WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 92: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (92)
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#92.
Late that night, Teacher drove her student home in her own car.
It had been a truly long day for them both.
Eun-jeong felt as if the day had lasted a whole year.
Emotionally, that feeling was close to the literal truth.
It had been a day filled with more shock, fear, aching sorrow, deep relief, and warm comfort than people living ordinary lives might feel in an entire year.
So she felt softly worn out in body and mind. It was different from sleepiness.
From the crown of her head to the tips of her toes, it felt as though her nerves had gone slack and melted warmly together with her sinews.
If she went home and lay on her bed, she felt as though she would immediately turn half liquid.
It was not that she wanted to sleep. If anything, she did not want to fall asleep.
She felt she needed time to lie still in bed, gaze at the ceiling, and sink into the lingering feelings of the day.
Eun-jeong did not dislike this feeling.
No, she liked it.
Perhaps because the refreshing feeling she had known after crying her heart out with her student still remained as warmth within her.
Was that why?
‘...Even driving along this road so late at night, I’m not on edge.’
Between the town where Teacher lived and the old village where her student lived, there was only one lonely road.
In other words, the dark road she was driving along now was the very road where Yohan had been murdered.
From Yohan’s death until now, Eun-jeong had trembled with a bleak chill whenever she passed this way.
The sinister feeling that set every nerve on edge reached its peak whenever she passed the bend where it had happened.
The malice that had killed Yohan. The malice that had never revealed its true form seemed thickly stuck to this road.
That was why she had avoided it until now.
Unless she was visiting Yohan’s grave, she had tried not to drive along this ominous road if she could help it.
Especially after the sun had gone down.
It felt as though a monster might be lurking somewhere in the darkness over the road.
The back of her head would keep tingling, her breathing would become uneven, and cold sweat would slowly soak her back and nape.
But now, it was different.
Teacher, who had learned that she had been saved through the murder her student had committed, was no longer caught in those sensations.
The chill. The fear. Her student’s heart, which had protected her, had driven them all away.
As her car sped onward, a sharp bend approached ahead.
‘...The place where Mr. Yohan was murdered.’
The very place where a murderer must have tied trellis twine between the guardrail posts on either side of the road.
The student in the passenger seat glanced at Teacher’s expression.
Teacher also glanced at her student through the rearview mirror.
As if they had made a promise.
Then she smiled softly with her eyes to show that she was all right.
The small car carrying teacher and student passed through the sharp bend.
The scene of a murder whose truth was known by only two people in the world drifted behind them in the quiet of the night.
Faint ripples rose on the lake in Teacher’s heart.
The ripples soon settled. The lake returned to its peaceful stillness.
That was all. The lake was clear and transparent.
“...From now on.”
At Teacher’s words, her student turned toward the driver’s seat.
Teacher looked at him again through the rearview mirror. Then she smiled affectionately.
“I’ll come visit your village often, Onik.”
Onik could not possibly fail to understand the context of those words.
He had invited city people weary from their difficult lives many times and comforted them, but he had been extremely careful about inviting Teacher.
He had thought traveling along the road where Yohan, who had been like an older brother to him, had died would be uncomfortable for her.
And that had indeed been true.
If Teacher came to visit often, it would naturally be a happy thing for the lonely boy, who carried an emptiness that would never be filled.
But the fact that Teacher no longer found this road difficult was far happier still.
The boy knew that one painful thorn had been pulled from Teacher’s heart.
Fidgeting with his clasped hands amid complicated feelings, the boy answered quietly.
“When the Guest Rest Pavilion and Guest Lodging Pavilion are finished, please feel free to stay anytime, as if it were your own home. Make yourself comfortable.
“I’ll ask Boss to always leave one room empty.”
Teacher smiled again with her eyes.
“Okay. I’m looking forward to it.”
After that, the two fell silent again.
But there was no awkwardness in their silence.
Teacher and student were like stoves that warmed each other’s hearts. Even without words, warmth passed between them.
In the quiet, Onik brought back the worry he had left unfinished earlier that day.
