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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 61

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The Way to Sokcho (1)

As the saying went, they had each traded a single stroke of the blade, but the outcome was clear.

Old Woman Wangdae's move—the village communal work—had been blocked by the sacrifice stone called Gomchi, while Han San's move against Meokbawi Valley had driven a stake straight into its heart.

And so both sides settled in to catch their breath: Old Woman Wangdae to clean up the damage and work out her next move, Han San to firm up the inner workings of the Meokbawi Valley he had won.

For about a month, a strangely peaceful stretch of time slipped by.

"Well now, boss. I never knew a photograph was such a flashy, glittery thing. And look at the legs on that machine. Doesn't it look just like some blasphemous reactionary bastard?"

Chuk Hong-cheol clicked his tongue in wonder.

Deep in the middle reaches of Meokbawi Valley, a three-legged tripod with a brass machine perched on top glistened in the sunlight. It was a surveying instrument called a theodolite—the very one Han San had managed to fish out back when he'd gotten tangled up with Hajama the First. And the one operating it now was Hajama the Second.

"Hmm, mm."

Hajama the Second pulled out a notebook now and then, jotting something down as he snapped photographs.

Click, pop!

A camera flash flared with the sound of magnesium powder bursting. Each time, the Sebeom Valley children watching from a distance let out shrieks of delight.

"How does it look, Surveyor-nim?" Han San asked.

Hajama the Second lifted his squared-off glasses once and set them back down. As if catching the afterglow of the flash, the whole of his lenses gleamed white.

"Han San. This terrain is quite interesting.

This is no ordinary cliff. Inside it holds a great vessel—a jar brimming with bedrock water."

Han San didn't ask whether the characters Hajama wrote for the word were odd. That sort of thing didn't matter right now.

"You mean there's water inside it?"

"Yes. On the surface it looks like a thick deposit of sediment, but inside there's surely rock packed full, and through the gaps a watercourse has formed.

And not just any watercourse. It's a great tiger—an ōtora[1]—sealed away with its body coiled and crouching, bend after bend."

Han San thought of the Great Flood of the Gapsul Year in his past life. Something in Hajama's description called it to mind, chillingly so.

"If we wanted to reinforce it, or to redirect the aftermath somewhere else when it bursts, how long would that take?"

"Are you asking the cost, or the time?"

"Both."

"Hmm. Han San, it depends on how far you want to go, but..."

The surveyor sank into thought, then once more only adjusted the set of his glasses.

"Wouldn't it run over three thousand won? You'd have to put more than thirty men on it, too. And the span—at the very least you'd need something like three months."

Three thousand won, thirty men, three months.

'I suppose it's a small mercy that at least it's easy to remember.'

Han San pressed a hand to his brow and sighed.

'The Great Flood of the Gapsul Year starts in mid-July of next year... Working backward, by next April—no, to be safe, by March—I'll have to earn three thousand won, round up the men, and break ground.'

It was June now, which meant he had to earn three thousand won in nine months.

'A long way off.'

But in any case, this was the first time a clear deadline and estimate had come out.

'Not bad.'

What was truly frightening wasn't the sheer size of the jar but the blank helplessness of not knowing how much more water you'd have to pour into it.

While he was at it, Han San decided to ask more.

"Could you also tell me how best to go about the reinforcement work?"

"Hmm. Is there something here?"

"Say there is."

Han San nodded. He'd hauled the man all the way out here, after all.

Of course, that didn't mean he was about to come out with things like there's a gold vein in here and this place collapses next year—and Surveyor Hajama, for his part, didn't probe too deeply.

"I can do it, but not right away.

You know how it is, don't you? What summer weather is like on Korean soil. This year's monsoon will start before long, and we have to see how things turn out after it.

Around September, maybe? Once the rain stops and the ground hardens... call me out one more time then. I'll be able to compare it against today's records and photographs and give you something far more accurate."

Han San nodded. To his own mind that made better sense, and it was more trustworthy besides.

"Understood. Then I'll have to secure one more survey permit. Is there anywhere you've had your eye on? Within a half day's distance from here, if possible."

Color rose in Hajama's face.

"Oh! As it happens, I've come all this way. To just turn back—that is no ordinary return. That is..."

"Yes, yes. A loss either way, fine—so where?"

"Mm. That valley over yonder where Ginsei was caught. There was something interesting deeper inside it. Could I photograph the spot where Ginsei was taken and fill in a page of the map while I'm at it?"

