WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 159: The Story of the Brothers 【Classic of Mountains and Seas】 (11)[1]
──────
The older brother threw punches. Again and again.
Some struck his younger brother’s cheek. Some merely grazed his shoulder.
The younger brother fell into the snow. His glasses went crooked, and as the older brother tried to pounce on him, cough, he dropped to one knee. That knee would no longer obey him.
The younger brother lashed out with his shoe. Thud. It struck that knee. Thud. Again, this time against the side where he had been shot. The older brother bent sharply at the waist.
The brothers tangled in the snow.
They swung their fists. They grabbed snow and flung it like dirt. They rolled once, and Thump! One of them crashed into the Seonangdang shrine tree, but neither knew whether it had been the older brother or the younger.
Snow fell from the tree, covering both brothers.
They struggled free and tangled together again. Clung to each other. The older brother’s body, shot through and bubbling with bloody phlegm, and the desk-bound younger brother’s body were in exquisite balance. Neither could gain the upper hand.
A long time passed.
“Hyung...”
The younger brother spoke. He was sprawled over his older brother, fist clenched and raised.
“As for me, Hyung...”
White breath broke apart and drifted away. Some drifted back down, dampening the glasses that had already turned white as ice.
“I hate this country. I hate the people of this country. Every two-legged thing that exists on this earth.
“These beasts, Hyung.”
The younger brother said,
“These beasts...”
The younger brother said,
“I hate that they mistake themselves for people.”
Ever since he had seen that crowd in Chuncheon, he had not understood.
How there could be so many of them.
“Beasts that only react when stimulated. Beasts so greedy that they bite and tear at everything they see.
“These man-eating beasts disgust me so much. To the point that I can’t endure it.”
It was the first time.
The older brother realized it.
His younger brother had cast off the smile he had worn like a layer over himself ever since their reunion. Something that had not been seen since he had said, [Everything will be all right.] and begun writing, [Hyung.]
His younger brother’s true feelings.
For the first time since he was nine.
“They forget what they said almost immediately.”
For a very long time, the younger brother had not understood.
“They see something and laugh. Then they cry. Then suddenly they get angry. Even at the very thing they had just been laughing at. When you ask them why, they say that and this are different. When someone else does the same thing, they throw stones. They point fingers and sing about how they knew all along that was exactly what the person would do.
“But the more chilling thing, Hyung. The truly most disgusting and frightening thing is...”
The younger brother coughed. There was blood in it.
“There were people, too.”
The younger brother laughed. It was a miserable laugh.
“Many people... At least, people you knew. Mr. Toono was kind. He saw people as people. Shin Cheol-min, was it? The person you told me about. You said he tried to stop the war.
“And there were many others... That student from June you told me about. The young man who brought you that plan. People who knew what they were doing. People who remembered and acted. There were people in this world. A few of them, at least.”
The younger brother’s hand released his older brother’s collar.
“But even those people get their ankles bitten by beasts. They get torn apart until they can no longer walk.”
Why had the 1987 presidential election[2] turned out that way?
Like everyone else in Korea, the younger brother had his own answer.
Since 1938, ever since seeing that disgusting herd of beasts, the younger brother had carried that answer in his heart. In 1987, he had finally had it confirmed as the right answer.
“You too, Hyung.”
The older brother looked up at him. His younger brother bared his teeth as he looked down. The lenses of his glasses were white, hiding the eyes behind them.
“The beasts made you unhappy.”
A whisper left the younger brother’s lips as white vapor.
“At nineteen, you pulled bodies from the water, polished military boots, and were treated like a dog. Those bastards were beasts. At twenty-three, you got on your knees and begged for help, and received five won. That bastard was a beast.”
“...”
“You lived your whole life among herds of beasts. I hate that, Hyung. I hate it. I just...”
The younger brother’s cheeks were wet. Something ran from beneath his glasses.
“I...”
This world was a play.
A vile, trashy play full of beasts.
Mr. Toono had wanted to lead the beasts somewhere better. To the water, somewhere, anywhere better than where they were.
He had not been like that. He despised the beasts, so he had wanted to sit in the highest seat and enjoy the whole grotesque pageant before he left.
But there was one person.
“Hyung, you make me pathetic.”
That was why Hyung got in the way.
“I just want to remain a spectator.”
The younger brother knew how pathetic it was for a spectator to become absorbed in a play, to cry and rage. Yet when he saw his older brother beyond that Gyeongseong coffeehouse, he had nearly done exactly that.
In truth, he had done it many times.
Because I’m pathetic.
From the beginning, those words had not been directed at his older brother.
“Bada...”
The older brother opened his mouth.
He closed it, then opened it again.
“Everyone’s suffering.”
The older brother raised the back of his hand and caressed his younger brother’s cheek.
“They’re suffering... They’re all suffering so much. It’s so hard to endure the present, and then endure it again.”
Even if they survived today, tomorrow would come again.
“They haven’t met them yet.”
The older brother adjusted his younger brother’s glasses.
“The person I have to take responsibility for. The person my heart commands me to protect, no matter what.”
His younger brother, crying from hunger.
Family. The person who would someday become your family.
“They’re suffering so much now... They don’t know why they have to keep going. That’s why they act that way. Not because they’re beasts... They’re all hurting, miserable, confused.”
“That...”
The younger brother ground his teeth.
“How is that an excuse?”
“You’re the same.”
The younger brother flinched.
The older brother looked at him.
“This... everything you’re doing right now. Aren’t you just acting spoiled with your Hyung?”
The younger brother did not answer.
More precisely, he could not.
The older brother smiled bitterly and raised his hand. He pushed his younger brother away, then pressed that hand to his own forehead.
“So let’s not make things harder... People are suffering enough already. Let’s not... just not make things even harder for them.”
A hollow sigh drifted over the snow.
“That bald man at the temple, the Cheongmyeong Plan, all of it. At least us... At least we brothers shouldn’t make people who are already suffering suffer even more.
“We’ve both lived hard lives.”
The younger brother was silent for a moment before speaking.
“...I didn’t exactly live a hard life.”
“Is that so?”
The younger brother did not answer.
This time, too, he could not.
The older brother gave a small snort.
The younger brother did not laugh. He only raised his bony hand to straighten his glasses.
“Hyung, I...”
Gunshot.
The younger brother’s body jerked backward.
The older brother saw blood spurt out.
The next moment, he moved.
The instant his younger brother flicked his eyes toward his own chest, the older brother thrust a hand inside his younger brother’s coat, seized the pistol, and drew it.
He turned.
Whoosh. His hair whipped around, scattering the falling snow. Bang! The man in the white suit who had shot his younger brother from among the trees spurted blood from his forehead and fell.
The older brother paid him no attention.
He embraced his younger brother.
“Bada!”
The younger brother coughed.
“Yeah...”
He touched his chest. Not where the pistol had been, but where he had been shot. Then he muttered,
“Well... It’s about time for the curtain to fall...”
“Bada, don’t talk. I’ll...”
“Hyung.”
The younger brother spoke. His voice was soft, but clear.
“What kind of people were our family?”
The older brother tried to speak. His younger brother covered his mouth.
“Our father... our mother... What were they like again? I can’t remember, Hyung. I...”
Cough.
“I miss them...”
“Bada.”
“No... Actually, I don’t miss them. I just said it.”
The younger brother smiled in his older brother’s arms.
“Mr. Toono was... Mr. Toono was a teacher. I respected him, and I liked him, but... he wasn’t family. Ms. Su-jeong... then simply Su-jeong. There was a girl by that name. Did I ever tell you about her?”
“You did, Bada. You told me.”
“Yeah... Mm, that girl is... How should I put it... She’s a little different. A little... not quite family... I...”
Cough.
“To me, Hyung was my only family...”
“Bada.”
The older brother ground his teeth. He tightened his arms around his younger brother, but when Bada coughed, he quickly loosened them. As he watched his younger brother slip farther away.
I have to do something.
I have to.
“Our father... Our father was a man of few words.”
I have to remember.
“He had a lot of beard around his mouth. When he spoke, it would twitch, but he was so thin that you could barely see his jaw. When he was younger... When I was very young, you could see his jaw and cheeks, but...”
The older brother desperately searched his memory. At seventy-four, his memories had grown dim, just like his failing eyesight. He tried somehow to wipe clear those clouded memories.
“His build... When I was young, Father was very strongly built. Like a bear. When he smiled, though he rarely did, he only lifted the corners of his mouth a little...”
I have to remember.
“Mother... Mother spoke in a Hamgyeong Province dialect. You know, those northern expressions like, ‘Do this, do that.’ You know that one, ‘Laughter brings good fortune’[3], right? You’ve seen it. The way comedians used to talk! Mother spoke like that...”
I have to remember. I have to remember.
“Mother... And Father...”
I have to remember.
“Hyung...”
The younger brother spoke.
“I’m cold... Hyung, I’m cold...”
The older brother held him more tightly.
“Bada.”
“Hyung... I, I want to see Mother and Father...”
“Bada!”
“Big brother...”
Then his younger brother spoke no more.
The older brother opened his mouth.
No sound came out. The old man howled with a soundless voice.
Snow fell.
He raised his head. The Seonangdang shrine tree was before him. Old Woman Wangdae had once performed an exorcism rite here... She had built an offering altar before it... That enormous old woman, praying for something.
Heaven.
Han San opened his mouth. Still, no sound came out.
...If there was
a heaven in this world,
if some great being
existed above it,
“Give me a chance.”
The words came out.
“Please, just one chance to live again.”
Words.
“Just once...”
Useless words. Words good for nothing. Words without any value.
“Please...”
He wanted to tell his younger brother about their father. He wanted to tell him about their mother.
He wanted to show him. Their father. Their mother. To tell him that he was not some monster born wrong, that he really was his younger brother, born from their mother’s womb and held in their father’s arms.
And he wanted to show his younger brother all the qualities an ideal older brother ought to have. Someone prepared for everything, always with a plan. Someone defeated by no one.
“Please.”
The words became a whisper, then broke apart and scattered.
His younger brother’s body was growing cold. So was his own.
Too much had already spilled from them. After his younger brother fell silent, even more spilled away.
The older brother knew it.
Yet he did not let go.
Looking one final time at the Seonangdang shrine tree,
I have to remember.
He thought one last time.
Father. Mother. His younger brother. Baechil-hyung. Ham Byeong-cheol’s five won. Haetae cigarettes. The man in the white durumagi. Old Woman Wangdae. Go Tae-chon. Go Jin-dong. Shin Cheol-min. Sawada Kazuo, the Inje military police detachment commander. Kim Mal-ja. Kannoizuna Toono.
The instant he thought of everything, his time was up.
And then.
Han San opened his eyes.
Footnotes:
[1] The Classic of Mountains and Seas is an ancient Chinese compilation of mythical geography, creatures, and lore.
[2] The 1987 South Korean presidential election followed democratization protests; a split opposition vote helped former general Roh Tae-woo win.
[3] “Laughter Brings Good Fortune” was a Korean comedy program whose comedians used the referenced northern Korean speech style.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
