripping from your eyes.”

“Come on, Director. What are you talking about...”

Chuk Jae-seok adjusted his glasses.

“The sajang has a more important matter to attend to. He and the Senior President have left.”

The Husband Youth Corps looked at one another.

It did not last long. They might not have had as much authority as the sajang, but the leader of the Chuk Brothers and Vice President Chuk Jae-seok had built up more than enough authority to keep the employees in line.

“Ha! It must be really important, then.”

“Can't be helped. Director, Vice President, we're in your hands.”

“What do you mean, can't be helped?”

Chuk Hong-cheol glared as if to restore discipline, but Chuk Jae-seok grinned.

“Let's go.”

The two men Han San trusted led their people down to Inje.

Until they had been called out, the Husband Youth Corps had all been resting comfortably at home. They had not really grasped the severity of the situation.

“I think the sajang made a fuss over nothing this time. What flood?”

“Right. Last year was bad. Now, what is there? No wind, no thunder and lightning, no pounding rain. It's only raining steadily.”

They kept thinking that way even as they passed through Lower Hamlet.

While working on Middle Hamlet and Meokbawi Valley, improvements had also been made throughout Lower Hamlet. The village was a little wet, but nothing had been damaged.

The problem came next.

Once they reached the new road, everything changed.

“...Huh?”

The new road was gone.

It had not collapsed.

It had not been submerged either.

But the moment the Husband Youth Corps stepped on it, skrrk! One foot slid wildly as if the ground had been greased, while squelch! The other sank ankle-deep into mud as thick as red pepper paste.

“Wh-what is this?”

“What's wrong with the road?”

The gravel that had been laid and packed down had come loose. Wheel ruts left by passing vehicles had turned into ever-deepening scars, filled with muddy slurry.

“So that's why we didn't bring the car.”

“There's a reason they didn't bring out the ox carts either...”

Thankfully, not every stretch of road was like that. After walking for a while, they found sections that still resembled roads.

But patches of road that did not look like roads were scattered everywhere, making travel horribly inconvenient. It was worse than before the new road had been built, when people had simply trampled out whatever path they could.

The Husband Youth Corps groaned.

“This is driving me crazy. Another mud pit.”

“If we weren't wearing boots, we'd have tossed them aside and walked barefoot by now.”

Originally, traveling from Sebeom Valley to Inje took a full fourteen hours by the long way around.

Over the past year, though, Han San had gradually opened shortcuts between town and Sebeom Valley, wide enough for people, A-frame carriers, and lightly loaded ox carts to pass.

“Ah, this is easier to walk on.”

“I remember this place. Cho Seo-bang and I dug it together.”

Those shortcuts running along the mountainside were alive and well. They were much narrower than the new road, leaving less to protect, and they had been built solidly from the start.

“I wondered why he was making us haul all those heavy stones instead of just throwing together something people could pass through.”

“The sajang always has a plan.”

They were delayed at mud pits along the way, then made up time on the shortcuts. About seven hours after setting out, the Husband Youth Corps reached a hillcrest overlooking Inje.

Then they froze in horror.

“Good heavens...”

“Th-that...”

They called the point where the Inbuk Stream flowing down from Seorak met the Naerin Stream flowing down from Bangtae Hapgang, the joining of rivers.

Inje township lay just beyond Hapgang.

It was a perfect example of land backed by mountains and facing water, according to geomancy. But after rain had poured down without pause, the situation had changed.

Still, this was not the image people normally pictured when they thought of a flood.

Houses had not been swept away, and the river had not swallowed the town.

Like the new road they had passed through, everything remained in its place.

Like that new road, everything was quietly festering.

Every road was a mud pit. The thatched roofs had soaked up so much water that they looked ready to collapse at any moment.

The tiled houses were holding up better, but every yard had turned to slop. People had laid planks from their front steps to their gates, and even those planks had sunk halfway into the mud as if they had fallen into a swamp.

“Not one drop leaked into our house...”

“Our yard too! No, forget the yard. The paths through our village were perfectly fine.”

The Husband Youth Corps felt chills run down their spines. The thought that the sajang had overreacted vanished as if it had never existed, leaving behind only relief.

Chuk Hong-cheol clicked his tongue.

“Does the sajang really see the future? What do you think, Vice President?”

“Come on, Hong-cheol hyung. You've read Marx, and you're saying something so unscientific? He's simply prepared for every possibility. Isn't that what's truly remarkable?”

Chuk Jae-seok said that with a smile, one that somewhat resembled the young sajang's.

Still smiling, Chuk Jae-seok addressed the employees.

“Everyone. These are the sajang's instructions. Let's go help those people.”

The employees of Han's Myriad Commerce looked at one another.

Then they did exactly that.

But Chuk Jae-seok, who had entered Inje through the rain to [go help], did not head first to the homes of people in need.

He went to the military police detachment.

“V-Vice President? Why are we here?”

Choi Seo-bang jumped in surprise. Chuk Hong-cheol also slipped naturally into the Husband Youth Corps, changing from Leader Breathing to Wanted Criminal Breathing, but Chuk Jae-seok remained calm.

“Because we need to.”

Chuk Jae-seok had not forgotten Han San's instructions from when they had spoken privately.

[ Jae-seok. You need to follow the proper procedures. We need permission if we're going to gather people. ]

He did not mean the absurd notion of asking permission from the people they were bringing in. He meant permission from those in power.

Even though Han San's 【standing】 had risen, passing the Chuncheon Realm in full through the success of his Chuncheon business and reaching the half-step Gyeongseong Realm through the founding of a publishing house, he had not forgotten that he was an ordinary civilian.

[ Even if I tell people to gather, they won't listen. And if they do gather, that creates another problem. One Korean civilian gathering hundreds of flood victims during a disaster? Wouldn't the Government-General throw a fit? ]

Chuk Jae-seok was a smart man. He understood what concerned his sajang, so he suppressed his reluctance and entered the military police detachment.

Inside, Sawada Kazuo, who had been glaring one-eyed at the rain beyond the window, received Chuk Jae-seok. His expression was complicated.

“Does your bastard of a sajang really have a precognitive eye or something?”

Normally, wouldn't a precognitive eye require a special eye? Sawada was the one with one eye, yet there was apparently a two-eyed prophet somewhere. The thought bothered him strangely...

Chuk Jae-seok smiled and waved a hand. Then he repeated what he had told Hong-cheol on the hill.

“No. Isn't he simply prepared for every situation?”

Sawada snorted.

“Hmph. Don't get cocky. Even if your bastard of a sajang has a precognitive eye, its quality looks Korean-made.”

The military police detachment commander of Inje, the aspiring man destined to rule the realm, pointed toward Hapgang with his chin.

The water had not overflowed, after all. So this did not count as the flood that bastard had warned about. It was an unspoken display of defiance.

Chuk Jae-seok did not argue. Han San had already told him many things.

How this flood would unfold from here, and what sort of man stood before him.

[ He'll go wild trying to pick at everything you say. You see him a lot because you're often with me, Jae-seok, so you know what he's like. Just pretend you're Park Seo-bang for a while and play along. Go, “There, there. Is that so?” ]

Sure enough, since Chuk Jae-seok did not indulge him, Sawada seemed to lose interest on his own.

“So where is that bastard of a sajang? It seems he didn't come with you.”

Sawada did not even consider that Han San might have come to Inje but sent only his vice president instead of appearing himself. That meant he had not come to Inje in the first place.

Whatever his thought process, his guess happened to be correct.

“He's handling another matter at the moment. He said the situation in his hometown village was urgent, so he couldn't possibly leave.”

“Hm.”

The last time Sawada had visited Sebeom Valley was last year, when he stopped by to requisition an inn during the Ginsei hunt.

Inje, which he governed, looked like this. What state would that slash-and-burn village be in?

Sawada pictured that arrogant fellow struggling alongside his neighbors to drain water and mud from their homes, sobbing, “Waaah!” like some small, helpless creature. The image pleased him immensely.

“I heard he spent money on construction. Seems it did him no good after all.”

“Ha ha...”

Chuk Jae-seok only gave a vague laugh and let it pass.

As Sawada lost interest again, he said, “Tch. If it's really that hard, tell him to abandon the village for a while and come down to town. Houses can be rebuilt after the rain stops.”

“Ah... Yes, sir.”

Chuk Jae-seok's smile changed slightly.

‘This man seems a little different from how the sajang described him...’

Feeling much lighter, Chuk Jae-seok bowed his head.

“I'll make sure to tell him, Commander.”

“Mm.” Sawada nodded, then jutted out his chin again with an arrogant air. “So, what did you come here for?”

Footnotes:

[1] Janggi is a Korean chess-like board game played on a 9-by-10 grid, featuring palace areas.

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