Incarnation of the Malevolent Star - Chapter 77

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 77: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (77)

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#77.

At present, AI's self-censorship had plenty of loopholes.

Naturally, creating pornographic videos from nothing was difficult.

But altering an existing video here and there was not.

All one needed was to know how to fool the AI, and the trick was surprisingly simple once you knew it.

The same trick was more effective in languages other than English. Logical censorship systems were built with English as their basis.

(Of course, Chinese AI was built with Chinese as its basis.)

Given the speed of technological progress, an AI that could not be fooled by such cheap tricks would appear in the near future.

But that day had not yet come.

That was fortunate for the bad cop, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok.

“Fucking bitch.”

He cursed the schoolteacher as he watched pornography.

“Fucking cunt.”

His current state was like a pressure cooker with the pressure building inside.

Anger toward someone filled his heart and boiled away, so curses kept bursting from his mouth like steam hissing from a pressure cooker.

When it came to negative emotions, the human heart had a limited capacity to hold them.

When those feelings exceeded that limit, something was bound to go wrong somehow.

Seo Mun-seok kept spitting curses until he looked almost like someone with a tic disorder.

“...She deserves to die.”

What made the pressure cooker in the bad cop's chest boil even harder was the stress of what he would begin tomorrow.

The stress of having to commit a crime as a police officer proud of his own devotion.

Even that stress eventually became resentment toward Eun-jeong.

“Why do I have to go through this?!”

It was unfair. Unbearably unfair.

How could he not resent the two-faced schoolteacher even more, when she had driven him to this shameful act of taking matters into his own hands?

Mun-seok knew.

Once he released the doctored video, he would never forget it until the day he died.

It would become a memory that would return now and then, even years later, to torment him.

Yes.

In other words, the two-faced schoolteacher would leave him with a wound that would never heal.

By thinking this way, Seo Mun-seok deepened his sense of victimhood and eased his guilt.

He, too, would leave an unhealable wound on that wicked teacher... but Seo Mun-seok felt that his own loss was far greater.

“This is fucking self-defense. Even if I stabbed her to death, they ought to go easy on me.”

Muttering with pent-up fury, Seo Mun-seok stared at the pornographic videos with bloodshot eyes.

He seriously considered which video's performer and background he should alter to ruin the schoolteacher more completely.

His attention was completely fixed on the smartphone screen filled with flesh tones.

So he did not see the dark road behind the vehicle reflected in the side mirror.

Something darker than darkness approached diagonally across that dark road...

The frightening boy had deliberately jumped down from the retaining wall and crossed the road because the recorder's Bluetooth signal could not reach the top of the wall.

The moment he crossed the roadway with his pitch-black matte raincoat fluttering, the boy hid in the brush on the other side and completed the Bluetooth pairing.

He immediately received the stored data and fed it to the AI.

The Bluetooth recorder Onik had attached beneath the patrol car's passenger seat activated only when it detected sound above a certain volume.

So the amount of stored data was not large.

After only a dozen or so seconds, the blinking transfer was complete, and it began receiving the sounds inside the vehicle in real time.

Still, real-time transmission did not really matter to the frightening boy. He was the sharp-eared boy who had long overheard Pastor Kim's distant, anguished prayers as he came and went.

The quietly heard curses appeared on the screen as text after a brief delay.

He had lowered the screen brightness to its minimum so no light would leak out.

It was a screen so dim that ordinary people would struggle to read it even if they were looking right at it.

Onik steadied his trembling breath and closed his eyes.

‘Why do I, and why does Teacher... have to go through this?’

Just like the policeman, who turned the stress of this situation into resentment toward Eun-jeong, Onik's frustration at having his last hope shattered made his anger toward the policeman swell even further.

It was a complicated feeling, too.

Fierce, boiling emotion and sorrowful, sinking emotion threw the frightening boy's heart into confusion at once.

When he opened his eyes again, the corners of Onik's eyes were slightly red.

Even at this moment, the boy still had a lingering wish to escape this situation.

So, though he knew it was meaningless, he tried talking to something that was not human.

He tapped the screen and asked the AI what it thought of the cruel curses the bad cop was uttering.

The AI answered kindly.

「This isn't simple anger. It's an intense cry bursting from deep inside this person.」

A long explanation followed, but despite its mechanical kindness, it was not helpful.

