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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 63

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The Way to Sokcho (3)

The axe-wielding robber was subdued with absurd ease.

With Chuk Hong-cheol pinning the man down, Han San crouched in front of him.

"You got a base around here?"

Pinned so he couldn't budge an inch, the axe robber could only look up. All he could see were Han San's two eyes, blade-sharp and blue, set against the backlight and the mountain's shadow.

His whole body trembling, the robber stammered.

"J-just a cave we sleep in, one cave, hiik! S-spare me—"

"Where is it?"

"I-if I tell you, you'll spare me—"

"I asked where it is."

"O-over there! Th-that way, just past that ridge, past it, past it...!!"

The questioning went on like that. There was no need to torture him further. The robber said what he had to say, and Han San heard what he needed to hear.

He asked, almost in passing.

"You going to take revenge?"

The axe robber stopped breathing.

The robber was looking at Han San.

Han San was looking at the robber.

The robber cried out in a fit.

"N-no! H-how could I take revenge, how would I dare, my home! I'll go back home, wash my hands of it! Wash my hands...!!"

Han San rose to his feet. The only thing on his mind right then was that being young again meant his knees didn't ache even after a long crouch—a nice change.

He gave the order.

"Chief comrade, finish him."

And Chuk Hong-cheol flinched.

He'd lived his whole life as a butcher. He was an old hand at cutting the lifeline of living things. He could fight well enough too, and he had no qualms about beating down a man who came at him.

And not only that. He'd taken up an activist's life late, and, hounded by the administrative powers, there was scarcely a struggle he hadn't been through.

But cutting the throat of a living man—that he had never done.

"S-spare me! Spare, spare me!"

The robber wailed. He sobbed and cried and thrashed.

"M-mother! I've got a mother, I have a mother! Home! My home! I'll go back home, wash my hands and go home, give me a chance, just once! Just once, my mother back home, mother, motherrr...!! Whaaahhh...!!"

Chuk Hong-cheol clenched his teeth. Every time the robber thrashed, the butcher pinning him swayed this way and that.

Han San watched him.

"Don't tell me this is different from what we agreed. I told you plain when I first gave you the money, didn't I? There might be killing to do—anyone trying to kill our side, I'd kill."

Chuk Hong-cheol remembered, of course.

And not just that. Back then he'd even thought it: if Han San was deceiving him to drag him into murder and robbery, he'd turn around and stab the man in the back instead. That bold he'd been, telling himself so.

How different thought and reality could be!

Han San watched, without pressing him further, as Chuk Hong-cheol's face twisted with self-reproach.

'I've said all there is to say.'

What remained was only whether Chuk Hong-cheol would act or not.

If he couldn't, then so be it. You couldn't entrust your back to an irresolute man.

He'd just have him do odd jobs and send him off when the six months were up.

It was as simple as that.

That was when it happened.

"I'll do it."

"No, I will."

It was Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha. They'd parked the ox cart off to one side, and they too had been watching the axe robber's interrogation.

"We almost crossed over to the other world just now, didn't we."

"My point exactly. Damn it, if the boss hadn't struck first..."

A chill had run right through their guts.

When they'd been told to be bait, oddly enough they'd given it no real thought, but coming back afterward and seeing—especially that, the bow and arrows lying scattered there!

If it had been only the axe and the pitchfork, even they might have hesitated.

But a bow and arrows?

If the boss had been a beat slower coming around, where would that yellow-rusted arrowhead be lodged right now?

"You've got a mother back home? What, were we born from a rock?"

"Chief comrade, step aside! Even when I try to hold back, I can't!"

In the middle of all that, Chuk Hong-cheol closed his eyes.

He drew a deep breath.

He opened them.

"It's fine."

It was the very instant Chuk Jun-ha and Chuk Hyeong-don were about to click their teeth and demand what exactly was fine.

Chuk Hong-cheol moved his hands.

Crunch!

"Spare— gguk!"

The neck of the robber, who'd been pleading so pitifully right up until then, snapped in the wrong direction. A moment later a few more places snapped, and the blade moved a few times to finish it off for certain.

And the forest went very quiet.

Only then did Han San nod.

"Well done, chief comrade."

Chuk Hong-cheol just drew deep breaths in and let them out, over and over. His body shook, but whether it was guilt or excitement, even he couldn't tell.

Han San left him to digest the feeling on his own and spoke to both Chuk Jun-ha and Chuk Hyeong-don.

"I'll say it again. I'll never be the one to rob someone first. And I've no intention of making you into a band of murdering robbers.

But here's the thing. Why shouldn't we kill the ones who try to kill us? There are police and an army so we won't have to, sure, but the way those police and that army are now... it's a world where we have to look after our own lives ourselves."

"..."

"The one who comes to beat you, you can beat. The one who comes to kill you, you can kill. Giving back as good as you got—that's equality. Let's not play nice for no reason and leave behind some strange grudge to bite us later. Eh?"

Sure, there'd be people in the world who weren't 'playing nice' but truly were 'nice.'

A great soul who, when an enemy thrust the left blade, would gather him in an embrace, saying let's live in love, and stop the right blade—surely such a person existed somewhere.

But Han San wasn't a man like that.

The butchers weren't men like that either, and they had no wish to become men like that!

Chuk Jun-ha and Chuk Hyeong-don in particular let out a roar.

"You speak nothing but truth, boss comrade!"

"That's right! The ones who try to kill us, we've got to kill them dead—that's equality!"

Maybe it was from fighting their first battle together, but their reaction was more fervent than expected, and it was Han San who ended up feeling awkward instead.

'No, what is this... it's like I've somehow turned into some king of the reds.'

Just his imagination, surely?

"Anyway, ajaes. Chief Hong-cheol and I will go take a look at that stronghold those fellows mentioned. Jun-ha-ssi and Hyeong-don-ssi, you two stay here, since you've got to guard the ox cart."

"Understood!"

"Pull them out by the roots, boss comrade! Chief comrade!"

The red butchers answered loud and strong.

It's always the first time that's hard. From the second time on, it's easy.

In front of the small cave the axe robber had confessed was their hideout, the robber left alone on watch had just opened his mouth in a wide yawn.

Shuk!

A short whisper of cutting wind, and pak! The thrown spear, swimming through the air, pierced through the man's chest.

"Urgh..."

The moment the robber dropped to his knees with that one short cry, Chuk Hong-cheol's butcher's knife, springing out like a wild boar, slashed the man's throat.

"Well done, chief comrade."

"Hoo..."

Chuk Hong-cheol still couldn't manage much of an answer and only shook his head. The hesitation had shrunk, but the trembling hadn't gone away.

Han San understood. It would take time.

He carefully scanned the inside of the cave.

"Ah, hell, the smell..."

Chuk Hong-cheol pinched his nose shut. Fitting for a hideout where four robbers had holed up tangled together, the stink—literally like a beggar's footwrap—hung thick in the air.

Inside there was nothing you could call furniture, just a few old chests and a straw mat.

One of those chests held food. Maybe they'd tried to avoid lighting fires as much as possible—which fit, since he hadn't seen any kindling or a cauldron—so it held some nuts and dried fish.

"Still all right."

It smelled a bit stale, but it was fine for eating on the move. He took it.

He opened the next chest.

"Boss, this..."

Chuk Hong-cheol lifted up a small pouch.

Peering into it, Han San saw a glittering yellow powder inside.

"Placer gold[1]."

Seeing a glass bottle of mercury beside it, they'd probably robbed a gold panner.

'About one nyang's[2] worth...'

With the memory that had sharpened over the course of his regression, Han San worked the abacus in his head. Convert nyang to ounces, ounces to dollars, dollars to yen, yen to won, and...

'Roughly 120 won!'

And that was the lowest baseline price. With each passing day it could only grow dearer.

'No wonder robbers never disappear.'

It was a fortune a man doing honest labor would have to save for 120 to 200 days without spending a single coin to come up with.

And robbing one person clean dropped it straight into your hand, so in a colonial mountain country where order couldn't take hold, how could two-legged beasts not breed?

'Though now it's dropped into my hands.'

He was deeply satisfied. As for the gold panner this band had robbed—well, he'd avenged them, so he only hoped they'd let go of their grudge and pass on to a good place.

"The cash comes to 12 won 30 jeon all told, boss. Counting what we took off those robbers earlier."

"Right."

The last chest held a pile of filthy clothes. The dreadful smell that had filled the cave seemed to have its source here.

"Honest to god, there's no animal that stinks like a human."

Han San clicked his tongue, and meanwhile debated whether he ought to take these along. They were cloth, after all.

'Wash them and they could at least serve as rags. But washing them myself is a pain. And I'd hate even more for Mother to touch them... ah, come to think of it, we've got three strong hired hands at the house now. So taking them is the better...'

While he was thinking along those lines, Han San saw Chuk Hong-cheol, who'd been digging through the clothes pile, go stiff.

Wondering what was the matter, he looked over and saw a bloodstained skirt and jacket come up in Chuk Hong-cheol's hand. Two flower-embroidered shoes rolled out beside them too.

What had befallen the owners of those clothes at the robbers' hands was plain without looking.

Chuk Hong-cheol bowed his head. His eyes, draped in shadow, growled low.

"These, beast-like robber bastards..."

There was no more hesitation, no more trembling on that face.

Without a word, Han San gathered them up and dug a small hole outside the cave. There happened to be a shovel among the robbers' tools, so it was done before long.

He laid the skirt and the flower shoes inside and covered them with earth.

Then he spoke.

"Hong-cheol-ajae."

"...Boss."

"Don't dwell on it too much."

Han San had given up cigarettes since his regression, and Chuk Hong-cheol simply didn't smoke. There'd been no chance for the IMCO trench lighter[3] to do its work, then, but you don't have to smoke a cigarette to get through to a man.

The seventy-four-year-old young man simply patted the shoulder of Chuk Hong-cheol, who stared silently down at the grave of clothes.

"What I mean is, this doesn't make those men bad bastards who deserved to die, and it doesn't make us judges acting out justice on its behalf, either.

If those men hadn't been the kind to violate women like this, if they'd been righteous outlaws funding some orphanage, I'd have killed them just the same."

"..."

"Because they tried to kill us. Like I said earlier, that's the whole reason those men had to die. Don't go tacking strange thoughts onto it."

"...All right."

Chuk Hong-cheol nodded heavily.

Han San said no more. He'd said all there was to say, and whether to take it in was the other man's to decide. Why else had the inner demon kept cropping up as a subject in every martial arts novel he'd read in his past life?

They gathered the spoils, left the rest of the clothes pile as it was, came back, and divided the cash.

"Here, take this. Three won. Special battle pay."

Chuk Hong-cheol seemed to have settled his heart a little. His face was still heavy, but he nodded and took the money.

"Thanks, boss."

"Hyeong-don-ssi and Jun-ha-ssi, two won each."

"Thank you, boss comrade!"

The remaining five won thirty jeon Han San took for himself. Boldly.

"The placer gold... for now, let's, well, hold on it. I'll tell you when I cash it out later. I'll never short-change you, so trust me. Got it?"

Han San had no thought of gulping down the spoils they'd won fighting together all by himself.

These were armed retainers bound to him by profit, so he had to keep such things clear. In history too, the mercenary captain who took a large share lived long, but the one who tried to take the whole share tended to lose his head.

The Chuk butchers, for their part, just blinked.

Chuk Hong-cheol especially had figured handing out the cash was plenty—that even if Han San said nothing about the gold pouch and slipped past it like a snake over a wall, he'd have understood. So he was thoroughly bewildered, then soon looked at Han San with admiration.

'So he really is a gentleman with a universal trust that transcends class.'

"Chief-ajae, you're thinking something red right now, aren't you?"

"I wasn't thinking anything."

Han San eyed Chuk Hong-cheol with suspicion, and Chuk Hong-cheol played innocent.

Soon they laughed lightly at each other and shook off the heavy mood.

"Let's go."

The party set off again.

The formation was the same as before. Jun-ha and Hyeong-don hauled the rattling ox cart along, while Han San, with Hong-cheol in tow, melted into the mountains.

Drawing on his past-life memory, Han San went around ahead and checked the spots where a robber might lie in ambush.

"None."

Next spot.

"None."

The next spot again.

"Nothing."

Had the gunshot earlier spooked them? No more two-legged beasts blocked the way.

A full half-day passed, and the sun was just beginning to tilt down.

"Boss, you smell something fishy?"

"I do."

At some point, the smell on the wind had changed.

The scent of grass and earth faded, and a salty tang came rushing in.

"We're almost there."

They happened to be up on a ridge. Han San cleared the brush in front of him with the leaf-spring blade and opened up his line of sight.

Far off, catching the sunset and gleaming like a shard of brass, the horizon came into full view.

'The East Sea.'

They'd reached Sokcho.

[1] Placer gold is gold found as loose flakes or nuggets in river sand and gravel, separated by panning or mercury amalgamation; in 1930s colonial Korea a small pouch could be worth months of wages.

[2] A nyang (냥/兩) was a traditional Korean unit of weight, roughly 37.5 grams, used as a measure for precious metals; during the colonial period gold prices were reckoned in nyang before conversion to yen.

[3] The IMCO Triplex was an Austrian-made windproof trench lighter, popular from the 1920s onward, prized for reliability in outdoor conditions.

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