WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 62: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (62)
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#62.
Eun-jeong would have been utterly dumbfounded to hear it, but the police officers assigned to the stalking committed by the fifty-six-year-old self-proclaimed young man believed they had done all they could.
That confidence was not entirely baseless.
“We normally have only two or three people covering an entire rural district. If three of us were put on one case, doesn't that mean we tried pretty hard...?”
There was room to question whether that could really be called trying.
They had not stepped up of their own accord. They had been pushed into it by orders from the higher office that had received Eun-jeong's complaint.
Eun-jeong had not filed her complaint just once.
Even so, it was true that the officers had performed above average by the standards of remote-area local police.
Could someone not fail an absolute evaluation yet still rank near the top on a relative one?
Korea was a country where the population assigned to each police officer far exceeded the OECD average.
In several remote towns and rural districts that constantly suffered staff shortages, a single officer had to cover nearly a thousand residents across a vast jurisdiction.
Police work in towns and rural districts was also more demanding than in cities.
The area was large, the population density low, and even basic patrols exhausting. On top of that, they had to take on piles of duties that barely seemed like police work at all.
Inspecting streams, drainage channels, landslide sites, forest-fire risk areas, and vacant homes, preventing unauthorized entry into the mountains and the gathering of forest products, and so on...
Being called out whenever there was an event in the area was another burden.
There were the endless festivals and various events important people enthusiastically held in the name of regional revitalization.
Every one of them created more work for the local police.
Whenever officers were broadly mobilized in the name of keeping order, those already burdened by work could only sigh.
The frequent investigations into crop theft were the final touch.
So Onik had been wrong to think the police uncles were lazy.
They were not lazy. It would have been more accurate to say that excessive workloads had drained them of all motivation.
(Their rotten way of thinking was a separate issue from their workload.)
For that reason, the officers assigned to Eun-jeong's case one after another, as well as the other officers who had to cover their absences, had been unhappy from the beginning.
The first officer assigned to it lamented.
“Ah, damn it. This is bad. I haven't met this month's insurance target yet...”
It sounded strange for a police officer to talk like an insurance salesperson, but the insurance target here meant cracking down on vehicles without mandatory insurance.
Since those performance requirements were practically handed down as quotas, their position was not so different from that of insurance salespeople.
If their station fell behind others in the records compiled by individual police stations and provincial agencies, officers faced considerable pressure and the stress that came with it.
There were many other targets to meet, and many other duties to get through.
That was how it went.
The officers assigned to the case also deeply resented the Women's and Youth Division at the higher office, which they saw as the cause of the unreasonable staffing.
“Just because they're women, women's cases come first, is that it? What, only their performance counts? Don't they ever think about ours? If they know our situation that well, shouldn't they know when to cut it off?”
“Someone else decides who has to suffer, and we're the ones out in the field who actually suffer through it. Tell them to stop talking bullshit.”
“Do they not know how short-staffed we are here? If they're that unhappy, they should come work in the field themselves. It's a women's case, right? Wouldn't it be nice if female officers took it?”
Not all towns and rural districts were alike.
Nearly every field officer in remote towns and rural districts was male.
Even in the largest metropolitan city in the region, there was only one female officer working a field position across both the investigation and detective divisions.
Expecting female officers to be assigned to dangerous, exhausting field work in the countryside was asking too much.
“Fuck. I only got a job to make money.”
Already burned out before they had even been assigned to the case, the officers disliked Eun-jeong from the start.
Their dissatisfaction with their workplace and duties had spread into resentment toward the person who reported the crime.
That was often how people's minds worked.
The more complaints Eun-jeong filed, the more the officers came to hate her.
It was a problem with the entire system.
A system that recruited people who wanted nothing more than stable employment, then routinely worked its staff to exhaustion with high-intensity duties while worsening their stress through unfair assignments.
Even the principle of rotating personnel between regions was routinely ignored. There simply were not enough people.
Captains and above were originally supposed to rotate among stations.
But rank inflation and staff shortages had reached the point where captains performed constable duties, making proper personnel rotation impossible.
Of course, none of that excused what they had done.
Wearing police badges while cozying up to the perpetrator was an inexcusable wrong.
They had gone beyond simple slacking and dereliction of duty and stepped into the realm of abuse.
After openly showing the victim that behavior, how ridiculous was it to resent her for filing repeated complaints?
It was a chronic sickness of local police, tangled in personal connections and hometown ties within a closed society.
Still, people were animals with a talent for conveniently forgetting the parts where they had done wrong.
It was one of the dark components of the ordinary life the frightening boy longed for.
The officers, put in an awkward position by their own wrongdoing, sincerely believed that they were the ones being treated unfairly...
#
Among parents who spent time online, the fame of teacher Lee Eun-jeong, who had nurtured the English prodigy Jo Onik, had not appeared overnight.
Interest had first begun when Onik earned a perfect TOEIC score through 「Beat Onik!」.
That interest grew much larger as Onik's record of competition awards became known.
Then, after the teacher consulted with her student and took charge of a viewer-participation series, it surged exponentially.
The series was titled 「Let’s Talk with Teacher!」.
(When the series was added, subscribers once again marveled at the country boy's terrifying amount of activity and energy.
The upload frequency of 「Onik Uncle and the Hapless Chief」 had already been abnormally high.
The bad adult who opposed hiring another editor really had no conscience.
There was a reason the hunter's daughter did not treat her father like a boss.)
Though it was viewer-participation educational content, 「Let’s Talk with Teacher!」 was not especially burdensome for the teacher.
She only spent twenty to thirty minutes chatting comfortably with her beloved student.
Far from being a burden, it was a healing time for a teacher who cared deeply for her student.
This was how it worked.
A viewer having trouble with English conversation joined a voice-chat channel on a VoIP social platform. They would talk about everyday subjects or current topics, and Eun-jeong and Onik would correct their sentences and pronunciation.
If needed, they gave other advice as well.
Of course, that alone would not have been entertaining, so other viewers sometimes assigned situations and roles in the form of missions.
Part of the appeal, in its own way, was watching participants flounder through mischievous scenarios and feeling secondhand embarrassment together.
When a participant inexperienced with live conversation stumbled through their words, the teacher and her student gently helped them along.
“I had a drink, but I didn't drive drunk... Hehe. Onik, how would you say this?”
“I drank alcohol, but I didn't drive under the influence. Would that be okay?”
“Mm, it's accurate, but it's almost too accurate, so it loses some of the nuance. People online quote this as a joke, so I think it would be better to bring out that feeling.”
“By using conversational set phrases?”
“That's right.”
“Then, how about, ‘I had a drink, but I wasn't drunk driving’? Drunk driving is a noun, but Americans often use it like a verb in everyday life.”
“Much better. It captures the feeling of someone who actually drove drunk making excuses that they didn't. It's a rough sentence that someone with no class might say.”
Managing the chat was important during content like this.
People who showed off their knowledge, talked down to participants, and humiliated them had to be removed immediately.
“Anyone who says mean things gets kicked out, no exceptions! Nobody starts out good at English!”
At times, Eun-jeong joined in.
“Student Tong Tong Tong Sahur, please step out for a moment.”
「Tong Tong Tong Sahur: Sob, sob. Thank you for the reward.」
Whenever she pretended to be such a strict teacher, plenty of strange people treated it as a reward and loved it.
Some even deliberately said mean things because they wanted to be rewarded.
Eun-jeong could not understand those aliens at all...
「Let’s Talk with Teacher!」 was often filmed at Eun-jeong's home.
The official reason was to conduct conversations in a comfortable, cozy atmosphere.
But Eun-jeong had another, real reason.
‘I hate the silence when I'm home alone!’
Since Yohan's death, Eun-jeong had not liked the hours she had to spend alone in a quiet house.
She had mild anxiety.
The anxiety that had once tormented her badly improved dramatically after the fifty-six-year-old self-proclaimed young man who stalked her became dog food.
Even so, it had not vanished completely.
Until the pain of losing her lover disappeared completely and her distrust of public authority was resolved, some trace of it would remain.
That was why she compulsively closed the curtains and blinds before a broadcast and carefully chose where to point the camera.
Even apart from that anxiety, she still hated the emptiness of a house occupied by no one but herself.
She wanted to drive away the cold emptiness filling a lonely home with the warm presence of another person.
In that sense, her energetic, kind, warm-hearted student was an enormous help.
‘When Onik is inside the house... just that alone makes it feel as though this home is filled with warmth!’
Her beloved student, who had always been especially admirable, was growing into an even more admirable child with every passing day.
Eun-jeong was an adult Onik trusted and relied on greatly.
Though he had not gone so far as to ask her advice about worries tied to his darkest secret, Onik had told Eun-jeong about someone who had considered suicide and the decision he had made after hearing their story.
“I'm going to make lots of money! Then I'll use what I earn to help people the law doesn't help!”
Her beloved student's serious words, his blacker-than-night eyes shining.
They reached deep into the teacher's heart, almost strangely so, because of the peculiar nuance mixed into those lovely words.
‘People the law doesn't help...’
Most people would have said people the law could not help, but her student had emphasized people the law did not help.
The teacher, whose distrust of the police ran deep, noticed that difference sharply.
Details that could identify the person who had considered suicide had been omitted from the story, but that was enough for her to understand why her student had made such a decision.
‘Is he really such a good child?’
The warmth her good student filled her home with grew in proportion to how admirable he was.
If she could, she wanted to keep him near her all day.
Her student was also happy with the time he spent at his teacher's home with her.
That was why it did not take him long to learn something.
Stalkers in police uniforms had attached themselves to his teacher.
He learned it by encountering those stalkers several times...
#
When the frightening boy saw the patrol car parked outside Eun-jeong's home, he sensed something wrong for the first time.
Ordinary people would have felt trust and security from the presence of a patrol car.
But it made the frightening boy think of the time when the fifty-six-year-old self-proclaimed young man had still been alive, putting him on guard.
‘Why has the police uncle come again?’
His teacher's reaction as they walked side by side was strange too.
The frightening boy's sharp senses and keen eyes did not miss the instant his teacher hesitated.
“Could something bad have happened to Teacher again? I hope not...”
When the boy stole a sidelong glance at his teacher, he saw disgust in her expression.
The teacher was showing aversion toward the police.
There was only one officer in the car.
Under the rules governing local police organization and operations, patrols were supposed to be done in pairs.
But in this understaffed countryside, it would not have been an exaggeration to say that the rule was almost never properly followed.
Put nicely, it was flexible personnel management. Put badly, it was grinding people down.
The officer, who had been sitting in the driver's seat looking at his phone with a bored expression, noticed the teacher and student entering the shared entrance a moment late. His eyes widened.
“...!”
The officer grabbed the shopping bag he had left on the passenger seat and hurriedly got out of the car.
That behavior showed that he had business with them.
Judging by where he looked, it was unlikely that business concerned the boy. It was with his teacher after all.
Despite seeing the officer's actions, the teacher responded with cold disregard.
“Let's go in, Onik.”
The frightening boy had enough clues to infer what was happening.
The subtle tension he sensed from his teacher's body.
The faintly stiff expression she wore despite trying not to show it.
Even her needlessly saying something to the boy who was going inside with her anyway.
The boy's eyes narrowed.
‘That police uncle is an unwelcome guest. This isn't his first time coming here, either!’
Thinking again of the fifty-six-year-old self-proclaimed young man who had become dog food, the boy's mood sank.
The fifty-six-year-old young man had also come as an unwelcome guest and persistently harassed his teacher.
The boy asked his teacher.
“Teacher. Is something wrong?”
The teacher pretended to be calm and smiled softly.
“Onik, you don't need to worry. It's nothing.”
The frightening boy read the unnaturalness beneath his teacher's smile, and his concern deepened.
The moment teacher and student entered her home, the clacking sound of shoes followed outside the door. The steps were quick, almost a run. And then...
「Ding-dong. Ding-dong.」
A static-laced electronic chime sounded through the low wall-pad speaker.
The officer had passed through the shared entrance as if it did not exist and was already pressing the unit's doorbell.
Though a police officer had followed them, the boy felt as though a criminal were pursuing them.
“...Teacher?”
The boy looked up at his teacher.
She stood still and caught her breath for a moment, then smiled at the boy again and turned toward the door.
Click.
The teacher latched the door chain and opened the door.
Rattle! The chain pulled tight once, catching the force of someone pushing the door.
The officer facing the teacher through the narrow opening wore a flattering smile.
“Teacher. About what I mentioned before...”
“Lieutenant Seo. I told you I don't want to talk about that anymore. I have something to do with my student now, so I would like you to leave.”
“Uh...”
“I would like you to leave.”
“Well, it'll only take a moment...”
“Please leave.”
When the teacher firmly repeated herself, the police officer with one hibiscus flower on his epaulet let his face fall. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes.
He had not been sleeping well lately.
Night patrols were one thing, but he had been increasingly worried that the teacher, who had begun receiving attention from several important people lately, might hold an “unfair grudge” and retaliate against him.
In an era when serious rank congestion meant one out of every three officers was a lieutenant, it would not have been strange for a lowly lieutenant to suffer badly over one careless word from an important person.
That was even more true in this countryside, where everything ran on connections.
Ugh. My life really is miserable...
The lieutenant swallowed the grievance of a powerless man and let his shoulders droop.
Since arguing further would only make her angrier, he decided to retreat for the moment.
He would have to keep making an effort until her anger had cooled.
‘Sincerity moves heaven, and no tree stays standing after ten strikes. I just have to come often and work hard at looking pitiful.’
That was the best the old-fashioned mind of a country police officer, waiting only for the day he would receive a time-in-service promotion to captain, could come up with.
It was the mindset of an aging officer who had spent a long time in a closed local community and a suffocating organization.
Its foundations were completely different from those of the younger generation in cities.
“...Excuse me. I will come again later.”
The teacher wanted to shoot back that he should never come again.
But she could not show such a sharp side of herself in front of her beloved student.
“Take care.”
She gave the officer, who bowed his head, a dry farewell and carefully closed the door.
She was mindful not to slam it shut with a bang.
Right after that, the boy came trotting up from behind and pressed himself against the front door.
The teacher looked puzzled.
“...Onik? What are you doing?”
With one ear against the door, the boy raised a finger to his lips and whispered.
“Teacher. Shh.”
“...”
After hesitating for a moment, Eun-jeong stood beside her student and put her ear to the front door as well.
...All she could hear were footsteps.
Her hearing could only catch the clacking shoes of the departing officer.
But the boy's hearing, far beyond human limits, caught the officer's quiet muttering.
“Ugh, damn. I got stuck with a fucking bitch with a nasty personality. Fucking bitch. I wish she'd just drop dead somewhere.
“A trashy bitch like that always has a stubbornly long life. She doesn't die easily. We protect people's daily lives, and she doesn't even know enough to be grateful...”
From the moment the officer said he wished she would drop dead, the boy clenched his fist tight.
A dark glint flickered in the frightening boy's eyes.
In an instant, his face went cold and stiff.
Seeing the unfamiliar expression on her beloved student's face, the teacher's eyes widened in surprise.
Footnotes:
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