WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 148: The World After the Flood (2)
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At the same time.
The rooftop of South Jade Pavilion in Inje.
“I wonder if that San brat is safe.”
Kim Mal-ja looked up at the sky and muttered.
Kim Tae-yang, tearing into Han's Myriad Commerce's special Golden Pollock, placed a flake of fish on the palm she held out and replied,
“He'll be fine. You know that bastard's temper too.”
“If a rotten temper made floods avoid you, why would ‘water ghost’ still mean what it does?”
“What does ‘water ghost’ mean?”
“Let's not talk... Ah, fuck! I said let's not talk, and now I'm thinking of that bastard's fucking joke!”
“N-Noona, what's wrong? Why are you suddenly yelling... ‘Let's not talk’ means... hmm... Oh? Ah, I see. Since your name is Kim Mal-ja, if you say ‘let's not talk,’ that's exactly San's kind of humor...”
“Don't explain it!!”
Kim Mal-ja threw a Golden Pollock at him. Kim Tae-yang let out a cry after receiving an unexpected Golden Pollock slap.
“Seriously! Stop! Suddenly! Yelling! At me...”
Kim Tae-yang clutched his head while Kim Mal-ja pressed a hand to her forehead. Thus unfolded a sibling relationship rather ahead of its time for this peninsula: the younger brother shrinking back while his older sister glared at him.
Kim Mal-ja picked the Golden Pollock back up and crunched through it as if it were that bastard Han San's raw flesh.
“Hey! Kim Tae-yang. Did that bastard leave any message for you? The rain's let up some, so isn't there any news?”
“No, no. Just wait. If I hear anything, I'll obviously tell you, Noona...”
That was when it happened.
Tatatata...
Kim Tae-yang, who had been muttering listlessly, glanced toward the sound.
Then he shot to his feet.
“Holy shit! Noona, look at that! Isn't that an airplane?”
Kim Mal-ja raised her head too. Her eyes soon widened.
Just as her brother had said, a small propeller plane was flying overhead.
How quickly did people become accustomed to civilization?
Only a few decades earlier, such a marvel of civilization had not even existed. Yet by 1934, it was no longer something utterly unseen even on this peninsula.
The airplane flew high, so many people could see it.
“So this is what he meant when he said we'd see and hear something in the sky after the rain ended?”
“Looks like it.”
It certainly would be visible and audible to everyone nearby.
Because...
“Noona, that plane is really small... Is it because it's flying close by?”
Kim Mal-ja narrowed her eyes as she watched it.
“It is flying close, and it is small.” Then she spotted something else. “And that is...”
A black lens pointed down from an opening in the side of the aircraft.
“A camera?”
Kim Tae-yang's mouth fell open.
“Whoa! They're taking pictures from an airplane? Can you even do that?”
Kim Mal-ja blinked. Thinking about it, there was no reason it could not be done.
No, it went beyond merely being possible. It was perfectly reasonable.
Even from a hill, one could see an entire village below at a glance. From an airplane, the area captured would be...
“Over here! Take pictures here too!”
Kim Tae-yang jumped up and down, shouting. He held two Golden Pollock in his hands like batons.
Kim Mal-ja sighed.
“Put down the dried pollack, idiot.”
July 24, 1934.
Chosun Ilbo sent Shin Yong-uk and Fujita Takeaki aboard a Salmson 2A2 airplane to the flood-stricken areas. Departing Yeouido and flying south, it would be remembered as the first aerial coverage of flood damage in Korean press history.
And in this world, another airplane took off that same day, heading east.
Hajama Ayame.
The granddaughter of the great businessman Hajama Fusataro and a reporter for Busan Daily, she held a camera and looked down below.
“Be careful!! The wind is cold!!”
The pilot raised their voice so it could be heard over the engine.
Ayame leaned back. Wind rushed through the window removed for photography, shaking her tied-back hair like a bell rope.
“Whoa!! You're right!!”
Ayame had to shout as well to be heard over the wind, engine, and propeller. It was hardly a sight a young lady ought to present, but the pilot did not point that out.
Was it because, as befitted a pilot, one of the dream jobs of the age, they had good manners?
Well. More than that, the young lady had chartered this airplane. How formidable must her family be?
So the pilot simply expressed admiration.
“Aren't you!! Scared!?”
“Hmm!! A little scared!!”
“But you still boarded!! That's impressive!!”
“Because I promised!! Mr. San!!”
Ayame picked up her camera.
A map was tied to one arm so she could check it at once by raising her arm and lowering her head.
Mr. San.
Even before the first rain of July had fallen, he had said a flood was coming. That everyone needed to prepare. He had gone around telling every person he knew, day after day.
At the same time.
[Miss Aya.]
Just before they parted, around the time the first rain began, he had made this request.
[I heard Chosun Ilbo[2] is planning the first aerial reporting in this land's press history.
It's a good thing. Photographs from the sky will vividly convey the horrors of the flooding. So, Miss Aya, your newspaper is Busan Daily, right? Busan Daily doesn't need to get one step ahead of Chosun Ilbo and claim the title of first in history out of some strange sense of competition. It's not as if we're trying to rub salt in people's wounds while they're dying.
But that's precisely why, Miss. Wouldn't it be better if there were two airplanes photographing the flood-stricken areas instead of one?]
He had said that if there were insufficient funds, he would cover them. He had asked her to rent an airplane under Busan Daily's name today and photograph the Gangwon region.
Mr. San had actually made a request, rare as that was.
If this had been any other time, a faintly flushed smile would have appeared on Ayame's lips. But looking down at the flood damage now, she could not do that.
With only firm resolve and the responsibility of someone entrusted with a task, Ayame pressed the shutter.
Click, flash!
She photographed a river.
There should have been a bridge across it. The bridge marked on the map was nowhere to be seen.
Click, flash!
She photographed the houses.
Two houses leaned at an angle. One had its roof torn away, its shabby interior exposed like that of a well-used ashtray passed around the table.
Ayame's finger stopped for a moment.
A small figure tried to enter a collapsed house, only to be held back by others. The person struggled and reached toward the interior of the ruined house.
That person probably could not see what was inside.
But Ayame, looking down from above, could.
Pressing her lips together slightly, Ayame photographed it.
Click, flash!
As she changed the film, the airplane headed northeast.
After passing through Gyeonggi and entering Gangwon, the devastating scenery gradually began to change.
People had gathered before a building on a hill. Smoke rose in many places.
“It looks like!! They evacuated there first!!”
That was what the pilot said.
Instead of answering, Ayame angled her camera a little farther down.
Click, flash!
As Ayame took the photo, the pilot continued their assessment.
“They must be!! Very lucky people!!”
But before long, the pilot had no choice but to revise that assessment.
The farther they crossed Gangwon's border and approached the Taebaek Range, the more the number of such “people who evacuated first” increased exponentially.
That was not all.
Tiled-roof houses opened their gates and took people in. Churches, temples, and government warehouses opened wide to receive those who had failed to escape the disaster.
“Wow!! Gangwon!! Got through this flood well!!”
The pilot exclaimed in genuine admiration.
Click, flash!
Ayame photographed that.
There were still broken roads. Collapsed bridges too.
But nearby, there were other people guiding the stranded toward unbroken roads or letting them rest.
Click, flash!
Ayame photographed that as well.
‘I need to show them together.’
She could not photograph only the submerged houses in Gyeonggi. That would be nothing more than putting other people's misery on display.
Nor could she photograph only the unharmed people in Gangwon. That would be nothing more than boasting of their own fortune.
‘One more thing.’
Ayame had photographs she had already taken before this flood came.
Carrying sacks being filled with stones. Gamani sacks being carried into warehouses. Carefully calculated channels for the flow of water.
Mr. San, sleeves rolled up, standing among the laborers and lending a hand.
‘Only if I show all three together.’
Gyeonggi. Gangwon. And the preparations Gangwon had made in advance.
Not simply so people could breathe in relief and say that this place had been safe, but so they could see what had been done to make it safe and what effect it had achieved.
‘Only then...’
When the same thing came again, people could be a little less unhappy.
‘Next.’
Yes. Next.
The next time would come. There was always, always a next time.
Because there was no final period in this world. Because those who survived had to live through tomorrow.
“I heard, Reporter!! That you also have!! A publishing company!!”
The pilot spoke again.
Ayame opened her notebook and wrote a memo as she replied,
“It's still!! In preparation!! It won't formally open!! Until after August!!”
“What kinds of books!! Will you mainly publish!?”
“I was planning!! To mainly publish novels!!”
Ayame's gaze moved between her notebook and camera. She reflected on the flooded areas she had seen, the sight of Gangwon, the photographs she had taken before, and the thoughts that had just occurred to her.
“But I think!! I should publish another book first!!”
Tatatata, tatatata.
At her shout ringing through the sound of the engine and propeller, the pilot shouted back.
“What kind of book!! Do you mean!?”
“A book about this flood!!”
And a book about the man who had prepared for it.
‘Mr. San.’
The airplane was passing over Inje.
People gathered in the yard of Han's Myriad Commerce's office waved their hands. The people who often stayed near Mr. San were all there, looking this way with the displaced people.
In that same yard, a one-eyed military policeman wearing an eyepatch silently lifted their cap and put it back on. Beside him, a police constable whose eyes shone especially brightly gave a crisp salute.
Another man dressed as a military policeman ran toward the office of Han's Myriad Commerce. He held documents in one hand and a photograph in the other, though Ayame could not make out what the photograph showed from here.
On the rooftop of a three-story building in the busy district, a boy and a woman looked up at them. The boy hopped around holding fish in both hands, while the woman narrowed her eyes with a tobacco pipe in her mouth. They were both familiar faces, and Ayame smiled faintly.
Not for long.
Her smile fading, Ayame raised her head.
Mount Seorak.
The heart of Taebaek, rising just beyond Inje.
Sebeom Valley lay within it. The place where Mr. San said he would remain throughout the flood was so deep in the mountains that it could not be clearly seen from here.
“We can't!! Go any farther!! We don't know!! How the wind will change!!”
That was how small propeller planes were. Ayame did not insist.
She nodded, only glancing toward Seorak as she pictured in her heart the man she had not seen for nearly ten days.
She murmured,
“I hope he's all right...”
Her voice was drowned out by the engine.
On the way back, the airplane stopped by Hongcheon.
Mogok, Han-ga Academy.
The heavy rain had stopped, and the clouds had fully cleared. Blankets and clothes were hung out one by one wherever sunlight reached.
“Do-il! Not there! Can't you see it's still damp!?”
Gomchi, acting roughly like the head dorm supervisor, waved his hands and shouted.
Jeong Do-il, carrying belongings out of the evacuation warehouse, grimaced and picked up the blanket again. Beside him, Jeong Guhwan accepted his sworn elder brother's blanket.
“Hyung, I'll do it.”
“No, there's no need...”
“It's all right. I've lived here before, so I'm more used to it. ...Though a lot of buildings have gone up and things have changed.”
Throughout the driving rain, the two men named Jeong ate whatever they were given and did whatever they were told. The teachers who had ground their teeth at the sight of them did not deliberately come looking for trouble once they saw that neither caused any disturbance.
Namgung Eok[3], who had accepted them, did not find that fact surprising in the least. But the Mogok School teacher famous for fine calligraphy found it strange.
‘Because they are before God?’
Or.
‘Because they are before the children?’
Perhaps the two were the same thing from the beginning.
The children carried the blankets they had used themselves. Han Bada, Go Jin-dong, and Han Su-jeong worked together to move one.
“Bada, should we put it here?”
When Go Jin-dong asked, Han Bada nodded.
“Yeah, turn it over. Su-jeong, hold that side.”
“Okay.”
Han Su-jeong answered briefly.
The three little ones spread the blanket over the railing.
That was when they heard it.
Tatatata... Tatatatata...
The children, having just set down the blanket, saw the airplane flying through the cleared sky.
“An airplane!”
“Wow!”
The children jumped up and down. One tried to run outside but Pi Sun-dae caught them by the nape. Another slipped anyway, landing face-first in the mud and looking ready to cry.
“I have to brag to Dad! I'll tell him I saw an airplane!”
Go Jin-dong, mixed among the children, waved both hands. Han Su-jeong only raised one hand lightly before lowering it.
Han Bada merely watched the airplane in silence. His eyes met those of the young woman aboard it.
Suddenly.
As if he had received some message, Han Bada turned his head toward the direction the airplane had come from.
There was a mountain.
Beyond that mountain was home.
His older brother was there.
“Hyung...”
The moment Bada murmured that, he felt a light tug.
When he looked back, Han Su-jeong was pulling at his clothes.
“Time to eat.”
“Okay.”
Han Bada nodded. At the mention of food, Go Jin-dong had already run toward the kitchen faster than anyone else.
Han Bada looked back at the mountain once more, then followed Han Su-jeong after Go Jin-dong.
Middle Hamlet.
The innermost room of the Han family home.
Sunlight and shadows alternated across the paper window. Footsteps from the yard came near the door, then receded again.
Ham Ssang-sim wrung out a towel over a basin.
A blanket lay beside her. Next to the hand emerging from beneath it rested another hand wrapped in bandages.
Han Man-seok sat beside his son, placing the towel his wife handed him on his son's forehead and shoulder.
The man who had foreseen Gangwon's flood, saved his family, changed the fate of his hometown, and hunted the Mountain Lord.
Han San.
He now had his eyes closed.
In his dream, his previous life wound around him and flowed past.
Footnotes:
[1] The line plays on Kim Mal-ja's name and the phrase “let's not talk,” whose final word sounds like her given name.
[2] Chosun Ilbo, founded in 1920, was a leading Korean-language newspaper under Japanese rule; its July 24, 1934 Salmson 2A2 flight is regarded as Korean journalism's first aerial flood-disaster coverage.
[3] Namgung Eok (1863–1939) was a Korean educator and independence activist who established Mogok School in Hongcheon.
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