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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 55

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Talent from Inje (2)

"No... that is... look here, Mistress Ham..."

Uncle Baek spoke in a trembling voice.

"This isn't right. This fellow... anyone can see he's no blood of this household..."

"What's that now!?"

Gomchi whipped his head around. The teary, glistening eyes that had been blubbering only a moment ago were swallowed up by a vicious glare in an instant.

"Ah, dammit, how the hell would you know whether I'm blood of this house or not? Are you some grim reaper holding the register of the dead? Are you the Minister of the Census Board, peering down at people's household registers and yapping that I'm not of this family's stock?"

Gomchi strode right up to Uncle Baek and planted himself with one hip cocked, looking for all the world like a rabid dog with its tongue lolling out.

"No... my good man, that's not what I meant..."

"Then what the hell did you mean!"

Build for build, Uncle Baek the seasoned blacksmith was far bigger and sturdier, but a dog's bark always outpaces a man's words.

"You doubting our ancestors or what!? No matter how the Upper Hamlet yangban folk carry on—and are they even really yangban? Even granting they are, how can a man cast doubt on another's ancestors! Is that any way to talk!?"

"No, look, when did I ever say a word about your ancestors' conduct..."

"You said he doesn't resemble us! And isn't the sharp little point bristling out of those words exactly an accusation that our ancestor strayed! Well, isn't it!?"

"That's not what I'm saying..."

"It's not? Then we're settled! That means you've no complaint about me, the uncle who carries this house's bloodline, going out to do this house's corvée labor!"

"No..."

"No or otherwise, let's go! Move! Let's go burn charcoal for two months! Right now!"

Gomchi rolled up his sleeves and marched out past the brushwood gate.

Uncle Baek was dumbstruck.

When he'd set out from the smithy that morning, he'd been thinking the Han household was in for a rough time, wondering how on earth they'd fallen out of Old Woman Wangdae's favor. He and Han Man-seok were close enough to clink cups now and then, so it had weighed on his heart, too.

But what in the world was this? He was the one about to suffer. Drag a fellow like this to the charcoal kiln and his own heart would come out fired blacker than the charcoal.

"San..."

Uncle Baek looked at Han San as if begging for help.

"Uncle, our household has put up a man for the village's communal work."

But Han San only looked back at him with the most benevolent, innocent face in all the world.

"A grown man, just as you wished. Two months. Without a single word of complaint."

"Uh, uh..."

"Isn't that right?"

The face was smiling and the words were courteous, but how could Uncle Baek fail to understand?

Old Woman Wangdae had tried to attack the Han family while staying within the [line]. And the Han family had turned that attack right back on her, all while staying within the [line].

This thing called the [line] was what mattered.

Beyond this, if she picked another quarrel with the Han household over the communal work matter, that would be crossing the line.

Sure, if it were a bug you could crush dead with a press of your thumb, crossing the line or not wouldn't matter. But was the Han household really a bug you could crush dead?

Of course the Han household would cross the line and strike back too!

And Uncle Baek grew afraid of just how far this eighteen-year-old young buck—the one who had brought along a Lower Hamlet brawler as casually as a man strolling out for a visit and flung him into two months of corvée—could go once he "crossed the line."

Uncle Baek dragged a dry hand down his face. Once, twice.

"...Right, understood. Middle Hamlet, one man from the Han household. I'll set it down clearly in the record."

"I'm in your debt. My uncle is a strong fellow, so he'll be a great help."

"...Right."

Uncle Baek trudged out of the yard. His steps were heavier going than they'd been coming.

The moment the gate shut, silence settled over the yard.

Ham Ssang-sim, who'd dabbed at her eyes, folded her arms.

"What in the world is going on? Why up and demand a man all of a sudden? And charcoal, of all things, at this time of year... the dew's so thick every morning it won't dry properly, and from the look of it they came aiming straight for you, San."

Han San gave a wry smile.

"I suppose my running the tavern fell out of favor with the Upper Hamlet folk."

The real reason, of course, wasn't that. It was that he had openly butted heads with Old Woman Wangdae over the so-called [tribulation]. But Han San didn't go that far. As ever, burdening his family with needless worry was not what he wanted.

And besides, it was true enough that running the tavern was the sort of thing that could fall out of favor with the Upper Hamlet folk.

