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◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 70

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Money Copies Itself, You Say

Han San's clock ran fast.

At Cheonbo Pharmacy in Inje town he handed over the phellinus mushroom and, as usual, raked in 30 won. While he was at it, he unloaded 4 of his 10 jars of chestnut honey at 3 won apiece, 12 won in all.

"Tsk. However close you and I are, Sajang-nim, handing over chestnut honey at this price feels like a pretty steep loss on my end... Sajang-nim, haven't you got some jaw-dropping offer that might set my, well, psychological disequilibrium to rights?"

Ma Jong-sung, owner of Cheonbo Pharmacy, put on the wronged face of a man left standing at the altar.

"Y-you! They say a frog forgets it was ever a tadpole, and here you are! Hey! You make a little money and think you can talk to me like that? Why, I all but carried you on my back and raised you from the days you went about in those beggar's foot-rags, and made you the respectable fellow you are now!"

"Now, are you really allowed to just fabricate history like that? Do you not fear the judgment of the ages, Sajang-nim?"

Once they'd traded the familiar volley through, Ma Jong-sung clicked his tongue.

"Hold on, now. Come September, there ought to be a big deal, the kind you've been dying and waiting for."

"Oh? What sort of deal?"

"There's such a thing, is all. When September comes, stop in as soon as you can."

As he said it, Ma Jong-sung took the money from his safe and handed it over. Han San took it and stepped out of Cheonbo Pharmacy.

'Forty-two won all told!'

That September promise might well end up a bounced check, but this settled cash was firmly in hand right now.

'Let's put all this money toward laying in goods too.'

While Han San was going back and forth to Sebeom Valley, the Chuk Brothers had brought in all the rest of the goods. All Han San had to do was carry the money around and briskly settle the payments, which suited him fine.

On top of that, Chuk Hong-cheol had also recruited the party for the Sokcho run in advance.

"These the ones?"

Han San asked it as he looked over the bundle peddlers, who clustered together muttering uneasily. Chuk Hong-cheol nodded at once.

"Yeah, Sajang. Rounded up exactly ten who won't collapse on the road. Word must've spread around the marketplace, because even though I picked pretty carefully and charged 2 won each for the escort fee, the slots filled up quick."

"Good news, that."

Han San smiled with satisfaction, then put on a deliberately stern face and laid down a warning to the assembled bundle peddlers.

"Right, everyone! You heard the cautions from Hong-cheol-ajae, yes? No refunds. Water and meals on the road, bring your own! If you don't have them you can get them from us, but we'll charge you. I'll tell you now, it'll be a bit dear.

I'll guarantee your safety as far as I can, but if something happens to us, from that point it's every man for himself. Even so, we'll hold out somehow until every last one of you has fled, so rest easy on that one score.

Any questions? None, right? Then let's set out this minute!"

But for all that discipline he'd laid down, the party reached Sokcho without a single incident.

"Wow! Made it safe and sound, not a hair harmed?"

"How much time did this save us! Han's Myriad Commerce, was it? I'm in your debt! My name's Park Ssi. If you're ever over in Yangyang, come look me up."

While some bundle peddlers rejoiced with a hand pressed to their chests, others clicked their tongues as if the whole thing had been absurd.

"Now what's this? The board said the place was crawling with bandits, and it turned out safe as anything."

"Tsk. Money down the drain, money down the drain. Escort, my foot. Next time let's go on our own."

To the grateful and the grumbling alike, Han San only offered the same smile.

"Glad to have traveled together, and let's meet again if the chance comes. If you'd rather not, well, nothing to be done."

Every man has to bear the weight of the fate he shapes with his own hands. Whether they crossed the pass unharmed by luck the next time too, or ran into bandits and lost their heads, that wasn't a matter Han San would answer for.

Chuk Jun-ha, though, was disappointed for a somewhat different reason.

"Well now. No side income, so it feels a bit empty. There ought to be a few fools poking their heads out, if a man's pockets are ever to fatten up."

How to put this. He was one of Han San's own, after all.

Han San clapped Chuk Jun-ha on the shoulder.

"Now, don't go wishing for that sort of thing. Get a taste for it and it'll ruin you. A young bachelor like you." Han San wasn't talking about ethics. "It's because we keep spotting them first and shooting first that everything lines up so nicely. Suppose the bandits' side had even one real article. Then we'd be in serious trouble, I tell you."

Chuk Jun-ha turned it over. Having nothing to say back, he cleared his throat for no reason.

"Now, Sajang, you're younger than me and still going on about bachelors..."

"Not married, you're a bachelor, that's all there is to it."

"Come on. By that logic, Sajang, you're the king of the bachelors."

Trading jokes like that, and letting the hot air out of the private soldiers as needed, the whole Han's Myriad Commerce crew, boss and staff alike, took rooms at an inn.

The next day, after clinking cups with Broker Jang, they spread out a stall at the Sokcho market and dug in for a full day this time.

The result was a smashing success. In a single day they cleared out all the goods and pulled in close to 60 won in profit.

The 6 jars of chestnut honey he'd held in reserve, going at nearly 4 won a jar, played an especially big part.

"Must be because it opens on a five-day cycle[1], but the bites are a bit livelier here."

Having updated the market prices in his head one more round, they rested a day, gathered people, and came to Inje again.

He'd raised the salt-cured mackerel's share of the cargo to 5 won's worth, and this time close to half of it survived.

"Huh. So mackerel really can hold up this well in this weather."

"That's what I said. Sajang, you're not really from Andong, are you?"

The Chuk Brothers marveled like that, but after adjusting the salt-curing data in his head, Han San shook his head.

"Still a long way off. I heard you can only be called a gagjabbi once about ninety percent of them survive."

"Ninety percent!? Hah. In the dog days of summer, with no ice?"

Chuk Hong-cheol clicked his tongue in wonder. What kind of place was Andong, anyway? He'd heard this peninsula boiled hotter the further south you went...

Either way, the salt-cured mackerel more than earned its keep as a bait item again. Even with only half surviving, tallied all together it had generated something close to 7 won's worth of value.

"Good. The mackerel's started clearing the break-even point too... Only this Inje market's profit was a little thin."

About 40 won?

That was the trade profit alone, of course. The side income from sending two bandits off to the netherworld on the way and pocketing the take, the part that fell to Han San, came to roughly 8 won's worth. Add the 20 won in escort fees and it was about 60.

Even after subtracting the staff bonuses, lodging, and other upkeep costs, the profit topped 50 won!

"Rest a bit again! I'm off to the village once more!"

Going back and forth between the Sokcho market and the Inje market like that a few times.

On the afternoon of July 18th, 1933, Han San held in his hands a sum verging on 500 won. And that was without even counting the placer gold he'd picked up in the bandit cave.

'Money really does copy itself.'

And it copied itself in reproducible ways, at that.

Barely a fortnight since he'd started the business in earnest. Even without a one-off windfall like the Ginsei bounty, Han's Myriad Commerce, escort service and cottage-industry outfit rolled into one, had become capable of this kind of earning.

'But it gets a bit hard from here on...'

Han San smacked his lips lightly.

Paradoxically, the money had swelled the more he rolled it precisely because there was so little of it to roll. Now that the pie had grown to 500 won, two big problems were cropping up.

'The first is that a single ox cart's getting to be more than it can handle.'

That one was easy. Just buy another ox and cart to match.

Once the salt-cured mackerel plan got properly on track past August, he'd meant to lay them in anyway.

So this wasn't a problem.

The real problem was.

'The second, and this one's a bit of a headache. Doubling the ox carts won't double the profit.'

Because there was a limit to how much the customers in Inje and Sokcho could absorb.

Increase things past that and it would grow hard to clear out the goods on the five-day market cycle the way he did now.

Sure, if he set up shop and traded doggedly over several days he could clear it, but if earning 50 won every 5 days became earning 80 won every 10, what use was that?

'And on top of that, factor in stay costs, meal costs, the cost of guarding the goods...'

Lost in thought, Han San came back from playing with Bada to find the Chuk Brothers' numbers had grown by two.

"Chuk Myeong-su, at your service."

"Chuk Jae-seok here."

The members who joined this time, though, had a somewhat different grain than the bandit-like Team Hong-cheol already on hand.

Their bodies were thin and reedy, their frames slight, giving the impression that glasses would suit them better than a butcher's knife.

'Intelli-Red, is it.'

Even granting that he was deliberately taking thoughtful sorts on as hired hands, spineless bookworms would be a bother, but that suspicion proved groundless: on the very next trading run the two proved their worth at once.

"Sajang. That slingshot you use is handy enough, but it's got a ceiling on its power. Let me show you what a rope sling can do."

With that, Chuk Myeong-su drew out a cord with a pocket for the shot at its center. His hand moved as naturally as a man fishing loose change out of his purse.

And Chuk Jae-seok chided that same Myeong-su.

"Now, Myeong-su-hyung! With Sajang handling himself this well, do you think he goes around with a slingshot because he doesn't know what a sling is? You think this is the flatland you came from? How do you mean to sling stones up on this mountain?

I reckon I know a few spots good for slinging, so follow me. Don't go whirling it around for nothing, catch it on a branch, and split your own head open."

The two of them formed a two-man pair on their own initiative. Chuk Jae-seok would climb a tree or a ridge to read the terrain and stand scout, and Chuk Myeong-su, working off that intelligence, would pick the optimal spot to strike.

Not only that, on the way back to Inje they even bagged a couple of wood pigeons and added them to the haul.

Even Han San spared no praise.

"You ajaes are something! Turns out you were top-grade practical talents!"

"Mm. My grandfather, you see. He always lamented that if I'd been born a bit earlier, I'd have become the Stone-Battle King of Gunsan."

Where Chuk Myeong-su nodded with his lips pressed into a flat line, Chuk Jae-seok sighed and looked up at the sky.

"It's an unfair thing to say to my comrades, but Hong-cheol-hyung and Myeong-su-hyung will know. I wasn't born to the butcher class, you see. I'd gone off to study in Japan and was learning advanced scholarship. But what could I do. This era, and this heart of mine that can't turn away from the weak, won't let me go..."

The two took on the posts of party secretary and chief secretary respectively. It was the moment a ranged thrower and a scout were each added to Han San's band of private soldiers.

Chief Chuk Hong-cheol, Great Marshal Chuk Hyeong-don, Chairman Chuk Jun-ha, party secretary Chuk Myeong-su, chief secretary Chuk Jae-seok.

Until they weathered next year's Great Flood of the Gapsul Year, the Red Retainer Five who would rule this whole region alongside Han San had been assembled.

"Good! That's it for new recruitment! Well done, Chief."

"It's Sajang who did the work, not me."

Chuk Hong-cheol swiped at the tip of his beard-covered nose.

"So, Sajang. What are we selling next? At this rate, before long won't we just buy up the whole of Inje?"

"Now, that'd be lovely, but the thing about business is, it doesn't run that way..."

Han San thought for a moment, then briefly explained the situation they were now in.

The butchers blinked at one another, but the Japan-schooled intellectual Red, chief secretary Chuk Jae-seok, nodded with precision.

"Localized market saturation, and a ceiling on absorbable demand."

"Ah, so that's what it's called?"

That precise term was something Han San himself was only learning now. His memories of Teacher Han Bada from his past life, to whom he'd outsourced the political-practice side of things, had their limits when it came to economic knowledge.

Chuk Jae-seok furrowed one eyebrow and folded his arms.

"It's a stretch anyone passes through when they scale up. Otherwise every neighborhood shopkeeper would've turned into a great merchant.

Just as you sensed, Sajang, this can't be solved in a hurry. It's a structural problem, literally."

"Right..."

Han San folded his arms too and sank into thought.

Watching the two of them, Chief Chuk Hong-cheol let out a tsk and scratched hard at the back of his head.

"So what do we do? Even so, our company reliably clears 50 won including the escort fee every time the five-day market comes around. Do we just keep earning that, like now?"

"But Chief, think it over and isn't that down to the season too? I'm not as sharp about trade as Sajang or the chief secretary, but I know Misiryeong Pass hasn't always been in that state.

Once time passes and the bandits scatter a bit and other folks can travel it well enough, going back and forth between Sokcho and Inje won't turn a profit like this..."

"Right, right. We'd have to fold the escort business too."

"Ah, so we would..."

And so the Chuk Brothers, too, put their heads together and pondered the company's future in their own way. Somewhere along the line, the thought of 'our company' had settled into these red fellows' heads as well.

Han San felt gratified at that, and at the same time glanced at the calendar.

"Mm... first of all, though."

This was July 24th, 1933.

This year's monsoon season seemed to have passed quietly. A few passing showers fell, but that was all. It was a stretch of quiet so deep you couldn't even imagine the flood that would come crashing down next year.

But the memory sharpened through his regression, and the skin of a mountain man who'd grown old his whole life in Seorak, were sensing something.

'It's about time [that] came, as well.'

The sense that the mountain shadows draped over this region were turning heavy and damp, like a sponge.

Beyond the blue sky in his sight, the juice of a saturated summer was seeping out.

"Trade, we stop here for a bit."

Han San declared it to the five retainers.

"We've got to raise houses for Myeong-su-ajae and Jae-seok-ajae too, so let's head back, rest, and do a little upkeep."

Loading the cart full of things to eat and use at home from Inje town, the whole Han's Myriad Commerce crew headed for home.

[1] Traditional Korean market towns held trading days on a five-day rotation, staggered across neighboring towns so peddlers could circuit between them.

[2] Gagjabbi was a term for a skilled fish handler or fish trader especially prized for expertise in preserving and transporting perishable catch such as mackerel over long distances without spoilage.

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