WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 97: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (97)
──────
#97.
Student rider Kim Ju-won was miserable every day.
It had begun on the day he tried to make Jo Onik, the lying entertainer boy who had first come to the riding school, fall from his horse, only to nearly suffer a serious accident himself.
The day the entertainer boy with absurd abilities had barely saved him by staging an impossible action spectacle.
After that day, Ju-won's life had been dyed a dull, ashen gray.
The first problem was the “good friend candidates” he had tried to get close to at the riding school.
On the very day the entertainer boy had visited, they giggled among themselves and made Ju-won treat them.
「Hey, Kim Ju-won. Aren't you buying us a Fall Treat? You seriously have no conscience if you don't.」
「Yeah. Buy us something now, then treat Onik separately later.」
「It's a little awkward since Onik, the main character, already left... but you still have to treat us, right? Ju-won? Answer us.」
Hearing such coldhearted words made Ju-won's blood boil.
It was true that things had been dangerous, but he had not actually fallen off the horse.
So why were these bastards demanding a Fall Treat from him?
And why was that damned entertainer boy the main character?
Obviously, the person buying the Fall Treat should be the main character, shouldn't he?
‘Not one of them even asked whether I was okay first.’
Looking back, the only people who had asked Ju-won whether he was all right were the instructors.
(In truth, Onik, who had saved him, had asked before anyone else out of kindness.
But Ju-won's memory of that time was hazy. He had been completely out of it.
It was not as though he remembered nothing, but his wounded pride kept him from trying to remember.)
Ju-won had felt utterly miserable that day.
Still, refusing to buy the Fall Treat had never been an option.
His relationship with the good friend candidates was not something Ju-won could end whenever he pleased.
Ju-won's parents took a great interest in their only son's friendships.
They regularly checked up on his relationships with his “riding school friends.”
Ju-won had to prepare in advance for those inspections by his strict parents.
Messages exchanged on social media, photographs taken together, whatever it took.
The cost of the Fall Treat had not been small.
The entire time they ate on Ju-won's money, the good friend candidates laughed and chattered excitedly among themselves.
To them, Ju-won was not a friend. He was merely an entertaining story...
What made Ju-won even more miserable was that his disgrace had been preserved on video.
‘Fuck. That cowardly old bastard.’
Ju-won resented the con artist boy's older business partner.
‘He came over and got permission while I was out of my mind. That should honestly count as invalid.
I asked him to take the video down, but he wouldn't. He just posted that shitty comment to screw me over.’
When Legal Hunter had come to ask permission to use the footage, Ju-won had been sitting blankly and resting after taking medicine given to him by his instructor.
He had not fallen, but he still needed painkillers and muscle relaxants.
Startled muscles and overworked ligaments hurt after a delay.
For someone who had desperately held on atop a crazed horse, full-body muscle pain was inevitable.
Perhaps because he had taken medicine after exhausting both body and mind, Ju-won had been heavy with sleep and slightly dizzy.
That was why Ju-won had given the hunter an answer he would regret for a long time.
「Go ahead...」
The hunter had smiled brightly and thanked him. He had even told Ju-won to take good care of himself.
Even then, he had been holding a camera. It had been truly cowardly.
Ju-won only regretted it after the video was uploaded and even appeared on the news.
He hurriedly sent an email asking for it to be taken down, using the business email address listed on the YouTube channel.
Consent to be filmed for an internet broadcast could be withdrawn at any time, even afterward.
Yet despite Ju-won's request, the video was not taken down.
They merely blurred Ju-won's entire appearance.
Then they wrote a comment and pinned it at the top.
「At the request of the student involved in the accident, who has withdrawn consent to be filmed, we have blurred the student's appearance. We ask for our subscribers' understanding.」
Ju-won had nearly cried.
What ill will did they have toward him that they had to drive him mad with such a petty comment to the very end?
(Ju-won did not know it, but Legal Hunter had nearly cried then as well.
It had been terribly painful to add blurring and voice alteration to a popular video whose views were exploding.
At the very least, the hunter had tried to stall for as much time as possible.
Since Ju-won was only a high school student, one or two days would never be enough for him to follow the procedures and exercise his legal rights.
But the problem was his young business partner's kind heart.
Onik had heard about it from his editor noona in Seoul and demanded quick action, so the bad adult swallowed his tears and complied with his young business partner's request...)
The notice comment that the bad adult had pinned while suppressing his profound resentment gave Ju-won a new humiliation in the end.
The upper-class student members at the riding school, according to Ju-won's own classification, used it to mock him again.
「Wow, fuck. Kim Ju-won, you really have no conscience, do you?」
「Seriously. A kid younger than you performed an insanely dangerous stunt to save you, so at least let him make some money from it...」
「Ah, this bastard is so petty that it's funny. Did you even buy Onik anything? Did you at least thank him? You didn't, did you? God, I feel sorry for Onik.」
「Our Ju-won, repaying kindness with spite, I'm fucking rooting for you. Keep living like that. Keep living like that, okay?
I mean it. That way, other people can weed you out sooner.」
The mockery continued day and night through messaging apps and social media.
Unable to bear it any longer, Ju-won eventually sent another email to Onik and Legal Hunter's shared business email account.
He said they did not need to blur him. They could just use the video.
But the water had already been spilled.
The video was quickly restored, but the student riders' attitude toward Ju-won did not change much.
It would be hard to say that reversing his decision had been worse than doing nothing...
He had no other choice.
‘Those fucking broadcasting-station bastards...’
The extraordinary entertainer boy's rescue spectacle was reported as news on every kind of channel.
It was the sort of news that said, “This story has recently become a topic of conversation in numerous online communities.”
Legal Hunter had not been able to stall for time, but broadcasting stations could.
They had extensive experience with this sort of thing.
「We have confirmed your request. After reviewing the relevant laws and regulations and holding internal discussions, we will take appropriate action.
Please understand that this process may take some time. Thank you.」
The replies sent by the broadcasting stations were polite enough.
But it took a total of four days merely to receive those brief replies.
‘What do they mean, it might take time?’
Ju-won felt he could see straight through the thoughts of the broadcasting stations that had sent those replies.
‘Fuck. Have you people only been broadcasting for a day or two? This can't be the first time something like this has happened, so what is there to review or discuss?
You're just dragging things out until you've sucked up all the views you can!’
It was a reasonable suspicion.
For the thoughts of a first-year high school student driven into a corner, they were remarkably sensible.
‘Those fucking trash reporters. I want to go to the station, pour gasoline everywhere, and set it on fire.’
Ju-won felt like filling some internet forum with posts threatening terrorism.
Posts saying that he had planted bombs at the broadcasting station and everyone should run if they did not want to die.
Not that his mind had truly snapped enough to do something that insane...
But during those four days, while he burned inside from the riding school's student members mocking him, the record he could do nothing about spread like wildfire.
Unauthorized extracted video files, so-called GIF clips, were posted across every sort of community and message board.
Along with arguments over whether the footage was real.
For a certain extraordinary boy nicknamed the con artist, arguments over authenticity were nothing new.
People had become suspicious because of AI these days, and even without that, the things the extraordinary country boy did made ordinary people doubt their own eyes.
This argument became a hot topic on nearly every major community and social media platform.
And it made the student riders who had been mocking Ju-won even more excited.
They were teenagers at an age overflowing with the desire for recognition.
There was no way they would miss the chance to receive positive attention from countless people.
「I'm a student who goes to the same riding school! Here's proof in the photo below.
To get straight to the point, that GIF is real. I saw it in person at the scene. Onik was seriously fucking amazing! lol」
「I'm Kwon Yu-bin, a second-year student at ○○ High School. I ride at that school too, I hung out with Onik that day, and I saw it all clearly with my own eyes lolol
If you have questions, send me a DM! I'll answer people in order when I have time!」
「(Video link) 13:37 I'm the one who threw Onik the can for him to shoot with an arrow lol and I saw it in person too lololol holy fuck, it was absolutely insane and so damn fun lololololol I never imagined I'd see something like that in my life lololololol Jo Onik is seriously crazy lolololololol when you see him in person, you really wonder what the hell he is lololololololol」
「Onik! It's your big brother Ha-jun! Do you remember me? You were really cool that time! When are you coming to the riding school again? We had so much fun together! I'm sad you haven't contacted us!」
「The kid Onik saved is named Kim Ju-won, and his behavior and personality have always been kind of strange.
I don't know what the hell he did that day, but that normally gentle horse got completely pissed off and went crazy.
If it hadn't been for Onik, he would have been seriously hurt.」
「A photo of all of us at the riding school with our Onik that day♡ Want to know what happened? (Video link)」
「(Photo) (Photo) (Video) This is the Fall Treat bought by the kid who nearly fell off his horse that day! Sadly, Onik isn't here! He left early because he had something to do!」
「Oh, you don't know what a Fall Treat is? It's when someone who falls from a horse buys everyone a commemorative meal-」
With so many witnesses desperate for attention, suspicion that the footage might have been manipulated by AI quickly died down.
Since things had gone this far, blurring the original video alone would not change anything.
If anything, leaving it that way would only reinforce the idea that Kim Ju-won was petty.
In the end, Ju-won had no choice but to reverse his request.
Ju-won felt as if the entire world were pointing at him and snickering.
Everyone who passed him seemed to recognize him, and at school, he began to suspect that not only the students but even the teachers were whispering about him behind his back.
To make matters worse, there were two devoted subscribers of the young entertainer in Ju-won's class.
One was a guy who claimed he had been a fan of the entertainer since last summer vacation, and the other was a girl who said she had become a new fan after seeing this recent spectacle.
(There were several more subscribers who were not devoted fans. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the entire class subscribed to Onik.
After all, one of the people in the viral story was in their class. It was only natural for children who knew Ju-won to be curious.)
The bastard and the bitch who had hit it off made Ju-won's reputation at school worse with the age-appropriate cruelty of teenagers.
“Oh, the Petty King is here?”
“Our Princess Petty is sooooo beautiful today too~♪ Princess~ Relax your face~ It would be such a waste of that pretty face to keep frowning! Hahahahaha!”
The nasty nicknames Petty King and Princess Petty had arisen from the riding school student members' enthusiastic comments and social media activity.
He was the Petty King because his pettiness stood out, and Princess Petty because he had only screamed like a girl before being rescued like a princess.
Apparently, Onik was the prince who had saved a princess in danger.
Even some of the hard-line female students, who normally made a fuss whenever they heard anyone say someone acted like a girl and demanded that people stop using sexist language, were no exception.
When Ju-won was mocked, they only laughed and giggled along with the other children.
Why?
Was it because he was a boy?
Ju-won's teeth ground together.
Even children from other classes and other years would lower their voices and giggle among themselves whenever Ju-won passed by.
“Oh, that's him? What was he so embarrassed about?”
“It was funny how he just clung to the horse and screamed his head off. And then, at the end, he got carried like a piece of luggage in one hand by someone smaller than him.”
Whenever whispers like that pierced his ears, the best Ju-won could do was quicken his steps.
Ju-won's school life had become a hell filled with shame...
There was no way out of this hell.
Social media connected children from different schools far too easily.
And those connections became enormously powerful when used to torment someone.
For example, if a victim of bullying or school violence transferred to a school in another area to escape, the cruel group at the new school could receive a “loser handoff” through social media from the bullies at the old school.
「A new transfer student came to our school, and just looking at them, they have total loser vibes.
If anyone knows why this kid transferred here, leave a comment or DM me lol」
Such exchanges of information through so-called private accounts or secondary private accounts were even more lethal because they were not visible to outsiders.
Ju-won was especially vulnerable to such handoffs.
There was no guarantee that a school he transferred to would not have devoted subscribers of that con artist entertainer brat.
Ju-won's situation was surely already being actively relayed to an unspecified number of people outside the school through multiple private accounts.
Onik's devoted subscribers did not have good feelings toward Ju-won.
Ju-won remembered what people had poured into the comment section when the original video had briefly been blurred.
Fewer than half had been moderate enough to simply express disappointment after seeing Legal Hunter's comment.
The rest had been irritated, condemned Ju-won, or mocked him.
Put another way, nearly half had been moderate. For an internet broadcasting channel, that was a surprising proportion.
Of course, it was neither surprising nor comforting to Ju-won.
So transferring schools would not be an escape.
‘Not that Mom and Dad would ever allow me to transfer...’
If Ju-won said that he wanted to transfer to a school in another district, his parents would immediately ask this.
“Transfer? Are you crazy?”
Ju-won's school was a prestigious private school with a long history, located in the heart of the largest and best school district in the metropolitan city.
It was famous for its high rate of admission to SKY universities and for producing a stream of high scorers on the college entrance exam.
(It was an open secret that many teachers at this school belonged to a nationwide private-education cartel.
When a teacher got caught selling exam questions to outside parties, they were merely treated as someone who had been unlucky.)
To leave this place and transfer schools would mean walking away from the most highly regarded school in the very best school district.
Ju-won's parents would never allow it.
For the same reason, it was even harder to say that he did not want to go to the riding school anymore.
Building friendships with the “good friends” there was like a mission Ju-won absolutely had to accomplish.
Developing his skill as an equestrian was the task that came afterward.
‘I really hate it. It feels suffocating. So suffocating...’
Ju-won felt as though he had lost every place where he belonged.
School was a hell where the thorns of shameful words and looks stabbed at his heart whenever they pleased. The riding school went without saying.
Home? It had not been a comfortable place even before he had started kindergarten.
Whenever he faced his parents, he felt as though his organs were shrinking and his airway was tightening.
Even late at night, alone in his room with the door closed, he could not let down his guard.
He was anxious because he never knew when his parents might suddenly fling open the door and come in.
Locking the door was naturally not permitted.
If he locked it on his own, he would definitely hear something that made his heart drop at some point.
Like this.
「Rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle!」
After the sound of someone violently shaking the locked doorknob, an angry voice would follow as if by a set routine.
“Kim Ju-won! Why is the door locked? What are you doing in there?! Open it right now!”
When he opened the door with trembling hands, the real interrogation began.
One of the interrogations from the past remained in Ju-won's heart almost like trauma.
Ju-won remembered with painful clarity the questioning he had received when he was the same age as the young entertainer.
“Don't tell me... you did that?”
“...That?”
“Masturbation! Masturbation! Jacking off! Is that dirty thing what you were doing with the door locked?”
“N-no, I wasn't.”
“What do you mean, you weren't! It isn't enough that you did something filthy, now you're lying too?!”
His mother's manner as she pressed the middle-school-aged Ju-won had been fierce and sharp.
Ju-won still experienced flashbacks of that moment all the time.
Whenever one happened, his mother's piercing voice in his memory returned intact beside his ears.
“You must not start doing things like that in the first place! Didn't you hear what the pastor said? The more you engage in such obscene behavior, the more it becomes a habit and an addiction, and you lose self-control!
Then you'll get addicted to porn too, you won't be able to study, your health will be ruined, and eventually you'll even commit crimes!”
“...”
“Listen carefully! I'm saying this for your own good! Masturbation is like alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs!
Once you're addicted, it's hard to stop! The right answer is never to start in the first place! That's how you develop self-restraint too! Do you understand?”
“...Yes.”
“Why are you answering so quietly? Again. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
Though she went on about the pastor's words, Ju-won's mother was not especially devout as a Protestant.
The answer was obvious from the tithe that the senior pastor always shouted was so important.
Ju-won's mother and father reduced their tithe to only as much as was needed to keep up appearances.
In other words, they repeatedly lied to the pastor and church officials.
How much true faith could exist in the hearts of parents like that?
A heart that did not fear going to hell was closer to that of an atheist than a believer.
Ju-won knew that the reason his parents faithfully attended church every week was the same as the reason they sent him to the riding school.
The metropolitan city where Ju-won's family lived was considered an area where Protestantism was weak.
But in the wealthy neighborhoods, a few churches had formed large congregations.
They were traditionally social places where the established elite gathered and formed connections.
