Incarnation of the Malevolent Star - Chapter 89

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 89: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (89)

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#89.

Before meeting Eun-jeong, Onik had worried that if Teacher developed an instinctive suspicion of him, there would be three reasons.

The successive accidental deaths of the bad people who had tormented him.

The extraordinary physical abilities of a student she cared for.

And finally, the direct clash between a bad police officer and her student.

But in truth, there was one more decisive reason.

It was the heart of the student who treasured his teacher.

Onik had believed that if Teacher trusted him, she could not possibly entertain even the faintest suspicion.

But the truth was the opposite.

Because Teacher trusted Onik, she had been able to reach the truth by instinct.

Because she knew just how much Onik treasured her.

...That was why she had considered the possibility that Onik might have made a terrifying choice to protect her.

Onik vaguely understood this.

The recollection the frightening boy shared with his precious teacher began in the clearing before the village hall's communal warehouse.

It began with the fifty-six-year-old Village Youth Association President parking his truck there, taking a bundle of black, steel-cored trellis twine from the warehouse, and loading it into the bed.

Teacher asked,

"...What is trellis twine?"

"It's a plastic cord with a steel core inside. I think you've seen it before.

"When I was in fifth grade, our school went to that autumn farm experience, remember? We went on an apple-picking field trip.

"Do you remember the tough cords tying up the apple tree branches?"

"Mm, yes. I think I remember."

"That was trellis twine."

The boy raised in the countryside held up two fingers before his teacher.

"Grandpa says trees have two desires.

"One is the desire to grow, and the other is the desire to bloom and bear fruit."

"..."

"But if you use trellis twine to guide the branches' direction and shape, you can control which desire the tree indulges more.

"You keep branches that only want to grow without bearing fruit in check, and increase the branches that bear fruit."

"I see."

"Trellis twine has to hold back branches that grow too strongly, so it's very tough.

"It's tough enough that if you stretch it tight between guardrail posts on either side of a road and wrap it around a couple of times, it could send a moving motorcycle flying."

Eun-jeong's breath caught.

The cruel truth had suddenly struck her.

A moment later, she asked in a thin, trembling voice, as though confirming it.

"So... Jo In-cheol... used a method like that...?"

Onik nodded with a quiet sigh.

"Yes. He killed Yohan hyung. In the dark, on a curved road, he strung up a black, tough cord that was hard to see even with the headlights on and caused an accident."

Only now did the pieces fit together.

The many details at the accident scene that Eun-jeong had found suspicious finally formed a complete picture, supporting Onik's account.

Eun-jeong recalled visiting the local police substation and pleading about the suspicious circumstances at the scene.

Then she felt a catharsis mixed with grief and bitterness.

The officers at the town substation, led by Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, should never have made her feel so frustrated and humiliated...

With her eyes reddening, the teacher asked her student again.

"Do you have... do you have evidence?"

Her student nodded heavily and placed his smartphone on the table.

"I think you should listen to this."

After unlocking it and tapping a few times, Onik played a recording.

It was the final conversation between the Village Youth Association President, who would soon become dog food, and the frightening boy in the vegetable garden at the late Grandma Gwi-rye's house, when Onik committed his first murder.

That bitter, chilling conversation began to play through the smartphone's speaker.

「Stop right there.」

Hearing her student's voice, Eun-jeong shivered slightly without meaning to.

The young voice telling someone to stop carried a coldness like the bitter wind of a rainy day in late autumn.

It was a strange chill her student had never once shown her.

「If you want to have a conversation with me, you'd better stop. You're not confident you can catch me if I run away, are you?」

Just hearing this much was enough for Eun-jeong to picture the confrontation between her student and the murderer.

A tension stronger than that of most horror thrillers seized her.

The teacher's heart began to pound.

Holding her breath, she listened to what followed.

「Onik... Why are you wearing a raincoat in weather like this? I don't think there was a forecast for rain anytime soon.」

The voice of the fake fifty-six-year-old youth, heard again after so long, was anything but welcome.

「That's true. Why am I wearing one? Maybe I'm wearing it because it's raining in my heart.」

Ah.

Eun-jeong let out a reflexive, sorrowful sigh at her student's calm answer from that day.

A new image formed in her mind.

Her good student's expressionless face.

With rain pouring down inside a heart covered in dark clouds, he must have looked at the murderer with all emotion emptied from his face.

Quietly holding in his grief over Yohan's death, and his rage at the murderer.

Knowing her student's nature well, the teacher believed this image was close to the truth.

The fact that he wore a raincoat suggested meticulous planning.

The same planning he had shown when he recorded Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok's conversation and gave it to her not long ago.

The conversation between the good boy and the bad adult continued.

「Why did you kill Yohan hyung?」

「Who... who... did you say... I killed...?」

「Keep pretending you don't know.」

「Evidence... do you have... evidence?」

「Of course I do.」

「What...?」

Before the murderer who asked about evidence, the boy cornered him with sharp intelligence and carefully ordered words.

「Whenever you stop somewhere for a moment, you don't lock your car doors every time. You did the same when you stopped by the funeral home.

「So I took out the memory card from your dashcam.」

「Even without that, I have more evidence!」

「It looked like you smoked a lot there. There were cigarette butts everywhere.

「The very next day after Yohan hyung died, I picked them up and recorded videos too. Where they were, how they were scattered, and how many there were.」

「I saw on the news that you can test DNA from saliva too. So I wrapped them in plastic and put them in the freezer.」

「Next are the tire tracks left on that farm road. I took lots of photos and videos of those too.

「Isn't it funny how these marks are exactly the same as your tires' tread pattern?

「If you didn't kill Yohan hyung, that would be an amazing coincidence!」

「I took dozens of photos from different angles, so I think they could compare the degree of wear on the tires and the cracked parts too! What do you think?」

「And there are marks on the guardrail post where you tied the trellis twine!

「Maybe the impact was strong when Yohan hyung's motorcycle caught on it, because the plastic coating broke apart?

「What if my testimony that I saw you gathering trellis twine on the day of the accident is added to that?」

「Please listen a little longer. This is the last one.」

「Unfortunately, there are no CCTV cameras on the stretch where the 'accident' happened, but as you know, there's only one road between our village and town.

「So if they check the CCTV on the town side and the CCTV in front of Three-Way Intersection Restaurant, I think they'll be able to tell roughly where you were that night. Don't you think?」

「What do you think? I'm very smart, right?」

Having listened that far, Eun-jeong touched her student's smartphone screen with a trembling hand. The recording paused.

Then she covered her face with both hands for a moment.

"Whew..."

Eun-jeong needed time to process what she had just heard.

She also needed a chance to calm the shivers that had built up beyond what she could bear in such a short time.

Every piece of evidence and circumstance her student had presented was deadly to the murderer.

They were so deadly that beneath the boy's clear, steady listing of the evidence, harsh breathing that did not belong to him had been recorded as well.

The boy had clearly begun the conversation from a distance, saying, "Stop right there."

And yet those filthy breaths had entered the recording.

'How ragged must his breathing have become?'

The murderer's shadowed figure in the scene Eun-jeong imagined became even more horrifying.

It was the presence of something closer to a beast than a person.

Even though the recording had stopped, the murderer's harsh, panting breaths still clung to Eun-jeong's ears.

It was the breathing of a fearsome beast, trapped with no way out, its eyes bloodshot as it glared at a person.

Before that beast, her precious student had remained calm throughout.

Facing the murderer who had killed Yohan, he had not shown the slightest tremor.

Eun-jeong looked at Onik anew.

Onik blinked with a puzzled expression.

"...?"

How could this good child have done that? Boldness and courage were abilities entirely separate from physical strength.

She rubbed both arms with her hands. It was not easy to calm her shivers.

After taking several deep breaths, Eun-jeong cautiously asked her student,

"Onik. If it's all right... could Teacher look through your phone for a little while?

"I mean, I want to check the photos and videos from that day in your gallery..."

"Of course!"

Before Teacher could finish speaking, her student nodded readily.

He unlocked the smartphone, whose screen had already gone dark, and held it out to her.

Boldly. Or desperately.

As though now that Teacher knew about his murder and was not keeping her distance from him, he had nothing left to hide.

And as though he would not mind if Teacher looked through every part of his private life.

"Here!"

"...Thank you, Onik."

Taking the phone, Eun-jeong opened Onik's gallery and swiped steadily upward.

The date dividers separating the photos and videos rose again and again, until at last the date she sought appeared on the screen.

The day after Yohan died... or possibly the very day he died.

Below that date divider were countless photos and videos of the evidence Onik had listed while cornering the fake fifty-six-year-old youth.

Eun-jeong checked every photo and video closely.

Her breathing faltered and her fingertips trembled, but she could not bear not to look.

Alongside the evidence Onik had mentioned, the gallery also contained close-up photos and videos of every corner of the murderer's Porter truck.

Even if the fake fifty-six-year-old youth had changed his tires to destroy part of the evidence, it would have been useless.

After steadying her breath, Eun-jeong lifted her eyes from the screen.

"Do you still have the dashcam memory card?"

"Yes."

"Could you lend it to Teacher? I want to check the videos on it too."

"Of course! But you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that, so as soon as I get home today, I'll send you the files first. I'll give you the memory card separately."

Onik pointed to the smartphone Eun-jeong held.

"If you need them, take the data on there too.

"Press and hold the gallery icon, tap Share, and then select Bluetooth."

The teacher did not refuse her student's offer.

There were many files and their total size was considerable, so the transfer would take time.

Eun-jeong swiped the navigation bar and brought up the audio player.

The recording, which had made her skin crawl and her heart pound so hard that she could not listen to it all at once, still had a little more than half its running time left.

Gulp.

In the silence, someone swallowed.

It was not Eun-jeong.

