WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 5: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (5)

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The elementary school Onik attended had twenty-three students and nineteen staff members.

Three first graders. Five second graders. Two third graders. Six each in fourth and fifth grade.

And only one sixth grader.

The sole sixth-grade student, due to graduate at the end of the year, was Jo Onik.

For Onik, having no one else in his grade was actually for the best.

Subjects like physical education, art, music, practical arts, and creative activities often combined two or three grades because there were too few students. But for core subjects such as Korean, math, and English, he could often sit face-to-face with his teacher and study one-on-one.

In other words, he was glad to receive frequent private lessons from Lee Eun-jeong.

It was also good that, no matter how close he became to his teacher, no one could accuse her of favoring a particular student.

Of course, as a teacher of good character, Eun-jeong sometimes worried about Onik's situation, just like the other adults in the village.

"Our Onik, what will you do without any friends in your grade...?"

Yet Onik himself had no interest in making friends his own age. His interests were entirely different from those of other children.

What child his age would smile sweetly while smashing feral dogs' heads in?

There were quite a few children at school who wanted to befriend Onik, even if they were in different grades, but he did not particularly enjoy spending time with them either.

"Onik hyung. Why don't you like dinosaurs?"

"Don't like them? Me? I don't particularly dislike them. I'm just not interested."

"Why?"

"They all died a long time ago. Nothing's left but bones, so what's there to be interested in? It's not like you can take them home and make soup with them."

"Nothing but bones? That's awful..."

"I didn't say anything wrong."

"Hyung doesn't understand people's feelings..."

"...?"

If dinosaurs he could kill himself had still existed in the world, Onik would have been the elementary school student most passionately interested in dinosaurs.

But they did not.

That was why Onik was a strange elementary school student, indifferent to dinosaurs and even to the games everyone else was desperate to play.

It was not that he found games played with others unfun. It was just much more exciting and enjoyable to kill things that were all right to kill.

Why would he go out of his way to play the less enjoyable game?

Killing something in a game did not even feel as real as wringing a chicken's neck in real life. If it was a realistic game, it might at least have value as educational software.

The other children would probably have been horrified if they could have looked inside Onik's head.

'Studying is more fun than games anyway.'

You could not receive praise for playing games.

You could receive praise for studying.

Onik was the sort of child who felt wonderfully happy just imagining the praise adults would give him later if he studied. He could never get enough of praise from his grandfather and Teacher Lee Eun-jeong.

Of course, the most enjoyable thing was still killing something alive.

But he could not wander around doing nothing but that all day, until late at night.

So studying was the best use of his remaining time.

Onik had been born able to feel refreshed even with little sleep, so he studied a great deal at dawn as well. It was nice because his grandfather would praise him more.

Onik was a child whose abilities for killing were unusually well developed, and still developing.

Those abilities included memory and reasoning.

Excellent memory and reasoning were essential qualities for a good hunter.

With natural talent and great enthusiasm combined, Onik's academic ability had reached a point where he was unmatched anywhere in the province.

His English in particular, Teacher Lee Eun-jeong's subject, was good enough that he could communicate smoothly if dropped into the middle of New York.

That was how powerful Eun-jeong's praise was as motivation for him.

Not all praise could possibly be the same.

'Praise from someone you like ten times more feels a hundred times better!'

Whenever Onik raced far beyond the curriculum for his grade, Eun-jeong would look at him with great pride and gently stroke his hair.

"You're truly amazing. Our Onik is such a rewarding student to teach."

The moment he heard that, a quick syllogism formed in Onik's mind.

Teacher enjoys teaching because I study hard.

The more she enjoys teaching, the more she will like me.

Therefore, if I study even harder, Teacher will like me even more!

'Then I should do it!'

Studying English also helped Onik greatly with his hobby.

That hobby was looking up overseas information about killing things.

Weapons, incidents, techniques, history.

And every other piece of bloody knowledge humanity had accumulated.

There were severe limits to finding such things only in Korean. Relying on machine translation software was not fully satisfying either, so the best method was for Onik to learn foreign languages one by one.

English was foremost among those languages.

The future was still only vaguely sketched in his mind, but Onik had thought a little about leaving for another country someday to pursue his dream.

Only a little, because it troubled him that he would have to leave his beloved grandfather's side.

Even imagining his grandfather's death was something Onik did not want to do.

At any rate, judging only by what showed on the surface, Onik was an outstanding model student. No one would have found it strange to call him a hardworking genius.

He had won prizes more than once at national elementary English speaking competitions and English academic contests.

Each time, Onik's name inevitably appeared in the local newspaper. His poor eye contact repeatedly created difficult situations that he had to overcome.

So Onik's grandfather never worried about his studies, no matter how much his grandson ran through the mountains and fields.

Onik took great pride in himself.

But did Jo Onik, the strongest model student in the province, always bring his teachers joy? Not necessarily.

#

The principal spoke with mild concern to the teachers gathered for the staff meeting.

"Everyone. September has come around again. What are we supposed to do about our invincible Onik...?"

At the end of September, as Chuseok approached, several elementary schools from two counties held a joint sports day.

By rights, this sports day should not have been an event that caused teachers headaches.

The old days, when teachers prepared sports days themselves, had passed long ago.

These days, all they had to do was hire a professional event company within a fixed budget.

The school put out a competitive bid, selected a decent company, and supervised it properly. An event MC would even handle the sports day's proceedings.

The teachers' worries began when locally influential people on the county council and high-ranking officials at the education support office developed needless ambitions.

"Listen, everyone. The low birth rate problem is serious these days. Shouldn't we show that we care deeply for the young children growing up here? That's how you become county governor someday, or move up to the provincial council."

They wanted an event that looked good to outsiders, an achievement worth showing off.

Something that could use little children as material for pretty photos and articles, then put their names and titles in national news, if only for a moment.

Naturally, they set their sights on the elementary schools' joint sports day.

"I saw other local governments getting news coverage with these joint sports days. Why don't we make ours bigger and give it something distinctive?"

What they meant by distinctive was nothing less than a return to old-fashioned ways.

They had rolled up their sleeves to recreate the beautiful sports days they remembered from their youth.

These old-fashioned higher-ups were disgusted even by the basic format of the usual sports day.

"What is this supposed to be, a sports day? This is why children these days grow up weak. All those newly hired young public employees keep quitting because education has gone wrong!"

Modern sports days were generally made up, where possible, of events without winners or losers.

The point was for children to gather for a day, run and play happily in something close to a festival, except for events such as relay races, which were difficult to leave out.

That approach reflected research showing that staining memories of a happy day with feelings of defeat harmed children's emotional development.

To the old-fashioned higher-ups, the policy seemed even more harmful to children.

"A sports day should have teams competing and winning, right? They should be cheering each other on and getting fired up!"

"You raise children in greenhouses, and they grow up with no willpower, refusing to do anything hard! That's why the countryside keeps declining! There are as many jobs as you could want if people would only work! Tsk, tsk!"

Someone might think, 'Whatever else they say, they do have a point about children being raised too protectively.'

But that was easy to say when someone else was the one who had to receive the parents' complaints.

"Teacher! Did the sports day really have to be run like this?! Why are you crushing my child's spirit? My husband is very angry! Do you know who my husband is?!"

It was miserable even if you did not know.

Ever since the sports day had been changed to suit the wishes of the old-fashioned higher-ups, teachers at nearby schools had feared malicious complaints every year.

The teachers at Onik's school bore comparatively less of the burden.

The old-fashioned higher-ups had remade the sports day into a competition between schools, and in that format, the team Onik belonged to could not lose even if it wanted to.

Still, the teachers at Onik's school had troubles of their own.

"Please, let's balance things out a little... Jo Onik is completely unfair. How can two hearts be running around an elementary school field?"

There were complaints from officials at the other schools, of course. But whenever Onik began showing his ability in a competitive event, even the students at his own school were reduced to extras.

And no parent in the world liked seeing their child made into an extra.

That was why the teachers' burden could be small, but never nonexistent.

Unreasonable parents were like rabid dogs. Once they latched on, they would keep biting until someone was practically dead.

(Sometimes they kept biting until someone did die. More rarely, they kept biting even after that.)

The real problem was that the old-fashioned higher-ups had packed the sports day full of competitive events they liked, events that would also photograph well.

The staff meeting called by the principal went in circles.

The reason came from the vice principal, who also served as the school's administrator.

"What can we do? Even the basic selection of the event company is no longer in our hands."

Since the sports day was no longer an event for just one school, the authority to select the professional event company had passed to some dubious ad hoc organization bearing the label of one committee or another.

It was a decision made after vaguely important members of the county council accepted a written opinion from the education support office merely for appearances' sake.

School personnel were listed among its members, of course.

But local influential people had also filled it with their names under titles such as sponsor, director, and outside auditor.

The final decision-making power was effectively in the hands of the important people, yet the structure was designed so that the fallout would reach school staff if anything went wrong.

Naturally, the companies awarded contracts had no meaningful experience and only watched for the wishes of the important people who had given them work.

The vice principal gave a hollow laugh.

"We just have to accept it."

The important people in this area were proceeding with the mindset that if they made something big enough, it would at least receive attention.

It was a simple-minded idea. Keep increasing the number of participating schools, and perhaps television stations would come cover it one more time.

This year, they were even holding it on the same date as the local festival.

Eun-jeong, who was present at the meeting, thought, 'Idiots. If they wanted an event to polish and show off that badly, they could at least have kept competitive bidding...'

The important people had changed the competitive bid into a sole-source contract, talking about stimulating the local economy.

Anyone could see it was an obvious scheme to hand work to companies run by people they knew.

Eun-jeong admired the diligence of the local elders, who never missed even the smallest chance to skim tax money. She admired their short-sightedness even more.

'Surely not every rural place is like this. Does this town only feel especially bad because I don't know enough?'

Whenever she encountered something similar, Eun-jeong felt like a time traveler dropped into South Korea of twenty or thirty years ago.

Time passed differently in a closed society than in an open one.

With things as they were, the staff meeting was not truly a place to solve the problem.

It was only a time for coworkers in the same situation to share their worries and take comfort in one another.

The teachers' conversation naturally drifted until it crossed into ordinary small talk, with just a little work-related discussion mixed in.

Most staff meetings were like that, really. Put positively, it was the ease of a rural school with few students.

One teacher spoke to Eun-jeong as she raised her teacup.

"You'll miss Onik a lot when he graduates, won't you, Eun-jeong?"

"Not especially."

Eun-jeong set down her teacup and smiled faintly.

"We agreed we'd see each other often even after he graduates."

"...Oh, really?"

"Yes. Onik was worried about it, so I told him the middle school is right across the street. I said he could come visit whenever he wanted. Would his teacher ever say she didn't want to see him? I told him I'd be sad if he didn't come."

"Mm..."

"He liked that. Very much."

The town's three schools, elementary, middle, and high school, stood clustered together with only a road between them. As long as Eun-jeong did not deliberately draw a line, there would be no problem continuing their relationship.

And what reason was there to draw one?

The teacher of good character did not find a student who relied so heavily on her bothersome in the slightest.

They exchanged messages routinely even on holidays.

For a moment, an expression that said this was not what I wanted crossed the face of the teacher who had spoken to Eun-jeong in a feigned tone of concern. It was a completely transparent expression.

Eun-jeong knew why.

'What a materialistic snob.'

The math teacher had always quietly envied Eun-jeong.

They tried not to show it, but in the end they always did, like now. Eun-jeong could not fail to see what lay underneath.

When a student won an academic competition or received excellent results on a highly credible exam, it was good for the school, but it also became something of an achievement for the supervising teacher.

The organizations, universities, and other institutions that hosted competitions sometimes gave awards to supervising teachers. That was before even considering the benefit to formal personnel evaluations.

Because he adored his English teacher, Onik participated prolifically in contests, helping Eun-jeong earn three Outstanding Supervising Teacher awards.

If Eun-jeong later changed careers to the private education industry or wrote textbooks, those awards would give her a considerable advantage.

In other words, the math teacher who envied Eun-jeong meant this:

"How sad for you. The child who was building your career is leaving."

It was a truly shabby sentiment.

Eun-jeong had not noticed Onik's talent first and then offered him calculated kindness. She had simply treated him well, only to find he was an uncut stone holding an intense light within.

