WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 6: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (6)

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The joint sports day linked to the local festival ended as little more than a dreary gathering for local residents.

The idea itself had not been bad: gather a large group of elementary school students for a sports day, then turn it into a tourist attraction by tying it to a local specialty festival and the Hometown Love Donation program.

Children had become exceedingly scarce in this day and age.

Festivals in this country offered much the same sights wherever one went. Only a handful of truly famous places were exceptions.

So an interschool competition where children put their pride on the line had the potential to be something distinctive.

If the bright innocence of country children warmed the hearts of city adults, those adults would naturally loosen their purse strings as well.

Retro trends had been popular lately, too. With more care put into planning and preparation, it might have become a success story that other local governments rushed to imitate.

But how could that have happened?

From the planning stage onward, miserable adults had each shoved in a spoon to claim their share.

After those greedy spoons heartily scooped up the budget “in good conscience,” the festival gave the impression that every part of it had only barely been thrown together.

The event stumbled along, the empty programs all felt disconnected, and the few tourists who came let out hollow laughs at the outrageous prices.

「Twenty thousand won for one bowl of banquet noodles? That's seriously over the line.」

It was a grand harmony of madness, born of the greed of aging bigwigs and the professional festival organizers who fed that greed with expensive stall fees and kickbacks.

Now that the outside vendors and tourists had all gone, only banners that had not yet been taken down hung forlornly over the empty grounds.

「Please join the Hometown Love Donation program for the children of this region!」

Of course, for Onik and the other children, the festival and sports day remained nothing but happy memories.

It was none of their concern how the ambitious plans of those aging bigwigs had been reported in the news.

Still, Onik had gained one worry afterward.

‘For some reason, Teacher has looked gloomy a lot since then.’

When Onik thought of a teacher outside school, Lee Eun-jeong was the default.

When he thought of other teachers, he always added something. So-and-so Teacher, the teacher for a certain subject, or the teacher without any hair.

Even if he could not look straight at the face of the teacher he liked so very much for long, Onik often stole glances at her.

Just as he did with his grandfather, the most precious person in the world to him.

As far as Onik could tell, Teacher had clearly developed some sort of worry lately.

The problem was that he did not know what it was.

So Teacher's worry became Onik's worry as well.

The old Master Bowyer beside the boy, whose hands had slowed a little because he was thinking about Teacher, abruptly spoke.

“You little rascal. You won't make a good bow if you keep letting your mind wander like that.”

“Ah, I'm sorry.”

After chasing away his stray thoughts, Onik's hands sped up again.

The Master Bowyer watched the boy shave bamboo.

The way Onik held bamboo marked with an ink line upright against the cutting block and struck it with an adze showed a skill far beyond his age.

‘That little fellow's something else. It's his first time actually doing it, but he follows along so well.’

No. He was doing more than simply following along.

The old artisan believed care mattered in every task, and they had also reprimanded the boy because they feared Onik might hurt himself while handling tools with his mind elsewhere.

Yet by Onik's standards, hands that had slowed “a little” still moved with the speed and precision of an experienced craftsman by ordinary standards.

Now that the boy's concentration had returned, he was naturally even faster.

The speed and accuracy displayed by that exceptional boy came closer to that of a machine than a person.

「Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!」

The sharp strikes rang out in a quick rhythm.

Each time he brought down the adze at an angle, chunks of bamboo came cleanly away exactly along the line.

Even the experienced Master Bowyer admired it inwardly. Even in their healthy days, they could not have done it as well as Onik was doing now.

Shaving the wood with diagonal strikes prevented the grain from splitting farther than necessary.

It was harder than it looked to control the force, since one wrong blow could ruin the material, but the boy did it with startling ease.

It was not something that could be achieved through grip strength alone.

Onik shaved thirty bamboo staves, then thirty oak and thirty mulberry staves, all at a startling pace.

Having finished all of them without showing a trace of fatigue or shedding a single drop of sweat, the boy gave the old Master Bowyer his usual gaze that looked past people, then smiled brightly.

“Should I fill the brazier with charcoal now?”

“Goodness. You've been paying close attention all this time.”

“Hehe. I'll be right back.”

The strong boy lifted the heavy brass brazier as lightly as a plastic washbasin and went out past the wooden porch.

They did not buy charcoal separately. They used a coal shovel to scoop up the charcoal left in the traditional stove hearth after stoking it.

When Onik soon returned with the brazier full, the old Master Bowyer held their palm about a handspan above it to judge the heat.

The pleasant warmth against their palm made them chuckle to themself.

‘How did he get even this exactly right?’

Onik's interest in the Master Bowyer's work was nothing new.

The old Master Bowyer remembered the young grandson of an older person from the village, someone they spent time with like a friend, coming to watch when he was six and staring blankly at the finished bows and arrows he held.

At first, they had worried that something might be wrong with the child. They could not help worrying when the boy stayed in the same position, silently watching, for ten or twenty minutes at a time.

After that, whenever he was bored, the child would come by and intently observe the Master Bowyer at work.

That child was Onik.

It was no surprise that he could judge the proper heat for the brazier by sight.

Satisfied, the old artisan held the bamboo over the brazier and moved it around, turning it front to back to heat it evenly all over.

The boy patiently watched this time-consuming work.

Just as he always had in the old craftsman's memories.

“Here, touch it.”

The old artisan held out the thoroughly heated bamboo to the boy. Onik took off his work gloves and carefully placed his fingers against the grain.

“Remember this temperature well. Bamboo must be heated to exactly this point. Don't forget that if you put it over too strong a fire and the outside and inside heat differently, you'll make a bad bow. An impatient person can't make a good bow.”

The old artisan had only said that Onik should come help from time to time when he had spare time or felt bored, but the boy showed such promise that they were seriously passing on their craft.

The boy, for his part, learned with complete focus.

Learning to make bows was knowledge for killing something, and knowledge for killing something was far more appealing to him than other kinds of knowledge.

It also felt as though he absorbed it at an entirely different rate from the start.

As though his mind, like a separate living thing, eagerly drew in knowledge.

The old Master Bowyer showed the boy how to bend a wooden stave against the bow-bending frame, a support with crossbars used for fitting and bending wood.

The boy had surely seen it repeated hundreds of times already, but the old artisan wanted to show him one final time before he tried it himself.

“Urgh...”

The forearm muscles of the aging Master Bowyer, which had nearly vanished since they lost their eldest son, strained and twitched.

The bamboo stave slowly bent into the shape of the middle of an unstrung bow.

Once the stave had been bent, both ends had to be tied with wire to hold it in place. It would take several days for it to set in that curved shape.

After tying the wire with a grunt, the old artisan let out a breath and gave the boy his turn.

“You must bend it exactly this far and tie it in place. Now you try.”

As if he had been waiting, Onik took one of the bamboo staves he had shaved and heated it.

He patiently warmed the stave, then fitted it into the bow-bending frame and bent it with the same seriousness as the Master Bowyer.

“Slowly. Slowly. Yes, like that. Think of it as handling a flower, not wood.”

The boy, whose senses and strength were both excellent, delicately bent the stave and neatly tied it with wire.

The Master Bowyer nodded and moved on.

“Bamboo, oak, and mulberry each have a different proper temperature for bending. Mulberry especially needs more heat on the side that will become the bow tip. The angle of that bend is different. I'll heat them one at a time, so feel it with your own hands.”

The boy eagerly absorbed the old craftsman's deep instruction as it came. From memorizing the different temperatures for the different woods to bending each stave and shaping the bow tips on the mulberry staves, he performed every task to a passing standard on his first attempt.

(A bow tip is the end of a traditional Korean bow. It is bent outward to secure the bowstring and absorb recoil when the bow is fired.)

Onik's smartphone rang just as the old Master Bowyer was about to teach him the form and technique for cutting water buffalo horn.

「It's too much-♬ Too- much♬ You- are♬ too mu-ch-♬」

Onik knew who was calling just from the hearty trot melody.

“Huh? Grandpa?”

There were exactly three people for whom Onik had set a separate ringtone.

His grandfather. Teacher Lee Eun-jeong. And Yo-han hyung, the second son of Pastor Kim.

He could not miss calls from those three people.

“Hello? Grandpa? What's wrong?”

The Master Bowyer's hearing was poor, so they could not hear the voice on the other end of the phone.

Still, the great change in the mature child's expression alone told them that Onik was hearing something unusual.

“Ah, yes... I'll... I'll come right away... Yes, Grandpa...”

Though he said he would come right away, after ending the call, the boy only sat there with both hands wrapped around his smartphone between his knees.

The child's eyes had gone blank in a way unlike his usual gaze that looked past people.

Those eyes made the Master Bowyer worry.

Growing anxious, the Master Bowyer asked, “Child, what's happened? What did your grandpa say that has you sitting there like that?”

At the question, Onik looked up at the Master Bowyer from an angle.

The confusion in the boy's eyes unsettled the old artisan.

The child, who always struggled to look people in the eye, was looking at them for a long time now, even if his gaze shook.

The Master Bowyer had no way of knowing, but this was possible because Onik's heart was more shaken than it had ever been before.

His turmoil was so great that, for the moment, he could not even see the possibilities of murder.

“Um...”

Onik's lips moved before he forced out an answer.

“Grandpa said my father came home...”

“Who came? Your father? That bastard Jo Yun-beom?”

“Yes.”

The boy nodded blankly, and the Master Bowyer's mouth fell open.

#

The old Master Bowyer, who had been just as dumbfounded as the boy, came to their senses and immediately barked at him to leave.

“What are you doing, you rascal? Go see him already!”

Onik sprang up and began running almost by reflex. His mind was still too tangled to function properly.

The boy ran wildly, but as home drew nearer, his pace gradually slowed.

By the time he turned the familiar corners and saw the vegetable garden and wall in front of his house, Onik realized he was not running hurriedly at all. He was plodding along.

Eventually, even those plodding steps came to a stop.

His thoughts kept tangling themselves into new knots, and the child did not know if it was all right to meet his father like this.

What should he say to greet him?

Would the father he was meeting for the first time dislike him?

‘If he does, what should I do? Could I really ask the countless questions that have piled up in my heart because I've never had anyone to ask?’

‘I thought I didn't care much anymore that Father never came to see me...’

Apparently, that had not been true.

A conversation he had once had at school with a younger boy from the grade below came to Onik's mind. It had been the classroom observation day his grandfather attended in place of his parents.

The child who liked dinosaurs whispered in Onik's ear.

“Hyung! Why don't you have a mom and dad?”

Onik shook his head.

“I have a dad. I just don't have a mom.”

“You have a dad? Then why doesn't he come?”

“They say he went far away by ship. To make money.”

“Far away? To another country?”

“Yeah. I guess he can't come because he travels through lots of countries that are really far away. Because he's busy.”

“Wow. That's cool.”

The younger child, impressed, envied Onik.

“Anyway, hyung, you don't have a mom?”

“Yeah.”

“That's nice. Not having a mom.”

“Why would that be nice?”

“Of course it is. Moms only nag you all the time. Study, do this, do that. On days when Mom isn't home, it's so comfortable. You can play games all day, eat cup noodles whenever you want, and you don't have to organize or clean up. I'm so jealous of you, hyung.”

“You don't understand people's hearts. Is it because you like dinosaurs and things like that...?”

“Huh...?”

Onik had never once thought it was good not to have a mother.

The same was true of his father.

It was not that he welcomed his father's absence. He had simply grown used to it, become indifferent to it, and thought that living with his grandfather alone was enough to make him happy.

With Chuseok just around the corner, he had briefly imagined that perhaps his father would come this holiday.

He had never expected that vague, unreal-feeling possibility to become reality like this.

The turmoil in his heart would not settle.

Still, he could not stand there forever. Onik took steps as heavy as his heart and walked toward home.

An unfamiliar car was parked on the lane beside the vegetable garden. Around the wall of the house, villagers who had come out after hearing the news stood in little groups and peered inside.

Perhaps he had heard their restless murmuring. Jo Jeong-ho threw open the gate and came out, angrily shouting at the villagers.

“What great spectacle is there that you've all gathered here? Get back home, every one of you!”

The villagers could understand Jo Jeong-ho's anger.

Embarrassed by the scolding from the most senior elder in this clan village, they dispersed.

Some noticed Onik making his way home with heavy steps, but no one said anything to a child about to meet his father for the first time. They only wore complicated expressions.

“You're a little later than I expected.”

Jo Jeong-ho let out a low sigh as he looked at his grandson.

“Go in. Your father is waiting in the inner room.”

Onik felt puzzled at that.

“...What about you, Grandpa?”

Jo Jeong-ho sighed again. This sigh carried even deeper displeasure.

“He asked to see you alone. He said he would leave otherwise... He's my child, but what on earth is going through that strange head of his...”

“...”

“Should your grandpa stay beside you after all?”

Of course Onik wanted his grandfather to stay.

But then his father might truly leave without seeing him.

There might not be another chance, so he did not think he should lean on his grandfather now.

“No. It's okay.”

“...”

“I'm really okay. I'll go in.”

Having lost all his usual brightness, Onik stepped through the tall gate.

He crossed the yard by stepping on the stones laid out like stepping-stones. When he reached the main house, he saw a pair of unfamiliar shoes on the stone step in front of the wooden porch.

That worn-out pair of men's shoes made Onik's heart grow even more troubled.

“...”

Wondering whether he should say something before entering, the boy hesitated before silently opening the door. The sliding sound rang loudly through the silence.

In the room watched over by a medal certificate and a war veteran's certificate, a middle-aged man who resembled his grandfather sat quietly.

The boy knew this man was his father.

He knew it with his head, not his heart.

Footnotes:

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