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Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 94: Chuseok in Sebeomgol (3)

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Around then, Cheol-min, Yun Cheom-ji's maternal grandson, had brought the Upper Hamlet boys to join the Middle Hamlet feast.

The Upper Hamlet boys were mixing with the children from Middle Hamlet and Lower Hamlet, merrily throwing yut sticks[1].

"Yut! One space, two spaces... Ah, what the heck! It's a desert island..."

"Hyeok loses a turn!"

It was not a traditional yut board, but one drawn on a wide sheet of drawing paper.

There were desert islands, spaces that sent you forward two steps, spaces that sent you back three steps... Han San had quickly drawn in a few such features, but when would children of this era ever have played something like this?

They played yut from time to time, perhaps, but yutnori with a [mode] installed was ahead of its time.

"I finished drawing my map too!"

They could even mod the game. That was thanks to the Han's Myriad Commerce sajang tossing them a whole armful of that expensive drawing paper.

Jin-dong from Lower Hamlet, in his suspenders, waved the map in his hand.

"Next round! Let's play the next round on the map I made!"

Hyeok from Upper Hamlet frowned.

"Ah, no! Your map's a total mess."

"What's wrong with my map!"

Jin-dong's voice rose, but it had no force behind it. Even he knew something about it was strange.

Then someone clicked their tongue and snatched Jin-dong's map away. It was Cheol-min, a pencil in hand.

"Hey. It's no fun when there are this many traps. Those things need to be used in moderation to make it fun."

What would children modding a yut board for the first time know? They only knew that covering the whole thing in traps that sent players backward seemed fun.

With a few strokes of Cheol-min's pencil, the map was quickly transformed into something good to play on. A real-time balancing patch had been applied.

"Upper Hamlet hyung! Look at my map too!"

"Cheol-min, mine too! Mine!"

Cheol-min smiled and waved them off.

"Hey, hey, I get it, so line up. I'll do them one at a time."

He had been the same when learning house-building techniques before. Cheol-min had always been good at anything after trying it only a few times. As the afternoon went on, the children's yut maps turned into god-tier games.

As he watched over the children and picked at the feast food, someone spoke to him.

"Cheol-min, boy! Having fun?"

It was Han San. Cheol-min clicked his tongue.

"Why do you keep calling me that! What's with the 'boy'?"

"Then what should I call you? Child Cheol-min?"

"What's so childish about me!"

Cheol-min grumbled, and Han San laughed.

Truthfully, Han San felt a little awkward inside as well.

'I really don't know how to deal with kids this age.'

Working alongside them and teaching them was easy enough. It was private time like this that gave him trouble.

'Even in my past life, Bada became hard to deal with right around this age...'

Little children were easy. In his past life, he had been invited to nearby elementary schools countless times, and they had always loved him.

He would just show off a little skill at carving something on the spot, and tell them a whole bundle of jokes. Back then, though, his joints and half the rest of his body had been ruined, so unlike now, nimble movements were beyond him. Carving was about all he could show them. Still, the children had howled with laughter every time.

Yet once those cute little things reached middle-school age, they began to change.

'Is it because I stop knowing what they want?'

Was it the same reason he had hesitated around Miss Ayame?

'Come to think of it, I started giving my parents trouble at exactly that age too.'

If so, perhaps it was karma coming full circle.

'Life...'

Han San shook his head and got to his feet.

"Anyway, enjoy the feast. Once the moon comes up, the Sebeom Valley ancestral rite will begin, so stay until then if you want to join."

Cheol-min spoke then.

"San... hyung."

"Yeah?"

"San hyung is..."

Cheol-min closed his mouth.

When he had called out, he had wanted to ask, 'Why do you let me and the Upper Hamlet boys stay instead of driving us out?' But entirely different words came from his mouth.

"Why do you call it the Sebeom Valley ancestral rite?"

"Huh?"

"You don't call it the Middle Hamlet ancestral rite. You keep saying the Sebeom Valley ancestral rite, the Sebeom Valley feast, things like that. Are you saying that what Upper Hamlet holds is not a Sebeom Valley ancestral rite, and that from now on, the one we hold will be the true, orthodox Sebeom Valley ancestral rite? Is that why you deliberately mobilized so many supplies and made this such a large event...?"

Han San looked utterly baffled.

Cheol-min had realized midway through speaking that he might be saying something embarrassing, but he did not take back the question.

Fifteen-year-old Shin Cheol-min was still fiddling with his closely cropped hair.

