WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 111: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (111)
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#111.
On the night the high school student abducted to another world was left speechless and defeated in his not-quite-argument with Onik.
Ju-won lay under a quilt in the largest room of the lower house, unable to fall asleep.
Memories of the day kept resurfacing in his mind, leaving him wide awake.
Clearest of all, and repeating again and again, was the kind rural boy's voice.
“I'll tell you again. There isn't anyone in this world who isn't worth helping.”
The utterly unreal rural boy had looked straight at Ju-won as he said it.
“You too, hyung.”
That gentle sentence, telling him that he too was worth helping, would not leave the troubled high school student's ears.
Ju-won sniffed.
He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but a tear he had missed slid down and dampened the pillowcase.
‘Why does a kid like that even exist...?’
It was an embarrassing thing he could not tell anyone, but Ju-won had often cried alone late at night.
He had many bleak memories of lying in bed as he was now, staring at the dark ceiling and shedding tears.
But these tears were different from every dark tear he had shed before.
At this moment, Ju-won was not crying because he was sad, angry, or in pain.
These were tears of emotional release.
The knotted mass of negative feelings built up inside his chest was slowly melting away, leaving behind a sorrowful, cleansing sense of relief.
The more Ju-won came to know Onik's goodness, the more ashamed he became of himself.
It was a shame that kept crawling into his conscious mind no matter how hard he tried to bury it in his unconscious.
Yet Ju-won did not find this shame painful.
He had begun to believe that at least Onik would not mock or hate him, even after seeing Ju-won exactly as he was.
It seemed Jo Onik was not a con artist after all...
‘I'm jealous.’
Ju-won envied Onik.
He envied Onik's talent. He envied Onik's good nature. More than anything, he was jealous of the warm people who cherished and loved Onik.
Still, he had no choice but to admit it.
Onik was a child loved because he deserved to be loved.
The warm people surrounding Onik had not simply been handed to him.
After tossing and turning for a long while, Ju-won finally fell asleep two or so hours later than usual.
And after struggling so hard to get to sleep, he had a truly unpleasant nightmare.
Not a frightening nightmare, but an unpleasant one.
In the dream, Ju-won was posting malicious comments on Onik's streaming channel.
It was a strange nightmare in which he watched his past self from a third-person perspective...
#
Im Seong-eung, the art-major physical-education teacher who taught art, health, gender equality and sex education, disability awareness, and physical education at the town middle school, carefully controlled his expression as people watched him.
‘Where am I? Who is this place? Why am I here...?’
An unprecedented kind of comprehensive experiential-learning program was underway on the grounds of his school.
Even though winter break had not yet ended.
There were an astonishing number of participating students, at least by town standards.
Nearly every student attending the town's elementary, middle, and high schools had joined.
Urban children temporarily attending through the rural study program mingled with the local children and laughed in peals.
They all seemed to be having nothing but fun with the varied hands-on activities centered on archery and horseback riding.
Normally, rural study programs during school holidays were so-called trial camps, where students stayed for one or two weeks before going home.
But the rural study program in this town was different.
The provincial office of education had designated the place some sort of AI-era Creative Development Education Pilot District, allowing even holiday rural study programs to have their duration stretched or shortened like a rubber band.
“This is desk-bound administration that ignores the burdens placed on frontline teachers!”
...It was hard to protest when the special allowance they received was so generous.
Just as when he had suddenly become the archery team supervisor, financial treatment rooted in capitalism proved powerful every time.
On top of that, the provincial office of education had promised to ease both administrative work and the burden of safety supervision.
“This time, through discussions with the provincial government! We have added a large number of field-trip safety guidance assistants to public-work projects in certain township and village areas! We even created new ordinances and education regulations related to it! Did we do well?!”
But that did not make everything easy. It brought burdens of its own.
No matter how many ordinances and education regulations they made, safety guidance assistants recruited from local residents could not fully replace existing professional field-trip safety personnel.
(Education regulations supported by ordinances had legal force, but they still could not override higher laws.
At best, they could add an official interpretation.
Therefore, field-trip safety guidance assistants employed through public-work programs could only serve in an auxiliary role. Still, they had some value as meat shields who could reduce teachers' responsibility if an accident occurred.)
Seong-eung thought:
‘This is all because of Onik...’
It was an accurate diagnosis.
Every recent change in the town and surrounding area was a domino effect set off by the small... no, enormous ball that Jo Onik had launched.
Eun-jeong's fame would not have existed without Onik either.
The changes caused by one extraordinary rural boy were combining with changes in the times to create greater and greater synergy.
