WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 4: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (4)

──────

A person could grow old in an instant.

Onik knew that saying was true without the slightest exaggeration. The Master Bowyer had truly aged that way after losing their eldest son.

Of course, the Master Bowyer had already been elderly before suffering the pain of losing a child.

But they had possessed a strength that did not suit their age.

Back then, the Master Bowyer could easily string and practice with a powerful bow whose draw weight was around 130 pounds.

Everything changed after their eldest son died before them and they spent two long months bedridden.

The boy had been shocked to watch the Master Bowyer's body rapidly weaken and shrivel.

'It was like life was leaking out of a broken vessel.'

The Master Bowyer was only a year older than Onik's grandfather.

That meant if the Master Bowyer could age in an instant, the same thing could happen to the grandfather the boy loved so dearly. The possibility was too frightening even to imagine, and it had shaken Onik.

He wished his grandfather could live forever.

Even though he knew that wish could never come true.

Old age brought death, and death could not be undone by human hands.

One day, an irreversible parting would come.

The moment he realized that hateful parting could be brought far sooner than its natural time by another person's unforeseen malice, a fierce killing intent he had never known before rose within Onik.

It was killing intent toward those who had killed the Master Bowyer's eldest son, made the old artisan age, and finally given Onik something to fear.

'People who need to die...'

Onik was certain.

There were people in this world who needed to die and vanish.

The life of his great-grandfather, whom he revered, proved it. His beloved grandfather often muttered bitterly at the news while sitting across from him at the table.

"That bastard deserves to be beaten to death."

People who deserved to die, according to his grandfather, appeared in the news every other day.

The fact that there were so many people in the world who deserved death encouraged Onik to shape his dark dream for the future a little more clearly each day. It was a secret dream he could never tell anyone else.

'A life where I kill those who need killing, people it would be good to kill, and receive love and respect from the many more people who hated them...'

If he could live that kind of life and earn his grandfather's praise, there seemed to be no better future for a boy bound by dark impulses.

...It was still only a hazy future. He had no clear idea how such a thing could ever be possible.

#

With his gaze lowered, Onik asked the frail Master Bowyer, "Sir, are you feeling a little better now?"

"Even if I'm not, work still needs doing."

The Master Bowyer answered casually as they brushed ink onto the bamboo.

"If I do nothing but lie around groaning until I die, the son who went ahead of me won't be happy. It's not as if he was my only child..."

"It still seems like it would be too hard for you..."

"Of course it is. That's why you, with all your strength, should come help me now and then."

"Me?"

"Haven't you always been interested? What, did you lose interest while I wasn't looking?"

The boy shook his head hard.

"No! Of course not!"

He was interested, naturally.

Onik was the kind of child who, upon seeing even a pair of chopsticks, instinctively imagined all sorts of ways to stab someone to death with them. Every time he ate with his grandfather, he had to be extremely careful.

When he was home alone, he had sometimes gripped a kitchen knife and sunk endlessly into bloody fantasies.

They were less like a child's daydreams than the meticulous mental training of a born killer.

Onik's imagination was abnormally vivid, and he was certain he could recreate every movement he pictured in his mind exactly in reality.

How much more captivating must a bow, a real weapon, have been?

The boy, born with dark impulses within him, had long been enthralled by the countless possibilities for slaughter inherent in a bow.

After drawing all the ink lines on the bamboo strip, the Master Bowyer braced a hand against their knee and rose with a groan.

"I intend to make thirty horn bows by next spring. Come help me whenever you're bored. Then I'll choose two or three of the well-made ones and give them to you."

"Huh? Really?"

Onik looked up at the Master Bowyer with round eyes, then lowered his gaze again before even a few seconds had passed.

As always, the moment he looked at someone, ominous possibilities flickered through his mind. Alluring scenarios of murder that made him want to look and not look at the same time.

Every last one was something Onik was capable of carrying out...

It was rare for him to look directly at a person for longer than three or four breaths.

Physical contact made him uncomfortable too.

Still, it was far less burdensome than looking at people. The less skin touched skin, the easier it was. Having clothes between them made it somewhat better.

The Master Bowyer stepped out to the edge of the wooden floor, put on their shoes, and planted their cane with a tap.

"I've known for a long time that you wanted a bow. I was going to make one suited to your body after you'd grown enough, but I've changed my mind."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why? I can't be sure I'll still be able to do this work by then, you brat."

"..."

"You finish elementary school this year, right? Think of it as a gift for entering middle school. When I was young, children your age were treated like adults."

"...Thank you."

"Thank me when you get them."

He had just been promised the bows he wanted so badly, but Onik did not feel very happy.

