WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 140: Great Calamity 【Great Floo■ of the Gap■ Year】 (6)
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Chuk Jae-seok straightened up and got to the point.
“This is what our sajang[1] said. At a time like this, shouldn’t the authority of the government be upheld?”
Sawada Kazuo narrowed his one eye.
“Authority?”
“Yes. Anyway, aren’t you the lord of Inje? No, Inje’s man destined to rule the realm? Our sajang wants to set up a shelter...”
Jae-seok briefly listed what they needed. After hearing him out, Sawada hummed.
“We’re short on manpower right now.”
At this point, government machinery in the other provinces was beginning to become paralyzed.
But in Gangwon, where Han San had called for preparations and the governor had accepted his advice, administrative capacity and public security had not yet reached that point.
That did not mean they had resources to spare. The Japanese Empire still fell short of being called a modern state, and Gangwon remained an underdeveloped region.
Still.
“Captain.”
Jae-seok spoke seriously.
“You know what our sajang can do. If you invest your public-security and administrative resources in us, we can produce at least twice the results.”
“Hmm...”
“And whose achievements will all that become? Our sajang isn’t one to hog the credit. Naturally, your name will receive the greatest recognition.”
Sawada thought it over. It did not take long.
If he limited himself to the matter of [trust], and honestly, even if he did not, Sawada trusted Han San.
He tossed and caught the steel ball he rarely spun these days.
“Take Kim Gang-cheol and the assistants. Tell me if you need anything else.”
Jae-seok beamed.
“Thank you!”
That was how Jae-seok left with military police assistants, police constable assistants, and Constable Kim Gang-cheol. He even picked up three or four civil servants from the town office as a bonus.
It was a moment that proved the Sawada Shield was as invincible as the Young Lady Shield. Perhaps Sawada, too, could be considered a young lady in the conceptual sense.
In any case.
With official permission and administrative manpower secured, Jae-seok next headed for Han's Myriad Commerce’s Inje office.
The office was already open.
It was even neatly arranged.
Leather had been rolled out across the wooden floor to block the moisture rising from below. A thick tarp had been spread in the yard, with a wood fire burning beneath it.
“Vice President Jae-seok! Supreme Leader Hong-cheol... I mean, Brother Hong-cheol! And you uncles too. You’re finally here.”
Director Chuk Hyeong-don welcomed them.
“Brother Hyeong-don! Have you been well?”
“I’ve been fine. These two came and helped out too.”
As the Chuk Brothers expanded from two to three in real time, Hyeong-don pointed behind him.
Han San’s longtime Inje acquaintances, Ma Jong-sung of Cheonbo Pharmacy and Park Dong-po of Daeseong Leather, stood there.
“Jae-seok, Hong-cheol, you’re here. We’ve been here since the day before yesterday. This place is nice!”
“Same here. Hey, I brought leather from my shop and laid it out. I did it without asking, but I didn’t cause you any trouble, did I?”
As Ma Jong-sung and Park Dong-po spoke over each other, Jae-seok smiled brightly.
“Trouble? Our sajang will be grateful too.”
“That’s a relief, then.”
Park Dong-po tossed that out casually before returning to his work. He was carefully laying down leather to keep the office from getting damp.
Ma Jong-sung then offered Jae-seok a bowl of steaming medicinal tea.
“Ah, thank you. We got rained on the whole way here.”
“Don’t overdo it just because you’re young. It only takes a moment.” Ma Jong-sung snapped at him with a frown, then looked over the people entering and widened his eyes. “Where’s your sajang?”
As he asked, he recalled Han San’s request from the last time they had met, just before the rain began.
[Uncle Jong-sung! Uncle Dong-po! Here’s the key to our office. Keep an eye on the rain, and if it starts seeming strange, pack up and come straight to our office. You can use anything inside as you please.
You’ll find someone named Chuk Hyeong-don there. Work together with him.
I can’t exactly call it payment, but until we get there, please make sure no one takes anything without permission. Of course, only as much as you can manage.]
Ma Jong-sung and Park Dong-po had taken those words to heart. When the rain began to drag on, they gathered their families and belongings without a word and moved in, using the supplies inside freely.
Of course, they had not only received help. They had brought and unpacked the things they had prepared as well.
That was why Park Dong-po had laid out leather from his shop, and why Ma Jong-sung was now brewing medicinal tea.