The change in the times referred to shifts in the education market brought on by advances in AI.
The CEO of the world's largest semiconductor-design and artificial-intelligence company had said this:
“We must now redefine what it means to be intelligent. In the coming future, humans will no longer be needed to solve technical problems.”
“From now on, we must find people's value in their ability to read others' emotions, grasp unspoken context, and intuitively foresee the future. This is what I consider intelligence for the new age.”
“Creativity is the key. Those who can only follow standardized work procedures, cannot ask questions, and only learn passively will be the first to lose their jobs and fall behind in the age of AI.”
“You no longer need to study coding. An age is coming when anyone can communicate with AI in natural language and create programs. So anyone who wants to adapt to this new age must gain specialized knowledge in a particular field and develop the ability to think creatively.”
Almost no one took those words lightly.
Especially not parents already worried about their children's education.
AI could supply knowledge, but it could not supply creativity.
“What do I have to do to cultivate creativity in my child? They say that without creativity, they won't even be able to get a job and will just scrape by...”
In truth, the answer to that question had been known for a long time.
The easiest and most effective way to develop students' creativity was to have them combine a variety of physical activities with experiential learning.
Exercise itself activated neural cells in the brain.
There was practically no more effective way than exercise, especially aerobic exercise, to improve cognitive ability and lay the groundwork for better memory.
The reason most Korean student athletes did poorly at school despite that was simply that they did not study.
This was precisely a case of, “My child's smart enough, but they just don't study...”
(Of course, as with everything else, exceptions existed.)
Next, hands-on activities cultivated sensory and complex thinking abilities.
They stimulated the many areas of the brain that were not activated by reading books alone.
The experience of solving problems in the real world, rather than through words and numbers, also became a source of creativity.
Even with the answer already known, putting it into practice was another matter.
For one thing, public education had difficulty meeting the educational demands of the new era.
As an active teacher, Seong-eung knew exactly why.
It was also a problem many people had come to recognize through frequent news coverage.
“According to a Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education survey, nearly half of all elementary schools in Seoul conducted no experiential field trips at all last year.”
“During the same period, the number of schools that went on school trips fell by more than half, while the proportion that held training camps declined by a similar amount. The number of schools discontinuing every form of experiential field trip altogether is reportedly continuing to rise.”
“Elementary schools are said to be particularly reluctant to hold experiential field trips, even more so than middle and high schools. The greatest cause identified is the safety responsibility teachers are expected to bear.”
“Some schools have reportedly even banned ball sports such as soccer because complaints are filed whenever a student gets hurt.”
“A survey of active teachers by the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union found that 89.6 percent of respondents worried they might bear criminal responsibility if an accident occurred during an experiential field trip. Of those, 54.8 percent said their anxiety was extremely high, plainly demonstrating the seriousness of the problem...”
At a gathering where local teachers discussed the issue, an elementary-school teacher working in a higher-tier area, meaning a major city, said:
“If we control the children, they call it abuse. If we leave them alone, they call it neglect. And if an accident happens, they tell us to take responsibility.”
“Even when we provide safety education beforehand and supervise them on site, it is hard to avoid punishment. Even if we're lucky enough to avoid it, the long court battle leaves us physically and mentally exhausted.”
“So who would want to do this? Of course people try not to.”
Yet schools in rural and fishing regions were relatively free from this problem. Teachers had fewer students to supervise, so the burden was lighter.
This was even more true in regions threatened with extinction because of population decline.
Just look at the town elementary school.
Before Jo Onik, the strongest graduate in its history, launched an unprecedentedly large ball, the school had nearly as many faculty members as students.
Had Onik not held a lonely graduation ceremony all by himself?
Some other elementary schools in the county had not even had a single graduate.
There were too few students for group sports such as soccer, but that made the environment well suited to experiential field trips.
For that reason, rural study programs had recently become increasingly well known among parents in major cities.
The more parents prioritized creativity education for their children, the more seriously they considered rural study programs.
“Isn't this completely different from when we were kids? Does it make any sense that if a child wants to play soccer, you have to send them to a soccer academy, and if they want to play basketball, you have to send them to a basketball academy...? Schools should at least provide the minimum amount of physical education...”
“At this rate, it'd be better to send them to a rural study program. In Seoul, it's hard to go on an experiential field trip even once a year, but apparently some rural schools go once a week. The quality is far better too. They say creativity develops better in a natural environment than in the city...”
“It is burdensome that at least one parent has to go with them, but we should be willing to do that much for our child's education.”
Among such parents, the rural study programs at Eun-jeong's elementary school and Onik's middle school were treated as premium programs on an entirely different level from those elsewhere.
The competition rate for this winter break's short-term rural study program was an astonishing 349 to 1.
Given the total capacity, that meant parents numbering in the tens of thousands had competed for places.
To study at schools in this backwater town.
And a considerable proportion of those parents were subscribers to Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief.
Since these parents did not hide that they were subscribers and fans, the teachers knew enough about the situation.
Some teachers were grateful simply for Onik's existence.
“It feels like he gave us the illness and then the medicine, but still, thanks to Onik, it's easier to deal with parents.”
Without Onik and Eun-jeong, a rural study boom in this isolated town would never have happened in the first place.
The only two advantages of teaching in the countryside were the small number of students and a reasonably comfortable work-life balance. Since those had been taken away overnight, it was no exaggeration to say Onik had given them the illness.
But considering the substantial extra allowances and performance bonuses, the career opportunities they could never have imagined in the countryside, and the easier student management and parent communication made possible by Onik, gratitude had to outweigh resentment.
Onik even sometimes helped plan the experiential-learning curriculum.
Today was no exception.
The horseback-riding experience program that came to the school had been arranged by Onik's older business partner. The fact that Legal Hunter had received a referral fee from the operator was a secret known only to the operator and the hunter.
The low-poundage bamboo bows and blunt-tipped arrows needed for the archery experience had been made by the elderly Master Bowyer from Onik's village.
Parents who had chosen rural study because of Onik and Eun-jeong tended to respond positively to any experiential-learning program involving the two of them.
Naturally, they were that much more cooperative.
But other teachers were worried.
“It is good for now, but what happens after Onik graduates? Won't things become harder then? I have a bad feeling that if Onik leaves, Teacher Lee Eun-jeong at the elementary school may leave too...”
The average time teachers spent at the same school in rural and fishing regions was about three years.
If they transferred in line with that average, the middle-school teachers currently employed did not need to worry about what would happen after Onik graduated.
Several of them were nearing or had already passed their third year.
The problem was that the teacher shortage in rural and fishing regions was growing worse by the day.
Schools in Seoul and the capital region lacked teachers in the short term because they had many students, but rural areas simply lacked teachers in absolute numbers.
Even if teachers transferred to another school, unless they had accumulated enough points, the reality was that they would simply keep cycling through rural schools.
#
The worried teachers, including Seong-eung, considered whether they should remain at the same school for a long time.
Whether they should follow the example of Lee Eun-jeong, the English teacher at the neighboring elementary school.
For the time being, the provincial office of education seemed determined to keep the current teachers in their positions for as long as possible...
‘Ha, damn it. I heard there are even fewer teachers in the province's rural and fishing areas than last year...
Unless I leave the province entirely, I could end up with even worse conditions if I transfer to another school at a time like this...’
There were combined classes, where several grades had to be taught together in one classroom.
There were also out-of-field teaching assignments, where teachers had to teach subjects outside their specialty.
All the teachers in town, including Im Seong-eung, endured both harsh conditions. But there was an even worse one.
It was being an itinerant teacher, required to travel among several schools to teach children.
The true worst case was teaching combined classes as an itinerant teacher in a remote mountain village while also teaching outside one's field.
If the subjects assigned outside one's field changed or multiplied as well, that was truly the finishing touch.
‘Ugh, I hate it... But it's not like I can just write a resignation letter and quit...’
To avoid such a dangerous roll of the dice, quite a few teachers simply stayed at one school for five full years, then tried for a transfer outside the area under better conditions.
(The town elementary school's mathematics teacher, Song Gyeong-a, fell into this category.)
Teachers hired from the beginning through region-restricted recruitment could not transfer outside the area at all.
They were in the sad position of being unable to leave their appointed region until they had fulfilled their mandatory service period.
(The art-major physical-education teacher, Im Seong-eung, unfortunately fell into this category. His certified-teacher training score was not particularly good either. Sob, so sad...)
The provincial office of education actively played upon the feelings of teachers like these.
“Teachers. Since things have turned out this way, how about staying at your current schools for as long as possible, like Teacher Lee Eun-jeong?”
“Of course, it will become difficult if the number of rural study students rises and experiential field trips increase accordingly... But once we expand the foundation further and the system settles in, it will be fine. We will provide ample support as well, whether materially or administratively.”
Wanting to strike while the iron was hot, the provincial office of education designated the town's elementary, middle, and high schools together as a creative-education pilot school. It wanted to raise teacher morale while preventing an outflow of personnel.
