WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 91: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (91)

──────

#91.

Eun-jeong moved to sit beside Onik. Then she wrapped him in a tight hug.

Teacher and student. Both believed they had failed to do their best for the other. Holding each other dear, they sniffled for a long while.

#

Tears shed in sorrow have the power to heal.

People often call it the catharsis of sorrow. After crying as much as one wants for a long time, does one not somehow feel lighter afterward?

If there is even one person beside you to cry with you, that power grows stronger still.

Anxiety fades, and inner peace arrives.

The weight of pain that had weighed upon the mind grows a little lighter.

With a heart as calm as a lake without the slightest breeze, one can contemplate the things that cause sadness.

And in doing so, one becomes able to overcome that sadness, if only a little.

That was how ordinary people's hearts worked.

Eun-jeong and Onik's hearts worked the same way.

After both of their sniffling had finally subsided, Eun-jeong released him from the embrace. With reddened eyes, she looked down at her student and gave him a wistful smile.

Then she gently stroked his hair.

“Onik.”

“Yes.”

“Objectively speaking, I can't say that what our Onik has done was right.”

“...Yes.”

“I think you already know why. You're a kind and smart child, Onik...

You must have studied what you did from many angles, and thought about it a great deal. Haven't you?”

“...Yes. I have. I know why the things I did were wrong.”

Onik agreed in part.

“If everyone in the world tried to solve problems with their own hands, like I did, the world would become a truly frightening and terrible place.

That alone is enough to call what I did wrong. I did it even though I knew it was a grave wrong...”

After saying that much, Onik swallowed the rest.

‘That's why I'm a bad child.’

It was obvious that he was a bad child.

But Onik found it difficult to say that obvious truth before Teacher.

After all, Teacher surely knew it already, yet she was comforting him by calling him a kind and smart child.

He was so grateful for his truly kind teacher's gentle consideration.

By killing the bad police lieutenant Seo Mun-seok, Onik had made Teacher safe.

That much could not be denied.

The other two bad police officers who had plotted with Lieutenant Seo had accepted their coming punishment with sighs of despair.

There was no longer any threat.

But this could not be called a righteous outcome. That would be far too dangerous a form of consequentialism.

Small-scale consequentialism, which judged right and wrong only by a single event and its result, could never coexist with fairness on the level of a nation or society.

It was a principle that should have been difficult for an ordinary first-year middle school student.

Yet this extraordinary boy, who said even preparing for the College Scholastic Ability Test was enjoyable, had understood it alone through experience, study, and thought.

‘What is right for me alone isn't always right for everyone else.’

Universal standards of right and wrong always had to stand upon the foundation of the social good.

That remained true even if it was a cruel standard, one that had to bury and bury again the injustices suffered by a minority.

...What could be done? It was the best way for ordinary people to live together in harmony.

Though perhaps it should only be called the lesser evil.

Reality held many examples that proved this principle.

So many that they made one sigh.

And Onik knew those examples very well.

Onik was a boy who admired the righteous assassin and patriot Jo Yang-jin, and who had an irresistible interest in killing people.

Would such an Onik not know the realities of third-world countries where vigilantism and private punishment ran rampant?

How could that be possible?

Onik knew far too well that the contradictory idea of a righteous assassin could only exist when there was an unshakable evil, like Japan during the colonial era.

‘...There isn't a single country where private punishment is seen as everyone's right and duty that functions properly.’

Miserable countries where cruel private punishment had seeped into everyday life shared one thing in common.

That commonality was a terrible belief held by many of their people.

The belief that even a person's life could be claimed as punitive damages.

To collect those damages, one did not need to obtain a ruling in court.

A society inhabited by people with such beliefs was inevitably ruled by an order of blood and fear.

The fear that, if they did not aggressively claim their compensation, other people would devour them.

That fear turned countless members of society into potential murderers.

Because they believed that making other people besides themselves share that same sickening fear would make them just a little safer.

More precisely...

‘...Because they believe it will.’

And so no one wanted to be the first to put down the blade of private punishment they held.

Even though everyone lived in anxiety that they might become the target of private punishment, and even though everyone was sick of that reality...

Every day, those who held blades trembled with anxiety and thought:

“If I'm supposed to give up my right to revenge and punishment first, what if I'm the only one who loses out?

What guarantee is there that others will give it up too? Won't I just be the only one left holding the bag?”

Here, “only me” could always be replaced with “only us.”

No, it always would be.

The frightening boy had studied hard for his dark plans for the future, and he had found no exception anywhere in the world.

People were animals that wanted to form groups more urgently the more dangerous their environment became.

That was why the chain of private punishment became an even more unstoppable current.

The hatred that different social groups built by drinking each other's blood inevitably led to ideological, political, and cultural hatred.

And so a vicious cycle was born, one that would never stop until one side destroyed the other.

But people had all kinds of reasons to hate other people.

Nor did a person have only one occasion in their life to bear a grudge against someone else.

Human beings were frightening animals who could want to kill another person for even the most trivial reason.

It was the same principle as when children at Onik's school yelled vicious things about killing each other while fighting with their peers.

Of course, after their blood cooled, their hearts usually changed.

But at the very moment they shouted them, that killing intent contained no small measure of sincerity. The many cases of school violence and resulting deaths proved it.

Following that principle and that killing intent, the vicious cycle multiplied without end.

It multiplied endlessly, spun fiercely, and greedily swallowed people's blood and lives.

Why did it become this way?

Once the endless chain of private punishment began, what was the greatest reason no one could break it?

The answer was simple.

‘Because everyone wants to pay back more than they suffered. That's how they feel satisfied, and how they feel justice has been done.’

Private punishment called forth stronger private punishment. It was almost a law.

At times, greed beyond a desire for compensation was added to it.

It was the desire to use another person's wrongdoing as an excuse to maximize one's own gain.

Those involved either did not know this, or deliberately pretended not to know.

That was what the boy, who had always longed to be ordinary, had observed closely.

This was usually how ordinary people's hearts worked. It was an unfortunate truth for the boy.

The more one learned about human ordinariness, the more it lost its beauty.

Even so, the boy still wanted to become ordinary. Because he was worse than ordinary people. That was why he felt the regret all the more deeply.

“I was scared.”

Onik spoke with a weary expression.

“I thought that if the police uncles really spread the deepfake video, so many people would curse Teacher.

Without even checking whether it was real or not. They'd say Teacher should die. They'd just shout for Teacher to die. I thought those frightening words might really kill Teacher.”

“...I see.”

Eun-jeong could not bring herself to say otherwise.

This was why she had not made the incident public through her student's broadcast.

The only difference was that her student worried about his teacher, while the teacher worried about her student.

Onik continued.

“But when I think about it carefully, what people who shout like that are doing is punishing someone privately, isn't it?

They say that they're right. That Teacher is a bad person, so Teacher has to be punished. That they're the ones demanding the punishment. That they're the ones giving it.”

“...”

“In the end, I was scared that the wrong things lots of people do without caring would happen to Teacher too.

So I got scared and solved the problem by doing something even worse in the same way.

That isn't right. So I, I...”

“Onik. Stop. You can stop now. That's enough.”

Eun-jeong soothed her student.

The torrent of self-hatred that was about to burst from her emotionally wounded student's lips quieted beneath his kind teacher's comfort.

“Teacher is greatly relieved just knowing that our Onik recognizes his own wrongdoing.

If you had said you had done nothing wrong at all... if you had said that, Teacher would have been very sad.

Even though I am alive now entirely because of you.”

After pausing for a moment, Eun-jeong added one more thing.

“And I would not have been able to honestly tell you thank you.”

Hearing that, her student looked up into Teacher's eyes.

Eun-jeong felt that she understood his heart, so she nodded with a wistful smile.

“That's right. Teacher thinks Onik saved Teacher.

Killing someone was obviously not the right thing to do, but if it hadn't been for you, something would have gone terribly wrong with Teacher.

Teacher was truly having a hard time... much more than you know.”

With distant eyes, Eun-jeong remembered the pain of those past days.

How badly she had fallen apart after Yohan's funeral.

“It was really, really hard.”

A sigh escaped Eun-jeong's lips.

“Yohan was dead, but Jo In-cheol was still alive and well. That was so frightening.

The fact that even the police would not properly investigate Yohan's suspicious death, and would not protect me either, made me so anxious.

So for several days, I hardly slept at all, and I couldn't even eat properly.”

“Ah...”

“Even if Teacher had left you here and run far away somewhere else, the anxiety would have chased me to the end.

Because... Jo In-cheol already had a history of doing such things. He had found out Teacher's address and contact information through improper means.”

“...The Village Youth Association President did that? I didn't know he went that far.”

“Yes. He did.”

Eun-jeong calmly combed through her student's hair with her fingers.

She thought that his hair was as soft as the texture of his heart.

“You watch the news a lot with your grandfather, so you know, don't you? Stalkers who bear grudges against their victims are hard to shake off just by moving away.”

“Yes, I know. They're frightening people. The Village Youth Association President turned out to be a frightening person too.”

“If that frightening person had still been alive, Teacher would not have been safe.

I'm certain of it. If nothing else, Teacher's heart would have died completely.”

“...”

“That anxiety was so great, and that fear was so severe...

But after Jo In-cheol died, it disappeared astonishingly quickly.

It was so fast, and peace came to my heart so quickly, that it felt like magic.”

If it was magic, then it was magic. Magic that had given new life to a woman who had been withering away alive.

“On the other hand... this may be something shameful to say, but I wondered whether that person's death might have been Yohan's last gift.

Whether Yohan had protected me one final time... It was such a strange coincidence in terms of timing, wasn't it?”

“What do you mean, a coincidence?”

“That person died right after Yohan's funeral ended. Was it that day, or the next day?”

“...It was that day.”

“I see. Teacher thinks I can understand how you must have felt when you called that bad person out that day.”

“You shouldn't understand that...”

Eun-jeong gave a small chuckle. Her eyes looked affectionately upon her downcast student.

“So it was our Onik who gave Teacher peace of mind and protected Teacher? What should I do when I'm so grateful?”

“...”

“You don't need to make that face. Wrong is wrong, and gratitude is gratitude.

You definitely did something wrong, Onik, but Teacher is alive because of it.”

“Umm, um, yes...”

“And like Teacher said earlier, you clearly did something wrong, but it wasn't only your wrongdoing.

Teacher bears responsibility too, and the many other adults who frightened you bear even greater responsibility.

Of course, the greatest responsibility lies with the two people who received punishment from you.”

Onik tried to say something, then stopped.

He found it difficult to accept the responsibility Teacher kept talking about, but he felt that no matter what he said, Teacher would not accept it either.

As much as Teacher knew her student, the student knew Teacher as well.

There was always a firm core within Teacher's gentleness.

The lonely boy liked that strength.

Teacher was a good adult.

That good adult seemed to think about something for a moment, then spoke with a sigh.

“I'm grateful for what you did to Lieutenant Seo Mun-seok too...

What you worried about. Teacher finds it frightening too.”

“What I worried about? People cursing Teacher terribly?”

“Yes.”

Eun-jeong was a teacher, and teachers were public servants.

And all public servants knew how frightening civil complaints could be.

There was no teacher who did not suffer hardship because of complaints. Every so often, news came of teachers who had taken their own lives after enduring malicious complaints from parents.

Eun-jeong had not yet joined any teachers' organization.

But there were things she naturally heard through the teachers around her.

‘Twenty-eight people died by suicide last year. They said that this year, just as many had died in the same period.’

Being targeted by just one parent could be enough to kill someone.

But if thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people poured out vicious condemnation and complaints in numbers to match... how severe would the resulting mental anguish be?

To make matters worse, the fallout from the deepfake video leaked by the bad police officers would never have remained limited to online commotion.

Around the time Eun-jeong had begun to grow fond of life at the rural elementary school, a female elementary school teacher around her age had taken her own life at a school in Seoul.

When that incident drew nationwide attention, low-quality internet streamers flooded the elementary school and caused a filthy scene.

‘Like dirty insects swarming around a corpse...’

Active teachers who watched the case unfold could not have loathed such people more.

Even after police officers responding to complaints began to control the scene, nothing particularly improved.

Small-time streamers whose lives depended on their viewers' attention lurked around, trying to produce broadcasts that were even slightly more provocative.

The way they endlessly reproduced and amplified political rumors without a single piece of evidence was truly ugly and contemptible.

Even the death of an unknown teacher had caused that sort of chaotic mess.

But what if the bad police officers' scheme had succeeded, and the “famous female teacher” Lee Eun-jeong had become the target of low-grade journalists and online hyenas?

‘...The rest of my life would have become terribly unhappy.’

For one thing, her career as a teacher would surely have ended there.

Before the truth was even confirmed, the school and the education office would have wanted to put her aside temporarily just because controversy had arisen and complaints were flooding in.

It was a common way of handling things in the public-service world.

Even after the truth came out, it would have been difficult for her reinstatement to proceed properly.

People who refused to believe the revealed facts would have continued to pursue her, persistently filing complaints and lawsuits.

Eun-jeong knew of several teachers who had not been able to return to work for that reason.

Ordinary people would find it strange.

“Are there really that many people in the world with nothing better to do?”

Astonishingly, there were.

Not merely a few. There were an unbelievable number of them.

Those who believed they were carrying out justice by punishing evil would never have permitted the teacher reinstatement of “child sex offender Lee Eun-jeong.”

And if someone who had graduated from a teachers college could not be a teacher... then in terms of work and economic life, half their life was ruined.

And if one considered the mental damage as well?

She might truly have died.

Even if she lived, it would have been a weary life, barely endured because she could not die.

Escape through marriage?

Could someone carrying such a controversy around like a label have a normal marriage?

‘If I alone were cursed and it ended there, perhaps it would have been bearable. I could have endured somehow.

Somehow, I could have held on and lived.’

Eun-jeong's awareness settled on the warmth of her student beneath her fingertips.

‘But our Onik... If even this kind child had been branded with a scarlet letter, could I have endured that guilt too?’

Eun-jeong's own answer was no.

After thinking that far, Eun-jeong spoke quietly to her student.

“Onik is right. People get angry far too easily. Without even checking whether something is real or not.

And they do not try to take responsibility for it either.”

“...I hate people like that.”

“Yes. Teacher hates them too. They're frightening.”

Eun-jeong had first felt that fear when she had just become a middle school student.

At the time, a popular rapper from a hip-hop group had been caught up in a controversy over falsified academic credentials. The way people suspected and slandered him had been cruel and horrible.

No evidence could persuade them.

No matter how much clear evidence was presented, they only shouted that it was all lies.

The tyranny of that malicious crowd had been so severe that even the President stepped forward to defend the victim.

Not only the rapper himself, but his family had suffered because of it.

His father, who already had a chronic illness, had even passed away from extreme stress...

That hateful group of killers had filled even the articles announcing his death with vicious comments about the deceased and the rapper.

It had been a mad spectacle that made middle schooler Lee Eun-jeong feel both disgust and fear.

And now, the world in which teacher Lee Eun-jeong lived did not seem to have improved much from that time.

It was a world where every person screamed at every other person with killing intent.

Mockery of tragic disasters and the dead was far too common.

“If they kept quiet and avoided responsibility once the truth came out, that would almost be better.”

Eun-jeong spoke about the behavior of people filled with malice.

“Truly bad people refuse to acknowledge the truth, even when you show it to them.

They don't want to accept that they were wrong, or that someone else had incited them.

Admitting it and apologizing would hurt their pride. They would feel as if they had become fools. So they keep attacking.”

“...Because it has to be the other person who's wrong, not me.”

“That's right. They're weak people who lack the courage to face their own mistakes.

They become more wicked because they're weak, and weaker because they're wicked. The easier a target is, the more cruelly they treat them.”

“...”

“So Teacher understands why you were frightened, Onik.

Adults like Teacher failed to make a better world. That is why kind children like you have no choice but to be scared.

That's why Teacher said that your wrongdoing is not your responsibility alone.”

“I think you're only saying good things about me...”

“What can Teacher do when that's the truth? We live in that kind of world.”

Bitterness seeped into Eun-jeong's smile.

In truth, there was something else she wanted to tell her student besides thank you.

But she could not say it.

‘Separate from Teacher's gratitude toward Onik, do I have the right, as I am now, to say the textbook thing that he must never kill anyone again?’

There was not a single lie in what Eun-jeong had told her student today.

After learning the truth her precious student had kept so carefully hidden, she believed that she was alive entirely because of him.

She sincerely believed it.

In other words, she was someone who had been saved through the murders committed by her young student.

Twice, at that.

From the position of someone who had been saved twice over, and who felt both profound gratitude and heavy responsibility for that salvation...

To urge him not to commit a third murder felt far too shallow and thoughtless.

I lived thanks to you, but from now on, you must not do it anyway.

What a ridiculous attitude. What hypocrisy.

Could that truly be called respecting her precious student?

...Her student was not a child who killed people carelessly.

Had he not gathered information thoroughly and thought deeply before making his decision in both of the murders he had already committed, enough to astonish Eun-jeong?

Eun-jeong remembered the day her beloved student had declared his admirable ambition.

“I decided that I'm going to make a lot of money! And I'll use that money to help people the law doesn't help!”

It was a beautiful resolve he said he had formed after helping someone who had been contemplating suicide.

A good-hearted wish to help people whose lives were endangered because the law did not help them.

If her student lived while holding firmly to that wish, then someday, a second Kim Yo-han and a second Lee Eun-jeong might appear in his life.

A person like Eun-jeong as she was now, someone whom Onik, and only Onik... could save through a sad and frightening, yet paradoxically beautiful decision.

Eun-jeong, who was now deeply grateful to the student who had saved her, could not tell this grateful and admirable student to ignore some future Eun-jeong.

“...”

There was one more thing.

Even at this moment, a knot of resentment lay in the teacher's heart.

She felt that the day it loosened might never come.

Her distrust in public authority and anxiety toward people remained unchanged.

The hesitating teacher gave up on the request she had no right to make.

Instead, she made another request, the next best thing.

“Onik. Later, if something like what happened to Teacher happens again...

Will you promise that you will discuss it with Teacher before deciding what to do?”

“...?”

Onik blinked with a puzzled expression.

He needed time to understand what Teacher meant.

And then, a moment later.

“...?!?”

Overwhelmed by tremendous shock and surprise, Onik's eyes went round.

It was the moment a record-breaking earthquake struck Onik's pupils.

Teacher, who had made a request her student had never even imagined, was thinking this.

‘If Onik once again has a worry he cannot tell anyone about, there is a danger that he will suffer alone, make the wrong choice, or step onto the wrong path.’

The first and second murders themselves were immediate examples.

If he had not been able to confide in anyone and had only suffered alone, his heart might have festered and rotted away in the end.

Was he not a kind child?

Had that incomparably kind child not been driven by a bad reality to kill people...?

The self-hatred Onik had revealed earlier while speaking of his own wrongdoing was one clue.

To Eun-jeong, it was a dark emotion that went beyond being unusual and seemed ominous.

She had to consider why that dark emotion had arisen.

‘So Onik needs someone he can consult about anything without worry.’

As a teacher, Eun-jeong knew how important it was to ease a student's sense of psychological isolation.

That alone greatly reduced the chance that the student would go astray.

Clear statistics supported it.

In short, simply having someone to talk to lowered the chance that Onik would commit a third murder.

At the same time, she intended to help her student during the process of those discussions as well.

So that he could walk as righteous a path as possible.

By offering kind advice, sincerely sharing his concerns, and sometimes becoming an adult he could rely upon, however inadequate she might be.

Lastly... she hoped that day would never come if possible...

But if a day came when Onik had to kill someone in order to save a second Kim Yo-han and a second Lee Eun-jeong...

‘Then I will affirm this child's decision and support him. I'll become this child's accomplice, so that this kind child does not have to carry all the burden in his heart alone.’

At the end of those thoughts, Eun-jeong swallowed a bitter smile.

‘I am an inadequate teacher. Onik is far too good for me.’

Perhaps some part of her heart had become deeply twisted.

Because after experiencing harsh sorrow and intense pain, she had come late to recognize that dark salvation, and had grown grateful for it.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried