WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 48

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This Is No Ordinary Meeting (2)

In front of the military police substation.

A large poster hung dead center on the notice board, flaunting its authority.

[Ginsei Subjugation Complete]

Beside it lay the grim end of the beast that, until just a few days ago, had turned all of Inje into a cauldron of fear and greed.

The headless corpse of the silver wolf.

'Tsk.'

Han San clicked his tongue.

The hide, torn away in patches, was matted with clotted blood. One look told the story: they'd lopped off the head any old way, slapped on a sloppy preservation job, and put it on display.

'They could've done it properly, that splendid material...'

Sure, he'd poked and dug at it some himself, and since reporting it up the chain meant cutting off the head to carry along, mounting it as taxidermy might have been too much to ask.

But still, it was silver hide. Skin it carefully so the damaged spots wouldn't show, tan it, store it away, and one fine holiday you could've gifted it up the ladder.

'He probably figured he'd display his authority to those below...'

Display or not, the military police were a feared lot anyway.

'That Sawada...'

There's always a reason a man can't get ahead.

His ambition was big and he did good work, but how to put it—there are men in this world who simply can't grasp the very notion of how to look good to their superiors, men clumsy at getting on.

'Looks like he'll be holed up in Inje his whole life this go-round too.'

Passing judgment like a man in modern clothes who'd never shouldered an A-frame carrier, Han San headed for the substation's front gate.

"Halt! What's your business!"

So said the Korean police constable assistant guarding the front of the substation. At once Han San pulled two calling cards from his coat.

"I was invited."

The police constable assistant flinched, then snapped a salute.

"Hah! Go on in! The military police lords are in the building at the back!"

"Mm."

Han San gave a light nod and stepped inside. He could feel the police constable assistant still holding his salute behind him.

'Power is a fine thing.'

Bowing and scraping like that over two scraps of paper.

The ones already enjoying so fine a thing would never be willing to give it up.

Thinking once again of Old Woman Wangdae, the power that ruled Upper Hamlet, Han San stepped into the building of the Inje township military police detachment. The place he'd secretly peeked at last time, he now walked into on his own two feet.

Knock, knock.

"Come in."

A hard voice. It was Sawada.

Han San opened the door and stepped through.

"Pardon me."

Two men were in the office.

Sawada Kazuo, seated behind the desk rolling walnuts, and Kannoizuna Toono, lounging sideways on the sofa, drinking black tea.

Their reactions split clear as day.

"You've come! I was waiting!"

Toono adjusted his monocle and beamed. Sawada, on the other hand, wore the look of a man eyeing someone else's spat-out phlegm.

"So you're here."

"Yes, sorry I'm late."

"Changed your shell, I see."

"Put a little effort in. I was on my way to meet high and mighty folk, after all."

"The husk changes, but the kernel stays the same."

Sawada jerked his chin toward the desk.

"Take it."

A single envelope lay on top.

True enough, having come all this way, there was none of that energy-sapping back-and-forth over whether to hand it over. Han San stepped up and picked up the envelope.

'...thin?'

The thickness that met his fingertips was absurdly slight.

Three hundred won. A fortune, more than enough to buy a whole house. A thick bundle of bills should fill the hand. That was normal.

Yet this thickness now.

'Hmm.'

Han San narrowed his eyes and looked at Sawada. The man only thumbed through papers with an indifferent face.

'This bastard...'

If Sawada had been the only one in the room, Han San would have checked what was inside the envelope one way or another. But he didn't.

Toono was here too. And Toono wasn't shooting Sawada a look or knitting his brow. He was beaming.

So there was no problem with the amount of money.

In other words, what this envelope's thinness meant was...

'Sawada. You childish little bastard.'

Han San snorted a laugh. Then he tucked the thin envelope away into his coat.

Only then did Sawada's eyebrow twitch.

"You don't want to check it? Sing a different tune later and it's only you who'll be in trouble."

"Ah, well. I trust in your character, Captain."

Sawada's brow crumpled hard. The tone was polite and the words were flattering, but for that very reason it soured his mood all the more.

Toono clapped and laughed.

"Ahahaha! Lovely—trust! It's the root of any relationship!"

"As expected of you, Baron-nim. You understand." Han San dipped his head and drew something from his coat. "It just so happens I prepared a gift, hoping to build a little trust with you as well, Baron-nim..."

"Oho?"

Toono blinked and looked at what Han San had pulled out. It was three rough stones bound together with hemp cord.

"Oho? And this is?"

"It's a hunting stone," Han San said. "You spin it round and round at something with long, thin legs—a deer or a roe deer—then let it fly, and it whips right around them and down they go with a thud. That spear-thrower thing... you seemed to find it interesting, so..."

When he scratched the back of his head and spoke with a guileless air, a sparkle came into Toono's eyes.

"Aha! A bolas[1]! To think it's used even in the mountain hollows of Korea!"

Toono tugged his gloves on, took the hunting stone, and turned it this way and that. His eyes drew into crescents.

"Splendid! The balance is excellent! Did your father teach you this one too?"

"Yes, heh heh. My father's quite something."

He said it with a simple face, but it was of course a lie. This was another tool he'd learned to handle late in his past life, teaching himself from a book.

But his respect for his father was real, at least, and the Toono of this moment couldn't tell the difference. He spoke in admiration.

"It makes me want to meet him—the father of Han San!"

'Now, that's a bit much.'

His father had a complicated past. Nothing good could come of being noticed by an officer with a direct line to Military Police Headquarters.

Feigning embarrassment, Han San bowed his head.

"My father's leg gives him some trouble, so..."

"Mm, is that so! A shame! My schedule has me setting out this very evening."

Toono smacked his lips. He glanced at the box on the table that gave off a strong reek of blood.

Just as Han San felt quietly relieved—

"In any case!" Toono dug through his suit pocket. "An Imperial baron cannot receive a subject's gift empty-handed!"

And from it he drew a gleaming brass-colored object and held it out to Han San.

"Oh."

Taking it almost without meaning to, Han San swallowed a gasp.

A smooth, streamlined form with a solid heft. A design like a diver's oxygen tank shrunk down small. The letters IMCO were printed across its center.

Toono's eyes crinkled into a smile.

"It's an IMCO trench lighter[2]! Handy for lighting fires!"

"This is... ah, Baron-nim..."

Han San's voice trembled without his meaning it to.

'Jackpot.'

This was an IMCO trench lighter!

Austrian-made, the IMCO IFA!

Refillable fuel tank! Replaceable flint! Doubles as a candle, and fully windproof!

It was beyond expensive—just plain hard to come by. Here in Inje, of course, but even out in Chuncheon you'd be hard pressed to find one. By any natural order of things, it was something you wouldn't get your hands on until after making it to Gyeongseong.

'With this, lighting a fire is settled. No contest.'

Tinder? Matches? What were those primitive things? How on earth was anyone supposed to light a fire with the likes of those? Han San, owner of an IMCO trench lighter, simply could not understand...

But he couldn't just gobble it up right away. Not that he meant to decline it, of course.

"That, um... I'm a bit of a country bumpkin, you see. How exactly does one use this..."

"Oh dear, you're right! I was thinking only of myself. Mm, press this part here and..."

Toono explained the operation, and even how to swap out the fuel tank, in fine detail.

As for Han San, these were uses he'd already grasped fully in his past life, but to suit his current role of "a slash-and-burn settler youth unfamiliar with the wider world," he received the lesson with a curious face, then bowed low at the waist.

"Oh, thank you, Baron-nim."

He'd thrown the thing together just to act friendly with Toono, so that later, if Sawada ever got it in his head to do him harm, it might give the man even a little pause. And here it came back to him like this.

'So this is the taste of bowing to the great?'

What? Selling out the country? Mm... the Japanese Empire was going to fall in twelve years anyway, so wasn't sucking it dry the truest patriotism? Not so, you say? Sorry, but the words of people without IMCO trench lighters didn't carry well to the dim ears of a seventy-four-year-old man.

"This is truly far too fine a gift. I'd like to make it a family heirloom."

"Ahaha, an heirloom! Just use it however you please! Tools exist to be used!"

Toono said it, laughing like a child.

Han San smacked his lips.

'Looked at this way, he really is a fine sponsor...'

A pity that tangling with him too deeply meant bleeding for it. Keeping a proper distance and catching the crumbs he dropped was the wisest course.

Just then he felt eyes on him. He turned his head and found Sawada watching with a sullen face. He looked like an old man sulking alone at the neighbor's children's recital.

'What a small-minded sort.'

Han San rummaged through his coat again.

"Captain. Come to think of it, I've got something for you as well..."

"What?"

His eyepatch twitched, as if he hadn't expected it.

Han San set what he'd drawn from his coat onto Sawada's desk.

Roll, roll.

Two black, knobby seeds rolled across roughly.

"...and this?"

"Wild walnuts from Mount Seorak."

Han San explained.

"They're also called garae, or chuja. I picked them up while out in the mountains. They've had the moisture drawn clean out of them over the winter, so they're hard as rock. Strike them with a hammer and they won't crack."

"...And what am I supposed to do with these wild walnuts of yours?"

"I figured they might fit your hand just right. Thought they'd need to be at least this size for you to get any real satisfaction out of rolling them."

Sawada's eyebrow shot up.

It lasted only a moment. He soon snorted and picked up the wild walnuts, whatever they were, meaning to crush them in one go and sneer at them.

But then.

"...Hmm."

They were heavy.

Different from the walnuts he'd been rolling before. The ridges on the surface were far coarser too—how to put it—with a touch of the wild to them.

He bore down.

Crrnch, crrr-nch.

Not the nerve-grinding crunch of before, but a crrr-nch like a millstone turning.

"Oho! Nice! They suit you!"

Toono laughed with his hands pressed together.

Sawada kept his expressionless face, but the corner of his mouth twisted up—just slightly, ever so slightly.

"...Hmph."

Sawada pocketed the wild walnuts. The walnuts he'd been carrying around, he chucked into the wastebasket.

He turned to Han San.

"I've got nothing in particular to give you in return."

"Oh come now, what return would I ever expect?"

Han San only smiled warmly.

'Didn't expect a thing, you punk.'

As said again and again, there's a reason a man can't get ahead. Han San was already full to bursting with the IMCO trench lighter the get-ahead-genius baron had given him.

For Sawada, though, that in its own way seemed to rankle.

'Mm.'

Sawada's one eye flicked to Toono, then to the lighter Toono had given Han San. A complicated emotion settled in that eye, different in kind from the usual.

That was when a knock came.

"What is it."

"Yes! Captain, the thing is..."

An adjutant came in and whispered something to Sawada.

Sawada's eyes changed. After mulling it over a moment, he glanced at Han San and said,

"Show him in."

"Yes!"

The adjutant snapped a salute and left the room.

Quick on the uptake, Han San lowered his head as well and made to leave.

"Then I'll be on my..."

"No, stay there."

Crrr-nch! Rolling the wild walnuts in his hand, Sawada held him back.

"This concerns you too."

Concerns him?

As Han San wore a puzzled expression, a moment later the door opened and someone stepped in.

Han San froze.

'Hajama the surveyor?'

A hard, harsh-faced man with irritation practically oozing off him—the very same clothes and the very same face as the man he'd seen at the construction site that time. The only difference was that the round spectacle frames had turned square.

'What's this? Was the surveyor that Ginsei killed a different fellow? No, but...'

Just as Han San's head began to tangle, the man pressed firmly at his angular spectacle frames and spoke.

"My posting to Inje—this is no ordinary assignment. It is a single thread of karma, set off by my elder brother's death."

Silence fell.

"Newly appointed to Inje, the Imperial gisu Hajama Tsuchikaku offers his greetings."

In this moment, right now, if there was anything Han San fervently wished upon this world, it was that the man would please, please cut the nonsense.

[1] A bolas is a throwing weapon of cord weighted with two or three stones or balls, whirled and hurled to entangle the legs of running game or livestock; it is most associated with the hunters and herders of South America.

[2] IMCO trench lighters were petrol lighters made by the Austrian firm Julius Meister & Co. (IMCO); the windproof, refillable IFA model—built from spent cartridge cases in the style of WWI "trench art"—was a prized, hard-to-obtain item in 1930s Korea.

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