WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 63: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (63)

──────

#63.

Eun-jeong was startled by a side of her student she had never seen before.

Onik had always been bright, clear-hearted, and warm around her.

Yet in an instant, he changed.

His black pupils narrowed sharply, and not a trace of warmth remained on his expressionless face.

Though it was the clenched fist of a young child, it made anyone who saw it sense the threat of savage violence.

The familiar boy had suddenly become a stranger.

It was as though the veil of humanity had been swept aside, revealing something inhuman beneath.

With his ear pressed to the front door, the boy carried the presence of a dangerous beast about him.

Simply looking at him made her body tremble faintly.

"...O-Onik?"

When the teacher, unable to help shrinking back, cautiously called his name, the boy snapped awake.

Yes. Awake.

She could think of no better word for it. The way Onik instantly returned to normal could only be described as waking up.

"......"

An awkward silence passed between the awakened child and the teacher.

Pulling his ear away from the cold door, the boy fidgeted with his hands and let his eyes dart about awkwardly. Eun-jeong blinked as though she had just woken from a daydream herself.

Fortunately, the awkwardness soon faded.

Calming the lingering pounding in her chest, Eun-jeong asked, "Onik. You heard something, didn't you? What did you hear that made you look so serious?"

"Um, well..."

Onik lowered his eyes and trailed off.

Ever since he had "woken up" a moment ago, the frightening boy had been fiercely blaming himself inside.

‘Ah, I made a mistake. Even if I got angry, I should've hidden it better!’

Now that things had turned out this way, he could no longer pretend he had heard nothing.

Still, if he answered honestly, he worried about his teacher's feelings.

‘Teacher has already been through bad things...!’

The wounds left by the fifty-six-year-old fake young man, and the wound from Yohan's death, had not fully healed.

If he told Teacher exactly what the bad police officer had said, another heavy shadow of anxiety might fall over her daily life.

But if he kept quiet, she would worry anyway.

At times like that, people's imaginations spread their wings in a bad direction and fly farther and farther away.

Onik had known that very well since he was little.

He had experienced it many times himself.

Back when he had waited endlessly for his father, who never came. Back when he imagined why his father had left him behind.

And when he imagined the stories surrounding his mother's death, which Grandfather rarely told him.

Caught in these thoughts and worries, Onik failed to control his expression again.

Seeing her student's face grow darker and darker, Eun-jeong bent slightly and gently took hold of both his shoulders.

Then she looked straight into his eyes.

"Onik."

"Yes."

"It's okay. Won't you tell me what our Onik heard?"

Eun-jeong knew very well that her student was no ordinary child.

With those keen ears of his, he must have heard what she could not.

Wiggling his fingers, Onik finally let out a long sigh.

"They were bad things. Do you really want to hear them?"

"Yes. I do. Please."

"He bad-mouthed Teacher a lot. He said he'd gotten mixed up with a woman with a terrible personality, and that he wished Teacher would go off somewhere and die. He also said they were protecting you, and you weren't even grateful."

"...I see."

"I think it'd be better if you didn't hear exactly what they said. Insults are just insults. Words that have no meaning except to make people feel bad. Mean words people throw around just to make someone uncomfortable."

The teacher could not help smiling, even now, when she felt her student's consideration in his words.

For a moment he had seemed strange to her, but he was still such a kind child.

Even the reason he had become so chillingly unfamiliar for that brief moment was because he was angry on her behalf.

Eun-jeong gently stroked Onik's hair.

"That's right. There's no reason to go out of your way to hear such meaningless words."

"......."

"Our Onik got angry because the police officer said cruel things to Teacher, didn't he?"

"...Teacher mustn't die."

"Ha... Why would Teacher die? Come here."

Eun-jeong pulled Onik into an embrace.

She had laughed, but the words, Teacher mustn't die, made her heart tingle painfully.

‘Right. Yohan was precious to Onik too.’

Onik had been the bridge between Yohan and Eun-jeong from the beginning.

Even before Yohan and Eun-jeong came to cherish each other, Onik had been precious to both of them, and both of them had been precious to him as well.

Eun-jeong knew that Onik still often visited Yohan's grave to clear away the weeds.

"......"

The frightening boy disliked prolonged physical contact with anyone he could kill.

Yet at this moment, he remained quietly in Teacher's embrace.

He even hugged her tightly in return. The killing intent stirring within him was completely focused on someone else who was not here.

It was focused so completely that not even a thread of it escaped toward the teacher.

There was no need for him to scatter his attention.

Over the teacher's shoulder, the frightening boy's black eyes gleamed like stars foretelling a great calamity.

‘He wished Teacher would just go somewhere and die?’

He was angry. Very angry.

The thought that the person who ought to go somewhere and die was not Teacher, but the police officer who had said those bad things, kept circling through the boy's mind.

Along with the thought of delivering that death himself.

Round and round. Round and round. Round and round.

...But that was out of the question. This was anger he had to endure.

Human lives were precious. He must never kill someone so lightly.

“I wish someone would die. I want to kill someone. I'll kill someone.”

Onik knew that ordinary people, simply because they were ordinary, spoke such dreadful words very easily.

It was a fact that even made the frightening boy feel that this was unfair.

He restrained himself every moment and kept watch over himself, carefully holding back even a single ugly word. Yet those ordinary people spoke so casually about killing others. It was terribly unfair...

‘Even my friends at school, and the older boys and girls, say, “I'll kill you!” whenever they fight.’

Whenever that happened, Onik would squeeze between the fighting children and always say one thing.

「Stop! That's enough! You mustn't say you'll kill someone so carelessly!」

But the children at school rarely took the frightening boy's words to heart.

They might listen in the moment, but before long, they would say again that they would kill someone.

The police officer who had hurled cruel words at his precious teacher was probably the same.

At least for now, he was unlikely to truly intend to kill someone.

When Teacher opened the door with the chain still on, the police officer's eyes held no intense emotion that came close to killing intent as he looked at her.

Even so, Onik found it difficult to calm his anger.

Just because that intent did not exist now did not mean it would never exist later.

Most crimes and murders were committed by ordinary people.

The fifty-six-year-old fake young man who had become dog food had been an ordinary person too.

To Onik, he had also been a good adult who was fond of him...

While Onik tried to calm the storming waves inside himself, the teacher kept stroking the head of the student in her arms as she thought of something else.

‘The local police who failed to do their jobs when they were needed are this flustered now... That must mean I have something now that gives them reason to worry about me!’

Honestly, she was not certain yet.

Eun-jeong was only a young woman who had graduated from university and gone straight into teaching.

It took experience to exercise social influence.

She had no experience at all with anything like this, so she could only feel dazed and unable to grasp the situation.

But at least the local police seemed to believe it. They believed she had gained the power to do something about them.

If so, that power did exist, at least against the police in this area. They would no longer be able to ignore Eun-jeong's words.

Eun-jeong felt as though she could faintly see a path ahead.

A path where she could change the things that had felt unfair, even a little, for the better.

For her own sake. For the children she taught. For the next generation they belonged to!

Whether she would walk that path was not a matter of choice.

Where had the influence she had stumbled into come from?

Had it not come from the time she had spent with the student she cherished and loved most?

Unless she intended to suddenly distance herself from Onik now, she would naturally end up walking the path he had opened for her.

That was right. It was a path her student had opened.

She had no intention of letting the opportunities she found along it simply go to waste.

If Eun-jeong were such a pathetic and hopeless adult, she would find it hard to raise her head before the student who, despite his own personal pain, was kinder, more considerate, and more thoughtful than anyone else.

"Onik."

The teacher released the embrace and gently cupped both sides of her student's face.

"Teacher is always grateful to Onik. Our Onik gives Teacher so many things. I don't know how I'll ever repay you."

"...? I haven't really given you anything..."

"Hehe. No. You've given me so much."

Eun-jeong gave a small laugh as she looked at her student's round-eyed confusion.

Even if she counted only material things, he had brought her so much, from lunchboxes to things he had gathered.

Yet he did not even seem to realize that he had given her anything, and she could not help laughing.

It was a laugh that welled warmly from around her heart and popped out through her lips.

Eun-jeong stood up.

"Come on. You have to stream, right? Your viewers must be waiting."

The teacher enjoyed this time with her student.

She was happy with the path they walked together.

May this path continue forever. Until Onik reaches where he wants to go. And until I reach where I want to go!

Holding a human wish in her heart, Eun-jeong appeared on her student's stream again today.

#

That night, Eun-jeong lay in bed and recalled what had happened during the day.

It was not something she meant to do. It was rumination that was partly beyond her control.

One thing that kept coming back to her, even when she tried not to think of it so she could sleep, was the side of her student that had suddenly become unfamiliar.

The teacher lay in her pajamas with the back of her right hand against her forehead, blinking up at the dark ceiling.

"I was surprised. So Onik could make an expression like that too..."

Those tightly narrowed pupils and that face emptied of emotion were still vivid before her eyes.

They were so vivid that, even when she closed her eyes, they seemed drawn on the insides of her eyelids.

It felt as though that moment had been imprinted on her retinas.

Jo Onik never seemed to know how to get angry at school.

He never fought with the other students, either. Even when immature children threw tantrums or made unreasonable demands, he might occasionally look troubled, but he usually gave in with a smile.

He liked being praised as admirable and very mature, though he would also become a little embarrassed.

「If I get angry, I become a bad child. So I don't get angry at my friends.」

There had been something a little odd about the way he said it, but it seemed like the sort of unique trait an extraordinary child might have.

Compared to the strange and sometimes wildly unpredictable behavior his peers often showed, it was nothing much.

Yet that child had gotten frighteningly serious and angry.

"They say someone who never gets angry is scary when they do. That was exactly right."

After thinking it over, Eun-jeong suddenly smiled.

‘A child who never gets angry became serious in an instant just because I was insulted. Honestly, should I thank him...?’

It would be a lie to say she was not happy as a teacher.

She had been flustered then because she had never seen him like that, but looking back now, warmth made the inside of her chest feel ticklish.

Teacher or not, anyone would have been happy.

Yet apart from the gratitude and warmth she felt toward her most precious student, a spark deep in her heart was slowly growing.

A spark of suspicion she had thought had gone out long ago.

A suspicion she had once crushed beneath her guilt and remorse toward her student.

...The dark, frightening suspicion that perhaps her precious student had killed someone.

That suspicion quietly raised its head again from some shadowed corner of her heart.

The teacher tried hard to ignore it.

‘Not this absurd thought again...’

But the more she tried to ignore it, the more the spark of that ominous suspicion used her effort as kindling and flickered brighter.

Every spark in this world dreamed of the day it would bloom brightly into flame.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried