WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 75: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (75)

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#75.

When an ordinary person with no criminal record intends to commit some serious wrongdoing, it is exceedingly rare for them to quietly suppress their anxiety alone.

If they can do that, they are no longer an ordinary person.

Humans are social animals, and sociability belongs to the realm of instinct.

So someone burdened with anxiety too difficult to bear alone will inevitably let it spill over onto the people around them, again and again.

It is an instinct difficult to rein in with reason alone.

Only people who are thoroughly isolated, possess extraordinary mental strength, or have severely troubled minds can be exceptions to this instinct.

The presence of someone who listens to your story without arguing against it is comforting in itself.

It makes you feel that you are not alone.

There is also a kind of catharsis in the act of taking anxiety locked inside your heart and bringing it out into the open.

And so Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, an ordinary man, spent the entire afternoon meeting one person after another and spreading his anxiety wherever he went.

It was time for him to sleep before his next shift, but he thought lying down would only make him suffer more.

Of course, he could not tell anyone the full truth.

He especially had to keep the sordid plan he was considering a secret.

Still, relying on the good standing he had built up over the years, he was satisfied with receiving vague words of comfort.

Secrets were difficult to keep in a closed community.

Moreover, the three police officers entangled in a bad relationship with the female teacher had already prepared their defenses and worked to shape public opinion. Many people already knew that disciplinary action against the three officers was under discussion.

The bad police officer's acquaintances saw his haggard face and all expressed the same pity.

"Oh dear. I heard the rough story. You're going to be disciplined, aren't you? You've really been through a lot."

"Your face is half its size, and your eyes are red as a rabbit's. How much sleep have you missed, huh?"

"Come in and have a meal before you go. I won't take your money. No matter how hard things are, a person still has to eat. That way, you'll have strength."

"Keep your spirits up and get through it. Everything will work out."

The comfort and encouragement of his acquaintances helped the bad police officer steady his wavering self-esteem.

'I really am a good person. I've lived as a good police officer, helping others and doing good things all this time.'

He was considering doing something bad now.

But this one thing could not erase all the years Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok had lived as a model officer.

As he saw it, the unavoidable self-defense of a good person should not be called wrong.

It might be illegal under the cold logic of the law, but under the warm morality of people, it was only an act of self-preservation that could not be called wrong.

'Yes. I'm good. I really am good...'

The process by which Seo Mun-seok became more certain of his own goodness was also the process of lightening the burden of the evil he might commit.

This was usually how ordinary people abandoned their consciences.

As the sun sank, the weight of hesitation in the bad police officer's heart grew lighter and lighter...

#

When Constable Kim, whose private life was questionable, made a hideous proposal and Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok listened closely, there had been one more constable quietly listening.

That constable's surname was Park.

The next day, when the three gathered again, Constable Park, the youngest of them, raised a concern he had not dared voice the day before.

"But... if things go badly, couldn't someone die because of this?"

Seo Mun-seok frowned at the cautious question.

"What are you talking about out of nowhere? Why would anyone die? Did anyone here say we should kill that woman?"

"No, but if doctored videos start spreading and strange rumors go around, won't people online swarm in and pour every kind of abuse on Lee Eun-jeong? She's known through internet broadcasting."

"And?"

"What do you mean, and? If she can't bear it, she could kill herself. Cases where someone gets publicly torn apart online and commits suicide. One happens every so often, doesn't it?"

"..."

"What if we end up getting someone killed? I don't particularly want to take that teacher's side, but death is a little..."

Constable Park trailed off as he watched Seo Mun-seok's reaction. He could feel the lieutenant's anger.

To Constable Park, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok was both his superior at work and a senior from the same hometown in private life.

Seo Mun-seok glared at Park with eyes even more bloodshot than yesterday.

"Then what about me?"

"Sir?"

"Are you not worried that I might kill myself, you bastard? Does my life not matter?"

Amid the ticking anxiety, Seo Mun-seok's warped sense of grievance, built up and built up over so long, erupted violently with fierce resentment.

"A police officer's life is a life too! News stories about civil servants driven to suicide by malicious complaints come up all the time! I might kill myself because of this!

But you're standing in front of me, worrying about that woman first? Are you trying to act like the good guy all by yourself now?!"

"No, I, that isn't..."

"What do you mean, it isn't?!"

The bad police officer, full of a victim mentality, slammed the table again and again.

Constable Kim, whose private life was questionable, was so startled that he clung to him, warning that everyone would hear. Only then did Seo Mun-seok's rage finally subside.

Panting, the bad police officer spoke in a lowered voice.

"People who drive someone else to suicide are murderers too. In a way, they're worse than real murderers! Because they don't even realize that they're murderers!"

"..."

"Isn't that disgusting? What do those malicious complainers always say? They say they never imagined someone would die because of this. They say the civil servant who died was weak. They say they did nothing wrong...

Then they go on living shamelessly, truly believing they did nothing wrong! And before long, they completely forget the civil servant driven to suicide by them!"

Seo Mun-seok spoke with force, packing suppressed rage into every word. From across the table, he looked frighteningly savage.

Crushed by that savagery, Constable Park thought that the Seo Mun-seok he had known for so long suddenly seemed unfamiliar.

'Is it just my imagination? He seems like a completely different person after only one day.'

Seo Mun-seok's bloodshot eyes glaring at him reminded Constable Park of a film he had seen before.

A famous film that had drawn attention for its detailed portrayal of Hitler growing madder by the day, trapped in an underground bunker near the end of World War II...

'That's exactly the feeling.'

That did not mean Seo Mun-seok looked as insane as Hitler near the end of the war.

The feeling was merely similar.

The concern Constable Park had carefully raised ultimately had the exact opposite effect from what he intended.

Seo Mun-seok finally made his decision.

'These unreliable bastards. If I keep hesitating like this, they'll stab me in the back without a second thought. Just to save themselves. Cowards.'

He did not know how they could possibly stab him in the back in a situation like this.

His mind, weakened far more than usual by extreme stress and exhaustion, could not think of anything.

But the possibility itself was what mattered.

After all, the method of spreading doctored videos through online communities for women was something Seo Mun-seok had never even imagined.

If those two men who were supposedly his colleagues put their heads together, there was no knowing what bizarre scheme they might come up with.

Then he had to act.

He had to act before even the choice he disliked disappeared.

Seo Mun-seok turned to Constable Kim.

"Hey. I've decided. Let's do it. I'll take responsibility."

Constable Kim brightened.

"You've made the right choice, sir. If we don't start now, it'll be too late."

Not stopping there, Seo Mun-seok spoke firmly to Constable Park.

"If that woman kills herself? Ha! Then she brought it on herself! It'll only mean a bitch who deserves to die killed herself!

She'll die because she can't bear the consequences of her own deeds. Why would that be my fault? Did I tell her to die?!"

The bad police officer firmly resolved to protect himself.

Now, he even believed that this was an act of protecting his own life...

#

The frightening boy listened to the newly obtained recording and became terribly angry.

"How can someone... say such selfish things?"

His anger was so deep that the hand gripping his phone trembled.

Amid the swirling rage, Onik reflected once again on the lesson left behind by the fifty-six-year-old Village Youth Association President.

'If an ordinary person holds a selfish sense of grievance, they can become a shameless murderer.'

The more he reflected on it, the more bitter the lesson tasted in his mouth.

Onik glimpsed that selfish sense of grievance in Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, who had resolved to do something bad.

The cheap kind of grievance that he had already experienced once, bringing both familiarity and a sense of dread.

That was right.

To the boy, this grievance was practically a trauma trigger.

This alone made Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok into a threat Onik could not leave alone.

But that was not all.

Along with his anger, Onik felt intense humiliation.

By a terrible coincidence... the bad police officer's forceful self-defense overlapped in many ways with the meaningful conversation the frightening boy had shared with Yu Se-ra, the idol who had wished to die.

Under the star-filled night sky of a rural village, Onik had once asked Sera:

"Big sister. Is someone who drives another person to suicide a murderer, or not?"

Sera had answered that she considered such a person a murderer.

Then the boy had asked:

"Then how many shameless murderers who do not even think of themselves as murderers must be walking freely through this world?"

Murderers who believed they had committed no great wrong and were ordinary people, who forgot the people they had killed and lived among others as though nothing had happened.

The boy deeply despised such murderers.

He even considered indirect murder, the kind that made someone choose death themselves, more wicked than active and intentional murder.

It had meant a great deal to Onik that Sera had deeply agreed with this belief.

Yu Se-ra, the idol who had once wished to die.

She was the first person whom the frightening boy had pulled back from death through his dark abnormality.

Because of her, Onik had been able to choose one path he would walk in the future.

One bright and precious path that would let him live with a little more self-acceptance despite his hatred for himself...

That was why the words spoken by the bad police officer were horribly insulting.

'Disgusting.'

Who was calling whom disgusting?

Who dared to lump Teacher in with hateful murderers, and call Teacher a person who deserved to die?

The broadcasts he made with Teacher held great meaning for the lonely boy.

When he graduated from elementary school, the boy had felt a lingering sense of loss. It had seemed as though one point of connection with his precious teacher had disappeared.

In that sense, their broadcasts were a new point of connection.

The boy wanted to continue broadcasting with Teacher.

Therefore, Teacher would continue becoming known to more people.

She would become even more famous than she was now.

Which also meant that the kind teacher would become an easier target for internet evil spirits.

As an internet broadcaster himself, the boy knew their behavior well.

They were every broadcaster's nightmare, flooding live chats with cries of, "To the abyss! To the abyss!" as they threw themselves a dopamine party.

To Onik, internet evil spirits were a faceless collective of murderers who took no responsibility for their actions.

The frightening boy knew of many fellow broadcasters and other public figures who had been driven to suicide by malicious comments and rumors.

'The police uncles have been spreading bad rumors about Teacher everywhere too.'

The smear campaign the bad police officers had carried out while preparing their legal defense had reached Onik's ears through the adults around him.

After all, Onik was also part of this closed community.

"Onik, are you all right? I've heard some unfavorable things about that teacher lately."

Hearing those words from an adult in town had made Onik's blood boil with anger.

The more famous Teacher became, the more likely she was to become a target for vile broadcasters.

The sort of malicious people who wanted attention by tearing down successful public figures.

The smear campaign carried out by the bad police officers within their closed community was no different from piling up firewood in advance for such people.

Here, use this to light a fire and hold a grand summoning ritual for internet evil spirits.

Once the internet evil spirits who answered the call sang their endless chorus of "To the abyss!" and stained Teacher's name... Teacher would be unable to continue broadcasting and might even be suspended from her teaching duties for some time.

There was no guarantee that Teacher would not think about suicide then.

"..."

Onik opened his SNS messenger and brought up his chat with Teacher.

It was a chat where no new messages had been exchanged since their conversation around evening.

Teacher had messaged first.

"Onik, would you like to come over to Teacher's house today?"

"Yesterday and today, Onik seems very busy. You haven't even turned on a live broadcast once."

"Nothing else happened after you argued with that police uncle, did it?"

"If possible, Teacher would like to see our Onik's face, even for a little while. Would that be all right?"

Since the day Teacher had become frighteningly angry at the bad police officer, Onik had not visited her house even once, all the way through today, the third day.

He had been busy with various things... and he had also felt guilty because he was doing so many bad things.

'It can't be helped. Lying to Teacher is just as difficult and uncomfortable as lying to Grandpa...'

There was a risk that Teacher might discover something she should not discover.

It was sad and painful to refuse Teacher's invitation, but that was why he had to be careful.

So Onik sent a reply with a gloomy heart.

He had something to do today, so it would be difficult. He would come visit another time.

"I see..."

After sending that brief message, Teacher repeatedly began typing and stopped. Only after a long time did she send her final message of the day.

"If Onik is busy, it can't be helped ㅠㅠ See you next time"

Receiving that final message, Onik felt a heavy sense of guilt.

Onik had heard such awful things from the police uncle whose thoughts were so twisted. Of course Teacher would be worried about him.

And he was lying to such a kind teacher.

Whatever the reason he was hiding things, Onik could not help being a very bad child.

The boy hoped.

He hoped Teacher was not hurt. He hoped her worry had not deepened.

(Onik did not know that Teacher had written the weak, cowardly message, "Is it something more important than Teacher?" Then, in deep shame, she had scolded herself and quickly erased it.

Like her student, Lee Eun-jeong also thought she was a bad teacher.)

Teacher was not the only one he had lied to.

After class ended today, Onik had remained in town until after the sun went down.

He had told Grandpa that he would play at a friend's house and sleep over.

It was a bad lie that only worked because tomorrow was the weekend.

In reality, he had merely circled secretly around the police substation and patrol cars, retrieving data from Bluetooth recorders, and stood in shadowed streets to remotely check the desk-clock spy camera whenever he could.

"...Phew."

After quietly staring at his chat with Teacher, Onik closed his eyes and let out a long breath.

Then he opened them again.

A pair of ominous, vicious lights had settled in the frightening boy's eyes.

Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok had made up his mind to walk a bad path, so the frightening boy also made up his mind to walk a dark one.

Footnotes:

"To the abyss!" recreates a Korean online chant using narak, slang for a public downfall or social ruin.

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