Good places for newcomers like Ju-won's family to become friendly with the local elite.
One of those places was a large historic church in a wealthy neighborhood.
Therefore, his mother's talk about the pastor's words had merely been an excuse.
If a caring teacher like Eun-jeong had been around Ju-won and heard this story, they would have taken it very seriously.
「This is far too oppressive... You can't suppress a child's autonomy to this extent...」
Parents with strong controlling tendencies wanted to keep their children as children forever, under their influence.
They wanted to perfectly control their child's every action and make the real child conform to the ideal child they held in their hearts.
That was why such parents could not tolerate their child locking a door.
The moment a child shut themselves in their room and locked the door, the parents lost control over the child inside.
...Parents with strong controlling tendencies even regarded this as a challenge to their authority.
That was why Ju-won still did not dare consider locking his bedroom door.
For Ju-won, the one time he could feel free had been when he rode a horse.
The time when the more effort he put in, the more results he received.
The time when he enjoyed making a creature larger than himself obey him.
The time when he controlled every situation, delighting in speed and refreshing freedom amid the wind splitting around him as he rode.
Now even that time was gone.
After experiencing a moment when a serious accident had nearly happened, he had become afraid to ride.
He had also come to hate going to the riding school itself.
Even skilled, experienced riders sometimes could not bring themselves to mount a saddle for some time after suffering a harsh fall.
Ju-won had not actually fallen, but the fear he had felt then had been much worse than during the several real falls he had experienced before.
A horse had never been that angry.
‘I want to die.’
A dark impulse swelled larger in Ju-won's chest day by day. His heart was like a pressure cooker whose pressure rose every day.
At that moment, there was only one tiny vent through which the steam of sorrow and resentment could escape from the pressure cooker inside him.
#
When people are told not to do something, they want to do it even more.
Ju-won could not lock his door, but when he was alone in his room, he frequently committed a small act of rebellion.
That rebellion was none other than watching Onik's broadcasts.
Committing this rebellion required meticulous preparation.
‘First, turn on an online lecture on the computer...’
The online lecture instructor on the large monitor was a decoy who would first catch his parents' eyes if the bedroom door opened.
He muted the lecture video and used its subtitle function.
If they questioned why he had muted it, all he had to say was that he did not want to disturb his parents while they rested.
After placing the decoy first, he propped his smartphone against the inside of the bookshelf facing the door.
Then he put an open-ear earbud paired to the smartphone only in the ear facing away from the door and held a Bluetooth remote paired to the phone in his hand.
The remote's buttons were set to play, pause, and turn off the screen.
It was safe to watch the broadcast by turning his eyes to the side in this state.
The door was in the same direction, and his ear canal was not blocked, so he could react quickly in an emergency.
If his parents came in, he could naturally remove the earbud while pretending to scratch his left ear.
He had practiced often while imagining the real situation.
Sliding the removed earbud into his pants pocket was one continuous motion.
His right hand holding the mini remote rested on the desk as though it held a pen.
From the middle of his forearm onward, it was hidden by the bookshelf, so there was no risk of his parents seeing it.
When the door opened, he only needed to turn off the screen and put the remote into his pencil case.
Then he would naturally grip his pen to complete the motion.
‘...What kind of broadcast is that con artist Jo Onik putting on today?’
Today was Christmas Eve. There would surely be some special broadcast.
Naturally, Ju-won had not first begun watching Onik's broadcasts because he was interested in the broadcasts themselves.
Ju-won could not forgive the young entertainer or the boy's old business partner.
It felt as though he could only relieve some of his anger by disliking every video and leaving hateful comments.
It would be unfair if he alone had to suffer...
On the other hand, he also harbored malice toward Onik's subscribers.
He wanted to hurt the people who had insulted and criticized Ju-won during the blurring incident with cruel words.
When Ju-won opened the YouTube app, he noticed a notification.
It said someone had replied to a hateful comment he had posted before.
The reply was brief and powerful.
「No mom?」
Clench.
The oppressed high school student unknowingly squeezed his fist tight.
Footnotes:
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
