WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Chen
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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈
Chapter 99: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (99)
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#99.
Christmas Eve. In the end, Onik's archery session turned into an effort to shoot every alien and Santa Claus in sight.
Operation Protect Santa Claus had abruptly become Operation Rescue the Reindeer from an Arctic Gulag.
“Thunk!”
Each time the extraordinary boy smoothly released the bowstring, an arrow struck the target without fail.
Santa Claus, whether he was a communist or a lackey of the capitalists, died first. Then the crudely drawn UFOs were shot down one after another.
His accuracy was one hundred percent.
After shooting the closer targets first, the boy explained the initial results.
“Now then. I shot the targets at twenty-five and fifty meters. Did you see the difference between a long arrow and a pyeonjeon?
“The pyeonjeon actually sank in less deeply, right? It was also stuck at a slightly different angle.”
“What? No! It isn't because I shot badly! That's just how pyeonjeon arrows are! At close range, they're worse than long arrows!”
“You use an arrow guide to shoot a pyeonjeon, and it's short, so it wobbles more than a long arrow when it first starts flying!
“And because the shaft is short, it takes longer for it to settle into stable flight! If it hits the target before that happens, it can't show its real power!”
“The higher the draw weight of the bow, the farther it needs to fly before it stabilizes! The bow I'm using now is very powerful, so if you want to use a pyeonjeon properly, you need at least sixty or seventy meters!”
The many-talented little fraudster proved his words with the shots that followed.
From the seventy-five-meter target onward, the pyeonjeon's penetration surpassed that of the long arrow, and the gap steadily widened with distance.
The viewers found the result fascinating and chatted about how Koreans really were a people specialized in long-range damage dealing.
Ju-won marveled at the accuracy that ignored distance.
‘He really is a good shot. For a fraud, he's talented at far too many things.’
It was especially striking that every shot at Santa Claus landed as a headshot.
Perhaps that pitiful viewer who had insisted that Communist Santa Claus needed to die was now getting more than enough vicarious satisfaction from this sight...
Speak of the devil: that viewer sent another donation.
“Let's kill Santa. Santa is my enemy. I was good. I was good, but that rude Santa didn't give me a present...”
He did not seem very good, actually. In every sense, he was hopelessly unfit to be called a decent person.
Ju-won had started watching midway through the broadcast, so he did not know that this archery session had begun simply to pass the time while meat cooked in the oven.
After sending every Santa Claus in the pictures to the next world, Onik put away his bow and arrows and moved to the Guest Rest Pavilion.
“Let me check on the meat for a moment!”
The wood-fired oven installed in the Guest Rest Pavilion had a very old-fashioned appearance.
After receiving a tip from a viewer, he had picked it up from an antique shop. It was an item used during the Japanese colonial era.
Crackling wood accompanied the royal roast cooking inside.
It was one of the Christmas dishes from that detestable island nation, Britain.
Onik opened the lid, pulled out the tray, and evenly basted the bacon-wrapped goose with juices and fat.
“Since this dish roasts three birds at once, you need to pay attention to it throughout the cooking!
“If you don't brush it with juices and fat regularly, the outside gets dry and crumbly, and it won't taste good. That's why I wrapped it in bacon, too. It adds fragrance and seasoning as well.”
Inside the goose was a chicken, and inside the chicken was a pheasant.
Traditionally, the dish was supposed to use a turkey instead of a goose. But turkeys were too large and did not taste as good, so people often substituted other birds, such as goose or duck.
“British people are really greedy, aren't they? Trying to roast and eat three birds in one go.
“Well, if they weren't greedy, they wouldn't have built something like the British Empire in the first place...
“Huh? Detestable island nation? Ah, don't say such bad things. People in Britain today are nice. Mm, umm, probably.”
Onik pushed a meat thermometer deep inside to check the internal temperature, then nodded.
“It needs to cook a little longer. If we want it ready by dinner, I should start preparing the other dishes soon!”
The other dishes were a log-shaped Bûche de Noël cake, German Kartoffelklöße potato dumplings, traditional japchae, and spicy dakgaejang.
One British dish. One French dish. One German dish. Two Korean dishes.
It was a combination with no sense of culinary roots at all...
Still, it was not especially strange on Onik's broadcasts, where he often prepared meals for the village elders.
Many elderly people in the aging village said sweet food ruined one's appetite, or that cake was a snack and could never count as a meal.
Three or four out of every ten elders also had to manage their blood sugar.
Even as he busily worked, Onik never stopped talking.
“There are lots of elders with diabetes in our village, so I'm going to make the cake as light as I can!
“I'll use fresh cream! Add vanilla extract, a little sugar, and allulose, then whip it up! I'll add strawberry topping to the filling to bring the fat content down even more!”
While Onik worked diligently, the Truffle Candy members sat in a circle and picked the meat from chickens that had been simmered in a cauldron.
Their gentle conversation and playful laughter mingled with the sound of burning wood like background noise.
To Ju-won, everything he saw and heard felt exceedingly warm.
The burdened high school student thought about the dinner he would have that evening.
‘...Could I skip the Christmas Eve event?’
Ju-won's parents were not devout Christians, but they never missed church events on special days like this.
The entire purpose of attending church was to socialize with the upper class. How could they miss the most festive event of the year?
‘I've always been uncomfortable every time I went...’
The Christmas Eve celebration at the large church, deeply rooted in this region, was held like a lively festival.
But Ju-won had never enjoyed that festival, not even once.
Ju-won's parents were the first problem.
Ju-won's parents firmly believed that there were ranks among people, and they worked hard to please those with higher social standing in the church community.
To elevate the other person, they often put themselves down in the process.
Ju-won's parents seemed to consider that ordinary courtesy and humility.
As their child, Ju-won had to demonstrate that same courtesy and humility alongside them.
Ju-won had to draw compliments from the other person's lips, compliments like this.
“Oh my. Your child is so quiet and polite. You two raised him very well.”
Ju-won hated it.
Every time it happened, it felt as though chunks of Ju-won's self-esteem were being shaved away.
It was especially bad when the other family had children around Ju-won's age or younger.
If their eyes met, the heat of humiliation seemed to run through every blood vessel in Ju-won's body...
The students in the church small group that Ju-won had to spend time with were also a problem.
They were the church version of the upper-class student riders at the equestrian center.
The members of those small groups, sometimes called cells or shepherding groups, were nominally all equal. In reality, though, certain members were more equal than others.
That was only natural.
They were social gatherings for the children of upper-class families based in a particular area.
Would it not be stranger if the parents' hierarchy had no effect on the hierarchy among their children?
Ju-won did not want to go to a place like that.
The church people would have prepared all kinds of food, but he would probably feel indigestion no matter what he ate.
Just as he had at every event attended year after year.
Ju-won let himself entertain a hopeful fantasy.
‘I'm in high school now... Maybe if I explain that I need to study, I can get out of it.’
Student equestrian athletes usually only maintained the minimum grades required to compete.
But Ju-won's parents were not satisfied with what was ordinary.
They thought their child was not particularly bright, yet still wanted Ju-won to earn grades slightly above the grade average. They held that contradiction within themselves.
Ju-won already interacted regularly with the students in the church small group.
Skipping one day's event would not mean losing the chance to build relationships.
So if Ju-won used studying as an excuse, perhaps he could avoid the event...
Ju-won unconsciously rubbed his stomach.
The closer dinner came, the more stress made his insides feel as though they were tightening.
Meanwhile, beyond the smartphone screen, the Truffle Candy members picked up the camera after pouring the deboned chicken meat back into the cauldron.
If it simmered until dinner, the meat would become tender enough for even elders with sparse teeth to eat easily.
“Onik! Are you almost done?”
At Sera's gentle question, Onik immediately nodded.
“Yes! For the japchae, I just need to boil the pheasant later and mix it in at dinner. The potato dumplings have all been kneaded and shaped, so they'll be ready after boiling for around twenty minutes before the meal!
“For the cake, I just need to make the bark pattern and put it in the refrigerator! Then we can wait a couple of hours and eat it for dessert!”
A Bûche de Noël needed to be refrigerated immediately after it was made so it could hold its shape.
Otherwise, the cream and ganache would lose their form and collapse.
The pheasant japchae was made from a recipe in Eumsik Dimibang, a culinary book the province was seeking to have registered as World Cultural Heritage.
Unlike modern japchae, it did not contain glass noodles.
Originally, this was the real japchae.
If people from the Joseon era saw modern japchae, they would say, “What kind of poor man's japchae is this?”