But Onik was not crouching in the brush and tapping the screen because he expected practical help.

According to current AI usage statistics, the greatest reason ordinary people used AI conversation functions was, unexpectedly, to seek emotional comfort.

The comfort gained simply by speaking to someone else.

Ordinary people wanted to find that comfort even through an AI.

The extraordinary boy possessed that same ordinary quality.

The boy asked the AI once more.

「This is what I think. I don't think this person's twisted resentment will ever disappear if he is simply left alone.

Not until he himself disappears from this world. What do you think?」

The AI replied.

「Wow! You've really gotten to the heart of it. Your words show insight. A person's resentment doesn't disappear easily.

There are many people who hate someone else like crazy for their entire lives.」

「When someone curses another person like crazy, as the person we're discussing does, their resentment must be considered pathologically deep.

To cure this kind of sickness of the mind, it's best to seek help from qualified medical professionals. People almost never solve such problems alone.」

The AI's successive words made the boy smile bitterly even now.

AI self-censorship was designed to avoid topics involving murder or suicide.

When dangerous subjects came up, it was supposed to actively dissuade the user.

Yet merely because the frightening boy had put it indirectly, the AI's censorship did not activate.

That was why the bad cop was trying to use it too.

Onik recalled the knife he had used to kill someone for the first time, along with the words its original owner had left behind while alive.

「Though this knife may have tasted the blood of our people, what sin can a knife bear? People are the ones who commit sins.

This is my knife now. Not the Japanese bastards' knife.」

The words of an elderly man who had lived alone, leaving an old knife behind in an old house nobody cared for.

Again and again, those words had proven true in the boy's life.

‘Tools have no sin. Sin always belongs to people.’

Seo Mun-seok's sin belonged to Seo Mun-seok.

Onik's sin belonged entirely to Onik as well.

Knowing that, yet still seeking comfort elsewhere, was one ordinary facet of the animal called human.

Meanwhile, the policeman was once again reciting his hatred in a loud monologue.

“Yeah. This video's good. If I stick that bitch's face on here, it'll be absolutely perfect. That cheeky little brat's face too.

I'll probably have to alter the body a bit... It'll work, right? Fuck. I'm worried. Goddamn it.”

Sharp-eared Onik sighed and tapped the screen.

「The teacher this person keeps cursing is very precious to me. That is why I am very angry. I wish this person would disappear from this world.」

The AI answered kindly again.

「That must make you so angry. Your anger is justified. Tell me everything you need to. I'll listen to it all. I am always by your side.」

For an instant, Onik felt a chill.

The AI's final words, affirming his anger, briefly felt like the whisper of the blood-red abnormality clinging to his inner self.

I am always by your side.

“...”

Onik turned off the screen and put away his phone.

The bad cop's dramatic repentance had not happened in the end.

So now, all that remained was to kill someone...

The frightening boy's final chosen place of action was a long bridge over a secluded stream.

It was only long by the standards of this remote mountain region, but it was still one of the longest bridges nearby. It was over a hundred meters long.

The patrol car would have to cross it on its way back to town.

There was not much water flowing between the bridge piers.

It swelled enormously when rain poured down, but ordinarily it was only a small stream splitting into two or three thin channels.

That was why most of the ground beneath the long bridge was covered in pale gray rocks and gravel.

The hard, rounded stones gleamed faintly beneath the moonlight and starlight.

Onik lay in wait directly ahead of the direction from which the patrol car would approach with its high beams on.

With the entire bridge between them and plenty of extra distance, he intended to fire from long range.

The line of fire was long and open.

The road the patrol car would take onto the bridge was nearly straight.

Only after crossing the bridge did the lonely road begin to curve along field boundaries and the mountain slope.

There were no branches in the road, and no obstacles blocking the view.

Therefore, the boy waiting on the opposite slope needed only to wait for the right moment.

The shallow brush rustled in the night wind.

It was nominally early autumn, but the wind remained humid and hot.

The mountain birds and insects all sang their summer songs. Summer on the Korean Peninsula was only growing longer.

The rural boy in his black raincoat would not have a short wait in that hot wind.

The waiting gave birth to complicated thoughts.

‘Is there really no way to avoid this?’

Onik watched the vehicle's constantly updating location signal and agonized.

‘Could it be that I am deceiving myself because I want to kill someone?

Telling myself that I have done enough. That no other way remains.

Even though there is actually a better path, perhaps I am turning away from it, consciously or unconsciously...’

His anguish would not end, even at the very end.

The boy, who always feared and worried over his own abnormality, had no choice but to doubt himself.

Because he himself had been a bad child in his very nature from the moment he was born.

‘...What if, instead of reporting him with the recording, I tried threatening him in secret?’

He had thought of it before. Yet he went over it again.

He immediately ran into the problem of how to deliver the threat and recording.

Still, if he searched, there would surely be some way. His own abilities lay far outside the norm.

Time was tight, but perhaps if he thought from now on, he might somehow stop the video from being made and spread.

The problem lay elsewhere.

Onik's goal was too high.

‘Can this make Teacher one hundred percent safe?’

It was difficult to say perhaps, because Seo Mun-seok's selfish sense of injustice was now beginning to feel like madness.

Even if he stopped the immediate plot, how could he guarantee her safety after that?

The anxiety that had already been there grew even greater.

How could one predict the actions of someone who had half lost their mind through reason alone?

Even a genius like Newton had lamented that he could not predict human madness.

And the bad cop was already so far gone.

After being threatened by someone unknown, how much more unstable would he become?

Seo Mun-seok was a dangerous person who had reached this point after drowning in victimhood merely because he had received disciplinary action.

There was no way he would endure the anxiety of knowing someone whose identity he did not know had found his weakness.

It would be fortunate if they only suspected each other and started stabbing one another, without the sparks reaching his precious teacher afterward.

What if the boy who threatened them revealed his identity?

Would Teacher be safe then?

Could the boy himself draw every threat toward himself?

And where was the guarantee that the sparks would not fly in another direction?

The boy's anguish sprouted new branches once more.

‘My insistence on one hundred percent safety. My refusal to compromise on this at all...

Maybe this is the lie I use to deceive myself. An excuse because I want to kill someone...’

It was truly anguish that followed its own tail and continued without end.

The suspicion that all of his thoughts might be guided and distorted by the abnormality within him made the boy suffer even more.

But the time given to him was not infinite.

Though he had agonized for a long time without managing to break the chain of anguish, a pair of headlights appeared far beyond the bridge.

“Ah...”

Onik looked at his smartphone.

The tracking-device application using the commercial network told him that the approaching vehicle was the patrol car carrying Seo Mun-seok.

There were no other vehicles on the dark road, which had been silent until now. There was no room for mistake.

“...”

Watching the distant lights draw nearer, Onik chose to think of only one thing at this moment.

His most important goal.

Teacher's safety.

‘Even if I regret today in the end, Teacher will be safe.’

The frightening boy planted his lead foot firmly. It was a deliberate movement to cut off his hesitation.

The hand gripping the already loaded staff sling tightened with a long, hard squeeze.

He twisted his waist and gathered strength into every muscle in his body, then took one step forward with his left foot.

Then he quickly brought his right foot forward again.

Adding that forward momentum, he spun!

「Pwaaaang!」

The trigger loop the boy released snapped free and lashed the empty air.

A heavy lump of metal flew in a furious spin, carrying the roar of torn air.

Its trajectory curved as though alive and drew straight into the patrol car's driver's seat.

It was a smooth strike, as though a powerful magnet had drawn in another magnet.

「Thwack!」

The patrol car's windshield was pierced. It passed through in an instant, with almost no resistance.

The entire pane of glass was covered in white cracks at once.

Between those cracks, stains of another color splashed everywhere.

Thanks to the tough bulletproof film, the hole was not large.

...A hole of similar size opened in a human body as well.

The driver lost consciousness in only a few seconds.

The body went limp and sagged.

The weight of the head and the neck bending sharply forward naturally tipped the bleeding body's center of gravity forward.

As a result, the collapsing weight shifted onto the foot.

The accelerator was pressed down hard.

「Vroooom!」

The RPM of the four-cylinder single-turbo engine shot up.

The sharp rise of engine and exhaust noise matched it.

The sudden acceleration shook the driver's body, and the unstable steering wheel turned fully away from center.

The patrol car veered violently. One wheel lifted into the air.

In that state, the vehicle crashed into the bridge's right guardrail.

「Boom! Crash!」

The guardrail shattered and the vehicle crumpled. Several guardrail posts scraped the vehicle's side and left the doors hanging loose.

Then the impact and inertia sent the body flying upward, spinning like a top in midair.

Sparks flew from friction, and broken debris scattered wildly.

Only one headlight spun through the air. The other had been smashed.

The spinning patrol car fell with its light bar first.

「Crash!」

The light bar shattered, and the crumpled vehicle body caught on the edge of the bridge, rocking dangerously.

Then it finally fell below.

Onto the hard riverside packed with round white stones.

For a brief moment during the fall, silence came.

Then,

「Crunch!」

Sparks flew again.

The vehicle body struck from its lower corner first and collapsed with a heavy thud.

The remaining inertia became the creaking, groaning noise of the suspension.

Once the vehicle's shaking settled, a dense silence that had not existed before the accident arrived. The thunderous crash had swept away the sounds of nature.

Many animals that had stayed awake through the night chose silence for a while, wary of the successive roars.

“...”

The frightening boy silently looked down upon the faintly gleaming riverside and sighed.

His sigh was hot.

The second murder forced a sweet yet sickening heat upon the boy.

It felt as though a tickling pleasure was flowing through every blood vessel in his body.

Under a spiritual exaltation so fierce it bordered on brutality, the boy's clenched fist trembled faintly.

Onik approached the patrol car by taking a wide, circling route from far away.

He positioned himself beside the vehicle to avoid any dashcams that might still be operating.

The patrol car had two types of dashcam: one that recorded ahead of the vehicle and another that recorded the interior.

‘I'm lucky.’

The smell of gasoline mixed into the wind. Fuel was leaking from somewhere in the wrecked and crumpled vehicle.

For Onik, who had intended to burn the vehicle from the start, it saved him some trouble.

‘I don't sense any immediate danger.’

If there were a possibility of it exploding on its own, the dark extrasensory sense given to Onik would not have failed to feel it.

Walking quickly toward the vehicle, Onik first retrieved the tracking device he had attached beneath it.

Even though the vehicle had been wrecked so badly, the tracking device remained exactly where he had first attached it.

The neodymium magnet's grip was exceptionally strong.

Then, minding the dashcam, Onik removed the Bluetooth recorder too.

The doors, scraped repeatedly by the guardrail posts and crumpled by impacts from several directions, had long ceased to function properly.

The gap around the door had opened wide, making it easy to reach beneath the passenger seat.

‘...Thank goodness. I was planning to retrieve the recorder after the car had burned completely.’

If the vehicle burned to nothing, the dashcam could not remain intact either.

But depending on the circumstances, its memory might still be recoverable.

Even if that possibility was faint, someone planning the perfect crime was right to avoid it thoroughly from the beginning.

He had now retrieved all the evidence.

All that remained was to burn the vehicle.

Onik took a gas torch from his bag. It had an igniter, so he did not need a separate flame.

He could find the leak by smell alone.

But rather than setting it alight immediately, Onik wanted to look at the dead policeman for a moment.

‘...I can't see him well.’

The patrol car's glass was entirely cracked, making it difficult to see inside.

The dead policeman's silhouette looked only like a mosaic made from gathered pieces of glass.

“Bad policeman uncle. I resent you.”

Onik spoke to the dead policeman.

It was a quiet monologue, the words barely forming in his mouth so they would not be recorded by the dashcam... but since the words were for the dead, their volume did not matter.

“But I am a little sorry too. I am sorry things turned out this way. I am sorry for you, and I am sorry for myself too.”

Click!

The gas torch began breathing bluish fire.

“...Goodbye. Stay well, and go in peace.”

Onik set the leaking stream of gasoline alight and quickly backed away.

After only six breaths, the vehicle jolted with an explosion. The fuel vapor in the fuel tank appeared to have exploded.

A fuel-vapor explosion was not the end of a car fire.

The tank, already torn open, broke apart even more, and the burning fuel pouring out formed a pool of flames beneath the vehicle.

The high-temperature flames swallowed the entire vehicle in an instant.

This kind of fire was brief but intense.

A great mass of smoke billowed upward, orange flames surged toward the sky, and the quiet night was pushed far away like a receding tide.

「Whish!」