WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 67: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (67)
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#67.
“Make sure you follow the order! Meat first! Then the mushrooms and onions! Toast the flour last! That’s how you build up the flavor in stages!
“You have to let the flavors of the meat, mushrooms, and onions melt into the butter, then make the roux with it. That’s how you get a deep flavor!”
Onik toasted flour in an equal amount of butter, making a thick roux.
A rich, nutty scent rose from the light brown roux.
“Once you’ve gotten this far, you just throw everything in! Put back all the things we sautéed first!
“Pour in the broth with the beef stock dissolved in it! Add sour cream to taste! Let it bubble away, and it’s done!”
While he worked, Eun-jeong finished the mashed potatoes beside him.
Since they were meant to accompany Beef Stroganoff, she skipped the butter and mixed in only a suitable amount of sour cream.
It was an easy dish too, but beginners often ruined it by missing the timing.
If they added the butter and cream after the potatoes had completely cooled, the ingredients would not combine well and would tend to separate.
Onik lifted the napa cabbage he had pickled in cold salt water into a colander. Then he lightly oiled another griddle, laid out various vegetables, and asked Eun-jeong a question.
“Teacher! I was looking in the dictionary before, and I got curious. Why is the correct Korean spelling for mashed potatoes supposed to reflect mashed as ‘masht’ potatoes? Aren’t the pronunciations really different?”
Eun-jeong smiled faintly and answered as an English teacher.
“Well, that’s because masht potatoes is actually the correct pronunciation in English too.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. It’s easy to get confused because many Americans pronounce this word incorrectly too... The sh in mashed is voiceless, right? When ed follows a voiceless sound, it’s supposed to be pronounced like a t.
“Finished is the same. Technically, it should be pronounced finish-t, not finish-d.”
“Ah... I didn’t know that.”
“It’s all right not to know. Like I said, many Americans don’t know either. When you’re learning practical English, it’s more important to speak confidently in a way that suits what most people are used to than to worry about details like that.”
“I guess that’s true.”
“Did you know that before you were born, the official Korean spelling for jjajangmyeon was jajangmyeon?”
“Huh? I didn’t know that either!”
“That’s how it was before. But everyone called it jjajangmyeon. They thought that was right. Mashed potatoes might be a similar case.”
“Ah. I understand what you mean!”
Nodding eagerly at his teacher’s words, Onik quickly dressed the fresh kimchi with the seasoning he had prepared beforehand, then turned off the heat beneath the Beef Stroganoff.
“Teacher! Please taste the fresh kimchi! Here!”
Eun-jeong smiled and ate the fresh kimchi her student held out in his hand. Then she gave a pleased hum.
“Mmm, it’s delicious! It’s nice and crisp!”
“That’s a relief!”
A Korean meal really needed kimchi.
They were having cream-based Beef Stroganoff with mashed potatoes that also contained cream, so grilled vegetables alone could not easily cut through the richness.
That was only difficult by Korean standards, of course. Still, freshly dressed kimchi went fairly well with Russian food in its own way.
Teacher and student enjoyed their meal. It was a warm table, filled with gentle, affectionate conversation and laughter that burst out now and then.
Quite a few viewers watching the mukbang felt lonely.
「Onik. Give some to your big sister too... Your big sister is eating instant noodles alone after work...」
This was an age when the number of people living alone only kept growing.
The elderly had long lived with loneliness, but now middle-aged people and even young adults spoke of carrying a heavy loneliness too.
The number of young people suffering from depression had tripled in ten years. It was too sharp an increase to explain simply by more people visiting hospitals and receiving diagnoses.
In an age like this, the cooking and mukbangs Onik showed held a strong appeal for lonely people.
He ate with his grandfather, the village elders, and his teacher. Sometimes he cooked for the children at school and ate with them too.
Those bright, warm, cheerful scenes were a heartwarming sight for lonely people.
After eating with his teacher, Onik charged his phone for a while, and the two of them brushed their teeth together.
Once they had washed the dishes side by side, they continued with a relaxed stream to chat with viewers.
“It’s still hot, so you want a scary-story special to cool you down? Teacher! Do you know any scary stories?”
“Hmm. Not really. What about you, Onik?”
“I know one!”
“What is it?”
“As you know, Teacher, I stream really often, right?”
“You do.”
“But when I look at the live chat, there are these mysterious people who are always present. Day or night, weekday or weekend. What do you think those people, who might be scary if you knew who they really were, actually are?
“Could they be earthbound spirits pretending to be human? Or maybe AI! They probably aren’t human, at least!”
At Onik’s shameless words, the viewer who had requested the scary story sent an indignant message.
「Take that back... What you just said...」
Onik beamed.
“Oh, I know that line! It’s what a loser says after fooling around and getting a hole punched through his stomach!”
「Aaargh!」
“Fire Fist is dead! I’m not Sima Yi, who ran away frightened by a dead Kongming, so if you want to face Jo Onik, the strongest in this town, bring me a line from someone strong who is still alive!”
Even as he said that, Onik thought of Yohan. Every comic book he had read had belonged to Yohan.
A viewer had happened to recite a line from one of those comic books, so though Onik smiled on the outside, he felt himself sink inside.
Considering what his teacher was going through now.
After trading remarks with the viewers and continuing the stream, Onik ended the broadcast when it grew late.
“That’s it for today’s stream! Thank you all for watching and for being with me again today! Have a good night, and go to bed early for tomorrow! I’ll see you next time! Bye!”
Standing shoulder to shoulder with her student and waving at the camera, Eun-jeong already felt an emptiness opening inside her.
‘It’s nice when Onik is here with me... But when he leaves, I get the same kind of backlash afterward.’
Eun-jeong hated the emptiness of being alone.
Once her kind student, who had filled the house with bright energy and human warmth, left, the chill that had been pushed aside would rush back all at once.
The tension returned with it.
The barrier magic her student had spread through his presence and broadcast had run its course. The evil spirit of paranoia wandering somewhere in the darkness beyond that barrier might come for her in a patrol car at any time.
“Teacher! I should get going now! The Boss said they’d give me a ride!”
“...All right. Be careful on your way home.”
In her heart, Eun-jeong wanted to tell her student to stay the night.
But she did not say it aloud.
‘An adult must not ask a child to carry their fear and danger.’
She could gratefully accept the consideration her student offered of his own accord. Rejecting it would hurt him too.
Eun-jeong knew that Onik carried a great anxiety within himself.
She also knew that anxiety lessened when he stayed by her side.
And she was not strong enough to refuse even the help her student willingly offered.
That was what Eun-jeong thought of herself. She had decided to become stronger, but she still had a long way to go.
Still, it was another matter entirely for her, the adult, to actively shift her burden onto her student.
She could not become a pathetic adult who deliberately used a child to ease her anxiety.
Only then could Eun-jeong continue to face the student she cherished most without shame.
Her reason and conscience were the brakes placed upon her weakness.
A sudden thought came to Eun-jeong.
‘...The more time passes, the angrier I get. Should I really do what they’re worried I’ll do?’
They were the police officers who caused her stress, especially Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok.
But hesitation crept in. Reason seized the reins of impulse.
For one thing, the teacher had no idea yet how useful the influence she had gained might be.
The only way to develop a sense for that was through experience.
She was not even sure how sincere the important people who had visited her so far had been.
Smooth words and flattering expressions were basic traits of politicians in every country. A democracy should not have too many naive people who believed every word politicians said.
That kind of blind faith belonged to hardline followers at either extreme of the political spectrum.
People with that kind of faith no longer had reason functioning normally within them...
So Eun-jeong wondered whether she would be laughed at if she innocently called and asked for help.
Like someone who took a conventional “Let’s have a meal sometime” seriously, then cluelessly asked when they would finally have that meal they had mentioned before.
In her imagination, the important people hung up the phone and snickered.
