WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 44: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (44)

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#44.

The vacation-season special, 「Let's Play with Onik!」, was planned to range much farther afield on its second and third days, visiting various attractions around the province.

They would host one group for two nights and three days, then another group for the same length of time.

Finally, they would welcome a third group for another two nights and three days, filming in three separate batches.

In other words, Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief had adopted a summer-vacation concept, spending nine days having fun with three groups of city guests.

It was the season when every famous attraction and popular restaurant was crowded.

Even so, sponsorship arrangements with the venues had gone remarkably well. That was thanks to the provincial governor's influence.

「Ho ho ho, excellent. A truly exemplary channel. We should make good use of content creators with this local, country feeling.

It may be more beneficial to the local economy than spending billions or tens of billions of won from the tourism promotion fund every year. The same goes for encouraging consumer spending.」

「You're absolutely right, Governor.」

「It's a shame our province's own channel has performed so poorly... It may not be a replacement, exactly, but for the time being, we can let these young people handle indirect promotion for tourism and local specialties while giving them a push.

Their whole feeling is traditional, yet young and MZ. Very nice. You can feel our province's own soul and heritage.」

「Should we look into a collaboration with the provincial channel as well?」

「That could be good too, as long as we don't get greedy and put too much strain on them. There's no need to rush, so take responsibility and Push It Through.」

「Yes, Governor!」

「First, find someone among the junior officials who would be suitable to take charge of the project. Someone tuned to a young, MZ wavelength.

Half of success or failure depends on finding the right person, and the other half depends on how you use that person.」

「Yes, Governor! Leave it to me!」

As the governor had said with regret, there was a reason so many local governments struggled desperately to establish their own social media promotional channels.

Ever since Chungju City created the first success story, it was not as though higher-ups at every local government had been pressuring their subordinates for no reason.

In any case, thanks to that, Onik and his party were able to enjoy a far more comfortable time than ordinary travelers could.

A comfortable time amid beautiful scenery.

During that time, Yu Se-ra, the leader of Truffle Candy, faithfully followed the advice of the kind and thoughtful country boy.

That was to say, she had a lot of fun hanging out with him.

"Noona! At least in our country, baseball is a sport where winning and losing don't matter!"

"Really? I don't think so."

"You only think that because you don't know! Look at Hanwha fans! Even when the players put on comedy baseball and lose the game, the fans always sing that they're happy!"

"Are they really singing that because they're happy...?"

"Of course! They're wonderful spectators who enjoy the game itself regardless of who wins or loses! You could call it Korea's own unique baseball culture!"

"I'd still be happier if the team I cheered for won. Losing takes the wind out of me."

"That's because you're still a beginner as a Korean baseball fan, noona!

Whether it's Lotte or Hanwha, the players are simply giving their all to make the spectators laugh!

Honestly, that level of comedy baseball can't just happen naturally, can it?"

"Pfft. I guess there have been times when I thought that. That it would be hard even if they were trying to play like that on purpose."

"Right? Look at teams like Samsung, NC, and Doosan! They're always gritting their teeth and trying to win, so they're too cold, dry, and lacking in humanity!

Teams that give people laughter and are full of human warmth are better than ruthless championship-machine teams like that! Like Lotte and Hanwha!"

"Hehe, ahahaha, ruthless championship machines? That's so funny..."

"I was right, wasn't I?"

"Umm, still, even if making people laugh is important, isn't it a little sad to get eliminated too early? You lose the chance to make people laugh in the first place.

No matter how ruthless teams like the Samsung Lions might be as cham... hehe... championship machines, don't they give their fans more enjoyment overall than Lotte or Hanwha?"

"..."

"I heard it's been a very long time since the Lotte Giants last made the postseason, but noona doesn't know exactly when. You know, don't you, Onik? You're a fan."

"..."

"Onik?"

"..."

"Pfft... Are you sulking?"

"...I don't know! I'm working hard to escape reality, and you're cowardly attacking me with facts!

And teasing me with difficult questions! You're mean! I won't play with noona for three whole minutes from now on!"

"Three minutes? Why three minutes?"

"Because that's how angry I am!"

"You're that angry, but you'll only refuse to play with me for three minutes?"

"What do you mean, only three minutes! Think about waiting after you pour water into a cup of instant noodles! Do you know how long those three minutes feel?

They're a Great Wall of China built out of time! Never look down on three minutes again!"

"But Onik, I'm an idol, so I can't eat cup noodles...

It's been so long since I last had any that I don't even remember what it felt like... Noona's sad... Sob, sob."

"Ah, ah..."

When Sera drooped her shoulders and pretended to cry, Onik pretended to panic.

Then, telling her to think of happy memories, he suddenly began singing the Hanwha Eagles' cheer song. He did it in the middle of setting up a hexagonal tarp beneath the trees at the auto campground.

"I am happy... I am happy..."

The country boy sang the song in a dragging, mournful tune, swaying along with limp, drained movements. It gave the viewers plenty to laugh about.