The old Master Bowyer had said they could not be sure they would still be able to work until the boy had grown enough. To Onik, it sounded like, "I might not be alive by then."

Nothing made Onik happier than death, but nothing made him sadder or more depressed either.

The Master Bowyer was one of the adults who had cared for Onik since he was little, and they had also been his grandfather's friend for many long years.

For the Master Bowyer to leave this world would hurt Onik twice over.

'Grandfather will be sad too.'

His grandfather's sorrow was Onik's pain.

Whenever another ownerless house appeared in the village, growing older by the day, Onik felt another empty space open in his grandfather's heart.

The people who had spent more than seventy years together in one village were leaving this world one after another. How could those who had grown old together not feel sorrowful?

The Master Bowyer patted their lower back with one hand and tapped their cane against the ground.

"Let's go."

"Yes, sir. You need to eat plenty today too."

"All right."

Onik glanced at the old Master Bowyer's gaunt, bent back.

It was a body that needed plenty of meat.

The village was located in the middle of a mountainous area colored red on a food desert map compiled by Statistics Korea a few years ago.

It meant people had to drive out of the village to buy groceries.

The one "Supermarket" at the entrance to the village had closed before Onik even started elementary school, when its elderly owner developed dementia and entered a nursing home. Now it remained only as a dreary ruin, with several holes smashed through the glass of its front door.

Even before it closed, its shelves had always been sparsely stocked, and it barely carried fresh food.

That was why Onik's active hunting, along with the volunteer work of Pastor Kim's second son, Kim Yo-han, did so much for the villagers' health.

Today was another example.

If Onik had not caught the feral dogs, many of the elders would have made do with a meal whose side dishes were nothing but greens.

The boy bound to death was fighting against the death of the village he loved.

He knew it was a battle he would eventually lose.

It was a future he did not want to think about while he was happy now.

#

Not long after the small feast at the village hall, Onik happily welcomed the start of the new school term.

Most children did not want to go to school, but Onik was different. There was one teacher he liked very much.

And Onik was not the only one who liked that teacher.

"Onik! Are you all ready for school?"

"Yes, hyung! I'm coming out now!"

Kim Yo-han, Pastor Kim's second son, had come early in the morning on his red-and-white City Best motorcycle and was waiting for Onik.

He was there to take the village's only student to school.

Until last year, Onik had been able to use the school bus.

But the administrative officers responsible for helping students commute had resigned or been transferred one after another for "specific reasons," leaving the students to find their own way to school.

After hearing more about what had happened through various people, Onik's grandfather had clicked his tongue.

"It's such an isolated place that young people don't even want to come here, yet instead of treating those young ones well, their older superiors act territorial and make their lives miserable..."

It was an upsetting matter to Onik's grandfather, but for Kim Yo-han, it could be called a small stroke of luck.

Helping Onik get to and from school gave him a natural excuse to see someone he had long held feelings for.

That person was Lee Eun-jeong, the teacher responsible for English and experiential activities.

She was an exceptionally kind person.

After learning that Onik lived with only his grandfather, without his parents, she began looking after him in many ways.

Several times, she had taken him in her car after school or on days off, driving him to the city farther away than the town.

They ate Lotteria Classic Cheese Burger sets, watched movies full of heroes and beautiful, brightly colored animated films, visited big supermarkets and famous temples, and tried all sorts of activities at children's museums.

Truthfully, Onik enjoyed running through the mountains and fields, killing things he was allowed to kill and seeing blood, more than those city entertainments.

But there was one exception.

His teacher's special kindness always made him look forward to the days they went into the city.

Whenever his teacher held him in a warm embrace, Onik thought:

'If my mother were alive, would it feel like this?'

Since the day he was born, Onik had never once felt a mother's warmth.

If not for the photographs his grandfather kept, he would not even have known what his mother looked like.

To this lonely boy, Lee Eun-jeong's body heat was a precious human warmth. It made him recognize an emptiness within him that he had not even known was there, and filled it, if only a little.

When he felt that warmth, it was easier to suppress the urge to kill something. Still, if he felt his teacher's warmth for too long, it inevitably became difficult.

After carefully putting on the riding gear his grandfather had bought with Kim Yo-han's help, Onik slung on his backpack and bowed to his grandfather.

"I'm off to school!"

"All right. Have a good day."

Onik darted across the yard, then sprang up and landed on the motorcycle's rear seat without slowing down.

His movement was as light as the wind. His momentum was not.

「Creak, creak.」

The compressed suspension swayed with the sound of straining metal.

Even Yo-han, who was used to Onik's everyday feats, could not help being impressed by the motorcycle's heavy sway.

"What's with you? You fly around more and more every day. I think you got heavier over vacation too."

"I didn't get heavier, I got taller!"

"Same thing."

"It's different!"

"All right, all right. Our Onik has grown so much. I'm starting, so hold on tight."

Vroooom!

Yo-han twisted the throttle, and the red-and-white motorcycle accelerated down the country road.

Old guardrail posts that no one knew when they had last been repaired streamed past them. The sound of the wind filled their ears, and Yo-han and Onik naturally raised their voices.

"You finished all your vacation homework, right? You wrote all your diary entries too?"

"Of course I finished my homework, but diary entries? What diary entries?"

"...? You didn't have a diary for vacation homework?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Pardon?"

"...?"

"...?"

These days, elementary schools rarely assigned diary writing as vacation homework. Some believed forcing students to keep diaries invaded their privacy.

Kim Yo-han, on the other hand, came from a generation when diary writing was naturally included in vacation homework.

After chatting with an actual elementary student and feeling the generation gap, Yo-han let out a deep sigh.

"So this is how I'm getting old..."

Though the village considered him a young man, Yo-han had passed his mid-thirties this year. Even by current standards, when people married later, he was entering old bachelor territory.

Onik knew exactly when Yo-han had started caring more about his age. He smiled and raised his voice.

"Hyung! Teacher Lee Eun-jeong said age isn't important in love!"

"No, hey..."

"So I asked her! I asked what she thought about dating an older man! Then she laughed and said an eight-year age gap was fine! As long as the person was kind!"

"No, no, no, no... Why would a kid ask something like that...?"

The age difference between Yo-han and Eun-jeong was exactly eight years.

There was no need to think deeply about whom the kind teacher had in mind when she answered Onik's bold question.

As Yo-han's neck turned red in an instant, Onik dealt another blow.

"Cheer up, hyung! I think you're better than the public service doctor ajussi!"

"Ugh..."

Onik called the public service doctor ajussi and Yo-han hyung, but the doctor was actually much younger.

Yo-han was hyung by the standards of the village where Onik lived, while the public service doctor was ajussi by the standards small children generally used.

By a child's standards, anyone over thirty, man or woman, was an ajussi or an ajumma.

Still, Onik had an objective reason for believing Yo-han had a chance.

'Yo-han hyung's face gives the romance powerful plausibility.'

Having followed his father, Pastor Kim, through overseas volunteer work and missionary work in developing countries and church planting in remote areas from childhood until now, Yo-han was not very aware of his own looks.

With a face like that and such a pure, kind nature, he had a real chance.

His body was solid too, thanks to the muscles he had built through all the hard volunteer work in rural areas.

Yo-han was left stammering for words, then finally managed to grumble after a long while.

"You know, whenever you get on a motorcycle, it feels like your filter comes off when you talk."

Onik gazed into the distance and pretended not to hear.

To Yo-han, Onik was a very strange child.

He was so shy that he struggled to make eye contact with others, yet his words and actions did not match that at all.

'Especially when he's on a motorcycle.'

It was not just Yo-han's imagination. The reason was simply different.

Onik did not speak more freely because he was riding a motorcycle. It was because he had to hold tightly around Yo-han's waist.

Whenever he held something he could kill, dark impulses unfailingly crawled up from deep within his heart.

From experience, he knew distracting himself helped considerably with suppressing those impulses.

That was why Onik diligently practiced deliberately distracting himself, and it had proven quite effective whenever he needed it.

One side effect was that he tended to say whatever came to mind, but that was a side effect he could accept.

If he kept practicing like this, perhaps one day he would be able to look other people in the eyes. A little at a time, for longer and longer.

Then he could accept Teacher Lee Eun-jeong's hugs for longer without trouble.

'I have to do it for Grandfather too.'

The boy knew his grandfather worried about him a great deal.

He also knew his grandfather felt sad whenever he saw his grandson unable to look at him properly.

So Onik intended to work hard. He intended to work hard and make his grandfather happy.

The boy proudly declared his resolution.

"Look forward to it, hyung! That filter's going to come off even more!"

Yo-han recoiled in horror.

"Hey, brat! You can't let that happen!"

As they talked, the narrow mountain road finally ended, and the town came into view. Onik's raptor-like eyesight clearly caught sight of the school far in the distance.

At the school gate, unchanged from before vacation, teachers and other staff had come out to welcome the students, exchanging cheerful two-handed high-fives with the arriving students.

When Onik spotted Teacher Lee Eun-jeong among them, he quickly lowered his gaze and smiled brightly.

Onik was satisfied with this moment.

In a way, even more than when he smashed in the feral dogs' heads.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried