WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 81: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (81)
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#81.
Caught off guard, Onik darted his eyes about. Then, with difficulty, he opened his mouth.
“Could you... tell? I thought I hid it well.”
“Mm-hm. You did hide it well.”
Sera nodded with a gentle expression.
“But I could see it. That made me worry about you even more.”
“Um...”
“Won't you tell me? I know because I've experienced it myself, thanks to someone. No matter what the worry is, keeping it all bottled up and suffering through it alone only makes things harder. And just talking about what's weighing on your heart can make you feel much better.”
“...”
“I promise I'll keep it secret. I won't tell anyone without your permission. You trust me, right?”
“I do, but...”
The boy who was the “someone” in “thanks to someone” made a troubled face.
Of course he had no choice but to be troubled.
The heart of his worry was his relationship with his precious teacher, but to explain why, he would have to tell Sera how he and Teacher had become entangled with the bad police officers.
And that story was tied up with both the boy's first murder and his second.
Even if he carefully hid those dark truths and told her everything else, it was only natural that he would not want to.
The longer the tail, the more likely it was to be stepped on.
By the same logic, if he spoke too long without preparing what to say... he might make a mistake over something he had not even realized.
Throughout the growing silence, Sera waited quietly and watched Onik's face.
Then, at some point, she narrowed her eyes and hummed through her nose.
“Hmm.”
“...Sera?”
“I'm hurt...”
Idly tracing patterns in the dirt with her fingertips, Sera pushed out her lips and pretended to sulk.
“The old me trusted Onik and told him all about my worries... But the current Onik doesn't want to tell me about his worries...”
“No, that's not it, Sera...”
“It's okay, Onik... It can't be helped... I'm sorry I'm a big sister you can't trust with your deepest worries. Then again, we haven't been friends for all that long... If I want to become a friend you can trust more than you do now, I guess I'll just have to try harder from now on... Right? Isn't that right...?”
“I don't distrust you, it's just...”
“But I'm still sad... I really, really trust you, Onik... And you've given me so much. I'm so grateful, really, really grateful, that I want to be there for you too... I guess it is still too soon... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm such an inadequate big sister...”
A twenty-three-year-old idol teasing him with all the polish of a professional.
Yet there was some sincerity in it too.
She wanted to hear the boy's worries. She wanted to sympathize with him, understand him, and comfort him. Through that, she wanted to deepen their friendship.
She wanted to become someone more meaningful to her precious boy.
That was why her teasing was closer to something meant to conceal her real feelings.
It had only begun as a light joke. She meant to press him for an answer a little mischievously, then laugh and stop if he became too uncomfortable...
But the deep disappointment that truly began to rise in her as she spoke proved otherwise.
The country boy, who had grown up with an emptiness in his heart, had been sensitive to other people's feelings since childhood.
And with the entirely new senses that had awakened after his first murder, when he paid attention to someone, he could read their emotions with remarkable accuracy.
There was no way such a boy would fail to recognize a friend's sincerity.
When Onik saw his older idol friend's eyes beginning to glisten, he made an anguished face and surrendered.
“I'll tell you. I'll tell you, so please don't be so sad...”
“Sad? I wasn't sad.”
“You were...”
The country boy answered as though the exchange alone had already drained him dry.
Seeing him like that, the twenty-three-year-old idol from the cold city let out an unconscious snicker.
#
Once Onik began his story, Sera listened to the precious country boy's voice with intense concentration and the utmost seriousness.
After she had heard everything, she sighed.
“So that happened. That's awful... The people who call themselves police officers.”
When Sera finally said the words police officers after a brief pause, both her expression and her voice were cold as ice for a moment.
There were more than one or two parts of the boy's long story that made her angry.
In particular, the part where the bad police officer had hurled abuse at Onik literally horrified her.
She was so furious that her body trembled.
‘How could they say such filthy things to a child as kind as him?!’
Sera herself did not know it, but she looked exactly like Eun-jeong had when she had been enraged by the humiliation inflicted upon her student.
It was probably because the two cared for Onik in similar ways, even if their feelings could never be exactly the same.
After thinking deeply for a while, Sera nodded.
“I think your guess is right too. Do you really think Teacher suddenly started hating you? That can't be it... She must be trying to keep her distance for a while because she's thinking of you.”
“You think so too...?”
“Mm-hm. You said those hopeless police officers were spreading bad rumors about Teacher, right? Your name must have come up naturally while they were doing that. Teacher probably heard about it too.”
“...”
“Right. If they were falsely slandering Lee Eun-jeong, there was no way your name would not come up... Even I, who have only watched her on broadcasts and heard stories about her, know how close you two are. How much Teacher cherishes you, and how much you love and follow her.”
To be honest, Sera envied Eun-jeong a great deal.
She was a little jealous too.
Even between friends, there were times when jealousy arose.
When someone was your closest friend, but they said someone else, not you, was their closest friend.
It was the same sort of jealousy.
Sera had felt that jealousy when she was in elementary school.
But Sera was not an elementary school student anymore.
The young girl who had gone home with an empty heart and sobbed because the friend she thought of as her closest had put another friend before her was gone.
Here stood the eldest member who spiritually led an idol group, an adult big sister who wanted to become a better friend to a kind country boy.
To Sera, English teacher Lee Eun-jeong was someone she felt grateful toward even more than she envied her.
‘If it weren't for that teacher, Onik might not be who he is now. And then I might never have received his help...’
Even apart from everything else, the fact that she was someone who greatly eased Onik's loneliness was enough to make Sera grateful.
It was only natural to feel gratitude toward her if she truly cared for Onik.
The wish that Onik would treasure her as much as she treasured him was something Sera had to earn through her own devotion and effort.
If she could not earn it, then she had not deserved it in the first place.
She had not deserved to become a precious person in the heart of a special child like Onik.
Thinking that, Sera continued what she had been saying.
“You said that before Teacher began keeping her distance like she is now, you turned down her invitations a few times first, right? Not for any particular reason, but because you were simply busy.”
“...Yes.”
The boy's answer came a little late.
The reason he had been busy then had not actually been simple. It had been a lie to conceal his second murder.
“I don't think you need to worry that Teacher came to dislike you because of that.”
“You don't?”
“Mm-hm. Trust your big sister on this. I don't know Teacher better than you do, of course, but sometimes a third person's eyes can see things more clearly. You like Teacher so, so much that you're worrying too much. Because you're terribly afraid of losing her.”
“...”
“Maybe Teacher misunderstood what you meant. Maybe she thought you were the one who began keeping your distance because you were worried about what others would think. But that isn't important.”
“It isn't? Why not?”
“Because even if Teacher did misunderstand, she would think you were being careful because you cared about her. She would think you tried to be cautious beforehand because you were worried that Teacher would be hurt if even worse rumors spread... That's what she would think.”
It was a relationship between teacher and student that made Sera feel warm just from seeing it through broadcasts and hearing stories about it.
As a devoted fan of both teacher and student, Sera would have bet everything she owned that they always put the other person first.
...Sadly, she did not own much to begin with.
Just as Sera avoided meeting late at night because she worried others might misunderstand her, English teacher Lee Eun-jeong must have been keeping her distance from her student for the same reason.
Sera gave the country boy a very gentle smile.
“So don't be so downhearted. If our Onik stays so sad, Teacher won't be at ease either.”
“But... even if you're right, it's still a problem.”
“Why?”
“Because it might not be resolved even after time passes. Then it will still be hard for Teacher and me to be together like we used to be.”
“Hmm, I don't think so.”
“...?”
“You just have to keep showing people what your relationship with Teacher is like. The relationship between you and Teacher is such a beautiful one that any normal person would look at it warmly.”
“Is it?”
“Of course! Most people who watch your broadcasts probably feel the same way. I do too. The more people there are who like you and Teacher and cheer you on, the more the voices of the handful of strange people will be pushed aside and buried.”
“I've seen plenty of times online when that doesn't happen...”
The reality of online spaces was the complete opposite of what the idol had said.
Irresponsible killers who used vicious words as weapons to kill people.
Anonymous demons who poured out overwhelming waves of hateful comments with the force of one person against a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand.
Wicked people who could not rest until they saw someone die over the slightest fault.
People made even worse because they believed themselves to be righteous.
When people like that began tearing someone apart, ordinary people naturally mistook them for the voice of the majority.
Online, a minority's malice often buried the majority's consensus.
There was an old saying that three people's lies could make a tiger.
But internet evil spirits could easily do the work of not three people, but ten or twenty people all by themselves.
With the help of that illusion, they often created public opinion.
The idol did not deny the boy's words.
“Usually, that's true.”
“...”
“But you aren't ordinary, Onik.”
“What? What do you mean...”
“I mean it. You're a truly, truly special child. Someone with a special light inside him, unlike ordinary people like me. Someone born with the destiny of becoming a star.”
At the words unlike ordinary people, the boy's eyes wavered.
He possessed not a special light, but a special darkness...
Sera took that flicker only as a sign of confusion.
She stroked the boy's head.
“I guarantee it, Onik. You will become a star loved sincerely by far more people than you are now... maybe even the whole country. That many people will come to love you and Teacher.”
“...”
“Then all those people will get angry on your behalf. When strange people say bad things, they will never just stand by. How could they not be angry? Someone I like, someone I admire, is being insulted.”
As she said this, Sera recalled a memory she would never forget.
The day Onik had said that, thanks to Sera, he had found one path he could walk forward on.
The path the boy had found was one where he sought out people who wanted to die and turned them back toward life.
“I want to walk that path.”
“I want to tuck other people's lives into the life I'll live from now on. Like bookmarks.”
Onik would never know how deeply his kind dream had moved Sera.
The love the public would give a boy walking such a path would surely be different in kind from the love received by ordinary stars.
Once, the youngest member, Mina, had jokingly said that Onik was invincible in many ways.
In the future, that would become even truer.
If countless people raised their voices with him, it would not be difficult for him to protect himself against a handful of malice.
As the kind country boy's friend and fan, Sera was certain that such a future would come soon.
“A small number of bad people can run wild only when the majority stays quiet. If the majority actively speaks up, the minority will struggle even to remain a noisy minority. So don't worry so much. You're not weak enough to have to worry about things like that.”
“Um...”
“Right now, you go around calling yourself Jo Onik, Strongest in Town, as a joke, don't you? In the future, you'll become Jo Onik, Strongest in the Country, Strongest in the World. Become strong enough that bad people learn to control their anger. Most of those people only act tough against the weak and cower before the strong!”
Once a few examples piled up of people foolishly provoking someone and being taught a harsh lesson, the rest of the vermin would naturally become careful.
What mattered was that the public would form the same impression.
Sera knew stars who had built firm positions for themselves in exactly that way.
Some who had steadily done good deeds were not even glanced at by the internet evil spirits.
They might grumble among themselves, but they could not cross the line.
Meanwhile, Onik thought over what he had just heard.
‘Um... Jo Onik, Strongest in the World...’
Sera had used the playful phrase to lighten the mood and lift the boy's spirits.
But Onik thought of another possibility.
That possibility was the bow.
He had long considered entering international competitions with his dark talent as a way to solve the problem of his future military service.
His older business partner had promised to bring that option into the realm of reality.
He had said he would somehow make it possible for Onik to enter archery competitions with Master Bowyer's bow.
‘Back then, I honestly didn't think Uncle's confidence was very reliable.’
But things were different now.
Was this not Legal Hunter, who had truly set the overly grand and seemingly unrealistic plan to separate Truffle Candy, establish its independence(?), and rescue them(?) on track?
If he fulfilled what he had promised once more, Onik would gain a chance to become a national hero.
A boy beloved by the nation, who rose to become the country's pride.
Such a boy would become someone no one would dare touch.
If they handled him badly, people would literally treat them like traitors.
That made Onik curious again.
‘How are things going with my competition entry now? Is anything actually moving along? There is still a long time before the competition...’
#
Im Seong-eung, the teacher responsible for five subjects at Onik's middle school, art, health, gender equality and sex education, disability awareness education, and physical education, crossed his arms and worried.
When the Provincial Office of Education Sports and Health Division had unilaterally appointed him the school's archery coach, he had worried terribly. It had felt as though he was about to suffer through hardship that was not in his destiny.
That was right. It could not possibly be anything but hardship.
He had majored in art. He knew next to nothing about archery.
And yet...
‘Why? Why is this such a sweet deal?’
The school administration office had placed the label of archery coach on him.
But in reality, he had nothing to do.
Since the new semester began, not a single instruction telling him to do anything had come down.
The problem was that he still received extra pay. A pretty sweet amount, too.
‘What is this? Can I really just keep collecting money like this?’
The timid art major was deeply confused...
Footnotes:
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