WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 90: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (90)

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#90.

Swallowing the lukewarm tea, Eun-jeong took her time calming her heart.

At first, the teacup had trembled hard, then slowly, gradually grew still.

Once the cup no longer shook, she asked her student.

What exactly had happened when the lives of her good student and that bad adult had hung in the balance?

There were limits to what she could picture from sound alone.

Her student, who had been watching her reactions the whole time, let out a thin, long breath.

Then, with an expression that said the moment had finally come, he answered.

"Village Youth Association President uncle rushed at me. He was trying to strangle me."

Eun-jeong clenched her teeth reflexively.

Though she had expected it, a hot surge of anger rose within her.

It was anger toward the murderer who, not content with killing Yohan, had tried to take the life of her precious student to cover up his ugly deeds.

‘What if Onik had been killed then...?’

What would she have become?

The mere thought made her dizzy. Even looking back on it herself, she had been in a truly precarious state at the time.

"...So? What did our Onik do?"

"I jumped diagonally to dodge him, and, um, then I... I swung the knife... I had it... hidden behind my back from the start..."

Onik glanced at his teacher again.

Although he had honestly confessed to swinging a weapon, his precious teacher sat straight-backed, maintaining a calmness he had not expected.

To be honest, Eun-jeong had flinched inwardly.

She was surprised that her kind young student had hidden a knife from the beginning.

But the fact did not feel especially frightening.

‘This child kept giving him chances.’

Onik's words from the recording echoed in Eun-jeong's mind.

‘He told him to turn himself in. To pay for his crime and live the rest of his life. He said he did not want to become a bad kid...

He gave him chance after chance, and waited long enough.’

Therefore, the knife her student had hidden behind his back did not represent an active desire to kill.

Her student had steadfastly restrained his urge for revenge.

Only after the murderer rushed at him to kill him and silence him forever had he finally swung the knife.

It could not be called justified self-defense.

If Eun-jeong's mental picture based on the sounds was accurate, then at the final moment, Onik had clearly pretended to be defenseless in order to draw out the murderer's decisive action.

It was a test that went beyond self-defense, followed by retribution carried out according to its result.

But the choice had ultimately been the murderer's.

The terrible choice to kill a child and silence him.

Instead, Eun-jeong thought this.

‘If Onik had been empty-handed then, that would have been truly frightening.’

Though he possessed extraordinary physical abilities, there was still a vast difference in size between an adult and a child.

If a child had faced a murderer bare-handed, there was a real possibility that something terrible might have happened.

Drawing a small measure of courage from his teacher's steady calmness and warmth, Onik slowly continued.

"Where I cut him was... here... I made a small cut beneath his jaw, on the left side of his neck... About one finger joint deep..."

The frightening boy pointed to his own neck.

"This is where the carotid artery runs. If that artery starts bleeding, a person can't hold on for long.

Usually, they lose consciousness before they can feel much pain. Like being put under with anesthesia."

There was a reason he explained it in such detail.

The boy was worried that his teacher's imagination might make it more terrible than it really had been.

‘What if Teacher thinks I just slashed him all over?’

Not every killing with a knife was the same kind of killing.

In his first killing, Onik had restrained the violence spewed out by the abnormality within him with all his strength.

"And the barking you heard at the end came from stray dogs."

"Stray dogs?"

"Yes. A dog that the village drove away once had become the leader and come back with a new pack. You know there are a lot of stray dogs around here."

This, too, was Onik's explanation because he did not want his teacher to misunderstand. He had not prepared dogs in advance to dispose of the body.

Of course, he had expected hungry stray dogs in winter, or other wild animals and birds, to smell it and gather to tear at the body.

That way, the wounds left by the knife would disappear without a trace.

But expecting that and preparing dogs to feed a body to were different degrees of cruelty.

The latter was something only a psychopath would do.

"I see."

Eun-jeong nodded quietly.

"But, Onik. After you used the knife, did you... get into a struggle with Jo In-cheol?

