WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

Chapter 90: In 1933, the Automatic Hunter Makes Good Money (3)

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"From what I hear, even if we start writing up complicated ledgers now, there isn't anyone to inspect them anyway, is there?"

Han San only answered after a full two hundred percent of waiting time had passed. Half of it was spent wondering why Ayame was here, half remembering that, right, they had agreed to have tea, half wondering why this young lady was not heading back to Busan, and half acknowledging that, yes, they really were short on manpower.

"True enough. In our company, the only one with even a scrap of financial knowledge is this chief secretary here..."

What? Go Tae-chon? What on earth was he talking about?

"I'm not exactly a specialist in that field either. Besides, I'm a dropout."

Chuk Jae-seok said it with a dry cough.

Ayame nodded, then said,

"Then how about at least making a unified form? You'd be setting up the framework now, so that later, when you do have the personnel, you can move it up a stage."

It was a stopgap measure. Still, for the current size of Han's Myriad Commerce, it was exactly the right solution.

And as Ayame sat there thinking it over with her head tilted, she even went one step further and proposed this:

"I could help you draft the ledger template myself."

Han San blinked. He looked at Ayame for quite a while.

With her head still tilted, she was looking back at him as strands of hair spilled from beneath her flat cap.

Han San went, "Mm," shut one eye, and groaned a little deeper than usual before deciding to ask more directly.

"You've been awfully good to me since the first time we met, and this is, well..."

If some fellow like Kim Tae-yang had seen him, he would have whistled and gone, "Oh! So even the mighty Han San is awkward around women!"

But Han San knew very well that was not it.

Did he act like this around Kim Mal-ja?

No.

Why not? Because what Kim Mal-ja wanted from him was obvious.

Profit, power, or at any rate something he could actually provide.

But Ayame?

She had said she wanted help with personal reporting.

Still, when he thought about the actual informational value of that statement, he was no less baffled than before.

Putting gender aside, Han San simply did not know how to deal with someone when he had no idea what they wanted from him. That was why he did not know how to deal with this woman.

Then it happened.

"I'm sorry."

Han San paused. Reflexively, he was about to apologize too, to say no, I should be the one apologizing for being so guarded.

But that was not why Ayame had apologized.

"I saw the photograph you took before."

Han San blinked a few times, then only after a moment let out an "Ah."

The photograph he'd taken with Sawada and sent up to Chuncheon.

"I'm sorry."

Apologizing again, Ayame tilted her head.

"Because of the typhoon, many places across the peninsula were damaged. On my way up from Busan to Inje, I covered many sites. And in the middle of all that."

And in the middle of all that, Ayame repeated, as though turning the words over once more.

"And in the middle of all that, I saw your village. It was doing very well... and the people's faces were bright and clear.

"I thought that you, say in Chuncheon, or perhaps somewhere like Inje, I mean a place like your village..."

The woman journalist, who so enjoyed speaking according to the six honest questions, faltered a little. Then with a sigh she stitched the thought together a bit roughly and pressed on.

"I wanted the Empire to be a country that kept the promises it made. Regardless of origin. Without discrimination. Whether Korean or Japanese. A country that would give opportunities to the people suited to the matter at hand, simply because they were the people needed to solve the problem. Not just in words, but truly a country that could carry out harmony between Japan and Korea. I wanted it to be that kind of country."

The two eyes behind her glasses closed straight and even, and the sunlight pouring down from Gangwon caught on her long eyelashes.

"But it wasn't."

Ayame lowered her head once more.

"I'm sorry."

Then silence flowed through the room.

Chuk Jae-seok blinked in surprise. Back in his study-abroad days, he had made no small number of Japanese friends, but they had all been much of a muchness.

For a genuine rich young lady like Hajama Ayame to lower her head and say something like that with her own mouth.

Of course, the Hajama family was not nobility or anything of the sort. They were simply wealthy. Being from settler stock that had put down roots in Busan, perhaps even calling her a genuine rich young lady was an overstatement. Even so...

"Mm..."

But Han San, who had actually received the apology, had an utterly relaxed expression on his face.

'I thought it was going to be something far bigger than that...'

His heart warmed a little too.

He felt like he understood this young lady now, at least roughly.

What he had half suspected while taking that photograph had turned out to be true in the end. This young lady merely possessed somewhat oversized ideals and somewhat oversized goodwill.

So Han San, in a voice that had suddenly turned much lighter, said to this young lady of the Empire,

"Well, sure... there was probably some reason in the fact that I'm Korean. My starting line is under the mantle itself, after all.

"But miss, in that recovery effort, even Sawada, who is Japanese and a military police squad leader, couldn't take part, could he?"

Ayame flinched and looked up.

"That was because he was not suited to it..."

Ah, did you hear that, Sawada? Yet again it has been proven that you're the sort who can't climb the ladder.

That thought pleased Han San a little, but he soon shook his head.

"I'm not suited to it either."

In Han San's view, it was not simply because he was Korean.

"For someone to be judged suitable, they have to go through the proper procedures. And this time, there simply wasn't time for me to go through those procedures."

To begin with, it was already far too late for him to be assigned a role in something like a recovery project.

