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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 66

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The Fish-Salter (3)

If Han San had lived just thirty years more in his past life, he might have waved a placard like this:

[@@Inje Same-Day Passage#Now Recruiting Bus Riders@@Driver Maxed Out#3 Melee Tanks#1 Hunter DPS (Burst)#High Movement Speed Only~~Fare Slashed to 1 won~~@Safe^ty^Guar^an^teed@]

But sadly, an old man who'd regressed without ever living to see the nineties had no such knack for catching trends.

Maybe that was why the merchants' reaction was mostly sour.

"What? Push through Misiryeong together, you say?"

"Sure, when a big crowd goes streaming through, robbers find it awkward and steer clear, or so they say. But that depends on the robbers, doesn't it? Run into the sort that hold nothing back and you're done for. Done for!"

"You young fellow! Don't go living in such a hurry!"

"My point exactly! Try to get there two days early and you could end up sixty years early instead!"

Most of them clicked their tongues like that.

In this era, a highwayman was no different from a natural disaster. Money and goods, of course, and your life along with them, all taken as a matter of course.

This too wasn't a matter of good and evil but of efficiency.

A corpse doesn't walk to the substation and file a report the way a person does. Not only that, toss it carelessly into the mountains and wait, and the animals and the wind and rain take care of it for you.

If you had the eye to tell the ones you mustn't touch apart from the prey, and if you could throw away your humanity, then in the chaos of colonial policing robbery was truly a high-yield profession, and the peddler brotherhood was the perfect prey for it.

But not everyone backed away.

"You're really going to push through Misiryeong?"

One bundle peddler stepped forward. Water reeking of the sea dripped, drop by drop, from a chest perched on top of a worn A-frame carrier.

"Aigo, Kim Seo-bang! Are you mad!? You'd walk into a tiger's maw on that young fool's word!?"

"Hold on, hold on! A few days late, but your life's what matters most, no question!"

The merchants around him recoiled and tried to stop him, but the bundle peddler called Kim Seo-bang shook his head hard.

"I've got to be in Inje by tomorrow, I tell you! What's loaded on this carrier, dried octopus and the rest, it's all raw, isn't it? In this weather, won't it all rot to mush? Think how much debt I'm carrying right now. If that happens, dying's all the same either way!"

Kim Seo-bang looked at Han San with bloodshot eyes.

"Die this way, die that way, I was going to push through Misiryeong on my own anyhow. If there's a man willing to take on escort duty, at least I won't die lonely! Here's one won!"

Han San took a fifty-jeon coin along with five ten-jeon coins. He gave a short laugh and clapped Kim Seo-bang on the shoulder.

"Splendid, that spirit! There's no dying to be done here, so rest easy and don't be so tense! Anyone else? If not, I go with this gentleman alone! Even I can see his load looks a bit urgent!"

Soothed by Han San, his face loosening a little, Kim Seo-bang went and stood beside the Chuk Brothers. The merchants gathered at the marketplace entrance glanced at one another.

"M-me too! Let me in! My load's not, well, that urgent, but still..."

"Count me in too, won't you..."

A couple of them shuffled forward, and after that it happened in a flash.

"Me too! One won, you said?"

"Me as well! I'm going too!"

The minds of the bundle peddlers who crowded in were busily running the numbers.

'If we really can push through Misiryeong and get straight to Inje, one won for an escort isn't a loss.'

'Not one won, even two, this is a gain no matter what!'

They called it travel time, but wasn't it just time tossed away on the roadside?

The opportunity cost alone was staggering, and along the way you ate, you slept, and if you wore yourself out sleeping rough and put up at an inn to recover, money leaked out steadily. All of it, they could save in one stroke.

The question was whether the Misiryeong route was really that safe, and even on that point the bundle peddlers had run their own calculations.

'Four or five, maybe, but with this many of us going, what could go wrong?'

'And even if something does go wrong, surely I alone can find a way to slip out...'

Those inner thoughts were plain to see, but Han San smiled and took them in.

"Yes, yes. Head over that way. There! I can still take three more!"

The merchants who didn't budge clicked their tongues.

"Those, those people, they really..."

"How can they go in such a hurry..."

But they too understood, deep down. After all, you had to brave the risk to make money.

In any case, someone always got lucky and succeeded. A man in trade always believed he himself would be that someone.

On top of that, there was the company standing guard over Han San's ox cart. The Chuk Brothers had a thoroughly thuggish look about them.

'The young man who comes out front to talk, fine, but those three human-butcher types lined up behind him... wouldn't even bandits find that awkward to touch?'

'Hmm. Should I try joining in too?'

Just then the quota of ten filled up.

Han San announced the closing at once.

"All right, that's it! Those who couldn't make it, I'll see you next time!"

"Ah! Hey, can't I get in too?"

A bundle peddler who'd put on an interested look too late said as much, but Han San shook his head firmly.

"No can do! I told you at the start I'd only take ten!"

These ten were the maximum Han San had calculated. Even with only bundle peddlers, one more added here and they'd drop below the ox cart's pace.

While a few bundle peddlers who'd missed their chance smacked their lips in regret, Han San pocketed a total of ten won in escort fees and crowed in triumph inside.

'There are many ways to make money. Many.'

One won apiece for an escort was, in truth, on the cheap side, but so what.

Ten won that had latched on for free along a road he had to travel anyway was simply sweet.

'Besides, I told them it was [one won each, since you're my first customers].'

If these ten arrived in Inje and served as living billboards, then the various profits to be wrung from the Inje-Sokcho Misiryeong trade route had nowhere to go but up.

Grinning, Han San gave his orders to Kim Seo-bang and the other bundle peddlers. His experience leading a marching column during the war shone through at once.

"Right. Once you've settled up, line up in rows and columns. Kim Seo-bang-ajae takes the lead. Behind him, this ajae. Behind him, Choi-ajae. Behind him, Park-ajae, on and on like that, spacing just about that much. Yes, good! We go right now!"

With Han San's declaration, the curtain rose on Han's Myriad Commerce's first caravan run.

Bravado is nothing but the other face of fear.

The very man who'd taken the first step into Han's Myriad Commerce's caravan run, Kim Seo-bang, was endlessly uneasy inside.

'Aigo, I've gone mad. I've gone mad.'

He'd held out one won, saying die this way or that it was all the same, that he'd bulk-bought live fish and meant to push through Misiryeong on his own, but the heart of a wild beast, by nature, has a shelf life shorter than mackerel sashimi.

When the scent of the East Sea drifted faintly away and the old pass road of Misiryeong loomed near, Kim Seo-bang's legs trembled until he thought he'd lose his mind.

'I was bewitched! Bewitched by the mountain, bewitched by the sea, that's what I was!'

Misiryeong, drawing closer, looked just like the maw of an enormous beast. From behind the trees that jutted up like jagged teeth, it felt as if bandits might come tumbling out at any moment, cackling...

Cha-chak.

A sudden metallic sound rang out at the very moment Kim Seo-bang's tension reached its peak.

"Hiik!?"

The other bundle peddlers seemed to feel much the same inside, judging by the fact that Kim Seo-bang wasn't the only one to shriek and pull his head in.

"Wh-what on earth was that sound..."

"A gun!? Did he pull out a gun!?"

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers were horrified.

The young man walking out front, Han San, had drawn his hunting gun. The metallic sound just now had come from the gun being unlocked.

"Rest easy, all of you. It's a legal gun, properly permitted by the police constables."

Han San said it calmly, fingering the barrel.

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers screamed inside.

'No, you mad fool! It's because you pulled out a gun out of nowhere that we're startled!'

'It's frightening even in my own hands, and now it's in some other bastard's!'

Maybe he read those blue-pale faces, because Han San gave a short laugh.

"Now, now, don't be so startled. Isn't it a hundred times better to have a fine hunting gun in our side's hands than in a bandit's?"

"Th-that's true, but still..."

"My friend and I will go on ahead and scout the road a bit. Follow Hyeong-don-ajae and Jun-ha-ajae closely and come up the path slowly."

No sooner had the words dropped than Han San and the biggest of the men slipped into the brush and vanished. It was a mountain trek that made no sound at all.

What was left was a single rattling yellow-bull cart, Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha walking at its flanks as if standing guard, and the ten bundle peddlers, Kim Seo-bang among them, all thoroughly terrified.

Rattle, rattle.

Only silence hung in the air as they climbed the old pass road. In the suffocating anxiety, the bundle peddlers dropped their voices to whispers and began to trade words.

"Hey, Kim Seo-bang... this... could it be those fellows are in cahoots with a robber gang...?"

Kim Seo-bang gave a violent start.

"I-in cahoots...?"

"You know the kind of story I mean. The one where they lure a whole bunch of the peddler brotherhood into the mountains, link up with the main force of robbers waiting ahead, clean them out all at once, and bury them all alive, the one about robbers' lures..."

"E-eh, surely not..."

"They say surely-not is what gets a man killed, and that gun he suddenly pulled out a moment ago, just look at it..."

At those words Kim Seo-bang jerked his head up.

"R-right, the gun! That gun, if he'd meant to do something to us, he'd have fired when he pulled it out back there... but he didn't fire, which means he's not a lure like that..."

"Ehey, Kim Seo-bang! Maybe he's dragging us in deep so the gunshots won't be heard when the time comes!? Could be he means to surround us so not a single man can flee..."

The imagination feeds on fear and swells without restraint.

As if by agreement, the merchants gulped and stole glances at Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha on either side of the ox cart.

It was summer, so their sleeves were rolled up, and on their forearms writhed, thuggishly, muscles of a wholly different grain from the wholesome farmer's brawn bred by honestly wrestling with the soil, muscle made for crushing the life out of a thing and slitting its throat.

They prided themselves on having strength to match any able-bodied man, being members of the peddler brotherhood who shouldered A-frame carriers over the mountains themselves, but seeing those thuggish muscles, they couldn't help shrinking.

'Please... please let nothing happen. Buddha, Jade Emperor, Mountain Lord, anyone, just let this not be a bad gamble...'

Kim Seo-bang, drenched in cold sweat, chanted prayers inwardly.

A towel was held out in front of that very Kim Seo-bang.

"Use this, would you? You're sweating a lot."

"Ah, thank y... eheek!?"

Kim Seo-bang, who'd taken it without thinking, nearly toppled over when he realized it was Han San who'd handed it to him.

Having finished his scouting without a sound and returned, Han San grinned.

"You startle so easily. Nothing wrong up ahead. Let's keep going."

"R-right, understood..."

"Yes. And we're not robbers' lures, so rest easy."

Kim Seo-bang could only nod in a daze.

Han San, who'd been walking with the gun slung over him as if on a stroll, took Chuk Hong-cheol along and went off to scout again the moment they crossed one rise.

"Nothing wrong this time either. Let's go."

"That gorge valley up ahead is empty too. Keep following. I'll go look a bit farther forward again."

Han San and Chuk Hong-cheol kept popping out just when you'd forget about them, sending chills through the merchants' hearts. The way they appeared and vanished over and over was just like mountain goblins.

The merchants no longer dared even to think of trading whispers. They only wished for this road to end soon.

How long had they walked?

The sun that had stained the sky crimson dropped sharply beyond the ridge, and a thick, muffled darkness settled over the mountain. They had met the night in the very middle of the old pass road.

And in that instant.

Taang-!!

A tearing roar echoed along the mountain ridge.

"Hiiiik!"

"M-mother!!"

Kim Seo-bang and several of the bundle peddlers lost the strength in their legs and slumped to the ground.

Had it come, the thing that was coming? Had they in the end been delivered, fresh from the mountain, into the maw of a robber gang?

Ta-tang-!! Ta-ta-tang--!!

The gunfire didn't end with one shot. Three shots, four, ringing out one after another, ripped the night air to shreds.

The merchants trembled, an instant away from wetting themselves.

But the two men driving the yellow-bull cart, Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha, didn't so much as twitch an eyebrow.

"What are you all doing?"

"Keep going. If you don't, we leave you behind."

They merely pressed on calmly along the path, hands clasped behind their backs, performing the [Great Marshal's Breathing] and the [Chairman's Breathing] they'd learned by watching Chuk Hong-cheol.

Kim Seo-bang clutched his head and all but shrieked.

"G-gunshots! Gunshots!"

Even at that, the two men's breathing didn't waver in the slightest.

"Don't worry."

"The boss will handle everything."

At that indifferent manner, the merchants, half out of their wits, had no choice but to move their feet.

Thirty minutes after that? An hour?

After walking a good while with their sense of time all but gone, Han San and Chuk Hong-cheol showed themselves.

"Startled you back there, didn't it? Don't worry. There were some animal whelps blocking the road, so I took care of them and came back."

Han San said it with a grin. It was the smile of a proper young master.

But the moment the torch in Kim Seo-bang's hand lit up Chuk Hong-cheol's body, the merchants couldn't help swallowing a gasp.

Blood!

Soaking Chuk Hong-cheol's clothes damp, the sharp reek of blood that wafted up!

"Ah. Got a bit on my friend's clothes. It was a fairly big animal, you see."

"Hiiiii..."

"Let's go. Nothing wrong up ahead."

Han San said it with a smile.

But Kim Seo-bang, and the other bundle peddlers too, were truly at their mental limit.

"I, I can't quite find the strength to walk..."

"Now, now."

To the bundle peddlers who whimpered like that, Han San laid a hand on Kim Seo-bang's shoulder as if coaxing him.

"Come now, walk. No matter how short the road, you have to walk it before it finally ends."

And Han San added in the most earnest of voices.

"We'll be in Inje now, now, any moment now."[1]

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers came sharply to their senses at those words.

'What? The hell did I just hear?'

'This goddamn wordplay... why is my blood suddenly boiling?'

Kim Seo-bang and the rest dearly wished to smash Han San in the face. It felt as though they could walk a thousand li for that alone.

Luckily, a thousand li wasn't needed.

Not long after they started walking again, the texture of the soil against Kim Seo-bang's soles changed.

"Oh..."

The moment Kim Seo-bang felt the ox cart wheel, which had been rattling and grating on his nerves at his side, glide smoothly.

The narrow, stifling forest path opened wide.

Under the dim moonlight, a broad, flat road stretched out cool and open before his eyes.

The injection tube the Japanese Empire had stuck in to ferry supplies into the continent and suck up its resources.

The new road.[2]

"Oh... ohh!"

Kim Seo-bang looked around with a dumbstruck face. The mountain terrain had ended. As if it were a lie, they had broken through that notorious old pass road of Misiryeong!

"We've crossed it! We've crossed it all!"

"We really made it over safe! After all that worrying!"

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers embraced and laughed. Soon they pulled apart, grimacing at the fishy and sweaty smells coming off each other.

After standing awkwardly a moment, one of them cleared his throat, no one having gone first.

"That, ahem. Ah, really, young man, you're something else!"

"My point exactly! A lure or whatever, who in the world slandered such a remarkable young fellow like that..."

Han San paid it no mind. He just grinned as he stowed his gun away.

"Didn't I tell you? We'll be in Inje now, now."

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers' faces curdled in an instant.

'No, son of a...'

'Haa... really, son of a, aoh, that face of his, I want to...'

After that, the walk that followed was somehow simply quiet.

With no boiling roar, no joy brimming with emotion, in an atmosphere where the heat seemed to have fizzled out, drained away by force, they arrived in Inje.

"Well then, everyone, do good business on your way and make plenty of money. If you ever have escort work to entrust again, just say the word."

Watching the receding backs of the Han's Myriad Commerce company walking into the Inje town center, Kim Seo-bang and the rest were seized by an ambivalence truly hard to put into words.

"What a remarkable young fellow, really... hmm..."

"Another escort next time... well, the safety really is rock solid, granted..."

Kim Seo-bang and the bundle peddlers resolved, no one having gone first.

That they ought to go around the whole Inje marketplace and spread word of that Han's Myriad Commerce escort service.

No question, there was no way they alone should be left to feel this goddamn thing creeping and circling around in their heads.

[1] The Korean "인제에, 인제 곧 도착합니다" puns on Inje (the town name) and the dialect word injeJ meaning "now/soon," so the line means both "We'll arrive in Inje soon" and "We'll be there now, now" — the double meaning being precisely what makes Kim Seo-bang's blood boil.

[2] During the colonial period, the Japanese administration built and expanded motorable roads across Korea primarily to facilitate military logistics and the extraction of resources for the war effort on the continent.

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