WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 41

──────

The Accountant (1)

A gorge valley.

A slope.

A single figure came sliding down it like a madman.

Tak, tak!

It was Han San. The Type 38 infantry rifle was gone from his hands. The instant he pulled the trigger, he had already shoved it into a hiding place he'd prepared beforehand and covered it over. He'd stashed it away like that and was now on his way down.

'Time.'

Gasping for breath, Han San plunged into the water with a splash, almost diving. He swam swiftly until he reached the dead wolf.

'Time.'

I have to check.

He stilled the trembling in his hands and grabbed the wolf. Flipped it. Left hand. The chest, groping. Wet fur. His fingers found a hot, sticky hole. Then his right hand, searching for the hole that should be on the opposite side—the hole, the hole.

'Time!'

Han San jammed his left hand into the bullet hole. With his right he flipped the body onto its back. And then.

'Nothing.'

The back was smooth. There was no exit wound.

'No.'

Phlegm boiled up from somewhere deep in Han San's chest: the bullet was lodged inside the wolf's body.

'Did it hit bone? A Type 38 round, caught in muscle?'

That round with almost no stopping power, no shock force, the one that went all in on penetration alone, the Type 38 Arisaka bullet that punched through a body like it was piercing water—it had failed to pass through, of all moments, right now?

'Damn it.'

If the military police came charging in right now, if they looked into this carcass, if they found a 6.5mm Arisaka rifle round inside the wolf's body—

'No.' Han San gritted his teeth. 'Not yet. Time. The greenhorn hunters...'

They would be making a racket. Causing an uproar. That commotion would scramble the military police's senses and tie up their feet.

At the very least, they couldn't come storming straight here.

There was time. Time. Luckily he'd thrown his ko-threats early and bought himself some, one way or another.

'This might even be for the better.'

Everything has its upsides and downsides.

If the round had passed through as planned, lodged in some rock or buried in a gap between the gravel nearby, and if someone found it a good while later—

[Ahah!]

He couldn't forget that Tono was in Inje.

'Better it stayed lodged in the body like this...'

A venomous gleam settled in Han San's eyes.

He drew the leaf spring blade from his shirt.

Stabbed it in.

He cut the wound open along the path of the bullet hole and pried it wide. The leaf spring blade dug all the way to the bone with a grinding crunch.

'Where is it?'

He dug as he searched for the round, the bullet. Blood spurted up and splashed his face, the hide tore—this, this silver hide, this build, if he had it stuffed and mounted, truly—no, he was going to trade it for the bounty anyway, the hide wouldn't stay in his hands so there was nothing to mourn—was this even the time to be thinking about the hide?

'Where is it? The bullet, where in the world...'

That was when.

"..., ...!?"

"...! ..., ...!!"

A buzz of voices drifted from far off.

The tramp of military boots, too.

'This—'

This fast?

The greenhorn hunters he'd planted to muddy the waters—had they been dealt with already? And how had they found this spot, surely not Tono? Was he not only in Inje but here at the scene too? But—no, there was no "but." He had to find it no matter what, the round, the round, quickly—

Thock.

Something hard caught against his fingertips.

Different from bone, still holding some warmth—a mass of crushed metal.

'Ah.'

Han San used the knife. He pulled out the lump of lead, clotted with congealed blood and hardened like blood pudding, together with a shard of broken bone.

'This—'

Where do I throw it? In the water—no, under the gravel—no! Then where?

'Here!'

Han San brought his hand to his mouth. Faster than thought.

He put it in. Into his mouth.

Gulp. He swallowed.

A retch heaved up on instinct. The reek of blood, of beast-musk, of lead, the taste of metal ringing sharp from the root of his tongue to the far end of his brain—but no hiding place safer than this came to mind.

'They won't go digging through the gut of a living man.'

And if they did?

'By then I'll already be dead.'

Would there be a third life? He hoped so. If he could meet his family one more time—hmm, then maybe it would be better to go a little safer next time, what was 300 won worth—ah, now that he thought about it, he'd been crossing too dangerous a bridge.

'But if I have 300 won.'

The 200 won earned from the tavern. Add another 300 to that and it came to 500 won.

'Next year's great flood...'

Options.

How many options he might be able to hold.

'I have to cross.'

The dangerous bridge—he was crossing it, and he had to keep crossing it.

'Keep going...'

As it happened, there was a stream beside him.

He buried his head and sucked at it. Drank. Swallowed frantically, ptui!—rinsed out his mouth, washed his lips, plunged his head in again with a splash, drank and rinsed once more, then turned back to Ginsei's corpse.

'Keep going.'

He had hidden the bullet.

The gunshot, too, he had buried inside other gunshots. That Sawada, with his foul, vile temper, would surely fire off a few more rounds—he was bound to—and no one in the world believed in Sawada Kazuo more than Han San did.

Only one thing remained.

'The bullet hole.'

This mark where the round had bored in, the trace—he'd dug at it, but it wasn't enough yet.

Han San drew out the spear.

'Into the hole...'

He lined it up and drove it in.

"Hhuup!"

He poured in his strength until the veins stood out red in his eyes.

The springy, supple shaft, optimized for throwing, had to be kept from snapping—that took half his effort; grinding it along the bullet hole took the other half. Putting his whole strength into it, he gouged and gouged and gouged until, with a wet thud, the spearhead finally punched out through the wolf's back.

"Haa, haa..."

Han San staggered and dropped to his knees. The spear stood lodged in the wolf's chest. Beside it he flung down the atlatl[1] with a clatter and caught his breath.

'I caught it with this spear.'

A gunshot?

What gunshot? It must have been one of the shots you fired earlier. Or maybe one of the greenhorn hunters fired off a matchlock gun or something. I wouldn't really know.

'I caught it with this spear.'

Why is the wound so mangled? Because I'm a bit of a brute by nature. And clumsy. I strained and made a fuss trying to pull the spear out, and it ended up punching through all crooked and a mess—so what of it? Is it a capital crime that my skill is clumsy?

'Because I caught it with this spear!'

At that very moment.

Stomp, stomp, stomp!

A dozen-odd pairs of military boots shook the gorge valley like an earthquake. Brush was trampled; gravel went rolling.

"Over there!"

"There's something there!"

Han San clenched his fist tight. Only then did he realize the skin of his fingers had torn open while he was driving the spear in, but he didn't even feel the sting.

It was done.

He had done every single thing he could.

Now at last, the reckoning[2]. In baduk, the time to count up the points each side has taken.

'Truly...'

Where was it, again?

Who was it?

Ah.

His brother.

[Hyung, did you know?]

Teacher Han Bada's good-natured smile flickered past before his eyes.

[They say when a man commits a murder, he makes twenty-five mistakes, and if he can foresee fifteen of them and correct them in advance, they call him a genius.]

When was it? Aah. Rain had been falling, and it wasn't Seorak—it was Cheonggu-dong, no, his brother's mansion in Sindang-dong, somewhere inside it. There.

[How far ahead can you plan, hyung?]

How had he answered back then?

[As if anything ever falls into place exactly as planned.]

Right.

[Not someone like me.]

That was it.

That was how it had been.

Things falling into place exactly as planned—there was no such thing in his world.

Not in his past life, not in this one.

Speaking of plans, he'd allowed for the storehouse being requisitioned, but he hadn't foreseen Sawada dumping out the liquor. Everything else could be seized, but as long as the liquor was left he'd meant to pull off one last big score with it. He'd never imagined that crazy viper would throw such a fit.

Speaking of plans, he'd never expected that idiot Go Tae-chon to actually buy the tavern. He'd doubted anyone could be that big a fool, but there it was—the neighborhood sucker buying in at the very top of the market. Thanks to it he'd been able to walk away clean, but people, really.

Speaking of plans, he'd counted on catching Ginsei, but he hadn't been entirely without hope for a lucky break—that maybe, thanks to all his arrangements, they wouldn't find this place at all. In that case the plan had been to hide Ginsei's corpse in some secret spot, and once the military police pulled out and things quieted down, quietly carry off just the head and collect the prize...

'Plans, plans, plans...'

It couldn't be helped. He was no god.

He wasn't even a genius.

Just an ordinary man with the soul of a seventy-four-year-old.

Because he was an ordinary man.

'Let's cross the rest of it.'

Ordinary as he was, all he could do was make a few preparations so that, whether things turned out well or badly, he'd be able to do something at the crucial moment—leave himself room to move.

Only to cross the bridge before his eyes.

'I have to cross it!'

The instant he steeled his resolve, the underbrush parted with a swish.

Six beams of lamplight fell on Han San, each to its own rhythm.

"..."

It was blinding, as if he'd been struck sideways by the blaze of the sun, but Han San didn't look away.

He only lifted his head.

He looked at the one man walking out of the flood of light—the man who, backlit, appeared almost black.

"..."

An angular military cap, an eyepatch over the left eye, and in his hand, with a crunch, two screaming walnuts.

The Inje military police detachment commander.

The viper, Sawada Kazuo.

Behind him, military police bearing Type 38 infantry rifles fell into ranks in a rush. Killing intent pricked the skin, sharp as needles.

"Hm."

Sawada's single eye swept the surroundings the way a snake slithers.

The enormous silver wolf, the long spear lodged in it, the crude knife lying beneath it and the rod with its bent tip.

And, standing there caked in blood, the familiar slash-and-burn settler youth.

A throb.

Sawada felt the area behind his eyepatch begin to ache. The corner of his mouth twisted upward.

"You again."

Han San didn't shy from that gaze.

His back was ramrod straight. He planted the butt end of the spear in the ground, both hands stacked over it as if leaning on a sword, and met Sawada's single eye with a face full of resolve.

The two men's gazes collided in midair and stayed there, locked just as they had met.

"Yes, it's me. We meet again," Han San said with a grin.

"This one's the 300 won one, isn't he?"

If there was one possibility Han San dreaded most in this moment—though he judged it exceedingly slim—it was precisely this: that Sawada Kazuo would raise his rifle at once, shoot him dead, and then mutter something like—

[What 300 won are you talking about?]

Mercifully, no such thing happened.

Sawada Kazuo merely rolled the walnuts in his hand. Crunch! And then he spoke.

"You..."

Han San was relieved. Briefly. Inwardly only.

'Good.'

He'd spoken.

That meant this side could speak too.

"I caught it. With this spear here," Han San said, his face filling with greed.

"300 won... heh heh, where can I collect it? Could I maybe collect it right now? Last time I got paid right there on the spot..."

Wearing the mask of a vulgar, money-blind brute, Han San swiftly delivered the information he needed to get across.

He only wanted the money.

He'd been paid before, too.

Sawada's eyebrows twitched and writhed several times. The eyepatch over his left eye twitched along after them.

"Before?" he asked.

"Ah, yes. That... surveyor-nim? He dropped his bag—it said so on the notice board. So I picked it up and returned it for him, and got paid. Five won."

Han San said it vaguely, but of course he'd brought it up remembering that Sawada Kazuo was the one who had written that notice.

Sawada remembered the notice too. He'd written it himself, and beyond that, a reward like that was an unusual thing to begin with.

What was more, that unusual matter—just like this equally unusual Ginsei bounty—was tied to a clan bearing a single surname: Hajama.

"You were the one who recovered that bag?" he asked.

"Yes! He must have taken a liking to me, the surveyor-nim, because he even gave me his calling card. I wonder how he's doing..."

Han San drew the calling card Surveyor Hajama Tsuchimaru had handed him from his shirt. Without making a show of it. Naturally.

Even so, the military police stirred, but Sawada held his subordinates down with a single flick of his eyes.

He was the Inje military police detachment commander. Even if the youngster before him drew a knife from his shirt—no, even if he suddenly pulled out a pistol—he was confident he could subdue him with ease.

"A calling card."

Sawada stretched out his angular fingers and took it. He grimaced at the damp feel of it, grimed with sweat and dirt, but his single eye scanned the card all the same.

Genuine.

"Hmph."

Sawada flicked the card away as if tossing it. "Ah!" Han San bent down in a fluster, as though caught off guard, and snatched it up. Then, heh heh, he looked up at Sawada with a smile.

"Um, so, about the money..."

"Quiet."

"Yes, sir."

Han San shut his mouth at once.

Under the still moonlight, only the sound of running water spread out.

Sawada was lost in thought.

'I never imagined this fellow had been acquainted with that surveyor who got eaten.'

A thought like that.

'It would have been better if he'd acted a little smarter, or shown an outright defiant attitude.'

A thought like that.

'But there's only me and my men here.'

A thought like that.

'Caught it with a spear? This monster of a wolf?'

And.

The one who shared that last thought was not Sawada alone.

"Ahah! How fascinating!"

A voice rang out without warning.

As if he had walked straight out of the shadows, from somewhere in the press of the military police, a pair of leather shoes ill-suited to a mountain trek stepped out with a clop.

A young nobleman in an ink-black suit.

"A spear! Hmm, a spear, you say!"

Baron Kannoizuna Toono tilted his head, a faint smile on his face as he adjusted his monocle.

"Would you show me, in person?"

[1] An atlatl (투창기) is a spear-throwing lever that cradles a dart or light spear and extends the arm's leverage, hurling it with far greater force and range than a bare-handed throw.

[2] In the board game baduk (Go), the "reckoning" (계가) is the final phase in which both players count the territory and captured stones they have secured to determine the winner.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried