WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 19: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (19)

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‘That cowardly bastard...’

After being beaten by the most respected elder in both the village and the clan, Jo In-cheol, the Village Youth Association President, burned with an even deeper grudge against Yo-han.

It was an emotion dark enough to be called hatred.

‘A man his age, and all he can do is tattle? What kind of man can't put both balls on the line and face someone fair and square?’

Tattling was for eunuchs. Even the Korean word for it, gojajil, sounded as though it came from goja, meaning “eunuch.”

The Village Youth Association President heaped every curse he could think of upon Yo-han.

It never once occurred to him that his repeated misconduct had finally exposed him.

To begin with, the fake youth did not think what he had done was wrong. Nor could he accept that any of it was anyone's fault but Kim Yo-han's.

‘That unemployed bastard. Now that I think about it, he'd been scheming to take my place from the start!’

Looking back, much of the volunteer work Yo-han did around the village overlapped with the duties In-cheol should have carried out as the Village Youth Association President.

The fake youth, Jo In-cheol, decided that Yo-han, sneaky as a woman, must have harbored ill will toward him from the beginning.

Wasn't it with that filthy malice that he had slowly gnawed away at In-cheol's standing in the village?

Anyone who heard him would have been dumbfounded.

What could Yo-han possibly gain by taking the President of the Village Youth Association's social standing?

Yet there was no room in the fake youth's mind for such reasonable doubts.

Had he not been publicly shamed by the village elders he had lived among like family since childhood, then beaten as well?

That was undeniable proof that Yo-han had profited from taking his place.

Nothing but blind certainty filled the fake youth's seething skull.

It was the dark certainty that Kim Yo-han, that unemployed bastard, had been aiming for this situation from the start.

‘Yeah. I hated that bastard from the beginning. I just realized it too late...’

Human memory was easily distorted.

All the more so when belief, need, and will drove it. The fake youth, Jo In-cheol, went so far as to edit even his memories of the past, inserting hatred into them.

What he inserted was his present hatred, but to In-cheol himself, it had now unquestionably become an old hatred. This was the truth.

And so the hatred that had suddenly acquired a new history swallowed the time and events in his memories, growing into an ever larger tree.

Before long, In-cheol resented everyone.

The village elders who had been completely taken in by the unemployed bum's womanish tricks.

The local friends who had not defended him while he was being beaten.

Pastor Kim, Yo-han's father.

Even the vulgar female teacher, Lee Eun-jeong, who fawned over Yo-han despite his having nothing but a neat appearance and no respectable job.

The only person still free from the hatred that spread its branches without end was Onik, still just a child.

Of course, the fake youth felt more uneasy around Onik than before.

Onik, too, had fallen under cunning Kim Yo-han's spell.

Even so, the fake youth could not hate the village's only child, whom he had watched since infancy...

Thinking of that boy, strange in some ways but good to the core, the fake youth felt a sense of duty.

It was an adult's responsibility to protect a child.

‘If I leave Kim Yo-han alone, he'll surely ruin Onik too.’

Even as the Village Youth Association President who hated him, he could not think of anything Yo-han had done to negatively influence Onik so far. If anything, Yo-han had only been good for him.

Still, just because that was how things had been until now, where was the guarantee they would remain that way?

Kim Yo-han only looked like a gentleman on the outside. Inside, he was black as tar.

So it was practically inevitable that he would stain a child like a blank sheet of paper black.

Ironically, the fifty-six-year-old fake youth took part of a Sunday sermon he had overheard from Pastor Kim while passing by and used it to support his delusions.

‘They say the devil comes in the form of an angel, don't they? It suits Kim Yo-han perfectly. He hid that filthy, dark heart of his so well while pretending to be a good person.’

The fake youth thought he was the only one in the village who knew Kim Yo-han's true nature.

That meant it was up to him to do something about the bastard.

He hated everyone who had been deceived by him, but surely the real culprit was the one who should answer for the crime.

That was right.

He had to make Yo-han answer for it.

Having reached his conclusion, the fake youth shook as though he had come down with a fever.

The vision of the dark road he had seen on his way back to the village the day that whore of a teacher flaunted her disgusting kiss with that demonic unemployed bastard before him came alive again in his mind.

It was a road he had always traveled, familiar as anything, yet that night, a strange layer of silence had settled bleakly over the black asphalt...

The silence that had made him shudder now felt like a revelation.

That road.

To punish evil, the fake youth had to go to that dark, desolate road after the sun crossed the ridge, when mountain darkness seeped between the sparse streetlights and he could hide and wait for the devil without meeting anyone.

The excitement flowing through his veins was hot.

The fear filling his marrow was cold.

Cold sweat ran down his body between those two different temperatures raging within him. He hesitated again and again, but the Village Youth Association President acted.

There was one crisis along the way.

"I was wondering where you were going to use the trellis twine! It's still a long time before peppers, cucumbers, and pumpkins get planted in the fields!"

"Huh? Huh? Oh, this? Hahaha, hahaha. I just have somewhere to use it. Yeah."

"Where are you going to use it?"

"Uh, well, right. A greenhouse in the next village! I'm fixing the greenhouse of someone I know!"

"Oh... They don't have any trellis twine there?"

"That's what they said. They ran out of what they were using. Hahaha..."

"I understand! Thank you for telling me!"

Onik had appeared out of nowhere and made the fake youth's heart drop. His probing questions sent the fake youth's heartbeat racing.

To anyone else, it would have seemed like an ordinary exchange.

Yet the Village Youth Association President felt as though he had been interrogated.

Of course, there was no way that kind child had meant to interrogate him.

Even after sitting in the driver's seat, his hands and feet shook and his heart pounded so violently that, after passing Three-Way Intersection Church and leaving the village, he had to pull over on the shoulder to catch his breath.

He took harsh, irritated drags on his cigarette and went over their conversation.

‘I didn't say anything strange, did I?’

Only after replaying it several times and reassuring himself that he had handled it well enough could the fake youth calm the shaking in his limbs a little.

Even then, the small tremors did not go away. His hesitation deepened.

Back in the driver's seat, the Village Youth Association President looked at the sky.

There was still plenty of time before sunset.

He had meant to load his things in advance and leave around dusk, but the innocent boy's sudden appearance had flustered him so badly that he had already left the village.

‘...I'll go into town and have a drink.’

It was still cold out. A bottle of soju with hot soup seemed like it might settle his churning chest.

He would need the courage from drink for what he planned to do that night as well.

He did not care that he would be driving drunk later. It was something he did often anyway.

In a remote mountain village, a little drunk driving was not considered much of a fault. As long as no accident happened, it was fine.

At the gukbap restaurant he stopped by, the Village Youth Association President clenched both fists beneath the table.

The old woman who owned the place had humiliated him.

"Oh my, look at those bruises... I heard the old gentleman from the independence fighter's family in the neighboring village gave you a proper scolding, and it was true. Why would you do something so foolish at your age? Tsk, tsk."

"..."

"I won't charge you today, so warm your stomach and get your strength back before you go. Call for more if you want it. You have to eat well to get better quickly."

"...Yes. Thank you."

The rumor that had spread by word of mouth had reached even here. It meant everyone likely to hear about it already had.

He was too ashamed to hold his head up.

Until this happened, he had felt as though his life had finally entered its prime, so the emotional crash and sense of loss were all the greater.

His self-esteem, which had risen higher and higher thanks to new businesses opened through connections and his growing income, had been shattered overnight and cast into the abyss.

The fake youth ground his teeth.

His hatred had faltered as his hesitation grew, but shame became its fuel, making it boil hotter than before.

‘I'll kill him. That bastard, I'll kill him with my own hands.’

His appetite had vanished, and the fake youth did not touch his soup. With the earthenware bowl cooling before him, he only kept drinking.

The old woman told him that he would ruin his stomach if he continued, but he gave only a distracted "yes, yes" and slowly finished a bottle.

Naturally, the liquor did not taste good.

Still, the fake youth desperately needed its courage, so he sat there for four or five hours, drinking two more bottles until the sun went down and dusk fell.

Even the faded soju advertisement poster on the restaurant wall seemed to add to his misery.

The idol on the poster, whose heyday had ended more than ten years ago and who had since faded from public view, had once been the object of the fake youth's parasocial romantic feelings.

Back then, the Village Youth Association President had believed that one day he, too, would find love with someone beautiful like that. He had believed that one day he would have a family and live happily.

But what had become of him after all these years?

It was all Kim Yo-han's fault.

That wicked Kim Yo-han had brutally trampled the life that was only now about to bloom and scattered ashes over it.

As the fake youth left the gukbap restaurant with his resolve to kill renewed, a dark blue-black sky at the edge of twilight greeted him.

The boundary between sunset and night remained only as a reddish glow along the mountain ridge.

#

The dark road that had given the fake youth his revelation curved often along the contours of the mountains and valley.

At one such bend, beside a side road leading to farmland, the fake youth set a trap to catch the devil. He tied trellis twine between the guardrail posts on either side of the road, using them in place of stakes.

He did it more than an hour after the last bus had gone by.

The steel-core plastic trellis line, pulled taut and tied securely at a height that would strike around the middle of a motorcycle tire, was enough of a trap to kill someone.

After setting the trap, the fake youth parked deep down the side road that also served as a farm track, then waited for his prey while chain-smoking.

"Fucking bastard. He seems even later than usual today..."

The longer he waited, the more the alcohol wore off, and the courage it had given him faded with it.

The fake youth tried to stoke his anger by imagining the filthy things that cunning unemployed bastard and that whore of a teacher were doing together.

Still, no matter how hard he tried, he could not stop the thought from surfacing that perhaps he should not be doing this.

The Village Youth Association President agonized.

‘...Should I take the twine down even now? Should I?’

His body kept twitching, but it did not lead to action.

Hatred and fear, heat and cold, his heart and his reason held each other in balance.

He could only waver and waver again.

The fake youth even wished the waiting would never end.

But this waiting had a clear end.

That end came in the form of a light approaching from far away.

"Oh, fuck?"

Even when the moment he had waited for arrived, the Village Youth Association President froze with fear rather than joy.

The terror that there was no turning back now swallowed every other emotion in an instant.

Even the blaze of hatred that had refused to go out vanished at that moment as though it had never existed.

There was only one headlight approaching quickly.

Since there was not a pair of them, it could not be a car. It was a motorcycle.

At this hour, there was only one motorcycle that would travel this road.

From the Porter truck's darkened driver's seat, the terrified Village Youth Association President watched the light in the road with bloodshot eyes opened wide and nostrils flaring.

The moment the speeding light caught in the trap and flew upward, he screamed without realizing it.

"Ugh, ah, uuuugh!"

The motorcycle's airborne headlight somersaulted over the guardrail and fell down the slope.

The slope was not especially steep where it met the farmland below, but the motorcycle still carried the momentum from the road and tumbled violently.

The rider, visible only as a silhouette, must have fallen and rolled down the slope with the same force.

"Huff, huff..."

Clutching his chest in shock, the Village Youth Association President breathed harshly.

His pupils had dilated, thick beads of sweat ran from his forehead, and his hands and feet trembled more violently than ever.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

He sat blankly muttering curses for over ten minutes, not even knowing whom they were aimed at.

Though the alcohol had completely worn off, only after a stretch of time that felt like a blackout did the Village Youth Association President's mind barely regain enough function to work.

‘I have to go... check the situation. I have to... take down the twine too...’

Half out of his mind, the fake youth struggled out of the truck.

His shaking limbs made it difficult, but he had to check what had happened.

Kim Yo-han absolutely could not survive now.

If Yo-han said he had crashed after catching on something, the Village Youth Association President himself would surely become a suspect.

The Village Youth Association President had quite a distance to walk. He had parked the Porter truck deep down the farm track in case Yo-han saw it.

At the end of that long walk, Kim Yo-han was still alive and groaning.

"...Fuck."

The Village Youth Association President shook even harder.

"Motherfucker. Why d-do you wear all that protective gear so damn carefully? A-a grown man, scared of everything..."

That was right. As far as the Village Youth Association President was concerned, Yo-han was far too cowardly.

The protective gear was one thing, but if he had ridden like a man and really opened up the throttle, none of this would have happened.

He had ridden slowly, saying he was keeping a safe speed like some girl, and now this was the result.

"On an empty road, you should've been p-pushing a hundred kilometers an hour...!"

Just after grumbling that ridiculous complaint, the Village Youth Association President sucked in a breath and went rigid. His eyes had met Yo-han's through the cracked visor.

Though he had kept his distance so as not to leave footprints nearby, there was no mistaking the encounter.

The fallen motorcycle's headlight shone across the scene at an angle.

It was unclear whether Yo-han's gaze, full of pain, was asking for help or expressing hatred.

The Village Youth Association President clung desperately to that wish.

Please die.

Just stop breathing where you are.

Wouldn't it be easier for you if you went quickly?

"..."

Yo-han breathed with difficulty in the silence, his breath coming in thin gasps, then turned his eyes elsewhere.

His gaze wandered as though searching for something before stopping on his smartphone, which had fallen several meters away.

It was only a few meters, but for Yo-han, whose internal organs had been damaged by the impact and who had suffered fractures throughout his body, it was impossibly far.

Yo-han began to crawl desperately across the distance toward it.

Each time he moved, the distance between him and the smartphone shrank by half a handspan, a quarter handspan, or even less.

‘No.’

The Village Youth Association President was terrified.

Yet he only shook like an aspen in the wind. He could not bring himself to stop Yo-han because his feet simply would not move toward him.

His feet wanted to run in the opposite direction instead.

While he stood there, Yo-han kept inching closer to the smartphone.

Then, just as Yo-han's fingertips were about to touch its edge, a single timidly thrown stone landed nearby with a soft thud and rolled away.

"..."

Yo-han squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.

Pain and despair made him feel as though he would lose consciousness, but he could not give up here. His father and brothers, Eun-jeong, and Onik flickered before his eyes.

Stones continued to fly in. The Village Youth Association President could not give up here either.

His poor athletic ability, combined with how tense he was, made the stones miss again and again. Sometimes they struck Yo-han's hand or body.

But this was a fight overwhelmingly tilted in favor of the one whose body was intact.

Among the stones that came without end were some that struck the smartphone.

Each time it was hit, the smartphone slid down the gentle slope, slowly widening the distance Yo-han had to cover.

Yo-han's body, which had been moving more and more slowly as he chased after it, eventually stopped.

The Village Youth Association President swallowed hard and watched Yo-han anxiously.

"...Is he dead?"

With his heart racing and his mouth dry, he watched for another thirty minutes. Yet Yo-han showed no sign of moving again.

Unless he went closer, there was no way to know whether Yo-han had truly stopped breathing.

But even Yo-han lying motionless was too frightening for the Village Youth Association President.

He did not know whether the fear came from Yo-han or from within himself, but either way, he could not bring himself to approach.

One thing was certain.

Even if Yo-han was still breathing, if he left him this way, Yo-han would die. Blood kept flowing from wounds he could not see.

Only after watching for another hour did the Village Youth Association President finally move.

He retrieved the severed trellis twine from the dark road, returned to the Porter truck, then leaned against it with an empty mind and smoked cigarette after cigarette.

The cigarette butts scattered messily across the frozen dirt road showed the Village Youth Association President's state without a word.

The distant barking of dogs drifted from somewhere.

After finishing the last cigarette in the pack, the Village Youth Association President crumpled the empty cigarette pack and threw it away, then looked up at the sky.

A trembling murmur escaped his lips along with the smoke.

"...Good thing I didn't believe."

Kim Yo-han's God was not a god who protected believers. Wasn't it truly a good thing that he had not believed?

His mind was too numb to think of anything else.

He was so exhausted that he felt he might collapse at any moment.

Driving back toward the village beneath the setting moon in the deep darkness, the Village Youth Association President checked Yo-han's condition one last time.

Yo-han, visible through the car window, remained exactly as he was, unmoving.

Footnotes:

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