WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 105: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (105)
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#105.
Though Onik now had a riding horse of his own, the equestrian center was too far away for him to ride there and back.
They also needed a car for his older business partner to come along.
So, to take Thunderbolt to the equestrian center, the two had no choice but to hire a transporter.
(Because of Legal Hunter's slip of the tongue, the retired racehorse Storm Thunder had abruptly been renamed Thunderbolt.
Its official name in the racing association database was still Storm Thunder, but Onik, its owner, called it Thunderbolt as a pet name.
Onik thought Thunderbolt had a nicer sound to it than Storm Thunder.)
At first, the transporter quoted 300,000 won for a one-way trip.
But Legal Hunter stepped in, did some smooth-talking, and bargained it down to 200,000 won.
“As you can see, we live pretty far from the equestrian center, and we won't be renting a stable there, so we'll be calling for trailers often. Think of it as gaining a regular customer and cut us a little deal. Whenever I need one, I'll only call your company. All right?”
“Hmm... Then 250,000 won?”
“Come on. If we're cutting it, let's be generous and make it 200,000. The distance isn't that far, is it? I'm telling you, we'll become regulars.”
“That's far too much of a discount... There has to be a limit to haggling. Cutting a third off is too much, isn't it? Fuel is expensive these days.”
“I'm telling you, we'll use you for round trips every time. Make us regulars, and every time we call, it's two jobs' worth. Two jobs! Ah, now that's nice!”
“Hmmmm...”
“And like I said, we'll need trailers often, won't we? Just take 200,000 won for now. If it turns out we aren't calling often enough, we can negotiate again then. What do you say? Sounds fair, doesn't it?”
“Hmmmmmm...”
“Let's do that, boss. Yeah?”
In the end, the transporter accepted Legal Hunter's offer.
Even if they only called twelve times a year, transporting the horse round trip would add up to the price of a trailer.
In other words, if the price was not lowered, Legal Hunter might decide he would be better off buying a trailer himself.
Legal Hunter handled all such troublesome matters, so Onik, the horse's owner, only had to get in the car and be driven there.
“Wow! It's Jo Onik!”
“You finally came! Do you know how much I've missed you?”
“I watched your stream! You got a thoroughbred for Christmas! Is that the one? You said its name was Thunderbolt, right?”
“You came in riding clothes this time? Are they tailored? No? Then how do they fit like that? That's seriously unfair. Onik, are you cheating even with your clothes now?”
The student riders at the provincial international equestrian center gave Onik, who had brought his horse in a trailer, an enthusiastic welcome.
A noisy wall of people and laughter quickly formed around him. Most of them were older boys and girls to Onik.
“Uh, I'm happy to see everyone too. It's been a while! And like I always say, Jo Onik, the strongest in town, is not a cheater...”
Onik was a little overwhelmed by the student riders' high energy and one-sided familiarity.
Still, he had experienced this often in town and in the city. It was happening more and more these days.
Onik had never thought it was a bad thing.
After quietly talking with Sera on the way back from filming the cooking variety show, he had come to see it even more positively.
Kindly accepting the greetings of student riders he had only met once before, Onik glanced at Ju-won, who was far away, guiding his horse alone, then tilted his head.
‘...What is it? Why does that older brother seem so much darker? He definitely wasn't this bad when I saw him before.’
The frightening boy sensed a deep shadow of death hanging over student rider Kim Ju-won.
It was the same dark shadow that had once hung over twenty-three-year-old idol Yu Se-ra.
Anyone could see that Ju-won was only going through the motions in practice.
He had no motivation at all. He was merely pretending to train.
It strongly felt as though he was deliberately keeping away from everyone else. His whole body seemed to be saying that he wanted to be left alone.
Depending on how one looked at it, he even seemed afraid of riding, or overly cautious of it.
“...”
Ju-won's downcast eyes turned briefly toward Onik. His gaze was clearly focused on him.
With eyesight comparable to that of a bird of prey, Onik could see everything reflected in those eyes as clearly as the palm of his hand.
Of course, he could not stare for long.
Ju-won was not especially precious to Onik.
The ominous abnormality clinging to Onik's heart was always hungry for other people's deaths.
But Ju-won did not stare at him for long either.
From that brief look, Onik read desperate conflict, heavy hesitation, and helpless resignation.
Those feelings were too clearly written on Ju-won's face to miss.
Perhaps Ju-won did not feel the need to control his expression when everyone else was so far away.
‘...Resignation? Why?’
Onik had no idea what it meant.
Anyone who gave him that feeling had to be holding some desperate emotion.
But was that not strange?
That desperate emotion was directed not at anyone else, but at Onik himself.
Could Ju-won's reasons for considering suicide have something to do with Onik?
And if they did, what sort of connection could there possibly be?
The clever country boy's mind turned quickly.
‘Could it be because of that request to blur him out before? That's the only thing I can think of.’
The comments had certainly been vicious at the time.
But if someone asked whether they had been vicious enough to drive a person to death, the answer would have to be, “Well...”
Those cruel comments had only appeared under that video, and after the blurring was removed again, even they had died down.
And more than a quarter of a year had passed since the video was uploaded.
Even for sensitive teenagers, that was enough time for it to become an old matter.
So if there was some causal connection between Ju-won's suicidal urges and Onik, the vicious comments could not have been the only cause.
Having thought that far, Onik quickly looked over the wall of people surrounding him.
The older boys and girls who showed him such one-sided warmth.
“Everyone. Does Ju-won have something bad going on? He looks really down.”
It was a probing question, spoken as though it meant nothing. The answers he received were exactly what he expected.
“Kim Ju-won? Come on. Why worry about someone like him?”
“Right. Don't pay attention to him. He was always kind of weird.”
“Is that a dark expression? I think he's looked like that since the first time I saw him. Ju-won just has that kind of face. The Ugly Animal Preservation Society should protect him.”
“Pfft... The Ugly Animal Preservation Society. It would be funny if there really were a group like that.”
“There is, actually. Who was it? I can't remember the name. Anyway, some British person made it.”
“...Really?”
“I said there is. Search it if you don't believe me.”
“Oh... Why is that real? Those British bastards make all kinds of things.”
Everyone laughed and agreed that he had always been a little strange, and the mood turned into a session of mocking him together.
It was not difficult to imagine how Ju-won was usually treated at this equestrian center.
Onik was not stupid. He immediately came close to the truth.
‘He must have started getting bullied after what happened. No, looking at them, they were already sort of excluding him before, and it probably got worse.’
If Onik used social media as much as other kids his age did, he would have noticed Ju-won's trouble much sooner.
But Onik did not like social media.
It went beyond simply disliking it. He held a deep hatred for it in his heart.
There were many reasons, but all of them could be condensed into one short thought.
It killed people.
It turned ordinary people into murderers, and it made people kill themselves.
To Onik, social media was a place of serial murder committed by an unspecified crowd hiding behind anonymity.
At the same time, it was a monster that devoured people.
That was why Onik stayed away from social media unless he needed it.
For the same reason, he did not know much about what happened in online communities or on social media, despite being a successful streamer himself.
He left the work of following internet trends and reflecting them in his broadcasts to his editor sister in Seoul and the junior editors who helped her.
His editor sister in Seoul worked hard not only at editing, but also at developing content.
Onik considered how he should approach a student rider at high risk of suicide.
‘Going to talk to him now... Hmm. This isn't a good way to do it. If I speak to him while all the people excluding him are watching, things might get worse when I'm not around.’
If he spoke to Ju-won, it had to be somewhere quiet.
Because he was thinking so hard, Onik failed to respond in time when someone spoke to him.
“Onik. Hey, did Kim Ju-won thank you? After you saved him, I mean.”
“...Uh, what?”
Onik answered a little late.
His thoughts had delayed him by half a beat, and the question also seemed like one he should not answer truthfully, so he hesitated another half beat.
The high school girl rider who had asked took that hesitation as an answer.
Before Onik, who suddenly realized his mistake, could say anything, the girl with the short haircut shot Ju-won a sharp look as he listlessly guided his horse along.
“I knew it... Does Kim Ju-won have no conscience? That brat has the worst manners. He still hasn't properly said thank you even once to the kid who saved him. I seriously can't stand looking at him.”
That started it.
Words of agreement poured out one after another.
Different people repeated the same mocking word, petty, over and over.
Each time they said it, snickering laughter spread through the group. It seemed to be a kind of meme within this small circle.
Everything about it suggested that they regularly made Ju-won into a target.
Onik's heart sank darkly.
The other student riders' one-sided affection and inner familiarity toward Onik himself must have made the exclusion of Ju-won even worse.
‘Does this... mean I have some responsibility too?’
Onik's feelings became complicated.
The frightening boy hated murderers who did not think of themselves as murderers.
He believed that driving someone else toward suicide could, in some ways, be a more wicked act of killing than deliberate and active murder.
The result was still a person's death, but the people responsible did not consider themselves murderers, and legally they would not receive much punishment either.
They might even laugh at the dead person, blame them, or resent them.
The problem was that the student riders laughing happily around Onik were exactly such people.
Judging by the mood, it would be fortunate if they did not all laugh together when Ju-won killed himself.
Yet the boy who carried a primal loneliness within him could not bring himself to hate them.
‘The older boys and girls here are doing this because they like me...’
On the other hand, these student riders thought Ju-won was being treated that way because he deserved it.
He was a petty person who did not know how to be grateful even after his life was saved, so he deserved to be publicly humiliated. That was the mood.
In other words, they were carrying out vigilante justice as a group.
Vigilante justice.
A phrase that always disturbed the frightening boy who wanted to pretend to be a good child.
‘First, I need to shift their attention. If I leave this alone, it will never end.’
Building a sense of belonging by insulting someone outside the group was a bad habit shared by many people, though there were degrees to it.
This case was worse because the student riders wanted to become close with Onik.
At times like this, bluntly saying, “Let's not say mean things,” was not a good idea.
The best choice was to turn the flow while keeping their good feelings toward Onik intact.
It was something Onik, the most popular student at the town middle school, had learned through similar experiences many times.
So he put on a bright expression.
“Everyone! Would you like to play with me again today? Before we start new content in our village, I brought something to test out first!”
#
Onik had come to the equestrian center for two reasons today.
One was to practice dressage, and the other was to rehearse new content for his broadcast.
The new content had been inspired by an old Joseon mounted archery competition.
Called Mogu (毛毬), Samogu (射毛毬), or Sagu (射毬), it was a competitive event in which several trailing riders chased a leather ball drawn along by the lead rider and shot it with bows.
The arrows used were blunt-tipped arrows without points.
Where an arrowhead should have been, they had a round cloth tip stuffed with cotton. Each rider shot arrows dipped in a different color of dye.
Once the event was over, they counted the marks on the ball by color to decide the rankings.
The editor sister in Seoul, Legal Hunter's daughter, had come up with the idea.
‘Wouldn't it be fun if we adapted this into a viewer-participation RC car survival game?’
First, they would secure a large open area where RC cars and people on horseback could run together.
(An empty lot would be enough, so they could level out and use a landlocked plot owned by the clan association.
They could leave a few trees, old stone walls, and scattered shrubs as obstacles.)
Then they would tie strings to the rear bumpers of the RC cars and have them drag hollow plastic balls.
Fans invited to the remote village through Let's Play with Onik! would control the RC cars.
As the seeker, Onik would ride around and shoot the balls with arrows. The last survivor would receive a small prize.
At a video meeting not long ago, Onik had immediately adopted his editor sister's idea.
“That sounds great! I was worried because our village doesn't have enough things to do, but this could be a fun activity!”
“Right? Once the content gets established, what if we build a small facility that ordinary tourists can use too?”
“Ordinary tourists? But I can't always be in the village! Even when I am, I can't play with them every time.”
“Don't worry! Do you think I don't know that our little boss is busy? The guests can play among themselves!”
“Among themselves? How?”
“Basically, we make a slightly unusual archery experience space! We build a fan-shaped course, maybe ten or twenty meters long. One team drives RC cars and the other team shoots bows! What if we charge for every round of five arrows, like at a shooting range? Of course, cheaper than a shooting range!”
“Oh...”
“If there aren't enough people to split into teams, the village elders who have nothing to do can control the RC cars! We could give them part of the fee for each game. Wouldn't that make a nice little pastime for them? Controlling RC cars isn't that hard, right? And if they're bad at it, that is fun too!”
“That makes sense! It's a good idea! Editor Sister, you must be a genius!”
The hunter, who had been silently listening, could not hold back any longer and stepped in.
“Onik, she is absolutely not a genius. I can guarantee that as her father. I still have her college entrance exam score report. Want to see it?”
“Dad, how can you say that?”
The bickering between father and daughter, sparked by the thoughtless father's surprise attack, had made Onik smile to himself.
Part of him had envied them too.
That was one of the reasons Onik viewed Legal Hunter favorably.
Legal Hunter was a good father.
“We should use bows with low draw weight! We need to ask Master Bowyer to make new bows for play.
Ordinary people probably couldn't properly draw bows made with water buffalo horn, and they would be too powerful for shooting in a small course.”
“Low draw weight bows? Then couldn't we shoot the RC cars directly instead of the balls?”
“Hmm, I don't know... Even if we use low draw weight bows and arrows without points, the RC car bodies would break if they kept getting hit. If we're unlucky, one hit might crack one.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. Even if they are for play, they will be much stronger than toy bows. If someone got hit, they would probably bruise.”
“Then we need to prepare safety measures for the users first... And it would be good to reinforce the RC cars too. Let's test it later.”
“Okay! Anyway, the idea itself is really good!
We should go to the equestrian center and practice it sometime! Boss, please contact the equestrian center! We need to get permission in advance!”
“Okay! Leave it to me!”
That was how Legal Hunter and Onik came to bring several RC cars to the equestrian center.
The student riders' response after hearing the idea was explosive.
They had been eagerly waiting for Onik to return, and all of them raised their hands, saying they wanted to join in the new game.
The instructors asked that the horses first be allowed to get used to the RC cars so they would not be startled.
They had been told to cooperate with Onik again today, so they did not step in to stop it.
#
‘...They're having fun.’
Watching the wealthy student riders squeal and shout, Ju-won gave a dark, bitter laugh to himself.
‘There are less than three months left until the competition. Where do they find time to waste like that?’
It was now late January.
The domestic spring equestrian competition would be held in April.
Many of the wealthy student riders had already registered to compete.
They were not in a position to waste time hanging around with an entertainer country boy.
(Ju-won did not know it, but the provincial archery competition Onik planned to enter would be held around the same time.
If the people on the organizing committee, who were busy preparing for it, saw Onik playing here like this, they might feel not only dumbfounded but insulted.)
Ju-won's harsh thoughts cut more deeply into himself than anyone else.
Because the student rider furthest from competing at this equestrian center was Ju-won himself.
That was why Ju-won's bitter laugh soon became self-mockery.
Ju-won was now in no position even to find small comfort by laughing at others.
‘Why is a bastard like me so pathetic...’
Ju-won still could not shake off the fear caused by the accident.
Even riding a horse like this felt burdensome to him.
Naturally, he could not even think of trying the show jumping that had been his specialty.
His heart pounded and his breath became short even when he merely rode at a light trot, around fifteen kilometers per hour.
It was difficult to tell anyone else about these feelings and symptoms. If his parents heard, they would say many things he did not want to hear.
His father would probably say this.
“A man shouldn't say such weak things. The best way to overcome fear is to face it head-on. If you only avoid things because you're scared, nothing will improve.”
