WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 21: Dressing the Catch (2)

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[I had no idea. So Teacher Han Bada had an older brother.]

[And a friend of Tae-yang's, no less... what a coincidence.]

[Ah, not a friend, you say? Well, of course. What kind of friends would that boy ever have?]

Kim Mal-ja.

In the era when backroom politics ran rampant, she was the owner of South Jade Pavilion, the ryotei that held sway over the whole of Gangwon.

A woman whose name didn't suit her splendid bearing or her radiant looks flickered past in his mind.

[Do you know why my name is like this? "Kim Mal-ja," the last child—please, no more daughters.]

[Wol-ja, Seong-ja, and then Mal-ja... The first daughter was Wol, the moon. The second was Seong, the star. After that there was nothing left to come up with, so it was, let's end this whole daughter business already—Mal-ja.]

[Tae-yang only got to be Tae-yang because he barely managed to be born a boy. If he'd been born a girl, he'd have been Kim Mal-mal-ja.]

You could call it a common enough story in this age. The truth was that right up to the end of Han San's past life, it stayed common enough that the preference for sons ran deep through this land.

In a world like that, the three Kim sisters and how far they pushed ahead stood out all the more.

Wol-ja, Seong-ja, Mal-ja.

The three sisters of the night.

These women clawed their way to the very edge of power—on the razor's edge of the National Total Mobilization period, through the chaos that came after liberation, under the gunfire of war and the jackboots of dictatorship. The more savage the times grew, the more their influence spread like a poisonous mushroom.

Kim Tae-yang had been able to remain a gangster well into old age in his past life partly because his formidable sisters had protected him.

The sisters had little use for their little brother, but blood ties run deep, and their karma deeper.

'Blood ties, huh...'

Thinking of Han Bada and himself in the past life, Han San shook his head amid the bitterness. He shook off the stray thought fast and turned his focus to the sucker in front of him.

"Hey. But if you're going to give your sister a gift anyway, do you really need to go about it like that?"

"Huh?"

"Take the goods, trade them for a badger, then trade the badger again for money. What on earth is the point of all that?"

Even as he said it, Han San couldn't believe it.

If there were just a million more guys like this, the whole human race could live off distribution fees alone. In a world like that, wouldn't there be a big company whose only business was hauling other people's food around?

"And on top of that, you punk, do you even know how to take a badger and sell it for a fair price?"

"Well, that... I figured my uncle, or the guys who owe my uncle, would know how..."

Kim Tae-yang trailed off. Han San thumped his own chest as if at his wits' end.

"Tae-yang. Use your head a little. Why do you think your storehouse is piled up with stuff nobody can get rid of? Because turning it into money is a hassle, or it's hard, so it just got shoved away, right? And a badger's a live thing on top of that. It rots. Hide, meat, all of it. Don't deal with it in time and it just turns into a lump of dung."

"Ah..."

The "use your head a little" he was always throwing at Im Baechil the second he got the chance came boomeranging right back.

Kim Tae-yang flared up and started to argue, then shut his mouth. Run it through the filter in his head and not one word was wrong. He went sullen.

"So what am I supposed to do? I finally bring it up and you tell me not to bring it at all?"

"No. What I'm saying is, let's cut out the middle steps."

Here's how we do it, Han San said, lowering his voice as if sharing a secret.

"When you come, bring a little empty bottle. Make it a pretty, clean one if you can. Then I'll refine badger oil and fill it right up for you."

"Oil?"

"Yeah. This stuff's used as medicine, and the madams in Gyeongseong are all over it too, you know? Good for the skin, they say."

Sticking up his thumb, Han San understood at the same time why peddlers were the byword for a smooth talker. This was a trade where you couldn't survive if you couldn't sell.

"You too, Tae-yang, you punk. Instead of some run-of-the-mill gift you bought for cash in town, picture this: 'Noona, this is a badger me and my friend, and his father, a Baekdu Mountain hunter, hunted by combing all over Mount Seorak. This is natural oil pressed from it.' Hold that out, and like you said yourself, wouldn't it look way cooler?"

Kim Tae-yang's eyes went round. His pupils rolled fast, as if he were running the numbers in his head, and then color flooded that bronze face.

"Ah, for real? You'll say we caught it together?"

"What's there to stop me?"

It cost him nothing, after all. If it got him something solid in return, wasn't that a clear profit?

Letting an outsider in on his and his father's hunt did, in truth, set off some resistance in him, but Han San was thinking of the very thing his father had shown this kid.

'He played the scarecrow so splendidly—putting his name at the bottom of the list is the least I can do.'

With no idea what was going on inside Han San, Kim Tae-yang just chuckled away, delighted. A gift of badger oil hunted together with a Baekdu Mountain hunter and his son? Just thinking about it made his chest puff right out.

"Got it! See you later, friend!"

His trousers had dried, as luck would have it. Kim Tae-yang threw his clothes on and ran off down the mountain without a backward glance. His departing figure was so light it was hard to believe this was the same guy who, moments ago, had wet himself and trembled.

The valley was left to the father and son again.

"He's finally gone. Damn punk."

Han San shook his head. He'd only talked, yet somehow a deep mental exhaustion had settled over him.

Han Man-seok, who had finished tidying up everything in that time, said only one thing.

"You handle him well."

"Leave the dung where it is and it's just guts. Clean it up nice and pack it with something to eat and it's sundae... it changes depending on what you put in, that's all."

Of course, there were things you couldn't eat no matter how you washed them. Han San knew from seventy-four years of experience that such things existed in this world.

Kim Tae-yang—which kind was he?

'Either way, it doesn't matter.'

If he could be eaten, eat him. If he couldn't, throw him out. For a hunter that was an everyday thing.

As for the waste of the time it took to wash, well, you just took the hit.

He would take it.

Han San loaded the cleaned catch onto the A-frame carrier.

"Let's go, Father."

"Mm."

The father and son, who had come up light, started down the mountain hauling a heavy harvest.

By the time they reached the house, the sun had passed its peak.

"Omama! What is all this!"

Ham Ssang-sim came running out in a rush. She couldn't shut her mouth at the thick haul piled on the carrier.

"Badgers! One, two—oya, three of them! You cleaned out the whole burrow?"

"Yes. Father found the den."

Han San smiled. With "omama" on her lips, Ham Ssang-sim gazed at her husband, her eyes warm.

That husband spent about six seconds silently lifting his chin, and Han San set down the carrier.

"Two of them are cubs, but this one's a big fellow, so the fat's really good. Mother, you can put this straight in the pot, can't you?"

"Oya! I'll get the fire going right now. Aigo, such a precious thing... the cubs, too—boiled whole as suyuk[1], they come out tender and tasty. Husband, your leg's not even good, you worked hard!"

Ham Ssang-sim brushed off her husband's sleeve, beaming. Han Man-seok's chin tilted a little higher.

What broke into the couple's moment was their youngest son, who came bursting out, kicking the door open.

"Whoaaa!"

Han Bada let out a cheer. His jaw hung so wide it was a wonder it didn't pop loose, and at the sight of the haul piled in the middle of the yard he started bouncing on the spot.

"What is it, what's this!? Hyung! Dad, is it a baby bear!? Did you catch a bear!?"

With three badgers stacked one on top of another, it might well have looked that way to the eyes of an eight-year-old.

Han San snorted a laugh and laid a hand on his head.

"Bear, my foot. A bear's about ten times bigger than this, punk."

"Really!? Hyung, you've seen a bear too!?"

He had. Plenty. But that was from his past life, so Han San just brushed it off.

"I'll show you next time I catch one. By then—ah, but even if I catch one, how would I drag it all the way back here..."

"I'll help you!"

"Go on and try. No matter how hard you pull, you couldn't yank out a single bear hair."

"Kkokko."

That last sound, of course, was not made by Han Bada.

In broad daylight in a slash-and-burn village, for a little boy chatting away perfectly fine to suddenly let out a chicken's cry—now wouldn't that be a truly terrifying thing.