He had heard things from his parents at home about his maternal grandfather's teacher, about his maternal grandfather himself, and about what the Hair-Cutting Edict[2] had meant in his maternal grandfather's life.

His parents were not close with his maternal grandfather, especially his mother. It seemed to have something to do with her childhood, but she never liked talking about it, not even now.

Still, his mother had once murmured while looking toward the house where his maternal grandfather lived.

[He's a pitiful person too. My father.]

Even after hearing all that, though, it had remained shocking to see his gentle and kindly maternal grandfather screaming at Im Baechil as if possessed by an evil spirit. That was why Cheol-min had avoided his maternal grandfather ever since that day.

But as he kept avoiding him, a thought had suddenly begun to rise in his mind.

'Could Han San have deliberately made shaved heads fashionable because he knew all about Grandfather's past and wanted to provoke him?'

It seemed absurd, but Han San was, after all, the ringleader of traitors with astonishing abilities.

Someone like that might have calculations behind every move. Perhaps his maternal grandfather's outburst that day had been some psychological trap Han San had set off.

Perhaps this grand ancestral rite was political calculation as well.

Could this person before him, cheerful and open, always first to step into dirty work and willing to teach without discrimination, actually be a political monster with no blood or tears?

Han San had stood there blankly, but then he scratched the back of his head and spoke.

"Well... I suppose there's some of that too. From now on, the rite we hold is the orthodox one! I take the lead! Upper Hamlet out! Something like that."

Cheol-min's face stiffened. But Han San was not finished.

"But would I really hold a feast and ancestral rite this big just to take Upper Hamlet down a peg... No... Cheol-min. Think about it. Is Upper Hamlet really that big a deal?"

"That big a deal?"

"Yeah. Do I really need to treat Upper Hamlet as that important? Do you know how much I make in a month now?"

It was true that Han San had worked to seize the hegemony from Upper Hamlet in order to overcome the so-called [tribulation] and build a foundation.

But.

'The game had already ended when the typhoon passed...'

To Han San, that struggle for dominance had ended a month ago. He had already built the foundation he wanted, proven by the fact that Han's Myriad Commerce could now be automated.

He would not let his guard down in the future either, but the real enemy he needed to face was the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year, backed by its ominous prophecy. It was no longer the handful of people in Upper Hamlet.

To prepare for that, he had to make money. To make money, he had to prepare to go into Chuncheon. To do that, he had to dig information out of the military police and build closer ties with Father's friends...

He was busy enough to die. Why would he need to organize his language around taking a shot at Upper Hamlet?

"Then why..."

"Hey. Are there only Middle Hamlet people here? The Lower Hamlet people are all here too. Calling it a Middle Hamlet feast would be a little strange, wouldn't it? What, should I call it the [Middle Hamlet and Lower Hamlet Feast and Ancestral Rite]? That has no ring to it.

"So it's just the Sebeom Valley feast and the Sebeom Valley ancestral rite."

Cheol-min caught the slight disbelief in Han San's voice. The embarrassment that had already been creeping up on him washed over him all at once, and the fifteen-year-old's face turned red.

Han San really did find Cheol-min a little ridiculous.

'He really is like Miss Ayame.'

When Han San explained why they could not join the recovery effort, had she not jumped to, [Could it be that you, a Korean, are making excuses for the Empire?]

Ayame was more idealistic, while this fifteen-year-old was more inclined to assume the worst of the world. That was the only difference.

'Maybe people like that are the ones who become politicians.'

Han San recalled Cheol-min's past life.

The clever Shin Cheol-min, good at everything he tried, had lived in Upper Hamlet and thus survived the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year unharmed. He had somehow avoided National Total Mobilization and forced labor as well, then threw himself into politics immediately after liberation.

'I heard he stayed close to Teacher Baekbeom[3].'

One might imagine how that life would have gone. He might have built his career early and become a major political figure standing opposite Teacher Han Bada.

But that was not what happened.

'I heard he went north before the war even broke out...'

It had supposedly happened fifteen years later, in 1948.

[Even if it takes time, we must reach an agreement and hold a unified North-South general election! If either side holds an election first, the nation will be divided forever!!]

That year, Han San had been thirty-three and Cheol-min thirty.

The thirty-year-old political youth, one of Baekbeom's followers, had apparently found it impossible to agree to an election held only in the South.

He thought 'apparently' because this was all a story he had heard secondhand.

Cheol-min had attended the North-South Joint Conference[4] alongside Teacher Baekbeom, and when the negotiations fell apart, he did not return. He stayed in the North.

There had been no word after that, but the fate awaiting a young politician with both ideals and righteous anger in the North was obvious enough.

'I hope he can just live a little happily in this life.'

Feeling strangely sorry for him, Han San spoke in a gentler voice.

"Sure, I do move while thinking about all sorts of things. Most of those thoughts are about my interests, my family's interests, and my people's interests.

"Other people's interests? Honestly, I don't care. Whether they lose out or not. It's not like I'm some hero who can save the world."

"..."

"But that isn't all there is to it."

Again, living wholly faithful to profit alone also required a certain talent.

Han Bada had that talent in abundance. One of his cousins had been born with it. Han San had little of it.

Take the rebuilding of Middle Hamlet. Sure, he had calculated that he could take the lead from Upper Hamlet, bind Middle Hamlet to his side, and turn them into labor. But even without all that, would he have simply watched as Choi Seo-bang's household was swept away?

Take the kitchen at the House of the Taste Magistrate. Sure, he had calculated that he could learn their recipes. But if he had known nothing of that, would he have simply left them alone?

Han San raised his head.

"Especially not this Chuseok."

He recalled the Chuseok he had spent at eighteen in his past life.

It had been a miserable Chuseok. The typhoon had wiped out the entire autumn harvest, and after filling their stomachs with nothing but water, Upper Hamlet had opened its gates and they had crawled in to beg for ancestral-rite food.

He had done every dirty job like a slave, seen Yun Cheom-ji's damned wild ginseng, ah, that hillside, that ash tree, received a tiny bit of ritual food, bowed and clapped along as Old Woman Wangdae performed her exorcism rite.

Before he knew it, Chuseok had ended as if it had never come at all.

[There won't ever be another Chuseok this miserable.]

Han San had muttered that as he left Upper Hamlet, after its gates shut behind him once more.

The conclusion was that his muttering had been wrong, and at the same time, right.

The following year, he and his younger brother had set out an ancestral table by themselves. They placed a bowl they had barely salvaged from a mudflat, filled it with plain water, and bowed before it.

The year after that too.

And the year after that.

Then they stopped. For a very long time. In truth, he had already realized it in his heart.

His Chuseok had disappeared forever with the Great Flood of the Gap-sul Year.

So.

He did not want Chuseok to disappear in this life.

"Look, Cheol-min."

Han San looked over the yard, alive with food, sights, and games.

The mountains surrounding the village wore robes of brocade, and the sunset flushed across them as though the entire world had taken a mouthful of liquor.

"Isn't it nice? So lively."

Cheol-min opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again.

"...It is."

"Yeah. You should relax and have some fun too. Kids are supposed to play a lot."

"Mm."

Cheol-min thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"No, San hyung. I think I'll head back now."

"Yeah? You won't join the rite?"

"I'm going to hold one in Upper Hamlet."

Han San did not stop him. Instead, he grinned.

"Yeah, you punk. You should be with your family on Chuseok. Be good to them."

"...Yes."

Cheol-min turned his head, nodded once without turning back, and rose from his seat.

On the mountain path back to Upper Hamlet, Cheol-min met Yun Cheom-ji, who was coming down with the hired hands from his household in tow, before the Seonangdang shrine tree.

Yun Cheom-ji looked relieved for an instant when he saw Cheol-min, then promptly began trembling.

"You! Foolish boy! Where have you been at this hour!"

Cheol-min's face crumpled.

"I was coming back from Middle Hamlet."

"Why did you go there! To a place full of lowborn rabble! You're fifteen years old already, and there's not a shred of sense in that head of yours!"

As Yun Cheom-ji thundered at him, Cheol-min felt anger rise and lifted his head. At that moment, his mother's words passed through his mind.

[He's a pitiful person too. My father.]

A pitiful person?

Pitiful?

If this man, who had spent his whole life scolding, looking down on others, shouting at them, and beating them, was pitiful, then what about the hired hands standing behind him?

How pitiful were those people, who had never once been able to lift their heads in their entire lives?

"You brat! What's with that look in your eyes now!

"To offer sacrifices to spirits that are not one's own is flattery! That is what was said! Can you not reflect on the vulgarity in your heart, seeking to come and go from the ancestral rites of such lowborn people!"

"Grandfather."

Cheol-min did not raise his voice.

"First, their ancestral table has not even been fully set yet. I did not bow before it. I only went to see the feast.

"Second."

He took one breath.

"That passage does not mean what you claim. It rebukes people who care about ritual food rather than the ritual itself. Or people who use ritual food as bait to divide others."

"What?"

Yun Cheom-ji's eyes widened.

But Cheol-min was not finished.

"And the next passage says this. To see what is right and not act is to lack courage. If failing to act when one sees righteousness is a lack of courage, then isn't a person who knows the suffering their neighbors will face and tells them only to wait devoid of courage, righteousness, and virtue as well?"

"What..."

Yun Cheom-ji caught his breath, then clicked his tongue.

"Y-you dare talk back to me! To me! How dare you... You unfilial wretch! Now I see you've inherited every bit of that rotten temper your mother had as a child!"

Yun Cheom-ji swung his hand.

If he slapped this foolish boy a few more times, he would come to his senses. This immature boy's mother, his own daughter, had grown obedient and gentle too.

But smack! Cheol-min caught Yun Cheom-ji's swinging wrist.

"Y-you dare grab me!?"

He gripped it tightly. Yun Cheom-ji let out something like a scream.

Then, in Cheol-min's mind, which had been growing cold, Han San's words surfaced.

[Be good to your family.]

Ah. He truly was this man's maternal grandson. In exactly the same tone, he let out a click of his tongue first.

Be good to family?

Even when that family was a person like this? How could he be good to someone like...

That was when it happened.

"Y-you dare grab..."

Cheol-min saw Yun Cheom-ji's face, trembling as his wrist was held.

He saw the old, wrinkled, bony wrist caught in his own hand too.

Before his eyes stood the image of something fixed beyond recovery, someone who would never examine himself, who could not even dream that he might be wrong.

[He's a pitiful person too. My father.]

In that moment, Cheol-min understood that his mother had been right.

His maternal grandfather was a pitiful person.

His maternal grandfather did not know it, did not know it now, and would never know it.

Cheol-min's mind suddenly became clear.

"Grandfather."

To press someone about why they could not do something when one knew full well they could not was cruel.

"I think it would be best if you rested a little now."

"W-what are you saying..."

"Uncle Ju-bal, Uncle Cheol-jun. The night is cold. Please escort Grandfather home."

Still holding Yun Cheom-ji's wrist, Cheol-min spoke to the hired hands who had followed his maternal grandfather down.

Yun Cheom-ji did not understand for a moment, then erupted.

"Escort me? What escort! Come to think of it, you lot! Ju-bal! Cheol-jun! You stupid lowborn fools! Why are you just standing there staring!

"Tie up this brat, this unfilial wretch who does not even recognize his own grandfather! Beat him! Beat him until his mind clears! I give you permission!"

"Now."

Cheol-min gave the short command.

The two men at the front of the household's hired hands briefly looked at each other.

Not for long.

They went behind Yun Cheom-ji and took hold of his shoulders.

"Elder, the night is cold."

"Please follow the young master's words."

Yun Cheom-ji felt as though his blood had gone cold.

"Y-you bastards...!? Have you gone mad, you dogs! How dare you violate the sacred order between master and servant, I, I am your master!"

But before the icy scolding they had heard all their lives, Ju-bal and Cheol-jun did not waver.

"Y-you bastards..."

Yun Cheom-ji struggled a few more times, but once he was firmly restrained, all strength quickly drained out of him.

Cheol-min watched in silence, then shifted his gaze.

Once, he looked toward the Han family's yard in Middle Hamlet, full of merry noise and excitement. Once, he looked toward Upper Hamlet's ancestral platform, quiet as a grave.

Then suddenly.

Ah.

A sigh escaped the fifteen-year-old boy.

It held longing, hope, and regret.

Why did people become adults?

Why did they have to become adults?

Autumn had only just begun, and the twilight over Seorak still held a warmth that seemed as if it could melt. The boy wanted to remain embraced by it forever.

But soon, time ran out.

"Mm."

Shin Cheol-min raised his head. He squared his shoulders.

With his hands clasped behind his back, he spoke.

"Let's go. We have a Chuseok ancestral rite to hold too, don't we?"

Upper Hamlet's new oligarch led his men back up to Upper Hamlet.

His boyhood, left behind with his footsteps, was buried in the sunset and fell asleep.

Footnotes:

[1] Yut is a traditional Korean board game in which players throw four marked wooden sticks to determine their moves.

[2] The Hair-Cutting Edict refers to the 1895 Korean reform order requiring men to cut their traditional topknots, a measure widely seen as an assault on Confucian custom.

[3] Baekbeom was the pen name of Kim Gu (1876–1949), a leading Korean independence activist and nationalist politician.

[4] The North-South Joint Conference was a 1948 meeting in Pyongyang where southern and northern Korean leaders sought to prevent separate elections and Korea's permanent division.

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