“That is what's wrong with young people in their twenties and thirties these days. They only want easy, comfortable work. They just keep getting weaker. They can't do their work properly, but they whine about why they aren't being paid minimum wage. If you want minimum wage, first learn everything and become capable of properly doing one person's work.”
And his mother would certainly scold Ju-won for being weak.
“How can you be so soft for a boy? You can fall while riding a horse sometimes! Besides, you did not even really fall, did you? That boy named Onik saved you! Stop being dramatic and do your work properly! I have no idea who you take after to be like this...”
In the end, the best thing was to waste time like this before going home.
If he put the horse in the stable too early, his parents would hear about it.
Even if Ju-won overcame his ‘weakness,’ there was another problem.
His assigned horse had changed because of the accident.
Horses were animals whose relationships needed careful attention. Once they came to strongly dislike a rider, it was very difficult for them to get along again.
(The accident had to be seen as the result of all the resentment the horse had built up from Ju-won's normally oppressive treatment bursting out at once.)
And in riding, people said skill was three parts while the horse was seven. A good horse was that important.
The horse's own ability mattered, but the harmony between horse and rider mattered just as much.
If their compatibility was good enough, even an ordinary horse could become a fine horse.
The replacement assigned horse Ju-won received after the accident did not work well with him at all.
Its basic ability was not especially good either.
It would not be wrong to say that Ju-won's chances of competing this year were practically ruined...
The closer someone came to suicide, the more their thoughts operated only in a depressed direction.
Ju-won glanced at the cheating boy riding his horse cheerfully.
He was a shining boy Ju-won kept looking at even though he told himself not to.
Despite the distance, it felt strange how often their eyes met, but it must have been his imagination.
It was as if Onik had been born to be the protagonist of this world.
Why would a boy like that care about someone as worthless as Ju-won?
Unless he felt betrayed over the blurring incident, perhaps.
‘Does a riding outfit really change a kid that much? He looks old money from any angle, while I look like some part-timer who showed up to ride horses.’
In a perfectly fitted riding outfit, his hair blowing in the wind, Onik looked like the child of some noble family.
And his harmony with Thunderbolt was so good that, with only another quarter of a year of training, they might reach the level of horse and rider moving as one.
Anyone who did not know the circumstances would think they had trained together for at least a year.
The cheating country boy clearly stood at Ju-won's opposite end.
The more brightly the country boy shone, the deeper Ju-won's heart sank into darkness.
With his heart devoured into blackness by the abyss, Ju-won could not even imagine himself speaking to that boy who glittered like a star.
His lies being exposed to his parents was as good as a certain future.
‘They're really going to tear me apart...’
How long could he put off the coming disaster?
The longer he delayed it, the greater his parents' anger would become, but he could not help delaying it either.
His parents now had great expectations for a boy named Onik.
When Ju-won thought of how much his parents would rage and shout when those expectations were shattered, he could not breathe and everything before his eyes went dark.
Ju-won did not have the courage to face that terrible future.
‘Wouldn't it be better to die before then? If I die and end everything, I won't have to suffer like this anymore.’
Once, after hearing news that a student at his school had died by suicide, Ju-won had casually said this.
“I seriously don't understand it. Why would someone die? If they have the courage to end their own life, shouldn't they just use that courage to live?”
No.
Now Ju-won knew his past self had been wrong.
‘That's it. People who die by suicide do it because living requires more courage than dying. Death is frightening, but life is more painful and more frightening than that. That is why they died.’
People who die by suicide do not choose death because they are stupid.
It is simply the most realistic choice for them, or the least bad one.
Having reached that realization, student rider Kim Ju-won was closer to suicide than ever before.
Sitting on the saddle as it swayed beneath him, Ju-won began making a concrete plan for suicide for the first time.
He was certain that no miracle would come to change his life in an instant.
The absence of hope was despair.
Despair killed people.
#
Onik looked for chances to speak with Ju-won, but he could not find an opportunity to slip away.
He had succeeded in completely shifting the student riders' attention, but that was all.
He also felt an overwhelming uncertainty that made him hesitate.
‘...I don't know. If that older brother thinks I am the cause of him being excluded, then how am I supposed to approach him? What am I supposed to say, and how am I supposed to talk it through? This is too different from what happened with Sera!’
If possible, Onik wanted to ask Teacher Lee Eun-jeong for advice.
He thought she would understand this sort of thing better than he did.
But he was not given a chance to do that either.
‘...! What is it? He suddenly got even darker! Why?! Why does he get darker while looking at me?! I haven't done anything!’
Ju-won abruptly grew so much darker that he now registered in Onik's senses almost like a living corpse.
Onik tried not to reveal his anxious feelings, and not to let the people around them notice that he was paying attention to Ju-won.
The wall of people around Onik was still there.
As he could do neither this nor that, time passed endlessly, until it was time for the equestrian center to close.
Seeing Ju-won leave the practice grounds while listlessly guiding his horse, Onik made up his mind.
He would just charge in without a plan.
‘Oh, whatever!’
After putting Thunderbolt into the trailer that had arrived and waited for them, Onik asked the hunter to wait a moment.
Then he ran after Ju-won at a speed faster than most horses could canter.
“Excuse me, wait a moment!”
Ju-won happened to be with his mother, who had come to pick him up.
The metropolitan city where Ju-won lived and this international equestrian center were far enough apart that traveling there and back in one day was burdensome.
It took at least three hours one way by poor public transportation, and nearly an hour and a half even by private car.
That was another reason horse riding was called an expensive sport.
This was the only equestrian center in the entire province with facilities for practicing every type of international competition.
Things were different from the capital region, where premium riding clubs stood everywhere.
So student riders in the province who seriously wanted to become athletes had to either pay 200,000 won for a round trip by taxi, or have a family member or employee with enough free time drive them in the morning and evening.
Unless they moved their entire lives closer to Seoul.
(There were also some student riders who attended schools in big cities and got by through sheer stubbornness on public transportation, or moved to nearby small cities to reduce the burden of travel.
They were the low-class riders Ju-won, with his poor upbringing, had treated as if they did not exist.)
Ju-won heard Onik call out, but he could not even imagine that it was meant for him.
But in the next moment, he had no choice but to turn around in surprise.
The cheating boy had called his name.
“Ju-won!”
As he turned his head, Ju-won wondered whether he was hearing things and seeing an illusion.
But even his mother's whispered, high-pitched exclamation as she turned with him could not be an illusion.
“Is that him? That kid called Jo Onik.”
“Uh... Yes. That's him.”
“Oh my... He looks far better in person than on screen. Is it because he is dressed up like that? He looks so elegant.”
Lately, Ju-won's mother had been watching Onik's broadcasts diligently.
She wanted to make sure she did not run out of things to discuss when she had the chance to speak with Mrs. Hwang Ha-rim again.
Onik ran over, stopped, and gave Ju-won's mother a deep bow.
It was natural to greet an adult first, but he also needed to buy time because he had run over without any plan at all.
“Hello! Are you Ju-won's mother, by any chance?”
“Yes.”
“It's nice to meet you! My name is Jo Onik!”
“Yes, yes. Nice to meet you, dear. Ju-won has told me so much about you that it hardly feels like I am meeting you for the first time.”
“Uh, really? He talked about me a lot?”
“Of course. A great deal. He said you and Ju-won are very, very close friends?”
Ju-won felt dizzy.
The moment when his countless lies would be exposed in the worst possible way had come.
When the frozen Ju-won instinctively looked to Onik, the boy seemed like a machine that had received a faulty input signal.
Looking closely, Onik's usual gaze, which did not look directly at people, held faint surprise and confusion.
“Um...”
It was not uncommon for victims of exclusion or school violence to lie to the people around them, especially their guardians, about their friendships.
Onik guessed that this was such a case and quickly recovered from his input error.
Then he smiled brightly and nodded.
“That is right! Ju-won and I are very, very close!”
Ju-won's eyes widened.
Thankfully, his mother's gaze was fixed on Onik.
Footnotes:
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