"Why ever not. Of course it can be done. Hong-cheol-ajae! Pack up the gear, would you. Enough gawking."

"Aigo. The way this man works a fellow so hard, honestly."

Grumbling all the while, Chuk Hong-cheol loaded the packed surveying equipment onto an A-frame carrier and trailed along behind.

"But boss. Is the character for jar really that jar? Doesn't something seem off about it?"

"Hey, is that what matters right now?"

"It matters. Right now it's gotten to where it's the only thing in this whole world that matters. It keeps coming back to me, I tell you."

Once Han San reached the destination, he handled the task Hajama had asked of him with ease. At the sight of him climbing up and down the sheer cliff as though it were a ladder, Chuk Hong-cheol could only shake his head.

"No, what in the... boss, were you maybe Sun Wukong[2] in a past life?"

"Ah, what are you on about. I was a person in my past life too, you know? Without a shadow of a doubt, for certain."

While Han San—a returner with a past life of his own—said that, Surveyor Hajama, thoroughly pleased, handed over the payment.

"Han San! Good work. Come September, call me anytime. Take this, too."

"Thank you, Surveyor-nim. This is no ordinary gratitude..."

And so Han San secured a survey permit to use in September and even pocketed ten won as a labor fee. Here in this very place stood living proof that a man with a skill need never go hungry.

'But there's still a long road ahead.'

Hired-hand wages, four hundred fifty won. Construction costs, three thousand won.

With miscellaneous expenses thrown in, four thousand won to be safe!

'I'll have to earn diligently.'

Han San went down to town now and then.

He called on Cheonbo Pharmacy, handed over medicinal goods, and ran up this month's cash limit of thirty won. He made slippers from the wildcat hide he'd hunted last time, delivered them to the South Jade Pavilion, and pocketed another twenty won.

Beyond that, he peddled small herbs and the hides of mountain beasts to the right places, gathered information, then shouldered what he needed onto an A-frame carrier and came home.

It was a grueling march, but luckily he now had a hired hand to take some of that load off his hands.

"Comrade Hong-cheol. Why don't you make a run into town too, ajae."

Chuk Hong-cheol, who'd been scrubbing down a hide in the yard, wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Me?"

"Yeah, this. Go give my name as an introduction, then stop by this shop and this shop. Buy what's written down."

As Han San had tested on the way back, Chuk Hong-cheol was a man who could take the [shortcuts] all through the mountains too.

'Being able to go down to town, take care of business, and get back in a single day—that's no small thing.'

He couldn't pick up snakes for a side profit the way Han San did, but he was more than twice as fast and safer than an ordinary person who had to go the long way along the new road.

"If there's any money left over, take it as your errand pay, ajae."

"Now, boss! You think I'm some reactionary who'd skim a cut off the top?"

Chuk Hong-cheol's eyes went round, but Han San just smiled warmly.

'Of course he'll skim some.'

When money passes through another's hands, it's bound to leak. Press a man to bring back receipts for every last thing, and the first thing he thinks about is how to cheat that, too.

Surely you couldn't go planting some kind of curse-worm inside a man's body and threaten to burst his heart, after all.

'This isn't some martial arts novel.'

So Han San simply put it nicely.

"Aw. The ajae might haggle the price down, or wear out his shoe leather hunting for a cheaper place. That's the ajae's own skill, so the ajae should keep it."

"..."

"In exchange! Bring back everything I asked for, no leaving anything out. If something comes up and you couldn't buy it—well, there's a price written next to each item, so you've got to bring back that much and hand it to me. Got it?"

The old man, who'd returned without ever seeing the nineties, didn't get his hopes up too high.

And yet.

Chuk Hong-cheol's reaction was strange.

He gripped the money he'd been handed and said nothing for a while, then, with the most complicated look on his face, said:

"...Understood, boss. I, Chuk Hong-cheol, may have lived slitting the throats of livestock, but I'm not the sort of beast who'd betray a man's trust."

"?"

Han San couldn't tell where in that conversation a man's trust had come up, but well, having drive was a good thing.

That night, Chuk Hong-cheol really did come back with the goods bought perfectly, not a grain of rice out of place. He'd even haggled the price down so shrewdly that he came back with seventy jeon left over—and then he went out of his way to try to return that to Han San.

Half moved, half wondering whether even that little bit might be added to the long four-thousand-won expedition still ahead, Han San pressed the money back into Chuk Hong-cheol's hand all the same.