When it came purely to entertaining fans, the Busan Seagull Boy who lived in the countryside stood several levels above the professional Lotte Giants.

"...?"

Truffle Candy's other members watched the two of them with amusement, but they could not hide their bewilderment either.

The eldest member and the country boy seemed very close.

So they privately wondered:

'Unni's completely different from yesterday, both in her expression and her voice.'

'This is strange... When did Sera unni get so close to Onik?'

'It's nice to see her expression brighten up so much, but... I don't know.'

The manager, who also acted as producer, looked a little dumbfounded.

His silent expression seemed to ask whether she really intended to ignore the management division head's instructions.

Sera firmly ignored the look directed her way. There was nothing for her to feel guilty about.

The auto campground they had visited was an attached facility of a cultural experience complex the governor had been promoting to develop the province's tourism industry.

Besides the campground, the complex contained an archery range, a performance hall, a small memorial hall, a zip coaster, and a rope activity facility with a low bungee-jumping platform.

A twenty-minute walk away was a large lake with a well-made walking trail around it, along with an amateur baseball field known as a mecca for recreational baseball in the province.

It was a good place to have fun in every way.

"Onik! Teach me archery!"

"Yes! The shooting method I'll teach you is Four Principles, One Release, which I learned from the Master Bowyer. First, we'll start with how to place your feet properly..."

They played at the archery range.

"Noona! Bungee jump!"

"I-I'm scared..."

"What's so scary about a height like this? Even children jump from this high! Aren't you ashamed as an adult? As the leader, you need to set an example for the other noonas! Come on, jump!"

"I don't want to be the leader anymore..."

They played at the bungee platform too.

"En-core! En-core!"

They even did a little busking at the performance hall.

「Crack!」

"Home run!"

"Wow, Onik, you're amazing!"

Onik joined a recreational baseball team that had come out for promotional purposes as an extra player, then hit a long drive cleanly toward the sparkling lake.

"The weather is so nice! The sky and lake are both so pretty! It would be even better if it weren't hot!"

"At least the wind's blowing a lot, so that's a relief!"

"Is it really? You don't seem very bothered by the heat, Onik."

"You're imagining it! Jo Onik isn't impervious to heat and cold!"

"...? What do you mean by ‘impervious to heat and cold’?"

"You don't know? Then study it!"

They even walked the trail around the lake where the baseball had flown like a laser and landed in the lake.

"Meat is always right!"

"Right!"

After returning to the campground, they sampled and compared two kinds of locally produced specialty pork.

One was stone pig, raised on feed mixed with finely ground geogeongseok, a rare stone. The other was a native-breed black pig that the kings of the Joseon dynasty had supposedly enjoyed eating.

"Everyone! Let's take a brief ad break! First, this stone pig..."

While Onik made sure to promote the businesses sponsoring the local specialties, the Truffle Candy members eagerly stuffed themselves with the meat Legal Hunter grilled for them.

Just like the day before, they unanimously ignored the producer's disapproving expression. Who knew when they would get another chance like this...?

Their mukbang was so impressive that the viewers could not help marveling.

「They really look like they're enjoying it. Ads or not, there's no way that's acting.」

「Bring it on lol, I'm ordering right away lol」

「All four of them have chipmunk cheeks lol. They've been eating so well since yesterday, I like them.」

Legal Hunter happily kept putting fresh meat on the grill.

The idols kept offering to grill too, saying they were sorry to make the Boss work alone, but he repeatedly waved them off.

"No, no! Meat should be grilled by the person who's good at grilling it! Especially when we've got such pre-cious meat here.

Just seeing the ladies of Truffle Candy eat fills me up, so don't worry about it and eat plenty. We have as much meat as you could want. Hahaha!"

The meat truly was precious.

The black pigs in particular were animals whose old breed had been restored only after great difficulty, yet their poor profitability meant the total number being raised remained only in the thousands.

The number of farms raising them had remained in the single digits for years.

Still, Legal Hunter did not insist on grilling because the meat was precious.

'What would people get from watching someone like me eat? Even if they're eating the same thing, it's better to watch young, handsome, pretty people do it.'

Legal Hunter, whose mind was full of money whether awake or asleep, did not want to waste even a single frame of the video.

His generation had treated the saying, "Every little bit adds up," as a golden rule.

Let us forget for a moment that he had been dissatisfied because one billion won in government money was too little.

'Besides, it's not enough to advertise only my own products well!'

Why had he started internet broadcasting in the first place? To make money, was it not?

The more faithfully he handled advertisements, and the better those advertisements performed, the more inquiries would come from advertisers and the higher his advertising rates would rise.

The view-based ad revenue and sponsorship rates for 「Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief」 were already much higher than their views and subscriber count would suggest.

They were high enough to leave Jo Jeong-ho somewhat flustered.

「This... is money that comes in from advertisements alone? Why is there so much? I thought it was only a bonus.」

「What did I tell you, sir! Didn't I say internet broadcasting could make money!」

「Huh...」

「Don't be surprised already! We're only getting started!

Onik and I will definitely become rich! Really rich, rich enough for Seoul people to talk about us!

Who's to say our village can't produce a second Chairman Chung Ju-yung?」

If Legal Hunter's ambitions came true, Onik might become a real-life Bruce Wayne.

For now, though, it remained only a distant dream.

Even if that future did become real, Onik would have no reason to wear a bat-man costume and roam Seoul's streets at night.

The kind of dark hero the terrifying boy admired was an assassin in the darkness, like the independence fighter Jo Yang-jin.

Legal Hunter's goal in diligently grilling meat was not simply to increase advertising income.

'This ad has! The provincial government! Tied up in it!'

Not wiretapping, but the provincial government office that handled the province's administration.

To begin with, both the stone pig and black pig were products that had lacked proper sales channels and had only barely been listed on the public online mall run by the provincial government.

How could the small-scale pig farms producing those goods have afforded expensive advertising?

Those farms, too, were benefiting from government money and public officials this time.

Under the command of a governor who was enthusiastically responding to the issue of regional extinction, or more precisely, who wanted to create that image, the task force assembled by the provincial government intended to tie tourism promotion and local-specialty consumption together as a catalyst for revitalizing the local economy.

The publicity chief of that task force, a grade-five administrative officer, had even contacted Legal Hunter personally and asked him to put in a little extra care.

Legal Hunter had thought, 'This person must be under serious pressure to produce results.' He could hear the exhaustion in the official's voice.

After all, the publicity chief was responsible for a project the higher-up took a deep interest in and received regular reports on.

And the publicity chief worked in a local government bureaucracy where hierarchy was even more distinct than it was in Seoul.

For someone doing the actual work, it was the sort of situation that could easily give them an ulcer.

'Wouldn't this be like a corps commander constantly calling in one battalion commander and kicking his ass?'

Even an overworked official like that was an excellent connection from Legal Hunter's perspective.

If he relieved the official's thirst for results, goodwill would naturally build. If goodwill built, they could become personally close. Then bribes could be delivered directly without passing through several intermediaries...

'A show of sincerity! Personal bonds! Direct deals! This is perfect!'

In any field, direct deals benefited both sellers and final consumers.

Bribery, another kind of economic interaction, was no different.

Yet bribes were surprisingly not something one could simply hand over. There had to be a basic degree of trust between the two parties before they could be exchanged.

Once he built enough of a relationship to naturally exchange holiday gifts, it would become easier to get inside information and win projects.

After all, people favored their own.

The promotional team under the Local Extinction Response Task Force had two major concerns.

One was promoting the cultural complex as a local cultural and tourism resource.

The other was securing a successful case of turning local specialties into premium products on a nationwide scale.

From what Legal Hunter had heard over the phone, the latter was clearly what caused the team leader stress.

'I know that too. It's not easy to establish something as a premium product in Seoul.'

It might be a little unexpected to city people who held only superficial images of farmers, but farmers often understood premium-product strategies far better than city people did.

That was because it was the long-cherished desire of every farm.

To succeed with a premium strategy and supply department stores, or to sell out all their best goods to the homes of so-called chairmen before the products even reached department stores.

Farms that achieved this dazzling golden dream became objects of both admiration and envy to other farms.

Everyone wanted to make that dream come true, but not even one in a thousand succeeded.

Legal Hunter had farmed when he was younger, and many people around him were farmers, so naturally he knew all about it.

The grade-five official was no fool.

The two kinds of pig that had caught the publicity chief's attention possessed more than enough potential as premium products. The trouble was that potential alone was never enough to make premiumization succeed.

Success could come only after every possible effort had been made and luck had played its part.

'But I can do it! I can make it happen!'

Legal Hunter was confident. Most of that confidence came from his young but extraordinary business partner.

Who said stone pigs fed geogeongseok and genuine native-breed black pigs could not become a two-horse team that replaced the finest Iberico pork?

'There's a clear limit to how much I can expand things by selling only my own goods... I need to bring in lots of other people's products, and by doing that, bring in lots of other people's money too. A proper business is one you run with other people's money!'

Therefore, he had no intention of letting this remain a one-off advertisement.

For now, the pig farms were merely advertisers, but later, they would become suppliers with whom he had signed exclusive supply contracts.

In the long term, the province's many local specialties that had yet to take off would have to follow the same precedent.

Through his own efforts (and Onik's), he had to turn them, one product after another, into nationally recognized premium goods, then create a beautiful future where he held exclusive distribution rights over them.

'I will definitely make it succeed! I'll even transfer the government money they receive into my bank account! Hahahaha!'

He was a bad adult, falling into wicked thoughts again because he could not change his ways...

The city idols, unaware of that dark inner nature, could only see Legal Hunter smiling cheerfully and kindly grilling meat for them as an extremely good person.

"The Boss is such a kind person!"

When Ye-seul, Truffle Candy's third-oldest member, spoke, Onik chimed in.

"That's right! Our Boss is a kind adult!"

The bad adult felt even better after receiving praise from the idol and his young business partner.

Footnotes:

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