Holding the bowl in both hands, Jae-seok said, “The sajang had an urgent matter in his hometown.”
It was the same answer he had given Sawada, but Jong-sung’s brow furrowed even further.
“His hometown is in trouble? After all that construction?”
“The construction is fine, but apparently there’s something only he can do.”
Jae-seok answered. Ma Jong-sung found it strange, but did not press further.
He only lowered his voice.
“Tell him to ask for anything he needs. After all, the relationship between me and that fellow...”
“Yes.”
Jae-seok felt warmth spread through one corner of his heart as he drank the tea. Heat soon rose through his body as well.
“Ah, this is really good, President Ma! Brother Hong-cheol! Have some too.”
“Hm... Is it that good? Ah, I feel alive! Wow, it really is that good!”
Like Zhang Fei[2] drinking liquor, Chuk Hong-cheol drained the medicinal tea in one go and looked over the employees.
“Everyone! Have some tea! Dry yourselves off, unpack your things! And don’t sit down while you’re still wet. President Park was kind enough to bring us all this leather, so we can’t go ruining it.”
At the Supreme Leader’s instructions, the Han's Myriad Commerce employees unpacked their belongings, dried themselves off, and caught their breath.
After a short rest, Jae-seok stepped forward again.
“All right! If you’re done getting yourselves sorted, gather up! Let’s organize things a little more, then get properly to work!”
“Yes, Vice President!”
Under Jae-seok’s direction, the employees opened the buildings around the office one by one and connected the routes between them.
“Brother Hong-cheol, let’s set up registration here. Clerks from the township office, please sit here. We specially covered the chairs in leather.”
“Hm.”
“Constable Kim Gang-cheol. It would be great if two assistants could stand here...”
“Exactly, young man!!!”
The registration desk, gruel distribution, a place to gather children, and a place to take anyone who fell ill were decided in no time.
As he directed them, Jae-seok could not help but marvel.
“Our sajang really is incredible.”
Everyone knew that lately, whenever he met anyone, Han San had acted as a loudspeaker warning them to prepare for the flood.
But that was not all.
The previous month, in June, when the drought had been at its worst, Han San had already rented the buildings around the office. He had done it to create shelters that could hold people.
He had also informed people he knew about those shelters in advance, just as he had Ma Jong-sung and Park Dong-po.
[People I know in Inje can go to the Inje office. People I know in Chuncheon can go to the Chuncheon office. For Hongcheon, it’s Mogok School. I’ve got it all arranged. For people I know in Sokcho, I asked Broker Jang.]
Still, Han San could not possibly know everyone in the world.
That was why they needed to borrow official authority and bring in the Husband Youth Corps[3] now.
All preparations were complete. It was time to properly bring people in.
“Everyone, let’s give it our all!”
Jae-seok paired several members of the Husband Youth Corps with one borrowed police constable assistant and sent them outside.
The effect was immediate.
“Sir! This way!”
“Give me the child! Put them on the A-frame carrier!”
In western Inje township, Choi Seo-bang supported an elderly person. In the east, Park Seo-bang carried an A-frame carrier with a child on it.
The elderly person had been staring up at the blackening ceiling and floor of a house slowly rotting from dampness. Gasping for breath, they said, “Th-thank you. Where are we going? You people aren’t suspicious, are you?”
“To Han's Myriad Commerce’s Inje office. Suspicious? Can’t you see we have a police constable assistant right here...”
“Han's Myriad Commerce!”
Just as the Korean police constable assistant puffed out his chest to display his Imperial reliability, the elderly person suddenly came to their senses and shouted.
“Han's Myriad Commerce! The place with that young man who went around warning everyone to watch out for flooding!”
The Korean police constable assistant awkwardly drew in his chest, while Choi Seo-bang grinned.
“Well now! You know us, sir. I knew our sajang had become so famous that everyone would know him!”
“How could I not? If it weren’t for you people, if I hadn’t stocked up on food, I would surely have collapsed by now...”
Across Inje, they brought people in from homes in especially serious condition.
“We’re here!”
“All right, take this and dry off. Take off your wet clothes and hang them up. Go over there and get yourself a bowl of gruel. Then rest for a while and follow instructions when someone tells you what to do.”
A packaging process along the prepared routes awaited the flood victims as they arrived.
Watching them, Choi Seo-bang was deeply moved.