I heard a long stretch of noisy movement. When I checked the recording time, I think it lasted more than forty seconds. I was so frightened the whole time."

"Ah, it wasn't that."

Onik shook his head from side to side.

"Village Youth Association President uncle kept trying to grab me until the end... but he only struggled where he had fallen, like a drunk person...

He probably didn't even know he'd been cut, or that he was bleeding... until he completely lost consciousness..."

Only then could Eun-jeong fill in the missing part of the scene she had pictured earlier.

Then a new wave of disgust rose in her.

Even as his consciousness faded, the murderer had thought of nothing but strangling her precious student to death.

How could such ugliness not disgust her?

‘He was disgusting to the very end.’

No. She should call him a monster, not a person.

Her student had killed a monster.

To avenge the dead Yohan, and because he wanted to protect her.

He had killed the monster with a heart that made Eun-jeong grateful and proud, then had thankfully survived unharmed once again.

Of course, she knew rationally that this was not something she should feel only gratitude about.

As a teacher, and as an adult, she also clearly knew she had things she needed to say to her precious student.

To lead him onto the right path.

She knew that...

But her heart disagreed with her head.

What was the true righteousness a teacher needed to teach Onik now?

The distrust and skepticism that had accumulated layer upon layer in her heart were too great for her to cling only to a textbook answer.

Distrust toward public authority, and skepticism toward people and society.

It could be called a vortex of han, of accumulated grief, resentment, and pain born from all the frustrations, sorrow, and suffering she had endured.

That vortex mingled with the gratitude she felt toward her student, and that mixture kept making her into a bad teacher.

In the end, it was a matter of social trust.

Interpersonal trust and institutional trust. Eun-jeong understood painfully why sociologists considered them so important.

‘...Let's hear the rest first. It won't be too late to think after I've heard it all.’

There was still more her student had to tell her.

She had heard of one person's death. Now she had to hear of the remaining person's death.

She needed to know why her kind, kind student had needed to "defeat" the bad police officer.

She needed to know whether the bad police officer had also been a monster who deserved to die.

Eun-jeong made a gentle request of her student.

"Onik. Will you tell me what happened next?"

"What happened next?"

"Yes. I mean, what happened with Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok... sir."

The stain in Eun-jeong's words was her dislike of the bad police officer. He was someone she did not want to address respectfully, even with an honorific.

But her student was before her.

Before a student who had not yet set aside all his anxiety, it would be better not to show such harsh feelings if she could help it.

"..."

With his head lowered, Onik fidgeted with his fingers before beginning with difficulty.

The story of the second killing.

#

This time as well, Onik supported his statement with specific physical evidence.

#

At first, Eun-jeong was aghast at the lengths her student had gone to.

‘He secretly broke into the police substation and planted a spy camera and a listening device? He put a listening device and even a tracking device on the patrol car and watched them?’

Strictly speaking, it had not been a listening device but a Bluetooth recorder.

But considering how it had been used, calling it a listening device was not unreasonable.

Yet the shock that had been difficult to swallow soon gave way to other feelings that were far harder to bear.

「In the end, isn't that female teacher, Lee Eun-jeong, the problem? We have to do something about that bitch somehow. There is no other answer.」

The sinister scheme of the bad police officers, which began there, was filled with content so appalling it defied belief.

「So... you're telling me you'll show me how, and I should make a video of that woman doing dirty things with the little brat and spread it around?」

At that point, the teacher suddenly ground her teeth.

The crunch was so clear that her student sitting opposite her opened his eyes wide.

Eun-jeong was so furious that her vision spun for a moment.

‘Never mind me. Why Onik?

How can people who are police officers think of using an innocent child as a scapegoat just to protect their own livelihoods?’

It was horrifying enough that they had made her a target for an AI deepfake video.

But Eun-jeong was angrier about what her student might have suffered than about what she herself had nearly suffered.

And she blamed herself.

As she had told her student earlier when she apologized, she had not done her best for her young student as an adult.

That sense of responsibility raised its head again and tormented Eun-jeong.

「I've heard all sorts of things from this guy, but among the kids who secretly pass around porn, Telegram has been outdated for ages.

I don't know whether to call it a good age or a bad one, but if you're just sharing videos, there are a lot of things better than Telegram now.」

The vile scheme of the bad police officers grew more and more outrageous.

People whose duty was to prevent and crack down on crime were using their experience and expertise to plan a crime.

The suggestions they exchanged were so detailed and sordidly specific that it was absurd.

The parts where they spoke of her student as "the shota kid" and "the pretty-dick kid" were enough to make her dizzy.

They were filthy words her kind student should never have had to hear.

And yet, driven solely by the desire to protect his teacher, her admirable student had listened to those disgusting words alone...

What expression had he worn?

How much more had Onik's trust in the police, and in justice throughout society, been damaged?

It was a point that pained Eun-jeong as a teacher...

‘Jo In-cheol's wrongdoing was the wrongdoing of one individual.

But these police officers, these ridiculous people, are different. Being a police officer has social significance.’

Strictly speaking, the fake fifty-six-year-old youth, Jo In-cheol, could not be said to have committed wrongdoing merely as an individual either.

After all, why had the three pathetic police officers become entangled with Eun-jeong in such a terrible relationship in the first place?

But Eun-jeong, as a teacher, was considering things from her student's perspective.

Grinding her teeth in sorrow and anger, she listened to the recording.

The rough words of the dead Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok burrowed into the teacher's ears.

Even among the three pathetic police officers, this man, who was remarkably twisted, revealed increasingly blatant and ominous feelings toward her.

「You fucking bitch.」

「You deserve to die.」

「Why do I have to go through this!」

「This is fucking self-defense. Hell, even if I stabbed her to death, they should go easy on me.」

「Yeah. This video's good. If I paste that bitch's face onto it, it'll be perfect. Put that cheeky little brat's face in too.

The body needs some work... but it can be fixed, right? Fuck. I'm worried. This is fucking bullshit.」

Eun-jeong rubbed her face with one hand.

Behind the final voice of the dead man, preserved through digital taxidermy, the shrill moans of an adult-film performer played like background noise.

When she imagined how Onik must have felt listening to it, she felt devastated...

At that moment, the dead man was finally reduced in Eun-jeong's heart to something less than human.

‘A beast.’

If the fifty-six-year-old Village Youth Association President, Jo In-cheol, had been a monster, Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok was simply a beast.

A beast did not have a person's ability to distinguish right from wrong.

That was why a beast's resentment toward people was irrational, absurd, self-centered, and selfish.

The recording ended.

"..."

After a brief silence to settle the violent storm of emotion, Eun-jeong asked her student in a calm voice.

"So, Onik. What did you do to this man...?"

Her student hesitated for a moment.

But refusing to answer or giving a vague answer had never been an option.

#

Her student's answer was honest and specific.

As the sole listener, Eun-jeong could vividly picture every step of the second killing committed by her young student.

Yet after completing another bloodstained image in her mind, Eun-jeong felt nothing in particular.

At least regarding Seo Mun-seok's death, she felt surprisingly calm.

Only her pity for her student deepened.

Her kind and precious student was not a child who should have had to experience such things.

The teacher's heart cried that the greatest victim of this case was her student.

Not the perpetrator, but the victim.

Beasts that harmed people deserved to be dealt with somehow.

Whether they were rehabilitated, isolated, or something more was done.

But it was a tragedy that her student had needed to carry out that judgment himself, and had believed that he had to.

All the more so because if he had not dealt with them, he would have become fodder for adults' filthy gossip.

An irreversible stigma would have been placed on him...

Ultimately, the adults were at fault.

Once more, Eun-jeong reflected on her conviction as a teacher.

Children's mistakes could never be the children's mistakes alone.

If children did something wrong, adults who had failed to fulfill their role always bore responsibility.

And depending on the case, adult responsibility could extend as far as society itself.

Eun-jeong believed this case was exactly such a case.

The teacher's heart could only favor her precious student.

#

Slurp, slurp, slurp...

On Onik's smartphone screen, a police officer in uniform sat in a chair eating cup noodles.

It was a live feed from the spy camera disguised as a clock.

This live video was the final piece confirming the truth of the many stories Onik had told his teacher so far.

"...I saw enough, Onik. This is enough."

Eun-jeong stared at the screen for a while, then handed the smartphone back to her student.

She had asked to see it after hearing that the spy camera was still inside the police substation, and as expected, there had not been a single lie in her student's words.

There was zero possibility that it was an AI-generated video.

She had watched from the moment he launched the remote-control app, listening to his explanation and asking questions.

She had not doubted her student.

She had simply thought it was better to confirm what could be confirmed. That would reassure her student as well.

Eun-jeong had noticed it for some time. Her student desperately did not want her to misunderstand him.

The teacher called him in a calm, warm voice.

"Onik."

"Yes."

"Wasn't it hard? Doing these things, I mean."

Onik hesitated before answering with difficulty.

"It wasn't hard. I was just scared."

"Scared?"

"Yes. I was scared that something might happen to you, Teacher..."

Until now, Onik had been a child who had kept so many worries carefully stored inside.

He still could not speak of the abnormality within him, his greatest concern and source of anxiety. But that only made him long all the more to confide at least his other worries to someone.

In truth, Onik was vulnerable in this respect.

So once the floodgates opened, he slowly laid out the many worries that had weighed on him, and the countless possibilities he had considered.

Throughout it all, Onik did not say a single word about the harm he himself might have suffered if the deepfake video had been distributed.

He spoke only of Teacher, Teacher, and Teacher again.

There was not the slightest sign that he was making anything up.

Nor was there even a trace that he was consciously filtering his words.

Having known Onik for so long, Eun-jeong knew this was her student's whole, sincere heart.

She could not help knowing.

That was why she felt even more pity and tenderness toward him.

He said it had not been hard, but it was plain that he had suffered terribly in his heart.

The anguish Onik confessed went all the way back to Yohan's death.

After all, the anxiety that had pushed Onik toward the second killing had largely come from his regret over Yohan's death.

"Teacher. I think Yohan hyung's death was largely my responsibility."

The boy who made this confession looked terribly dark.

The teacher was overwhelmed.

"Onik! Why would you think that?"

"Because I really was responsible."

With self-loathing, the boy let out a deep sigh.

"I had a chance to prevent Yohan hyung's death.

When I saw Village Youth Association President uncle taking trellis twine, I should have been more suspicious about why he was taking something like that when it wasn't even the season.

I should have watched his suspicious behavior more closely..."

"Onik, Onik..."

The teacher, suddenly filled with sorrow, shook her head desperately.

"That wasn't your fault. How could you think that someone you knew well would kill a person?"

"No, Teacher. I could have done it. I had the ability to do it."

Onik grew more depressed because he could not say exactly what that ability was.

"Just as you feel that you did not do your best for me, I feel that I did not do my best for hyung then. I regretted it so much.

So I'm sorry to you too, Teacher. If I had done better... If I had just done a little better, you could have been happy with hyung too."

"No, how... Oh, my goodness... Onik... Ah... Have you been thinking... thinking that all this time?"

Eun-jeong was so shocked that she began to stammer.

Her student, steeped in self-loathing, lowered his gaze and let out another gloomy sigh.

"So this time, I tried to do my best, but I didn't know what doing my best meant.

Since I didn't know, I tried to think only about the most important thing, keeping you safe, Teacher.

But in the end, even that wasn't entirely the right thing to do. I'm sorry. For everything. I didn't do my best for you either, Teacher..."

Looking at her kind student as he spoke, the teacher found herself at a loss for words, her eyes growing hot.

Footnotes:

Han refers to deeply accumulated grief, resentment, and injustice.

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