'How pathetic. Really.'

Whenever she saw adults so pathetic, Eun-jeong renewed her determination to be a good adult and teacher to Onik, and to all her other students.

Another teacher, the homeroom teacher for the second grade who also taught physical education and information technology, asked Eun-jeong, "Eun-jeong, has Onik decided not to go to a school with a baseball team? He says he dreams of becoming a baseball player. If he goes to the middle school here, he can't do that, can he?"

Across the entire province, there were only four middle schools with official baseball teams belonging to the youth baseball federation.

There had been seven until a few years ago, but three had vanished in a short time as the number of new students sharply dropped. The remaining four were also in serious danger.

It stood in stark contrast to the Seoul metropolitan area, where nearly seventy middle-school baseball teams still remained.

The countryside was dying in a time that flowed differently from the capital region.

Eun-jeong shrugged.

"I'm not sure. He said that, but he doesn't seem all that interested. Strangely enough. It feels like he has another real dream but hesitates to talk about it. That's only my impression, though."

It was a sharp instinct that would have made Onik flinch if he had heard it.

The physical education teacher furrowed their brow.

"Uh... That really won't do... No matter how I look at him, he's a future national team athlete... Could he be refusing because he wants to keep seeing you, Eun-jeong?"

"Oh, no. If that were the reason, his grandfather would come before me."

"Ah, right. Onik's love for his grandfather is famous."

The physical education teacher immediately understood and made a request of Eun-jeong.

"Still, please talk to him once more. It would be a national loss if he doesn't choose that path. He absolutely has to become an athlete, even if not a baseball player."

"Ha ha. I don't know. Onik is such a good student, too. Still, I'll speak to him."

"Please do! As a teacher, I feel it is my duty!"

The physical education teacher launched into an enthusiastic speech about how precious an athletic prodigy Onik was.

From that teacher's point of view, classes with Onik in them could be summed up in one sentence.

Jo Onik was hiding his strength.

The lonely boy who loved praise had once run a hundred-meter race with all his heart in second grade, expecting praise from the newly appointed physical education teacher. He had been confused afterward.

The teacher who should have praised him had only furrowed their brow and tilted their head.

"Hm... This is not a record a second grader should be able to set... It absolutely isn't... What is this? Is the Chinese stopwatch broken? Or is the track length wrong? What is this, really?"

Onik had already recognized his own abnormality before entering elementary school. Quick-witted as he was, he soon realized that he had gone too far.

"Our Onik, would you like to run it again?"

From that day, Onik began hiding his strength during physical education.

Even while concealing quite a lot, he still had enough ability to remain the strongest elementary school student in the province, so there was no obstacle to receiving praise.

And from that day on, the physical education teacher had to suffer through an unresolved frustration.

They felt that Jo Onik was hiding his ability, but the other teachers would not believe them.

"I'm telling you, it's true! He is absolutely not going all out right now! He's hiding his full strength! Look at him, he runs around like that and doesn't even look tired!"

"What? Children naturally have good stamina? No, not that good! I'm the expert! That child is an urban legend!"

The physical education teacher's frustration made their sense of duty as a teacher clear, just as they had said.

They were another good teacher at this school.

Yet Eun-jeong honestly felt relieved when Onik said he would attend the middle school in town.

It was not because she did not want to part from him. She doubted whether attending school in another area would truly be good for Onik.

Eun-jeong thought, 'His grandfather said he couldn't move to the city with him. He can't leave the land and rice fields his family has inherited for generations. But if Onik starts training as a baseball player now, they'd have to rely on an introduction and leave him with another household...'

In this region, where people were all connected through school ties, local ties, or blood relations after only two or three steps, they would surely be able to find a boarding house willing to take in a child.

But early separation from his sole guardian would harm Onik's emotional development.

Things had improved greatly from the past, but athletic teams still often tolerated various abuses under a strong senior-junior hierarchy.

Since they were groups of physically active children, the turbulent period of adolescence could be rougher than it was for other students.

Many athletic team coaches also regarded such things as natural, or as a necessary evil.

Teachers saw clear statistical evidence of this harm. Children on athletic teams had a significantly higher chance of falling into delinquency than children who were not.

