Incarnation of the Malevolent Star - Chapter 29

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 29: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (29)

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The first thing that made the frightening boy take an interest in fated love was an action romance movie he happened to see in town.

「A fated love that completely transforms a killer's soul!」

The movie poster pasted to the outside wall of the quiet local specialty shop was utterly ordinary.

The characters, the setting, and even the promotional line hinting at the plot were all utterly ordinary. It was nothing more than a typical B-movie poster.

Yet the frightening boy, who longed for normality, found himself rooted to the spot by that ordinary line.

The idea of a love that could completely change a killer's soul stirred something in him.

"What? Onik, you're not hunting today? Why? Ah, you want to see a movie? Tsk..."

Legal Hunter could not hide his disappointment at the sudden news that Onik would be taking the day off.

Whenever Onik took a day off, at least a million won in expected earnings vanished.

Still, in the relationship between the frightening boy and the bad adult, the one with the upper hand was always the boy.

The hunter might have been a bad adult, but he was not a foolish one. He was not stupid enough to pressure Onik out of short-sighted greed.

Besides, he was one of the village adults who cared about Onik.

"Ah, what can I do? Call me when the movie ends. I'll come pick you up then. Enjoy the movie!"

Lately, Legal Hunter had been volunteering as Onik's chauffeur. It was a good way to earn points with both Onik and old man Jo Jeong-ho.

The small cinema, built during the Lee Myung-bak administration, was on the second floor of the specialty shop.

It had two theaters, each with forty seats.

It was small but clean, and its sound system was no worse than that of the big theaters in the city.

The seats did not rise much from row to row, though, so the heads of people in front easily blocked the screen.

The film was rated for ages fifteen and up.

Onik went in anyway.

The cinema was run on a small scale by local residents with national and provincial funding, so they tended to let a lot of things slide.

"Oh dear. This movie isn't selling tickets at all. Looks like you'll have the whole theater to yourself."

The woman managing both the ticket booth and concession stand did not think much of it.

"Would you like some popcorn? If you buy it now, I'll give you a large for the price of a small. It's been sitting around too long. At this rate, I'll have to throw it all out and make a fresh batch."

"Then I'll have a large popcorn, please!"

"What about a cola?"

"A large cola too, please!"

"...Here you go. Try not to spill it, if you can. Cleaning is a pain."

"Yes! Don't worry!"

As the woman had said, there was no one in the theater when Onik entered a little early with his popcorn and cola.

No one else came in before the advertisements ended and the movie began, so Onik truly had the theater all to himself.

「Rat-a-tat-tat! Tat-tat!」

Was it any surprise that it was exactly what he expected?

The action sequences at the heart of the film did not go beyond the usual repertoire of a B-grade action movie.

They were conventional, but there was nothing new about them. And because there was nothing new, it was the sort of film ordinary viewers would see as nothing more or less than a way to kill time.

For the frightening boy, it could only be one incomprehensible scene after another. To a boy born with the talent of a natural killer, every flaw in the action sequences stood out plainly.

Onik crunched popcorn as he stared blankly at the screen.

‘If they fight like that, of course they'll die...’

Naturally, Onik had never handled a firearm in real life.

Still, through his usual hobbies online, he understood plenty about the potential of guns as tools for killing.

That understanding was carved into the dark instinct at the root of his frightening talent.

How firearms should be used in an actual gunfight.

How armed people should interact as enemies or allies, and what needed to change depending on the environment.

Because of that, Onik's immersion in the fight scenes was shattered in nearly every scene.

Whenever the protagonist did something that should have gotten him killed.

Whenever bullets fired by the enemies missed unnaturally, creating the so-called Stormtrooper effect.

And whenever both the protagonist and his enemies did something unbelievably stupid, or performed actions that looked stylish but had no real purpose.

‘...This is why I don't really like action movies. How can the world's greatest assassin be that clumsy?’

He still liked action films and war movies that pursued extreme realism.

Even those had at least a little staging done purely for show, which bothered him.

In the dark theater, the protagonist of the film Onik watched alone was supposedly a legendary assassin who had operated all over the world.

If the entire movie had been filled only with the sloppy action of an assassin who did not live up to that premise, Onik would have felt he had come for nothing and wasted his time.

Yet the movie had parts that were definitely good.

For one, the actors' performances, apart from the action, were excellent.

The emotional threads revealed through those performances were good as well. The relationship between the protagonist and the heroine might have been conventional, but it was delicate and beautiful.

