WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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Chapter 158: The Story of the Brothers 【Classic of Mountains and Seas】 (10)
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The document the young man had brought Han San, the Cheongmyeong Plan, lacked something important.
It described everything they intended to do. So thoroughly that it seemed almost excessive.
But it omitted why they intended to do it. Why they would declare emergency martial law, what they would do with the people they arrested, what they would do after martial law, all of it.
The brothers faced each other in the darkened Sindang-dong mansion.
The older brother asked again. It was the third time.
“What are you doing?”
This time, the younger brother answered.
“You know that bald man.”
The big Sima.
“The one holed up in the temple near where you live, Hyung.”
Baekdamsa Temple.
“I’m putting that bald man back on the throne.”
Han San could not breathe.
“Why?”
Mr. Han Bada rose from the sofa. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked out the window, where rain streamed down.
“Well, why do you think?”
Crack!
Lightning flashed.
“Wouldn’t there be plenty of reasons? That plan passed through many hands. They all had their reasons. Just as everyone who went to the polls two years ago had their reasons.”
Only us.
“People who believed that we had to win for it to be a real victory. People who thought any compromise was defeat. People who thought soldiers were still more trustworthy. People enraged that communist bastards might ruin the country.
“There are plenty of reasons. Take your pick. Anyway, Hyung, you...”
“Hey.”
Han San cut him off.
Grinding his teeth, he forced the words out.
“You said we should do it.”
His cheeks were wet.
“You said we should bring down that bald man and his friend. You said you needed Hyung’s help, my help, to do it. You asked me to help you.”
You.
“Bada, you.”
That day.
After I offered incense in your place before Toono’s portrait, after I returned to Korea, after you ate tofu outside Seobinggo, after you heard everything I had to tell you.
“You asked me... to do something with you...”
Raindrops battered the window.
Still looking outside, the younger brother said,
“I did.”
“So I did it.”
The older brother clenched his teeth.
“I went where you told me to go. I brought what you told me to bring, did what you told me to do... everything I could do.”
Because you wanted it, I did all those things.
Military dictatorship. Democracy movement.
As someone living on this land, Han San could not possibly have had no thoughts or stance on such matters.
He had his own clear position and attitude toward the man in sunglasses, the big Sima and the little Sima, and many other things.
But none of those personal feelings mattered.
The flood of the Gap-sul Year had swept away the days when he had treated his own feelings as absolute, believing the world ought to follow them.
It was simply that his younger brother had wanted it.
His clever younger brother had said he needed help, said he wanted to do some good in the world. As an older brother who was only an ordinary man, Han San had simply been glad.
And now, this.
For something they had worked on together for seven years.
“Did you hate me that much?”
The older brother’s voice was drowned in rain.
“Is that why you did this? Pretended you needed my help. When really, you meant to bring it all down like this. Or was I nothing more than a chess piece to begin with? Did you just use me because it was convenient, then move on to your next game?”
“Hyung.”
The younger brother turned to face him.
“Neither you nor I have much time left. We should go out with a grand fireworks display.”
“Set fire to what we did together, the two of us...”
“Enough.”
Mr. Han Bada raised a hand, cutting Han San off.
Han San stopped speaking as well. Then again, words had no value at all.
After a moment, Mr. Han Bada’s pleasant smile returned.
“Anyway, this is what I intend to do. What will you do, Hyung?”
Cheongmyeong.
“Will you stop me? Or will you grant your younger brother’s wish this time too?”
The younger brother’s face as he spoke before Toono in Chuncheon in 1938 flashed before the older brother’s eyes.
You decide, Hyung.
“Hyung, you decide.”
The younger brother had said that, and so the older brother had decided.
Seven years spent with his younger brother.
Two years his younger brother had spent in secret.
Han San was no longer at a loss over which of the two he should place first.
He turned away.
“Hyung, did you know?”
Han Bada’s voice followed Han San as he walked away.
“They say that when someone commits murder, they make twenty-five mistakes. And if they can recognize fifteen of them beforehand and correct them, they’re a genius.”