「Good grief. People who stand in front of classrooms really don’t know how the world works. I told her to contact me if she needed someone like me, and she actually contacted me.
Does she think I really serve the people?」
Of course, the truth was different. If Eun-jeong explained what had happened, at least the county council members would certainly be enraged.
“How dare they mess with my two-legged, zero-budget ten-thousand-won housing program!”
But Eun-jeong had no way of knowing that.
There was one more thing she did not know.
Among the council members on the local assembly’s education committee was someone who had pressured the police as a “fine elder” on behalf of the fake fifty-six-year-old youth.
In a way, it was fortunate that Eun-jeong did not know this.
If she had, her distrust of state administration and public authority would have run far deeper than it did now...
At any rate, in this situation, the easiest way for Eun-jeong to solve her problem was forgiveness.
She could give the bothersome police officers reassurance.
Tell them not to worry, because she would not make an issue of the past.
Yet she could not bring herself to forgive them. Eun-jeong did not want to put their minds at ease that way.
Her heart cried out that they were guilty.
They too bore responsibility for Yohan’s death. Had they not failed even to investigate properly after he died?
And how much frustration and anxiety had they caused her? Were they not repeating the same kind of wrongdoing even now?
‘The forgiveness I give now would not be forgiveness. It would only be surrendering to fear and anxiety...’
There was another reason she hesitated.
‘The punishment would not be much, even if there was one.’
Eun-jeong knew very well about the disciplinary measures police officers received.
Teachers were public servants too, even if they belonged to a specific service category. She had also looked into it a great deal while repeatedly filing complaints about the fake fifty-six-year-old youth’s stalking.
Suppose Eun-jeong appealed to the “council members” and disciplinary action was taken.
Realistically, it would be hard for that punishment to go beyond a reprimand or a pay cut.
At most, it would be demotion.
Unqualified police officers, including Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, would receive absolution for only that much.
For now, all they did was make her uncomfortable or set her nerves on edge by claiming they wanted to apologize for the past.
So far, that was all.
But what if, after they were disciplined, they truly harbored a bitter grudge?
「That bitch... We humbled ourselves that much, and she still had to screw us over?」
Who could guarantee that none of the police officers grinding their teeth like that would develop truly evil intentions?
Eun-jeong had learned the dangers of a closed society clearly through the fake fifty-six-year-old youth’s stalking.
Through Yohan’s death, she had also understood the terror of a remote mountain village where the truth could easily be buried even after someone died.
In this case, the people she needed to watch out for even worked alongside the other police officers in the area.
The local police, whom she already did not trust, might overlook a colleague’s crime if the worst-case scenario came true.
They might even actively cover it up.
Not simply out of camaraderie, but because they feared group discipline at the police substation level.
Perhaps she was worrying too much.
But after everything Eun-jeong had experienced, she could not consider these concerns excessive.
‘Then perhaps this situation is best for now. Letting them suffer on their own!’
Eun-jeong was not causing them pain.
The police officers, who had much to feel guilty about, were suffering on their own from their guilty consciences.
Perhaps the better scenario was to let them worry themselves sick as they were doing now, then demand apologies, reflection, and reform in exchange for forgiveness.
The problem was that Eun-jeong herself would suffer too until this second-best scenario came to an end.
It was also hard to be certain that police officers, whose very way of thinking seemed different from ordinary people’s, would not do something unexpected along the way.
Eun-jeong bit her lower lip in frustration.
“If only I had a little more power I could count on, I wouldn’t have to worry about things like this...”
Eun-jeong had only just stepped onto the new path her student had opened for her. She was still a novice.
A novice who could not yet judge what she had gained, how much of it she possessed, or how she should use it.
For now, Eun-jeong was still only an ordinary teacher at a rural school, someone who could easily be put in danger.
What would happen in the future was another matter.
If Eun-jeong truly wanted to fulfill her wish, perhaps she would have to become a “council member” herself, rather than merely asking the council members for favors.
For now, it was nothing but a fantasy.
Clink.
Troubled at heart, Eun-jeong went to the window and parted the blinds with her fingers. She wanted to watch her student leave.
But the student she cherished most moved along a different route than she expected.
“...?”
Onik hurried across the parking lot, slipped into the shrubs that also served as a fence, and hid himself. It was a spot from which he could likely see both the parking lot and the driveway clearly.
The place where Onik hid was roughly halfway between two streetlights.
The streetlights illuminating the apartment parking lot in the remote town were spaced far apart.
One even flickered slowly with a buzzing sound, as if it might go out. It looked precarious, the result of maintenance not being carried out when it should have been.
In the place where the night’s darkness deepened between them, the boy crouched skillfully enough that no ordinary observer could have noticed him.
Even Eun-jeong, looking down from above, could only see him because she knew he was there.
Had she not kept her gaze fixed on him from the well-lit area onward, she would not have found him even after staring for a long time.
Why?
The sight of her student crouching in the darkness reminded the teacher of a predator lying in wait among the bushes.
Eun-jeong’s heartbeat quickened slightly.
“Surely not...”
What flashed through her mind at that moment was a nasty suspicion that made her scold herself whenever it came to mind, because she felt sorry for her student.
The dark suspicion that he might have killed the fake fifty-six-year-old youth.
Her heart pounding, Eun-jeong could not take her eyes off the parking lot already shrouded in darkness.
#
Contrary to his teacher’s ominous suspicions, the frightening boy did not yet intend to do anything terrible.
The frightening boy wanted to be human.
And humans were animals that could talk.
The first police uncle to encounter the boy among those who bothered his teacher had said some very bad things, but... as the boy had already considered, he could not conclude that those words contained sincere intent.
At least not yet.
The boy suppressed the strangeness inside him with cold reason.
‘An ordinary person who truly intends to kill someone will show it somehow!’
The fake fifty-six-year-old youth the boy had personally turned into dog food was like that, for example.
Onik still regretted that day. Had there not been something unnatural in the Village Youth Association President’s behavior?
The regret that he should have lifted the curtain of his longing for normalcy and watched the man’s behavior more closely remained in the boy’s heart as though it had happened only yesterday.
Like a scar that would never heal.
So first, he intended to talk.
He would watch the man’s reaction. If possible, he would try to understand what he was thinking and what sort of person he was...
If he was lucky, perhaps even more would be possible.
Had he waited amid the thicket of shrubs for around thirty minutes?
「Vrooom.」
The sound of a car engine came from far away. The boy, whose hearing was sharp and memory excellent, identified the model from the sound alone.
It was the kind of car he had been waiting for.
The area around the parking lot entrance brightened beneath the headlights.
A patrol car entered, just as expected. It was one of the two vehicles assigned to the town police substation, the very car Lieutenant Seo had ridden away in earlier.
‘Click.’
The engine stopped, followed by the sound of the driver engaging the parking brake.
Lieutenant Seo got out with a click, leaving the headlights on. His shoulders drooped with the weary air of a worn-down family man.
“Ugh, this is my life...”
He checked his wristwatch and let out a long sigh. Then he suddenly went, “Ah!” and reopened the driver’s door to retrieve a shopping bag from the passenger seat.
Judging by its solid weight and the vague outline showing through it, the shopping bag appeared to hold a beverage gift set or something similar.
“...”
The frightening boy narrowed his eyes and silently slipped out of the night’s shadow.
Lieutenant Seo had not locked the car door.
That gave the boy an easy chance to hide a recorder in the vehicle alongside the tracking device, but he did not want to make the sound of opening and closing the door now.
Nor did he want to let the bad police uncle enter the apartment building.
“There’ll be another chance later anyway!”
As a local born and raised in the area, the boy knew how carelessly the police uncles at the town substation usually worked and conducted their patrols.
With the soundless steps of a small tiger, the boy followed behind the exhausted officer.
A recording application was running on the smartphone in his pocket, one corner protruding from it.
Footnotes:
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