WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 68

──────

The Fish-Salter (5)

The general-goods seller couldn't make sense of any of it.

Why in the world were those vicious-looking brutes bending into ninety-degree bows before that young son of a bitch?

Everything about it was backwards. The young son of a bitch was supposed to be groveling to those brutes and begging for mercy, or else losing his head to hot blood and tearing into them in a dogfight.

Han San didn't even spare the thunderstruck seller a glance. He tipped his chin at the head of the market toughs.

"Hey."

"Yes, hyung-nim!"

"I want to light some charcoal here. That a problem for anyone?"

The head of the market toughs grinned wide and rubbed his hands together.

"Aigo! What problem could there be! This Han's Myriad Commerce you lead, hyung-nim—isn't it the very company where our Malja-noona sits as a director? Charcoal? You could burn the whole marketplace to the ground and who'd dare say a word!"

"Now, now. You still shouldn't be setting the marketplace on fire."

"My apologies, hyung-nim! My tongue just ran hot with excitement, that's all!"

The head of the market toughs was quick to chime along as he drew something from his coat.

Two bottles of soju and three bags of rock candy.

"This here's next to nothing, but it's the respects-money we put together for you, Han San hyung-nim! Take it for a laugh and please don't hold it against us!"

Han San weighed the gifts. A few dozen jeon worth, sure, but the amount was hardly the point.

"There's heart in it. Somebody must've told you I don't smoke?"

"Ah, of course, hyung-nim. I heard and remembered you've got a young master at home, too. If I left that kind of care out, I'd be as good as dead!"

"All right. Off you go. Give my regards to noona."

"Yes, sir! Good luck with business, hyung-nim!"

Once more the head of the market toughs sank into a deep ninety-degree bow, then finally shot the seller a glare. The seller couldn't so much as squeak, and only pulled his neck in.

Only after the market toughs had drained away like an ebbing tide did the general-goods seller steal glances at Han San, his face like a man who'd seen a goblin at high noon.

'Th-that fellow—what in the world is he...?!'

Wasn't it the way of the world for a stall vendor to pay protection money to the market toughs?

Where on earth was there a stall vendor who instead collected respects-money from the market toughs?

Just then Han San spoke.

"Ajae."

"Uh, uh?!"

"I won't let a fire start. And I'll keep the smoke off your side as much as I can, so bear with me. Yeah?"

Against that veiled threat, what more could the seller possibly say? He could only shrink down and avoid eye contact.

"Th-that's, well... if you're careful enough that no fire starts, then, well..."

Han San nodded and drove the nail home.

"So you've got no beef. Long as I don't beef it up."

For a moment the seller doubted his own ears.

'No, dammit... what did I just hear...?'

【No beef, if I don't beef it up.】

The wordplay kept crawling round and round in the seller's head, refusing to leave, like the smell of navel lint glued fast right under his nostrils.

Such was the ghastly price of firing off filthy curses at a man before knowing who he was.

The Chuk Brothers heard the wordplay too, of course, but—hm—having spent enough time stuck to Han San, they were used to it by now. They triggered a selective amnesia and let out nothing but sounds of admiration.

"Ah, boss. Something else, really! Those market toughs looked hard as nails."

"It's all connections, this."

Han San smirked.

The South Jade Pavilion was, from the start, the very first connection he'd cut open. His formal footing—the household register, the company, and the rest—had all been made possible through it too.

Was there any chance he'd have treated it lightly?

'There's an upside to a world where the fist is closer than the law. All you need is for the fist to be strong enough.'

The mackerel had finished grilling right on cue. With nobody left to interfere, Han San called out in high spirits.

"Come, come, come! Step up and look! We've got squid! Dried squid! Squid straight from Sokcho, squid, squid! Matches too, and a can of lamp oil all the way from Primorye! You folks watching, take a bite of freshly grilled mackerel to whet your appetites—come try a taste before you go!"

As he did, he shot a glance at the Chuk Brothers.

"What are you doing, my dear employees? You lot ought to pull in some customers too."

Chuk Hong-cheol flushed.

"Well... you might say my conscience as an activist won't allow me to be mobilized into unjust capital accumulation under the name of commerce..."

"And the real reason?"

"Er... it's, kind of embarrassing..."

The Chuk Brothers cleared their throats one after another.

They'd raised their voices in front of crowds plenty of times, struggling away in their late turn to activism, but hawking wares carried a different flavor of shame.

Han San was dumbfounded.

"Come on, you lot were of the butcher class, weren't you? You ran a meat shop and never once served a customer?"

"We were on slaughter duty..."

"I had no idea the butcher class's society was divided up so finely. Do it anyway. You get used to anything by doing it. You're young men."

The Chuk Brothers' whiskered faces went redder still. To be called young men by an eighteen-year-old.

In the end, the leader-comrade of the Chuk Brothers set the example first.

"Ahem—step right up! Mackerel! Squid! Matches! And so on, we've got it all, whatever you please! Cheap!"

With the leader out front, the Grand Marshal and the Chairman started hesitantly following his lead, and Han's Myriad Commerce got down to real business.

The customers' response ran as hot as the charcoal fire stoked in the brazier.

"Dried squid! The price is a bit brutal, but my mouth's been idle lately, so I'd better buy some!"

"Except for what comes in on the trucks now and then, I never see any seafood at all, and today I thought there was a bit of it about the market—and lo, over here they're grilling mackerel!"

"Can I really try a bite of this?"

Han San grinned.

"Now, ajae! Peel the mackerel flesh off nice and clean... ah, you're already doing it! Yes, jab in a toothpick like that and hand it to the customers! You're doing fine! Should've done it that way from the start!"

The customers who tasted the mackerel Chuk Jun-ha held out clicked their tongues in unison.

"Whew, that's good!"

"It's not even winter, and I never thought I'd get to eat mackerel in Inje on a hot summer day like this! Not a whiff of fishiness, and salty enough to make me crave rice!"

Han San laughed with easy charm.

"This right here is the secret the noble folk way off in Andong, Gyeongsang Province, use to eat mackerel. Andong salt-cured mackerel[1], they call it."

"Andong salt-cured mackerel?"

"Yes, sir. You take fresh mackerel caught at the harbor, scatter salt all over it, then haul it all the way to Andong by ox cart, and the jolting and shaking of that cart works the cure moist and deep into the whole body of the fish.

Now this is work that takes real expertise. That's why there are craftsmen who spend their whole lives specializing in nothing but that salting—and, well, why should I hide it? I'm one of the men who inherited that craftsman's secret art, is what I'm saying!"

"No, for real?!"

"For real, of course! Any of you with relatives in Andong, write and ask them!"

Copy-pasting outright the article on Andong salt-cured mackerel he'd read in a magazine in his past life, Han San nodded with full confidence.

'Of course, the part about me inheriting the fish-salter's craft is a flat-out lie.'

In his past life too he'd spent his whole time in Gangwon. He'd gone fishing in the East Sea often enough, sure, but when would he ever have gone to Andong to be handed the fish-salter's craft?

But in 1933, when even the term "false advertising" didn't exist, this much was mere charm.

Had Hajama the First and the Second been present, they'd have said in one voice, [This is no mere fabrication of credentials. It is a storytelling technique meant to delight the customers.]

"Boss, is that the right characters for storytelling? Aren't you just spouting more and more of whatever comes to mind?"

"Ah, hell, what are you on about? Is that what matters right now?"

Having snubbed Chuk Hong-cheol, Han San turned back to the customer.

"How is it?"

The customer chewing away at the mackerel let out a long "kah."

"Aigo, don't even get me started! The flavor's out of this world!"

"Heh heh. Of course it can't match mackerel just pulled from the sea, but for grilled mackerel eaten in Inje in the dead of summer, isn't it a rare treat?"

"What are you talking about! I think this salt-cured mackerel's far better than fresh mackerel!"

That was surely laying it on thick, but such thickly laid praise stirred up the impatience of the other customers. One old man took out his wallet and shook it.

"Hey, young man! How much mackerel have you got? Hand the whole lot over to me! I'll buy it all!"

Han San waved a hand as if it pained him.

"Aigo, my apologies, sir. I've only got a few fish left as yet. I'm still in the middle of trial and error to bring out the perfect flavor myself."

"Didn't you say you learned the secret art? So why the trial and error?"

"Turns out East Sea mackerel and South Sea mackerel are different things."

Without wetting his lips with a single drop of spit, Han San kept up the lie with true ease.

"Think of today's grilling as a sample, and please spread plenty of word of mouth."

"Hah, if I spread word of mouth, won't that just cut down on the mackerel I get to buy!"

"Come now, there's a good long while yet until mackerel season proper.

Until then I'll just grill it up like this and share it out as samples, so don't be in a rush.

Once the monsoon ends and it gets to late August or early September, every five days I'll load this cart chock-full—hundreds of hands of mackerel cured by my secret method—and bring it round. That's when you can sweep it up to your heart's content!"

This right here was scarcity marketing, the kind you couldn't buy even with money to spare.

Had Han San lived to a hundred and ten in his past life, he'd have named it the Dubai chewy-mackerel sales pitch, but sad to say, having regressed at seventy-four, he couldn't.

Still, be it spring-greens mackerel or butter-cake mackerel, the power of marketing works the same now as it will a hundred years hence.

"Now, now! Hyeong-don-ajae, put the next mackerel on! Come see the squid, squid! Matches! We've got lamp oil here too!"

Having drawn eyes with the salt-cured mackerel tasting, Han San rode the momentum and sold off the goods he'd hauled from the Sokcho five-day market without a pause.

Among the groundwork he'd done over the past two months was a survey of demand at the Inje marketplace, too. On top of that, thanks to the trouble he'd taken in Sokcho to sort the goods into fine categories, a whole cartload of cargo sold out clean before the sun even went down.

That night, at the inn.

Han San spread the money out beneath the oil lamp and clicked the abacus beads.

'The money I spent buying up goods in Sokcho came to about 180 won.'

And the total sales he'd gathered selling wares at the marketplace over the whole day?

'238 won!'

A mad profit rate reaching a full 32 percent!

'The plunder from the bandit we caught on the way—the share that fell to me—was 7 won. And the money the bundle peddlers paid for the escort service, add the 10 won in escort fees...'

Han San's lips stretched to the tips of his ears.

'255 won in all!'

Without even counting the 120 won worth of placer gold, his cash holdings had swelled by over 40 percent.

'Of course, this isn't all profit. There's the basic upkeep, after all...'

Things like the cart wheels, for instance. Even running along the new road, their durability got shaved down fast, didn't it? All the more so the old Misiryeong pass, which reduced them to rags with a single round trip.

On top of that, eating and sleeping. Lodging costs, the ox's fodder, and so on.

'A few won at most, though.'

The nearly 40 percent profit rate didn't budge.

Above all, this was Han San's exclusive profit, one he didn't even need to split with the Chuk Brothers. Since it was gained through trade and not battle, there was no need to hand out combat pay to his private soldiers.

But would a seventy-four-year-old man really fail to look after the hired hands of his own house?

He begrudged every jeon of showy generosity toward outsiders, but a man ought to take care of his own household.

"Leader! Grand Marshal! Chairman! Here, this. Take it and go buy yourselves a drink. There's two squid I set aside that got crushed on the way, so tear into those together too."

Han San generously handed out a total of 4 won as a bonus—2 won to Chuk Hong-cheol, and 1 won each to Chuk Hyeong-don and Chuk Jun-ha.

Chuk Hong-cheol was flustered.

"No, boss! We were all thumbs the whole time we were selling, there's no need to go this far..."

"You worked hard. And look—the more you did it, the better you got! You felt it yourselves, didn't you?"

"Uh, uh... that's, well..."

"We set out from home on the 2nd, hit Sokcho on the 3rd, and today, without even a few hours' sleep here, we were selling the moment day broke. The schedule was truly brutal, so you did a fine job. Oil up your stomachs and joints, and get some good rest. Yeah?"

At the sight of their boss smiling contentedly and clapping their shoulders, the Chuk Brothers felt their chests swell to bursting.

Han San smiled. "Go on, go. Head to the tavern and pour down a whole load of makgeolli with some meat to go with it."

"..."

"Keep on just like this from here on out. If you trust and follow me, whatever else may be, I've certainly got the ability to make sure you never have to worry about earning your keep for the rest of your lives."

"...Understood, boss."

Chuk Hong-cheol could only shake his head in wonder.

Young, good with his body, a fine shot, plain good at hunting, and a smooth talker besides—and to top it off, an overwhelming man of skill who also possessed a conscience that transcended class.

'Isn't this the very specimen of a perfect man?'

"But that line I said—the [No beef, if I don't beef it up]. Don't you think it struck right at the heart of it? This is what you call verbal quick-wittedness."

'Ah. Not perfect after all.'

But this much was just a flaw in the jade. When Chuk Hong-cheol went to send him a look of awe again, Han San put on a face that said come to think of it—

"Hong-cheol-ajae, back when I hired you, too. I thought to myself, [I've found talent from Inje], and it was such a shame I had no one to say it to."

'Not a flaw in the jade—a smear of crap stuck in it.'

"Leader-comrade?"

"Mm."

Chuk Hong-cheol gathered himself. He looked at Han San with a face wearing all the complications of the world, then, in a sense, felt one corner of his heart go suddenly at ease.

Right—if he'd been too perfect, it would've been downright unlucky.

"Won't you have a drink with us too, boss?"

At Chuk Hong-cheol's invitation, Han San's eyes went round.

"Hm? Is that all right? Doesn't it make the employees uncomfortable to have the boss butting in on their meal?"

"That's a matter for other bosses. You're not that kind of boss, so it's fine. Come on, let's go.

Grand Marshal! Chairman! Grab the boss and haul him off to the tavern!"

"Whoa, whoa! Don't grab me! I'll go on my own two feet. Ah! Speaking of feet, I just thought up another really fun bit of wordplay..."

"Cover his mouth too!"

"Mmph mmph?!"

That night, at the Inje tavern, Han's Myriad Commerce's first company dinner carried on until the day broke.

[1] Andong salt-cured mackerel is a specialty of the inland city of Andong, where mackerel brought from the coast was traditionally salted heavily to survive the long overland journey before refrigeration.

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried