WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 61: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (61)

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#61.

Onik's first horseback-riding experience video rapidly climbed in views.

Of every video they had uploaded so far, it was the second fastest to do so.

(The fastest had been that mushroom-gathering and mukbang video.

People who came out of simple curiosity could hardly compete with crowds armed with coordinates and ready to hurl insults.)

Even in hindsight, Onik's feats at the riding school were astonishing enough to make one wonder whether they had really happened.

They were the sort of exploits one would expect to find in a novel like Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

Legal Hunter watched the view count rise with deep satisfaction.

‘Heh... as expected of our Onik. He's setting another fine record. A truly great man has come from our Jo clan of Songnyeong.’

In the video, Legal Hunter diligently made sure he got his share of screen time.

His young business partner had performed all the tricks, but Legal Hunter went around collecting everyone's reactions.

He was the hype man who made the first and loudest fuss over his young partner's accomplishments, drawing even more amazement and praise from those watching.

It was another role Legal Hunter had established for himself on the channel.

His daughter's advice had played a large part in it.

"Dad, look at successful variety shows. The star is important, obviously, but there isn't a program carried by the star alone.

"The other members need to secure their own roles, interact with the star in different ways, enrich the situation and conversation, and keep creating variables to throw at the star."

When his daughter had been job hunting, Legal Hunter had been thoroughly displeased that she spent every day shut up at home watching variety programs instead of preparing for employment.

Still, fortunes rose and fell.

Now, Legal Hunter felt proud of his daughter for drawing on her extensive viewing experience from those days to advise him.

His self-proclaimed "professional viewer" daughter unexpectedly showed some humility, too.

"Ah... by the standards of professional viewers who have followed one variety show for a long time, this much insight is nothing.

"There are people everywhere who can write out a predicted script for the next episode and say, 'Ah, I've already watched all of next week's episode.' No, I guess I should say there used to be."

When he asked why she had changed it to the past tense, she said fewer people watched variety shows on traditional television these days.

Apparently, every broadcaster had lost its touch.

It was a difficult time for South Korean broadcasters in many ways...

Legal Hunter agreed with his daughter's assessment.

‘They really have lost their touch. Just look at the casting emails they've sent us!’

Every casting offer from the various broadcasters and programs that arrived in the business email account carried, no matter what it was, a deeply unpleasant undertone.

That unspoken message was this:

"We will give you the opportunity to appear on our program."

The precise wording varied, but they all meant the same thing.

Give them an opportunity?

That patronizing attitude put Legal Hunter in a foul mood.

Of course, Legal Hunter did not hate such things unconditionally.

Did pride make money?

If bowing a little, offering a servile smile, and flattering someone gave him the chance to make a great deal of money, Legal Hunter, a bad adult, was perfectly willing to do it.

But the offers he had received so far went too far, no matter how he looked at them.

If they were seriously trying to cast someone, should they not at least do some basic research on the other party and make an offer that suited them?

‘We may have risen quickly, but we're not in a weight class that deserves this treatment... I'm not asking them to meet a satisfying figure from the start, but they should at least make it look respectable!

‘I can take it, but what do they mean by treating an appearance itself as compensation for Onik?’

Legal Hunter recalled the troubles Truffle Candy had mentioned in passing.

Had they said that the entire four-member group's appearance fee for a terrestrial television music show was only 100,000 won?

Split four ways, it was barely enough to order one chicken.

Their agency had taken even that, so what pleasure could there have been in working?

He could not tolerate anyone treating his precious young business partner that way.

He and his young partner were bound by fate. To disregard his young partner was to disregard him.

‘Our Onik isn't just a winning lottery ticket. He's a ticket whose winning numbers have already been announced!’

Legal Hunter did not know it, but the producers who had tried to cast them felt somewhat wronged.

They had unavoidable practical reasons of their own.

The reason they could not bring themselves to say aloud, swallowing it only out of pride, was this:

"Well, actually, we don't have any money."

More precisely, it was not that they had no money. It was difficult to secure a budget.

Because ratings had continued to fall, even the nation's leading state broadcaster stood on the verge of a capital impairment crisis.

In that situation, the higher-ups who held budgetary authority had not abandoned their outdated thinking. They insisted that cutting costs to improve the organization's structure had to come first.

The cost-cutting methods of those higher-ups, trapped in past glory, naturally included driving down the fees of new television talent.

People had always been the easiest thing to save money on in this country.

It was also an industry custom so common that it could be called tradition.

"They're still nothing but unproven performers on network television. Why pay them so much for their first appearance?"

"We're still the major players! Anyone in their right mind should be grateful if we give them an opportunity!"

"Do you people have any intention of saving the budget at all? The whole company needs to tighten its belt in this time of crisis, and you're working with such complacent attitudes... Tsk, tsk."

"Negotiations depend on how you handle them! What do you mean, bowing from the start just because the other side seems to be in a higher weight class?"

"In my day, we had the spirit to charge in first, even if the other party had power!"

What could staff members struggling with reality on the front lines do in a situation like that?

They had to try to regain a little pride by throwing their weight around when they could choose the target. When that was not possible, they at least had to bluff with all their strength.

Things had improved somewhat these days.

As more internet broadcasters successfully moved into traditional television, the higher-ups had finally begun to change their thinking.

It was a change rooted in a sense of defeat, born from gradually accepting that online broadcasting had become the mainstream, but still...

In any case, after the horseback-riding experience video became a major topic, the quality of the offers they received began to change.

Legal Hunter considered the situation in his own way.

‘Looks like our little blessing is starting to catch the eyes of important people.’

Legal Hunter did not understand the workings of the broadcasting industry, but he knew one thing well.

In the end, money was moved by decision-makers with a certain level of authority.

If the figures they offered had changed, then the rank of the broadcasting people paying attention to them must have changed as well.

And that was exactly what had happened.

Until then, the people asking whether they would be willing to appear had been a mix of staff and freelance writers, along with ordinary producers.

Now, content producer-level executives had begun to take notice of the extraordinary country boy.

At that point, Legal Hunter naturally thought of someone he had decided to "hunt."

‘Heh heh. If that fellow sees these emails, his eyes will roll back a few more times!’

The prey the bad adult had in mind was Truffle Candy's producer.

Even the casting offers whose terms Legal Hunter and his daughter had criticized together would have seemed like eye-popping opportunities to a producer from a third-rate entertainment agency.

Legal Hunter had confirmed that fact while cleverly testing the waters when he first approached his prey.

‘Just hearing that offers had come in from this place or that made his eyes go wide. It was funny.

‘He didn't even ask what the exact terms were. I thought, ah, this man has really suffered his share of broadcasters throwing their weight around...

‘Still, it made sense. The group he managed was grateful even for the chance to appear on a music show for only 100,000 won.’

Legal Hunter had kept in steady contact with his prey.

On the surface, their conversations were practical discussions to turn the memorandum of understanding they had previously sent into a binding contract.

That was why the agency did not object even when they exchanged messages frequently during business hours.

It was now the fourth week since Truffle Candy had visited the country village, and the group's agency was eager to sign a binding contract.

There was nothing strange, then, about having a deeper "consultation" with his prey about the new casting offers.

Legal Hunter and his prey had already reached the point of calling one another older brother and younger brother in private.

He had finished building rapport with his bribery target.

The bad adult gave a wicked grin.

He had a pleasant feeling that the day would surely come when he could use his own abilities to give his young business partner a surprise.

#

Lee Eun-jeong, the teacher, was one of the regular members who often appeared on the Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief channel.

Apart from Onik's grandfather and the residents of the clan village, she appeared more often than any other regular member.

Viewers always reacted positively to the teacher's appearances.

To viewers, Lee Eun-jeong added a comforting quality.

The lovely bond between a country schoolteacher and a country boy seemed deeply ideal and heartwarming to city people.

"Onik just likes his teacher lol."

"At this rate, he'll marry his teacher too."

"The relationship between teacher and student remains close even after graduation, and it is truly lovely to see. There used to be more teacher-student relationships like that than there are now. I miss them."

"The kid is lucky with teachers, and the teacher is lucky with students."

‘Eun-jeong mama...’

Naturally, ill-natured people existed everywhere, and complaints occasionally came in about a teacher's duty not to hold a second job.

Eun-jeong had gone beyond being a simple guest and was in charge of an English education series, so people assumed she was being paid.

But those complaints never became a real problem.

Eun-jeong received no financial compensation for her appearances.

Legal Hunter, who always valued his young business partner's approval, offered the teacher appearance fees several times.

Eun-jeong refused every offer.

"I appreciate the thought, but no thank you. Onik is such a precious child to me. I don't want money to come between us."

She could have received permission for outside work if she wanted.

Not only the school but the city and provincial offices of education actively supported her work, publicizing it as a model case.

So no one involved with her work would have criticized her for receiving a reasonable appearance fee.

Yet she firmly refused them.

The upright teacher's attitude deeply moved a certain bad adult who valued money far too much.

"Oh, Teacher. I truly respect you! Compared to the teachers who used to take little bribes when I was young, you're as different as heaven and earth!"

Then the bad adult thought:

‘This isn't a heartwarming story I should keep to myself!’

Legal Hunter actively told viewers about it.

Eun-jeong told him not to, but the bad adult rarely listened.

He believed it was a story that would benefit her the more it spread, while also improving the channel's image.

The scale in the bad adult's heart naturally tipped more toward the latter motive.

Anyone who buried such a useful marketing tool did not deserve to become successful in business in this country...

Thanks to the bad adult, who looked after his own interests while pretending to care for her, viewers came to see Eun-jeong even more firmly as the ideal teacher, a true mentor.

Eun-jeong found it terribly embarrassing.

‘It's so embarrassing to be praised for something like this. It's only natural for a teacher, and I even received a superintendent's commendation...’

She was praised more because her character, which saw uncommon things as natural duties, showed in her ordinary words and actions. But it was difficult for a person to notice such things about themselves.

Eun-jeong did not think she was in such an honorable position.

She did not accept money, but she did accept the various gifts her student brought her.

She could not reject the concern of her kind student, so she accepted them gratefully with a smile.

Still, she could not help feeling guilty when he gave her expensive medicinal foods such as long-lived balloon flower.

If he had bought them with money, she would have firmly told him not to do it.

But it was difficult when he roamed mountains and fields to dig them up himself, then handed them to her with such a proud smile, or with a serious expression of concern for his teacher.

Even so, Eun-jeong had no intention at all of stopping her appearances on her student's channel.

As fond as Onik was of Eun-jeong, Eun-jeong was fond of Onik too.

He was no longer simply a student she treasured. He was a precious child.

Any time spent with Onik brought Eun-jeong warmth and happiness.

Onik was the one who filled the emptiness in her heart left by Yohan's death.

The first and most important reason she appeared on Onik's channel was to have more time with the student she loved.

She also watched with pride as her student, despite his young age, moved toward social success.

But that was not the only reason.

As her appearances continued to accumulate, a small but impossible-to-ignore anxiety began to grow inside her.

‘I've heard that when your face becomes known like this, strange people can easily latch onto you...’

It could not be called excessive concern. It was something many internet broadcasters experienced.

The one-sided intimacy people formed from behind a screen could sometimes become the beginning of terrible events.

For Eun-jeong, who still vividly remembered the stalker in the blue Porter truck, it was only natural to worry.

But when she considered limiting her appearances because of that worry, she felt fierce resistance rise from deep inside her the next moment.

‘Why should I be the one who has to hold myself back? Why shouldn't I be able to spend time freely with my own student?

‘I’ve done nothing wrong, so why should I have to watch myself and be afraid in advance because strange people might hurt me?’

The emotion that followed was anger.

It was anger so hot that Eun-jeong herself was startled to discover it had been inside her.

If the local police had done their job from the beginning, Eun-jeong's worries would have been far lighter than they were now.

The Eun-jeong of the past had trusted public authority.

Put another way, the Eun-jeong of the present did not trust it.

From what she had looked into, stalking crimes were an area where Heinrich's law and Bird's law applied.

It meant that stalkers who committed violent crimes from the very beginning were surprisingly rare.

Almost every violent crime committed by a stalker was preceded by dozens of minor offenses.

And before those dozens of minor offenses, there were bound to be hundreds of warning signs.

In other words, if the preventive measures of public authority were taken promptly and as needed, violent crime could be prevented with a high probability.

The teacher who had lost her lover gave free rein to her anger toward the social order that had failed to do that obvious thing, planting distrust in her heart.

Then she thought:

‘If I have to live with this sort of anxiety for the rest of my life... that makes me even angrier. It shouldn't be this way. It's completely unfair!’

Eun-jeong wanted the reality she lived in to change for the better.

If possible, she wanted to do something with her own hands to make that happen.

She did not want a passive life of holding fear inside, avoiding danger only by restraining herself and being careful.

It was too unfair.

Even a very small change would be enough. She wanted to create a meaningful change through her own power.

For herself. For the students she taught.

And for the future generation those students belonged to.

‘But how?’

As she agonized over a way, a faint possibility came to her from an unexpected place and in an unexpected form.

It came through Onik's channel, where she had begun appearing even more often in resistance to her own fear.

The number of students at the school where she worked was increasing at a remarkable rate.

English teacher Lee Eun-jeong had become known among parents as the instructor of "English prodigy Jo Onik."

Eun-jeong's exceptional ability as an English teacher.

Her neat appearance and kind image.

And the gentle way she treated her student.

Seeing these things, more and more parents were applying for the short-term rural study-abroad program for their children's education.

From the perspective of city parents, it was English study abroad within Korea.

It drew attention as a remarkable success story in regional revitalization.

Applications for the study-abroad program were received before the new semester began, and this was the first time so many applications had come in that they had to announce the applicant-to-place ratio separately.

Even for a temporary study-abroad program, it was rare for a rural school's student body to grow so much in such a short time.

It was difficult to find a similar case anywhere in the country.

And it was fair to say that there had never been a case caused by the presence of a single teacher.

Once things reached that point, people Eun-jeong never imagined she would meet began coming to see her one after another.

The township head, the county superintendent of education, the provincial superintendent of education, members of the provincial assembly's education committee, regional assembly members whose constituencies faced consolidation because of population decline, and the National Assembly members who held sway over those politicians within their factions.

The visitors to the rural school listened to the teacher's story, took photographs, and left their own contact details or those of their aides, saying she should contact them if she ever needed help with her work or had policy suggestions.

They seemed to have glimpsed some sort of political usefulness or value in her.

Otherwise, no matter that it was a year for by-elections, they would not have shown such great interest in a single teacher.

#

To people in Seoul, regional extinction probably felt like a story from another country.

But politicians whose constituencies lay in regions classified as being at high risk of extinction felt an enormous sense of crisis.

For some, that sense of crisis was so deep that they received daily reports on the number of people moving into their constituencies with the obsessive vigilance of a paranoid person.

"Again... no new residents today...? Only people moving out...? All right... I understand..."

The elected officials in township and village areas where a real-time countdown was ticking toward the minimum population needed to retain their constituencies were especially worried.

In nerve-racking anxiety, they counted every new resident one by one and prayed to every god they could think of.

"Please, please, let my constituency survive at least until the next election. Please watch over me so I can hold onto my home constituency for one more term."

"And grant me time to build political capital and advance onto the national political stage. Kill the other bastards first, and let me live just a little longer..."

This was K-Last Leaf.

Yet no matter how desperately they prayed, constituencies that fell below the minimum voter threshold were being cut down by the Constitutional Court's merciless rulings.

"Your constituency used to exist, but now it does not. Bang, bang, bang!"

The wave of disappearing constituencies had so far remained at the level of metropolitan local governments and below, but it was only a matter of time before National Assembly members' districts were placed on the chopping block as well.

In the previous general election, the National Assembly had resorted to a trick to preserve the number of constituency seats by reducing proportional representation seats and freely creating special-case districts.

But many predicted that it would be difficult to deceive the Constitutional Court with the same trick again in the next general election.

The population-proportional principle for constituencies existed to protect the principle of equal elections, one of democracy's core principles.

In that situation, a rural schoolteacher who had brought dozens of new residents into the area, including students and guardians, attracted far more interest from local elected officials than she could have imagined.

After all, those newcomers could extend the constituency's lifespan by meaningful percentage points.

People who had received a terminal diagnosis were desperate to cling to even the smallest hope.

#

After those visits from crisis-stricken higher-ups to the rural school, some people suddenly began to bother the teacher.

"Teacher, do you have a moment to spare...?"

They were the wicked police officers who, when a fifty-six-year-old stalker driving a blue Porter truck had harassed her, had not protected her at all. Instead, they had left her with humiliation through their unfriendly attitudes and cruel words...

Footnotes:

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