WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 10: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (10)

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In the old village wedged between the mountain slopes, only three out of ten houses were inhabited, while seven out of ten stood abandoned.

Among those many empty houses, Onik had made one into his secret base.

This secret base had a treasure room.

Its contents were roughly as follows.

Meaningful objects he had found while exploring other vacant and abandoned houses.

Hunting trophies he wanted to remember.

Ball bearings of various sizes for his sling.

The Sky Kong Kong pogo stick Grandfather had bought him in the lower grades of elementary school.

Various tools Onik had repaired or made himself...

It was early evening, when the dim sky was turning the color of ink.

Onik came to his secret base, white breath spilling from his mouth as he entered the treasure room.

The boy stood as quietly as a shadow, looking down at his special collection.

“...”

Three months had passed since the father who was still a stranger to him had visited.

During those three months, Onik had been unable to recover his former cheerfulness.

That did not mean he had been gloomy the entire time.

He still enjoyed being praised, and there were certainly times when happiness made him smile.

Still, his happiness and joy faded far more quickly than they once had.

It felt like a bonfire lit on a cold day, quickly burning out. Whenever those bright feelings disappeared, an emptiness that could never be filled rushed in to take their place.

That emptiness resembled the winter air Onik could feel against his skin.

Cold and dry.

In the midst of all this, the precious people who had always shown the lonely boy care and affection whenever his mood darkened seemed to have troubles of their own.

Onik watched those precious people closely, so he knew they were struggling for some reason as well.

That was why the mood at his graduation ceremony today had been quite different from what he had expected.

Everyone had congratulated Onik with smiling faces, but they had been less bright and lively than he had hoped.

And less warm.

Perhaps it felt especially so because Lee Eun-jeong's smile had looked weary and shadowed.

「Scrape-」

Lost in thought, Onik found his hand closing around the Joseon axe.

It was a dark Joseon axe with a long handle, a thick head, and a pointed horn on the side opposite the blade.

The blade, which Onik had sharpened on a whetstone while imagining pleasant things, held a cold gleam even beneath the faint moonlight filtering through the small window.

Tonight, his heart felt stifled, and he wanted to see the blood of something living.

The weight of the axe filling his grip gave the boy a sense of security to match its weight.

‘I like this heavy feeling...’

No animal's skull could withstand it if Onik brought this weight down with all his strength.

Holding the handle in one hand and resting the axe head on his shoulder, Onik looked over the rest of his collection.

Among the neatly displayed objects was a genuine bladed weapon.

He had taken it from the home of an old man in the village who said that, when he was young, he had belonged to some group called the Korean Youth Corps or something before entering the National Defense Corps. It was a single-edged sword about fifty centimeters long.

Long grooves ran down both sides of its straight, slender blade. They had been made so blood would flow easily when it was thrust deep into something.

The entire blade had also been blackened so its reflection would be difficult to see in the dark.

The boy knew it was a weapon made for murderers.

Unlike a bow made by a Master Bowyer and imbued with a long tradition and craftsmanship, this was a grim blade forged for no purpose but killing people.

The sword's former owner, who had since passed away, had told the lonely child who kept him company about the weapon's history.

「Curious about this? This sword was originally a bayonet the Japanese army bastards used during the colonial era. The American military seized it with other weapons and handed it over to free Korea. Said we ought to protect ourselves with our own hands from then on.」

「And we did. We protected the country and protected freedom.」

「It may have drunk the blood of our people, but what sin does a sword have? People are the ones who commit sins. This is my sword now. Not the Japanese bastards' sword.」

The old man, who looked back proudly on his past, had been missing one hand. Onik had heard it had been amputated after he got frostbite while marching during the Korean War.

Though Onik had ground off the rust, restored the edge, oiled it, and hung it beside its sheath, he had rarely held the sword since.

The wild imaginings that rose from its tip, traveled up the handle, and reached the top of his head were far too stimulating.

Until he developed more patience, it was a sword he should avoid holding even when he was alone. If he wanted to remain a good boy in Grandfather's eyes, and in the eyes of the other precious people, for a long, long time.

Pulling his gaze away from the beautiful but sinister sword, Onik left the other things where they were and stepped out of the storage room.

「Crunch, crunch.」

Snow crunched beneath his feet with every step.

Enough snow had fallen during the day to sink him to his knees.

Winter came early and deep in the mountains. Everywhere he looked, white snow lay piled high.

Moonlight reflected in the young hunter's eyes, along with the pale path and mountain ridges beyond it.

A day with this much snow was a good day for a young hunter to hunt.

The tracks of wild animals were clear, their paths became obvious, animals struggling to find food came closer to people's homes, and even their flight slowed.

A freezing wind descended through the valley and stirred the hem of his raincoat.

There was a dark reason Onik had come out wearing a raincoat, even though the snow had stopped at dusk.

The frightening boy had decided he would be a little bad tonight.

‘I’m sorry, Grandfather.’

Onik had promised his beloved grandfather that he would keep Great-Grandfather's words close to his heart and always hunt safely.

