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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 22

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Dressing the Catch (3)

Dim sunlight forced its way through the paper sliding door, and a sharp, biting smell of metal hung in the room.

Han Man-seok held his son's hand and studied it. He had been at it for a while now, ever since he'd said, "I'll fix it to suit you" — nothing but silence since.

Han San didn't ask. He simply waited.

A clatter drifted in from outside. Somehow Han San knew it meant his mother and Bada had started eating without them.

His mother hadn't asked permission to go ahead. She'd known without a word that her husband was busy with something important alongside their eldest son, and so she'd gone ahead.

A wife's trust really was something a child could hardly outmatch.

So he would keep trying.

Han San waited.

He had to wait a long time, but he held out.

His father spoke at last.

"Are you going to shoot men, or beasts?"

The question came out of nowhere, but Han San understood it at once.

'The independence movement...'

It would be a lie to say he'd never thought about it.

Not to become a hero. Again and again, Han San knew well that he wasn't built for that.

It was because he knew history.

'A chance to stand on the winning side.'

They said that after liberation the pro-Japanese collaborators rose to power again and the independence fighters suffered for it — but he knew even that. Surely he wouldn't get stabbed in the back so pointlessly.

But Han San did not choose that road.

"I'll shoot beasts."

The great cause was far away, and the nation a blur.

Power... power burned hot.

In the end, his skin wasn't as thick as his younger brother's.

He would simply protect the family he had been reunited with. He would always put that first.

Someday his arm might grow longer, his reach wider. But today, at least, was not that day.

"Good."

Han Man-seok released his wrist and spoke.

"Lay out the newspaper."

"Yes, sir."

Han San spread the newspaper he'd bought in town that day across the floor — wide. He set the gun on top of it and placed the machine oil to the side, within his father's easy reach.

But then.

"It can't be used like this."

Han Man-seok reached not for the machine oil but for the file. Looking down at the gun, he said in a low voice.

"Use it, and you die."

He didn't mean dying to a beast.

He meant dying to the Empire that had once owned this gun — to the blades and rifles of its soldiers.

"This is still a gun made to shoot men."

Holding the file, Han Man-seok looked at the top of the chamber.

The chrysanthemum[1] stamp, pressed in sharp and clear.

The mark that showed it had been property of the Empire. The time Han Man-seok spent gazing at it, lingering on it, was very short — but it was there.

Still, again, very short.

He brought the file to it.

He rubbed the chrysanthemum pattern for a long time, a very long time. A man with that kind of monstrous strength, and yet he didn't try to grind it off in one stroke — he went slowly, carefully.

Surely.

It wasn't like crushing the windpipe at the throat, but like gently sealing the holes of the mouth and nose. The petals blurred away little by little, without a sound. Only when it had become a scar that no one could say for certain "that is a chrysanthemum" did he stop his hand.

He blew the metal filings away with a sharp puff of breath.

"Now it's ready to shoot beasts."

Watching, Han San was trembling.

'I'd been wondering what to do about that stamp anyway.'

Out of burning patriotism? Out of hatred for imperial Japan?

'No.'

Han San, who had survived seventy-four years through every hardship under the sun, was not the kind to be swayed by feelings like that.

'The charge changes.'

Unlicensed possession of a firearm — violation of the Firearms and Explosives Control Ordinance, up to one year in prison or a fine of up to 300 won.

Capture of a military infantry rifle — violation of the Peace Preservation Law, up to ten years in prison.

'Even if I slipped up and someone laid eyes on it, as long as he wasn't a man who knew guns, I might be able to talk my way past it — but...'

That chrysanthemum stamp stood out far too much. It would leave no room for any excuse at all.

And it was only when his thoughts reached that point that Han San finally noticed something strange.

'Wait — then why until now? If he'd been able to do this all along...'

It had been close to fifteen long years.

Why had he only ever kept it wrapped in cloth?

Why had he left the chrysanthemum stamp in place all this time?

To take on every one of those risks, to keep this gun and leave it untouched — what could it possibly have meant to his father, that he would do such a thing?

Several guesses sprang up at once in Han San's head. He didn't dare confirm a single one of them.

But the one thing he did understand was why his father was doing it now.

'Because this has become my gun.'

The handing down continued.

The metal rings that had clamped the barrel and the wood tight — Han Man-seok gripped them and did not let go for a long while. The veins stood out on the backs of his hands, a few rough metallic groans rang out, and then, with a snap, the metal pieces at the front lost their hold and fell away.

"There's no need to fix a blade to a gun for shooting beasts."

The wooden casing covering the barrel peeled away. Even the distinctive dust cover was torn off. Leaving the bare, stripped barrel on the newspaper, Han Man-seok picked up the saw.

"A gun is fired from a distance. A pattern stands out the closer you get — but an outline grows sharper the farther it is."

He measured for a long time, handled it, gauging without a ruler, using only his bony-knuckled fingers and the palm of his hand. Then the old Baekdu Mountain hunter sawed away at the wooden stock here and there.

The buttstock was next.

"If you're trying to strike with this, it's already too late. Don't let them get close in the first place."

He cracked the steel plate off the rear, let it drop, and brought the saw over. With a sawing sound that seemed to cut into the heart, the buttstock too shifted a little in shape.

After the saw came the file, after the file the saw, then the file again — working the gun over by turns.

The frame of the Type 38 infantry rifle grew gaunt, like a prisoner put to the slow death. Stripped wood and metal bone dust piled up thick on the floor.

Han San recognized the new outline that had taken shape.

'A Murata hunting gun[2].'

A relic of a bygone era that looked much like the Type 38 infantry rifle but was, in truth, a world apart. Long since retired from military service, converted to fire shot, and sold off to civilians, it was a castoff that anyone with a single permit could sling over their shoulder.

Right now, this gun had been disguised to look just like that.

"Don't put it in anyone else's hands."

Han Man-seok said it low.

Han San nodded too. Even after all of this, in the end it was only a cover that could fool eyes passing by.

'If someone saw these marks where it was ground and sawn — if they looked inside the chamber to see what kind of round this gun actually fires...'

Unauthorized modification of a military firearm for the purpose of concealment, violation of the Peace Preservation Law, judged a dangerous element threatening the national polity — five years or more in prison, life, or death!

"Take it."

The son took the gun his father held out.

The moment he took hold of it, a shiver ran clean over Han San's skin.

It wasn't only the stamp that had been ruined, nor only the outline that had been reshaped.

The weight settling into his body was different, the grain meeting his hands changed.

'This is my gun.'

His father had spoken nothing but the truth from start to finish. This was his own gun, fixed to suit him.

The one and only of its kind in the world. A gun that was his alone.

"Let's clean it."

Only now did Han Man-seok reach out and open the sewing machine oil Han San had bought in town.

At that same hour, at the new road expansion work site near Daeseung Falls.

The mountain air, with dusk settled heavy over it, was full of noise.

"Aw, come on, foreman! Let's just knock off for today!"

One of the laborers grumbled around his leaf tobacco.

"Once the sun's down it's the mountain spirit's hours, ain't it! It gets dark real quick! Let's head on over to the tents and get ready to sprawl out and sleep!"

The foreman felt his insides burning.

"Ah, you little bastards! All you ever think about is dragging out the construction period so you can collect more daily wages! Look over there — that fellow — can't you see his eyes have gone wild!"

Where the foreman jerked his chin stood Hajama Tsuchimaru the surveyor, pressing his round glasses up.

"Irritating."

The surveyor spat it out, his face sour.

"What you are wasting right now is not simple time. It is precious surgical time — time meant to bore through the veins of the Empire."

The foreman and the laborers were irritated too. Couldn't that son of a bitch just talk like a normal person for once?

"Enough. Once the sun goes down, light the torches and keep working."

"No, surveyor-nim, how are we supposed to work by torchlight..."

"Why can't you? Yesterday that young man scaled a cliff with his bare hands — and you can't even work on flat ground?"

"How is what that fellow did the same as the work we do? And you know full well, surveyor-nim. How are we supposed to manage that? Torches — really, come on."

The foreman was firm too. Impossible was impossible, no matter how you cut it. If this surveyor kept on being so unreasonable, he meant to use as his shield the fact that he too had half the blood of the divine nation in his veins.

That look made the surveyor even more irritated. The one who knows best that he's being unreasonable is the very person making the unreasonable demand. The surveyor's voice grew a notch sharper.

"You — what's with that look? That gaze is no simple stare. It is, toward the Empire, a—"

"Aaaaagh!"

A sudden scream ripped the surveyor's words clean in half.

The foreman, Hajama, all the laborers turned toward where the sound had come from. Into their bewildered eyes came a black, enormous shadow.

And the sight of that shadow bearing down on the one who had screamed — the laborer who'd been smoking his leaf tobacco.

"Grrrrrr..."

The shadow of a beast let out a low growl.

[1] The chrysanthemum here is the imperial chrysanthemum crest of Japan (菊花, kikka), stamped on military property to mark it as belonging to the Empire.

[2] The Murata gun (村田銃) was an early Japanese-designed bolt-action service rifle of the 1880s; obsolete versions were later converted to fire shot and sold to civilians as hunting guns.

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