WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 3: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (3)

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At first, old Jo Jeong-ho had not been pleased about his only grandson hunting feral dogs. It was dangerous.

No matter how nimble he was or how skilled he was with a sling, what child would volunteer to kill a pack of beasts dangerous even to adults?

Still, there were several reasons the old man allowed his grandson to do it.

For one, in this isolated village nestled between the foothills, the threat of feral dogs and other wild animals was not something one could escape simply by wishing it away.

All kinds of animals came and went through the abandoned houses scattered everywhere and the fields.

Anyone wishing to avoid an unfortunate encounter with dangerous animals had no choice but to stay shut inside all day. This was especially true lately, as feral dogs had been appearing more and more often.

According to what the public officials said, the density of feral dogs in this area was among the highest in the country.

Yet when the villagers asked the authorities to capture them, they received only the same answer: there was not enough manpower or funding.

The environment here was entirely different from the big cities, where the news made a great fuss whenever even one wild boar appeared.

The villagers, most of them elderly or infirm, could only resent the irresponsible dog owners who kept abandoning their pets.

By now, the feral dogs had bred among themselves so many times that even if no more dogs were abandoned, there was no stopping their numbers from growing.

“Those wicked people probably never even think about how they’re putting human lives at risk. For old rural folks like us, it’s truly a matter of life and death...”

“It’d be better if they did something about all those guesthouses and campgrounds.”

“Would that be enough? They ought to stop city folk from coming here altogether.”

“The law is too far removed from reality. What kind of nonsense is it to say you can’t kill a dog when people could die...”

“Tsk, tsk. This village is becoming harder and harder to live in. It was already a village that would disappear on its own someday. Even now, there are empty houses everywhere.”

In such an environment, Jo Jeong-ho found it difficult to force his lonely grandson to stay locked inside the house.

It would have been cruel for a guardian to do, and in a village without a single child his age, cruel in another way as well.

Once someone encountered a pack of feral dogs, turning their back and running was nothing less than suicide.

The moment one showed their back, they became prey.

Standing firm and intimidating them, or slowly backing away, were responses fit for a tall adult.

Even those methods did not work well when the feral dogs were in a pack.

So perhaps it was fortunate that Onik had the ability to beat feral dogs to death. The boy’s legs were unusually strong, and he could run faster than most dogs.

Another reason the old man did not stop his grandson from hunting feral dogs was his desperate wish for the shy child to grow stronger.

One thought always lingered in a corner of his heart.

‘How much longer can I live?’

After he died, his grandson would truly be alone.

Whenever he managed to contact his son, who worked aboard ships, he had pressed him, coaxed him, and even begged him. Yet that worthless bastard had never once shown his face to his own child.

It was difficult to expect that wayward son to properly act as a parent even after his own father died of old age.

So he wanted his grandson to grow sturdy and strong.

Sturdier and stronger than any other child.

Strong enough to keep moving forward alone without leaning on anyone, even after losing his only guardian.

‘This world is a jungle.’

Jo Jeong-ho, a Vietnam War veteran, had seen the naked face of the animal called man in the tropical jungle. He had seen how cruel and how evil a person could become toward another person.

This world was a harsh jungle full of such frightening beasts.

That was why the standard of strength and toughness that a grandfather who had lived through a brutal war expected from his shy grandson was far higher and harsher than that of ordinary grandfathers.

There was another reason as well. All his life, the old man had taken pride in his father, independence fighter Jo Yang-jin.

Onik's skill with a sling.

His nimble body and remarkable strength.

Even the boldness to face dangerous beasts without fear.

The old man’s grandson had clearly inherited the blood of his great-grandfather, independence fighter Jo Yang-jin, in abundance.

A child like this would be capable of surviving the harsh world alone if he fully developed the gifts in his blood.

To the old man, it felt as though the spirit of his long-dead father was watching over his pitiful great-grandson.

Anyone who read his heart might have said that the old war veteran’s sensibilities were somewhat outside the norm.

Still, the old man always urged his grandson to be careful.

