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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 39

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Exit (2)

April 30th, early evening, Seorak.

A birch forest near Dumun Falls.

There, where bark-stripped trees stood pale and ranked like bones, Inje's military police detachment commander, Sawada Kazuo, waited.

Crick, crack.

Two walnuts screamed in his grip. His other hand rested alone behind his back.

"Today."

A white plume of breath stretched from Sawada's mouth, long as a snake's tongue.

"I take Ginsei."

His left eye socket, wrapped in its patch, throbbed beneath the empty hollow. The brand always came calling whenever the killing intent stirred in him.

'Filthy rats.'

Since the bounty had been posted, the Inje town center had become an absolute madhouse.

Dung flies, their eyes rolled back at the fortune of 300 won, swarmed in nearly every single day to raise hell. The air itself seemed blanketed by the kimchi stink of all eight provinces.

'Damn it all.'

Inje. Inje, Gangwon Province.

He held no attachment to this lump of dung of a land.

Manchuria, where word of endless victory kept arriving. Gyeongseong, seething with wealth and power. The quiet, lofty Mainland. Those were the lands where he belonged.

And yet Inje was the land he had been given charge of. The sense that his fief grew filthier by the day jabbed at his left eye socket past all bearing.

"I finish it today."

Crick! The sound of the walnuts rolling in his hand gnawed at the forest's silence once more.

Sawada steadied his breathing.

'Still, the chance has come.'

Baron Kannoizuna Toono.

That noble brat, favored by the upper echelons, was watching him. What was more, this affair was tied to the Hajama family.

'If I can claim this achievement properly...'

The Empire would have no choice but to put him to greater use.

"In any case..."

Sawada lifted his chin and swept his gaze across the forest ridge, feeling the presence of his subordinates lying in ambush in the dark.

'That brat of a baron.'

At first the man's brazen swagger had displeased him, but now he had no choice but to grant him a measure of respect.

Baron Kannoizuna Toono sat in the town office and played baduk[1]. The map of Seorak was his board, and his stones were the military police and the half-baked hunters.

While the military police stayed dug in at every spot like ladder formations, the half-baked hunters were thrown out as dead stones. Ginsei, who knew a gun and slipped away a step ahead, had its escape routes plugged one point at a time.

And so, now.

Ginsei had been left with no choice but to set foot inside the open tiger's mouth.

"That brat. Not half bad."

"Ahat! A brat, you say? Your words go too far!"

A sudden voice rang out from behind him, without a trace of anyone's presence.

Sawada didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow. He only rolled the walnuts in his hand once, crick, before he spoke.

"I was not speaking of His Lordship the Baron."

"Oh ho? Then of whom?"

"Who can say. More to the point—"

Sawada turned his words and his head together, toward the Imperial baron who had walked out of the darkness, toward that monocle gleaming like a full moon in the moonlight.

"Were you not in town?"

"Mm! Because today brings the decision! I make it my policy to attend the final count in person."

Toono laughed with his black-gloved index finger pressed to the corner of his mouth. His manner was as innocent as if he had come out for a picnic, but Sawada saw the abyss yawning behind it.

"Are you confident, Kazuo-kun?"

"Of course. My unit and I are capable men."

"A fine attitude! Be sure not to forget your zanshin[2]!"

At those words—a warning not to drop his guard to the very end—Sawada twitched one eyebrow.

'Insolent brat, through and through.'

Of course, he let none of it pass his lips. He merely bowed his head once and faced the forest again.

One hand behind his back, the other rolling the walnuts hard.

Crick!

As if that sound had been a signal, his adjutant's report came up.

"Detachment Commander. Two o'clock, dead ahead. Wolves."

The corner of Sawada's mouth twisted.

"All hands, load."

The military police lying in ambush in the dark drew back the bolts of their Type 38 infantry rifles all at once.

Cha-chak.

The chambers opened their black mouths. Thunk. A five-round clip rammed into each loading port, and the cartridges slid down inside in a row, pressed home.

It was then that hazy shadows came crawling out from between the pale-ranked birches.

"Grrn..."

"Grrrrr..."

A pack of wolves.

Not a trace remained of the triumphant figures from when they had swept down on the new road work site.

Hunted, blocked, worn ragged, starved, and forced to flee again and again, most of their coats had lost their color.

Only one.

Only the coat of the leader wolf—especially cowed, hunched down small in a way that didn't suit its build—gleamed sleek.

'Ginsei.'

Fur that flashed like white silver in the moonlight. Two scars carved like tattoos on both cheeks.

"Kaeng!"

Ginsei drew in its neck. It had caught the smell of gunpowder. By instinct it sensed that a still greater death lay waiting in the very place it had thought it was escaping toward.

Too late already.

"Fire."

With Sawada's order—

Bang! Ba-bang! Ratatatang, ba-bang!

Twelve Type 38 infantry rifles spat fire at once.

The birch forest wailed. In an instant, acrid gunpowder smoke and muzzle flash swallowed the whole forest.

"Kaeng!"

"Kae-kaeng!"

Against overwhelming firepower, beast-savagery meant nothing.

The Type 38's rounds didn't lash out crudely; they bored through bodies like awls. Thwack! Thwack-thwack! The wolves staggered once, twice, then laid their bodies down on the ground like reeds swept by the wind.

"Don't let a single one escape!"

At Sawada's shout, the military police finished reloading like machines. There wasn't a gap in their iron-tight formation for even one rat to slip through.

"Grrrrr..."

Ginsei, who had let the first volley pass over by hiding behind a tree and one of its subordinate beasts, pawed the ground like a pup desperate to relieve itself.

It glanced about ceaselessly, as if hunting for some hole to escape through, but in every direction a muzzle hung drawn like a fishing line.

'Beast.'

Sawada sneered and raised one hand.

"All hands—"

At the very moment his final order was about to fall.

Thudthudthudthud—!

Suddenly, the ground shook.

The sound rolled out fierce, as if an earthquake had struck, and swallowed the whole birch forest.

"What is it!"

Sawada whipped his head around on reflex. So did the military police.

The instant they did, a roar crashed in from the flank of the birch forest, from the darkness at the weakest point of the encirclement.

"W-wild boar!"

"A herd of boar out of nowhere—agh!"

The report was buried in a scream, and the scream buried again in that roar.

Thudthudthud!

What burst out through the darkness were black living tanks. A dozen or more wild boar, eyes rolled wild, had punched straight through the flank of the encircling line!

"These beasts! All hands, scatter for now and—"

Sawada screamed it, but he too was already too late.

Crunch!

"Aagh! My leg!"

"Uuurgh!"

An encirclement, by its nature, can only be formed thin. That flank had been struck with the impact of a cavalry charge.

The formation shattered like glass, and the military police scattered every which way. A few were even sent flying outright by the boar.

"Damn it all! Don't panic! They're only passing through!"

Sawada shouted as he fired at the boar. Bang! The round bored through one, but it only made the thing stagger. Bang! Ba-bang! Only after two more rounds did the boar drop dead and lay its body down.

A single boar had fallen, but that gunshot and that sight pulled the panicked military police back into discipline.

"Yes, Commander!"

"All hands, confirm your positions and—!"

As the military police bustled into motion, thudthudthud...! the boar herd finally passed through.

The black storm that had crashed in faded away beyond, and the breathing of the regrouped military police filled the torn gaps.

Objectively, the chaos had not lasted long.

But for the one who had been searching for nothing but a chance to flee, it was a chance worth its weight in gold.

The thought struck Sawada all at once too.

He turned his head.

And this time, again, once more, it was already too late.

"Th—"

In the very center of the half-crouched wolf pack.

The silver leader wolf was already gone, vanished without a trace.

"Damn it all—!!"

A beastlike roar burst from Sawada's mouth.

Turning the clock back, a little earlier.

The mouth of the birch forest.

"Hoo."

Han San dragged in ragged breaths. Before him lay a half-grown wild boar, dead.

"No way..."

"Good heavens..."

Behind him, Kim Tae-yang and Im Baechil stood with their mouths hanging open. They looked as if they'd seen a ghost.

"Hey, San, just now you..."

"W-what on earth did you, how did you do that, San...?"

From where they stood, it really was no different from seeing a ghost.

In the dark, where nothing could be seen at all, Han San had suddenly said a single word: "There."

Then he'd pulled out a spear, laid it on some stick that looked like a backscratcher, and swung his arm around in a full circle, whoosh, drawing a great wide arc.

And the long shaft had swum off into the mountain's shadow like a sweetfish, sucked away, and thwack, a dull sound rang out, and then, all of a sudden...

"W-was that a herd of boar? That thing just now? Baechil-hyung?"

"I, I don't know... It didn't even come this way..."

All they had seen and heard was some black, pitch-dark mass receding off into the distance with a terrifying sound.

Kim Tae-yang and Im Baechil could not begin to understand what had happened.

Had they not found this one boar lying dead here like this, they'd have been sure that Han San had touched some taboo and loosed the ghosts.

"I caught a boar, that's all."

That was all Han San answered as he stepped up to the boar's carcass. A subadult in the 40-kilogram class. He pulled the long thrown spear free from its body.

A shudder.

The metal spearhead, fragments of heart clinging to it, and the cock pheasant feather dangling from the end of the wooden shaft both trembled at once.

'Ah, that feather. The one from back when we caught...'

Im Baechil remembered that during the division of the catch after the pheasant hunt, Han San had said, "I have a use for the cock pheasant feathers, so I'll take them."

Still, he had no idea exactly what role tying that feather to the end of the shaft had played, nor what that backscratcher-looking stick the spear had been laid on even was.

Instead of explaining, Han San jerked his chin at the boar.

"Carry this and go to our house."

"Huh?"

"Father will be at home. He'll dress it and divide it up, so just take your share. After that, head quietly back to your own house and..." Han San shook his head. "No, just stay at our house. Baechil-hyung, fetch your mother if you have to and bring her along."

Kim Tae-yang and Im Baechil looked at each other.

Kim Tae-yang, perhaps excited by the sense of adventure in sleeping somewhere other than usual—and hauling a boar carcass on top of it—soon grinned. But Im Baechil hesitated at the words about fetching his mother and looked at Han San.

"U-until when...?"

"Until the situation's over."

"Wh-what's going on...? You're not coming, San, so... you mean to do something more...?"

"Later."

Han San said it short, and gripping the cloth-wrapped stick—his Type 38 infantry rifle—hard, he went on.

"There's one big fish left."

From here on, even breathing came with a time limit attached.

How he'd caught the boar, what scrap of some low-rank hunter's gear the metal in this spearhead had come from and how it had been worked, what this thing called a spear-thrower even was that it could punch through that thick boar hide—Han San wanted to explain all of it too, but not now.

Shift up one more gear, accelerate, move.

"I'll be back."

Han San began to stride off.

He left Im Baechil and Kim Tae-yang behind him, the Type 38 infantry rifle in one hand, the thrown spear and spear-thrower on his back, and the leaf-spring knife at his waist.

Just before he'd left the house, finished and ready, the last situation board he and his father had reviewed rose vivid in his mind.

[If the encirclement breaks on terrain like that, the escape routes that wolf would choose are three. But going by the tendencies we've talked about so far, I'll put my bet on the first of them.]

[The first, you mean...]

[Right under the lamp.]

Beneath the birch forest.

A gorge valley stream where water trickled by.

As fate would have it, the very first hunting ground he'd shared with his younger brother after his return spread out in that very spot.

Han San headed for that field of decisive battle, where the Dog Star tilted precariously low.

[1] Baduk (바둑) is the Korean name for Go, the strategy board game of territorial encirclement played with black and white stones on a gridded board.

[2] Zanshin (잔심, 残心) is a term from Japanese martial arts for the state of relaxed, total alertness a fighter maintains even after a technique is completed.

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