WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Hunting Genius of the Japanese Colonial Era

Chapter 75

──────

Landmine (1)

"Yun Cheom-ji! Come out here, I'm telling you!"

"Elder Cheom-ji, come out and hear us out, please!"

The front of Yun Cheom-ji's tiled house in Upper Hamlet was a regular open-air market, and no mistake.

Upper Hamlet had always been steeped in a hushed, tranquil air, and for such a clamor to break out in front of Yun Cheom-ji's house, one of the very pillars that held the hamlet up, was something no one could have imagined these past several decades.

Yet lately, things that couldn't have been imagined seemed to be happening quite often.

Ju Ssi, whose house in Upper Hamlet had collapsed in this typhoon, beat his own chest.

"Now, it's been nearly a whole month since our house came down. Why is there no measure taken in our hamlet at all?"

His neighbor Jin Ssi lamented too.

"Same with our house! The wind blows right on through, every last gust of it, so what are we to do! It's September already... ah, Elder Cheom-ji! There you are at last. Have a look at us, please!"

Just then Yun Cheom-ji came out from the inner room. Stepping into the yard with his usual clear, composed gait, he looked over the crowd that had gathered.

"What is this commotion?"

The Upper Hamlet folk, who'd been hollering and carrying on, flinched the moment Yun Cheom-ji came out and asked.

Where even three people gather, the so-called "seat of honor" and "lowest seat" get divided. And Upper Hamlet, treated as the seat of honor by all of Sebeom Valley, likewise divided into seat of honor and lowest seat when its own folk assembled.

Yun Cheom-ji was one of those who could sit in Upper Hamlet's seat of honor.

Ju Ssi's voice shrank all at once.

"That... ahem. Our house coming down, and getting a hand with it, could you somehow..."

"Why such haste?"

Yun Cheom-ji cut Ju Ssi off with his ever-refined manner.

"Have patience and wait. If one cannot bear the small, then great designs are thrown into ruin. How many times must I repeat the same words?"

Ju Ssi, who had shrunk back, felt the frustration rise in him again. Because, truly now, how many times were the same words to be repeated?

This fellow called Yun Cheom-ji, every time they met these days, gave that same line!

In ordinary times he'd have said "Thank you for the wise words" and backed off with a bow, and for the past few visits he had, in fact, done just that. The trouble was that this waiting had already gone on close to a month. For that whole month a bitter draft had kept whistling in, ravaging his home.

'And autumn will be here soon...'

Still, Ju Ssi reminded himself that this Yun Cheom-ji was, after all, one of Upper Hamlet's elders, and kept his voice as quiet and soft as he could manage.

"Then at least, could you just tell me, until when I'm to wait, just that much..."

At that, Yun Cheom-ji knit his brows. He had caught the stale, musty smell coming off Ju Ssi's body.

Yun Cheom-ji, who styled himself the descendant of a Confucian scholar, did not go so far as to openly clamp his nose shut, and spoke with decorum instead.

"It is said that self-cultivation comes first, and only then the ordering of the household. Before you fret over your home, might you not first tend to your own person? Only when body and dress are set right do soul and spirit grow clear..."

Ju Ssi's face flushed red in an instant.

For it was true that Ju Ssi had not managed to bathe for several days now. But that was...

"No... th-that, ah, spare me the self-cultivation and household-ordering! And spare me the wait, wait, wait! So when in the world will it get done, eh? Whether this can happen at all! Just tell me that much! Is that so hard!"

Yun Cheom-ji put on a dumbfounded look. What's gotten into this fellow, suddenly raising his voice and making a scene?

Jin Ssi caught hold of the seething Ju Ssi and pulled him back. Then he turned to Yun Cheom-ji in a rush.

"E-Elder Cheom-ji. A while back the Middle Hamlet fellows went and blocked off Meokbawi Valley, so we Upper Hamlet folk can't get into the gorge valley at all.

So trying to see to all our eating and drinking with just Upper Hamlet's central well, this, it's..."

Yun Cheom-ji's eyes narrowed.

"Those Middle Hamlet men blocked off Meokbawi Valley, you say."

"Yes, some, that... the [Meokbawi Valley Gorge Management Mutual Aid Council], is it? Anyhow, some strange organization they cooked up among themselves, and among themselves they made caps like chairman and vice-chairman and passed them around, and then, you Upper Hamlet folk can't come in, if you want in you join the gorge management council and pay dues, that kind of talk they..."

"Such a thing happened?"

When Yun Cheom-ji blinked, Ju Ssi shook off Jin Ssi, who'd been restraining him, and put on a look of sheer disbelief.

"Now, Yun Cheom-ji! You didn't even know that?"

Yun Cheom-ji frowned, but Ju Ssi went right on hollering.

"Unbelievable, it's unbelievable! Good heavens. You haven't the faintest idea what's happening right now, and yet again you chanted your wait, wait like it was a prayer!"

"A prayer, you say. You spoke that word to me just now?

Ju Seo-bang, mind your—"

"Ah, so when will it get done! Just that, only that, tell me!"

His words cut off so roughly, Yun Cheom-ji glared straight at Ju Ssi.

But Ju Ssi paid that stare no mind at all.

"Wait a little, wait a little! Wait like that and those Middle Hamlet fellows will come swarming over of their own accord and volunteer to be your servants, is that it?

Servants, my foot! Those wretches went and choked off Meokbawi Valley, and you're saying you only just now heard the news of it! So what's left to wait for, waiting!

Enough! Stop dancing around it, so when will it get done, eh? How long do I wait until—"

Yun Cheom-ji raised one hand.

"Ju Seo-bang."

Ju Ssi shut his mouth. He was still seething, but he waited, at any rate, for Yun Cheom-ji's words to follow. Let him at least hear how much longer he had to wait before the hands came to help repair the house.

But what actually came out of Yun Cheom-ji's mouth was no such timetable.

"Isn't it your house that collapsed?"

Ju Ssi was struck dumb in an instant.

Yun Cheom-ji went on staring, gazing intently at Ju Ssi's face, and casting aside even his polite speech, dropped into a lowering tone.

"The gentleman seeks it in himself; the small man seeks it in others, so they say. If your house collapsed and left you living in such discomfort, and near a month has already passed, then in all that time, just what have you done?"

"No..."

"And yet you simply come to me, and every time you see my face, what'll you do about our house, what'll you do about our house.

Tell me, Ju Seo-bang. Am I the one who builds your house? I am a man who passes on the words of the sages. Do I look to you like some lowborn wretch to chop wood and stack stones?"

Ju Ssi felt a heaviness in his chest. Heavy, and heavier still, but the words wouldn't come out well.

At last he wrung out a reply.

"You told me to wait..."

Yun Cheom-ji only sniffed, "Oh?"

"To rely on others is not as good as relying on oneself. Beg nothing of another. If you're a true man, try first to see to your own house yourself. Do that, and would the time I told you to wait for not naturally come round on its own?

Of course, even should that time arrive, that attitude you were putting on toward me just now... aigh, and so I told you again and again, if one cannot bear the small, then great designs are thrown into ruin. Tsk, tsk."

"N-no..."

Ju Ssi felt his heart clench tight. But now that he'd been so plainly branded a "fellow of poor attitude," he feared that one more ill-chosen word might only blow the matter up further, and had no choice but to swallow it down inside.

A dry smile settled at the corner of Yun Cheom-ji's mouth. He waved his hand as if shooing off a fly, meaning to send Ju Ssi on his way.

That was when it happened.

"Um, Elder Cheom-ji... th-that, that's not quite right, is it."

It was Jin Ssi.

The very man who'd wrenched Ju Ssi back and shown Yun Cheom-ji even more deference than Ju Ssi had, hesitantly opened his mouth.

"Right now those Middle Hamlet fellows are all rallying together, moving about in one great push, stacking houses together. That... what's the word, doing it that way, the work gets done ever so fast too.

My thought is, my thought, Elder Cheom-ji. What I mean to say is..."

As Jin Ssi got the words out, a few others of Upper Hamlet's lowest seats who'd gathered besides Ju Ssi and Jin Ssi, the ones struck by the typhoon, added their voices.

"That's right! Those houses were downright handsome too!"

"They scrape up the Meokbawi Valley clay by the fistful, set up a whole mess of mud kilns, and fire bricks and roof tiles all together in one go, I tell you!"

"Widened the paths too! Pulled up all the trees that got in the way, and the fences, every one to the same spec, laid out straight as if measured by a rule..."

Yun Cheom-ji bit his lower lip.

He looked over the hollering, ignorant Upper Hamlet folk once, clenched his fist once, opened it, then let a slight smile return and said,

"So what is it you would have me do?"

The Upper Hamlet lowest seats looked at one another at that.

"Well, that's for you, Yun Cheom-ji-nim, to think out..."

Yun Cheom-ji drew a deep breath.

"Very well. Then I shall give it some thought."

"What sort of thought..."

"That!"

Yun Cheom-ji raised his voice before he knew it, then cleared his throat once.

"I said I shall give it thought."

And so, brushing the people off, Yun Cheom-ji turned around.

'Blocked off Meokbawi Valley, did they?'

He'd have to see it for himself.

Yun Cheom-ji gathered up his coat hem and set off. From Upper Hamlet to the ridgeline that looked out over Meokbawi Valley was but a stone's throw.

With his usual clear, composed gait, only somehow half a beat quicker than usual, Yun Cheom-ji climbed the hill and looked down.

And came to an abrupt halt.

At the entrance leading from Upper Hamlet into Meokbawi Valley, a sign had been driven into the ground.

[Meokbawi Valley Gorge Management Council]

[No entry except for members. For membership inquiries, see the chairman or vice-chairman]

The ugly vernacular script, slapped on in scrawled paint, left him dumbfounded, choked with disbelief.

'The lowborn wretches!'

The gall of the unschooled, aping their betters to make it look fine. Yun Cheom-ji, suppressing a scoff, meant to shake his head from side to side.

But then.

Looking again, it wasn't only that sign that met his eye.

Deep inside the gorge, along the water's edge, five or six mud kilns stood in a row, each sending up its own smoke. Beside them, freshly fired bricks lay in rows, one after another.

"Heave-ho! The next batch of clay's arrived here!"

"As expected of Hyeong-don-ssi! I knew right off you were a man who brings it just on time!"

A powerful-looking shaved-head set a whole basket of clay down off his A-frame carrier with a thud, and a sly-looking shaved-head grinned and set to kneading it.

Beside them, still other shaved-heads were pressing the well-kneaded clay into square molds, shaping it into bricks, and carrying them to the kilns.

'That sight of heads shaved down to the scalp...'

Something began to crawl its way up from within Yun Cheom-ji's chest. Something buried deep in his heart a very long time ago.

It was then that someone came staggering up.

"E-Elder Cheom-ji..."

A soft voice rang out from somewhere rather low down. Yun Cheom-ji turned, and only after dropping his gaze did he recognize that it was Deok-tae.

"Deok-tae, you..."

Deok-tae, who until not long ago had managed Meokbawi Valley, was already soused on cheap makgeolli from midday.

"Uugh... I, I told you, didn't I?"

Hiccupping, his face flushed crimson, Deok-tae mumbled. From the wrinkled dwarf's lips flowed that same strangely soft voice.

"Those fellows, hic! Han San, that young pup, my gorge! The gorge my grand-uncle and my uncle made and kept, my gorge. When they seized my family's gorge, Elder Cheom-ji, I told you, didn't I? Do something, step in for us, how many times did I tell you that?"

Yun Cheom-ji frowned.

"Are you drunk?"

"J-just a bit drunk."

Deok-tae took one more swallow of makgeolli and let out a long belch.

"But drunk or not, that's not the, not the point right now. Elder Cheom-ji, anyhow I said, hic! I said it, but wait, wait, only those words, Elder Cheom-ji, that's all you, that's all you said."

Yun Cheom-ji's fist tightened. Surely this dwarf steward wasn't now scolding him too for having said "wait"?

In fact, he was.

"N-now those fellows have, now completely, the gorge! They've swallowed Meokbawi Valley whole."

Deok-tae smirked and smirked and sucked down another mouthful. Grinding his teeth, glaring at Meokbawi Valley.

"Dues, dues, pay dues, they say! For my family's gorge! The gorge where my grand-uncle drove off a bear, and they say pay money, pay money!"

"..."

"I, I told you, didn't I? Elder Cheom-ji, step in! If all of Upper Hamlet had stepped in, and back then taken Meokbawi Valley back out of that Han San pup's hands! Just when that Han San pup was away from the village all the time, off doing his trading or whatever, that, that was the moment, the chance, the chance."

"..."

"But now the chance is lost, isn't it? Those Middle Hamlet fellows have all, calling it their own gorge, one by one taking turns to lick their spit onto it! Before, you only had to deal with that Han San pup, only the one with the land deed. Now you've got to deal with all of Middle Hamlet..."

Listening, Yun Cheom-ji drew a deep breath. Once, twice.

Then he asked something else.

"Never mind that, those fellows... why are their heads shaved down so close?"

Deok-tae raised his head. After all that long talk, what's this sudden turn to hair?

"That? These days it's all the rage over in Middle Hamlet. No heat rash, they say, no lice getting in. Modern hygiene or some such..."

Yun Cheom-ji felt his breath catch in his throat.

No heat rash?

Modern hygiene?

Nearly forty years ago, Yun Cheom-ji had heard talk like this once.

'The Hair-Cutting Edict!'

That gruesome affair of the Eulmi year[1]!

That lawless deed led by Kim Hong-jip[2] and the other treasonous, sycophantic ministers of the old court!

Was it not that very Hair-Cutting Edict that spurred his teacher Yu In-seok[3] to break his seclusion and come forth, crying out for the defense of orthodoxy and the rejection of heterodoxy[4], and raise a righteous uprising?

'And I, still a boy, was there in the very field of that uprising where Kim Gyu-sik[5] was struck down!'

In the end that uprising ended with his teacher departing for the Russian side, for Primorye, and himself and his fellow disciples scattering across every corner of the peninsula. Yet Yun Cheom-ji had never once forgotten that affair, the one that should have made him something more than himself!

That nightmare had come back to life before his eyes!

'To think the Hair-Cutting Edict was being reenacted right at my feet...'

Yun Cheom-ji felt the fine hairs on his neck stand on end. This was a matter that would need deep thought.

But the dwarf beside him kept on prattling.

"Anyhow, right now hair and the like isn't what matters. What matters is that Meokbawi Valley. Anyhow, how many times did I say it? And yet you, Elder Cheom-ji..."

Yun Cheom-ji couldn't bear the buzzing whine of it.

"Why do you keep tacking your words on in that manner?"

Deok-tae nearly sobered up. First it was the hair, and now what's this about how he ends his words?

"Whatever do you mean?"

"That, this and that, this and that. It grates something awful to hear. Speak differently. A runt of a fellow, tiny as you are, and a voice and manner of speech like some pretty-boy gigolo..."

Deok-tae's eyes widened.

With those widened eyes, Deok-tae simply stared at Yun Cheom-ji.

Just as Yun Cheom-ji was about to bellow, and now what's that look for, Deok-tae smirked.

"What does that have to do with anything right now?"

"What..."

Yun Cheom-ji's mouth fell open.

Whether it did or didn't, Deok-tae sucked down the last mouthful from the makgeolli bottle and turned his small body around.

"I'll be going."

And then he really did go.

Left there alone, Yun Cheom-ji failed to grasp it for a moment, then, choked with disbelief, began to tremble in his hands and feet.

[1] The Eulmi year refers to 1895 in the sexagenary calendar, the year of the Hair-Cutting Edict and the assassination of Empress Myeongseong.

[2] Kim Hong-jip (1842–1896) was a Joseon prime minister whose reformist cabinet issued the Hair-Cutting Edict; he was lynched by an angry mob shortly after.

[3] Yu In-seok (1842–1915) was a prominent Confucian scholar who led righteous-army resistance against Japanese encroachment following the Hair-Cutting Edict.

[4] "Defense of orthodoxy and rejection of heterodoxy" was a late-Joseon Confucian ideological movement that opposed Western and Japanese influence as corrupting deviations from true doctrine.

[5] Kim Gyu-sik was an official killed during the righteous-army uprising that followed the Hair-Cutting Edict.

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