The Unbelievers Chapter 17

“Mister, do you happen to know this saying?”

“Yes.”

“My dad told me something about Mom once when he was drunk. He said that when he first saw her, it was a moment where beauty was superior to everything else.”

“Oscar Wilde.”

“Pardon?”

“It is a quote by a man named Oscar Wilde. Aesthetics are higher than ethics.”

“…Ah, so it was a quote. I thought my dad made it up all this time.”

He stared intently at Eunseong as if confirming what it meant for aesthetics to be higher than ethics.

“That’s kind of cool. Knowing exactly who said it right away.”

“You learn it all once you go to university.”

“I might not even be able to go to university. I’m really bad at it, studying. To the point where getting into a school in Seoul would be tough.”

“Hmm…”

Yoo Siun fell into deep thought and groaned at the boldness of confessing his poor academic skills without a hint of hesitation.

“Since you said I don’t have to be an heir or anything, doesn’t that mean I don’t have to go to university?”

“Everyone else goes, so is there a reason for you not to go?”

“I told you, I can’t. It’s not something you can do just because you want to. Can’t you just give me whatever inheritance I’m supposed to get in advance? I want to live while running a small cafe or something. And raise a big dog.”

“If studying is hard, do you want to get a tutor?”

Yoo Siun ignored Eunseong’s words about wanting to receive his inheritance early to start a small cafe and asked as if he hadn’t heard.

“Why would you do something for me that even my own father doesn’t do?”

“…Because we are relatives?”

The man ignored Eunseong’s persistent gaze, perhaps considering his own answer meager even as he said it. His coffee was nearing the bottom of the cup.

“I should head out now.”

Yoo Siun turned around holding his empty coffee cup. He set the cup down in the sink. Turning back after grabbing his phone from the island table, Yoo Siun flinched and froze in his tracks.

Eunseong, holding his own empty cup, had somehow approached right behind him. Eunseong looked up at the startled Yoo Siun.

“…”

“…”

As if holding his breath, his chest, which had inflated for a second, remained frozen like that. This seemed like the exact opposite of the situations where Choi Jungeon would pull pranks, play tricks, and make threats just to touch him somehow. Yoo Siun remained in a rigid posture, trying his best not to have any contact with Eunseong.

Eunseong set his finished coffee cup down in the sink with a gentle motion. Eunseong’s arm brushed against the man’s jacket sleeve.

“Should I do the dishes?”

“…”

Yoo Siun didn’t answer and shook his head. It was a rigid movement, as if he were horrified by seeing a patient with a contagious disease. Eunseong, who had approached nonchalantly, stepped back just as nonchalantly. Only after Eunseong moved away to a suitable distance did Yoo Siun finally let out a breath.

“…Am I dirty?”

“…”

“Why are you even holding your breath? Do I smell?”

Eunseong suddenly pulled up his pajama top. He sniffed himself. His flat white stomach and navel were exposed. Yoo Siun turned his gaze far away like a person who had seen something they shouldn’t have.

“…I have mysophobia, that is why.”

He muttered in embarrassment.

“Is it so bad that if a person touches you, it feels as loathsome as an insect touching you?”

“To put it a bit harshly, yes. It feels like that.”

“You aren’t only like that with me, right?”

“It isn’t only with you…”

“Then that’s fine. I was about to feel bad, but… if that’s the case, whatever. Since you say you hate everyone else too.”

Eunseong had actually started to feel rotten, but his unpleasant mood cleared up the moment the man explained it was a mysophobia applied equally to everyone and not just him. To think he would turn that rigid just because a person stood within reach. It seemed his mysophobia was quite severe.

Yoo Siun did seem to have a bit of a finicky personality just from the way he brewed coffee. Even when he came to his father’s house, he had been wearing shoes as if it were only natural. When he was dragging him away, he had only grabbed the bag abruptly to avoid body contact. If it was because of mysophobia, it was understandable.

“Have a good day at work.”

Eunseong bowed his head to the frozen man and turned away.

∞ ∞ ∞

Eunseong transferred schools. He was a senior, and it was a time leading into final exams and summer vacation in a few weeks. It wasn’t an atmosphere that welcomed Eunseong, who transferred at such a time, very warmly. Suspicious eyes, assuming he had been subject to a forced transfer, were wary of him.

Eunseong didn’t care either way. As long as there were no guys like Choi Jungeon, it was fine. It seemed there were no crazy kids like Choi Jungeon in the private high school attended by children from wealthy families, but he did not let his guard down.

The student sitting next to him and the class president, who said he would help Eunseong adjust, asked a few formal questions. They only relaxed their watchful tension after finding out Eunseong’s grades were nothing special.