“Well, I’ll be. What the sajang did for us during last year’s typhoon, now we’re doing it for these people.”
“Me too! That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“A song resounding through Inje... Anyway, a song!”
Jae-seok sent the Husband Youth Corps members back outside.
“Excellent work! Once you finish your song, make another round!”
Jae-seok himself was repeatedly marveling inside as he remembered the sajang’s words.
[It was the same during last year’s typhoon. What matters at times like this isn’t really how much food you have left.]
Hopelessness breaks people before hunger does.
The sajang had said that when people did not know where to go, how they would spend the night, or how long this would continue, they would fall into confusion and trample one another.
In other words.
[If it looks like there’s a good plan, people will follow it. Unless they’re completely insane.]
When people could imagine a better tomorrow, they could endure today.
“Our sajang... He’s so young, yet his insight runs so deep.”
“Maybe he experienced some kind of disaster when he was even younger. There was that flood in the Eulchuk Year too, right? The Nakdong River and the Han River both burst their banks.”
Chuk Hong-cheol and Chuk Hyeong-don murmured to each other.
Listening beside them, Jae-seok thought that made sense. It felt less like someone accustomed to sitting at a desk and creating countermeasures, and more like someone who had experienced it firsthand, gathering up all the thoughts of, [If only things had been like this.]
Soon, though, he shook his head and cleared those thoughts away.
“What does the reason matter? As long as it works.”
At Jae-seok’s words, Hong-cheol and Hyeong-don looked at each other and grinned.
“That’s true.”
“Let’s keep at it too.”
And so.
In the heart of Inje, a disaster-relief control center called Han's Myriad Commerce began to operate.
That was the first step.
Before the downpour became truly fierce, they gathered those isolated on their own little islands in one place.
They also spread the word to everyone else that, [Anyway, this is where you need to go.]
Still, people who gathered because there seemed to be a plan naturally wanted to know what that plan was.
“Um... Young sajang...?”
“I’m the vice president.”
When Jae-seok corrected him, the middle-aged man holding a bowl of gruel said, “Ah,” and corrected himself.
“Vice President. When will this rain stop?”
The shelter fell quiet.
Everyone looked at Jae-seok with the same question in their eyes.
Beside him, Hong-cheol clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘How would I know? Am I the one making it rain?’
He did not say it aloud. His temper wanted to snap that at them, but that was precisely why he had not been made vice president, despite having joined earlier.
Han's Myriad Commerce’s vice president, on the other hand, answered firmly.
“Look at the sky. When it ends, you’ll see something.”
Hong-cheol stared at Jae-seok in disbelief. He had said something so obvious with such seriousness?
‘Well, when the rain ends, the clouds will part, the sun will come out, a rainbow will appear, and who knows what else will be doing the boogie up there...’
Yet because he said it so solemnly, it somehow sounded profound. The people gathered in the shelter felt the same way.
Sounds of admiration rose from all around.
“I see! Thank you, Vice President!”
“So it ends when something appears in the sky!”
Hong-cheol could only marvel inwardly.
When Jae-seok became vice president, he could not say he had felt nothing about it. Still, there was one thing he had to admit.
“Jae-seok really is amazing. No wonder he’s a foreign-educated intellectual.”
He whispered that and patted Jae-seok’s shoulder, but Jae-seok only scratched the back of his head and smiled a little.
“That was something the sajang told me too...”
“Huh? Really?”
“Yes. He said that when it ends, we’ll know right away. From what appears in the sky and the sounds we hear.”
Hong-cheol’s expression grew complicated.
When he thought Jae-seok had said it, it sounded like an intellectual making a vague excuse. But if the sajang had said it, then somehow... it seemed like there had to be something to it.
“What could we see and hear? A rainbow?”
“Who knows... We’ll find out when it ends.”
“That’s true, but...”
Hong-cheol scratched the back of his head as he agonized over it.
Jae-seok grinned, then raised his voice so the people in the shelter could hear him too.
“But we can’t just stare at the sky! Let’s do what we can!”
Footnotes:
[1] Sajang is a Korean term for the owner or head of a business, used here as a respectful form of address for Han San.
[2] Zhang Fei was a famously fierce and boisterous general of the Three Kingdoms era, popularized by the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
[3] The Husband Youth Corps is a local volunteer group of older married men; its deliberately odd name contrasts their domestic status with the usual image of a youth corps.
Footnotes:
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