The Unbelievers Chapter 10

“…What on earth are you talking about?”

“Your father’s family is not the kind of ordinary family you think it is. Far from ordinary, it might be a bit much to put it this way, but they are people who are not in their right minds.”

“You are sending me to people who are not in their right minds?”

Without even giving a glance to Eunseong, who could not understand a word he was saying, his father was shuddering as if the mere thought of his own family made his skin crawl.

“That is why I am sending you. So that those people who are not in their right minds cannot harm you.”

“What does that mean? You have to speak so I can understand for me to actually understand!”

“Your uncle is outside, right?”

His father glanced back at the closed room door, even though the man was not visible.

The man with looks that made it hard to believe he shared blood with his father would still be standing in someone else’s living room with his shoes on.

“I heard my uncle passed away a month ago. He was your uncle’s father, so he would be your great-uncle. That man helped your mother and me a lot. If it is Yoo Siun, he will follow his father’s dying wishes and protect you. They are the only sane people in that family. Our contact was cut off due to various circumstances… anyway, yes, it might actually be better to be there. Rather, that is better.”

He was convincing himself with his own words as he puffed out clouds of smoke. He kept nodding his head as if to persuade himself. Before long, his father stubbed out the shrunken cigarette against the windowsill and turned around. His face, having made the decision, looked much lighter as if he had unburdened a heavy load.

“There were so many things our Eunseong wanted to do all this time, right? You said you wanted to go on a trip to Europe, and what was it, you wanted a new cell phone too. Right?”

“…”

“Now you do not need to do things like part-time jobs, you can have everything you want, and you can do everything you want to do.”

His father’s rambling—saying it was different from his own situation where he could not even send him to an academy, let alone college—sounded as if he was relieved to be sending an extra mouth from a poor house off to be adopted by a wealthy family.

“I do not really know what you are saying. Why do I have to go? Why are you trying to send me? I am at an age where I can live by my own strength too!”

“They need you because it is a family where sons are scarce. They need a son, a son. An heir.”

“What does that mean? You said you were a son of that house too, Dad! Then what about you? Why did you run away from the family in the first place?”

“I was removed from the family register long ago anyway. They do not need me; they need you.”

The look in his father’s eyes seemed very sad. Guilt, a sense of loathing that Eunseong could not understand, and various emotions toward the sickening family he had to flee from were intricately intertwined.

“What if I say I will not follow my uncle? What if I say I do not want to go? What happens if I say I will not be something like an heir?”

“I ran away to prevent them from making you do that. If we run, they will just find us again. Rather than being found by the other bastards in the family, it is better to be in Siun’s hands. Siun is an unbeliever. Your uncle is a realistic person.”

An unbeliever…?

Eunseong understood less and less. What was he an unbeliever of, what on earth were they not going to make him do, and what did his uncle being a realistic person have to do with him?

His father was describing his family as some suspicious group shrouded in secrets that one would only see in movies.

“A realistic person made my dad kneel and prostrate himself before him? Is that normal? In front of someone way younger than my dad?!”

The scene of his father kneeling before him was so shocking that every time his father evaluated the uncle positively, a fire of rage surged inside Eunseong.

“Siun is younger, but his rank is higher than mine since I was kicked out of the family register. In our family, that is the etiquette.”

Seeing him speak as if kneeling and prostrating oneself to beg was natural made him look even more abnormal.

“Now, pack your bags. No, throw it all away. Tell him to buy you everything new—good things, expensive things. Forget this life you lived with your father and be born again. Your uncle will help you. Listen to him well. Okay?”

While sending Eunseong to the family he said he fled because they were not normal, his father told him not to keep anything shabby from this house and to forget—as if telling him to forget his father as well. No matter how much he hated and disliked his father, even though he was a father he had intended to abandon, he had never dreamed of a severance in this manner.

“I am not going. I will not go.”

“If you do not go, you will be dragged away in a much worse way. They will try to force you to be the heir. If that happens…”

His father squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head while imagining something terrible.

“Siun came looking for us because he was worried about that. Listen to your father. This is the best way. Or are you going to keep living while getting beaten every day as a vent for your drunk father? Do you want to live like that? Is that the life you want?”

“…”

The words that he had intended to abandon him before that happened lingered in his choked throat. His father’s eyeballs were burning red. The father who had lived while abandoning and turning his back on everything to keep him from becoming the heir of that family; whenever he got drunk and lost his reason, he would recall what he had given up and pour that resentment onto Eunseong, who had made him abandon it.

Realizing that the violence his father had inflicted on him was the resentment of being forced to turn his back on his family, Eunseong’s back froze cold.

“You are pathetic, seriously… Dad, you are really pathetic.”

“…Yeah, your father is this pathetic, so go to the person who will raise you well.”

“…”

He hated his father’s shallow inner self, and he even hated that such a man was his biological father. Yet, because he was so pathetic, Eunseong felt sorry for him. Tears welled up blurrily.

He had run away with him to protect him, but then he resented him while longing for the things he had to give up because of him. Sometimes he did not stop at using violence but criticized him as being filthy, and even insulted his mother, calling it dirty blood.

Realizing that the reason for the violence his father had exerted was so shallow and heartless, he felt his complicated mind settle into a calm order. No, it was a sensation of cooling down chillingly.

Eunseong rubbed the tears falling down his cheeks roughly with the back of his hand.

They stood for a long time in a heavy silence without looking at each other until Eunseong turned away first. He stepped out of the master bedroom.

His uncle was standing silently in that same spot, with both hands shoved into his suit pants pockets. His shoes were still on.

Eunseong entered his own room without even pretending to see him. He did not have a large bag suitable for packing. He opened his school backpack and packed enough for maybe a three-day trip. In the deepest part of the bag, he stuffed the money he had saved up until now. He took out the half-torn wedding photo of his mother hidden at the very back of his desk drawer. After looking at his mother with longing, he carefully tucked it between the pages of a book and put it in his bag.

Shouldering the heavy bag, Eunseong left the room.

“Shall we head out now?”

“…”

His uncle asked, but Eunseong only glanced at him and did not answer. His father was cleaning up the liquor bottles rolling around the house, as if the reason to keep drinking had vanished now that Eunseong was leaving this house.

Eunseong stared blankly at his father’s back and then left the house without even saying goodbye.

The narrow stairs of the multi-unit villa felt even more cramped because several of the uncle’s subordinates—who were supposedly high-ranking people in some grand family—were standing there.

They made way for Eunseong. The man standing at the very bottom let Eunseong out of the gate first and followed behind. He walked a few steps ahead and opened the rear door of a black sedan.

“You may board here.”

Eunseong gave the man’s face a single look but did not get into the car and passed right by him. He walked past the cars parked in the alleyway one by one.

Eunseong had no desire to follow the uncle he met for the first time today, and he had even less desire to live with his father. On the contrary, while it had felt somewhat uncomfortable to run away and leave his incompetent father, this was actually a relief. If the reason for all the pathetic things his father had done all this time was him, then for Eunseong, it was a thankful thing that he was given a justification to abandon his father. Now he could severance ties with his father lightheartedly without leaving any lingering guilt.

Regardless of what his father and uncle did, he walked while carrying the bag that weighed heavily on his shoulders, and the sedan, which was quiet even in its engine noise, slowly followed Eunseong’s pace.

Eunseong, who had been walking while pretending not to see it with his hands gripping the heavy bag straps, turned his head.

“…”

“…”

The handsome man, whom it was hard to believe was a blood relative of his father, was sitting in the back seat of the sedan. The leather seats visible inside the car looked very luxurious.

He sent him a warning look to stop following and quickened his pace again. Nevertheless, because the car followed at a speed similar to his walking pace, Eunseong had to stop again.

When Eunseong stopped walking, the car also stopped moving. His uncle, who had been sitting with his arm leaning on the rear window, lifted his cold eyes.

“Are you angry because I entered your house with my shoes on earlier?”

“…”

“Or did it make you feel bad that your father was kneeling before me?”

He asked in a tone clearly meant for handling a child. He was not guessing Eunseong’s heart at all. Those two things could be reasons, but they were extremely superficial.

“How do I know who you are to follow you? How am I supposed to know if you are a cousin or an uncle? Do you think I will just believe everything if you say so? Am I an idiot?”