“But the Suneung isn’t far off, so why did you transfer? My mom looked into it and said it wasn’t a forced transfer or anything.”

“…”

“My mom is the president of the parents’ association. She’s the one who told me first that someone was transferring in.”

Despite having violated his privacy, the president spoke as if it were no big deal.

“Because I moved from far away.”

“You went to an arts high school, didn’t you? Are you in the theater and film department? Or the modeling department?”

“No, I just went to a regular high school.”

Eunseong looked at the president with an expression asking what kind of nonsense he was talking out of the blue.

“Ah, I see. I thought kids who look like you went to arts high schools.”

“…Kids like me?”

“It’s my first time seeing someone look this good in our school uniform. The color is so damn tacky that it usually doesn’t look good on anyone.”

The class president, who had taken someone else’s seat, said while resting his chin on Eunseong’s desk. Eunseong pulled his books and pencil case out of his bag and recalled what happened this morning.

To go to school, he had changed into his cleanly washed and ironed uniform and stepped out of his room. Just like any other morning, Yoo Siun was brewing coffee in the dining area.

With a refined touch as if performing a ritual, he moistened the beans; once the coffee grounds bloomed, he rotated the drip kettle to brew the coffee.

The man, who was pouring water by moving the kettle in circles, stopped his hand upon discovering Eunseong standing there in his school uniform. His eyes, which had been thinking of the moment beauty replaces ethics, stared for a long time until Eunseong’s face turned red.

There were no words about him looking bright and well-suited, or about the uniform being pretty. He simply stared for a long time, so long he didn’t seem to realize it himself.

When a needlessly embarrassed Eunseong started talking aimlessly about how today’s weather was this way and that, the piercing gaze was withdrawn.

The new school uniform, made of high-quality material, felt entirely different in texture compared to the cheap nylon material he used to wear. Perhaps it felt even more so because it was well-ironed. Thinking that the saying “clothes are wings” wasn’t a lie, his complexion looked much better in the new uniform.

Looking in the mirror this morning, he confirmed that the claim of being blood-related to his 5th cousin—the remarkably handsome man—was not an unconvincing argument, even if he didn’t seem related to his father, whose face had turned dark and dull from alcohol. As time passed, Eunseong was starting to look more and more like his biological mother rather than his father.

Yoo Siun didn’t look at Eunseong any longer and only said briefly that Manager Nam would take him to school. He added that Manager Nam would drop him off and pick him up, and that for the time being, it was impossible for him to go around alone without his permission. Eunseong protested, asking if “protection” wasn’t just a different word for “surveillance,” and asked for coffee, but the man didn’t give him any. Instead, he poured some milk and set it down in the middle of the table by stretching his arm out from a distance. Eunseong also said nothing more and stretched his arm out long to laboriously bring the milk toward himself.

Whenever Eunseong passed behind him to take an apple out of the fridge, Yoo Siun would step back several paces to keep a distance. Apples and milk were a well-suited combination. They finished their breakfast with coffee and apples.

Yoo Siun went to work first. Eunseong got into the car driven by Manager Nam and left the residence of the CEO of Seongha Momentum. It took less than fifteen minutes by car to get to school. He expected a certain feeling from getting out of a luxury car, but in front of the school gate, foreign cars similar to the one Eunseong arrived in were stopping one after another to drop off children. Eunseong was one of them.

Telling him to ask whenever there was something he didn’t know, the president exchanged phone numbers with Eunseong. Like the others’ misunderstanding, the president also seemed to believe Eunseong was a kid from a well-to-do family.

Eunseong’s lifestyle, which had changed suddenly, was worlds apart from when he lived with his father. First of all, the biggest change was the disappearance of his father, who would drink and act violently. The unfortunate environment that had surrounded Eunseong like a dark cloud vanished in an instant. The house was spacious and pleasant, and the bedding was always clean as if new. Meals were served as formal dinners considering both taste and nutrition.

He was dropped off and picked up from school by a luxury car. Unlike other students who headed to academies once school was over, Eunseong had to return to the residence of the CEO of Seongha Momentum. He said he could take the bus alone, but that was not permitted, and there was no such thing as free time.

Well, he said the elders of the family, who value bloodline very highly, were in the middle of searching for Eunseong—the heir—to take him for themselves. He didn’t know yet what was so special about him that they were obsessed, but in any case, if the succession of the eldest son was important, it was true that Eunseong was a more suitable candidate for the succession than Yoo Siun. Eunseong’s grandfather was the eldest, and Yoo Siun’s father was the youngest among five brothers.

The eldest son born to the eldest son, and the eldest son born to that eldest son.

That was Eunseong’s identity, whose last name was not Seo, but Yoo.