Han Bada asked,
“How far ahead can you plan, Hyung?”
Han San kept walking as he answered.
“As if things would ever turn out exactly as planned.”
Past the front door.
“Not someone like me.”
Han San stepped out into the driving rain and wind.
18. December 31, 1989, the Last Day
It was one day before the 1990s.
Han San left home.
He put on a bulletproof vest he had made himself. He strapped leather belts around his body. He took everything he could carry, from hunting stones to throwing spears. A dagger. A small axe. He strapped them all on.
Then he slung a Type 38 infantry rifle over his shoulder.
What? Voluntary firearm registration?
Civilians in South Korea were not allowed to own guns freely?
Ha ha ha.
He took Arisaka rounds with him. Rounds that had not been produced since 1945 and had no import route.
Only seventeen bullets remained. He had no way of knowing whether their powder was still good, or whether one shot firing meant the next would as well.
They suited him, Han San thought.
Then he climbed the mountain.
Snow was falling in Seorak.
A person in a white suit and white shoes, nearly invisible against the snowfield, blocked his path.
“Turn back, old man. This isn’t a place you can come freely.”
Han San walked.
“I said don’t come any closer.”
He walked.
“A matter of national importance will be taking place shortly. You’ve been warned.”
He kept walking.
Bang!
The old man stopped.
Still holding a pistol, the person in the white suit looked at him.
“I warned you.
Hey. A few of you with free hands, get over here. Bring a bag.
Here? Ah, fuck. We decided everyone’s positions before the operation began. This is, so...”
Bang!
The person in the white suit fell.
Han San walked on. Cough. Blood ran from his lips and side, but he kept going.
Along with droplets of blood, a crackling sound leaked from the radio left behind.
« Songo-mae Three, respond. What’s happening? Songo-mae Three... »
Gunshot.
Footsteps.
« We’ve lost contact at three locations! Something’s happening! »
« Stay calm. Did you think there would be no interference while we carried out the undertaking? Hold your positions and respond calmly. »
Gunshot.
Footsteps.
« How many are there? »
« Unable to determine! There could be more than ten, ah! Wait, what the hell is this... »
« Songo-mae Seven! »
Gunshot.
Footsteps.
« No more falcons are responding. »
« What do we do? »
« Call Eagle. »
« Those fossils? No, we can’t control those people... »
« Call them! Hurry! All of them, One through Three! Otherwise, right now... Aagh! »
Gunshot.
Footsteps.
« Hah... honestly. Everyone’s so damn unreliable. Kids these days, seriously. Ever since Su-jeong-noona left, it’s been a complete mess. »
« Oh, come on. Why are you bringing up Su-jeong-eonni now, you old geezer? Do we have to talk about someone who left twenty years ago? »
« I just thought of her, so I said it. Why? Can’t I? »
« How could that be okay? Sunbae, you think so too, right? Right? »
« Quiet, everyone. It’s time to work. »
« Yeah, yeah. Work is work. »
« Roger that~ »
Gunshot. Gunshot. Gunshot. Footsteps and gunshot. Gunshot. Then footsteps, more footsteps, the click of a round catching, gunshot, then another gunshot.
« Hah... this... »
One final gunshot.
« I’ve failed you, Mr. Han Bada... »
Snow was falling.
The older brother entered the place where Sebeom Valley had once stood.
Middle Hamlet was still gone. For a brief time after the war, refugees had gathered at the abandoned site of Upper Hamlet and formed something resembling Middle Hamlet, but it had not lasted. Sebeom Valley was too inconvenient a place.
How had people lived in a place like this?
Because some people had nowhere else to live. Han San remembered the day when they could no longer live even here.
At its center, it still stood.
The Seonangdang shrine tree.
It was thick. Thicker than fifty-five years ago. Far thicker than when he had seen it again forty-four years ago.
Snow had piled upon it. When the wind blew, powdery snow drifted down.
His younger brother stood there beneath that falling snow, a radio in one hand.
He was alone. He wore an overcoat. A sixty-four-year-old man. Glasses. His hair, slicked back, was even whiter beneath the snow.