Killing prey by striking it with an axe was not a safe way to hunt.

Still, Onik did not feel very guilty.

He thought the chance of getting hurt was so small that it did not matter.

It only bothered him because Grandfather would surely worry if he found out.

He felt guilty because he knew he would be scolded if he were caught.

Since Chuseok, Onik's nighttime outings had become more frequent.

Grandfather sadly understood his grandson, who left home in the early evening and returned late at night.

More than anyone, he knew how his grandson had spent the unusually long Chuseok holiday after the father who was still a stranger to him had left coldly following their brief meeting.

Seollal and Chuseok, which came every year, were already times when the lonely boy's emptiness grew deeper.

Whenever he watched the families of familiar adults in the village happily come to visit, envy and longing filled him, even if he acted as though he was fine.

This year's Chuseok, after his father had come, had been much worse.

“Why...”

A sigh slipped from Onik's lips for no apparent reason.

That single sigh showed exactly what was in his heart. The breath that escaped with it scattered without a trace on the winter wind.

About half an hour later, the young hunter found the tracks of something he could kill. His natural talent and rapidly developing senses had combined with his fierce desire.

A wild animal had pushed through the piled snow. Onik identified his prey from its footprints.

A wild boar.

Onik's cheeks flushed, half from the cold and half from anticipation.

“It’s pretty big...”

Winter was a season when wild boars appeared more often.

They mated from autumn through early winter, and pregnant sows almost always intruded into human territory during that time.

Pregnancy demanded far more nutrition than usual, while there was less food in the mountains and fields during the cold season.

To the old farmers in remote mountain villages, wild boars were animals not only harmful but frightening. If wild boars got into their fields, they could ruin the farmers' entire year.

Ruined in the literal sense.

Onik remembered an elderly villager angrily shouting one autumn two years ago.

「I farmed five thousand pyeong, and all I get is two sacks of decent rice! Does that make any sense?! I work all year and barely make 400,000 won. What the hell am I supposed to live on!」

Wild boars were not the only cause of that poor harvest.

Still, it was true they had accounted for the largest share among the many causes.

If there were animals in the world that ate cash and went around devouring twenty, thirty, or more percent of office workers' salaries, city people would surely scream just like farmers in remote areas did.

When Onik shared that thought with Yo-han, Yo-han answered with a strangely wistful expression and a tone unlike his usual one.

「Onik. You might not have known, but such an animal really does exist in this world.」

「Really?」

「Yes. It’s called the domestic stock market. A terrifying beast that brings suffering to countless people and sometimes even kills them. Yet people keep going near it and getting bitten over and over. They’d be safe if they just didn’t go near it in the first place.」

「...? Why do they do that?」

「I wonder. Why did I? Why did I get bitten so many times...」

「?...???」

Curious, Onik looked up the domestic stock market and learned that its Korean name was commonly shortened to a two-syllable abbreviation.

The perceptive boy felt sorry for Yo-han. ‘I heard things have changed a lot these days...’

In any case, wild boars were harmful animals.

They might have been less harmful than the domestic stock market had been in the past, when the magic of split listings ran rampant, but they were still dangerous animals that could never be ignored.

It was not the season for growing rice, but there were countless overwintering crops that wild boars could ruin with help from water deer and the like.

Garlic, spring cabbage, onions, spinach...

Wild boars disliked garlic and onions because of their sharp taste and strong smell. Spring cabbage and spinach were mainly dug up and eaten by deer or water deer, not crops wild boars preferred.

But when an animal was starving, when would it have time to be choosy?

A wild boar in winter was a hungry beast that tore into any crop it found.

It ate less of the crops it disliked, but it still ate them.

Even crops it could not eat, it would dig up and put in its mouth.

A life he could kill, should kill, and would do well to kill.

From the moment he found the harmful animal's tracks and caught its scent, the anguish that had been circling in Onik's mind retreated, if only for a while.

The fervor of his unwanted inborn nature, which craved bloody death, forcefully drove away the emptiness that resembled winter air.

When a hunter approached while smelling prey, it meant the prey had difficulty smelling the hunter. The wind was blowing from the prey toward the hunter.

Of course, no matter how favorable the wind was, an ordinary person could not become a hunter who tracked prey by scent alone.

That was why nine out of ten wild boar hunters brought packs of hunting dogs.

But Onik did not need hunting dogs.

Running nimbly through the snow-covered mountains, Onik resembled a feline predator in more ways than one.

He was still a young predator that had not fully grown, but his sprint over the snowfield was swift and smooth, and so quiet it was as if he had paw pads on his feet.

The small pattering sounds of his steps were buried beneath the mountain wind, hard to hear from even a short distance away.

The quietly running boy saw bushes moving near a field ridge.

‘Found it.’

He could not see the wild boar itself yet.

But the movement of the brush, out of step with the wind, made the prey's presence clear.

Onik's exceptional instinct almost drove the knowledge straight into his mind: that was the movement of something he could kill.

There was certainly a large wild boar lurking there. Its size was suggested by the shaking brush and by the tracks he had followed.

Wild boars were cautious animals. Even if no people seemed to be in the fields, they rarely came right out to feed.

Usually, they hid in bushes with thick forest at their backs, quietly observing their target until they believed it was safe. Only then would they come out and begin ruining the field.

Just like now.

「-?!」

The wild boar noticed the boy too late and sprang out with a sharp sound.

But Onik rushed forward faster than most hunting dogs could sprint at full speed.

That was especially true on sloped ground, whether he was running uphill or down.

The moment it realized it could not escape, the wild boar turned toward Onik. It was cautious, but not an animal that refused a fight when one became necessary.

As he leaped powerfully toward the charging beast, Onik raised the axe vertically and swung it back behind his head.

Then, with a calm greeting that did not suit the violence of the movement, he said,

“Hello?”

The next moment, the axe that had been pulled back to its limit shot upward with the powerful spring of its reversed motion.

Wild boars were poor at avoiding attacks that came down from above.

They could not see them.

The heavy axe head began its swing in the blind spot behind the boy's body, rose above the crown of his head to its highest point, then fell vertically like lightning.

「Crack!」

The axe's metal cracked and ground through bone with a dreadful sound.

It was a lethal blow, delivered by a boy nearly monstrous in strength as he strained every muscle in his body and added his full weight to the strike.

The powerful shock traveled through Onik's arms and shook his torso.

「Squeal...!」

The frightening boy planted a foot on the wild boar and passed over it with ease, adding the remaining force of his leap to the power of his downward strike before it could even let out a full cry.

The instant he twisted the handle and stepped on the boar's back, the axe blade, driven by the principle of the lever, tore free.

Blood and bone fragments sprayed from the place where the blade had been pulled out.

The bleeding beast collapsed and slid across the snow-covered ground.

「Grrk... grrk... ghk...」

The wild boar lay sprawled in an ugly heap, and its breath stopped by the time the boy turned around.

The heavy prey had pushed through the snow as it slid, making a path for the hunter.

The boy approached the dead wild boar.

Haa.

A pleased breath escaped the frightening boy as he admired his dead prey.

His heart was pounding.

After killing such a large creature, the boy felt a fulfillment that far exceeded what he felt after killing smaller creatures.

It was not simply excitement or pleasure.

It was an unknown dark energy that, the more it accumulated within him, raised the abilities needed to kill something to a higher realm.

Twitch.

Lost in the lingering sensation of killing, Onik saw the lower belly of the dead wild boar twitch faintly. The night was dark, but the boy's night vision was too good for him to be mistaken.

Twitch.

The skin of the corpse's belly moved slightly again after a pause.

It was not a trivial postmortem spasm. It was fetal movement, subtle enough that anyone without a sharp eye would have missed it.

Inside something already dead, there were still things he could kill.

But that fact did not make the frightening boy happy.

Killing something was always enjoyable for him, but the new pleasure in this moment touched the sadness he had been carrying all along.

The faint smile that had lingered at the corner of his mouth quietly faded.

Onik brought down his axe without expression.

「Thud!」

The flashing axe blade struck down and split the corpse's hide, organs, and frozen earth all at once.

Sluuush.

When the boy pulled out the axe, the corpse's contents spilled forth.

Where the blood flowed, the snow melted.

The night air was so cold that warm white steam rose from the flooding blood. Beyond that curling vapor were piglets that looked like clots of blood.

Thanks to the boy's extraordinary senses and skill with an axe, not one of the nine piglets had been struck and killed by the blade.

But avoiding the axe blade was no blessing.

They were premature piglets who should have stayed in their mother's warm belly for at least another month and a half before entering the world.

Suddenly cast into the cold of a midwinter mountain, the premature piglets' tiny bodies writhed. Their movements were weak, but full of pain.

Onik silently watched those little struggles quickly grow still.

The frightening boy's gaze grew distant as he sank into deep thought.

Piglets that would have been better off dying beneath the axe blade.

And...

‘Me, who Father might have thought would have been better off never being born.’

Onik now knew why the father who was still a stranger to him had left the way he had.

He knew because he had asked Grandfather and received an answer.

「Please tell me, Grandfather.」

Near the end of the Chuseok holiday, lonelier than any other holiday, Onik had knelt before Grandfather and asked him sincerely.

「I didn’t ask before because I thought it made you uncomfortable... But I have to hear it now. Why does Father hate me so much? Did I do something wrong? If I did, what was it?」

The father who was still a stranger to him had said, “You did nothing wrong,” but Onik had not taken those words at face value.

Why else would Father avoid Onik that way unless Onik had done something wrong?

No. There had to be something. There had to be.

...If it was hatred without any reason, there was nothing Onik could do to solve it.

Unfortunately, Grandfather's answer had been no different from the words of the father who was still a stranger to him.

「Don’t think that way, Onik. You haven’t done a single thing wrong...」

Footnotes:

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