WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 72: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (72)

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#72.

Disciplinary proceedings against serving police officers generally had prescribed time limits.

Ordinarily, the limit was thirty days from the receipt of a disciplinary request. If an investigation was necessary, the investigation period was added.

With separate approval from the disciplinary authority, another thirty days could be added.

So when grounds for discipline arose from an issue outside the organization, the usual practice was to stretch the deadline as far as possible, then stretch it again, and begin defensively dragging things out.

If they stalled under the banner of procedural fairness and protecting the accused officer's right to defend themselves, public interest was bound to cool.

Once interest had cooled, the police would hand down a slap-on-the-wrist punishment. That was their basic strategy for handling an issue.

The public, already boiling over like a pot, would express only anger like cooled steam before losing interest.

With the familiar resignation of, “Of course. When has this country ever been any different...?”

But there were two exceptions.

When the matter was serious, the charges were clear, and an investigation was unnecessary.

Or when the person facing discipline had thoroughly angered the disciplinary authority.

Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and the colleagues who had joined in his misconduct fell under both categories.

The police chief, the disciplinary authority, invoked a command spell filled with furious anger toward those beneath them and firm determination to earn a promotion. The disciplinary proceedings moved forward with astonishing speed.

And so Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, who had eaten an early dinner before reporting for the night shift, could not hide his shock at the thunderbolt of news sent down from the superior office.

“No, no... W-what is this? They're convening a disciplinary committee? And they're discussing giving me serious discipline right now?

Without even investigating... without even hearing my explanation...?”

Every serious police disciplinary measure involved a penalty to one's employment status.

The lightest was suspension. The heaviest was expulsion.

The bad police officer felt his vision darken.

‘Surely... no matter what, it can't go as far as expulsion...’

That day when he had poured vile words onto the impudent student of that troublesome female teacher, only to be caught by the teacher and incur her fury.

Since that chilling day, the bad police officer had lived in constant anxiety, fearing retaliation.

Now that the retaliation he had feared had become reality, the bad police officer, consumed by a sense of victimhood, could no longer keep calm.

They were discussing serious disciplinary action without even hearing from the person involved, skipping the investigation stage entirely?

That could only mean the head of the superior office and the disciplinary committee had secured clear evidence and were extremely angry.

‘What on earth is it? Is there evidence serious enough for that? There can't be.’

Even if there were evidence documenting every single thing he had done, the situation should not have become so urgent according to the regional police's “common sense.”

Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and his colleagues had not been police officers for a day or two.

Because the troublesome female teacher's “sincerity” was genuine, they thought they would never actually have to use it. Even so, they had prepared a line of defense in case of a contingency.

「What we did was not stalking! It was action taken solely to reach a settlement!」

In its narrow sense, action taken to reach a settlement referred to various efforts intended to settle ongoing civil or criminal cases.

But attempts to reach an agreement in advance over something that might later become a legal problem could also be considered action taken to reach a settlement, in a broader sense.

「We clearly did something wrong! But it still was not stalking!」

If that defense worked, then at the very least, they could avoid serious punishment that brought disadvantages to their employment status.

It was an example of police officers, well versed in the relevant laws and regulations, displaying their professional expertise.

(It would have been better if they had shown the same expertise for crime victims.)

Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and his colleagues had also prepared “statements from people nearby” to reinforce their defense.

They had carefully spread complaints throughout the town that they wanted to beg the female teacher for forgiveness, but it was not easy.

The manager of the apartment complex, who held a grudge against the teacher, was perfect for the role of witness.

At the same time, it was a threefold effort. It would create sympathetic public opinion for them within the closed community, damage the teacher's image, and provide supporting testimony.

Once that groundwork was laid, it was only natural, in a closed organization, for the disciplinary committee to refer to statements from those around them and hand down light discipline.

That was the altered “common sense” of the regional police.

But this time, common sense and the way things worked had gone astray.

It could not have been otherwise.

Lieutenant Seo was certain of it.

At that moment, the logic of power, which overpowered all other ways of the world, was at work.

The furious female teacher had asked powerful people for help. There was no other explanation unless her influence had reached the worst possibility he had imagined.

The vicious female teacher had decided to use her power to trample decent police officers beneath her feet.

The wicked power of the two-faced teacher, now experienced firsthand, seemed far beyond anything Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok and his colleagues had been prepared for...

The lieutenant felt sick with it.

‘It's truly miserable being a weak person like me...’

Fragile police officers like them had no way to resist the tyranny of a powerful person like that teacher.

Yet even under these circumstances, the three police officers tied to Eun-jeong by a bad relationship had not been excluded from their existing duties.

In principle, the three officers involved in the case should immediately have been relieved of their positions and removed from duty.

Relief from position was not discipline itself, but a temporary measure.

It did not matter if the grounds for discipline were still only allegations.

When the allegations were serious and likely true, it was a temporary measure that could, and in practice had to, be taken immediately at the decision-maker's discretion.

But this was a police substation in an isolated mountain village, one that always suffered from staff shortages.

If three people suddenly left duty, there was no easy way to fill their places.

Finding replacements after the disciplinary process was over would be a problem, but the immediate problem was worse.

There had been no time to prepare.

Calling in off-duty personnel or making people work extra hours without pay was only an unofficial custom.

Relieving someone from their position, on the other hand, was an official order. Any supplementary measures also had to be handled through official orders.

But then they would have to pay additional allowances to the replacement personnel.

And the superior office in a region facing extinction had no budget for additional allowances...

They did not want to create a recorded gap in public safety, nor did they want to cause a budget shortfall.

To the police chief, both were work failures for which they would be held responsible.

If work failures accumulated, they would interfere with promotion.

In any case, the police chiefs at nearby stations all lacked staff and money to the same degree.

How severe was the shortage? Police service centers with zero resident personnel only continued to increase.

So when resources were scarce, only those capable of minimizing problems despite that shortage could gain an advantage in the competition for promotion.

Complaining to those above them would not solve anything. It would only lower their own evaluation.

「Other stations manage just fine, so why are you people making such a fuss? Do you think this is Seoul or Gyeonggi Province?

Don't you know the population keeps falling, so the budget gets tighter every year?」

If they did not want to hear this sort of scolding, they had to cover the gap somewhere.

Budget reduction, personnel management, and maintaining the public safety system were all important performance measures.

The police chief chose to use the people facing discipline to plug the gaps.

No matter that they were facing discipline, it was unacceptable for them to receive a salary while doing nothing, even if it was a reduced amount.

The police chief thought:

‘Can't I put them to work as long as I keep them from approaching the victim?’

Once the disciplinary process was complete, bringing in new personnel would clearly be another headache.

That was why they had to shorten the period of “official staffing shortage,” even if it meant using an irregular method.

For that reason, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok went back to work with a face like death.

“...Still, I have to do what needs doing.”

Even if he meant to find a way out, he had to search while continuing to do his job.

Otherwise, he might be charged with the offense of giving offense, and be unable to receive even the help that might have been available to him.

He still had the right to defend himself under the law, and the path of appealing to personal goodwill.

Within the closed society of an isolated area, the boundary between the two was very blurred.

If he lost people's goodwill, he could consider even his legal right to defense gone.

「This bastard has completely given up, has he? Your life is tangled up, so everything is over? You think the police organization is a joke? Want me to show you what the real end looks like? Huh?」

To avoid hearing such frightening words, a mere lieutenant, nothing more than a weak person, had to behave even more carefully when times were hard.

Drowning in growing misery and resentment, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok decided to work for the moment and contact the other two colleagues tied to the female teacher by their bad relationship.

One was on the day shift, while the other was off duty. They would have heard the news as well.

The three of them needed to work together from the beginning, from the stage of accurately understanding what was happening.

After all, the power of connections increased honestly in proportion to the number of people who used them.

#

As the night grew deeper, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, having roughly grasped the situation, yanked at his hair beneath the crushing weight of despair.

“This is driving me insane. Why is only my disciplinary level...”

The words he left unsaid were, “Why is mine so much worse?”

Still, though he lamented like this, he knew better than anyone why.

One of the two other officers, who had been busily figuring out the situation alongside the lieutenant since sunset, said something that did not need to be said, with an utterly exhausted expression.

“You should have watched your mouth, sir. It was the same before, and it was the same this time. Why couldn't you control that temper of yours... One mistake like this should have been enough...”

The vile things he had said in the past to the teacher who came asking for an investigation into her lover's death.

And the filthy things he had said this time to her student.

Both had been Seo Mun-seok's doing.

The remaining officer also blamed Seo Mun-seok.

“A boy that age, constantly coming and going from the house where a female teacher lives alone? Suspicious. Fucking suspicious, honestly.

But no matter how suspicious it is, how could you say something like that to a kid who's still a minor?

And right in front of that woman's house! You should have considered who you were saying it to, and where!”

“...Fuck.”

“Now that disciplinary proceedings have started, there's no point begging that woman for forgiveness. From the looks of it, someone quite high up has used their influence. What are we supposed to do now...?”

The reason the other two knew what had started this whole affair was that Seo Mun-seok himself, crushed by extreme anxiety before everything broke open, had confessed early on while asking, “What do I do? What do I do?”

People with a great deal of anxiety wanted to unburden it to anyone.

Especially when the people they spoke to were colleagues they had long been open with, and who were in the same position as them.

But it seemed speaking so freely about his anxiety had not been wise.

Seo Mun-seok sensed a quiet resentment in the eyes of the two junior officers, both one rank below him.

He had brought this trouble upon himself, so he had nothing to say.

If he had watched his words the first time, the teacher's grudge against him would have been smaller than it was now. If he had watched his words this time, the two-faced teacher would still have been putting on her innocent act while enjoying her power trip.

Even so, Seo Mun-seok felt anger rising inside him.

He could see the two officers quietly drawing a line between themselves and him.

When he had first made that verbal mistake, and when he had colluded with the fifty-six-year-old stalker in a rigged game of Go-Stop to humiliate her, they had joined him in every action except the words.

The three of them had also shared the same dark suspicions about the relationship between the teacher and her student.

If someone collected all the obscene talk they had shared while enduring anxiety and stress, it would easily amount to three or four hours.

And now they were trying to distance themselves from him.

‘You two won't get fired anyway. Is that it?’

The remaining two people, whom Seo Mun-seok had thought were in the same boat as him, turned out to have their own boat.

And from what he had learned so far... the boat carrying those two was likely not going to sink, even if it came out battered and ragged from the storm.

Reliable connections had told him that the discipline for the other two was being discussed somewhere between suspension and demotion.

Suspension or demotion?

They were serious disciplinary measures, but they could continue working as police officers.

Their precious pensions would be safe as well.

On the other hand, the boat Seo Mun-seok rode alone was all but certain to sink.

According to what he had heard through several connections, the tentative minimum punishment set for him was dismissal.

If he was unlucky, he would be expelled and lose half his public service pension.

At least he could probably end the criminal punishment with a suspended sentence. It was his first offense, and he had already prepared a line of defense.

But as a police officer, he was finished.

That was why the other two wanted to distance themselves from him now. They did not want to be dragged further into it and suffer additional damage.

They had worked together for almost ten years. Human relationships were truly empty things...

The weight of betrayal and loneliness joined the despair that had already been there.

Seo Mun-seok clenched his molars and folded his arms, then looked up at the ceiling and let out a long breath.

‘...They said evidence especially unfavorable to me was submitted. And it went through someone very high up.’

This was what he had only barely managed to hear by desperately appealing to an older schoolmate in the inspection office for personal goodwill.

Someone “very high up” was involved in this matter.

The lieutenant guessed that person was the National Assembly member for the district.

After all, the highest-ranking person among those who had come to see the female teacher had been a National Assembly member.

He did not yet know that among the evidence passed to the police chief through the lawmaker's aide was the “second verbal mistake” recorded by the frightening boy on his phone.

The day after sneaking into the police substation, committing a whole load of “bad child actions,” and returning home, the boy sent Teacher the recorded conversation through a messenger app.

「I was recording from the beginning, just in case. I thought there might be something in what the police uncle said to me that could help you...」

The teacher had been deeply impressed by her student's thoroughness when she received the recording.

“...”

A heavy silence hung over the three people sitting around one table.

The place where the three bleak officers had gathered was a space inside the police substation that served as a break room, pantry, and makeshift meeting room.

(There was a real meeting room elsewhere, but that was a space for the station chief to establish their authority.)

Though the air conditioner was on and the room was cool, the stale smell of ramen lingered in the air and made it feel stuffy.

In this familiar space, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok was bothered by the absence of a ticking sound.

The wall clock that used to make that sound was gone.

The round clock that had hung on the wall had watched over this police substation longer than Seo Mun-seok himself.

But perhaps it had broken. Someone had simply removed it and brought in a new electronic clock.

The lieutenant thought:

Just as the old clock had been thrown away without a thought, was he too, after devoting more than ten years to the local community as a police officer, being discarded like an old shoe?

Despite all those long years of sacrifice and devotion, simply because he had fallen afoul of a bad-tempered female teacher...

A fellow officer's voice brought Seo Mun-seok back to himself.

“There might be a way, sir.”

“...What way?”

“In the end, isn't the problem that female teacher, Lee Eun-jeong? We need to deal with that bitch somehow. There is no answer otherwise.”

Seo Mun-seok was startled.

“What do you mean, deal with her? You're not suggesting we kill her?”

The junior officer who had spoken recoiled in shock.

“No, are you out of your mind? Who is talking about killing anyone? No matter how much we hate that woman... You're saying something that could get you into real trouble, sir.”

“Hey, you...!”

Seo Mun-seok, suddenly reduced to a man plotting murder, flared up as well.

“You said it in a way that made it easy to misunderstand! Am I crazy? Why would a police officer think about killing someone?”

“What did I say that was so easy to misunderstand...?”

“Seriously, I can't even hit you... I have to hold myself back... Anyway, what are you suggesting, then? What is this way of ‘dealing with her somehow’?”

At the lieutenant's irritated questioning, the sergeant two years younger than him leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice.

“Sir. Why do the powerful people help that bitch? Because she's a female teacher who became famous through her student's online stream. And because that fame makes parents from the city keep coming down here with their brats in tow, isn't it?”

“Get to the point. I have patrol soon.”

“This is the point. We get rid of the reason the powerful people have to help that bitch.

If we turn Lee Eun-jeong into trash, those people will cut ties with her immediately.

Isn't it common for people who do internet broadcasts to fall into the gutter overnight?”

Seo Mun-seok was somewhat tempted and asked again.

“Turn her into trash? How?”

After pausing for a moment, the sergeant two years younger answered.

“Sir. Lately, whenever I've been feeling starved in that department, I've been satisfying myself with AI deepfake videos. They're really something. As long as you know how to get around the built-in filters...”

Footnotes:

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