WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 83: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (83)
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#83.
News of incidents in a remote mountain region took time to make it onto broadcasts.
Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's death was not reported for the first time until the following evening.
Even so, Eun-jeong learned of his death before noon.
The person who told her was a colleague at the same school.
That mathematics teacher whose jealousy toward Eun-jeong seemed to deepen with every passing day.
Eun-jeong had been spending Saturday morning with a vaguely hollow feeling when her phone went Kkak! A messenger notification appeared on the lock screen, and she frowned slightly.
「「Teacher Song Gyeong-a」 @Lee Eun-jeong: Teacher! Did you hear the news?」
At first, Eun-jeong wondered what this was about.
The English teacher Lee Eun-jeong and mathematics teacher Song Gyeong-a were not close enough to contact each other privately.
Perhaps that was why Gyeong-a had tagged Eun-jeong in the group chat for teachers at their school.
The chat room was usually silent unless the principal had official business to relay, or questions and discussions arose from it.
Eun-jeong tapped the notification and opened the chat room.
Then she read the messages the mathematics teacher had sent next, and her eyes widened.
「You know Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, one of the police officers who had that misunderstanding with Teacher Eun-jeong?」
「He died last night! In an accident!」
The news made her heart race at once.
The shock Eun-jeong felt was not merely surprise.
It was not that the death of a stalker in police uniform was unsurprising.
Rather, she was more shaken by the fact that a premonition, that something like this might happen, had truly come to pass.
Yes. Eun-jeong had worried from early on that Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok might die.
The night her most precious student had hidden in the bushes, waiting for the police to arrive in a parking lot beneath the darkness and flickering streetlights.
A single ominous feeling that had seized her that night.
And the dark concern born from that feeling.
Of course, the death of the stalker in police uniform was not itself a concern for Eun-jeong.
Why should she worry about someone like him?
He deserved to die, considering the filthy words he had poured onto her kind and precious student.
What Eun-jeong had truly worried about was her student.
If that bad police officer met his death, she felt there might be some causal connection between that death and her precious student.
And that connection... might somehow have been formed because of Eun-jeong herself.
So Eun-jeong wanted to deny the mathematics teacher's words first. It was a powerful demand from her unconscious.
With faintly trembling hands, she tapped the screen.
「Are you sure? Who did you hear it from? It could be a false rumor.」
The mathematics teacher's replies came shortly afterward and betrayed Eun-jeong's hopes.
「I'm sure! I heard it from another police officer who works at the town substation!」
「Someone went out on night patrol and didn't come back even when it got late,」
「so they went looking for him, and would you believe it?」
「Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's patrol car had fallen beneath a bridge!」
「It didn't just fall. The whole car burned up,」
「and they said the body had been reduced to a pitch-black lump of charcoal!」
After reading this far, Eun-jeong steadied her unsteady breathing and closed her eyes briefly.
She wondered why an elementary school mathematics teacher was privately exchanging messages with police officers in town.
Still, judging by the malicious rumors spreading around, she could make a few guesses.
It seemed the mathematics teacher's ill feelings toward Eun-jeong ran deeper than Eun-jeong had thought.
She still could not understand why Gyeong-a treated her so cruelly...
When Eun-jeong opened her eyes, the mathematics teacher had already sent another message full of malice.
「Isn't it a little scary? It seems everyone who has a misunderstanding with Teacher Eun-jeong dies! Not that this means there's anything wrong with Teacher Eun-jeong, of course!」
The ill-tempered mathematics teacher seemed to have used the group chat because she wanted to say exactly this.
A cruel remark that indirectly suggested perhaps there was something wrong with Eun-jeong.
She wanted every other teacher at the school to see it.
And she hoped someone would voice even the slightest agreement.
‘Misunderstanding?’
Her twisted nature showed in the very choice of word.
The two instances of stalking Eun-jeong had suffered were not stalking at all, but misunderstandings.
The fifty-six-year-old man who had masqueraded as a young man and driven a blue Porter truck around her.