This was a matter of vested interests!

On a board this big, within a month it was all decided who would get what. And he was supposed to wedge himself into that? On the recommendation of a single idealistic young lady who, even being generous, was only about as influential as a local council member?

Would that ever work?

The Chuncheon military police chief and the others would probably say they had already shown Ayame every courtesy. They hadn't ignored her, after all. They had even let her take a photograph. Told her to have a drink.

Han San explained that logic only in very broad strokes, smoothing it over by saying that back in his village things worked this way too.

"So whether I was Korean or not, well, that probably wasn't entirely irrelevant, but honestly it wasn't all that important. Even if I were Japanese and some reconstruction prodigy who'd spent a hundred years doing nothing but dig into recovery work before descending the mountain, it still wouldn't have happened."

Once the shares had all been divided up, anyone trying to jump in late got dogpiled. They were threatening the profits of everyone who had gotten in first.

'Which means if you want in on a board like this, you have to go through the proper procedures early and slip neatly inside from the start...'

In that sense.

Han San was actually grateful to Ayame.

And now that it had become clear she had no ulterior motive at all, only ideals and goodwill, he felt even more grateful.

'What I got thanks to this young lady was a single photograph taken for show.'

But that one photograph was also the photograph that had passed through Sawada's hands, been handed to the Chuncheon military police chief, and then reported further up.

In other words.

'Next year.'

The Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year.

That watery hell that had left an unerasable trauma on him. Still, by Gangwon standards, he had heard the northern part had actually suffered less damage. The farther south one went, the more horrific the devastation became.

'I couldn't get into this year's Typhoon 3383 recovery board.'

But next year's recovery board?

Thanks to that one photograph, hadn't he at least ceased to be [some nameless Korean fellow who suddenly popped out of nowhere]?

If he used that as a foothold, and based on the regressor's advantage of knowing the flood was coming, prepared bit by bit...

'By then, the company will be much bigger too...'

As Han San was thinking that, Ayame sat there blinking.

In a tone that was almost one of disbelief, Ayame said,

"Are you making excuses for the Japanese Empire right now...? You, a Korean...?"

Mm.

That is... a truly... idealistic, almost mystical, and very, very peculiar interpretation, miss.

Of course, Han San did not say any such thing.

Nor did he put a hand to his forehead and wonder just how cloudlessly sunny her head had to be to interpret what he'd said that way.

He merely gave her the answer he could, softly and with sincerity.

"I'm trying to comfort you."

Ayame only looked more bewildered.

Han San did not want to drag this topic out any further, so he returned to the original subject. Just then, he also thought of a joke that seemed perfect for lifting the sunken mood at once.

"More importantly, are you really sure you'd be all right helping with the ledger template? I just thought of a very funny pun. If you combine it with Japanese, then ledger... daijobu?"

Silence fell.

Chuk Jae-seok had no idea what crime he had committed to be here at this exact moment.

Was being born into a wealthy family, receiving a fine education, and then throwing himself into the communist movement really such a grave sin? Even if it was, wasn't this too cruel a punishment? At that moment, the only thought in Chuk Jae-seok's head was that he wished a meteor would fall immediately and end the world...

Then it happened.

"Ahahahahaha!!"

Hajama Ayame, always so quiet and gentle, tilted her head, then tilted it farther, and then burst out laughing so hard she clutched her stomach.

"Ahaha, ahahaha! Ahaha, ah, ah, ahahahahaha!!"

Holding her sides, Ayame laughed for a long while with her head still tilted. Every time her body shook, her long hair flew about, and the flat cap perched on top nearly fell off.

"L-ledger, daijobu! Ledger, great man, ahahaha! Ah, ah, Han-gun, really, really, how, how do you come up with such funny jokes, ahahaha!"

"I've always been a funny person."

Han San puffed his chest right out. As expected, his jokes were funny.

'At last. Is the world finally returning to normal?'

Since he was on a roll, he brought out a few more of his secret jokes.

"Autumn's only just started, but this autumn is so bright and clear it's a just-autumn."

"Ahahahahaha!"

"They say a reader, while reading an Honore de Balzac novel, got mad at the way the story was going, threw the book, and cursed. [Honore...! Are you having a Bal-zac fit...?]"

"Ahaha, ahahaha! Ahahahahaha!"

"Do you know Zhu Yuanzhang? The Ming emperor. One day Zhu Yuanzhang was walking down the road..."

And so Han San told Ayame one funny joke after another, and each time Ayame broke into helpless laughter.

So it took her a little while to recover from laughing and settle down to sketch the ledger template for him.

"See you again, San-gun!"

Ayame took off her flat cap, then put it back on. Taking the change in address from Han-gun to San-gun as a sign that her heart had grown more at ease, Han San saw Ayame off.

It was on the way back, with Chuk Jae-seok having stared at the pair the whole time as though witnessing something uncanny, that he finally opened his mouth.

"Sajang."

"Mm?"

"Do not let that young lady go. Not ever."

Han San frowned.

"No... Chief Secretary, Mr. Jae-seok. I think I've said this before. Jokes like that can affect the young lady's reputa-"

"Enough!"

Cutting Han San off, Chuk Jae-seok strode toward him with a face that looked ready to devour him, and said, one syllable at a time,

"If you let that young lady go! Sajang! For your whole life! Forever! You will never, ever get married!!"

There was almost murderous force in the way he said it, and Han San's spirit faltered.

"No..."

"No this, no that! Hold on to that young lady with your very life!"

And then Chuk Jae-seok stormed off. Han San stood there staring at his back, dumbfounded.

'Why... what on earth...'

He had no idea what had just happened. Han San felt a little forlorn.

It was September.

Anyway.

Problem Three. They had been in the middle of discussing embezzlement. Go Tae-chon had not, in fact, committed that embezzlement, but in any case, they had decided to start writing ledgers to prevent such things, and the young journalist from a business family, Hajama Ayame, had drawn up the template.

The field workers, who now had to write ledgers they had previously gotten away without writing, were naturally not daijobu about it. The grumbling came first.

"What! Why are you making us do something we never had to do before!"

"What a pain!"

"What, is this because you don't trust us now!"

"Now that's hurtful!"

That was just how people worked.

You could say,

"We're only starting simple, aren't we,"

or,

"Other places are much stricter,"

or,

"Haven't you had it easy all this time,"

or, more bluntly,

"We took in people who were starving, gave them work, gave them money, and you don't even like this much,"

and it was all useless!

"Well now, I thought the sajang was a broad-minded man..."

"So the sajang actually had a stingy streak hidden away after all. I knew it at a glance!"

"Me too! Me too, I could tell!"

"The song of hurt feelings ringing out through Han's Myriad Commerce...!!"

It wasn't that everyone was like that, of course. But neither was it a proportion he could ignore.

Still, Han San was a man who, once he decided something, drove it through, and a man who solved matters through action rather than words.

"Do it. Or I'll have no choice but to make you do it."

"Ah, but...!"

"Of course, there is a third option. Would you like to quit?"

"Ah... no, no! Why would I quit! As a matter of fact, I was just thinking I'd like to write a few ledgers myself..."

In a one-boss outfit like Han's Myriad Commerce, what the underlings feared most was when the boss acted lukewarm. If the center held and authority was exercised without wavering, people followed.

Of course, there were some who did not follow.

Han San was not omnipotent, so if it did not catch his eye there was not much he could do. But if it did catch his eye, he crushed it immediately.

And once again, astonishingly enough, the one who got crushed was not Go Tae-chon.

"Now then, Uncle So."

Looking at So Seobang, whom he had brought over from Middle Hamlet, Han San spoke with a drained expression.

"I told you, didn't I? I said I'd give you plenty of discretion. That I know money gets spent while work is being done in the field.

"I even said that if you used your own skill to haggle down prices within budget and without leaving room for talk behind your back, then sure, if a few leftover coins happened to stay in your pocket, I'd more or less close my eyes to it.

"But."

Han San's face turned cold.

"You deliberately bought goods at inflated prices? And then got the difference returned to your own pocket later?

"That means you joined hands with the supplier and siphoned off company money. That's a completely different problem."

This was not a mistake but malice, an act of hostility toward him!

"Aigo! San, I was wrong. Can't you forgive me just this once...?"

At first So Seobang had tried to deny it, but once the physical evidence was presented, he threw himself down in front of Han San, who was young enough to be his son, and begged. Han San, with a seventy-four-year-old man sitting inside him, did not bat an eye.

"Forgiveness is what you give when one of your own people makes a mistake. You've turned yourself into an enemy now, uncle."

Han San fired him on the spot. He also clawed back every last coin he had siphoned away.

The man had worked as a township clerk before washing up in Middle Hamlet, and because he talked well and looked capable, So Seobang had won a position directly beneath the Chuk Brothers. Like that, he became unemployed and had no choice but to trudge back to Middle Hamlet.

But Middle Hamlet was Han San's territory. In effect, it was the bedroom town for the employees of Han's Myriad Commerce.

And what awaited the returning So Seobang was the constant public roasting launched by his Middle Hamlet friends every chance they got.

"Honestly now. To think So Seobang would go and do a thing like that! He got saved during the typhoon, got a house built for him, got fed, got work, got paid! What more was he lacking that he had to suck company money clean like soy-marinated crab?"

"No wonder the sajang said we needed ledgers! I knew it. I knew at a glance that So Seobang was that kind of ungrateful sort!"

"Me too! Me too, I could tell!"

"The song of ingratitude ringing out through Han's Myriad Commerce...!!"

That too was just how people's affections ran.

Thinking it over, they had wanted to write ledgers from the very start. The few seeds who had taken offense must all have had ugly little schemes just like So Seobang.

"What? So Seobang, what was that you just said? That when the order came down to write ledgers, your mouths were hanging out three feet long too?"

"When were ours? What year, what month, what week, what day, what hour, what minute, what second?"

"I'm so wronged I feel tears about to spill! Why are you inventing things that never happened just to peck a person to death? People like us, who work without a selfish thought in our heads?"

"So Seobang, you're going to end badly at this rate! That's exactly why you embezzled!"

"Don't live like that!"

Footnotes:

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