So no such bone-chilling event had befallen the Han household. It was the Leghorn hen Han San had brought home for the grand sum of one won. The bird, white feathers trailing like a gown, had stepped gracefully out in front of the heap of badgers.

"Cluck..."

The hen let out a cry as she looked at the badger corpses. It was as if some noble young lady were lamenting the fall of a natural enemy with a kind of melancholy, sighing over the heartlessness of the wheeling way of heaven and the surging tides of the martial world that no single person could defy.

Or maybe she was just hungry.

Probably hungry.

Otherwise she wouldn't have suddenly started pecking, peck-peck, at a limp badger's head.

"Hey! Kkokko, what do you think you're doing!"

Bada rushed over, horrified. The hen, who had been forcibly saddled with the name "Kkokko" since yesterday, dodged Bada with a practiced move and began circling the yard.

"Aigo, honestly. San, I don't know who in the world your little brother takes after! You weren't this rowdy when you were little..."

At his mother's lament, Han San grinned.

"I'm pretty rowdy even now, you know."

"Hearing you say that, this mother's heart suddenly feels rowdy too. Enough—now go wash up!"

"Ah, but I already went and did a full bath-and-purify down at the stream. Do you have any idea how hurt I was last time, when you told me not to come into the kitchen in that state? I'm clean, so I'm going to help in the kitchen. Don't stop me."

"You, you, you! Aigo, Bada, and who in the world does your hyung take after..."

Ham Ssang-sim clicked her tongue and laughed. That was when it happened.

Han Man-seok suddenly spoke up. The angle of his chin had, at some point, settled back down.

"Ssang-sim."

"Hm? What is it?"

"Give me one of the small ones."

Ham Ssang-sim made a puzzled face.

But the woman who had lived a whole life with this man looked into his eyes a moment, then nodded.

"Take this one."

Ham Ssang-sim handed her husband a badger cub. Taking it in hand, Han Man-seok strode off toward the brushwood gate.

"Father, where are you going? Let me come with you..."

"Stay here." Han Man-seok waved one hand as he kept walking. "I'll be back soon."

Han San had no choice but to turn back the step he'd been about to take. His father's retreating figure grew distant, the badger cub with him.

'Where could he be going...'

For the first time since regressing, oddly enough, he had nothing in particular to guess at.

Just as he was about to think it over further—smack! A stinging shock landed on his back.

He turned to find his mother smiling.

"There, let's work! Or what—don't tell me you've already decided you don't want to help this mother of yours?"

Han San, who had stood there blankly for a moment, soon laughed along. There was no way he could beat the trust his mother held in his father.

"I'll work."

The house quickly grew busy.

While Ham Ssang-sim set up the pot and hauled water, Han San crouched in front of the kitchen furnace and got the fire going.

Crackle, crackle.

The firewood caught, and steam began to rise from the two furnace holes.

The small pot on the left of the furnace was where money got made.

"San, don't make the fire too strong! The oil will burn!"

"Yes, Mother!"

Han San adjusted the flame. Inside the pot sat the lumps of white fat scraped off the badger.

"Look at the color of this oil. Your mother's hands are this good."

"It's really something."

It was no empty flattery. Han San was awed. He'd spent his whole life as a mountain man and the work was second nature to him too, but this kind of job, his mother seemed to do better.

"My cooking's pretty something as well!"

In the big pot to the right of the furnace, badger intestines were being stir-fried with doenjang. Back home he'd washed them clean one more time, chopped them small, and was frying them up.

"Smells good, my son!"

"Ha, it could've turned out even better. If only there'd been garlic and scallions and chilies..."

"The problem is your heart's gone all greedy like a thief's, my son. Hey! If there were a house that could throw stuff like that around freely, wouldn't they be called the House of the Lord of Flavor[2]?"

"Then our house can be the House of the Lord of Flavor."

"You don't get to be a lord's house overnight! For now, aim for Master of Flavor... no, Squire of Flavor."

So the mother rendered the oil while the son, aiming for Squire of Flavor, prepared for his flavor civil exam. That was when it happened.

With the sound of the brushwood gate opening, a cold wind swept in.

"Father, you're back?"

"Mm."

A short answer. Han San craned his neck to look, and sure enough his father had just returned.

The badger he'd taken out with him was nowhere to be seen, and two unfamiliar pieces of metal were in his hands.

'A file and a saw?'

Han San's eyes narrowed.

'Did he go over to Uncle Baek's place?'

As he pictured the Upper Hamlet blacksmith's house, sure enough Han Man-seok nodded.

"Borrowed them from the Upper Hamlet. Have to return them this evening."

Han San paused. He'd given a whole badger cub just to borrow them for that little while?

No matter how scarce iron tools were in a slash-and-burn village, no matter how rife the plundering trade was of stripping another family bare to feed your own, this was too steep.

'The Upper Hamlet bunch and the Lower Hamlet bunch alike—their talent for fleecing people...'

His teeth ground of their own accord, but Han Man-seok, as if he'd seen straight through his son's thoughts, said with a calm face,

"Don't dwell on it. I used it because it was needed."

"Yes, Father..."

"Come inside."

Han San's hand stopped.

Han Man-seok went into the room. As Han San hesitated, watching his father's back, Ham Ssang-sim kneaded his shoulder and pushed him along.

"Hurry on in. Leave the rest to this mother."

"...Yes."

Wiping his hands roughly on his trousers, Han San came out of the kitchen.

Slide.

When the door of the inner room closed, the sounds outside fell away a layer.

Han Man-seok stood at the upper end of the room. The hacksaw and saw borrowed from the Upper Hamlet lay on the floor.

And in his hands was that very cloth-wrapped stick.

Han San felt the spit in his mouth go dry.

'At last?'

Han Man-seok sat down and unwound the cloth.

Whisper.

As the yellowed cloth came away, the buttstock was revealed, gleaming dark from soaked oil.

The buttstock was long. The wooden stock connected to it in one piece stretched out long as well.

The blackened barrel rested on that stock like a cannon mounted on an emplacement. On its top face he could see the chrysanthemum seal, stamped clear.

【Type 38 infantry rifle (Type 38 Infantry Rifle)】

Nearly fifteen years ago, the thing his father had seized during his "Righteous Army" days in Hamgyeong Province and hidden away like his very life!

Han Man-seok cradled the rifle in both hands and turned to look at his son.

"I saw the oil you bought in town."

"...Ah, yes. That—they said it was good for blades, so for the sickle and the like..."

"That's oil for cleaning a rifle, isn't it."

Han San held his breath.

His father had already known—what his son had been preparing, what his son had been wanting.

'The moment he saw the machine oil?'

No. Maybe it was the very moment, back when they went together to Go Tae-chon's house, that he first stole a glance at it.

Either way, his father hadn't spoken and his son hadn't asked, so this matter would never be brought to light.

Han Man-seok simply walked. One step, and that much closer to his son.

To the son kneeling on the floor, the old marksman held out the rifle.

"Take it."

Han San took the rifle with trembling hands.

Thunk.

One hand reached the barrel, the other the stock.

The metal was bone-chillingly cold, the wood smooth as an animal's skin.

The rims of Han San's eyes grew red.

The weight of the years his father had carried, and the weight of the responsibility he himself now had to carry, came traveling up his fingertips at last, across a span of seventy-four years.

His father spoke.

"It's heavy."

Han San hugged the rifle tight to his chest. Once again the seventy-four-year-old man and the eighteen-year-old boy overlapped within that embrace.

With reddened eyes he looked his father straight in the face.

"I'll carry it."

No more than that needed saying.

Han Man-seok nodded.

"Give me your hand. I'll fit it to you."

[1] Suyuk is boiled meat, simmered whole or in large pieces in plain water and then sliced, a traditional Korean way of preparing meat without seasoning.

[2] "Lord," "Master," and "Squire" of Flavor render a joke on the Joseon-era ranks daegam, saengwon, and jinsa, graded titles for high officials and for men who had passed the lower and higher literary licentiate exams, here applied to a household's ability to afford seasonings.

Footnotes:

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