“Hyung.”
Thud.
The younger brother dropped the radio, which had been emitting nothing but static, onto the snow and turned toward his older brother.
“You came.”
“I came.”
The older brother gasped for breath. Cough. Blood sprayed across the snow.
The younger brother counted the dark red stains hardened over his brother’s clothes.
“Three shots?”
“Five. Four of them were from those last three bastards.” Cough. He spat blood. “They were strong, those bastards. They could’ve eaten a People’s Army special operations squad leader alive.”
“At seventy-four.”
The younger brother laughed. It was a laugh of disbelief.
“And you still think you’re just an ordinary man.”
The older brother did not answer. He coughed once more. There was no time.
Time to talk.
“What you meant to do. Cheongmyeong... You can’t do it anymore.”
“Mm.”
The younger brother adjusted his glasses as he looked at his watch.
“Gears can always be replaced, Hyung. That’s why they’re gears. If a machine stopped running just because a few of them were removed...”
The older brother coughed.
“Kim Mal-ja.”
The younger brother looked at him.
“That old woman from South Jade Pavilion?”
“Yeah.” Cough. “I told her... to put it all out. All the materials. What I brought. Everything I investigated. All of it.”
The younger brother said nothing.
For a long while, he said nothing.
“You trust them? They’re witches who built their power by sucking on the sweet fruits of dictatorship. The three sisters of the night.”
“Kim Tae-yang.”
At the mention of the gangster who had been taken to Samcheong[2] after the new military junta came to power, Han Bada pursed his lips as if saying, Oh.
“I asked you to tell him to be careful. When I came out of Seobinggo.”
“I did.”
“Let’s see, then it isn’t your responsibility or mine... I see. That bald man and his friend have no choice but to take the blame.
Hm. But weren’t those siblings not especially close? Especially Madam Mal-ja and that fellow Kim Tae-yang.”
“They’re old now.”
The older brother coughed.
“When you get old... you naturally start thinking about more things.”
The younger brother laughed. This time, aloud. He laughed loudly, from the depths of his stomach.
After laughing for a while, the younger brother raised a hand. He stroked the Seonangdang shrine tree.
“Hyung, do you remember?”
“Bada.”
“I was just a kid then. You know, there was that guy named Jin-dong. Was he from Lower Hamlet? The guy who always wore overalls.”
The older brother shut his mouth.
Looking up at the Seonangdang shrine tree through his frosted glasses, the younger brother said,
“I wanted to teach him a lesson. Just teaching him a lesson wasn’t enough. I wanted to make him cry. I wanted to become a police constable, military police, anything, and make him cry for his mother.
Hm, what kind of person was his mother again? I can’t remember. I do remember that his father was a real piece of work.”
Mrs. Go.
Go Tae-chon.
“Funny, isn’t it? I can’t even remember what his parents were like, but I remember him. Back then, I thought that if I made him call for his mother, I would win.”
The younger brother took a cigarette from his coat. Click. It lit, and in the white world, only its tip burned fiercely.
“What happened to him again... I can’t remember that either.
Do you remember, Hyung?”
“He died.”
The older brother drew in a deep breath.
“In the flood. They were all swept away. Lower Hamlet left behind only Taeyang and Pi Sun-dae, that real thug bastard... Everyone else died.”
“I see.”
The younger brother exhaled cigarette smoke and stroked the Seonangdang shrine tree once more.
“That’s right.”
That was what had happened.
“Bada.”
Han San coughed. Flecks of blood scattered across the snow.
When he walked over and stood before him, Mr. Han Bada spoke.
“You asked why I did this.”
He had.
“Do you still want to hear the answer?”
Han San raised his head.
The corners of Mr. Han Bada’s mouth rose.
“Isn’t it funny? The sight of them all tearing at each other.”
Han San roared. He swung his fist.
Beneath the snow-covered Seonangdang shrine tree, the sounds of two old men grappling rang out loudly.
Footnotes:
[2] The Samcheong Education Corps was a 1980 South Korean military regime “social purification” program that sent detainees to military-run camps.
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