When she raised her gaze toward the sound, she saw her student staring at her with his fists gathered on his knees.

The student before her seemed far more nervous than the student in the recording.

He was the extraordinary boy who had remained calm and composed as he methodically drove the murderer who killed Yohan into a corner.

Yet before Eun-jeong, that same boy sat quietly like a small animal, cautiously watching her expression and enduring his anxiety.

"..."

It was a deeply striking contrast.

Even at a time like this, Eun-jeong liked this student of hers, who made a corner of her heart feel fondly ticklish.

Paradoxically, her student's tension eased her own.

The teacher tapped the play button.

The murderer's voice, preserved in the recording, began to flow out.

「You... why are you doing this to me...? Did I... did I do something wrong to you...?

「Our Onik... you're a good kid... A good kid... shouldn't act like this... right? I've been... so good to you...」

The tearful voice was filled with a sense of grievance.

To Eun-jeong, it was a terrifying sense of grievance. It was not the sense of grievance a normal person would feel.

The murderer's sense of grievance was enough to become a motive for another murder.

And this murderer was standing before her precious student.

She already knew how the confrontation between the murderer and her student would end.

But hearing it while imagining the scene, she could not help feeling chilled to the bone...

Her student's voice cut through the murderer's sense of grievance.

「That's right. I still want to be a good kid, so I'll give you a chance.」

「A chance...? What chance...?」

「Turn yourself in. Here. In front of me.」

The Onik in the recording urged him calmly.

「Hurry. You brought your smartphone, didn't you? Show me that you're pressing 112 right there, then call them.

「I have good hearing, so don't even think about trying to fool me. You can't call somewhere like the police substation instead of 112.」

Then silence fell.

The longer the silence continued, the greater the sense of dread became.

The bad adult did not take the final chance the good boy had given him.

「Are you not going to turn yourself in? I don't want to become a bad kid like this.」

I still want to be a good kid. I do not want to become a bad kid like this.

The listening teacher's heart ached.

「I looked it up, and it seems that if you turn yourself in and show remorse, even for murder, the sentence isn't that long. About ten years?

「At your age, even if it's ten years, you could get out before you turn seventy. If you take good care of your health, you could still live well for at least another ten or twenty years after that.

「You should find a nice granny and get married too. So hurry and turn yourself in.」

「Huff, huff...」

「...Are you really not going to?」

Though the good boy urged him again and again to surrender, the murderer who had killed Yohan only continued to breathe harshly.

The end was nearing. Just as Eun-jeong focused to her limit...

Thud!

A loud sound rang out. The startled teacher flinched, her shoulders jerking.

「Oops!」

A half-beat later came her student's unguarded voice, somehow sounding a little farther away.

「My hand slipped?」

Tap. Step, step.

It seemed her student had stepped down from somewhere with a difference in height.

Then came a rustling sound.

It was clearly the sound of a raincoat shifting.

In the scene formed within Eun-jeong's mind as she listened with utmost concentration, the boy was looking down at the smartphone he had dropped.

She had drawn that conclusion from his earlier unguardedness, and from the way he had spoken as though reciting from a textbook.

In other words, the boy had taken his eyes off the murderer who killed Yohan.

The instant every one of the teacher's nerves stood on end...

Heavy footsteps pounded closer at speed.

The ominous, beastlike breathing also came closer at the same pace.

Eun-jeong could picture the murderer rushing at her student.

Clearly. Far too clearly.

Then, suddenly, a sharp smack cut through the sound.

And something heavy fell to the ground.

Thump.

The crash was so loud that Eun-jeong's body trembled again.

It was a sound only the weight of a large adult could make.

Eun-jeong knew that the beast had fallen.

The fallen beast clawed at the dirt.

The student's smartphone on the ground clearly captured the beast's frantic struggling.

Scrape, scrape, scratch, scratch, rumble, crash...

Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. Forty seconds...

As the uproar gradually subsided, Eun-jeong released the breath she had unknowingly held, as though a dam had burst.

Her heart was beating madly fast.

When she placed a hand over her chest, the pounding reached all the way to her palm.

「Goodbye.」

The boy's farewell remained calm.

But unlike before, it was a calmness steeped in heavy sorrow.

「...Thank you for all the praise you gave me. If you meet Yohan hyung, make sure you beg him for forgiveness. Though I don't know if you'll be able to meet him.」

After that, silence returned.

Though the beast's breathing had stopped, nearly two minutes remained in the recording.

Trying to calm her pounding heart, Eun-jeong still could not let down her guard.

Was there something else left?

Indeed, there was.

「Woof, woof!」

Just as she thought the recording would end quietly, the distant sound of a dog barking reached her.

Eun-jeong looked at Onik reflexively.

A chilling shudder seized her. She knew what condition the fake fifty-six-year-old youth's body had been in when it was found.

Onik looked the same as before.

With both fists gathered on his knees, he sat quietly, his eyes darting this way and that like a frightened small animal.

Rustle. Rustle.