WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 9: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (9)

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The company took Yun-beom's circumstances into consideration.

Ordinarily, Yun-beom would have had to make one more trip out to sea before his wife's due date, though it would have been a relatively short voyage of about two months.

Fortunately, the company sent in a replacement. They did not ignore what he told them about his wife's poor condition.

During the time he had been given, Yun-beom tried everything he could for his wife.

He even turned to religion and shamanism he did not believe in.

His father, old Jo Jeong-ho, could not hide his bewilderment when his son asked him to find a skilled shaman.

"Why are you asking me for something like that? You know perfectly well I hate those swindlers."

"But aren't there more people around you who believe in that sort of thing...? I don't know anything about this, so if I suddenly start looking for someone myself, I'm more likely to find a real fraud. Please, I'm asking you."

"You fool. There's no separate category of 'real frauds.' Every bastard who calls themself a shaman or a spiritual medium is a fraud."

Old Jo Jeong-ho frowned as frustration rose within him.

"People are scarier than ghosts. It isn't people who run from ghosts, it's ghosts who run from people. Even granting for argument's sake that ghosts really existed, they should have fled this human world long ago."

"..."

"If you insist on looking for ghosts in this world, then the people who prey on others are the real ghosts. Those charlatans you're looking for!"

"Still, Father..."

"Still what? You idiot, if your wife's mind is sick, then you, her husband, need to stay strong! If you're falling apart too, who else is your wife supposed to rely on?"

Jo Jeong-ho, a veteran of the Vietnam War, possessed a view of humanity as grim as it was firm.

He had witnessed the terror of human beings too thoroughly in the tropical jungle. That was why he firmly believed no insignificant wandering spirit could ever be more frightening than a person.

The belief that a dead person could not be more dangerous than a living one had taken root in him as well.

In this day and age, the only beast that ate people was another person.

Every now and then, other beasts did intrude and startle people. Even then, though, wasn't it usually people who had created the reason for those beasts to intrude?

The old soldier trusted human reason.

Human reason had painted blood over an ordinary jungle and made it into hell, but human reason had also brought the old soldier out of that hell alive.

So his lovely daughter-in-law would need the strength of reason to escape her own hell as well.

The old soldier reached his answer through experience.

"I'm against it."

Old Jo Jeong-ho spoke with the stubbornness of a wise old man.

"I know what you're hoping for, but that will only make your wife suffer more. A shamanic rite performed to cure her could instead strengthen her superstitious beliefs."

"..."

"And it would be better for those fraudulent swindlers, too. The more you do it, the more chances they have to fleece you!"

Despite his father's strong opposition, Yun-beom asked around among acquaintances, elders from his hometown, and even people connected to his company. In the end, he held a grand, noisy shamanic rite, like a drowning man clutching at straws.

And like every effort he had made for his wife, the shaman who walked atop the chaff-cutter blade and swung swords betrayed his expectations.

"Your devotion isn't enough."

The shaman pursued more money with a stock phrase.

"Trust me. If you offer greater devotion, you'll definitely see improvement."

Even after seeing the greed glinting in the fraudulent shaman's eyes, Yun-beom allowed himself to be deceived one more time.

It was not because he trusted the shaman. He only hoped the visible spectacle of the rite might somehow create a turning point in his wife's mind.

He had never possessed any faith in shamans to begin with.

Still, in that world, once became twice, and twice usually led to three times. Easy marks could not give up on what they had already spent, nor could they admit they had been wrong.

As though it were only the natural course of things, the shaman attempted a third deception.

Yun-beom calmly nodded.

"All right. Let's do that."

He looked straight at the shaman, who was trying to hide their delight.

"But if this has no effect again, I'll come find you. Wherever you are, I will."

He did not say what he would do after finding them.

Perhaps Yun-beom's expression looked dangerous enough, because after hesitating, the shaman vaguely said they would choose an auspicious day and left.

Yun-beom never saw that shaman again.

The fraud had already established themself well enough that they likely considered it a waste to extort only another ten or twenty million won before starting over under a different name. It would have been difficult to take a large sum all at once from someone who distrusted them, too.

His wife found no peace of mind even in the religion she had chosen and embraced together with her husband.

After every attempt came to nothing, the couple ultimately had no choice but an early delivery.

As the doctor had said, the hospital tried to buy as much time as possible.

But high stress had reduced blood flow to the fetuses and raised her inflammation levels, so there was a limit to how much they could extend the pregnancy, no matter what they tried.

Her abnormally frequent uterine contractions were no less a warning sign.

Before the operation, his wife suffered a panic attack.

Once it had passed, she gave her husband a weak smile, her face pale.

"Honey, I have a favor to ask."

"What favor? Whatever it is, tell me."

"If, and this is only hypothetical..."

Yun-beom guessed what she was going to say the moment her voice trailed off.

"There is no if. Don't even start talking about things that will bring bad luck. The doctor said you're well enough to handle the surgery, so why are you saying this? Are you trying to upset me?"

His faith in the hospital and doctors had diminished greatly, but he still had to say it at a moment like this.

Though her husband had firmly cut her off, his wife only gazed at him.

It was the look she usually used to overcome him with affection.

"I know you don't want to hear it, but listen anyway."

"Honey."

"Don't be like that. Okay? I think it'll help me feel a little better."

"..."

Yun-beom pressed his lips together.

Feeling gratitude and guilt toward her husband, his wife left behind last words that assumed the worst outcome.

"If something happens to me, I want you to cremate me and scatter my ashes in the sea."

"Ha..."

"Ahem. This is a little embarrassing, but... When you're on your boat at sea, think of every glimmer of light on the water, every wave striking the hull, every sea breeze blowing toward you as me."

The mood softened. Yun-beom put one hand to his forehead.

"How long did you spend thinking up something that embarrassing?"

"Thinking of it didn't take long. Working up the courage did. Now that I've said it, it's even more embarrassing than I expected."

"Is that what you want?"

"But it was poetic and romantic in its own way, wasn't it? Doesn't it remind you of when we first started dating? Everyone around us said we were unbearably cheesy, but we never noticed. Those days were so nice."

Yun-beom knew. His thoughtful wife wanted to reassure her husband, who was worried about her.

Who was reassuring whom...?

Yet the very fact that she was trying to reassure him proved that, somewhere in her heart, she was seriously considering the possibility that something might happen to her.

Even now, her hands were trembling faintly with that same anxiety.

Her embarrassment could not conceal all the sincerity in those last words.

She truly wanted to become light, waves, and wind, and remain at her husband's side if she met an unfortunate death.

With his heart sinking heavily, Yun-beom tightly held her hand.

"Nothing will happen to you."

His wife smiled.

"I know."

#

His wife died in the delivery room.

She left this world with one of the two lives she had carried inside her.

#

Yun-beom believed there was some meaning in his wife's death.

Without even a belief like that, it was too hard to endure the piercing loss.

So he thought this.

His wife had wasted away while fighting the 'frightening thing.'

Fragile yet strong, she had paid for killing that frightening thing with her own life.

It was a belief far outside the thinking of a normal person.

Perhaps Jo Yun-beom had already gone mad when his wife died. Yun-beom himself suspected as much.

But doubt was doubt, and belief was belief.

Yun-beom believed it because he wanted to believe it, because the belief allowed him to endure his loss. He made no effort to resist with reason what anyone would call a delusion.

He let that belief take hold of him completely. It hurt a little less that way.

Not that he had the strength to resist in the first place.

The form of the premature baby who had been born dead played a major part in that belief taking root.

That was truly... a frightening sight.

Whether it had truly been frightening, or whether the thought that it had killed his wife made it seem more frightening than it really was... Now, after so many years, he honestly could not say.

Perhaps the shock of his wife's death had distorted his impression of the dead premature baby.

His wife's cause of death was, at least officially, childbirth complications.

Yet medically, the precise cause remained unclear.

Faced with the furious husband's questioning, the doctor who had performed the operation explained in a fluster that it had been a death with no warning signs.

The moment the baby came out, her vital signs had abruptly vanished, without any indication at all.

Her condition had been poor, but there had been no reason for her vital signs to stop like that.

The doctor and the entire medical staff had done everything they could to save her...

The doctor did not seem to be lying.

Most people would have demanded to know how that could make any sense.

But as Yun-beom listened to the doctor's stumbling words, all the strength drained from him. In some instinctive part of him, he thought that perhaps it could happen.

The frightening thing that had tormented his wife finally took on substance within his consciousness as well.

Then, while he was half out of his mind, he went through the procedures and saw the dead fetus.

That was why he himself suspected that the image fixed in his mind had been distorted.

Whatever the case, the form of the stillborn fetus that remained in Yun-beom's memory terrified him enough to make him shudder just as he had the first time, even when he recalled it after all these years.

Why? It felt completely different from the fetoscopic image he had seen.

Even now, when he had returned to his hometown as though pushed by duty after so much time had passed, that fear remained unchanged.

Yun-beom sat in the middle of the dim room, his body trembling.

Everyone else says it gets a little easier as time passes. Why am I still exactly the same? Why does it hurt like it did at first, and why am I still afraid like I was at first...?

Normally, he tried not to think of it whenever possible.

But Onik, kneeling timidly before him and glancing his way, was like a trauma trigger that forced flashbacks on Yun-beom.

To Yun-beom, Onik was a constant reminder that he had not stayed beside his wife when he should have, and that he had not ended the pregnancy when he still could.

He could be called the living crystallization of Yun-beom's regret.

That was not all.

When Yun-beom accepted his wife's death, there had not been one possible frightening thing in his mind, but two.

His wife's lonely struggle might have stopped the frightening thing from growing, causing it to be born dead in the end.

Or the healthy child might have been the frightening thing, draining all the blood from its sibling and killing it, then killing its mother as well before entering the world.

Yun-beom, who wanted to believe there had been meaning in his wife's death, had consciously ruled out the latter possibility.

Even so, uncertainty remained in a corner of his heart, making it all the harder for him to face Onik.

It was an uncertainty that might never disappear.

A madness that would not disappear.

With the reason left in him like ruins, Yun-beom apologized to his son for all of it.

"I'm sorry."

Onik cautiously looked sideways at the unfamiliar father who was apologizing to him once again.

The boy, tense all over, could read feelings he did not understand in his father's worn, exhausted face as he repeated the apology.

Guilt and self-reproach. Resentment. Distrust. Fear. Fear. Fear...

And even more sadness, depression, and regret than that.

"I should get going."

Their meeting had not been very long.

At the sight of his father suddenly standing despite almost no conversation passing between them, Onik hurriedly rose too.

Yun-beom raised a hand to stop him. His gaze stayed elsewhere, and only his hand was lifted toward his son in a bleak dismissal.

"Don't come out. You don't need to see me off."

"Ah..."

Leaving the child frozen as if struck by an arrow, his father turned his back and left.

The sound of the sliding paper door opening and closing.

The room, briefly brightened, sank back into dimness.

The lonely boy was left in the shadowed room with a cheeseburger meal.

"..."

In contrast to the silence settling in the room, the boy's grandfather raised his voice outside.

"How long have you even been here, and you're already trying to leave?"

"How can you call yourself human, you heartless bastard?"

"I didn't raise you like this. Chuseok is coming soon. At least stay through the holiday before you go back."

"Do you want to see your old father die from frustration? Don't you feel sorry for your young son, growing up without his parents? If you're still going to leave, kill me first and go, you bastard..."

Within the boy's heart, the urge to peek outside through the crack in the door struggled against the urge to stay still.

The commotion in the yard moved farther away, beyond the gate.

Soon came the sounds of a car door opening and closing, an engine starting, and Grandfather angrily pounding on the car door.

Then came the roar of the revving engine and the crunch of tires over sand.

Only after all those sounds passed, after the same silence that filled the room settled outside too, could Onik's heart finally escape that noose-like struggle.

Lonelier than usual, the boy slid the paper door open.

The yard that greeted him looked as it always did.

At the far end stood the wide-open gate.

Beyond it, Grandfather was striking his chest as he stared endlessly in the direction his son's car had gone.

Even now, the early autumn sky was high, and the wind was cool.

It was an indifferent scene, peaceful and bright, unlike Onik's troubled heart or the shadowed room where no light had been turned on.

So the lonely boy stood at the boundary between light and darkness. The shadow of the boy quietly dwelling on that moment stretched toward the dark.

A little later, Onik picked up the cheeseburger meal and sat at the edge of the wooden porch.

「Rustle-」

The cheeseburger had gone completely cold. It had been left on the unheated ondol floor in autumn.

Even the world's best cheeseburger could not retain its flavor once it had gone cold like this.

Warming it a little in the microwave would have improved it.

But Onik sat there blankly, unwrapped the burger without reheating it, and began to eat. He ate it with soggy fries and cola watered down by melted ice.

After he had eaten about a third of it, Grandfather came over and sat beside him.

"...Hoo."

Old Jo Jeong-ho let out a short breath but said nothing to his grandson. He only looked in the same direction as Onik, at the bright autumn scene that seemed indifferent to everything.

In the boy's mind, his brief meeting with his father played over and over.

The unfamiliar father had left without even saying, however insincerely, that they should meet again.

Even the apology hurt when he thought about its context.

It had not been that his father wanted to say sorry. It had been that he thought he ought to say sorry.

There was a great difference between the two.

One was an apology given from the heart. The other was an apology given from the head.

For a child whose heart felt hollow and empty, there could only be something colder about the latter.

A rusted wind chime hanging from the edge of the eaves rang in the breeze.

Ding, ding. Its clear metallic sound spread, but it was not enough to drive away the silence shared by grandfather and grandson. No more than the rustling of the hamburger wrapper was.

Before long, the cheeseburger was gone.

"..."

Onik stared quietly down at the empty wrapper, then took it to the kitchen instead of throwing it into the traditional stove hearth.

Old Jo Jeong-ho watched his grandson's strange behavior with puzzled eyes.

Onik carefully unfolded the wrapper and thoroughly wiped the sauce from its inside with a paper towel.

Then he tore off another paper towel, dampened it with water, and wiped the inside of the wrapper again.

Finally, he used a dry towel to remove the remaining moisture.

"What are you doing?"

"Um, nothing."

Onik, who very rarely gave his grandfather such a half-hearted answer, neatly folded the wrapper twice.

Then he took it into the main room, pulled an album from the bookshelf, and tucked it between its pages.

The album's pages were filled only with memories of Grandfather. Between them, Onik had placed the wrapper from the cheeseburger bought for him by the father who was still a stranger to him.

Unable to watch any longer, old Jo Jeong-ho turned his eyes back toward the bright scene ahead.

But even when he looked at the sunlit autumn yard and the sky beyond the wall, no light entered his heart. Just as the crisp wind could not cool the boiling anger within him.

The old man sighed quietly so his grandson would not hear.

Footnotes:

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