WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 84: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (84)

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#84.

Mathematics teacher Song Gyeong-a was also deeply displeased by Eun-jeong and Yohan's relationship.

Everyone around them, except the mathematics teacher, watched warmly as the man and woman gradually grew closer through Onik.

Once, the principal said this.

“Goodness. Just watching them makes me feel all ticklish. Young love can still be that fresh these days. It makes me think of when I was young, and I love it...”

At the time, the principal stood by the window with a teacup in hand, looking out over the schoolyard.

Gyeong-a remembered that moment clearly.

It was time for everyone to leave work, so the lights in the teachers' office had been turned off. But it was bright outside, and sunlight came through the windows, so the room was not especially dark.

Squares of sunlight lay on the floor. Quiet sunlight, cut clean and straight into the shape of the window frames.

And Gyeong-a stood behind the principal, in the shade where the light did not reach.

Standing in the shadows, she looked in the same direction as the principal.

So Gyeong-a saw the freshness the principal had spoken of as well.

The innocent feeling between Eun-jeong and Yohan was full of youth.

Yohan's age was closer to Gyeong-a's than Eun-jeong's...

Even so, it was difficult to describe the purity between those two with any word other than youth.

To Gyeong-a, standing at the very edge of youth, it was an unbearable sight.

Yohan's rare innocence and tall, handsome appearance.

And the fact that Jo Onik, of all people, had built the bridge between them made her stomach twist even more.

‘If I had gotten Jo Onik for myself, that man might have come to me too.’

There was one more thing.

Gyeong-a even felt humiliated that Eun-jeong had turned down the public service doctor's interest and chosen Yohan.

In Gyeong-a's eyes, Eun-jeong seemed to be saying this through her actions.

「A public service doctor? He may be someone you need to cling to desperately, but not me.」

「I'm still young. His profession may be nothing special, but I still have the freedom to enjoy dating a tall, handsome man. My circumstances are different from yours, scrambling to find someone to marry.」

「I turned down the public service doctor because I'm confident. Confident that I can find someone just as good later on.

So why don't you try things with him? I won't get in your way. Not that it'll work out just because I stay out of the way.」

Her thoughts were thoroughly twisted, but people rarely realized their own minds were twisted.

Gyeong-a was so skilled at speaking woman-speak that it was difficult to find anyone comparable. She also had great confidence in her ability to interpret it.

In the end, Gyeong-a could not even establish private contact with the public service doctor, even by the time he completed his service and left.

After that, the town health subcenter could no longer operate normally.

There had been difficulties securing public service doctors, and a rotating clinic system had taken root out of necessity.

They were reportedly discussing a plan to downgrade the health subcenter into a health clinic in the near future and station a nurse there permanently. But any nurse sent to this godforsaken countryside would most likely be a man.

Still, a male nurse was far beneath the level of someone like Gyeong-a, who had the advantage of being a teacher.

Besides, by the time the restructuring happened, Gyeong-a would have transferred away and no longer be in this town.

‘A man? A nurse? That's garbage. Disgusting.’

As far as she was concerned, nursing was originally women's territory.

There could not possibly be a worthwhile man among the losers who had fallen behind in competition with other men and crawled into women's territory.

Nothing went her way.

Gyeong-a was sick to death of this old, worn-down backwater.

As dissatisfaction piled up, Gyeong-a found another reason to feel deprived because of Eun-jeong.

Eun-jeong had appeared on her favorite student's internet broadcast and begun gaining fame far beyond what she deserved, in Gyeong-a's opinion.

Gyeong-a was resentful. Bitterly, endlessly resentful.

‘Jo Onik! Jo Onik! Jo Onik! If only I had charmed that child properly! That fame could have been mine!’

Why had a child so innocent he could not even look people properly in the eye so steadfastly kept away from Gyeong-a, who had approached him purely out of goodwill?

Was it not because cunning attention-seeker Eun-jeong had subtly gaslit her young student?

Because she wanted to monopolize that precious gifted child for herself!

To Gyeong-a, Eun-jeong looked like the villainess in a romance novel. A villainess who cunningly stole the protagonist's place.

In any case, Lee Eun-jeong was unmistakably the protagonist of the school.

As English teacher Lee Eun-jeong became famous among city parents, students in the rural study-abroad program poured into this backwater. Gyeong-a's workplace practically revolved around Eun-jeong alone.

The principal was desperate to accommodate Eun-jeong, even though she was merely an ordinary teacher.

That was because Eun-jeong brought tremendous spillover benefits to the school's management evaluations.

To Gyeong-a, it was an utterly unpleasant sight.

So Gyeong-a tried somehow to find fault with Eun-jeong's broadcasting activities.

But when Gyeong-a cautiously raised the issue, after making what she considered a great effort to be careful, the principal only looked bewildered.

「Did Teacher Eun-jeong create a personal channel?」

「...No, she didn't.」

「Then does she receive a share of Onik's earnings without obtaining approval for outside employment?」

「No...」

「As far as I know, Teacher Eun-jeong has never appeared on a broadcast during work hours, nor has she violated other students' portrait rights without their consent.

And if we are talking about favoritism toward a particular student, Onik has already graduated... I don't see any particular problem here. Am I wrong?」

「...I suppose you're right.」

That was right. Kind English teacher Lee Eun-jeong was immune to every possible criticism of a teacher's personal broadcasting activities.

‘Cold-blooded bitch.’

Gyeong-a was overwhelmed by Eun-jeong's thoroughness.

‘The money she could receive from Jo Onik's broadcasts certainly wouldn't be small, yet she's giving it all up just to receive attention... You're no ordinary attention-seeker.’

To Gyeong-a, it was like the Marshmallow Test.

By suppressing her greed for money now and building a better image, Eun-jeong could receive positive attention and affection from more people. In the end, that would likely bring her more money and opportunities later.

But was greed for money really so easy to suppress just because someone wanted to?

Besides, the patience Gyeong-a saw in Eun-jeong was an investment that accepted uncertainty about the future.

That made it different from an ordinary Marshmallow Test. The result was not guaranteed.

Therefore, Eun-jeong's patience could only mean she had that much ruthless determination.

‘I could endure it too. I could...!’

One day, if Eun-jeong's patience was rewarded with money and opportunities, its value might reach tens of millions of won at the least, or billions at the most.

She could open her own internet broadcasting channel, build an independent revenue structure, and somehow even enter the entertainment industry.

Then, using public recognition and numerous supervising-teacher commendations as leverage, she could rise into a nationally famous private-education instructor...

‘If luck stays on her side like that, could she really fail to make money in the billions? In this country with such a long history of private education?’

This country was facing a crisis of extinction because of its severe population decline, yet the private-education market still continued its frightening growth every year.

There had even been news reports saying that its size might soon surpass thirty trillion won.

Considering that the number of students was decreasing by hundreds of thousands every year, it was growth so extreme it felt insane.

Gyeong-a had not set her sights on Onik and become greedy about building her career for no reason.

She regretted the opportunity she had lost because of Eun-jeong's insidious interference so deeply that she felt tears might come.

Whenever she thought of the immense money she could have earned by sweet-talking and gently melting one parentless child, her hands and feet often trembled.

(Gyeong-a never stopped to consider whether she actually possessed the teaching ability necessary to become a star instructor.)

But what could she do?

The struggle over Jo Onik had ended long ago in her complete defeat.

‘What's even more irritating is that Lee Eun-jeong won so completely, yet never lets it show. As if someone like me was never even worth fighting...!’

Of course she wasn't. Eun-jeong had never fought her.

But Gyeong-a certainly had.

Gyeong-a never even considered the possibility that her battle had existed entirely within her imagination.

In any case, there was nothing she could do to Eun-jeong.

That meant Gyeong-a's next-best option was to ride the current Eun-jeong had created.

‘Being annoyed is one thing. My career is another.’

The rural school in this miserable backwater where she worked was now receiving more attention than it deserved.

Broadcasting stations even came to cover it every so often.

That meant Gyeong-a could enjoy the spillover effect in various ways too.

So Gyeong-a quickly received approval for outside employment and began her own vlog. Her appearance was at a level that utterly crushed Eun-jeong's, after all.

(Again, this was Gyeong-a's own opinion.)

Gyeong-a had her own calculations.

If word spread that there was another beautiful teacher with a kind personality at famous English teacher Lee Eun-jeong's school, then gaining recognition would not be difficult.

But reality was cold.

‘My subscriber count... isn't growing...’

Even though she joined the rural study-abroad program's summer camp as a supervising teacher and worked hard in many ways throughout the break, her subscriber count barely surpassed two thousand.

In truth, that was not slow growth at all.

Along with the spillover effect, being a female teacher had enough appeal to attract at least a basic number of subscribers to a vlog.

The problem was that her point of comparison was Onik's channel, which kept making rocket-like leaps every day.

And Gyeong-a did not have much time left at this school.

Of course, there was a way to extend it. Like Eun-jeong, she could apply for a transfer postponement.

The chance of the application being approved was infinitely close to one hundred percent.

Choosing to remain voluntarily in this mountain backwater would require tremendous determination, but if there was hope, she could perhaps stay one more year.

Yes. If there was hope.

She had worked herself to the bone throughout the vacation and gathered only two thousand subscribers. How many more years would she have to rot in this place to secure a meaningful subscriber count?

She could not do that. If she did, her marriage prospects would be finished.

The only hope of quickly increasing her subscriber count was Strongest in Town Jo Onik.

But Jo Onik was in Eun-jeong's grip, and he had even been thoroughly tamed.

‘Ugh... Jo Onik! Jo Onik!’

At this point, Gyeong-a even began to resent Onik.

Perhaps because he had grown up without parents, he studied well but was excessively stupid in other ways.

It was unbearably frustrating to watch him fall completely for the tricks of that dark-hearted English teacher and stubbornly avoid Gyeong-a.

It was at that very time that three police officers, led by Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, approached Gyeong-a.

They wanted to carry out their usual reputation campaign among Gyeong-a and the other teachers, and perhaps uncover some weakness Eun-jeong might have.

At first, Gyeong-a disliked these worthless backwater police officers.

It was good that they caused Eun-jeong stress, but what they were doing was deeply unsettling.

But once they began talking, did they not get along surprisingly well?

Gyeong-a and the worthless police officers bonded over their ill feelings toward Eun-jeong.

To the cornered police officers, the mere existence of a female teacher who disliked Eun-jeong was valuable. And Gyeong-a liked the police officers because they eagerly sympathized with her.

The three police officers and one mathematics teacher even created a separate group chat, before a full day had passed since their first conversation.

Given the situation, the police officers' dark suspicions about Eun-jeong and Onik naturally reached the mathematics teacher as well.

A suspicious relationship between teacher and student?

For Gyeong-a, who had not considered it that far, it felt as though a light suddenly flashed inside her head.

‘Yes! That could be it! Why didn't I think of that?’

When she heard it, did the story not sound remarkably plausible?

What if the English teacher had judged it difficult to compete with the beautiful mathematics teacher who had just transferred in through looks alone, and had used sexual manipulation to ensnare her student?

‘That would explain why that stupid child, Jo Onik, avoided me so much.

I'm prettier, and I was kinder too.’

In Gyeong-a's mind, a scene unfolded in which the dark-hearted female teacher lured in her student.

She imagined Eun-jeong, having drawn her innocent student into her home, reclining on a bed or sofa and beckoning to him.

With a lewd smile she had never once shown at school.

Gyeong-a imagined the shameless conversation that might have passed between teacher and student.

「Onik, come here. Today, your teacher is going to give our Onik a special lesson.」

「A special lesson?」

「Yes. Something adults do when they like each other very much. I'm going to teach you how to do it. You like your teacher very much too, don't you?」

「Yes! I really, really like you, Teacher! But I'm not an adult yet.」

「Hehe. It's all right. You're such a mature child, Onik. More mature than most adults.

I think that's wonderful. Your teacher likes that about you.」

「Thank you for the praise!」

「Now, come here. Closer. Closer still... That's right. Today is a practical lesson. You can just stay still, Onik. Your teacher will take care of everything...」

After such a conversation, Gyeong-a imagined, teacher and student would have begun an obscene act in earnest.

They would have licked each other's lips and entwined their tongues wetly, the student fondling the teacher's “meager” breasts while the teacher slipped a hand into the student's pants.

Then, with long, slender fingers, she would have toyed with him until she wrung a pitiful moan from the young student...

It was truly filthy beyond words.

The suspiciously high resolution of her imagination was, naturally, only because Gyeong-a knew Eun-jeong's dirty and vile nature so well.

It had nothing at all to do with the women-oriented erotic novels and adult comics Gyeong-a sometimes sought out.

(By the way, Gyeong-a liked Boys' Love and female-domination stories. She also liked older-woman-younger-boy stories, but only when the younger boy was a beautiful young master type who could offer social advancement.

By her standards, Onik might have been a pretty boy, but his every gesture carried the stink of the countryside, so he was out.)

The more she imagined it, the more reasonable the police officers' suspicions felt to Gyeong-a.

It was a natural result that Gyeong-a grew emotionally close to the police officers through their frequent conversations.

That was why news of Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's death reached Gyeong-a so quickly.

Gyeong-a found Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's death deeply regrettable.

Not sad. Regrettable.

She even felt a sense of loss that one of the few people who sincerely hated Eun-jeong had left the world...

Footnotes:

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