The other stalker, who had worn a police uniform and repeatedly come to her workplace and home.
Neither had held any ill will. Eun-jeong had simply misunderstood them and fallen into paranoid delusions.
The principal, whose typing indicator had been appearing and disappearing for a while, finally spoke.
「What do you mean, a misunderstanding? Teacher Song Gyeong-a, how can you say such a thing?」
Other teachers soon added a word or two in Eun-jeong's defense.
「Honestly, it was strange that the police kept coming to the school. I would've felt uncomfortable too.」
「Exactly. The children were a little anxious every time it happened. They said the police uncles were strange.」
「It was uncomfortable even when we were in the staff room. He'd stand far away outside the window and just stare in here... It was like something out of a thriller movie.」
「The person who followed her before was no joke either... Even now, I flinch whenever I see a blue truck because of what happened then.
If I'm this affected, imagine how Teacher Eun-jeong must feel as the person involved.」
「I agree. Now even police cars make me feel strange. What misunderstanding are you talking about?」
The principal and the other faculty members had always taken Eun-jeong's side.
They themselves had endured the disturbances all along, and it was obvious who had been spreading bad rumors about her.
It also helped that the teachers' rotation system was working properly.
All the teachers had come from elsewhere, so they had no personal sense of closeness with the police officers from the area.
As comments carrying subtle reproach toward her came pouring in, the twisted mathematics teacher wrote a message in an aggrieved tone.
Presumably, what truly filled her was not resentment, but malice.
「Did I say anything so terrible?」
「Depending on how you look at it, it could be called a misunderstanding...」
「And honestly, it is scary.」
「Even if it is a coincidence, people keep dying.」
It would have been better if she had stopped there.
But Song Gyeong-a insisted on saying something even more awful.
「Come to think of it, there was another person who died! Teacher Eun-jeong's boyfriend!」
「There wasn't really any misunderstanding with him, but he passed away last year anyway.」
「It must be truly frightening! Men around you keep dying...」
Eun-jeong did not even feel angry anymore. The other teachers became angry on her behalf.
She was grateful to the other teachers who defended her.
But the longer their defense continued, the more obvious it was that Song Gyeong-a's ill feelings toward Eun-jeong would deepen.
Recently, Gyeong-a's attitude toward Eun-jeong had been growing more openly hostile by the day.
She no longer cared what the other teachers thought.
‘They are people she won't have to see after she transfers next year anyway...’
She did care a little about the principal's opinion. The principal was the one who wrote her work-performance evaluation.
But it was difficult to reflect private conflicts among rank-and-file teachers in an evaluation.
It was hard to disadvantage a teacher who had not neglected their work over an attitude problem.
Considering Gyeong-a's spiteful nature, she would certainly file an objection.
It could even lead to an administrative lawsuit.
For a principal with a gentle nature, it would be unpleasant to take things that far with someone they would not have to see in four or five months, including the vacation period.
Eun-jeong hoped that the mathematics teacher with the ugly heart would stop fostering ill feelings toward her.
She hoped Gyeong-a would not keep feeding those feelings until, even by the slightest chance, she crossed some dangerous line.
This was not a wish for Eun-jeong's own sake.
It was only for her precious student.
If she had to put it another way, it might even have been a wish for Song Gyeong-a's sake.
Eun-jeong did not particularly want to care for her, but a human life should be valued no matter whose it was.
Yes.
At this point, Eun-jeong could feel her suspicions toward her student growing darker by the moment.
They were suspicions that filled her with guilt and remorse toward her kind student merely for having them. And all she had to support them were flimsy intuitions and circumstantial suspicions...
Even so, they had become suspicions she could no longer cast off through conscious effort.
If, even by the slightest chance, her dark guess, the ominous possibility that worried her, was true...
There could not be a third.
Even more so if that third was caused by Eun-jeong herself.
Burdened with heavy worry, Eun-jeong looked down with troubled eyes at the mathematics teacher's messages as Song Gyeong-a contended with the other teachers.
Why did this person hate me so much?
#
Mathematics teacher Song Gyeong-a could not stand English teacher Lee Eun-jeong.
When she first came to this godforsaken backwater school, a place she had found stressful merely to arrive at, Gyeong-a had felt deep bewilderment the moment she saw Eun-jeong.
‘What? She's a teacher? She looks at least ten years younger than me. Does she just look young for her age?’
Look young for her age, my foot.
In truth, the age gap was even greater.
At the modest welcome gathering the previous principal held for newly transferred teachers, Gyeong-a asked the English teacher, who had arrived two years before her, how old she was.
“Excuse me, but how old are you? You look so young that I was honestly surprised. You look completely like a college student. Even your skin is soft like a baby's.”
Eun-jeong answered, a little embarrassed.
“I'm twenty-five this year.”
For a moment, Gyeong-a failed to control her expression after hearing the answer. It was too ridiculous.
She did not merely look young. She really was young!
‘Twenty-five? Is that even possible? Then that means she's newly appointed, doesn't it? Why is a newly appointed teacher in a backwater like this?’
Eun-jeong had passed the notoriously difficult teacher recruitment exam on her first attempt and gone straight to an elementary school in a remote mountain village the following year. She was a truly unusual case.
Gyeong-a pressed this strange English teacher about why she had come to a rural school.
That was how she learned that Eun-jeong had heard about the difficult circumstances of a country school and voluntarily requested an exceptional application of the personnel regulations.
The principal explained this in Eun-jeong's place.
Throughout the story, the previous principal looked at Eun-jeong with pleased eyes, as though looking at their own daughter.
The other teachers also regarded Eun-jeong very warmly.
At that moment, the star of the welcome gathering was not Gyeong-a, but Eun-jeong.
Seeing Eun-jeong grow even more embarrassed, Gyeong-a realized something.
‘Ah, I get it. She's an attention seeker.’
It was a realization far from the truth, but Gyeong-a was certain of it.
She herself had often pretended to be kind, quiet, and modest because she wanted the attention of others.
People judged others by themselves.
Someone whose inner world was filled only with calculations of gain and loss always viewed the goodwill of others with distrust.
Believing people like that could not possibly exist.
With such a poor first impression, Eun-jeong remained irritating to Gyeong-a afterward as well.
‘...She's so much younger, yet already so crafty. And she's keeping a genius like Jo Onik all to herself.’
Originally, Gyeong-a had not expected anything from this rural school, either for her life or her career.
All she wanted was to accumulate transfer points and move to a top-tier assignment.
That was why she could not help feeling excited when she first learned about a child named Jo Onik.
Onik had already been steadily building up all sorts of awards under Eun-jeong's guidance. He was not merely a pearl in the mud, but a jewel that had already been polished.
English was the only subject in which Onik showed particular interest, but his grades in other subjects were also exceptionally good.
A teacher only had to teach him once to know.
To know how rare the cleverness of this special child was.
Enter him in any academic competition, and a commendation for the supervising teacher was guaranteed.
So as a late arrival, Gyeong-a wanted to copy Eun-jeong's strategy.
To Gyeong-a, Eun-jeong was a sly vixen.
A vixen who pretended to be kind and innocent, charmed a parentless child, and was using him to build her career.
‘Why couldn't I do it too? He's an innocent child who can't even look people in the eye properly...
If I treat him kindly, he'll bring me every supervising-teacher commendation too.’
But things did not go as she expected.
“Onik. Would you like to go somewhere with Teacher, just the two of us? I heard you like Lotteria hamburgers so much. Teacher will buy you one. All right?”
“Uh... No! Thank you, but you don't have to buy me anything! I have lots of money!”
“Hm?”
“Goodbye!”
The lonely boy, who had grown up feeling deprived, was sensitive to the goodwill of others.
To such a boy, the kindness of the newly arrived mathematics teacher felt somehow burdensome, unnatural, and unsettling.
This was even more so because he had a wonderful point of comparison in Teacher Lee Eun-jeong.
Gyeong-a did not give up easily.
