WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 109: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (109)
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#109.
Kim Ju-won, the high school student transported to another world, had grown fond of the window seats at Cafe Candy Box.
The seats were nice, for one thing, but he also wanted the “city people” who came to the cafe to see it.
To see how close he was with Onik and the people around him.
(The witness accounts that appeared one by one in Jo Onik’s fan community gave Ju-won, who devoted himself to egosurfing, a furtive sort of catharsis and hope.
Just as a certain thoughtful country boy had planned.
They say even Kim Jong-un from that northern neighborhood cannot resist egosurfing. People are all much the same, after all.)
It had long been a tradition in this country for high school students transported to another world to cause a ruckus, whatever the reason.
But Ju-won had neither the reason nor the ability to uphold such an old custom.
The mountain village in this other world, which he had only ever seen through a screen, was an incredibly peaceful place.
There was no king from a fantasy kingdom in this remote village, suddenly ordering him to defeat a Demon King.
There was no certain black-winged goddess, either, whispering through telepathy, “Can you hear me? My voice?” (A bitch.) No four evil gods and armies of Chaos threatening the Empire of Mankind.
And Ju-won was not a hero.
He had received none of the perks of being transported to another world. He had not even been given a status screen, the most basic of basics.
All he had been given was a new reality.
Yet Kim Ju-won, the kidnapping victim, was satisfied with it.
He had not been here long, but he found himself growing more satisfied every day.
That morning, Ju-won had opened a book under the excuse of studying, then rested his chin in his hand and stared blankly into space. Through the window, he saw the true protagonist of this other world riding a horse toward the cafe at an easy pace.
A fine crack ran through the leisure and contentment Ju-won had been enjoying in the sunlight.
‘...Jo Onik.’
When he had first heard Onik say that he was practicing riding through trackless mountain terrain, Ju-won had thought, ‘What kind of crazy nonsense is that?’
But Onik was putting his plans into practice exactly as he had envisioned them.
It shattered everything Kim Ju-won knew as a student rider.
And so Ju-won felt jealousy anew.
‘He really is free. He seems like a kid who can do anything he wants.’
Unlike the suffocating life kidnapped high school student Kim Ju-won had lived before being transported here, country boy Jo Onik’s life was not trapped inside a mold forced upon him by someone else.
He thought for himself, chose his own direction, and moved forward through his own strength and will.
Despite his young age, he was already living a self-directed life.
At least, that was how Ju-won saw him.
That shining independence kept making Ju-won feel small.
The fact that a bright child like Onik treated him with unconditional kindness also made Ju-won more aware of his own smallness.
That was why Ju-won’s manner toward Onik often carried a trace of sullenness.
It was a pathetic sort of sullenness he carefully held back around others, only letting it show timidly when the two of them were alone.
Ju-won himself knew it was not right.
But he could not help it.
Like a child throwing a tantrum, eight or nine times out of ten, whenever he was alone with Onik, he ended up wearing a cold expression.
The remaining one or two times, he tried in his own way to act differently.
Unfortunately, they were awkward attempts that failed every time.
‘When that happens, I don’t even know what expression I’m making. I don’t know what expression I should make, either...’
It felt somewhat like becoming aware of the position of one’s tongue.
「Wait. Where did I normally keep my tongue? Up? Down? Against my front teeth? If it was against them, was it my top teeth or bottom teeth? How much pressure was I using? It feels strange if I relax it completely, too.」
Forgetting the natural position of one’s tongue.
And forgetting what expression to make for someone who showed him kindness.
Did the two have some common ground?
The two seemed very different at first glance.
But by ordinary standards, they were alike in that both were things people did naturally without thinking about them.
In short, this inability to manage his expressions was one aspect of Ju-won’s emotional disorder.
A person’s emotions take root in instinct, then sprout and grow through learning and experience.
In infancy, one learns through interaction with one’s parents. As one grows older, one forms relationships with other people and matures emotionally.
Few people would fail to know that trust and affection play an enormously important role in such learning and experience.
This was no longer an age when people needed to study it academically to understand it.
But knowing and doing were always different.
Ju-won’s parents had continued emotionally abusing him without practicing what they knew, so Ju-won had never properly learned how to connect with others through positive feelings.
It was fortunate that he had been given a chance to learn, even now, through the kindness of a good country boy.
Still, learning something too late was always difficult.
People had developmental stages that came with particular ages and periods.
‘...People will laugh when they see my face.’
Whenever he failed to make a different expression around Onik or anyone else, Ju-won hurriedly lowered his head and hid his face.
That, too, was the result of accumulated learning.
Whenever he reflexively hid his face from the good country boy, Ju-won became anxious.
He was afraid that the country boy, who showed him unconditional kindness, might reveal that he disliked him.
Ju-won could not admit it, but the unconscious mind of the kidnapped high school student feared losing the kindness of the good country boy...
Fortunately, Onik had never shown displeasure even once.
Whether the older boy acted coldly toward him for no reason or not, the mature country boy always treated him with a smile.
Ju-won cautiously leaned on that kindness, but he truly found Onik difficult to understand.
#
Ju-won truly found Onik difficult to understand.
‘Why does he help assholes like that?’
The city people who accepted the good country boy’s invitation and came to the remote mountain village were, as a rule, people struggling through difficult, exhausting lives.
Onik often gave such people more than comfort.
“If anyone is really, really having a hard time, please write a short explanation and put it in the Help Letterbox in your room.
“Then Boss and I will send you a little rice or some side dishes!”
At the same time, Onik took care to protect the self-respect of those receiving help.
“We won’t use this as broadcast content! The letters are personal, so only Boss and I will read them, then burn them!
“So if you need help, please use the letterbox without worrying!”
Whenever Onik acted so kindly, most people who had rested in the mountain village and found comfort there responded in ways that remained within ordinary common sense.
They thanked the boy, admired him, and expressed affection for him.
Some even put money into the Help Letterbox, asking that it be used to help others.
But the fact that most people were like that meant there were occasional exceptions.
Gloomy people who could not mingle happily with others, whose faces showed resentment toward everything in the world and a sense of being wronged.
These exceptional people would make Onik and the others uncomfortable with sharp remarks and rude attitudes.
Like this.
“Then just give me money instead.”
“...Pardon?”
“I said give me money. You make plenty of money, don’t you? Rice and side dishes? How much could that stuff possibly cost? If you’re going to help people, then help them properly...
“Isn’t it a bit much to give someone a little food and act like you’ve helped them? Honestly, aren’t you just trying to go viral?”
Everyone else there stared wide-eyed at the outrageous remark, as though the speaker’s common sense and conscience had annihilated one another in a gigantic blast.
Ju-won, who had joined Let’s Play with Onik! under the pretext of being Onik’s friend, was the same.
Despite the baffled looks the others gave them, the owner of that twisted mindset did not stop saying awful things.
“Who do you think lets kids like you make money? It’s viewers like us!
“If you make money because we watch your broadcasts, shouldn’t you give something back to us?
“Am I wrong? Did I say something strange?”
“Excuse me!”
One participant who had heard enough raised their eyebrows.
“Could you stop saying crazy things? And what do you mean, ‘us’? You’re the only person here who thinks like that, you know?
“We’ve spent the whole weekend having fun together, eating and sleeping for free. We’re already really grateful, so what kind of insane bullshit are you talking about?”
The other participants joined in, shooting condemning looks at the person.
The person who had been spouting nonsense fell silent, but their face remained full of dissatisfaction and grievance.
“Everyone, please calm down! You shouldn’t fight!”
After calming the angry participants, Onik also held back Legal Hunter, who had been snorting angrily and about to step forward.
Then he comforted the shameless person sitting there with their lips pressed together, with the same kindness as before.
“I’m sorry, but we can’t provide help in cash.”
“Why? You don’t have any money?”
“It’s not about whether we have money or not!”
“Then what is it about?”
“Boss and I talked it over, and we thought there would be a lot of side effects if we started giving money. More people would ask for help even when they did not really need it, and more people would come with fake stories...”
“...”
“You use our official fan community, right?”
“...I do. That’s why I came here. You don’t take applications through comments alone anymore.”
“Then you know! There have already been more people making fake stories with AI lately, and it’s become a real headache.
“They even manipulate images, so it’s really difficult to deal with.
“Not long ago, there was even a post on another site called something like, ‘My review of farming freebies through livestream viewer participation,’ and it became a problem.”
“So?”
“Um, I’m asking you to understand.
“Giving help as money would make things more difficult, and giving larger amounts of help would cause problems too.
“Please. I’m asking you. Okay?”
The good country boy spoke with a gentle smile, his gaze slightly averted.
After hearing him, the shameless and thoughtless person turned their head away from the boy.
Not long after, they muttered pointlessly, “I should pack my things,” and returned to their room.
Ju-won truly could not stand the sight of that person’s sullen face.
His disgust grew worse because, to some extent, it looked like his own.
‘Fuck. This is fucking gross. Assholes like that are probably the ones posting those freebie-farming stories.’
Ju-won spent a great deal of time lurking in the official fan community for Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief.
He had once muddied the waters with a multiple-account clone technique, but these days he only lurked.
It was a community he had to visit anyway if he wanted to egosurf.
So he knew about most issues related to the broadcasts.
One of them was the Viewer Participation Freebie-Farming Incident, which had become a subject of negative attention on another large online community.
「[Best] Story time: I farmed freebies through livestream viewer participation lol (+214)」
The story was simple and disgusting.
The poster had used AI to generate a fake story, applied to Let’s Play with Onik!, been selected, taken various things from the innocent country kid, then sold them on a secondhand marketplace.
「Isn’t it fine to squeeze this much out of him? He’s a rich kid living a gazillion times better than me, a young man who’s been unemployed for three years.
The kid was so innocent. Had fun, ate well, and got a sweet haul of freebies too lol.」
When Ju-won had read the original post at the time, he had felt intense disgust.
Even though Ju-won thought Onik was a fraud whose outward appearance differed from what he was inside, and even though Ju-won himself had once written malicious posts and comments slandering Onik... he had become strangely furious.
So, for the first time in a while, Ju-won used anonymous alternate accounts and flooded the post with hateful comments.
The first comment he wrote was this.
「You fucking piece of shit, both your parents are dead.」
The more successful Onik and Legal Hunter’s broadcasts became, the more these fucking bastards increased in number.
There were also countless application comments and posts that showed signs of being generated by AI.
One of them stayed particularly vivid in Ju-won’s memory.
「Yes. As requested, I have emphasized the melodramatic atmosphere of the scene in which the mother runs away from home.
Since you said the streamer in question has no mother, this should make it easier for you to establish common ground.
Are there any other parts you would like revised?」
It was a post where someone had copied and pasted an AI response without even reading it once.
It was even more infuriating that they had not put in the slightest bit of effort while trying to deceive someone and dig into their painful memories.
(Much of that anger was hatred for his own kind.
Ju-won silently tried to insist to himself that he was different, but he was not shameless enough to neatly forget the hateful comments he himself had written before.
It was semi-automatic mirror therapy forced upon him by circumstances.)
On the other hand, Onik’s character was kind to an almost excessive degree.
They were complete opposites.
After the senseless viewer who had demanded help in cash left.
Onik checked the room where they had stayed, then came down the stairs with a rueful smile.
When the others helping with the cleanup turned to look at him, Onik hesitated, scratched his head, and spoke.
“Um, that person... did use the letterbox, at least.”
Mina, her eyes blazing, tried to snatch the letter from Onik.
But she was no match for Onik’s defense as he dodged this way and that.
Mina stomped her feet. They were stomps of pure frustration.
“Eek! Eeeek! Onik! Give me the letter! If you don’t, your big sister will cry!”
Onik stood firm, saying no.
But when Mina really did burst into a loud wail, he looked flustered and handed it over.
Mina had been crying bitterly, but the instant she snatched the letter, her tears stopped.
Then she sniffled, checked its contents, and looked utterly dumbfounded.
“Wow, this is crazy! I want to swear, seriously! Idols shouldn’t swear, but...”
The contents of the letter Mina passed around for everyone to see were incredibly brief.
「Help me.」
Apart from the clumsily scrawled words “Help me,” everything else was information for the delivery label.
Address. Contact information. Name.
How could someone lack such basic sense?
Ju-won came to understand perfectly what it felt like for someone’s way of thinking to be completely different from his own.
The last person to receive the letter as it passed from hand to hand was Sera.
Sera, who rarely looked serious, asked Onik.
“Onik. Are you going to help this person?”
Onik stood there uncertainly, looking a little troubled, then slowly nodded.
“Yes. They asked for help.”
Sera was speechless for a moment. Sorin, with none of her usual playfulness, spoke harshly in place of her older sister.
“...This is, this is not right, Onik. Why are you trying to help a crazy asshole like this?
“There are plenty of other viewers who need help. So why someone who barely even counts as a person...?”
Legal Hunter also chimed in, his face angry.
“That’s right! Miss Sorin is right about this! Onik, aren’t you angry? Everyone needs to know shame!
“Shameless lowlifes like this are not worth helping! Can’t you see that something is seriously wrong with that person?”
Onik, who had listened quietly, partially agreed with Sorin and Legal Hunter’s condemnation.
“Something is wrong... Um, that person certainly is not quite... normal. They seem very twisted and damaged in many ways.”
Then Onik said, “But...” and looked in turn at Legal Hunter, Sorin, Mina, and Sera.
“I’m curious. Was that person born strange from the beginning?
“Or were they normal when they were born, but became twisted while growing up in hardship, and had their heart damaged because life was too harsh?”
At the time, Ju-won could not understand why Onik was asking such a question.
‘Why does that matter?’
Whether they had been born trash from the start, or had been normal at birth but become trash after growing worn down by life.
Either way, they were still trash, were they not?
Why would he want to help a person like that?
Footnotes:
Freebie-farming renders a Korean online slang term for exploiting games, broadcasts, or similar activities for small material gains.
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