WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 78: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (78)
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#78.
Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's death was briefly covered as a passing news item on the next evening's broadcast and the following morning's news.
The reports said that Lieutenant Seo, who had been on night patrol, had been pierced by a leaf spring fragment, plunged beneath a bridge with his vehicle, and been found burned.
The news did not identify a direct cause of death.
It was still unclear whether he had died from internal injuries and excessive blood loss caused by the leaf spring, or from the fire after the fall.
The anchors ended their reports by saying that the police had requested an analysis from the National Forensic Service.
Meanwhile, the police investigating the accident scene ran into several questions from the very beginning.
The first question was this.
“The leaf spring went through a person's body and the driver's seat in one go. That's far too much penetration for its weight. What was it, some kind of artillery shell? How fast would the relative speed have needed to be for this to happen?”
The leaf spring thrown at full force by the frightening boy was found lodged in the rear seat backrest.
Despite the intense fire, the seats of the crashed patrol car had retained some of their shape.
Their outer layer was made of flame-retardant polyester-based material, while the filling was self-extinguishing, flame-retardant polyurethane foam.
The leaf spring embedded deep in the rear seat backrest was strikingly unnatural.
Judging by its size, it could only have been an illegal auxiliary support from a small truck weighing around one or two tons. Yet a piece weighing barely a pound and a third had displayed excessive penetrating power.
It had pierced the windshield covered in bulletproof film, gone through a human body, smashed the spine, pierced the driver's seat backrest, and buried itself in the rear seat.
Too much was as bad as too little.
The frightening boy had overestimated the patrol car windshield's defensive strength.
The bulletproof film used by Korean police was less protective than genuine bulletproof glass.
The second question was the leaf spring's origin.
“This is the kind of penetration you'd only get if something fell from an oncoming vehicle in the opposite lane and struck the car. But... there were no trucks passing through at that time on any of the nearby road cameras. What is this?”
If the leaf spring had been lying on the ground and bounced up after another vehicle's tire ran over it, its penetrating force would have been much weaker.
Yet no suspect vehicle had appeared on camera. It was baffling.
The third question was the trajectory the leaf spring had taken.
Despite the frightening boy's thorough preparations, the dashcam memory had been damaged so severely that recovery was nearly impossible.
It had been sent to a specialist company, but the police did not have high hopes.
Even if they got lucky and recovered something, restoring the entire recording was out of the question.
They would be fortunate to salvage even a few incomplete frames from the moment of the accident.
So the police searched the road for another clue that might reveal the trajectory.
“If a heavy, angular chunk of metal like this struck the ground and bounced, it would have left a mark. We just need to find it. That would at least give us a lead.”
It was common sense. It was a reasonable effort.
By comparing the National Forensic Service's findings on the leaf spring with the marks left on the asphalt, they might roughly determine the angle and speed at which the leaf spring that killed a man had struck the road.
But their efforts were not rewarded.
“There are... no marks?”
The police were bewildered.
For the leaf spring to fly in and lodge itself at the driver's aorta height, it had to strike the asphalt once and bounce upward from the force.
But no matter how thoroughly they searched the road, they found not a single dent or scrape apart from the points where the crashed vehicle had struck the guardrail and its posts.
The skid marks left when the unconscious driver's vehicle suddenly swerved served as a boundary.
Any trace of the leaf spring striking or scraping the asphalt should have been left before those skid marks.
That could only mean that the heavy leaf spring fragment had flown in from far away like a real artillery shell.
Its path truly deserved to be called a ballistic trajectory.
“Does that even make sense?”
Of course it did not.
And yet, it had really happened.
At this stage, wondering whether it might have been murder would have been an excessive leap of logic.
Still, if one insisted on making that excessive leap of logic anyway, just once...
The only person in town who could be said to have held a grudge against the dead man was the famous female teacher, Ms. Lee.
(Constable Kim, whose private life was suspicious, and his colleague Constable Park knew that Seo Mun-seok had also had an unpleasant incident with the female teacher's student.
But they did not think a child who was only in the first year of middle school could have held a grudge against the dead man.
The child had merely heard harsh words from an adult once, which was literally nothing more than an unpleasant incident. Besides, Onik had become famous throughout town as a “good child.”)
Suppose one of the investigators possessed a truly bizarre imagination and raised the following question.
“Could that awful female teacher have thrown the leaf spring with more force than the starting pitchers of the great Lotte Giants? Maybe she awakened some unknown superhuman strength she had been hiding and threw a leaf spring fragment more than four times heavier than a baseball at over a hundred kilometers per hour!”
What a convincing theory.
It was entirely realistic, was it not?
That is, if a monster ranch overseer from a certain fantasy territory, where things far more dangerous than wild dogs and wild boars roamed, had lent the rural school's female teacher an Ogre Power Gauntlet.
Another investigator who heard this question would look at their colleague with pity.
“You've finally gone mad. If she had that kind of strength, she would've torn those troublesome stalkers apart with her own hands and left them half dead, instead of reporting them to the police and filing complaints.”
Even leaving physical strength aside, she had an alibi.
They had already checked the cameras near the accident site.
No other vehicles were believed to have passed along that road when the accident occurred.
If the female teacher were the culprit, that meant she had traveled on foot to that remote accident site late at night.
While knowing the police patrol route and schedule exactly. While crossing pathless mountain terrain to avoid the cameras.
It would be impossible unless she had monitored the staffing situation at the town police substation and attached a tracking device to the patrol car.
Ah, and she would also need the stamina for rapid marches through mountain terrain and navigation skills good enough to use at night.
If she possessed the ability to truly carry out something like that of an intelligence operative and special forces soldier... then the female teacher's true identity would have to be a North Korean infiltration agent, highly trained and sent south from beyond the mountains to the north.
Before becoming an agent, she had most likely been a high school girl who had completed military service and received an honorable discharge.
A high school girl who had completed military service and possessed the combat power of one-third of a main battle tank was a biological weapon who could easily overpower the starting pitchers of the great Lotte Giants through sheer strength.
Anyone who seriously proposed such a theory would only be treated as insane.
“Why not just call her a Jedi? Or the leader of the Demonic Cult who mastered the Heavenly Demon Divine Art.”
Ever since the first Heavenly Demon, Michael Jackson, ascended to heaven, no successor to the Heavenly Demon Divine Art had appeared in this world.
The chances of an English teacher at a rural school being the Heavenly Demon were infinitely close to zero.
Moreover, the teacher had a smartwatch issued on the police chief's orders.
On the day of the accident, its location data had never strayed from her usual daily route.
Next-generation smartwatches had not yet been distributed, so there was no way to confirm whether she had actually worn it. But there was no reason to suspect her that far.
In the end, the police did not consider the possibility that this was murder from the beginning.
They did not waste their thoughts on a leap of logic close to delusion.
Still, perhaps there was one fortunate thing amid the misfortune.
The National Forensic Service's analysis produced one clue.
“Damaged wild boar DNA was detected? Is that a trace left by roadkill?”
Because it had been buried deep in flame-retardant material, some of the DNA on the leaf spring's surface had been preserved well enough for comparison.
A meaningful clue had survived even the flames that had exceeded one thousand degrees Celsius at their peak.
“At least we got this much... Let's continue the investigation with this as our lead.”
The police decided to focus their investigative power on the one clue immediately available to them.
To reach the truth hidden deep in the mountains, far from the accident site, they would need to pour an enormous amount of manpower into the investigation.
Even mobilizing every police officer in the country would barely be enough.
#
As an internet broadcaster whose specialty was rural-themed content, Legal Hunter had reached the time of year when he needed to think about what to do for the approaching Chuseok holiday.
He was worried about his young business partner.
‘Why has the kid seemed so down lately?’
For six whole days, the extraordinary boy who was usually so full of energy had been listless.
‘He doesn't seem sick. And even when I ask whether something bad happened, he only smiles weakly and says that isn't it.’
It was truly rare for his young business partner to seem as gloomy as he did now.
There had been only two other occasions that Legal Hunter could remember.
Once, around this time last year, when the unfamiliar father who had never shown his face in Onik's life appeared without warning, left behind a single cold hamburger, and heartlessly departed.
And when Pastor Kim's second child and the President of the Village Youth Association had met untimely deaths in rapid succession, leaving the village to endure funeral after funeral.
Even as a hunter who had known Onik since he was an infant, those were the only two times that came to mind.
There were moments when it seemed the boy deliberately acted cheerful for his grandfather's sake, but whatever the case, Jo Onik had always been bright and lively.
‘Could he have fallen for a girl, confessed, and gotten rejected?’
That was about all Legal Hunter could imagine.
Soon, he dismissed the possibility himself.
‘Come on. What girl in town would say she doesn't like our Onik?’
Jo Onik was the town's greatest superstar.
If someone asked the children who knew him, “Choose. Lotteria or Jo Onik?” all ten out of ten would choose Jo Onik.
One or two might think about it first.
Considering the absolute status that Lotteria and Nonghyup Hanaro Mart held in this remote little town, that was no small thing.
Lotteria hamburgers were delicious, honestly.
Anyone who insisted otherwise was just a prissy person unable to be honest with themself.
The technical industry term for such a person was tsundere.
At this point, there were a little over fifty million tsunderes in this country. Koreans were naturally rather shy.
The truth Legal Hunter did not know was connected to Onik's favorite teacher.
For six days straight, Eun-jeong had avoided seeing her most cherished student.
When her student came to the elementary school's teachers' room, she still greeted him with a smile. But there was an unfamiliar awkwardness and discomfort in her words and manner.
It felt as though she did not know how she should treat this child.
There was no way the lonely boy would fail to notice that change in his teacher.
Onik was actually very attentive to other people's feelings.
And the person in question was the teacher he liked more than anyone in the world besides his grandfather.
The boy thought:
‘Uh... Did I upset her back then? Did it look like I was avoiding Teacher first?’
From spying on the town police substation and watching the bad policemen, to making plans to kill someone and finally committing his second murder.
Onik had been too busy in body and mind to spend time with his teacher.
Because of the cruel verbal abuse the bad policeman had directed at her student, Teacher had seemed to want to stay with him.
Onik had already been deeply concerned about that.
Onik was actually a very fearful child.
The lonely boy, who held a bottomless emptiness within him, was terribly afraid of losing the people precious to him.
So fear suddenly seized him. All kinds of possibilities drifted through his mind.
‘Does Teacher hate me now? Or is she trying to keep her distance for another reason? Is she afraid people around her will have strange suspicions, like that bad policeman said so presumptuously?’
After all, if a boy like him visited a female teacher's house as though it were his own home, there was no guarantee that people would not look at her with improper suspicion again and again.
Especially now, when the bad policemen had spread gossip all over the place.
If Teacher wanted to keep her distance from now on for that reason, it would be sad for the boy. Even if it was not because she hated him.
The boy's self-loathing had grown deeper after his second murder. He could not help feeling terribly gloomy.
It was a gloom so deep that he did not even worry about being caught for murder.
Watching his lonely young business partner sink so low, Legal Hunter prepared a secret event today to lift his spirits.
“Onik is feeling down? Why?”
At the question from Sera, Truffle Candy's leader, the hunter shrugged.
“I don't know the reason either. But won't our Truffle Candy ladies appearing as a surprise make him feel a little better? And you aren't simply coming to see him. You have some very welcome news as well. Hahaha!”
The welcome news Legal Hunter meant was Truffle Candy's practical independence.
There was a reason he had called them “our” Truffle Candy ladies.
Build your own business with someone else's money. Grow your crops in someone else's field.
Legal Hunter had finally put the plan he had boasted about to his young business partner on track.
Like the multi-label systems operated by large entertainment companies, they established a subsidiary label through joint investment and spun Truffle Candy off into it.
The new subsidiary label had been given the somewhat careless name Candy Box.
In exchange for investment from the corporation jointly represented by Legal Hunter and Onik, the label's shares were split evenly with the original agency.
Naturally, the money they invested had been acquired through a loan.
The bad adult had once again firmly carried out his belief that business should be done with other people's money.
‘Heh. Connections really are important for a businessman.’
An idol group's business performance and future value were areas where the evaluator could manipulate things however they pleased.
The cooperative branch manager connected to Legal Hunter through personal ties had once again evaluated Truffle Candy's value using extremely appropriate standards.
It was money they would not need to repay if the label went bankrupt.
Legal Hunter had no intention of bankrupting the label, so there was no problem at all. By the bad adult's standards.
Of course, Legal Hunter's grand plan had only just begun.
Even if the other party was a shitty little agency, could taking over a label truly end so easily?
In practical matters, they held absolute power. Still, the contract allowed the original agency to exercise nominal management rights.
The producer-cum-manager had merely been appointed to run the label.
They had not yet used the agency's internal problems as leverage for blackmail.
Hide a dagger behind a smile.
For now, it was time to hide the blade beneath a smiling face.
Since the person running the label knew every private corruption committed by the parent company and was a spy, it would not be long before the day came for the dagger of backstabbing to be driven deep.
When that day came, the agency president would weep and cry out.
“I trusted you! I trusted you!”
They trusted them, so what? The one being taken advantage of was at fault.
Delighted by the thought alone, the bad adult exchanged a friendly handshake with the producer, who looked slightly nervous.
“Mr. Producer. There will be plenty for us to do together from now on. Let's work well together, yes?”
“Yes, CEO.”
“Hahaha. CEO. I like the sound of that. Now then, shall we go, Truffle Candy ladies? Let's give our uncle a surprise!”
Today's surprise had not been planned in the last day or two.
He had not expected his young business partner to become gloomy at just the right time, but Legal Hunter had been plotting a surprise event with his daughter for a while.
It was a fine opportunity to get an easy video for the channel.
The Truffle Candy members, including Sera, eagerly cooperated.
Sera was in an exceptionally good mood.
‘Onik told me not to make it too obvious to the producer how much I hated them... Onik already knew then. He knew a day like this would come.’
The person who had pushed forward the subsidiary label plan was Legal Hunter.
But every Truffle Candy member knew who had moved Legal Hunter into action.
Sera felt as if the thoughtful, warm-hearted boy had saved her once again.
This reunion with the rural boy had to become an event worth remembering.
Unfortunately, Sera's expectations and Legal Hunter's were not fulfilled.
“Uncle! Some welcome people came from far away to see you! Who could they be?”
Holding a camera gimbal in one hand, Legal Hunter approached Onik with a broad grin and a playful little shimmy. Then he covered the boy's eyes with his free hand and asked.
The extraordinary boy had been sitting on the veranda of the head house's outer building, taking in the breeze.
The wind that rustled down the slopes from the early autumn ridge soothed him a little amid his unsettled feelings.
The boy was not particularly bothered by heat, but he wished the breeze had been a little cooler.
He answered with a quiet smile.
“I know who it is. It's the Truffle Candy sisters, right?”
Legal Hunter was flustered.
The Truffle Candy members, who had been preparing to appear at the right moment with a “Ta-da!”, strike poses, and shout their group slogan, were flustered as well.
The boy's voice was faint at that distance, but not beyond an ordinary person's hearing if they listened carefully.
“...Uncle. How did you know?”
As Legal Hunter removed his hand from the boy's eyes, he asked the question. The extraordinary boy tapped the bridge of his nose with his fingertip.
“I've been able to smell you for a while.”
It was not as if he had only smelled them.
He had heard their voices from quite far away, and he had sensed the presences of things he could kill.
He had even guessed that they were preparing a surprise.
He simply did not have the energy to raise his spirits and play along.
“Uh...”
The hidden Truffle Candy members felt as though a boulder had crashed down inside their minds.
Sniff, sniff.
Mina, the youngest, brought her arm beneath her nose and sniffed it several times. Then, with a half-serious expression that looked close to tears, she whispered into Sera's ear.
“...Did we sweat a lot on the way here?”
Sera was not in the mood to answer.
Legal Hunter's wife, who was filming them, covered her mouth with one hand and laughed quietly.
It was far too easy to guess what Mina had whispered.
Footnotes:
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