WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 27: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (27)

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The partnership between the frightening boy and the Legal Hunter continued to thrive.

Hunting was one thing, but Onik was an even greater broadcasting genius than the hunter had expected.

Onik had been reluctant to show hunting scenes that might cause legal trouble, but he actively cooperated when it came to appearing in broadcasts with other content.

Wouldn't earning more money let him do more for his grandfather?

Becoming too famous as an internet broadcaster would make it harder to go around killing people someday, but that was something to think about when the time came.

With all the self-loathing in his heart, part of him almost welcomed the thought.

It was a complicated feeling.

"Hello, viewers! It's Onik Uncle!"

Waving at the camera, Onik held up a pair of tongs and a collection box.

"Today, Chief and I are going to catch centipedes and make chicken stew! The village elders said centipedes are good for sore backs and knees if you make medicine or food out of them!

I don't think that's true, but lots of elders believe it, so we're going to make it anyway!"

Gathering ingredients in nature could easily become boring.

But Onik's sense for finding things he could kill took all the boredom out of it.

"One... two... three..."

Whenever the frightening boy raked through fallen leaves in shaded places or turned over a stone, revolting arthropods appeared without fail.

Centipedes tended to gather in places with good living conditions, so once he found one, the rest were not difficult to find.

More than anything, Onik had diligently gone around killing things he could kill, and things it was all right to kill, since he was even younger.

He knew exactly what lived where around the village, and when.

The Legal Hunter and the viewers did not know that, so Onik's effortless searching and collecting could only seem remarkable to them.

The hunter asked, "Uncle. How do you find them so easily?"

"By feel! I just get a feeling there'll be some around here!"

"Huh. That feeling again."

Feeling envious, the hunter smacked his lips.

If only he had that sense too, the one that worked so well for finding wild boars and water deer.

Before long, dozens of centipedes were writhing in the frightening boy's collection box.

"Centipede catching, done!"

"Good work, Uncle."

"It was nothing. It was easy. Should we show the viewers?"

"Why not? Ugh, they're disgusting."

When the hunter pointed the camera into the box, the live chat filled with half-joking, half-serious screams.

Then the hunter's smartphone chimed, and the TTS voice read out a viewer's question. It was about why the Legal Hunter called Onik Uncle.

(YouTube itself still did not have viewer-participation TTS at this point, so Onik and the hunter used platform integration and a separate third-party service. The hunter's daughter had helped them set it up.)

The hunter answered.

"You're asking why I call this kid Uncle? I've explained it a few times before, but I guess you're new here. Welcome! Ha ha!

To answer your question, he's from my father's generation when you go by family hierarchy. I only talk like this on broadcasts, though. Normally, I just call him by his name."

In this clan village, Onik truly ranked rather high in the family hierarchy.

For one thing, his great-grandfather, the independence fighter Jo Yang-jin, had children late in life.

He had written the reason in his memoir:

"Look at what the Japanese Empire is doing to the next generation of our people. To bear children in a country reduced to a colony is for parents to commit a sin against their children."

His grandfather, Jo Jeong-ho, had also had a late child. The reason was simply infertility.

Still, Onik had almost never been treated according to his generational rank, neither in the village nor at clan association and family meetings.

Jo Jeong-ho had strongly opposed it, worried that it might spoil the boy.

Sickened by the bizarre behavior of the son who had abandoned his grandson, Jo Jeong-ho had taken great care to raise him properly.

He had only allowed the boy to partner with that bad adult, Legal Hunter, because it was necessary if he hoped to send Onik to a desirable school district in Seoul someday.

Even with that background, the hunter had begun calling Onik Uncle on broadcasts as part of his effort to set the channel apart.

He had separately asked Jo Jeong-ho for permission.

The hunter thought,

'City people these days will probably find this kind of thing unfamiliar and interesting. And just calling him by his name would be a little boring.'

After collecting the centipedes, they moved to Onik's yard.

The village hall was larger and better for gathering the elders and serving them food, but the hanok where Onik and Jo Jeong-ho lived was a historic old house designated by the province as a heritage structure.

It was so remote that no tourists came by, but even across the entire province, there were only a handful of old houses this well preserved.

The outdoor air-conditioning unit behind the house was about the only flaw.

For the Legal Hunter, whose broadcasts followed a Joseon-era hunter concept, it would have been hard to find a better filming location.

The Legal Hunter looked at Onik with satisfaction.

'Bringing this kid in as a partner was the right call. Elder Jeong-ho seems sincere about wanting him to succeed too. Otherwise, borrowing this place would have been difficult.'

It was also nice that every time they passed through the main gate, the plaques for the House of an Independence Merit Recipient and the House of a National Merit Recipient naturally appeared on camera.

People were bound to feel a basic goodwill toward independence patriots and national merit recipients.

The image of Onik Uncle as the descendant of a patriotic family could only help.

(It was a secret that they also listed location-rental fees as an expense to reduce their taxes.)

"All right, I'll light the fire!"

Onik put firewood and tinder into a temporary stove made from clay bricks stacked in a circle, then struck a fire starter and lit it.

There was a reason they were making a fire outside instead of using the kitchen. The village elders, who had been notified in advance and were already waiting, needed to be included in the camera shot.

The Legal Hunter hung a cauldron over the stove and poured in water.

As he did, the elders seated on the wooden porch and raised platform chuckled at the camera.

"Are people watching this through that internet thing too?"

"Don't city folks have anything better to do? What's so fun about watching old folks like us eat?"

"It's not us they're interested in. It's Onik. He's so good at catching and making all sorts of things. It's both admirable and amazing."

"That 'camp-jail' or whatever French bread was good last time, wasn't it, old man? I spent my whole life in the kitchen, but that was the first time I'd ever seen someone bake foreigner bread in a cauldron. I've made rice-wine bread before, though."

"Not 'camp-jail.' Campagne."

"Same thing. It was so amazing."

Although they were trying a somewhat bizarre dish today, at least from a city person's perspective, the main appeal of Onik's cooking and eating broadcasts, which had accelerated the channel's growth, was novelty and variety.

With the full support of the Legal Hunter and his wife, Onik had adapted many Dutch oven recipes for the cauldron.

The sense that had helped him judge the heat of a brass brazier while assisting the Master Bowyer in making bows proved valuable here too.

Thanks to his first murder, that sense had become more sensitive than it had been then.

Starting with macarons baked in a cauldron, all kinds of dishes began emerging from Onik and the hunter's cauldron, including bouillabaisse, mille-feuille nabe, medovik, dongpo pork, xiaolongxia, and campagne bread.

Naturally, they had also made traditional dishes like spicy beef soup, pork-bone stew, beef connective-tissue soup with rice, and ox-head soup with rice.

As clips of those broadcasts spread through online communities, Legal Hunter's channel grew to forty-seven thousand subscribers in a short time.

The number of live viewers regularly exceeded a hundred. They had a high number of active viewers compared to their subscriber count.

That was still nowhere near the major channels that dominated the platform.

For the Legal Hunter, who had been a tiny creator for years, it was enough to make his heart swell.

Before Onik joined, he had exactly 869 subscribers. There had often been no live viewers at all.

If they maintained this rate of growth, they could pass one hundred thousand before the year ended, perhaps even reach two hundred thousand.

"Chief! We need to wash the centipedes, so bring over a basin! And scoop us some water too!"

"Okay!"

The hunter, whose concept was a Joseon-era hunter but whose title was that of a bandit chief, followed the boy's instructions.

The frightening boy filled the basin with water and dumped every centipede into it.

The submerged centipedes thrashed wildly, but the boy fearlessly put his hand in and stirred them around.

His sense for the possibility of death was quiet, so he had no reason to be afraid.

That meant the adult holding the camera had to be the frightened one.

Dozens of venomous creatures, grotesque in appearance, writhed together in a tangled basin.

It was only normal for one's hair to stand on end at the sight of a child stirring that basin barehanded.

"Ugh! Hey, hey, hey, hey! Be careful not to get bitten! If you get bitten, it'll be really bad!"

Onik doing something frightening while the hunter made a fuss was one of the channel's running gags.

Screaming like that also made viewers sympathize with him more.

Onik replied calmly, "Come on, it's fine. Why are you so scared?"

"Why aren't you scared at all?"

"I told you, it's fine. They're too confused to bite anything right now! Maybe if you put your hand right in front of them, but if you stir them this quickly, they can't bite even if they want to!"

"Oh, geez..."

The watching elders laughed aloud.

"Cheol-sang, how can a grown man be more scared than a child? Your balls are going to fall off at this rate, you brat."

"If they do, we'll give them to Onik and have him cook them."

"Oh my, thinking of taking your own balls and making health food for the elders. What a fine boy."

"I've eaten bull testicles and bull penis before, but I've never eaten human balls. Might as well try them now."

"You old men, how can you say such shameless things where city people can hear? Ho ho ho."

As viewers flooded the chat with strings of Korean consonants, the hunter hastily waved his hands.

"Elders! If you keep saying balls, balls, balls, this broadcast might get taken down! Please stop!"

By then, the waterlogged centipedes had stopped struggling and gone limp. Every one of them had drowned.

Quietly savoring those small deaths, the frightening boy changed the water several times and carefully scrubbed the centipedes with a toothbrush.

All the other ingredients were ready.

The boy put chickens already stuffed with glutinous rice and jujubes, fresh ginseng, green onions, garlic, and onions into the pot. Finally, he poured in the revolting arthropods and seasoned it with coarse salt.

While the centipede chicken stew cooked in the vigorously boiling cauldron, Onik showed the elders and viewers some tricks.

Setting the stage was the job of the hunter, who had prepared this content.

"Now then, what are we doing next! Do you remember when the candle-extinguishing challenge with a baseball bat was popular on broadcasts?

Baseball players did it, actors did it, and especially good old Guk-jin made it famous when he smashed everything to pieces! Anyway, today Chief Jo and Uncle are going to compete in that challenge!"

The Legal Hunter cultivated a bumbling image when he was with Onik.

He stuck thirty candles into a wooden stand fitted with long upside-down nails, then smashed them all with a single swing of his bat.

"Ha. Couldn't do it."

Onik, on the other hand, sprang into the air and extinguished every candle cleanly with a powerful full swing. The swing was exactly level with the ground.

The elders watching applauded in delight.

"That's Onik for you. He's got the makings of a great general."

"You're better than the grown-up."

"Elder Jeong-ho must be so pleased. His grandson is so brave and splendid."

Bringing the village elders into the broadcast did a good job of filling it with sound and reactions.

The Legal Hunter added to the atmosphere by acting far more excitable than his age would suggest.

"Wait! It's not over! Onik Uncle's Trick Show! Next up, putting out candles with a bow, chaaaaallenge!"

"Chaaaaallenge! Yay!"

They had started by calling it a competition, but that no longer mattered.

Mindful of his grandfather watching, Onik tried to appear even more cheerful.

He wanted to show that he was no longer trapped by sad things, to ease his grandfather's worries.

「Thwung!」

The arrow, fired hard with the bow tips snapping forward, extinguished all thirty candles burning in a row before embedding itself in the makeshift target opposite with a heavy thump.

Onik raised his bow high and made a lap around the yard like an athlete who had won a match. Then he stopped in front of the chuckling Master Bowyer.

"Viewers! Let's take a quick advertisement break!"

"All of a sudden?"

"This is the Master Bowyer who made my bow. He's an Intangible Cultural Heritage artisan recognized by the country, and he's really, really good at making bows!

If you're interested, ask in the comments! The bow he finished this spring still hasn't been sold! It's a luxury item, a luxury item! Limited sale, just 270,000 won!"

"Ho ho..."

After that, an axe appeared.

It was a throwing tactical axe from the Legal Hunter's private collection, unlike the Joseon axe Onik kept in his treasure vault.

"It's not over! Onik Uncle's Trick Show! This time, putting out candles by throwing an axe! Chaaaaallenge!"

"Chaaaaallenge!"

The Legal Hunter had a hobby of collecting tactical gear and clothes.

Being able to borrow from that collection after partnering with the hunter was an unexpected pleasure for Onik.

Dinosaurs were strange things that only high school girls who had just finished their military service would like.

Tactical gear, though, was ordinary stuff any man was bound to like.

When the boy holding the throwing axe raised both hands, the Legal Hunter followed suit and shouted the chant they had decided on together.

"Tactical!"

"Tactical!"

Then, without warning, the boy spun and hurled the axe sideways.

The flashing axe extinguished every newly placed candle without fail, then buried itself in the same makeshift target where the arrow had struck earlier with a loud thud.

Because of the axe's weight, the entire target shook violently.

No one noticed the boy's true feelings as he quickly let go of the sharp axe.

The frightening boy had been afraid that, in front of the elders, he might become absorbed in the alluring possibilities of that beautifully shaped tactical axe.

As always, Onik hid what he was feeling and made another lap around the yard amid the elders' cheers and the viewers' amazement.

Then the hunter made another fuss.

"It's not over! Onik Uncle's Trick Show! This time, putting out candles with a sling! Chaaaaallenge!"

It had become impossible to tell whether this was the hunter's broadcast or Onik's, but no one could deny that the broadcast was packed with content.

Any other streamer would have been worrying over how to fill the time until the chicken stew was ready.

The two spent an hour at high energy without giving viewers a chance to get bored, then finally opened the cauldron's lid.

Through the thick steam, the centipede chicken stew revealed itself.

"Wow."

"Ugh..."

Onik gave an exclamation of admiration, while the hunter let out a groan.

Blackened centipedes floated up and sank again in the currents of the bubbling green broth. To the hunter, it was an unspeakably grotesque sight.

"Maybe because of the centipedes, the broth is a light grassy green? That's interesting! Did their insides dissolve into it?"

"Interesting? Is that all you have to say about this?"

"Yes!"

"Ugh."

When the Legal Hunter shuddered, the elders started saying his balls would fall off again.

The hunter tried to stop the mischievous elders as he made another fuss.

"I'm the normal one, elders! He's the abnormal one!"

"Don't be so dramatic. There's no normal or abnormal when it comes to food."

"Ah, food depends on what kind of food it is!"

"You'll be punished for talking that way about food, you brat."

"The punishment is eating this..."

"Then you shouldn't have made it in the first place. You went out with Onik and made it yourself."

"Well, that's..."

"Just wait until you're older. When you get old, you'll understand how badly you start wanting things that are good for your body. You're still young, so you don't know how precious medicinal food is. Tsk tsk."

"...I'm old enough myself, you know."

Just as there was a generation gap between the hunter and Onik, there was one between the hunter and the elders.

The elders, who had eaten all manner of things during hard times, were unfazed by the floating centipedes. The hunter simply could not react the same way.

Onik was the strange one for reacting just like the elders even after seeing something like this.

Then came the eating broadcast in earnest.

After serving each elder a bowl of chicken stew in order of family rank, Onik and the hunter sat side by side before the camera with a low table between them and picked up their spoons.

"Thank you for the meal!"

"Uh... ugh... thank... you... for the meal..."

The boy who had handled the centipedes without a care had no hesitation about eating them either.

He was worlds apart from the Legal Hunter, who could not even bring himself to lift his spoon and chopsticks to his mouth.

The hunter could only sit beside him and repeat, "Wow. Wow. Wow," while watching the boy eat.

"How... how does it taste? The centipede, I mean."

"The centipede? Honestly, it's just okay! I don't think you eat it for the flavor! But the broth it made is pretty good. Try some!"

"Is it really... not disgusting? Not revolting?"

"I don't really know what's disgusting about it! The elders are eating it just fine too!"

"You're really amazing... Really amazing..."

"Hm... Is it really that big a deal?"

"It is that big a deal!"

The frightening boy's sense of disgust was much, truly much duller than other people's.

Why did people fear something and also find it disgusting?

The greatest reason was the instinct to survive. The next was further learning built upon that instinct.

When people did not understand what they faced, the uncertainty it contained might threaten their survival. That was why they came to feel fear and disgust.

The frightening boy could not help being different from other people in this regard.

He directly sensed the many possible deaths inherent in any given object.

So there was no reason for something as insignificant as a centipede to frighten him. No reason to find it disgusting, either.

In the realm of instinct, he was certain that it could not kill him.

That made the frightening boy a far better predator than even a certain British Mr. B, a world authority on consuming wild protein.

...Though he would not go out of his way to eat genuinely revolting things like that man did.

Still, Onik believed he was normal in this regard, at least.

Look. The “normal” elders were eating it just fine too.

Being normal was good. Thinking it was simply a matter of experience and learning, Onik smiled softly.

Footnotes:

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