WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 51: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (51)

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#51.

When the frightening, lonely country boy wanted to talk seriously about something, there were exactly four adults nearby whom he could ask to make time for him.

His grandfather.

Teacher Lee Eun-jeong.

Master Bowyer.

And Pastor Kim.

(In the boy's view, Legal Hunter was a little... no, rather ill-suited to serious consultations unrelated to “business.”

Not that he had any particular reason. He simply had a feeling.

It was the extraordinary boy's accurate intuition.)

Of those four dependable adults, his grandfather was the person the frightening boy least wanted to discover his strangeness.

If what he wanted to discuss had anything at all, even the tiniest speck, to do with the dreadful strangeness within him... he could not help hesitating to choose his grandfather.

Teacher Lee Eun-jeong was the second person he least wanted to find out about his dark strangeness.

She also lived far away, so she was not someone he could comfortably meet for advice whenever he wanted.

She would listen to him over the phone even late at night, of course.

Master Bowyer, meanwhile, was much too close to his grandfather.

Whatever Onik consulted them about, there was a high chance the secret would not stay secret. That was a problem apart from Onik's reluctance to reveal his strangeness.

So Pastor Kim, the fourth person, was the boy's best choice.

For one thing, he was the person whose discovery of that strangeness would hurt Onik the least. He also seemed like someone who would guard a secret even if he did find out.

...As long as Onik hid the fact that he had actually killed someone.

Onik also respected Pastor Kim.

Almost as much as he respected the other three adults.

'Uncle Pastor Kim is strong. Even though his heart still hurts so much, he's always kind to other people.'

No one knew better than Onik how difficult a time Pastor Kim had been having since Yohan's death.

Whenever the boy moved swiftly through the village at night, he sometimes overheard prayers from the Three-Way Intersection Restaurant Church.

He had not set out to eavesdrop in the first place.

Even if the frightening boy thought of himself as a bad child, he had never wanted to be bad in that way.

It had simply been something almost beyond his control.

"What am I supposed to do? I can just hear it..."

Nights in a remote clan village were quiet.

Of course, they were only quiet in comparison to a city.

There were plenty of sounds, if one bothered to count them.

The wind blew, grass bent low, and leaves and branches rustled. From the mountain came the calls of scops owls and nightjars, singing through the darkness of the hot season.

Dogs from one house or another barked now and then in the village. At the babbling stream, frogs in their season croaked in a loud chorus.

Yet no cars drove along the roads, and no people passed down the paths.

The frightening boy's hearing was sharp enough to pierce through nature's noise and catch the pastor's prayers.

Once he began hearing one, his feet would stop as though nailed to the ground.

It was not some light feeling such as curiosity.

He had no choice but to stop.

Because he was the boy who had avenged Yohan. And because the pastor did not know about that vengeance.

Whenever it happened, Onik would stop and agonize over whether he should finally tell Pastor Kim the truth behind Yohan's death.

'I wish Uncle Pastor Kim only prayed in his heart...'

But his prayers sometimes spilled out like sobs.

The father who had lost his child could not help it either.

At the same time, the prayers of a father grieving his lost son kept prodding the hollow place in the heart of the frightening boy, who had been abandoned by his own father.

That was why, after first hearing the prayers by chance, Onik had never chosen to avoid that area.

He knew the pain Pastor Kim hid from others.

He knew it more deeply than even the pastor's two remaining sons did.

That made the pastor's gentle kindness toward others in daylight all the more worthy of respect.

There was another reason, too.

It was Pastor Kim's past, which Onik had only learned about after Yohan died.

Pastor Kim was someone who had endured times no person should have been able to endure.

#

By the time the mille-feuille nabe in the large pot had vanished, leaving only a little broth pooled at the bottom, Onik quietly spoke to Pastor Kim.

"Uncle! Do you have time later?"

By then, Pastor Kim could tell that Onik had something serious to discuss.

His church doors were always open, and he had never turned away a visitor.

The church still held the spaces where Yohan used to play with Onik.

Onik had been coming and going from the church, reading the comic books Yohan had left behind. It was how the kind country boy remembered the pastor's dead son.

For such a boy to suddenly ask whether he had time could only mean he had another purpose.

The pastor answered gently.

"I have plenty of time. Come by whenever you feel comfortable. I'll be waiting."

"Yes! Thank you!"

After bowing deeply, Onik began clearing up with quick movements.

He cleaned as swiftly as he had served the food. The cluttered platform and the village hall yard soon became so spotless that it felt as if they had been erased with a few quick swishes.

Anyone who tried to help would only get in his way.

Still, the adults could not leave everything to a child, so they often took work away from him.

At least, they handled the dishes other than the cast-iron pot.

When the heavy cast-iron pot was in the frightening boy's hands, it spun like a light plate.

He scrubbed it in quick strokes, sprayed it with water from the rubber hose, then spun it around to rinse it. That was all it took.

Watching him wash it was almost like watching a trick.

Brushing one's teeth carefully after a meal was a proper habit every good child should have.

It was especially important in this remote village. If he got a cavity, he would have to travel all the way into the distant town for treatment.

Once he had brushed his teeth, Onik packed a small bundle.

Inside a neatly knotted Nonghyup Hanaro Mart wrapping cloth were a thick root of long-lived balloon flower and a ripe pear.

Carrying the bundle, Onik ran off with a patter of feet and soon entered the Three-Way Intersection Restaurant Church.

"Uncle! I'm here!"

"All right, come in. What's that?"

"Please take it first! It's a present!"

"A present? What has our Onik brought this time?"

The pastor accepted the bundle without demurring. It was something he had grown more accustomed to after Yohan died.

He understood the boy's feelings toward him.

"Can I open it now?"

"Yes!"

When he opened the bundle and saw what was inside, the pastor chuckled.

Having spent a long time in the countryside, he could not fail to recognize the value of the boy's gifts.

"These are precious gifts. Did Onik gather them himself?"

"Yes! I dug up the balloon flower root in the mountains, and I picked the biggest, ripest pear myself!"

"The balloon flower root I understand, but pears are not supposed to be ready yet. As far as I know, there's still a month to go."

"Mr. Jongsik's family up there put up a greenhouse over their pear orchard last spring, remember?

"The weather keeps getting hotter and ruining their crops, so they said it would be better to harvest as early as they could!

"They put up plastic sheeting early, installed reflective panels, and used hormones, and look how big the fruit has gotten already!"

"Oh. There was no guarantee that method would work, so I didn't expect them to succeed on their first try. That's wonderful news. But you got permission before picking it, right?"

"Of course! I don't steal fruit! Jo Onik isn't a mean little magpie!"

"Heh. All right. But is there a reason you brought these two things together?"

"Of course there is! Master Bowyer said the medicine works better if you double-boil balloon flower root and pear together!

"Ah, don't peel the pear! Wash it well and put it in whole!

"Drink the steeped water morning and evening over five days! It'll make your bronchial tubes stronger!"

"Ha ha. All right. I'll have it gratefully. Ah, since I received something so good, I should brag about it first."

Pastor Kim spread the wrapping cloth on the inner wooden floor, took several pictures, and uploaded them to the group chat.

It was a chat room shared by Pastor Kim's family and Onik.

The number beside the messages, the number of people who had not read them, did not immediately go down.

Onik was here with him, Pideuk was busy with work at his company, and Philip lived in a completely different time zone on the other side of the Pacific.

After packing the bundle away and placing it in the refrigerator, the pastor led Onik farther inside the church.

"Now then, shall I hear it? What's Onik worried about this time?"

"Um..."

After darting his eyes around, Onik asked the pastor to keep a secret.

"You have to be the only one who knows what I'm about to tell you! Promise me in Mr. God's name!"

"All right. I promise, so feel free to tell me."

When the pastor readily nodded, the boy carefully told him Sera's story from the beginning.

It was something that could put Sera in a difficult position if it got out.

Her situation, unable to protest despite the unfair treatment she received from her agency.

And the reason she would struggle to receive legal compensation for that unfairness even after her contract expired.

Even the reality in which fairness in the wording of the law did not lead to fairness in the law itself.

"I don't understand. Is the law too high up? Or are people who need help too low down and too far away?"

"Um..."

"Either way, there are people who cannot reach the law unless the law goes looking for them itself. But the law doesn't do that. Even if it tried, it probably wouldn't work very well."

"That's true. There are limits that can't be helped in reality. Onik has thought deeply about this."

"I'm going to help Sera noona, but who helps everyone else? Mr. God hardly helps either.

"If Mr. God was going to help them, He wouldn't have made them need help in the first place."

"..."

"Please tell me if I'm wrong. There are people in this world who have been abandoned by both human law and Mr. God. Aren't there?"

In the boy's heart as he asked this was a hope he did not want to acknowledge.

The second, third, and all the murders after that which he would someday be driven to commit.

He wanted a trusted adult to approve of those killings, even a little.

That was why the existence of abandoned people, people neither law nor God helped, held such special meaning for him.

Their existence would, at least in part, affirm the life of a murderer who helped them.

As the pastor listened to Onik's unchildlike words, he thought:

'An ordinary answer won't be enough.'

The answer he should give as a believer had already been decided.

Suffering on earth could be rewarded in heaven.

But only if that person had lived a life worthy of reward.

Still, that answer would not satisfy a boy who had long shown distrust toward “Mr. God.”

Given the existence of omniscient and omnipotent Mr. God, are not every person's life and salvation already ordained within God's plan?

Predestination was, in truth, one of Christianity's major doctrines.

Its details and interpretations differed greatly among denominations, sometimes causing fierce conflict, but practically no denomination rejected it outright.

After thinking deeply, the pastor spoke.

"Onik. To be completely honest, even I can't understand the way God gives His love to people."

"Really?"

"Yes. This uncle believes that God is infinitely good, but separate from that, I think it may be impossible for people to understand God's goodness.

"Compared to God, people are endlessly foolish and lacking."

It was a doubt that had coiled within the pastor's heart ever since Yohan's death.

A life spent striving to understand had become a life that had given up on understanding.

Even so, the pastor's faith remained firm.

Onik tilted his head.

"If people can't understand that goodness, can people's goodness and Mr. God's goodness really be called the same kind of goodness?"

"...No, I suppose not. At least, not from a person's point of view."

"If He gives us love we can't understand through goodness we can't understand, then I think that love is really scary. What even is that? It sounds too much like Cthulhu."

"Cthulhu? What's Cthulhu?"

"Um, Cthulhu is an alien god with an octopus head, and its weakness is getting rammed by a steamship..."

The boy chattered eagerly as he explained everything he knew about the Cthulhu Mythos.

This fictional mythology, originating in Lovecraft's novels, featured many divine beings beyond human understanding.

Those beings sometimes bestowed blessings upon humans.

Yet to most humans, those blessings were no more than curses that brought death, ruin, or a distortion of existence nearly as terrible.

The boy was asking whether the favor of a being beyond human comprehension was not twisted in the same way.

Onik did not know it, but many philosophers had argued the same point.

They pointed out that the very concept of a god's transcendent goodness, a goodness beyond human understanding, was ultimately nothing more than a patchwork pile of excuses.

One should not rationalize the evil in a world created by a supposedly good god in such a way.

"So maybe... everything the Truffle Candy noonas went through was a blessing according to Mr. God's standards.

"And ‘foolish people like us’ just can't understand that blessing. Isn't that possible?"

Instead of getting angry, the pastor answered gently.

"As you say, perhaps it is."

"Right?"

"But this uncle believes otherwise."

"Why?"

"Because although we may not understand God's great love...

"there are very special times when God's love becomes clear in ways that even we can recognize.

"Miraculous moments when God saves people with unmistakable love."

"...What kind of moments are those? Have you experienced one?"

"Of course I have. That's why I still believe in God today, isn't it?"

Stroking the boy's head, the pastor asked:

"You know what happened when I was in Congo, and how I got the rebel commander to make concessions, right?"

"Yes. I heard about it from Pideuk hyung."

"At that time... I didn't endure torture through my strength and will alone.

"If God hadn't given me strength, I might not have lasted even half a day, let alone a full day, before begging them to spare me."

The boy, who had kept his eyes turned aside until then, looked up at the pastor for a moment with doubtful eyes.

Pastor Kim only smiled softly.

#

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Pastor Kim had once worked desperately to save lives, was a place it would be no exaggeration to call hell on earth.

(Of course, even after so much time had passed, it was still hell.

The difference was that the Red Horseman of War had moved slightly aside, and the Black Horseman of Famine had moved into its place. The White Horseman of Plague traveled freely through both their domains.)

In that country, cruel conflicts that washed blood with blood had never ceased for even a moment.

The outside world was told there had been very brief lulls, but the truth was different.

Even during those lulls, human blood was sure to be shed somewhere in a land larger than all of Western Europe.

The region where Pastor Kim and other foreign volunteers worked lay at the edge of a safe zone.

At least, that was what it was called.

But safety there meant something very different from what people in the outside world imagined.

It was land where government forces little different from warlords, or actual warlords and rebel forces, maintained a feudal order.

In such a place, foreigners received only conditional guarantees of personal safety.

The volunteers had to follow those conditions without fail.

"Remember. Never make the warlord leaders angry!"

They also could not forget to give small bribes to subordinates when necessary.

Naturally, the personal safety of local residents was a separate matter.

The residents' property and lives were like possessions of the warlord leaders.

Even North Korea, the fief of the Northern Duke under three generations of hereditary rule, had what could be called order, did it not?

As in that Northern Duke's fief, people might keep dying, but if they died under a system that made society function according to an established order, then it was still order.

The first root that gave birth to this bloody order was Belgium, a humanist country that had once represented all humanity's morality and conscience better than any other.

Belgium, the beautiful nation that brought civilization to the savage land of Congo.

This admirable moral superpower left a lesson for future warlords to follow for generations.

「If the slaves do not meet their work quotas, cut off their hands and make an example of them!」

After Congo gained independence, Mobutu, the dictator who seized power with the support of the great former colonial motherland Belgium, realized something.

That morality was a nation's most important asset.

So he imported a new morality from a rising moral superpower in some distant corner of the Far East.

『Kim Il-sung is the teacher of my heart! With my independent leadership, I shall lead this nation!』

Having sold out independence hero Lumumba to the moral nation Belgium and ended his military-coup turn, this good dictator governed his country according to the methods of the new moral superpower, North Korea.

Simply put, he made the nation his private property.

Koreans should have been ashamed of themselves.

It was entirely the fault of morally backward South Korea that it had failed to slit Kim Il-sung's throat early on and achieve reunification by advancing north.

In any event, the self-reliant morality Mobutu imported directly from North Korea was truly magnificent.

So magnificent that in a democratically held presidential election, Mobutu could be gloriously elected with the perfectly normal vote share of 99.9985%.

「Mobutu, Father of Congo! Mobutu, Savior of the People! Follow Mobutu, Supreme Revolutionary Leader!」

But that alone was not enough.

Wanting more morality, he also imported Nazi Germany's morality of the leader principle.

Naturally, he imported anti-communism, another moral value of Nazi Germany, along with it.

The advanced ethics of the Nazis, who went bankrupt while turning the Jews, the world's most evil race (as certified by Palestinians), into eco-friendly recycled soap, moved the hearts of the Congolese people.

「One party, one nation, one leader! Mobutu is the party, the nation, and the father of all the people!」

Of course, running a country with so much morality plunged Mobutu, as it had the Nazis, into a serious military crisis for a time.

But Mobutu could overcome that by borrowing the army of another moral superpower, France.

France apparently did not dislike the Nazis.

It must have rather enjoyed the days when it lay beneath the animal-loving vegan man ahead of his time, Hitler, crying out like an animal.

In the end, all things return to their rightful course.

When a person lived by morality, good friends like these would eventually come to help.

The most moral nation on earth, the United States, certified by the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC, also became friends with the good dictator Mobutu.

In other words, it transferred enormous sums of friendship money every year so he could crush the communists.

Mobutu's remarkable flexibility, declaring Kim Il-sung the teacher of his heart while also presenting himself as an anti-communist leader, affected his friendships as much as his morality did.

Though the era of the great dictator Mobutu faded with the Cold War, warlords and rebel forces across the country inherited the legacy of his long moral rule.

Pastor Kim had once struggled desperately to save people amid those self-reliant and moral armed forces.

For a pastor from the Republic of Korea, the weakest nation in Northeast Asian morality, with competitors like Japan, China, North Korea, and Russia, it had truly not been easy...

Footnotes:

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