‘...What could it really be? What changed in me, and how? Why did it happen?’
Physical contact with others had always been difficult and uncomfortable for Onik.
But after fainting once today... he no longer felt that discomfort with Teacher.
Was that all? Even when he looked directly at Teacher, thoughts of “possible murders I could carry out” no longer came to him so easily.
They had not disappeared entirely, but it felt much easier than before to push them beyond the edge of his awareness.
The intensity of the impulses themselves had fallen sharply compared to before.
It was as if an unknown, solid wall had appeared between the impulses that should have risen and Onik’s own consciousness.
What was that wall?
How had something like that formed?
And how much longer would this good change last?
Onik desperately wanted to know.
And there was one more thing he wondered.
‘Is it only better when I’m with Teacher?’
For now, it had not been better with the people he met at the hospital or restaurant.
The doctor’s and nurses’ palpations had been uncomfortable, and the impulses he felt while looking at other people had remained at their usual level.
Even so, Onik could not help but hope.
It was a hope that made his heart beat hard.
‘Maybe... maybe my sickness of the heart... could get better...’
Until now, Onik had accepted the inborn abnormality he had been given with resignation.
This abnormality, which he could not tell anyone about, had to be a powerful curse that would never leave him until the day he died.
The abnormality itself whispered that truth to him.
Onik could not doubt it.
It was a spiritual certainty that flowed into him from the realm of instinct and the supernatural.
As the abnormality inside him fed on blood and death and continued to grow, Onik’s certainty had only become stronger.
Rational doubt could not raise its head beneath that certainty.
But today, for the first time in his life, he had experienced something strange enough to make him question that dark certainty.
The vampire’s curse was weakening? It was an astonishing experience.
‘...No. I shouldn’t get my hopes up too much already.’
Onik tried to suppress his growing expectations.
‘Maybe I only felt better for a little while because I fainted earlier.
‘Maybe I’ll wake up after one night and be back to normal. Then... I’d be incredibly sad.’
Hope was more painful when you had it and lost it than when you had never had it at all.
Onik had experienced that pain in the autumn of last year.
The small hope he had felt when his unfamiliar father suddenly came to visit.
That hope had gone cold, like the hamburger set his father had left on the cold floor before going away.
The lonely boy had eaten that fleeting hope along with the hamburger.
It was a rather painful and very lonely memory.
He would never hold that same hope again.
Because he had experienced something like that, Onik was being very careful now.
“We’re here.”
Teacher’s voice brought her student back to attention.
Beyond the windshield, he could see the old Three-Way Intersection Restaurant and its sign. Since the lights were on, Pastor Kim seemed to still be awake.
Eun-jeong considered stopping in to greet him, since she was already here, but decided against it.
They often checked in on one another, but a sudden visit so late at night would be an inconvenience.
The small car Eun-jeong drove stopped on the dirt road beyond the vegetable garden of the Songryeong Jo Clan Head House.
It was the very place where Onik’s father had parked his car when he came to the village last year.
“Woof! Woof!”
Dogs barking could be heard even inside the car.
There were no dogs kept at the head house, but in rural villages like this, when one car came in, all the dogs in the neighborhood barked together.
After unfastening his seat belt, the student gripped the door handle. Before opening the door, he turned toward the driver’s seat.
“Thank you for taking me home. Um, and... there were so many things I was sorry about today.
“I think I only caused Teacher trouble all day.”
Eun-jeong looked as if that were completely absurd.
“Trouble? Not at all.”
Then her expression became gentle.
“More than anything, our Onik can cause Teacher as much trouble as he wants.
“Teacher owes our Onik her life. Twice, too.”
Before Teacher’s kindness, Onik fidgeted with his fingers, his expression made up of about seventy percent embarrassment and thirty percent awkwardness.
Whatever he said would feel awkward, so Onik quietly changed the subject.
“Please wait here for a moment.
“Since you came all this way, I’ll bring you the dashcam memory card I told you about at Teacher’s house earlier. The Village Youth Association President’s.”
“...Okay.”
Eun-jeong flinched for a moment, then nodded with a quiet smile.
Onik climbed out of the car and hurried through the raised main gate. Not long after, he came running back to Eun-jeong’s car.
“Here!”
Onik held out a small SD memory card and a reader.
“I brought the reader too. You’ll need it. You don’t have to return it.”
“Okay. Thank you, Onik.”
Eun-jeong carefully accepted the gift that was not quite a gift from her student and put it away safely.
The time and date saved on the memory card. The murderer’s voice. And the vehicle’s GPS location data.
They were another piece of evidence that would support her student’s testimony, which had already been remarkably detailed.
Though to Eun-jeong now, they were closer to a monument of faith than evidence of a crime.
Onik bowed deeply.
“Then goodbye! Drive safely! Be especially careful of water deer! They keep trying to pull insurance scams even though they don’t even have insurance!”
“Pfft... I will. Go inside and get some rest. You must be very tired.”
“I’m not, though? I’m totally fine right now.”
“Not from where Teacher is sitting. Onik needs to rest well. So go inside now. And make sure to greet your grandfather too.”
Until the very end, the student worried about Teacher, and Teacher worried about her student.
Onik looked back several times before going through the raised main gate.
He looked back and bowed. Looked back and bowed again. Looked back and bowed once more.
Eun-jeong kept waving to her student from inside the car, its interior light on.
She was very happy that he met her eyes every time.
A student who had never been able to hold anyone’s gaze for long no longer let his eyes slide away, at least not when he was with her.
Not knowing the true nature of her student’s abnormality, she simply thought that she had become someone closer and more comfortable to her precious student than before.
Of course, she could not help feeling happy.
Wrapped in soft contentment, Eun-jeong turned her car around.
There was one dark road connecting the remote village and the town.
The road Teacher drove alone was not frightening in the least.
#
The next day, Onik overslept.
Unlike his usual lively awakening, the extraordinary boy rubbed his eyes and got up groggily.
Then he looked at his smartphone with sleepy eyes.
A moment later.
The boy’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Huh? 5:46? Really?”
It was nearly time for the eastern sky to begin growing light.
At this historic old head house, it was also time to prepare breakfast.
Like the scholars of the Joseon era, Onik usually fell asleep late at the tail end of the night and woke around the time of the first rooster’s crow, or even before the first rooster crowed.
By Onik’s standards, today had been an incredible oversleep.
The extraordinary boy’s pineal gland was very sensitive.
It was even more sensitive than the pineal glands of chickens, which were famously sensitive to light.
Even without setting an alarm, the boy would blink his eyes open the moment the faintest light passing through the papered sliding door touched the top of his head.
Oh, is it time to get up?
He usually opened his eyes around three or four in the morning, so even the proudest genius rooster in the village needed to learn humility when Onik was around.
“Wow...”
Onik let out a breath of amazement.
Yesterday, he had thought he was truly fine, but it seemed he had actually been very tired. Teacher had been right.
“...”
The hope and anxiety he had put off came over the boy at the same time.
What if the “abnormal” state he had been in yesterday was only because he had become temporarily a little less sensitive due to exhaustion he had not even noticed himself?
Calming his unsettled heart, Onik got up and quickly folded his bedding.
Then he quickly changed clothes, quickly washed his face, and finally went to greet his grandfather.
‘...I was fine with Grandpa yesterday too.’
After coming home yesterday, Onik had naturally gone to show his face to his grandfather.
That was how he learned it.
The abnormality inside him had grown quiet around his grandfather too.
It was such a happy thing for Onik.
He had been so happy that it had been truly difficult to suppress the expectations constantly swelling inside him.
‘Please, let it be the same now.’
Holding that desperate wish, Onik stood before the main room door.
“Grandpa. Are you awake?”
It was a customary question. Onik could tell that his grandfather was awake from his presence alone.
“Yes.”
“I’m coming in.”
His heart pounding, the boy opened the sliding door.
Old man Jo Jeong-ho was wearing glasses and looking at a tablet screen. It was his long-standing dawn routine of reading the newspaper.
In this village, newspaper delivery had ended long ago, apart from the Farmers’ Newspaper that the mail carrier occasionally brought.
So without relying on a digital device like this, it was impossible to read the newspaper every day.
The tablet the old man used had been a gift from his grandson.
Onik had worried whenever he saw Grandpa looking at the tiny screen of his smartphone every day. After he began earning money in earnest, he immediately bought a tablet and gave it to him.
“Did you sleep well?”
Hearing his grandson’s greeting, Jo Jeong-ho lifted his eyes from the screen after a moment and looked at Onik.
Then he raised one eyebrow in puzzlement. His grandson’s eyes, fixed on him, were especially bright.
And they were not carefully sliding to the side or looking away as they usually did.
“...Your expression is bright. Did something good happen?”
“Um, for now?”
“For now?”
“Hehe.”
After closing the door, Onik trotted over and knelt in front of his grandfather. Smiling brightly, he held out both hands.
“Grandpa. Please lend me one hand for a moment.”
“...You did this yesterday too. Why do you suddenly need my hand?”
“Don’t ask why. Hurry.”
At his grandson’s urging, the old man gave him one hand.
Grasping the firm, wrinkled hand of his beloved grandfather, Onik looked down at it with eyes full of deep emotion.
“Wow...”
“...???”
Whether or not his grandfather’s confusion deepened, Onik enjoyed the warmth of his grandfather’s hand filling both of his own.
It was the warmth of a precious person felt with his mind fully clear, without needing to make an effort to distract himself and without struggling to restrain ominous desires.
How could it not move him?
The ominous abnormality inside him still stirred faintly. But not enough to interfere.
Onik smiled again and released his grandfather’s hand.
Seeing his grandson meet his eyes without hesitation, Jo Jeong-ho immediately sensed a positive change.
His grandson’s eyes, looking at him, were full of joy and affection.
Before the old man could ask anything, his grandson stood energetically.
“Please wait just a little! I’ll make breakfast!”
When Onik had been in the lower grades of elementary school, preparing breakfast had been Grandpa’s job. Onik had only helped prepare the ingredients beside him.
But a few years ago, Onik began wanting to do it himself, and since last year he had taken on all of it.
Preparing meals was deeply rewarding for the grandson who loved his grandfather.
Rattle, rattle, click. The sliding door opened and closed.
After his excited grandson trotted away, Jo Jeong-ho sat alone in the main room and quietly considered his grandson’s words and behavior.
‘It seems Teacher Lee Eun-jeong gave him some good guidance.’
His grandson had spent all day yesterday with the teacher he loved most.
So his grandson’s change must have come from the time he had spent with Teacher.
‘She is truly someone to be grateful for. Though she is his teacher, she is ultimately a stranger to our Onik, yet she cherishes and looks after him so much.’
The old man wondered how he could repay the devotion shown by his grandson’s esteemed teacher.
#
Onik’s experiments continued even after breakfast.
First subject. The extraordinary boy’s older business partner.
“Boss! Please lend me your hand for a moment!”
“...Huh? Why do you suddenly need my hand?”
“Hurry!”
“Uh...”
Legal Hunter had recently been using work as an excuse to come to the head house from the morning and often eat Onik’s lavish Korean breakfasts. With a puzzled expression, he offered the boy one hand.
The boy held his business partner’s hand and stared at it seriously for quite a while. Then he nodded.
“Hmm. Boss is about this much. Okay.”
“...Okay for what?”
“There’s something!”
“...???”
Second subject. Twenty-three-year-old idol Yu Se-ra, who was there with them.
The boy stared at Sera and carefully judged something. Then he asked Sera, who was beginning to feel awkward because she had no idea why he was looking at her, for her hand too.
“Sera noona! Please lend me your hand too!”
“Huh? Okay.”
When the idol offered her hand, Onik immediately took it.
He held it for a few minutes, then nodded once again and let go.
“Okay. Sera noona is about this much.”
“...????”
