I Regressed and Became Too Good at Brewing - Chapter 71

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 71. How to Trim the Thorns (2)
“Welcome. Master Craftsman from Korea.”
Naguchi bent at a ninety-degree angle and offered a respectful bow.
For a moment, I wondered if the plane lag had gotten to me and I was hallucinating.
Ye-hyeon and Ye-eun, standing behind me, stared at us both with wide, startled eyes.
Anyone who’d heard the name Naguchi would’ve had the same reaction.
“Well… that’s what he said, anyway.”
But that touching reunion lasted all of five seconds.
The moment Naguchi lifted his head, his expression hardened right back into its usual pinched shape, and behind those glasses, his eyes gleamed with that familiar, tactless arrogance.
“Let me be clear from the start—this was a decision that reflected absolutely none of my personal wishes.”
Figured as much.
Everything Eddie Brook had said over the phone must’ve been gilded, because Naguchi kept right on sniping with that characteristic barbed tone of his.
Which meant I wasn’t about to manage much civility either.
“Then why did you call me here at all?”
“The legendary Eddie Brook of Scotland simply wouldn’t stop raving about your genius, so I reluctantly made room for you.”
This man had no charm, I’ll give him that, but he did love his alcohol.
Come to think of it, he’d shown up at Songhada once before, weighed down with prejudice, drunk our sake, and then bolted like a man fleeing a fire.
So he must’ve had his reasons not to dismiss Brook’s recommendation.
But whether I thought that or not, Naguchi kept right on broadcasting his opinions.
“To be frank, I’m deeply skeptical that a Korean master of traditional alcohol—a craft with such a short history—could truly understand the subtle shifts in flavor that Japan’s four seasons and climate have cultivated.”
Naguchi tilted his chin up and brushed off his sleeves.
At that pathetic display, a hollow laugh escaped me.
The longer I stood there listening, the more my patience started to fray.
Billion-won proposal or not, there was no reason I had to stand here and take this.
“Naguchi.”
“What?”
“If you distrust me so much and you hate the idea of showing Korea one of Japan’s prized spirits, then why did you contact me in the first place?”
A man bound up in twisted nationalism would’ve sooner died than bow his head and ask a Korean for help.
It was a point worth making.
Naguchi’s face flushed crimson in an instant.
As if I’d struck exactly at the shame he’d been burying deepest, his narrow eyes widened in shock.
“How, how dare you say such nonsense! I never asked you for help! Brook forced the issue, and I had no choice but—”
“If you’d rather I leave, I can go now. The taxi probably hasn’t gone far. I can just catch another one.”
“Wait, wait! You’re really planning to leave? And here I thought a sake brewer would have some patience! This is exactly why Korean craftsmen lack depth—you’re all so light and frivolous, prone to emotional outbursts—”
It was right then, as Naguchi reddened and began stamping about in frustration, that it happened.
Crack!
A sharp, ringing sound echoed through the entire entrance of the distillery.
A sound most Koreans knew all too well.
The unmistakable sound of a good smack across the back.
And most Koreans knew what came next.
What sound would follow.
“Ow!”
Naguchi yelped and nearly stumbled forward before barely catching himself.
Standing behind him, appearing from nowhere, was a woman in an upright posture.
Her hair was tied back tightly, a sturdy cotton haori with rolled-up sleeves slung across her shoulders, traditional tabi socks and work boots on her feet.
Everything about her solid, weighty presence spoke to a real craftsman who’d spent a lifetime on the workshop floor.
Her uncompromising eyes held the scars of years and a deep, genuine skill.
She fixed Naguchi with a withering stare and opened her mouth.
“You blowhard! Running your mouth in front of guests like that! You’ve forgotten every scrap of manners since the day you were born!”
“Ow, ow… Me, Megumi! Even so, you can’t hit someone right in front of visitors!”
Ye-hyeon and Ye-eun, overwhelmed by her ferocious presence, grabbed each other’s sleeves and quietly edged behind me.
The fact that they didn’t let go of the camera through all this was either brave or stubborn.
“Quiet! Every time you open that mouth of yours, you smash everything to pieces! This person came all the way from Korea out of kindness, and instead of being grateful, you wag your tongue like a fool!”
“But I was just… defending the pride of Japanese distilled spirits…”
“Pride nothing! The distillery’s about to collapse and you’re worried about pride? Bow your head right now and apologize!”
Pressed down by her womanly fury, Naguchi grumbled and awkwardly bent his head.
The way they casually hit each other and hollered suggested they were old friends or longtime collaborators.
Or perhaps the distillery’s actual owner and a consulting critic.
“Are you two partners, then?”
Naguchi glanced nervously back at Megumi, then cried out in a voice heavy with grievance and sorrow:
“Honey, please! Stop hitting me in front of people! What’s left of my dignity?”
“Never mind your dignity—shut your mouth and show the guest inside! You stubborn old fool, I ought to kick you right in the rear!”
“…….”
Honey.
For a moment, my thoughts simply stopped.
So this obstinate, prideful Naguchi—a man whose self-respect was all he had left—was actually the husband of this fierce, commanding woman.
What’s more, at the word “honey,” Megumi’s eyes flashed even more dangerously. She drew back her hand and struck Naguchi’s back a second time with satisfying force, and he bit his lip against the pain, falling silent.
Megumi’s presence was undeniably overwhelming.
After subduing Naguchi, she turned to me and bowed with both gentleness and formality.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. I’m Megumi, the wife of this stubborn old fool. My husband here was born without a shred of social grace, and his tongue’s just as rough, so I beg your pardon if his manner offended. Thank you for making the journey—please don’t take his words to heart.”
“Not at all. It’s fine. I’ve already heard the situation from Eddie Brook.”
“Then come inside, if you please.”
* * *
Once we’d settled into the main room and warmed our hands with tea, Megumi explained the distillery’s troubles with steady composure.
“This place has been passed down through my family from my grandfather’s grandfather, and far beyond.”
The Zao Distillery was a venerable establishment that Megumi’s family had operated for generations.
Megumi herself was the tenth master craftsman to inherit the family’s craft.
Until recently, she’d been crafting excellent spirits without any trouble at all.
But recently, every batch had begun to develop a bizarre off-flavor whose cause remained utterly mysterious—and this crisis threatened the family’s reputation.
“Once the spirits began failing, Naguchi was the first to act, I imagine.”
“That he was. The old fool used every connection he had, traveling all across Japan to bow before master craftsmen and beg for their advice.”
At Megumi’s words, Naguchi twitched his teacup and snorted dismissively.
But the results had been a bitter rejection.
The reason was simple and disheartening: Japan’s liquor industry, for all its glamorous reputation, was desperately insular and controlled by massive corporations.
It was an old evil perpetuated under the banner of so-called artisanal tradition.
Because of this, smaller distilleries like Zao—ones that tried to preserve tradition while charting their own course—were especially vulnerable.
The large corporations locked their doors tight against any risk of technical leakage, while local critics and rival craftsmen offered no help whatsoever. Instead, they whispered behind closed doors: “Just what you’d expect from a small distillery without real pedigree.”
And because Naguchi had a sharp tongue and had made enemies all over the industry, the powerful figures who despised him had systematically cut off any hand of assistance.
“So in the end, there were no answers left in Japan, and you had to look to the wider world.”
“Exactly. So this stubborn old fool threw all shame aside and contacted Eddie Brook, begging him to help—he practically grabbed the man’s pantleg.”
At the mention of Brook’s name, Naguchi, who had been sitting quietly, clenched his teeth and spoke in a voice tight with suppressed anger.
“I never dreamed he’d use that as leverage to drag in some Korean. Here I’ve spent my whole life championing the excellence of Japanese spirits, and now I have to entrust this critical matter to a foreigner…….”
Crack!
“Ow!”
