WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: ZERO_SUGAR

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Chapter 97: Expanding into Chuncheon (2)

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There was one feeling that had still lingered into Han San's old age, only to be rapidly forgotten after that.

The feeling of [heading for the capital].

Class and status had never applied to people alone, no matter the era or the country. Even gods had ranks.

Naturally, places had ranks too.

Unlike later generations, who divided the country into [Seoul] and [non-Seoul] without a moment's hesitation, the cities and villages of the Korean Peninsula had originally existed within a strict [class hierarchy].

The Chuk Brothers members who had accompanied Han San to Chuncheon, Chuk Hong-cheol and Chuk Jun-ha, sensed Chuncheon's overwhelming class order more keenly than anyone.

"Ha, this..."

"I'm getting hungry for a revolution..."

Before Chuncheon Township's crushingly superior status, the tiny red warriors in the hearts of the Chuk Brothers, who had been gradually reformed in Inje, began to stir again.

"No wonder Hapgang in Inje had felt kind of cramped."

"But this place, whew! Just look at the Soyang River over there, all calm beneath the autumn sun. What a sight."

That natural view was only the opening act.

Unlike later generations, the measure of real estate status in this era was not how many natural features a place had, but how many artificial ones had been put into it.

"Inje's colors were gloomy from the start. Dirt roads, red brick, wooden barricades. But here, wow..."

"My eyes don't get tired. Not tired at all."

Gray, navy blue, and black.

The roads had been laid with crushed stone and packed down with rollers, while the main streets had even been coated in tar.

Concrete buildings stood here and there as well.

"It's big..."

"And wide as hell. Just enormous."

In Inje town, the three-story South Jade Pavilion had been overwhelming.

Here, though, four-story buildings were not hard to spot. The Gangwon Provincial Office was not especially tall, but it covered enough ground to rival a palace.

And that was not all.

Honk! Honk!

Inje town was still an age of cattle, horses, and donkeys. Sawada's military car had stood out like a crane among chickens.

Here in Chuncheon, those cranes traveled in flocks, all blaring their horns as they went.

"Makes me want to burn the whole place down. Especially that Gangwon Provincial Office."

"We ought to build a society with fairness..."

Their eyes were at ease, their ears were noisy, and it was a fine day for revolution.

The urge to fight those of a higher class was the true essence of this era's original Reds.

"S-seniors... get a grip... W-why would you burn anything down..."

Im Baechil desperately tried to talk them out of it.

Ordinarily, Im Baechil would have only needed to gape at Chuncheon and serve as a country bumpkin's shock dispenser. Instead, on his very first visit to Chuncheon, he barely had time to enjoy the sights before he had to play the reasonable one.

Traveling with lunatics was exhausting.

That was when it happened.

"Those bastards... The way they're looking around, don't they seem like country hicks?"

"Want to stomp them?"

No matter how rotten colonial law enforcement was, robbers did not suddenly appear in the middle of respectable Chuncheon Township.

Gangsters did.

The Chuncheon gangsters wanted to stomp on the country hicks in front of them. Why? Wasn't the reason people climbed mountains that mountains were there?

They had just passed through an intersection, and there were fewer people around. The gangsters exchanged glances, then began emerging one by one from the alleys.

'Even among people from the same Gangwon Province, there has to be order.'

'We'll show these country hicks Chuncheon's overwhelming order. And shake them down for a little money while we're at it.'

The gangsters approached, cracking their fingers. The Chuk Brothers recognized that embodiment of class violence at once.

"Oh? Is this a revolution?"

"To borrow the sajang's words, I hadn't dared hope for it, but it is exactly what I wished for."

Human history was the history of class struggle. Today, another page of human history would be written in Chuncheon.

"S-seniors, get a grip...! This isn't a revolution...!! Sajang, stop them-"

"Right, sajang! We can have ourselves a little revolution, can't we? We-"

Terrified Im Baechil and the eager Chuk Brothers turned to Han San at the same time.

Then froze.

They were not the only ones. The Chuncheon gangsters who had been approaching froze as well.

"Isn't that guy... the leader of these country hicks?"

"What the hell is with that air about him!?"

Han San was not overwhelmed by Chuncheon's overpowering order in the slightest.

He was calm.

No, beyond calm...

'Contempt!?'

'That bastard... Could he possibly be looking down on Chuncheon!?'

He was.

With his hands clasped behind his back, Han San carried himself with a contempt for Chuncheon, Gangwon's grand young lady, flowing as steadily as the Soyang River.

'That isn't a bluff!?'

'Could he be from Busan? Or Kaesong?'

'N-no! This is contempt on at least a Gyeongseong level... Maybe even Tokyo!'

Caught in the aura of his contempt, the gangsters broke into cold sweats.

Had Han San heard their thoughts, he would have snorted.

After all...

'Village and village, region and region, Seoul and non-Seoul... In this era, Gyeongseong and non-Gyeongseong. How could one possibly decide superiority and inferiority by things like that?'

Those were no more than ranks of [space].

Han San belonged to a class order incomparably superior to that.

The hierarchy of [time]!

'I am a Korean who watched the 1988 Olympics. How could I possibly be overwhelmed by somewhere like present-day Chuncheon?'

As he walked with his hands behind his back, Han San radiated the relaxed ease of a man strolling through mountains of corpses and seas of blood. He was superior not in space, but in time.

What? Time and space were really one?

What nonsense was that? Why would time be space and space be time? Just looking at the phrase [a sword that cuts time], didn't it naturally make one think, [Gasp! It sounds a hundred times stronger than a sword that cuts space]?

At any rate, the seventy-four-year-old man could not help sighing at the thought that people with no basic literary sense were running around calling themselves scientists and philosophers...

"You."

Han San held out his hand and crooked a finger.

As if dragged in by an invisible force, a Chuncheon gangster found himself stepping forward under the pressure of Han San's presence. Han San casually tossed him a letter of introduction.

"Lead the way."

Han San had brought two letters of introduction to Chuncheon.

[Go pay your respects to our Kaesong Merchants' Fellowship!]

One was from Ma Jong-sung of Cheonbo Pharmacy. It bore the address of the Chuncheon branch of the Kaesong Merchants' Fellowship.

[My older sister... Be careful. She isn't someone you can take lightly.]

The other was from Kim Mal-ja, mistress of South Jade Pavilion. It bore the address of Chuncheon's Blue-Gold Pavilion.

Naturally, the letter Han San had just tossed to the Chuncheon gangster was the one Kim Mal-ja had given him.

At the sight of Blue-Gold Pavilion's name, the Chuncheon gangster trembled as if he had been handed a thousand-geun crescent blade, then bowed deeply.

"Y-yes! I'll escort you there at once!"

And so Han San found himself seated across from Kim Seong-ja, mistress of Blue-Gold Pavilion, in a windowless room beneath the club.

"Heheh... Welcome..."

If Kim Mal-ja resembled a flashy, vicious owl, Kim Seong-ja resembled a large horned owl.

Pale skin, a tall frame, deep dark circles beneath her eyes, thick glasses, and hair hanging in stringy locks like seaweed.

Kim Seong-ja looked at Han San in an appearance better suited to a library clerk than a woman of the night.

"Hee... Just like my little sister and Anna said... You have quite the bearing... You look like someone who'll make it big..."

Her lazy voice and half-awake manner did not make Han San let down his guard.

The truly strong did not need to look strong.

Kim Mal-ja, who had looked fierce from the first glance, was therefore the weakest of the three sisters of the night.

"Thank you for thinking so highly of me, noona."

Of course, that did not mean he was intimidated.

He went straight to the point.

"From now on, we're thinking of doing some business in Chuncheon."

"Business...?"

"Yes. We have several items prepared, but quite a few of them need more time."

Han's Myriad Commerce currently had its foundation in Inje and Sokcho.

Inje was a complete inferior version of Chuncheon, so there was nothing there that could compete.

Animal hides, medicinal herbs, honey?

They would sell, of course. But those depended on the personal abilities of Han San and Han Man-seok, father and son, so they had limits of scale as long-term business items.

The things most likely to work in Chuncheon were goods from Sokcho. Yet to bring the cheapest sea fish all the way to Chuncheon, the temperature needed to drop further than it was now.

'And the thing I left to Mother and her relatives will need even more time.'

Han San had naturally prepared items that could serve as a bridge until then.

"First, I'm planning to open two kinds of restaurants."

Han San began explaining his idea, and Kim Seong-ja listened with interest.

"Hmm... You cut chicken into pieces, stir-fry it on a broad iron plate, and sell it...? With rice cakes and potatoes mixed in too... Then you finish it by frying rice on the plate...? And if they pay extra, they can even add cheese...

My goodness... There are people here who would buy such a luxuriously sinful dish... Of course there are."

This was Chuncheon.

"Hee... You fry an entire chicken in oil...? You even coat it thickly in flour batter... Then after frying it, you cover it in a sauce made generously with grain syrup, starch syrup, garlic, and red pepper paste...?

My goodness... There are people here who would buy such a luxuriously sinful dish... Of course there are!"

This was Chuncheon!

Han's Dakgalbi[1] and Han's Chicken!

Had this been the 1980s of Han San's old age, these would have been the sort of food middle-class families ate when they thought, [We're a bit short on funds to go out for grilled meat at the garden restaurant, so let's just have something like this this week.]

At this point in time, though, it was a luxury item only two steps short of fine dining.

And there was a market here capable of taking all of that luxury.

Because this was Chuncheon.

"All right... It will take about a month to find a place and get the shops open... Work hard, then..."

Kim Seong-ja spoke with her chin propped on one hand, but she did not look convinced by Han San's forward-looking business ideas.

She looked as though she were watching a child perform.

Yes, friend of my little sister. I understand you came to Chuncheon intending to work hard. Now go do your best, there there.

And that expression caught the eye of Han's Myriad Commerce's sajang, Han San.

'This is a problem.'

It was not for some ridiculous reason like wounded pride.

'With Malja's letter of introduction, she won't interfere with us, but she won't give us her full support the way Malja did in Inje either. It would take too long to establish ourselves here.'

The solution was simple.

'What's the use of talking until my mouth goes dry?'

Han San grinned and rose from his seat.

"Could I borrow the kitchen?"

Blue-Gold Pavilion was a high-class club. It sold alcohol and food.

Naturally, it had a kitchen.

It even had an oven, an advanced kitchen as fine as a hotel kitchen by this era's standards.

"Leader Hong-cheol! Slaughter the chickens, chop the vegetables, and handle the prep. Chairman Jun-ha! You take the batter and seasoning. Baechil-hyung! Pour oil into the pot, then help the Leader and Chairman."

Han San promptly took over the kitchen and set it to work.

He had bought all the ingredients along the way. Chickens and vegetables were chopped on one side, while batter was made on the other.

Sizzle! Whoosh!

Chicken rolled across the heated griddle. Potatoes, carrots, and onions cooked separately danced in the chicken fat sizzling from the meat.

In the pot, battered chicken puffed up crisp on the outside and juicy within.

He did not make the sauces there.

'I made them all at home.'

And he had tested and blended them over and over until he found the ideal ratio. He had not spent enough time researching the dakgalbi sauce to reach that point yet, but the fried chicken sauce, ah, that was something he could dare call art.

'Pelicana Chicken[2] has arrived. It came cutting through time from the future.'

All the chicken he had made at home had not simply been for fattening up Father and Bada. It had also been practice for work like this.

A short while later, four plates were lined up before Kim Seong-ja.

Behind her thick glasses, Kim Seong-ja blinked her large eyes.

"This is..."

The smell alone was different.

The color looked incredible too.

'One is simply battered and fried. Golden. Such a lovely color...

The other is fried chicken coated in a red sauce. He didn't just pour the sauce over it, he put it into a pot and stir-fried it.

And one is this dakgalbi, with onions, carrots, potatoes, rice cakes, chicken, and a sauce completely different from the one used on the fried chicken...

The last is dakgalbi too, but what's different... Ah. He took out all the bones? To make it easier to eat... But would it really taste much different?

Hmm! I have to try it.'

Without realizing it, she swallowed.

At first, she intended to politely pick at it with chopsticks. But after taking one bite from each plate, her chopsticks stopped.

After all, boneless dakgalbi was one thing, but how could one eat fried chicken and bone-in dakgalbi satisfactorily with chopsticks?

More than anything, there was the taste.

"Gloves."

At Kim Seong-ja's word, the Blue-Gold Pavilion toughs who had been watching with drool streaming from their mouths brought her a pair of clean leather gloves.

Kim Seong-ja put one on each hand. At first, she politely lifted a drumstick to her mouth and seemed to chew on it a few times.

Then she began tearing through the plates, eating greedily like a bird of prey ripping apart meat.

And Kim Seong-ja realized.

All the chicken dishes she had eaten until now...

Had not been chicken dishes at all, but nothing more than chicken jokes!

[1] Dakgalbi is a Chuncheon-associated Korean dish of chicken, vegetables, and rice cakes stir-fried in a spicy sauce on a large griddle.

[2] Pelicana Chicken is a South Korean fried-chicken chain, invoked here as a future-era benchmark for the dish.

Footnotes:

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