Afterward, Onik looked over Truffle Candy’s remaining members one after another. His expression remained completely serious.
There was still a long time before the Guest Rest Pavilion and Guest Lodging Pavilion would be finished.
So, as they had when they came as guests on Let’s Play with Onik!, the Truffle Candy members were staying in the guest room of the head house.
The producer, who had come down with them to greet everyone, had already returned to Seoul. They had gone to coordinate broadcast appearances and conditions.
The schedules for major broadcasters’ programs were often planned more than half a year in advance.
Sorin, Yesul, and Mina had been wondering if it was their turn now. But when Onik simply said, “Hmm,” without asking anything of them, they became upset for no reason.
“What is that, Onik? What exactly does that ‘hmm’ mean? Why are we being skipped? The flow, huh? It was totally the kind of flow where you’d ask us for our hands too!”
“That’s right! Wake up, exploitative boss Jo Onik! We condemn discriminatory treatment! Guarantee this and that!”
“CEO! An employer has a duty to treat their employees equally! If you keep acting like this, your noonas are going to become crooked! Want a taste of a strike, huh?”
The producer was nominally the head of their subsidiary label.
However, Legal Hunter and Onik owned half the label’s shares, and the producer also treated the two as superiors.
That was why Truffle Candy’s members often jokingly called Legal Hunter and Onik boss or CEO.
(The members did not yet know that Legal Hunter and Onik were really set to become CEOs someday.)
Onik hesitated for a moment before speaking.
“Uh, well, I could sort of tell just by looking at you, noonas...”
It was like pouring oil on a fire. Mina, who had mentioned a strike, cried out sharply.
“What does that even mean?”
The morning at the head house filled with the chirping protests of three idols against their young co-CEO’s discriminatory treatment.
After the commotion passed, Onik went to see Master Bowyer and Pastor Kim in turn.
It was a process of watching the movements of his abnormality as he met their eyes and held their hands.
The following was part of the conversation between the elderly Master Bowyer and the boy.
“You rascal. What are you doing, coming here at the crack of dawn and suddenly doing this? It’s not like you’re reading palms.”
“Hmm, it’s important!”
“That is why I’m asking what this important thing is.”
“It’s a secret!”
“...?”
“And I don’t need to read Master Bowyer’s palm lines! They must be the palm lines of someone sure to live a long life!”
“Heh. What a rascal.”
Pastor Kim was much the same.
He was first flustered by the boy suddenly coming in and gazing steadily at him. Then, when Onik stubbornly asked for his hand, he gave it over in confusion.
After that, as he watched the boy leave with a very satisfied expression after saying goodbye, he muttered to himself.
“...What was that just now?”
From the head house to Master Bowyer’s house. From Master Bowyer’s house to the Three-Way Intersection Restaurant at the village entrance.
The other village adults he met while crossing the village length and breadth were also subjects of the same experiments and observations.
‘The level of comfort and discomfort is different for each person.’
As he repeated the experiments, one hypothesis became clearer and clearer.
The unknown wall that blocked the temptation of his ominous abnormality seemed to grow thicker in proportion to how precious Onik thought the other person was.
‘Grandpa was the easiest to be around, and Teacher was just below him. I don’t feel as comfortable around Pastor and Hunter as I do around Teacher.
‘Sera noona is, hmm, about the same as Hunter? Or maybe higher? It feels like there’s a difference, but maybe there isn’t...’
This hypothesis did not conflict with what he had experienced yesterday either.
At the hospital. On the streets downtown and in the clothing store. And at the braised chicken restaurant where he had eaten with Teacher.
When he was around complete strangers passing by, the frightening boy’s hideous impulses unfailingly raised their heads.
There was no way to know what the wall truly was.
But did he really need to know?
Even the ominous origin of the dark impulses that had tormented Onik so terribly was unknown.
Onik only hoped that this change would not be temporary.
The frightening boy, carrying an emptiness that would never be filled, hungered for the warmth of precious people.
It was an old hunger that had grown older alongside the boy himself.
Footnotes:
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