The protagonist said:

「I am a man burdened with sin...」

「You cannot even imagine how much blood I have stained these hands with.」

「I have spent my whole life killing people. I have lived luxuriously by selling the lives of others. Though I knew in my head that it was sinful, in my heart I took pride in it.」

「I believed that human beings were creatures who went through life committing sins.」

「That was why I liked it when people feared me.」

「I was satisfied when criminals living in the same world as me looked up to me with respect and fear.」

「Whenever one of my bullets blew someone's head apart, whenever a knife I swung pierced someone's heart, I felt a thrilling sense of accomplishment.」

「The more my secret reputation grew, the more I thought myself an extraordinary man. I looked down on ordinary people.」

「Those people who lived without knowing how precarious their daily lives were, how easily their lives could be destroyed by evil people like me... They looked weak, foolish, and ridiculous to me.」

「I rationalized that it was only natural for the weak to be killed and robbed, and I lived a life of killing and taking whatever I pleased.」

「I confused cruelty with cool-headedness.」

「I believed ruthlessness and resolve were the same thing.」

「I believed that cruel, ruthless violence was the greatest strength a person could possess, the strength they had to possess in this world.」

「...Not anymore.」

「You opened my eyes.」

「Through you, I learned how precious and beautiful the lives of those ordinary people were, the lives I traded away for filthy money and meaningless fame...」

「Because I came to love you, shining within your ordinary daily life.」

「This belated understanding pains me.」

「When I stand before you like this, I become someone who wants to hide away in the darkness I have lived in. Someone who wants only to hide my filth. Because I know how all the filth I took pride in will look in your eyes...」

「Even so, if you accept my heart, I want to share an ordinary life with you... A life beautiful because it is ordinary.」

「After I clear away the filthy obstacles standing in our way here and now, making that the last filthy thing I do in my life.」

The lines had been divided across two or three scenes, but even put together like this, they did not feel out of place. That must have been the screenwriter's intention.

What especially struck Onik about them was the power of the word that kept repeating from the protagonist's mouth: normality.

To other people, those words might have sounded insignificant.

But for a boy carrying a worry that might not end until the day he died because of an ominous abnormality he had been born with against his will, they inevitably resonated with him differently.

‘...People often say love is a great emotion.’

Stories of love completely changing a person filled the world.

Heartwarming stories of people overcoming hardship and adversity through love were also easy to find.

Some had surely been invented to teach a lesson, but there were even more real examples.

So he could not deny the power of love itself.

Many religions and countless philosophies say that love is the noblest and greatest emotion.

They teach that it is a beautiful power that can change a person's life.

A wondrous power that overcomes the fear of death, makes the impossible possible, and makes people offer up their own lives for others.

Gods love, and humans love.

The goodness of gods and the goodness of humans both come from love.

Onik watched the credits scroll across the screen and thought deeply.

‘If love is an emotion with such great and powerful strength, then maybe my abnormality is also a problem that love can solve? Maybe someday, fated love will come and turn me into a normal person?’

From that day on, Onik began seeking out and devouring stories of true love that completely transformed a person's soul.

Movies were fine. Dramas were fine. Comics and novels were fine too.

He even carefully clipped and saved true stories.

His efforts to find works that met his conditions were not always successful. It seemed like a common condition, but it was not quite as common as it appeared.

He was often lured into duds by cleverly misleading advertisements.

「The fierce love and war of thirteen British aristocrats with elegant and refined tastes.

And the moving story of a visually impaired person who, after struggling for survival amid that violent storm, finally realizes what true love is and steps into a new life!」

「Number one in domestic romance sales for twenty-four consecutive weeks! Glowing praise from critics pouring in from overseas!」

「Elmstead: She was the woman who would become my mother. 5/5 ★★★★★」

「Medcrux: A human form painted against the wonders of the universe. 5/5 ★★★★★」

「Rotherfield: The beauty of truth revealed through the naked human body. 5/5 ★★★★★」

「Shabbington: Love blooms even in the filthiest place in this world. 5/5 ★★★★★」

「There has never been a more colorful and beautiful love story! The greatest K-romance novel, 『Imperial Hunter』! Read it now!」

Onik had been lured in by a trashy advertisement that technically did not lie, then ended up reading a grotesque novel full of deviant sexual desires. He felt nauseated.

‘Ugh, disgusting. What kind of true love story is this?’

If this garbage was number one in the romance genre, the country was surely headed for ruin.

Onik swallowed his sigh and wrote an objective, cool-headed review without emotion.

「Onik: The author who wrote this novel is a fraud. We need to find the author and give them a scolding. Absolutely.」

Except for times like that, when false and exaggerated advertising deceived him, every story about true love, whatever it was, made Onik ache with longing.

Before long, a firm preference and an earnest wish took root within him.

‘I hope truly fated love comes into my life. Ordinary love probably won't be enough to fix me...’

The more new and moving love stories he encountered, whether fiction or nonfiction, the stronger and clearer the wish of the lonely boy who harbored self-loathing became.

‘If I could have a love that would seize my whole soul and make me forget all the bad impulses inside me... Then I could probably live normally too.’

That was why he could not accept the shy confession a third-year upperclassman offered him.

Onik, who was friends with everyone, knew this upperclassman well.

She was pretty, kind, and diligent, all in an ordinary way.

That was why, to the strange boy who longed for normality, she looked even prettier and lovelier than her appearance alone would suggest.

But that normality did not seem capable of curing the sickness in the strange boy's heart.

She did not seem capable of understanding the boy exactly as he was, either.

Suppose he accepted her confession.

Then Onik would have had to face her while always wearing a mask.

If that mask slipped even once and his identity as a vampire was exposed, it would hurt both the vampire and his upperclassman.

What had that ordinarily kind upperclassman done to deserve dating a vampire who hid his identity?

So it was not that Onik deliberately tried to avoid ordinary love.