Things were going better than they could have hoped.
If a site was already running smoothly on its own, the wise decision was to preserve that state as much as possible.
Naturally, politicians in the province who dreamed of extending the lives of their electoral districts and raising their approval ratings were enthusiastically supporting this decision from behind the scenes.
Under provincial-office regulations, creative-education pilot schools were classified as research schools.
A research school was a school designated by the superintendent of education to study experimental educational policies, processes, and methods for up to three years, then distribute the results.
Designation as a research school required unanimous approval from the teachers employed at that school.
Alongside additional allowances, the provincial office of education dangled promotion bonus points available to those employed at research schools.
“Teachers! Look at this! If you agree to research-school designation, you'll earn a whopping 0.0006 promotion points every day! That's 0.018 points in a month! An incredible 0.216 points after a full year! Wow! That's truly amazing!”
It sounded like mockery, but it really was amazing.
It was the same score given for work experience at schools in remote mountain regions with inconvenient transportation, categorized as rural and fishing Region B.
Simply put, it meant a double-experience-points event had begun.
They had even opened up the level cap further. Each category of bonus points had a maximum limit.
...In truth, research schools were not always appealing to ordinary teachers.
In many cases, research schools sacrificed regular teachers and students to create visible results.
Normally, only teachers obsessed with promotion, transfers to better positions, or career management welcomed research-school designation.
But this time was different.
All the provincial office of education wanted was to maintain the status quo.
“Ah! The mood is great right now! Let's just keep things going like this, everyone!”
The provincial office of education only wanted the current upward trend in rural study enrollment in the town to continue.
That was also the wish of the provincial governor and county council members.
“You don't need to do anything especially grand just because you're a research school! You only need to hold experiential field trips a little more often and with a little more variety! We will create a dedicated support team within the office of education and the education support office, providing one-stop support for both educational-program planning and administrative work! Wow! No administrative burden either!”
With the provincial office of education going this far, the teachers could hardly vote against it.
Of course, the public officials assigned to the dedicated support team were wailing.
Had they not suddenly been made to prepare hundreds of official documents every month in place of the teachers, share responsibility for them, and then handle a great deal of complaint response on top of that?
But their wailing could not stop the authority spell of those lofty decision-makers.
“Push It Through.”
When the matter was discussed at school, the art-major physical-education teacher had honestly wanted to oppose it.
He worried that strengthening experiential field trips might create burdensome work for him as the archery team supervisor.
But...
‘If I oppose this here, they might brand me a troublemaker and “deal with” me.’
It was never easy for ordinary teachers to voice opposition in discussions like this. It was a face-to-face meeting, not a secret ballot.
When the timid art-major physical-education teacher cautiously looked around, the principal and vice principal were staring at the teachers with eyes that gleamed fiercely.
Their fierce gazes seemed to warn the physical-education teacher:
“The moment you vote against this, I will throw your performance evaluation into the abyss.”
That alone made the fainthearted art major shrink back completely.
‘Eek. Scary.’
Even Seong-eung, merely an ordinary teacher, had heard that this was a matter drawing the attention of high-ranking figures in the provincial office of education, the provincial government, and the provincial council.
In other words, there was no knowing what disadvantages he might quietly suffer if he became a marked man here.
When the research-school designation passed by unanimous, though not truly unanimous, consent, the art-major physical-education teacher prayed inwardly to every god he could think of.
‘Please don't let me become the lead research teacher.’
Fortunately, this prayer was granted.
Another teacher aggressively promoted themself and seized the lead research-teacher position.
That teacher had long watched Seong-eung with displeasure, believing that he had become the archery team supervisor through slapdash administration without even completing archery-coach training, while effortlessly gobbling up promotion bonus points.
The art-major physical-education teacher had secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Being responsible for an archery team, something he had never imagined he would do, already weighed heavily on him.
‘Onik. Teacher is trusting only you... Teacher is hopeless... I don't know anything about professional training... It's already overwhelming just handling archery experiential learning like this...’
If, by some chance, truly by some chance, his only athlete put on an abysmal performance at the provincial archery competition this coming April...
Seong-eung was afraid merely to imagine the humiliation he would suffer afterward.
#
Despite the provincial office of education's enthusiastic defense of the status quo, one teacher at the town elementary school had applied for a transfer outside the area.
That teacher's name was Song Gyeong-a.
She was a mathematics teacher, and the only staff member who disliked both Eun-jeong and Onik.
Footnotes:
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