WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR
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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era
Chapter 23
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The Inauspicious Star
Time is a relative thing.
In the face of terror, an instant becomes an eternity. A sight too unbelievable to grasp peels the "now" and the "here" away from a person.
"...Huh?"
Someone let out a dazed sound. Probably. Or, surely.
A black shadow flickered before their eyes; that shadow was crushing a coworker they had bickered with through long days of shared labor; and when a man sees a sight like that, since a human is the kind of beast that makes such a cry, someone surely did make such a sound.
But that sound was, after all,
too far off to wake the others.
Crunch, crack.
The grotesque sound of tearing came first. A lukewarm liquid followed, spraying into a fine mist.
On someone's cheek, on someone's work clothes, red dots scattered down.
"Uh, uh..."
The fishy smell of iron, the rank stink of beast stabbing at the nose.
Even then the men stood blank. They only stared, cigarettes still in their mouths, pickaxes still in their hands, dully watching the torn flesh of their coworker.
What shattered that frozen time was a roar.
"Aooooooo!!"
Only after that roar shook them to the marrow did the world finally begin to flow again.
"W-wolf!?"
The instant the foreman screamed—
"Grrrrrr!"
"Krrr... grrrr!"
"Kyaaaang, kyareung!"
From over there, from over here, then from that side and over there again, from all around the forest that ringed the construction site, wolves, wolves, and then wolf after wolf came bursting out.
"Aaargh! Help, somebody!"
"Wolves! It's a wolf pack!"
The construction site dissolved into chaos in a heartbeat.
The laborers tried frantically to spin around, but—thud—every time they did, the wolves cut off each man's path, one wolf per man, then another. Like a yakuza deliberately stepping in front of someone in a hurry.
Like an organization those yakuza had banded together to form.
They stamped a foot once, twice, and after barring the way like that—
"Krang!"
—they lunged.
"Aagh!"
One laborer toppled backward. A wolf mounted him, drooling, and swiped its forepaws. Thwack. "Gah!" A scream tore loose, and the wolves, drunk on the spurting blood, howled long—aooooo!
"G-get back! Get back, damn you!"
"I'm bitten! I'm bit, aagh!"
The laborers swung their shovels at anything, drove their pickaxes down. They split nothing but air. The wolves dodged as if enjoying it, lunged as if at play, swinging, striking, tearing.
"Gah!"
"S-save me! Save me, aaagh!"
Screams and the sound of flesh being gouged, the smell of human blood and the rank stink of beast tangled together into a hell.
In the dead center of it, Hajama Tsuchimaru the surveyor stood blank.
He saw it.
Beyond the slaughter, perched on a high rock, looking down—a certain being.
'That thing.'
A frame a full head larger than the other wolves, silver fur gleaming in the sunset, and on each cheek a single livid scar running clear.
Most chilling of all were its eyes.
The screams ringing across the worksite, the laborers sprawled and kneeling and thrashing—those eyes looked down on it all as if savoring the meaning of it.
'That is no ordinary beast,' Hajama thought. 'That is a monster—'
Sirius—
Beyond the silver wolf seated on the rock, Hajama saw the Dog Star[1] cutting across the sunset sky, risen early.
'The inauspicious star that calls down calamity—'
Without his knowing it, Hajama's hand slid into his coat.
A cold touch met his fingers.
A pistol—only, not one that fired live rounds.
A German-made Hebel M1894.[2]
A flare gun with a single-round chamber, bought for himself partly against the chance of being stranded during survey work, partly as a hobby.
'Even if I fire this...'
Hajama's hand trembled.
That was when—
"What are you doing!"
A rough hand shoved Hajama hard. It was the foreman.
"Run, damn it! Are you an idiot?"
Gripping his pickaxe, the foreman screamed, his eyes rimmed red.
"Damn it, damn this fate of mine! Aigo, damn it, really! Peninsula bastards, islander bastards, the whole lot of you! Just die, all of you, die already!"
Whip, whip! The wildly swung pickaxe drove off a wolf that was closing in. It came again at once, and he swung again at once and drove it off again. His breath quickly turned ragged and foam ran from his mouth, but he kept on.
"But get the hell out of my sight first, then die! Damn it—ah, this is hard as hell—ah, damn it, why aren't you bastards running either, you sons of bitches!"
That desperate struggle enraged the wolves and made the laborers falter.
And it brought Hajama to his senses.
A faint smile formed at the corner of Hajama's mouth. He felt just a little more at ease, and he himself did not know why.
Hajama took a step.
He moved a single step ahead of the gasping foreman.
"Run."
"What?"
"I said run!"
A touch of temper crept into the smile on Hajama's mouth.
Ah—in the end, right up to this moment, the people he had been with had given him nothing but annoyance.
They could give one another nothing but annoyance, and receive nothing else.
Perhaps that was all that was possible between people living through the same era.
But then again, perhaps that was enough.
Beyond the bright glint of his lenses, Hajama's eyes now carried something other than irritation. They turned toward the leader on the rock, the silver wolf.
"This is no simple signal to retreat. It is an order to survive and report the situation to the Government-General!"
"Y-you crazy bastard..."
The foreman ground his teeth. But the instruction was clear, and it had already been given.
He had to obey it.
"You bastards, get up! Quick, every bastard who can stand, quick..."
The survivors, the laborers with shallow wounds, staggered over and gathered at the foreman's side.
"F-foreman... surveyor-nim..."
"B-but what are we supposed to do now..."
The wolves' encirclement was near perfect, and it kept closing in.
There seemed to be no gap to slip through, and even if they tore one open, how were they to outrun a beast through these mountains and win?
And yet—could they simply give up because of that?
Hajama raised the flare gun with a trembling hand.
He aimed not at the sky, but at the leader with its glistening silver fur, right between its eyes.
'No live round, but enough to buy even a sliver of an opening—'
The instant that thought flashed through Hajama's mind, something astonishing happened.
"Yelp!"
The silver leader, which had been looking down on the slaughter at its ease like an honored guest, sprang back with a sound close to a scream the moment it saw the muzzle pointed at it.
'It knows guns.'
Hajama understood in a single instant.
'It knows guns!'
The destructive power of a powder weapon, the death that black hole spat out—this beast knew it!
"Hm."
The smile at the corner of Hajama's mouth deepened.
A beast that knows guns is usually rated more dangerous than one that does not. They catch the scent of powder and clear out before the muzzle spits fire. And they wait for the moment a gunner cannot possibly shoot, then charge in.
But that cunning had now become a crack in the wall!
Hajama did not lower the muzzle. He kept the silver wolf doggedly in his sights.
"Krrr... grrrr."
"Grrr..."
When the leader took fright and drew back, the discipline of its underlings fell apart. Some inched backward toward the silver wolf as if to shield their boss, and some crept cautiously toward Hajama.
A hole opened in the encirclement.
"Now!"
"Wooaaaah!"
With the foreman's shout, the laborers surged through that hole.
After confirming they had vanished into the darkness, Hajama still kept the muzzle leveled. He knew that the moment he turned it away, this standoff would end.
But there is no play whose curtain never falls.
"Grrr..."
Doubt began to settle into the silver wolf's eyes. A stick that never spat fire, no matter how long—small in size, too.
And on top of that, the hand holding it was shaking.
"Krrr!"
The instant the silver wolf bared its teeth—click—Hajama finally pulled the trigger.
A bang rang out.
"Yelp!"
The silver wolf flinched back again, terrified. The wolves jerked to a halt.
In the dead center of the construction site, gone dark red where sunset and shadow had mixed, a blazing red sun shot up sideways.
Tsssssk!
The heat and light the magnesium poured out could not last, though, and fell away limply.
And then the world went very quiet.
"Grrr..."
What broke that quiet was, of course, the silver wolf.
It had realized it had been toyed with.
After sweeping the area with a single look, the beast bared its teeth at the stares its underlings turned on it. Grrrrr! A low growl that rattled the very lining of the heart made the underling wolves cower and set the forest trembling.
The wolves cleared a path. A road opened between Hajama and the silver wolf.
The silver wolf came on, its footfalls thudding—thud, thud.
"Hm."
Hajama let go of the flare gun.
With a clatter the empty gun dropped.
Beyond the round lenses, toward the silver wolf looming larger and larger, Hajama smiled.
"The human you kill—that is no simple human," said Hajama Tsuchimaru the surveyor. "That is a civil servant of the Empire."
He fought to look straight into the wolf's gaping maw.
"The Empire will kill you."
A moment later, the teeth covered everything.
Some time later, the following report was submitted to the Security Section of the Police Affairs Bureau of the Government-General of Joseon.
[ At the Section 17 site of the new road in Inje County, Gangwon Province, an attack by a pack of wild wolves occurred. ]
[ Including the gisu, Surveyor Hajama Tsuchimaru, a total of 6 persons died and 10 suffered injuries great and small. ]
[ Putting together the survivors' testimony, the leader of the wild wolf pack is presumed to be a wolf of enormous build with silver fur. ]
[ This individual is hereby designated the mutant man-eating wolf 'Ginsei,'[3] and each jurisdiction is to take every measure at once to eradicate Ginsei. ]
This incident would ride the telegraph wires to shake Busan greatly, set Gyeongseong astir once more, and drive its aftershocks back around to Gangwon.
[1] The Dog Star is Sirius (천랑성, 天狼星), the brightest star in the night sky; in classical East Asian astrology it was read as an ill omen heralding war, invasion, and calamity.
[2] The Hebel M1894 was a German single-shot break-action flare (signal) pistol; it fired magnesium signal cartridges, not lethal rounds.
[3] "Ginsei" (銀星) is the Japanese reading of the characters for "silver star," the official designation the colonial authorities assign to the silver-furred wolf.
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