"Aw, never mind, just keep it, I said. That's what I told you, isn't it."

"No, boss, but still..."

"Take it. If you're grateful, just keep doing this from now on. How nice would that be."

In the end Chuk Hong-cheol tucked away the seventy jeon, and that evening, eating white rice with meat soup, he marveled.

'A capitalist landlord, and yet he trusts a hired laborer this much. This, if anything, is the universal trust of mankind that transcends class.'

Sadly, Han San couldn't read minds, so he had no idea what Chuk Hong-cheol was thinking.

In any case, with one more person now able to make the trip into town, the flexibility of Han San's schedule shot up dramatically.

But Han San thought it was still a little lacking.

'There's a limit to the load you can carry on an A-frame carrier, after all.'

It was the same even with two people now. Shuttling that volume back and forth amounted, literally, to peddling out of a bundle—running a "business" was hard.

And Han San had to run a "business"!

Because he had to earn that damned four thousand won within nine months!

'It'd be good if I could send the ox along.'

In the yard, the yellow bull that had come in from finishing the spring plowing was chewing its feed. If that fellow hauled a cart back and forth, he'd do the work of ten A-frame porters, easily.

Even accounting for the round trip stretching out to nearly two days, it came to almost five times the efficiency.

'Not yet, though.'

It wasn't that he feared Chuk Hong-cheol running off with the ox. Had he harbored worries like that, he'd never have entrusted him with money and an A-frame and sent him into town in the first place.

The hunter Han San was naturally confident he could "track down" a runaway hired hand. And leading an ox, escaping his pursuit would be flat-out impossible.

Sadly, Chuk Hong-cheol couldn't read minds, so he had no idea what Han San was thinking.

The nonexistence of mind reading kept the peace between people to such a degree.

So then, why not?

'It's simply that the [road] is dangerous.'

Han San thought back to the three bandits he'd run into the day he'd led Nureung-i home.

They'd been bunglers with crude weapons, but the reason he'd been able to dispatch them so easily was the Murata hunting gun.

But what if Chuk Hong-cheol, leading the ox alone, ran into a pack of bandits?

'That's hard.'

No matter how good a fighter Chuk Hong-cheol was, it'd be too much. If the bandits set their minds to it—taking turns hurling stones, then fleeing, over and over—then the seventy-won ox, the twenty-won cart, and the load piled on top would all have to be abandoned.

'I need more people.'

Men with some grounding in the martial arts if possible, and on the other hand utterly without scruples.

Luckily, that problem was solved faster than expected.

Wednesday, June 28th, 1933.

"Boss! You said it was all right to bring my comrades along, didn't you?"

Chuk Hong-cheol's booming voice carried in from the yard, back from an errand run down in town.

Han San opened the door, stepped out, and stopped short. For a moment he'd thought a herd of wild boars was standing there in the yard.

Burly muscle, fierce features, and this oddly lawless air about them.

Chuk Hong-cheol clapped the shoulders of the two men standing beside him. "Let me introduce them. This here is Chuk Hyeong-don, and this is Chuk Jun-ha."

"Pleased to meet you!"

"Good to meet you!"

The two men bowed their heads in unison.

Chuk Hong-cheol spoke with a swagger.

"They're all comrades you can trust. Trust them just like me, boss."

In other words, these two were Hyeongpyeongsa members as well—part of the Red Butchers.

Chuk Hong-cheol, Chuk Hyeong-don, Chuk Jun-ha.

Seeing them all matched up under the Chuk surname, the names were probably aliases—but an alias is a name one gives oneself, isn't it? There was something lawless to be felt in those very names...

Han San broke into a broad grin.

"Welcome! Comrades. You've had a hard time of it, coming all this way."

The two men wore slightly dazed expressions. They didn't seem to have expected to be welcomed with smiling faces like this.

Chuk Hong-cheol let out a hearty laugh.

"See. The boss is a bit young, but he's a fine man, I tell you. A gentleman with the universal trust that transcends class."

"???"

Once again, Han San couldn't for the life of him tell where in himself such trust might be found—but, once more, having drive was a good thing.

[1] Ōtora (大虎, "great tiger") is a Japanese term used in civil engineering and geology for a large, hidden underground watercourse that can burst catastrophically when disturbed.

[2] Sun Wukong (孫悟空) is the Monkey King of the Chinese classic Journey to the West, renowned for his supernatural agility and ability to scale any cliff or mountain.

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