Ham Ssang-sim, too, took it without much suspicion, her face merely reddening as her temper came to a boil.

"Their pride must've been smarting, sure, but even so, to go about it like this..."

"Enough, enough. Let them. We've got our own plans on this side too."

Han San picked up the newspaper again—the bundles of papers he'd lugged back bit by bit on his trips into town, back issues and all.

The part he'd just been reading was the evening edition dated May 3rd.

[Grave Incident Brought to Light... Search for Hayang Hyeongpyeongsa Members]

It was an article about the "Hyeongpyeongsa" affair, one of the cases that had caused an uproar in this period. It described how a Special Higher Police[1] detective, together with provincial officers, had raided a place believed to be where the leaders lay hidden.

'Hyeongpyeongsa.'

The group, founded under the banner [Abolish discrimination against the butcher class], was marching toward its foreordained end under the harsh rule of the occupation.

'Discrimination against butchers...'

Han San held no prejudice toward butchers.

It wasn't only because he was a regressor who'd lived in the future.

'What's wrong with being a butcher?'

In his past life, too, he'd lived his whole life in Seorak. He was used to butchering the animals he hunted.

After his return, even more so. In this present life of dressing game with his father and cooking with his mother, Han San couldn't even understand why the fixed notion that "a butcher's work is base work" existed at all.

But that incomprehensible thing was, at any rate, a reality firmly rooted in this era...

When his thoughts had reached that far, Ham Ssang-sim asked carefully.

"But, son."

"Yes, mother."

"How much did you pay? Bringing that brawler over this fast must've cost a fair bit..."

"Twenty won."

"Twenty won!?"

Ham Ssang-sim flinched. Even though her son had grown to earn money and they lived comfortably now, she had yet to shed the economic outlook of a slash-and-burn village marksman's wife.

"Aigo, for twenty won... I'd have been better off going to burn the charcoal myself somehow, and bringing back some work payment besides once the job was done..."

"Aw, what are you saying, mother."

Han San shook his head. For something arranged in a hurry, twenty won meant that Pi Sun-dae fellow had literally let him hire a man at a steal—and, more to the point, he didn't agree with his mother at all.

"My two months are worth ten times more than twenty won. And mother's two months? Oof. A hundred times more."

"Son..."

Ham Ssang-sim looked at her son, moved.

Her son, by contrast, rested his chin on his hand with a calm face.

"But, hmm. Hiring someone fresh every single time trouble breaks out is a bit of a waste, though. A hassle, too."

Han San set the newspaper back down on the floor and looked up at his parents.

"Father, mother. There's one thing I'd like to propose."

"A proposal?"

Ham Ssang-sim made a puzzled face. Han Man-seok drew his wife along and sat down across from their son.

"What proposal?"

"It's something I've been thinking about anyway."

The next head of the Han household spoke in earnest.

"Let's take on a hired hand for our house."

The next day, Monday, May 29th.

The dawn of spring in Seorak was wrapped in fog, as if the whole mountain had budded over.

Rustle, rustle.

Parting the pale white foam draped over the mountain, two young men pressed on. Han San and Kim Tae-yang.

"Oh, for real? You're taking on a hired hand?"

Kim Tae-yang glanced over at Han San, an A-frame carrier loaded with hunting gear strapped to his back. A peculiar grin hung at the corners of his mouth.

"You sure do need one, though. Look at the state of your house right now. You've got money but no men. The talk's spread through the whole neighborhood every which way...

No matter that your father's a Baekdu Mountain mountain-god hunter and you're his heir, what can you do? Your father's got a bad leg and you've only got the one body."

"Mountain-god hunter, what's that now? Hah, honestly."

Han San snorted as he tracked the wildcat's prints. Just how high did this kid keep driving up his father's stock?

"Anyway, you're right. I do leave the house empty a lot. I've been thinking I could use a strong hired hand."

"Oh, come on. San! You don't get it, man, you really don't."

Kim Tae-yang puffed himself up and made a show of laying down the law.

Han San shot him a what-the-hell look, but let him keep talking for now. He could thrash him anytime.

"What don't I get?"

"Why buy a hired hand? You buy a housemaid!"

The Lower Hamlet good-for-nothing, youngest son of a gangster family run out of Gyeongseong, launched into his sermon with a serious face.

"A woman! A woman, no question. Skinny little girls their families put up just to feed one fewer mouth! Offer even fifty won—no, forty—and the parents bow and hand them over, I'm telling you."

In 1933, the colony's spring was cruel. Poor farmers who couldn't cross the spring hunger gap sold their children.

"A male hired hand, see, that's a contract. A contract. You've got to pay out his yearly wages year after year without fail.

A top hand usually runs fifty won a year, right? So while you feed him, house him, and clothe him, you've got to send fifty won to his family year in, year out. Every single year, I'm telling you.

It's exactly like subscribing to the newspaper."

Kim Tae-yang counted it out on his fingers.

"But a housemaid? Pay her bride-price of fifty won when you first bring her over, and that's it.

It's a sort of dowry cost, you could say—since you're bringing her in something like a marriage. Buy her once and she'll wear your household's mourning clothes till the day she dies. That's what I mean.

It's just like buying a book and having it be yours forever!"

The reason the yangban with a few coins to spare in those days kept concubines wasn't lust alone. At its root lay the premodern exploitation of labor.

"Take our own house. You know how many mothers I've got? It's because my real mother keeps a tight grip on the other mothers that the money she brings in that way is a real tidy sum."

The youngest son of the distinguished gangster house gave an excited wink.

"And it's not like a woman can't work, either. Hoeing the field, gathering herbs, cooking, washing, mucking out the outhouse... Aside from being laid up a few days for her monthly and not being able to heave rice sacks up like they're nothing, women are better at the rough chores, I'm telling you.

San, aren't you of marrying age too? Why not take on a housemaid-slash-concubine while you're at it? Forget this hired-hand nonsense. Eh?"

"You little bastard, honestly."

Fed up, Han San pulled the cloth-wrapped Murata hunting gun from the A-frame carrier on Kim Tae-yang's back.

Weigh it on economy alone, and buying a woman might well be the better deal.

But.

"I need a man."

Han San wiped the dew off the Murata hunting gun with the cloth as he went on.

"The whole reason I want a hired hand is for that very 'heavy lifting.'"

Han San's eyes deepened. With a gaze that seemed to pierce beyond the fog, he thought quietly.

'Because I intend to raise a force of private soldiers.'

Breaking the tribulation was nothing more than a start.

The ventures he would launch from here on, the conflicts that would inevitably come. To protect his family and hold onto his interests in those dog-eat-dog scrambles, an armed force to serve as his hands and feet was a must.

'And for that, it has to be a male hired hand.'

Put simply, a man was the better fit for a private soldier.

After all, it wasn't as if there really existed in this world—ready to be made into a private soldier—

some Soviet woman spy with strikingly languid eyes,

or some expressionless girl assassin of a stunted little build from a Chuncheon beggar gang,

or some Third Imperial Princess of the Northern Advancing Single-Sword school holding a full license, who'd inherited the imperial bloodline but hid her identity, touring the colony with a single Bizen Osafune[2] blade slung across her back,

or some young lady of a wealthy surveying clan who went about playing reporter with the most bizarre manner of speech—"that is no mere such-and-such"—but who was in truth an onmyoji[3] shrine maiden skilled at exorcism,

or some fledgling shaman who'd received the spirit-descent through a mountain-god rite and could borrow the strength of fierce beasts,

or some blonde beauty who'd crossed over by ship from America to hunt for gold, a pistol in one hand and a pickaxe in the other,

or some chemist young lady of mixed German-French blood who always wore white and always spoke in a prim, formal turn of phrase—

all these mad, ridiculous women?

'It's not like this is some Wolong Sheng wuxia novel.'

So it's a man. A male hired hand.

But Kim Tae-yang knit his brow deeply.

[1] The Special Higher Police (특고, 特高, tokkō) were the colonial-era political and thought police charged with suppressing dissidents, leftists, and independence activists.

[2] Bizen Osafune (備前長船) was a renowned school of swordsmiths in Bizen Province, Japan, celebrated for producing some of the finest blades in Japanese history.

[3] An onmyōji (음양사, 陰陽師) was a practitioner of onmyōdō, the Japanese esoteric cosmology of divination, exorcism, and spirit-warding derived from yin-yang and five-elements theory.

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