WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 86: Armed Organization for Transforming the National Polity [Inwangdang] (1)

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With a sigh, Han San made his decision.

'Let's at least meet them.'

He understood now why his father was a man of few words. Every word his father spoke carried weight.

'He told me to give them his name if I ran into them, so it can't have been some casual connection.'

Connections did not run only one way.

If Han San owed the people of the Inwang Gang enough to honor his father's connection to them, then his father must have held just as much affection for them.

Shouldn't Han San uphold his father's dignity too?

And so, an hour later, Han San stood at the bow with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting to make contact with the Inwang Gang.

"Well, I'll be. Stick with the sajang long enough, and you get to have all sorts of strange experiences."

"Exactly. I thought joining the movement would be the biggest turning point of my life, but every day brings something new."

While the Chuk brothers chatted away without a trace of tension, Im Baechil trembled, his large frame shivering all over.

"S-San... no, Sajang... will this really be all right? I hear they're scary people..."

"It'll be fine."

Han San said it because he trusted his father, and because Im Baechil trusted Han San, his trembling eased.

A little later.

"Uh, uh..."

"W-what's that?"

Im Baechil went back into vibration mode, and the Chuk brothers recovered the tension they had somehow lost. It was not because their trust had faltered.

"They're coming."

Han San peered through the binoculars Sawada had given him, following the direction Broker Jang pointed.

At first, it was only a tiny dot on the East Sea, where the sunset had begun to fall.

The dot rapidly grew larger through Han San's binoculars.

Then came the waves.

Shhhhhh, crashhh!!

The closer it came, the water shoved aside by its hull rocked the wooden boat Han San stood on. Im Baechil nearly toppled over with a startled cry, but the Chuk brothers caught the newcomer and steadied him.

Chuk Hong-cheol stammered.

"An ironclad... Is that a machine gun mounted on the front? It can't be a cannon, can it?"

"It's a harpoon gun. The kind they use to hunt whales... Looks like a Russian whaling ship..."

"Ah, a harpoon gun... You scared me there..."

Chuk Hong-cheol pressed a hand to his chest, but Chuk Jae-seok did not relax. His eyes went from the harpoon gun fixed at the prow to the wooden deck beneath their feet.

Han San, though, was looking past the gun, at the man standing behind it.

A white durumagi.

Amid the smell of boat grease, sea salt, and sharp metal, only the white hem of the garment he wore seemed to follow the laws of another world, falling in neat, orderly folds.

He held a folding fan in one hand. Mountains, rocks, and trees were painted across the open fan, with pale mist rising to cover their roots, Jeong Seon's masterpiece, Clearing After Rain on Mount Inwang.

Han San saw the man's face through the binoculars.

He was somewhere between forty and fifty. Tall and lean, with eyes that shone clearly from deep-set sockets.

Though he wore a white durumagi and held a folding fan, the man did not feel like a fallen Confucian scholar. He felt more like an elite banker from Gyeongseong. It must have been those eyes, their outlines so sharply defined.

The instant Han San saw them, a light came on in his memory.

That day. The day the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year struck, in July 1934.

Han San wanted to say he did not remember much of that day. But the memory sharpened by his regression would not let him say it.

Remember that day, his memories kept telling him. When he went to sleep, when he ate, when he saw his younger brother's face, whenever he saw the brother from his past life and the brother in this one, whenever he saw the parents still alive in this life, the old man's memories told him the same thing.

Remember. Remember it.

You have no right to forget, the memories of the seventy-four-year-old man told him.

[ Hyung... I-I miss Mom. I miss Mom and Dad... ]

The Great Flood of the Gapsul Year had passed through. His parents were gone, his home was gone, and he sat blankly in a field of mud beside his crying younger brother.

[ Raise your head. ]

Then that man, dressed in a white durumagi and holding a folding fan, offered him a single Haetae cigarette.

Han San had begun with that single Haetae cigarette, just as he had first thought of cigarettes on the day he went down to town after regressing, cigarettes he had sworn off in this life but could never quit in his last.

That was how it had been.

'This man...'

Han San drew in a deep breath.

'I thought he was from Upper Hamlet. Yun Cheom-ji dressed in Korean clothes too. But...'

After regressing, Han San had not been able to find this man in Upper Hamlet.

Nor anywhere else. Even after searching every corner of his past life's memories with the sharpened memory he had gained after returning, the result was the same.

That day had been the first and last time this man ever appeared in Han San's seventy-four years of life.

'Back then, this man...'

The man who had handed him that single Haetae cigarette had looked at the spot where their washed-away house had stood and remained silent. Then he murmured,

[ Who was responsible for Lord Han? ]

There were people beside him. One dressed in animal hides stepped forward and answered in a voice squeezed tight, as if making excuses.

[ I was, Elder. ]

[ So this was how he lived. ]

[ As you know, Man-seok hyung was stubborn... I told him, over and over, that he didn't need to worry about his leg and should just stay with us...

Still, whenever I had the chance, I gave him money and rice, and I did everything I could to make sure his wife and children lacked for nothing... ]

[ Do not be nervous. I am not blaming you. ]

The man in animal hides stopped speaking. The man in the white durumagi stroked his folding fan and murmured once more.

[ So this was how he lived. ]

Then he said nothing for a long time.

His past self, numb with grief, had watched all of it with a Haetae cigarette between his lips. Even when it burned down to the filter and started scorching his lips, the man in animal hides took it away for him.

The man in animal hides asked,

[ Shall we take them with us? ]

The man in white looked between Han San and Bada.

His eyes, their outlines clear enough to sting, lingered on Bada longer than they did on Han San, then drifted away.

[ Let us respect Lord Han's wishes. ]

They left, and Han San never saw them again.

Still.

Han San remembered that in his past life, whenever there was something he desperately wanted, or when he found himself in a crisis that seemed impossible to escape, things had often worked themselves out with strange ease.

"..."

"..."

Han San's gaze met that of the man in white, the two lines of sight tangled in the air.

Then the ironclad stopped.

The wooden vessel Han San stood on was swallowed by shadow. The man in white atop the ironclad faced the setting sun and looked like the sunset itself.

Broker Jang started to speak in surprise.

"Elder, I didn't expect you to come yourself..."

With a snap, the man in white opened his folding fan and cut him off.

He spoke.

"My surname is Lee. My clan is Jeonju, and my courtesy name is Mok.

I inherited Taejo's sword, Sejong's brush, and Danjong's blood. From Baekdu, I gathered companions and watched over that region.

In the Gyeongsul Year, when the incense at Jongmyo went out and Sajik became an empty lot, I accepted Heaven's mandate and opened the heavens."

The man in white standing atop the ironclad recited it all as if he were reading out a calculation.

"The common folk call this sovereign Imok, Lord of the Inwang Gang."

Once again, a light came on in Han San's memory.

[ Ssangsim, let's go. Take San with you. We can't stay here any longer. ]

[ Gangwon. Elder Imok is heading that way too. ]

[ I'm putting you through hardship. ]

Han San looked for a long time at the man his father had once called Elder.

Then he answered.

"My name is Han San."

"I know you."

Imok said it simply.

Instead of giving his father's name, Han San puffed out his chest.

"I've been making a name for myself here and there lately."

Imok did not react. He only looked at Han San, and Han San did not avoid his gaze.

Behind him, the Chuk brothers whispered as quietly as they could.

"...Chief Secretary, did I hear that right? Did he just call himself 'this sovereign'?"

"I heard it too. And he said he inherited Danjong's blood..."

"Seriously... What a load of nonsense... Our chairman thinks so too, right?"

"That's what I'm saying, Leader. For a robber gang boss, he sure gave himself a grand title."

Their whispers naturally did not reach the ironclad, but Broker Jang and Im Baechil nearly fainted.

"G-gentlemen..."

"Please... s-sirs..."

The Chuk brothers flinched and clamped their mouths shut. They had only blurted it out because they were so nervous in the first place.

Then Imok spoke.

"Come aboard."

Imok's subordinates moved. Han San recognized several of them as people who had come with Imok to the empty site of his old home in his past life.

With a heavy thud, they lowered a long plank.

Chuk Hong-cheol went pale.

"S-Sajang... We can just talk face-to-face from here..."

The plank stretched between the two ships, which stood at different heights. It sagged in the middle from its own weight and swayed whenever the wind blew.

How was anyone supposed to cross that?

Chuk Jae-seok hurriedly tried to stop Han San too.

"The Leader's right, Sajang. Even if you do cross that..."

Wouldn't he be walking right into a tiger's jaws?

They had only met to discuss tribute money. If everyone operating boats around here paid tribute, there would be a set price, and it probably would not be terribly unreasonable.

Wouldn't it be enough to agree to pay that amount?

Broker Jang had arranged the meeting because he thought the matter would end there. But things had been going strangely ever since Imok came himself instead of sending someone as usual...

Only Han San knew that none of it was strange.

He looked back at the worried group and grinned.

"Don't worry. It'll be fine."

The eighteen-year-old hunter lightly placed the ball of his foot on the plank extending from the gunwale.

Creak. The plank groaned beneath his weight.

"H-hieek..."

He heard sharp breaths behind him, but Han San, standing on the plank, looked up at Imok without the slightest tremor.

'You know me.'

He took one step.

'I know you better.'

In his past life, this man had looked after him and his younger brother.

There was the time he had been thrown into the holding cell at the Inje police constable post while struggling to scrape out a living. Several days later, a disturbance broke out, and the cell door swung wide open.

Mixed in with the petty criminals, he walked out of the holding cell too, and returned to his younger brother, who had been waiting beneath a bridge. Though days had passed, Bada had not gone hungry.

There was the time he had hauled cargo and passengers alone in a rickshaw. One client had accused him of theft, claiming an expensive piece of luggage had vanished.

Several days later, the client appeared covered in bruises, said they had been mistaken, offered a hefty sum in compensation, and apologized.

'It happened more than once.'

Creak. The plank began sloping downward.

The ships stood at different heights, so the board beneath his feet bowed like a drawn bow. The farther he walked, the steeper the angle became.

Han San's steps did not waver.

'Only now do I understand it.'

But knowing that did not make Han San feel any so-called gratitude from his past life.

'You didn't show me kindness. You gave my father face.'

His father had left behind something like affection and loyalty, an invisible inheritance that still existed and could be measured.

Just as the kindness the Kim family had shown over generations had returned to Mal-ye in the form of a single root of wild ginseng.

'I resented him for leaving me nothing behind...'

But there had been such an inheritance. It had opened the holding cell door that night and forced the client's head down that day.

Thanks to it, Han San of his past life had survived until adulthood.

'So the gratitude belongs to Father. Not you.'

When he reached the middle of the plank, a wave struck.

The board beneath his feet lurched once. The blue-black abyss splashed at his feet like drool.

"S-Sajang!"

"San!"

Han San absorbed the lurch with his knees. His upper body did not sway in the slightest.

'More than that, I won't need to inherit that legacy in this life.'

The tragedy brought by the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year, that morning in the mud, the Haetae cigarettes he had clung to all his life, none of it existed in this life, and none of it would happen again.

Because the man this person had called Lord Han, the hunter of Baekdu Mountain, his father, would not die!

'So there is nothing to repay between us.'

The eighteen-year-old, who had received nothing and owed nothing, walked lightly across the plank.

The climb began. The bowed plank lifted its head toward the ironclad's gunwale.

Up he went, into the shadow cast by the other side.

'I know how you end.'

Han San knew that one day his father's inheritance would abruptly stop paying out, that the eyes and hands Imok had placed over him would disappear.

Even Sawada, that man who could never rise any higher, that mere military police detachment commander who could never leave Inje, would one day stop speaking the Inwang Gang's name.

Han San, the regressor who had lived through the future, knew that this ship, this force, this little make-believe dynasty Imok had set up, would vanish without a sound one day.

And because he knew that,

'I could help you avoid that ending, or I could let you fail to avoid it.'

Still, simply having goods to sell did not make someone a merchant.

There had to be someone willing to pay the price.

'I know you're someone who pays the price.'

A debt of the heart. A debt of the heart.

It was easy enough to say, but how many people could spend years taking care of someone's son through such troublesome means when they were not even the person who owed the debt?

When Broker Jang, after escaping a crisis thanks to Han San's advice, had secured a putt-putt boat for him at a bargain price, Han San had felt grateful. He had shown a sincerity beyond what Han San expected.

Imok's sincerity was greater still.

Han San understood something Imok himself might not have fully recognized: it was this man's creditworthiness.

'That is why.'

As he finished the thought, the path of planks ended.

'I intend to make a fairly large deal with you.'

Clang. Han San stepped onto the iron deck.

"H-he crossed it!"

"My heart nearly stopped..."

Behind him came the sound of people clutching their chests in relief.

Before him, surprise crossed the faces of the Inwang Gang's men, followed, on some faces, by understanding.

That same understanding showed on Imok's face. His voice gained an inflection.

"Bring chairs." Then he added, "Two."

"Thank you."

Han San grinned and offered his thanks to his father's old friends.

Footnotes:

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