Sera smiled sweetly and spoke kindly.
“Really? Then hurry up and finish! We all have somewhere to go before dinner!”
“Huh? Go somewhere? Where?”
“That's a secret!”
“...???”
Even while his hands blurred with movement, Onik wore a puzzled expression.
He truly looked as though no one had given him the slightest hint.
After putting the finished cake into the refrigerator, Onik was immediately seized by both arms by Yesul and Mina.
Before him, Sorin held up a black blindfold with a mischievous smile.
“Now, our Onik. Let's put on the blindfold first!”
“...No, really, what is this?”
The Truffle Candy members giggled as they covered the boy's eyes, then put Bluetooth headphones over his ears with music playing through them.
While Sera quietly waved a hand before the blindfold, Sorin asked Onik as if checking.
“Onik, can you hear your big sis? If you can, could you answer?”
“Uh, yes. I can hear you.”
“Oh no. Mina, we need to turn up the volume. How are his ears this sharp?”
“...”
With his sight and hearing blocked, Onik soon lost most of his sense of smell as well.
Sorin and Sera rolled up tissues and pushed them into his nostrils.
Standing stiffly upright, Onik spoke through his stuffed nose in bewilderment.
“I don't know what's going on, but... do we really have to go this far...?”
It was not a question he expected answered. He would not hear an answer anyway.
Temporarily blind and deaf, the boy walked wherever the Truffle Candy members led him.
Every step he took was cautious. No matter how extraordinary he was, he could not display that extraordinariness in a state like this.
Of course, he possessed a sense of position that rivaled a highly precise inertial navigation system.
Onik also remembered the village landmarks and the internal layouts of buildings in high resolution.
But if he trusted that and moved recklessly, he might trip over something that had not been there before. So he had no choice but to be careful.
(There was no danger of colliding with another person.
His sense for detecting the presence of something he could kill remained alive even with his eyes covered and his ears and nose blocked.)
Holding the camera, Sorin playfully grumbled.
“Goodness... It isn't easy to give our Onik a surprise gift. He's just too amazing.”
Sera laughed in agreement.
Then Sera looked at the screen and explained the situation to the viewers.
“Viewers, you've been wondering what this is about, right? As you just heard, we have a Christmas present that will surprise Onik.
“His Boss prepared it. That's why he hasn't appeared on the broadcast much lately. He was busy looking for the best gift he could find.”
Sorin chuckled happily and added,
“Onik's hearing is incredibly sharp, and his nose is strangely good, you know?
“So we thought that if we left him alone, he might notice just from the sound and smell of an unfamiliar car coming in.”
The camera swayed with their cheerful steps.
The familiar village road passed slowly by in a flowing landscape.
After everyone walked and walked together, they finally arrived at Legal Hunter's barn.
Ju-won had been watching with equal parts jealousy and envy. When the identity of the present finally appeared, he was deeply shocked.
A slender horse stood inside the barn!
‘...That's a Thoroughbred?!’
The burdened high school student's shock was not simple surprise.
The jealousy that had built within Ju-won swelled enormously in an instant, opening up an old wound in his heart.
Through that gap burst a torrent of pent-up, resentful sorrow and inferiority.
Caught in the flood of negative emotions, Ju-won's hands trembled faintly.
‘Even I don't have a horse of my own, and I'm trying to enter competitions... I've worked so hard to get assigned a horse that suits me...’
Equestrian riding carried great meaning in Ju-won's life.
It was not something Ju-won had started by choice, but until only three months ago, riding had been the one thing in his stifling daily life that gave him a sense of achievement and freedom.
Ju-won was afraid of riding now, but he believed it was a fear he would eventually overcome.
No, that was wrong.
It was a fear Ju-won absolutely had to overcome.
If he could not, if he could not reclaim those precious moments when he ran as his heart wished and cut through the high wind, feeling free...
Ju-won would soon suffocate to death.
Whether Ju-won was crushed beneath dark emotions or not, the warm mood continued in the bright space beyond the screen.
“One, two, three!”
The Truffle Candy members counted to three with sweet smiles, restoring all of the extraordinary boy's senses at once.
They removed the headphones, lifted the blindfold, and pulled out the tissues that had blocked his nose with a quick, “Yoink!”
“Surprise! A special gift for good little Onik from Santa Boss!”
Sera and Sorin stood on either side in front of the boy and spread their arms wide.
It was a gesture meant to direct attention toward Legal Hunter, who had been posing in front of the barn.
Meanwhile, Yesul and Mina threw the tissues that had blocked Onik's nose into one corner of the barn with cries of, “Eww, gross!”
Later, when they cleaned out the straw on the floor, the tissues would go into the traditional stove hearth with it.
“...Huh?”
Perhaps because he saw something he had never expected the instant his senses returned, Onik wore a blank expression for once.
Even by ordinary standards, his reaction was delayed by two or three beats. The astonishing quickness he usually displayed was nowhere to be found.
His sixth sense for the presence of things he could kill had warned the stuffed-nosed boy, blind and deaf beneath the blindfold, that a large life-form was there.
But he had never expected that life-form to be a slender retired racehorse.
It was even harder to imagine that the life-form was a present prepared for him.
Legal Hunter, dressed as Santa Claus but looking more like a bandit disguised as Santa, was pleased by Onik's reaction.
“Ha ha ha! Merry Christmas, Onik!”
“Boss? What is...?”
Onik trailed off, still unable to escape his surprise.
Ordinarily, this would have been the part where things became truly heartwarming. Unfortunately, Onik was a frightening boy who harbored strange phenomena, extraordinary powers, disorder, and spirits.
“Snort, snort, snrrt...!”
Storm Thunder had already been uneasy at the presence of something frightening that was slowly drawing near in this unfamiliar environment.
The moment all of the boy's senses caught hold of it...
The moment, in other words, that the boy more clearly and vividly recognized something he could kill, the retired racehorse's primal fear swelled with violent speed.
The frightened horse pawed at the ground and backed away, causing the barrier post where its lead rope was fastened to rattle loudly.
If left like this, an accident would happen.
Legal Hunter's barn was an old structure that had been empty for decades.
“Ah!”
Coming to his senses a moment late, Onik quickly climbed over the barrier and grabbed the lead rope.
Startled, Thunderbolt shook its head wildly to avoid him, but it could not evade the extraordinary boy's blurred Seizing Hand Technique.
The horse caught firmly in the boy's powerful grip had its pupils dilate in an instant.
It was a reflex meant to take in more light and visual information, so it could flee from predators when faced with danger.
Its flared nostrils followed the same instinct.
To take in more oxygen. To unleash explosive strength.
In other words, it was a dangerous situation.
Watching through the screen, Ju-won frowned.
‘...It’s dangerous to hold it like that, isn't it? What if he gets bitten?
‘Does that fraud have no basic knowledge about horses? No, he definitely wasn't that unskilled when I saw him at the equestrian center.’
The high school student with a shadowed life was caught in contradictory feelings.
Part of Ju-won spitefully hoped an accident really would happen. Another part worried about the fraudulent boy.
It left Ju-won confused and flustered.
‘Worried? About him? Why would I be?’
Ju-won could not understand himself.
While the shadowed high school student was confused, the boy beyond the screen remained calm and looked back at his older business partner.
It was a calmness displayed while he alone bore the full strength of the horse's body.
“Boss! What's this one's name?”
A frightened horse. A boy trying to calm it.
The boy's feet slowly scraped backward, but considering the difference in their sizes, he was holding on so easily that it was beyond astonishing and made the viewer doubt their own eyes.
The frightened horse looked as if it were performing pantomime.
The same thing had happened at the equestrian center before. Startled by the familiar situation, Santa Hunter stammered.
“Th-Thunder... Thunderbolt. The name is Thunderbolt.”
It was a slip of the tongue made in his haste. The same mistake he had made before the horse trainer.
Legal Hunter did not realize that he had made a mistake.
“It's called Thunderbolt? Thunderbolt. That's a good name.”
The boy repeated it as if speaking to himself, then smiled brightly.
He raised his free hand before the frightened horse's nose.
It was a gentle movement like a single motion from a master of tai chi.
“It's okay. It's okay, Thunderbolt. I won't hurt you. No one here will hurt you.
“There's nothing dangerous here. So calm down. All right? You're a good one, aren't you?”
Warm words delivered gently and kindly by the frightening boy.
Only the sound and tone reached the horse, but they still had an effect.
There was one more thing.
There was one major difference between the boy now and when he had calmed Yeon-ri, the training horse.
It was the trauma impressed into his unconscious when he collapsed before Eun-jeong.
The beneficial effect of that trauma did not occur only when he dealt with people.
“...Snort?”
The retired racehorse felt its primal fear of the frightening boy rapidly receding.
The pace at which it receded exactly matched the pace at which the retired racehorse settled in the boy's heart as a meaningful present from someone precious to him on a special day.
The psychological barrier created by trauma separated things he could kill into two kinds.
One. Things he could kill, and whose deaths would bring him joy.
The other. Things he could kill, but whose loss would hurt him more than it pleased him.
For the latter, the trauma's psychological barrier restrained the writhing of the dark red aberration.
The more precious the target, the stronger the restraint.
At first, Onik had merely been dumbfounded by the unexpected situation and gift.
But the emotion that arrived a little late made his eyes sting.
It was a moment likely to remain a memory for the rest of his life. The more moved he felt, the more precious Thunderbolt became to him.
Killing Thunderbolt would be like splashing blood across this warm, beautiful memory.
It would also bring disappointment and sadness to the precious people who had prepared the surprise event for him.
...Perhaps people who were deeply disappointed would distance themselves from the boy. Perhaps he would lose precious people that way.
That could not happen. He did not want that.
Even imagining it was terrifying. That was what Onik thought.
For a boy who was lonely because he could not confide his deepest secret in anyone, and who had carried a sense of lack throughout his growing years, warm moments like this were terribly precious.
So the boy's gaze upon the retired racehorse was as soft as late spring sunlight.
Sunlight that gently opened the buds of magnolias and cherry blossoms.
“It's okay, it's okay. You don't need to be scared. I won't hurt you. I'll protect you instead.
“Trust me, Thunderbolt. I think we can become good friends from now on...”
As the fear ebbed and the kindness continued, the racehorse's ragged breathing gradually slowed.
“Snrrt...”
Since it was not dealing with a person, there was a limit to how much the frightening aura around the boy could diminish.
Only the horse in question could feel that aura.
Still, it gave the retired racehorse enough room to understand the situation.
Enough room to understand that the thing which had become much less frightening than before was not hostile to it, but kind.
The horse stopped backing away and flared its nostrils.
It was not the flare of labored breathing. It was a cautious, searching flare.
Its tail was still tucked between its legs, but it licked and curled back its upper lip. Its attitude toward the boy had clearly changed.
If one interpreted the frightened horse's body language, it meant roughly this.
“I'm, I'm still scared of you, okay? But I've surrendered to you, okay? Surrendered. I've surrendered.
“I'm lower than you in the hierarchy. So please don't hurt me. I can trust you, right? I'll trust you? Okay?”
After cautiously smelling him, the horse recognized that the hand the boy had held out was not a threat.
The frightening boy smiled gently and stroked the horse's withers and mane.
Ju-won, watching, was dumbfounded.
‘He calmed down a horse that was that frightened so quickly? Anyone could see that this was the kind of situation where an accident should happen! This is a scam!’
It was the defeat of common sense, and Ju-won's defeat.
Since Ju-won did not know the full circumstances, it looked to him as though the extraordinary boy had even been born with an innate affinity for horses and a natural talent for handling them.
(Ju-won did not consider why the horse had been frightened in the first place.)
Thus, Ju-won's worry for the boy vanished in an instant.
Jealousy, envy, a sense of defeat, and deprivation filled all the remaining space in Ju-won's heart.
‘...Good for you. Really.’
Beyond the screen, after the crisis passed, warm smiles spread once more.
Ju-won's gaze fixed on Onik's smile among them.
At that moment, pure happiness bloomed on the rural boy's face like a flower.
Ju-won gritted his teeth.
‘This world is unfair. He just doesn't have parents. Other than that, he really has everything. He shouldn't be allowed to have that much...’
Ju-won envied Onik.
Ju-won envied him so much.
Sinking deeply into dark feelings, Ju-won had become just as deeply immersed in the happiness of the person beyond the screen. Because of that, Ju-won noticed far too late the presence of someone approaching outside the bedroom door.
“Click!”
The door flew open without a single knock.
It was another sudden attack from a mother who always suspected her child.
Ju-won jolted like a child having a fit. Ju-won's heart dropped with a clatter.
Footnotes:
“Horse in question” preserves a Korean joke that replaces “person” in the expression “the person concerned” with “horse.”
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