The Unbelievers Chapter 27

At that moment, the heavy footsteps of an adult were heard. Eunseong, whose senses were sharply attuned to any presence, hurriedly looked back. Although no one was there, he suddenly grabbed Choi Jungeon’s wrist.

“What are you—what!”

“Come on. Fast! Faster! We have to go now!”

Grabbing Choi Jungeon’s wrist firmly, Eunseong fled. They dashed through the alleys and sprinted across an intersection where only a few seconds remained on the pedestrian signal. Choi Jungeon’s friends couldn’t even catch up; they stopped on the other side of the road as the light changed.

Eunseong reached out toward a taxi standing by the roadside. He haphazardly shoved Choi Jungeon, who had been dragged along unexpectedly, into the back seat first, and then hurriedly climbed in beside him.

“Mister, please go fast, quickly. Please start moving now!”

Because of Eunseong shouting urgently, the taxi driver instinctively stepped hard on the accelerator. The car started moving as if it were performing a sudden unintended acceleration. Eunseong even held his breath, looking around through the rear window as they moved away. Fortunately, there was no sign of anyone following.

“What the hell are you doing right now?!”

Choi Jungeon shouted as he adjusted his posture from a near-collapsed position to sitting upright.

“…Huff, huff, huff.”

Only once the school was far away did Eunseong finally exhale a large, held breath. He turned to look at Choi Jungeon, who was sitting with an expression of pure disbelief. Although the person he happened to meet by chance in this situation was Choi Jungeon of all people, a bone-melting sense of relief washed over him at the fact that he had met someone he knew.

“Jungeon…”

Eunseong suddenly hugged Choi Jungeon. Choi Jungeon, who had been frowning at the sudden action, froze like a stone statue as Eunseong wrapped his arms around his neck. Choi Jungeon extended his arms and urgently grabbed onto whatever he could, like someone hanging onto a taxi driving with its door open.

“Choi Jungeon, you crazy bastard… you son of a bitch. How are you here, how did you.”

“…”

Clinging to him, Eunseong caught his breath while burying his face in Choi Jungeon’s neck, which smelled of sweat. He tried to find his sense of reality. Eunseong eventually pulled away from Choi Jungeon—who was literally frozen like ice, not hugging back, and just keeping his arms extended—and looked at him anew.

“Where shall we go? Student, where are you going?”

Eunseong snapped out of it at the driver’s question and turned his head. Puzzled eyes were scanning Eunseong and Choi Jungeon uneasily through the rearview mirror.

“For now, toward your house… let’s go to your neighborhood. Where is your house?”

Eunseong asked Choi Jungeon. Choi Jungeon blurted out his home address. It was a distance that took over an hour by car. The taxi driver checked with a distrustful look if they even had the fare. Eunseong took off the bag he was wearing on his back, pulled out two fifty-thousand won bills, and handed them to the driver. The taxi driver took the hundred thousand won first and said he would give back the change once they arrived.

Choi Jungeon grabbed Eunseong’s shoulder to make him look at him. As their eyes met, he asked demandingly.

“What happened to you? Weren’t you supposed to have transferred schools?”

Eunseong was acting like someone being hunted. Choi Jungeon knitted one eyebrow fiercely.

“Well… you see, that is.”

“Did your father sell you off to debt collectors after all, in the end?”

“Huh?”

“I’m asking if you were sold to private moneylenders. Those guys that day were moneylenders, right?”

“…Y-yes. That’s right.”

Eunseong nodded his head, pretending that was the case. The face of his cousin—who had placed a wet towel on his forehead when he was sick, who had taken a photo of the mother bird so she wouldn’t abandon her eggs, and who had checked outside without a hint of annoyance when Eunseong said he heard strange noises at night—came to mind, but he turned his head away and answered Choi Jungeon that it was so.

“Sigh, fuck. I knew it. I knew it would be like that. Do you know your father is gone too? Do you know your house is empty right now?”

“…”

“What happened? Did those bastards at least let you go to school?”

“…How did you know I was here?”

Eunseong asked. Choi Jungeon replied that he had snuck into the teacher’s office and searched the computer behind the homeroom teacher’s back.

To the point that he could forget all the atrocities the boy had committed against him, Eunseong was tearfully glad for Choi Jungeon’s presence, appearing right when he was needed.

“I’m so glad. I didn’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do about anything. I just left, I just left recklessly.”

“Let’s go to my neighborhood first. And then report it to the police or something.”

“…Not the police. The police mustn’t know.”

“Fuck, what on earth have you been doing? Fine, for now, I got it.”

If he reported it to the police, his location would surely be discovered immediately. They were the ones who had finally tracked down his father and himself, even though they had lived with changed names.

Eunseong quickly took out his cell phone and turned it off. Now there was nothing that could provide a lead for Yoo Siun to track him.

“You didn’t go to school today?”

“It’s exams. I bolted as soon as it was over.”

“Why?”

“To see if a prick like you, Seo Eunseong, was hiding and living well.”

“…Are you going to do something strange again?”

At Eunseong’s words, Choi Jungeon’s face turned red.

“When did I say I did something strange? Anyway, ahem, this isn’t the situation for that. Those guys seemed like they weren’t ordinary punks. How much debt is there?”

“A lot. Really a lot.”

“…Sigh, fuck. He’s not a father, he’s an enemy. An enemy.”

“…”

“Have you been well?”

“…”

“I’m a fool for asking if you’ve been well. I was stupid.”

Choi Jungeon examined Eunseong’s pale complexion. On the surface, Eunseong looked like he had been doing well. He ate and wore good things. He didn’t work a part-time job, so he slept well, and his complexion had brightened. He lived a daily life far removed from hardship. If he heard how he had lived, Choi Jungeon would scold Eunseong, telling him not to lie.

“Did those bastards bully you or anything like that? You weren’t beaten up anywhere?”

“No.”

Eunseong shook his head, saying nothing like that happened.

“Maybe they were polishing you up to sell you, or feeding you well to harvest your organs. You don’t know how commonly human trafficking happens in our country, do you?”

The taxi driver kept glancing at the students exchanging such ghastly conversation while he drove. He wanted to interfere as an adult, but Choi Jungeon’s expression was so foul that he was unable to cut in.

“By the way, were you glad to see me?”

“Huh?”

“I was fucking shocked earlier. I thought I was being sexually harassed.”

Rubbing under his nose, Choi Jungeon grumbled that he was very startled because he had hugged him so suddenly. If the person he met while escaping was a familiar face, Eunseong would have hugged him and felt relieved regardless of who it was.

“Yeah, I was fucking glad. Because there was someone I knew.”

“Ha, I’m the type that can be quite reliable at times like this. Right?”

“…”

Eunseong didn’t answer and merely acquiesced to his words.

By now, Manager Nam, having realized he was gone, would have reported it to Yoo Siun immediately. Yoo Siun wasn’t just an ordinary citizen; he was the CEO of a Seongha Group affiliate and a member of a chaebol family. He had seen it in movies and dramas. It was natural for them to hire professional personnel and use power to find someone. If he intended to track him down, he would search every corner of the earth, and it would be hard to evade him just by turning off his cell phone.

“Mister, please pull over here. I’m sorry. I’ll get out here.”

“I took the payment in advance, how can I do that? Let’s just keep going.”

“No, I’ll get out here. There’s a reason for it.”

When Eunseong suddenly asked to stop the taxi, the driver actually increased his speed. Choi Jungeon tapped Eunseong on the shoulder as he was leaning his head between the front seats. When he looked back, Choi Jungeon gestured for him to move back. Eunseong sat back down. Choi Jungeon suddenly pushed his upper body forward and thrust his face toward the taxi driver.

“We’re getting out, Mister.”

“…Oh, uh, okay. I can just pull over up there, right?”

“Yes.”

The taxi stopped near a subway station. Eunseong received his change and got out of the taxi. After hurriedly looking around, he grabbed the wrist of the blankly standing Choi Jungeon and entered the subway entrance. He threw his cell phone into a subway trash can.

They boarded the train heading toward Choi Jungeon’s neighborhood.

Confirming that the train was departing smoothly, Eunseong let out a sigh of relief.

“It’s not like we’re filming a movie… right, you don’t have your phone, do you?”

“I just threw it away.”

“Ah, right. Do you want to sit here?”

A seat happened to open up, so Choi Jungeon asked. Eunseong took off the bag he was wearing on his shoulder, placed it on his knees, and sat down. A person in the neighboring seat, recognizing they were together, vacated their spot saying they were getting off next. Choi Jungeon, having been yielded a seat, gave a slouched bow to the man and sat beside Eunseong.

“It’s already been over a month; what were you doing there?”

“I went to school. They let me go to school.”

“But if you can’t report it to the police, what are you going to do?”

“I just need to find a job that provides room and board. If I change my name and live in hiding, they won’t find me.”

“What about school? Are you going to be a middle school graduate?”

“I’ll just take an exam later. By the way, are your finals over? Haven’t they finished yet?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren’t you studying?”

“Fuck, do you know how much my grades dropped because of you?”

Choi Jungeon suddenly raised his arm high. Clutching his bag tightly, Eunseong also scowled deeply.

“How is that my fault? You’re the one who messed up.”

“You vanished overnight without a word as if you evaporated; do you think I’d be in my right mind? Huh?”

“It’s none of your business. Whether I evaporate or not.”

“Fuck, you call that an answer right now?”