“Do not forget the warning your great-grandfather wrote in his memorandum. Not fighting when you must fight is a lack of courage, but not retreating when you must retreat is a lack of wisdom. Whenever you face dangerous beasts, you must be a wise person. Understand?”

The old man had deliberately borrowed the maxim written in the memorandum because he knew it would be effective on a grandson who respected his great-grandfather.

He trusted that his clever grandson would retreat when he needed to.

Lastly, he wanted his grandson to have many chances to feel cherished by others.

Before the child grew more mature than he ought to, he wanted him to feel his parents’ absence a little less.

#

Whenever the boy caught feral dogs, the village held a small feast.

“Ha ha ha! Thanks to our Onik, the adults get to build up their strength every time!”

“We build up our strength, and the village gets safer too! Thank you, Onik! You’re far better than most adults!”

“That’s right! You have no idea how glad we are to have you!”

The praise of the President of the Village Youth Association, who was fifty-six and unmarried, and his friends, who had all come after receiving a phone call, gradually filled the young hunter's empty heart with warmth.

The Village Youth Association President and his friends tied the dead dogs’ hind legs together and hung them upside down from a tree. They cut the carotid arteries to drain their blood, because meat easily discolored or developed a smell if it was not bled thoroughly.

Then they skillfully skinned the dogs, slit open their bellies, and scraped out the entrails. They put the entrails in a basin and carried them to the stream to clean them.

Red, white, and black organs were laid out one after another on a small, flat rock that people supposedly used in place of a washboard long ago. Since entrails had been washed on it many times in recent years, dark red blood had seeped into every corner of the stone.

Onik normally liked to watch this from nearby.

Freshly removed organs were very pretty.

Today, though, he had to watch from a little distance, dissatisfied. The adults were working with cigarettes in their mouths.

‘Ugh. Cigarette smoke.’

Onik hated cigarettes.

He did not need to breathe the smoke in to know. He could tell just by seeing it that the smoke slowly brought people closer to death.

It was a sense no one else had, one that belonged only to Onik.

Death that came after a long illness was not beautiful. The boy liked deaths that involved blood. Whether it was himself or someone else, he truly hated seeing anyone draw closer to death through sickness.

People were far too precious and valuable to die that way, Onik thought. How sad a loss it was when people who could die bleeding instead sickened and died.

He also hated seeing people who could cherish, love, and praise him leave through such deaths.

It was a loss that added to the emptiness in his chest.

In this old village, such unwelcome losses happened often. To Onik, it was one of the village’s few flaws.

Unaware of the boy’s thoughts, the cigarette-smoking adults exchanged pointless chatter.

“What’s so good about smoking that? I tried it, and it tasted completely bland.”

“I smoke it because it has less tar. For my health.”

“Look at this crazy bastard talking nonsense. If you care about your health, quit smoking altogether. Do you think it’s less harmful just because it has less tar?”

“It’s better than what you smoke.”

“Bullshit. Your lungs are already pitch-black.”

Every member of the village youth association smoked a different brand of cigarettes. Onik’s sensitive nose let him tell people apart simply by the faint differences in scent left on their clothes after they smoked.

This talent, which was not quite human, worked just as well on things that were not human.

Like now.

Onik caught a new scent mixed into the breeze and turned his head.

‘...A dog?’

It was not the smell of the dogs being butchered after death. It was the scent of one of the living dogs he had smelled earlier.

The young hunter swept his gaze over the direction from which the wind was blowing, following the scent. Before long, he spotted something he could kill.

Far away, a feral dog peeked out with only its head visible beside a low stone wall.

The dog met the frightening child’s eyes and reflexively ducked its head down. It hid for a moment, then raised its head again. When its eyes met the child’s once more, it hurriedly hid.

After this happened several times, the dog stopped ducking its head.

It seemed convinced that the cover it had positioned itself behind guaranteed its safety.

No matter how quickly the boy hunter, human yet unlike a human, gripped his sling and loaded a steel ball, he could not launch it faster than the dog could duck.

If he wanted to kill it, he had no choice but to chase it down.

「...」

Onik sensed many emotions in the eyes of the feral dog that had surely come after smelling blood.

Sorrow. Fear. And despair, resentment, and anger.

It had run because it had no way to face the frightening boy, but it had returned to peer from hiding despite the danger. It must have been close to the dead dogs.

Perhaps one among them had been especially dear to it.

After staring for a long time at its dead friends and at the humans who had killed them, cut open their bellies, and washed their entrails, the feral dog by the stone wall vanished.

「Awooooo!」

It left only a short howl in the place where it had lingered out of attachment.

For some reason, Onik had a feeling that he would see that dog, which had left howling sadly, again.

Whether the feral dog wailed mournfully or not, the four dead dogs, now fully butchered, were carried to the front yard of the village hall and immediately placed in a boiling cauldron. The elders at the hall had been notified in advance and had filled the cauldron with water and lit the fire early.

Once seasoning was added and the meat simmered until dinner, tender boiled dog meat would be ready, soft enough for even toothless elders to somehow eat with dentures.

「Beep-」

A high, piercing squeal of microphone feedback came from the loudspeaker hanging on an electric pole.

「Ah, ah. The village unit leader is making an announcement from the village hall.」

What followed was the aged voice of the village unit leader, who practically lived at the hall.

「The pride of our village, Onik, the grandson from the patriot’s household, has caught four feral dogs at once. We are boiling them with soybean paste and chopped green onions, so everyone, please come and build up your strength. I repeat. The pride of our village, Onik, the grandson from the patriot’s household...」

In a village where most residents were elderly, gathering people whenever something happened was a task in itself.

The smart village broadcasting system installed with local government funds could be heard not only through the village hall’s loudspeakers, but through individual receivers in each home and phone alerts for residents.

Yet elderly people with poor hearing or declining cognitive ability often failed to hear it.

The Village Youth Association President and his friends called the elders who showed no sign of coming despite repeated broadcasts, but that was no easy task either.

“Elder! Onik caught feral dogs! Come eat!”

「Mmm? He ground perilla seeds? Why did Onik do that?」

“Not perilla seeds, feral dogs! Feral dogs!”

「Yes, perilla seeds. Are we pressing perilla oil today? It isn’t harvest season...」

“No! We’re making dog meat soup, so please come eat!”

After struggling over the phone, the Village Youth Association President asked Onik for help.

“I think you’ll have to go tell a few of them yourself. Could I ask you to do that?”

This was a role the child, who loved receiving praise, volunteered to take on every time.

Onik’s face brightened, and he nodded eagerly.

“Of course! I’ll be back!”

He did not need to ask which houses he should visit. As he listened to the calls, he had already figured it out from the voices that leaked through the phone.

The Village Youth Association President was used to this too, so he said nothing more, trusting that the sharp-eared, clever boy would handle it himself.

Onik ran briskly along the roads between stone walls. At times, he cleared the walls like a mountain goat with rapid leaps and wall steps, then cut across abandoned properties.

After delivering the news to several homes, Onik’s lively run stopped at a hanok with a wide yard beneath a large chestnut tree.

“Master Bowyer! Please come to the village hall for dinner! I caught feral dogs!”

The owner of this hanok was one of the few Master Bowyers registered as Intangible Cultural Heritage holders in Korea.

As Onik entered the yard, he saw the Master Bowyer working while seated on the raised wooden floor and opened his eyes wide.

“Huh? Master Bowyer! Are you making a bow?!”

“Yes.”

The old Master Bowyer squinted through failing eyesight as they held a ruler to a piece of bamboo and marked lines on it. They were marking the places where they would shave the bamboo and attach the oak grip piece.

As far as Onik knew, the old Master Bowyer had not made bows since last winter.

Around that time, they had lost their beloved eldest son and taken to their bed for a while. Even afterward, they had struggled to regain their strength.

The Master Bowyer’s eldest son had died by suicide.

The cause of the suicide had been a jeonse rental fraud, followed by a voice phishing scam.

Footnotes:

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