WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 53: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (53)
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#53.
Charles Fraser was a man who knew exactly where to draw the line.
He treated people according to the value he believed they possessed.
And in his eyes, K-Otherworld Hero Pastor Kim was a man worthy of respect.
The more help Pastor Kim received, the more worthwhile helping him proved. He was a kind pastor.
There might have been some self-interest mixed into his reason for coming to a conflict zone, but Charles was a Christian all the same.
Christianity was more than a religion to him. It was part of the cultural identity of a white man from the upper class, and part of his family's identity as well.
Fraser liked Pastor Kim and his sons.
Enough to help them with his family's private funds, beyond the resources supplied by the National Council of Churches, the NCC.
“Here are the medicines we prepared this time. I took care to source as many different brands as possible, even for medications with the same active ingredients.”
Fraser's smiling explanation puzzled Pastor Kim.
“Why did you do that? It must have been troublesome. And you must have spent your own money as well.”
Whatever the supplies were, the more varieties there were, the more strain they put on the supply chain.
Naturally, buying small amounts of many items cost more than purchasing a single item in bulk.
That was why the medicines supported by the NCC, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the UN all came in predetermined varieties.
Pastor Kim immediately understood what Fraser meant by saying he had “taken care.”
The son of a distinguished family shrugged.
“It’s simple. It’ll make the local people see you as a more professional medical practitioner. Wouldn’t they place more trust in someone who occasionally changes the medicine for the same symptoms than in someone who chooses one drug from a small selection and keeps prescribing only that?”
“...”
“Ha ha. You don't look pleased.”
“I’m sorry. You did this because you were worried about me, so I should be thanking you first...”
“It’s all right! You feel as though you’re deceiving people, don't you? I respect you for feeling that way. It makes me want to help you all the more, because you're such an upright person.”
After saying that, Fraser's smile faded.
“Pastor. You need to establish yourself as someone even more valuable to both the government forces and the rebels. That's the only way you can avoid following in the footsteps of those who left before you, should anything happen.”
Those who had left before meant one of two things.
The people who had fled because they could no longer endure the threats and exploitation of the local powers.
And the people who had left this world through death.
For now, both the government forces and the rebels kept Pastor Kim alive and extracted what profit they could from him. But there had once been a time when those violent, ignorant black ants did not know how to handle aphids.
They knew no limits. They simply took whatever they could until the aphids who could bear it no longer ran away, or they killed aphids for amusement and regretted it afterward.
K-Otherworld Hero Pastor Kim's present was possible because people had left that way in the past.
“Have you heard something troubling?”
“It’s still an unconfirmed rumor, but reliable sources have been saying that the rebel commander near the area where you're staying may soon be replaced. The person in question is... not good.”
“Who is it?”
“A man named Moweli Karuru. Have you heard of him? He’s rather well known as a vicious sort among activists who have spent a long time in this country.”
“No. It’s the first I’ve heard of him. What kind of man is he?”
“He calls himself an independence activist, but he’s a madman... Among activists on our side, he’s better known as ‘Waterboarding Moweli.’ As the nickname suggests, he’s a vicious sadist who enjoys water torture.”
Fraser frowned in open disgust.
#
Rebel commander Moweli Karuru hated foreign “so-called aid workers” even more than Fraser hated the “so-called independence activist” Moweli.
The worst of them were Christian aid workers.
“Those disgusting people never come here out of genuine goodwill.”
Moweli regularly gave cynical ideological lectures before his subordinates.
“In their hearts, they see us Congolese as an inferior race beneath them. They come believing that they, the higher and superior people, must save us. And while they’re at it, they hope to please the god they believe in and earn themselves a place in heaven!”
In Moweli's eyes, Congo had never once been truly independent.
Even when Belgium, that moral superpower, had no choice but to let Congo go, it attached every condition it could, trying to preserve its influence.
And its efforts were rewarded by the good dictator Mobutu.
As long as he could live lavishly, Mobutu did not care what happened to the country.
That allowed the benevolent moral nations of the West that had supported him to divide up the countless resources of a land as broad as Europe.
Moral superpowers sell morality for money.
Mobutu maintained the image of his good friends by taking all the blame for the infamy of corrupt kleptocracy upon himself.
And as payment for selling that morality, he brought a great deal of foreign currency into Congo.
Since it was foreign currency he had brought in, of course he had the right to spend it.
To make this easier for Korea's candidates for Otherworld Hero, imagine this.
Not long after liberation, a pro-Japanese political thug backed by Japan killed everyone from Syngman Rhee to Kim Gu, established a pro-Japanese regime, and lived in wealth and glory.
During the reign of the good dictator Mobutu, Congo's resource sovereignty was handed entirely to foreign powers.
The countless warlords and rebel groups in the country were the only things getting in the way of that.
They too were ultimately nothing but bands of robbers who cared only for their own interests.
Still, they were robbers within the country.
It was at least a speck better for the resources of this land to be robbed by thieves from the same country than for them all to be stripped away by thieves from outside it.
At least, that was what Moweli believed.
The collateral damage that arose in the process simply had to be endured.
He also had to look away from the fact that the robbers within the country all made lofty claims, yet ultimately worked as subcontractors for foreign powers.
Moweli lamented this reality.
How could anyone call this a proper independent nation?
“The first step toward true independence is restoring spiritual self-reliance!”
Moweli, the proud independence army commander, could not accept this shameful history.
“No matter how sick and starving you are, even if you feel close to death, you mustn't think of relying on the charity that white bastards, who live on the pleasure of their own superiority, hand out in hypocrisy! Only then can you preserve the bare minimum of dignity as a human being! Taking whatever you’re given and stuffing it into your mouth does not make you human. It makes you livestock!”
And livestock ought to be treated as livestock.
That was why he and his soldiers had no hesitation about exploiting and massacring civilians.
“Those weak livestock who have abandoned their dignity as human beings and added to this country's shame must be forced to serve our righteous army! Only then can they become human again! Those who dare insult us or stubbornly refuse to serve would be better off dead!”
The soldiers receiving his ideological instruction respected their commander as he spoke with such force.
He was the only person around them who said such “intelligent” things.
What was more, those intelligent words logically justified the soldiers' violence, looting, rape, and massacres.
It was an appealing ideology, one that affirmed they were righteous.
Of course, soldiers whose average educational attainment fell short of completing elementary school did not understand their clever commander's lessons and speeches from the beginning.
Eight or nine out of every ten soldiers recruited only from conflict zones were illiterate.
But though Moweli's ideology was warped, he was a diligent commander.
He also possessed a passion no less fierce than Hitler's or Churchill's.
He worked hard to enlighten his soldiers.
Didn't those disgusting missionaries repeat their sermons to illiterate locals until they could understand at least some of the Bible?
As an independence army commander, he could not fall behind them.
To build a truly strong army, he first had to give his soldiers conviction, justification, and the ironclad sense of duty that came from them.
That was why his ideological lessons always ended by emphasizing the importance of the spirit.
“What we need is a spirit that transcends material things! No matter how fully supplied you are with material goods, without a steadfast spirit, you are no more than loose grains of sand!”
Moweli was not repeating outdated slogans about willpower being supreme.
He knew as well as anyone that no army which had championed such slogans had ever been strong.
The spirit Moweli emphasized was thought, ideology, and faith.
It was the powerful force that made people walk willingly toward death for the values they believed were right.
An army that does not know what it must give its life for is not an army.
It is only a gathering of armed robbers.
In that sense, Moweli did not consider even the rebel force he belonged to an army.
He believed that only the unit under his command was developing the identity of a true army.
“Many foreigners mock the reality of our country. They call us inferior natives who only kill and kill one another, no matter how much time passes, without ever making any progress. They call us lesser beings who sit upon vast lands and rich resources yet know only how to beg from the outside world.
“Yet among those foreigners, almost none speak with a proper understanding of Congo's history and the reality it created today.
“There are only ignorant people who want to look clever and superior while insulting an easy target, an inferior race.
“Even fewer know that the countless warlords and rebel groups scattered across this land at least claim to seek true independence from the West.
“Of course, that is no more than a claim.
“The fallen warlords and rebel leaders care only about monopolizing wealth for themselves and their tribes.
“They are people with little to recommend them over the dictator Mobutu.
“From the spiritual soil of this land, laid waste since the Belgian colonial era, it was difficult for greater people than them to emerge.
“Proper native leaders went extinct with Lumumba, whom Mobutu sold out.
“But I am different. I possess a spirit that transcends material things!”
Mao Zedong was one of the revolutionaries Moweli admired.
That Chinese man too had united his party with a spirit that transcended material things, completed the Long March, and finally won ultimate victory.
In that sense, Moweli liked waterboarding.
‘I like the moment arrogant outsiders have their masks stripped away.
Those who hide their pride behind thin hypocrisy, then mock the dignity of the people living on this land with their patronizing attitudes.
The disgusting outsiders who scatter a handful of food and reduce people to livestock.
The collaborators who keep giving Western nations excuses to escape the guilt of their past sins.
The ignorant fools who have no intention of taking responsibility for the new sins they contribute to.
Narcissists intoxicated only by “me, helping pitiful black people” and “me, walking through heaven's gates”...’
Moweli knew how to strip away the masks of such people.
All he had to do was tie them to a chair, cover their faces with cloth, and pour water over them in a steady trickle.
Doing only that... made the outsiders reveal their true selves.
“There has not been a single exception so far.”
In the terror and agony of suffocation, they betrayed the locals they had conditioned to live like livestock.
They did so even when Moweli promised he would never kill them.
It did not take very long.
Whenever he stripped the masks from outsiders through public waterboarding, the livestock who had relied on them wore expressions as though their world had collapsed.
That was the first step in turning livestock back into people. It was the process of cleansing minds poisoned by the filthy hypocrisy of outsiders.
It was the first step in giving proper spirit to the craven people who had forgotten their anger and their pride, content as long as they were not hungry from one day to the next.
That was why independence army commander Moweli loved waterboarding so much.
One day, he hoped to subject the supreme commander of his own rebel organization to the same torture.
He hoped to wash away that filthy man's mask as though rinsing it off with water, and make him confess that he was a self-serving profiteering scoundrel who had exploited people only to satisfy his private greed.
That day would be the day when the true patriot Moweli Karuru ascended to the position of rebel leader in the truest sense.
#
The brothers Pideuk, Yohan, and Philip had been used to living apart from their father since their school days.
All three had graduated from an international Christian academy in Addis Ababa, then gone on to universities affiliated with Protestant foundations in Britain.
Why had they gone all the way to universities in that wretched island country? Because the curriculum at their high school academy had been accredited for Britain's IGCSE qualification.
Britain also had many scholarship programs in both the public and private sectors that supported students like them.
These programs were fundamentally meant to expand Britain's religious and cultural influence, though they were also intended to compensate for Britain's historical wrongs.
Naturally, any decent Earthling, and perhaps even an alien, would have a question.
「Can something like that really count as compensation?」
But people must not ask such honest, and tactless, questions.
If the British conscience circuit, which had barely started working, developed an error, the wretched instincts sleeping in their genes might take over.
Then there would have been no point in twentieth-century Otherworld Hero Hitler carrying the original sins of imperialist nations and shooting himself in the head.
In any case, Pastor Kim's three sons benefited from their father when they went to university.
A young British noble, who had come to volunteer in one of his own country's former colonies for the same reasons as Charles Fraser, had taken a liking to the K-Otherworld Hero he met in Kenya and written special-admission recommendation letters for Pastor Kim's children.
They were called recommendation letters, but they were magical letters that let them pass freely through the selection process of a scholarship foundation funded by the noble family's wealth.
「This magical letter began in Britain, traveled once around the Earth each year, brought good luck to whoever received it, and has now come to you, shouting, “Your tuition is solved!”...」
That was right. The chain-letter ghost story had a real form.
People said that Britain made every wicked thing in the world, but now and then it made other things too.
At this point, it was worth suspecting that one strange benefit had been included among the perks of sending a K-Otherworld Hero to Africa.
Something like demonic BL pheromones that made the children of distinguished white families fall head over heels for him.
To set the record straight for the Hero's honor, the support was truly trivial from the young British noble's perspective.
The combined four years of tuition and dormitory expenses at a Christian foundation for Pastor Kim's three sons amounted to only two or three months of his spending money.
The favor cost even less because it came from the trust funds particular to British noble families. To receive tax benefits related to their scholarship foundations, it was money they had to spend on someone anyway.
People should not say anything rude like, “Why are you involved in managing a trust fund?”
After graduating through this process that naturally filled them with love for humanity, the three brothers followed their father's volunteer work.
They were not related by blood, yet perhaps because of that, they were an even warmer and more devoted family.
To the three brothers, all of them orphans, Pastor Kim was a savior.
And Pastor Kim's volunteer work saved others whose circumstances were like the brothers' or even worse.
The brothers gladly wanted to share with others the salvation they had received.
There was no reason for them to find it unfamiliar or upsetting to live apart from one another.
When they divided their roles across a vast land, the days spent apart naturally outnumbered the days spent together.
Leaving their father alone to face danger was another matter.
“Father.”
Pideuk, the eldest, held his father back with a worried expression.
“Wouldn't it be better if we went with you?”
Yohan stood beside Pideuk, wearing the same expression.
Philip was away to provide legal consultations for nearby residents, but Philip's heart would not have differed from that of his two older brothers.
Pastor Kim gently shook his head.
“If what you're worried about happens, what would change just because there were more of us? I'd feel more at ease with family behind me to look after things.”
“But...”
“If things truly go wrong, there will be far more children with nowhere to turn and far more desperate fugitives than there are now. We cannot turn our backs on them.”
“...”
“Ha ha. Don't worry too much. It's only a rumor.”
The pastor reassured his sons.
“Most rumors that spread across this vast country come from mouths hundreds of kilometers away, even when they’re said to be close. Even if this time is an exception, would this Waterboarding Moweli really come looking for a little village where I am?”
There was one rule of life every Korean learned.
The words “surely not” killed people with alarming frequency.
Though they had spent less than half their young lives growing up in Korea, Pastor Kim's three sons were Korean nationals.
Pideuk and Yohan had an uneasy feeling and could not relax.
‘Something feels wrong...’
Honestly, the brothers wanted their Hero father to hide himself away for a while.
But he was their father because he was not the sort of person who would do that.
Not only the children and fugitives with nowhere to turn, but also the village residents whose lives had become a little more stable because of Pastor Kim were people the K-Otherworld Hero could not abandon.
The pastor encouraged the sons in his Hero party.
“Keep helping Mr. Fraser as you have been, and take the fugitives farther away. As you know, even experienced brokers are difficult to trust these days.”
Pideuk and Yohan nodded helplessly.
Originally, there had been a broker based at Fraser's aid base who took custody of the fugitives Pastor Kim brought there and carried them onward to the refugee camps assigned as their destinations farther to the rear.
But it came to light that the broker had not taken them to those refugee camps. On several occasions, he had instead taken them to mines controlled by the rebels. Since then, Yohan and Pideuk had been taking turns making round trips of hundreds of kilometers along unpaved roads.
The broker who had deceived people while wearing the mask of a devout Christian defended himself by saying he had sold people only three times.
Naturally, he had swallowed all the money paid to him for his trouble.
There was no court in this land that could punish him.
Even now, that broker still believed he was a devout Christian.
「Me? Yes, I committed a sin... But it's all right now. I repented before God and asked for forgiveness. Our Lord God embraces even the most terrible sinner in love if they truly repent. Am I wrong?」
Just as much evil existed in a world said to have been created by a good god, much disgusting evil also existed among those who claimed to believe in a good god...
The Hero found that fact deeply depressing.
“Then I’ll be going. Let’s meet again next week. Give my regards to Philip.”
After putting an arm around each of his two sons' shoulders, Pastor Kim climbed into the driver's seat of the truck loaded with medicine and food for treating malnutrition.
Fraser spoke to the pastor through the open window.
“I have always held your devotion in the highest respect. May our Lord Jesus Christ protect your path ahead, Pastor.”
“You're too kind. My sons and I have received much help from you. Thank you, always.”
With that, they said their farewells.
Pastor Kim then recited a verse from Psalm 23.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod, it comforts me!”
If God truly existed and heard the prayer in the pastor's heart, perhaps He would have answered with the following verse.
「Behold, I have refined you, but not with silver. I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.」
Jacob, whom Jehovah had “chosen in the furnace of affliction,” was a far worse person than K-Otherworld Hero Pastor Kim, but that did not matter.
Jehovah was not a god who chose whom to test according to whether someone was good or evil.
Anyone who wished to say that was wrong should first go look at poor Job, who remained clean as pure gold even after being sifted and sifted, yet was still fleeced and fleeced again by Jehovah.
The story of Job said this: the will of the god called Jehovah was something humans dared not understand, and trying to divide the will of god into human right and wrong was itself an act of impiety.
「My will is good. And you cannot know my will. Receive whatever I give you, and be grateful.」
「That is the entirety of the morality granted to you, and the greatest good you can possibly practice.」
In the end, Onik's remark that the Christian God felt like Cthulhu... had its basis in the Bible itself.
To humans who could not understand him, Jehovah, who tested Job, was no different from a frightening boy crushing ants to satisfy his desires.
Therefore, Jehovah was no more and no less than an unknown horror to the boy.
A horror difficult to rank even against the unknown providence that had bestowed dark-red strangeness upon him.
A god like Cthulhu was not qualified to become the lonely boy's father.
Onik firmly believed that such a god was not one that people with difficult lives, like Sera, could rely upon either.
Mr. God, whose other name might perhaps be Nyarlathotep, according to Onik's suspicion, sent an executive of the Demon King's Army, a Demon King (true), to K-Otherworld Hero Pastor Kim.
“So, you're the pastor named Kim? The villagers had many good things to say about you. It is good to meet you.”
The furnace of affliction that had come looking for the Hero was a cruel, dark-skinned warrior who, despite being fire, wielded water-element skills.
“I am Lieutenant Colonel Moweli Karuru, commander of the Congo Free Liberation Front shock troops (Troupes de choc). I have been newly assigned to this area.”
Blasphemously, as the Hero looked into the eyes of black fire in human form, he offered a prayer to the God he believed in.
Footnotes:
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