WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 69: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (69)

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#69.

"Uh... Did you happen to hear all that...?"

"I heard it all! Why?!"

Having heard the female teacher's furious roar, the bad policeman hesitated. Unable to add another word, he hurried away in quick, flustered steps.

He looked like a petty ghost fleeing after being struck by the spell, “Quickly, quickly, as the law commands,” or a barrage of traditional Joseon cannon fire.

Onik had never seen his teacher this angry before, and he did not know what to do.

He had only tried somehow to stop the policeman from saying cruel things and behaving badly, yet he watched his teacher's face like a child who had done something wrong.

"Teacher, um, that..."

Seeing her student shrink back for no reason made the teacher's heart ache.

It hurt even more because she had heard most of the conversation between the bad adult and her student.

She approached him and wrapped her anxious student in a tight embrace.

"...Teacher?"

At her student's call, she tightened her arms around him.

Buried in his teacher's warm embrace, the student went, "Uh..." before timidly hugging her back.

Listening to his teacher's heartbeat near his ear, the boy calmed down.

Perhaps because of the shock he had felt, or perhaps for some other reason... the dark red abnormality within him lay curled up quietly for now.

It was still the season when the heat of day lingered into the night.

Yet his warmth did not trouble or discomfort his teacher in the least.

Teacher and student, who cared deeply for each other, remained in each other's arms for quite some time.

"..."

When they reluctantly ended their long embrace, the teacher wore such a gentle smile that it was hard to believe she had been so furious moments earlier.

She stroked her student's head with a soft hand.

"You should head home now, Onik."

No more words were needed. Knowing each other's hearts was enough.

They shared a wordless smile of understanding.

#

Furious over what had happened to her student, the teacher decided to act.

She had only hesitated until now because of practical concerns and dangerous possibilities. She had made preparations in her own way.

Whether this was truly the best course remained uncertain.

Still, no one in this world was guided by reason alone.

With only the rarest exceptions, human reason was no more than emotion's attendant.

What moved people was always the heart.

That was the ordinary humanity of the person a certain boy admired.

Even the good teacher Lee Eun-jeong possessed that ordinary humanity.

#

After parting with his teacher, the frightening boy melted like a shadow into a dark alley.

From the bag he had carried, he took out and put on a newly purchased matte black raincoat.

In one hand, he held a dental mirror he had bought cheaply online.

The purpose of this tiny mirror on a stick was to check around corners before turning them.

Considering what he was about to do, the boy wanted to avoid being caught on car dashcams whenever possible.

His exceptional eyesight and superior spatial awareness transferred every inch reflected in the tiny medical mirror, only 2.5 centimeters across, straight into his mind.

Tap.

Whenever his path was blocked, the boy crossed countless walls as if they did not exist.

Some had shards of broken glass embedded along the top for security, or to keep stray cats out, but they posed no obstacle to him.

"Up we go!"

Keeping his momentum, the boy ran up the wall and gripped its edge while avoiding the glass.

Then, adding the strength of his legs and arms to the momentum of his run, he flipped himself over in one swift motion.

One turn through the air, then a soft landing beyond the wall. That was all it took.

His joints, ligaments, and leg muscles absorbed the impact in stages, making his landing incredibly quiet.

He absorbed the shock even more gently than a cat.

"Grrrr! Woof, woof!"

Sometimes, dogs barked like this.

The dogs tied up in yards bared their teeth savagely at the unwelcome nighttime visitor who had dropped in. It was the old duty of dogs raised by people.

But then...

"Shh."

All it took was for the expressionless boy to place a finger over his lips and glance at them, and dogs throughout town whimpered and lowered their tails.

He had intimidated plenty of unfamiliar dogs this way before, so he did not hesitate to climb even the walls of homes that smelled of dogs.

To the town's dogs, the boy's gaze was terrifying. It was a murderous gaze that sharply distinguished between people and animals that were not people.

Since committing his first murder, the cold look the frightening boy cast had grown potent enough to make even the biggest, most violent stray dogs slowly back away with their tails tucked.

Tonight, with anger held down inside him, his gaze was even more ominous than usual...

The frightening boy's route, unconstrained by roads, led toward the town's police substation.

The boy apologized to his teacher in his heart.

'I'm sorry, Teacher. I lied to you.'

He had told her Legal Hunter was coming to pick him up, but there had been no such arrangement.

He could get home by himself.

It would take time, but if he set his mind to it, Onik was capable of crossing the rough mountain terrain at night in a nearly straight line to get home.

Onik felt bad about telling even a small lie to his precious teacher. That was the kind of thing only bad children did.

Sensitive to the presence of things he could kill, the boy thoroughly avoided encountering people as he reached his destination.

His destination was the town's police substation.

The ominous boy in the black raincoat stood just outside the streetlight's glow and quietly observed the building.

Two CCTV cameras watched the entrance and parking lot, one mounted on each side of the substation's front.

They were positioned to cover each other's blind spots.

That did not mean there were no blind spots at all.

Both cameras were focused on the area in front of the entrance.

The spaces where patrol cars were parked fell along the dark edge of each camera's view. Only the direction of that edge differed.

The town's police substation operated two patrol cars.

If even one of them was parked there, a blind spot would form where neither camera could see.

Add the shrubs serving as a fence, landscaped trees, and the deep nighttime shadows where the light barely reached, and it was not difficult for a boy in a black raincoat to approach the vehicles or building without being noticed.

'They're blind spots with no meaning to ordinary people, but...'

The back door was locked, while the front entrance and center of the parking lot were fully exposed beneath strong lighting and cameras.

An ordinary person would have no way to break into the police substation while avoiding the lights and surveillance. Unless they brought tools to tear out the window bars and get inside.

What was the point of simply getting close to the wall in a situation like that?

For the frightening boy, though, it was different.

Security bars were only installed on the first floor. The second floor had ordinary windows.

Every window on the second floor was closed.

Most of the old-fashioned manual locks were not actually locked, though. The lingering summer heat probably meant they were opened and shut often.

Looking up at the second-floor windows, Onik thought,

'Hm... Looks like I won't need lock-picking tools to get in. I might need them inside, though!'

If every window had been locked, Onik would have gone up to the roof and picked the stairwell door lock.

The back door, which he had checked from a distance, seemed to use an electronic lock, so he excluded it as an entry route.

Picking locked locks was one of the activities he enjoyed while exploring abandoned houses in the declining village.

The boy who admired the righteous assassin and patriot Jo Yang-jin had found such activities hidden all over the village and made the most of them.

It was how the only child in an aging village had entertained himself.

Getting the tools had not been difficult. They were simply sold online.

Cheaply, too, along with transparent practice locks.

There was no age or identity verification during the purchase process.

'Am I living in America or something? This is way too easy to get.'

He was glad they were easy to buy, but even as he bought them, Onik had tilted his head in confusion.

The reason elementary-school-aged Onik had thought this was that the product descriptions were highly suspicious.

For example:

「HYNTR: (Dr/Bt) for Hyundai series, Kia series, Sonata, Monica」

The seller had listed, one by one, which brands and vehicle models each tool in the Chinese-made premium thirty-two-piece lock pick set could open.

Korean corporate brands made up the largest share of the list.

The seller pretended they were the best tools for locksmiths, but locksmiths could not possibly have been the overwhelming majority of the actual buyers.

In Korea, lock picks were of little use because most passenger cars used smart keys.

America was different.

Treating domestic customers worse was an old tradition among Korean companies, but sometimes products made for the domestic market had their advantages.

Onik immediately understood why Korean cars had been targeted so heavily for theft in America over the past few years...

Learning the technique was not difficult, either. Just like buying the tools, he could find it by searching.

「How to Use a 2-in-1 Lock Pick」

One person who uploaded videos like that was a famous YouTuber with as many as 4.6 million subscribers.

They mainly covered lock-picking techniques, but occasionally uploaded videos bypassing fingerprint gun locks and various other digital locking devices.

As that subscriber count showed, more people abroad enjoyed lock-picking as a hobby than one might expect.

They even gathered together to hold competitions.

Many participants belonged to hobby groups in hackerspaces.

No matter the country or group, hackerspaces were fundamentally active in sharing knowledge.

They were gatherings of people who believed all humanity's intellectual assets should be shared freely.

Thanks to that, a certain elementary school student who spoke English like a native could interact with them anonymously through Discord.

The lock-picking veterans who played together in their Discord channel warmly welcomed young Onik.

「A newbie! A fresh newbie has appeared!」

「Everyone, look over here! A newcomer joined! How long has it been?!」

「Grab him first! Don't let him leave! You may have come in as you pleased, but leaving is another matter!」

「Hiss, ha... Hiss, ha... A newbie, and such a young little sprout, too. The air suddenly feels sweet...!」

「Welcome, boy. People like us can eat three bowls of macaroni without cheese just by imagining a newbie happily picking a lock with our help!」

They were happy memories for Onik in their own way.

The front of the police substation was quiet. The only things moving were insects fluttering in confusion around the lights.

Having finished his basic reconnaissance, Onik approached the parked patrol car.

Only one was there. The other had gone out on patrol and had not returned.

Onik first took a tracking device from his black bag.

Clack!

The tracking device stuck to the underside of the vehicle with a powerful magnet. When Onik tested it, it seemed strong enough not to come loose from any ordinary impact.

Next, he put on gloves and tried opening the rear door.

Click.

He had only pulled it on the off chance, but the door opened with absurd ease.

The frightening boy shook his head inwardly.

He remembered news of a tragic accident he had watched with his grandfather.

'It happened down south, but wasn't there an accident last year or the year before where someone got trapped and baked to death? Nothing's changed...'

The rear doors of a police car could not be opened from the inside. If the police neglected to lock the door, someone could get in and become trapped.

There was no point asking why anyone would deliberately climb in there.

Anyone capable of giving a normal answer to that question would not get in to begin with.

"Why don't they lock this? The police officers are too careless!"

There were two provinces and three metropolitan cities in the region where Onik lived.

Of the two provinces divided into north and south, Onik lived in the northern one.

The accident where someone not in their right mind entered a patrol car, became trapped, and died happened in the southern province.

Though North and South were separate administrative regions, residents of both considered each other part of "our region." They shared the same history and culture.

That was why the incident down south did not feel distant to the country boy.

In any case, the police officers' carelessness was good news for Onik at this moment.

'It would've been a little troublesome if the door had been locked.'

If it had been locked, Onik would have waited for an opportunity based on the tracking device... or he would have inserted a hand drill into the gap diagonally below the rear door and forced a hole through it.

By widening that hole little by little in both directions, he thought he could somehow make enough room to insert and secure a tiny recorder.

It was a narrow gap in a corner of the rarely used rear door, so it would be hard to notice unless someone inspected it closely.

'I would've had to give up connecting the power bank, though...'

Careful not to be caught on the camera positioned in front of the safety partition, Onik attached a tiny recorder connected to a power bank beneath the passenger seat.

He used acrylic foam double-sided tape for automotive interiors. That was sold online too.

Tap.

After closing the car door, Onik activated the Bluetooth connection with the recorder through his smartphone.

'It works.'

Unlike the tracking device, the recorder had no function that connected to commercial communication networks.

Therefore, to receive the recorded data, Onik would need to retrieve the recorder itself or use its Bluetooth function.

He carefully moved away from the vehicle.

He was checking how far the Bluetooth connection would remain active.

'Hm... It's stable up to nine steps.'

That was encouraging, even with the barrier of the car body between them.

Having finished his work on one patrol car, Onik slipped out of the CCTV's range with ghostly movements.

Then, from a spot where the night shadows lay thick, he faced the side of the police substation.

There was enough distance between him and the building for a running start.

After gauging the height he needed to run vertically up the wall and the place where he would grab on, the frightening boy lowered his body into the posture for a full short-distance sprint.

It was a crouching start he had never once attempted seriously during school gym class.

"...!"

The boy kicked off the ground.

In the darkness of the insect-filled night, his hair fluttered in the hot wind brushing past him.

Muscles that fed on the deaths of living things and exerted strength beyond human limits propelled their owner's body forward with explosive spring.

He made his leap before the first-floor barred window, where nobody stood beyond it.

Clang.

A small metallic ring.

The rising boy stepped down on the end of the first-floor window bars as if pressing them toward the ground.

With that smooth but powerful second leap, he raced straight up the wall.

It took only an instant for the boy, rising further against gravity, to grab the second-floor window frame.

He could have carried his momentum higher, but he restrained his strength and hung there with his feet braced against the wall.

Holding his weight with one hand, Onik raised the dental mirror with the other and checked inside the window.

He had a sense that could feel the presence of things he could kill, but he still wanted to be certain of his safety.

After confirming the quiet hallway beyond the glass, Onik held the dental mirror in his mouth to free one hand.

When he gently opened the window with that free hand, it made a faint scraping sound.

The sound was quieter than the chorus of katydids chirring in the nearby bushes.

The boy lightly vaulted over the window frame.

Thud.

His own footstep, inaudible to anyone else, heard only by the extraordinary boy himself.

'...I'm in!'

The moment he finally set foot inside the cool police substation, Onik quietly closed the window and put away the dental mirror he had held in his mouth.

Then he let out a faint, troubled sigh without realizing it.

He felt as though he had become a bad child in a different way from before.

© Tunguska#lijin

Footnotes:

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