But whenever she approached the boy with calculated kindness and friendliness, he answered each time with an evasive maneuver sharp as a knife.
“I'm sorry, Teacher! I already have plans! I should be going now!”
“O-Onik...!”
One excuse Onik often gave when carrying out such evasive maneuvers was Eun-jeong.
He already had plans with Teacher Eun-jeong.
They were going to study together, or go look around town together.
Every time this happened, Gyeong-a found it difficult to keep smiling. Anger toward Eun-jeong rose inside her.
Gyeong-a thought Eun-jeong was keeping her in check.
‘They must be saying bad things about me whenever they're alone. Like, that teacher is actually a bad person, so don't spend time with her.’
Otherwise, it made no sense.
A child who surely felt lonely inside because he had no parents kept trying to stay away from a pretty teacher who approached him with unconditional kindness.
(The assessment that she was pretty was Gyeong-a's own. She was confident that her appearance was far better than Eun-jeong's.)
‘...Yes. That must be it. She must have badmouthed me. I would've done the same, of course!’
Good things were not meant to be shared with others.
Why share when it reduced your own share?
From the perspective of a teacher full of career ambition, the more completely she monopolized student Jo Onik's time, the more it benefited her.
Thus, Gyeong-a once again judged Eun-jeong by her own standards.
That was not the end of it.
She was interested in the public service doctor working at the town health subcenter.
As someone who had not yet married, she could not help setting her sights on the only top-tier husband prospect in this remote backwater.
‘Honestly, his looks aren't my type... But I'm not in a position to be picky anymore. If he's a doctor, I can put up with him being a little short and having a somewhat disappointing face.’
From her school days through her early thirties, men had never stopped coming around Gyeong-a.
She considered that the golden age of her life.
But as she entered her mid-thirties, the number of men approaching her began to decrease quickly.
It was not only the number that decreased. The drop in quality was also clear.
The decline in quality hurt more than the decline in numbers.
During that time, friends who had married first made her stomach churn with advice that went without saying.
「How can your standards still be the same as when we were in college...? This might hurt to hear, but you shouldn't look for a perfect man with every box checked at your age. You'll really miss your chance.」
「Right. It doesn't matter if you never plan to marry, but if you do, this is really your last chance. Your last chance to meet a man without major flaws.」
「The female-teacher premium? Hmm... Does something like that still exist these days...? It certainly did when we were younger. I'm not sure now.」
「Well, someone like you wouldn't have anything to regret even if you lived alone. Teachers have good pensions too. It's better than meeting some strange person and suffering.」
Gyeong-a could be certain. The friends who wore concerned expressions while giving this perfunctory advice must have been laughing at her inside.
As Gyeong-a saw it, what her friends truly wanted to say was this.
「You lost to us. Accept your defeat. Or live alone and pretend you have no regrets.」
It made her furious.
If she was going to have an unsatisfying marriage, it would be better to live alone.
But in that case, her friends would keep laughing at her inside.
Those friends she had secretly considered beneath her, like accessories of a sort, would now have another accessory called a husband.
Yes. A good husband was a splendid accessory that decorated a woman's life.
If she could flaunt a younger “doctor husband” before those two-faced friends, it would make for a fairly good revenge.
At the very least, it would be enough to save face. Apart from finances, her married life might be a little disappointing.
Because the town was small, the school and health subcenter were not far apart.
The commercial district and its surrounding living area were small as well, making it suitable for deliberately arranging natural encounters.
But the public service doctor at the health subcenter did not respond favorably to Gyeong-a's approaches.
He only put up ironclad walls around himself, repeatedly using evasive maneuvers that reminded her of Onik.
What angered Gyeong-a was that the public service doctor, who put up walls around himself with her, showed subtle interest in Eun-jeong.
He said he liked her kind impression and the actions that matched it.
A student. A man.
In this tiny, shabby backwater, every truly precious thing, of which there were so few, showed interest only in Eun-jeong.
Gyeong-a was beside herself with rage.
Footnotes:
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