It would be especially harmful for a child like Onik, with an emptiness in one corner of his heart.

Of course, Eun-jeong knew.

To become an elite athlete, it was advantageous to begin serious training not just in middle school, but from elementary school.

That was why the physical education teacher was so anxious.

But making a person mattered more than making an athlete.

Eun-jeong wanted Onik to remain the kind child he was now, forever.

'There are plenty of athletes who distinguish themselves even after starting later than others. Onik is more than capable of that.'

Above all, Eun-jeong trusted her observations and instincts.

There had to be something else that Onik truly wanted to do. It seemed to be such a secret wish that he did not intend to tell even his closest teacher about it easily.

There was no need to force out something he did not want to say.

Unless a student had lost their way and was wandering, a teacher's role could be fulfilled simply by watching so they did not go astray, and quietly supporting them.

Eun-jeong wanted to stay with Onik as long as she could.

#

The President of the Village Youth Association in Onik's village, fifty-six years old and unmarried, had made his living his entire life as an intermediary distributor supplying goods to markets and auction houses.

It was the sort of job where he employed five or six people beneath him and could be called boss, although even the boss occasionally had to drive a Porter truck and load and unload goods himself.

But last May, one of his second cousins had married the granddaughter of a county council member. That gave the Village Youth Association President a chance to try various new businesses late in life.

(Of course, the Village Youth Association President did not consider himself late in life at all. A man of fifty-six was in his prime, was he not? He did not wake up with an erection anymore, but he could still get it up if he tried.)

To people from Seoul, a second cousin might as well have been a stranger. But to the people living here, a second cousin was very close family.

And because they were close family, it was only natural to look after one another as soon as a new connection was made. That was how the arrangement worked in reverse, too.

The Village Youth Association President was excited.

'This is why blood relations are so good.'

In this region, putting blood ties, local ties, and school ties first was simply common sense.

To the Village Youth Association President, people from Seoul were far too cold. Their lives were harsher because they did not value blood ties, local ties, and school ties. They were foolish people.

Thanks to his second cousin joining one committee or another this time on the recommendation of his father-in-law, the Village Youth Association President landed another job.

"Outsourcing the local festival and sports day? Can I really take that? I've never done anything except supply goods to order."

When the Village Youth Association President offered a refusal he did not mean, his much younger second cousin smiled as though he knew exactly what was in his heart.

"Everyone has a first time, hyung. If everyone only wanted beginners who already had experience, where would beginners gain experience? Companies are the same."

"That's right."

"If someone has to pocket government money, it's better for a local company to pocket it. And if a local company is going to get it anyway, it's even better for a company run by someone we know to get it. You can trust someone you know that much more. Isn't that what real local economic revitalization is?"

"That makes logical sense. I can't argue with it."

"You're not taking it all for yourself, so what is there to worry about? Just watch what others do and follow their example. With work or anything else."

"I see!"

"So keep slipping us a nice kickback like before. You know the amount on this job is rather large, right? My father-in-law likes dried yellow corvina."

If you brought only dried yellow corvina because someone said they liked it, you were an idiot.

This joint sports day and local festival, to be held by the two counties together, had a budget of no less than eight hundred million won.

About two hundred million of that should rightly go into the inner pockets of local influential people and residents.

It was not even half. They would only divide up about a quarter of it, so how conscientious they were.

The important people would also collect money separately from the outside merchants participating in the festival. The Village Youth Association President planned to earn extra profit by supplying goods to those merchants through oligopolistic control of supply.

He would have to be generous with his tokens of appreciation, full of familial affection and gratitude.

At any rate, while busily rushing about with enthusiasm over his new work, the Village Youth Association President passed by the elementary school around the time classes ended.

His eyes widened.

"Hm? Who is that?"

The Village Youth Association President prided himself on knowing everyone in town.

It was a small town where people were bound to know each other somehow after only one or two connections. He also met many people through his work as a distributor and his role as Village Youth Association President.

Even so, when he saw Lee Eun-jeong standing at the school gate in a white blouse and black suit skirt, his heart fluttered in bewilderment.

'What? Was there someone that pretty here?'

Naturally, the Village Youth Association President had seen Eun-jeong before.

But Eun-jeong had not been smiling as brightly then, nor had she dressed herself prettily because she was conscious of someone she liked. In such a backward area, not dressing oneself up was also a means of self-defense.

Objectively, Eun-jeong's features were neat, but she was not an outstanding beauty. The Village Youth Association President, whose standards had grown high because of fantasies about a love he had failed to achieve in his youth, had not been deeply impressed by the Eun-jeong of the past.

(To him, an outstanding beauty was someone like a news anchor or weather presenter. The Village Youth Association President really did have high standards.)

At the school gate, Eun-jeong was chatting pleasantly with Yo-han, who had come to pick up Onik.

Yo-han was such a pure person that he found it difficult to converse with Eun-jeong without bringing Onik into the conversation as a pretext.

Fortunately, Onik was a shared interest for both Yo-han and Eun-jeong. They could grow closer simply by responding to Onik's chatter or talking about Onik.

That was why Onik had been leaving school a little later than before these days.

After hearing the reason, his grandfather stroked Onik's head.

"You'll have to play your part between them."

Onik's grandfather, Jo Jeong-ho, wanted to support Yo-han just as his grandson did.

He could barely remember when the steadily declining village had last had something to celebrate. He thought he would be very happy if a kind and diligent young man like Yo-han had a happy occasion.

But at that moment, the Village Youth Association President could not support the two of them like Onik's grandfather did.

He looked at the pastor's second son with displeasure.

He did not like the sight of Yo-han, constantly embarrassed yet maintaining such a warm rapport with the pretty teacher.

'It looks like the two of them are doing that thing they call flirting...'

The Village Youth Association President was a man who had failed to marry by the age of fifty-six.

In the past, his lack of confidence with women had left him half resigned to his fate. But recently, his network had expanded and his business had gone smoothly, raising his self-esteem considerably.

The teacher was clearly far younger than him, but the Village Youth Association President believed that would not be a problem.

'So what? I'm young too.'

The Village Youth Association President affirmed himself once again.

'Fifty isn't that old these days.'

He neatly erased from his mind the fact that his own age was closer to sixty than fifty, as well as the fact that wearing the title of President of the Village Youth Association did not make him an actual young man.

A person's identity was largely determined by their environment.

There were many older bachelors in the surrounding area who brought home brides from Southeast Asia, twenty or thirty years younger than themselves. That had warped the self-perception of the fifty-six-year-old man claiming to be young even further.

Watching such examples made him feel as though he had lost at something, so this man who still had many dreams had deliberately refused to look toward international marriage.

The pent-up compensatory urge that had long been knotted deep inside this false young man's chest now stirred strongly.

Feeling it stir, the Village Youth Association President asked the elderly owner of the stationery shop in front of the school.

"Sir. Do you know who that female teacher over there is?"

"Huh?"

The stationery shop owner, sitting on a bench in front of his shop and watching the children go home with contentment, had poor hearing. Only after hearing the question several more times did he nod.

"Ah, yes, I do. That's Teacher Lee Eun-jeong, who teaches English. She's a kind-hearted young woman."

"Lee Eun-jeong..."

"But why? Is something going on with that teacher?"

"No, it's nothing. But, sir."

"What is it now?"

"I'm still young, right?"

The stationery shop owner tilted his head at the question with its answer already decided.

"Of course you're young. You're still in your prime. You haven't even turned sixty yet."

The Village Youth Association President stared at the female teacher from a distance and thought hard.

'I heard that there are high-ranking officials from the education support office on the committee where my second cousin serves.'

The brave man wins the beauty.

To the fifty-six-year-old man claiming to be young, what mattered was the courage to stop at nothing.

When he got even older than he was now, even the chance to stop at nothing would disappear.

It was not as if he had fallen so deeply for that teacher that no other woman would do.

...But realistically, he did not have the leisure to look for anyone else.

He was already being chased by age. How long would it take him to find another woman? If he spotted someone who seemed suitable, he had to latch on no matter what.

A neat female teacher like that would do well enough as a wife, if he had to settle.

The Village Youth Association President decided to gather his courage before it was too late.

A dark crack ran through a boy's small, precious paradise.

Footnotes:

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