“Still haven’t learned your lesson? Open your mouth and all you do is go on about nations! There’s no border in brewing—the person who makes the best spirit is what matters!”
Under Megumi’s sharp hand, Naguchi shrank back again, retreating behind his teacup.
Though it hardly would have hidden him.
As I watched this married couple’s spirited exchange with some amusement, a peculiar doubt suddenly crossed my mind.
The genealogy didn’t add up.
Japanese whisky history, even stretching it generously, only begins around 1923, when Suntory’s Yamagata Distillery was founded.
At most, that’s barely a century of history.
Yet Megumi had introduced herself as the tenth master craftsman to inherit the family trade.
Even if each generation were remarkably short-lived, ten generations would require at least two or three centuries…….
“Forgive me, Megumi, but may I ask one thing?”
“Of course—please, ask freely.”
“I understand that Japanese whisky history spans only about a century at most. Yet if you’re the tenth master craftsman…… the timeline doesn’t seem to match. Am I mistaken somehow?”
At my sharp observation, Megumi tilted her head as if confused by what I was saying.
Naguchi, sitting beside her, cleared his throat, set down his teacup, and spoke.
“Megumi’s family didn’t make whisky. This is why everyone lumps all distilled spirits together as either whisky or brandy…….”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Our family started in the Kyushu region and eventually settled in this cold land of Yamagata, and we’ve been making traditional shochu for ten generations. I’m a shochu master!”
Shochu.
Japan’s traditional distilled spirit.
In that moment, all the scattered puzzle pieces in my mind suddenly fell into place.
Now I understood why the atmosphere had felt subtly different from the moment I’d entered the distillery.
The sturdy wooden framework standing grandly behind the Western red brick, the delicate, earthy grain notes that touched my nose—their character was fundamentally different from Scotland’s distilleries.
It was a structure that preserved the traditional aesthetic of a Japanese brewery.
“Our family’s sweet potato shochu is renowned among craftsmen in this region—truly one of the finest spirits.”
Megumi smiled, lifting her teacup.
The rough ferocity with which she’d struck her husband’s back just moments before had vanished entirely, replaced by eyes that gleamed with unmistakable pride in her family’s craft.
“From those steep peaks of the Zao Mountain Range, we use the pristine spring water that flows from ten-thousand-year-old snow, along with hand-selected sweet potato and koji. When we craft it using the secret Distillation Method passed down through generations, the aroma becomes impossibly deep and smooth—sake lovers line up for it from all across the country. My grandfather carried that pride, my father carried it, and they endured their whole lives in this cold, snow-heavy land of Yamagata on the strength of it alone.”
Yet Megumi’s shoulders, which had swelled with such confidence just moments before, suddenly sagged.
The pride that had gleamed in her eyes clouded over in an instant, and her expression crumpled entirely.
In the deepening of her sigh lay the profound helplessness of a master craftsman facing ruin.
“But here’s the thing…… we follow the exact same method, and yet it keeps going wrong somehow. This bizarre off-flavor—the kind you can’t identify at all—has started appearing in the base liquid. It’s like rotted moss, or iron-tainted water, or…… some foul stench mixed in that no human could possibly drink.”
Off-flavor.
To those who make spirits, it’s a death sentence.
The blend of ingredients, the state of the koji, the temperature of the still, or even the slightest shift in climate.
With thousands—tens of thousands—of possible variables that could be the cause, even a legendary distiller like Eddie Brook couldn’t find his footing.
Megumi herself must be burning with anguish over it.
Though I’d need to see the place firsthand to understand it fully, I could sense instinctively that this was no simple matter.
And besides, evidence that the problem was stranger and more tangled than anyone could imagine already existed in one corner of the room—in the most literal form possible.

For a while now, some hulking figure sprawled out in one corner of the tatami room had been dragging itself across the floor, groaning and whimpering.
A creature wearing a shabby Fox Mask askew on its face, draped in a dingy traditional garment, was now pressing its forehead into the floorboards, its tail drooping limp as death itself.