The Unbelievers Chapter 31

Choi Jungeon waved his hand shoo-shooing as he gave Eunseong a petty gesture to move further inside the bed. Eunseong moved toward the inner side, crawling on his knees as if being herded.

He opened the closet and took out another pillow. He threw it down on the outer side and flopped down there. The bed springs sloshed. A space not too narrow and not too wide, just enough for Eunseong to lie down, was created next to Choi Jungeon.

Eunseong carefully lay down on the bed as if squeezing himself between the wall and Choi Jungeon. Choi Jungeon, who had been lying with his back turned, suddenly sat up and turned off the light.

“…Haa, what a truly variety-show-like day.”

He muttered like a sigh and turned his back to lie on his left, causing the bed to slosh again. Eunseong, lying flat toward the ceiling, turned his head to look at the back of Choi Jungeon’s head before straightening his position.

Would he be looking for me…

What would Mister be doing?

Or perhaps he thinks it’s for the best that I’m gone, and has lightly laid down the troublesome and heavy duty of having to protect me.

When he thought about how he would never again smell the scent of the drip coffee the man brewed every morning, a bit of sadness rose within him. It was also a shame that he wouldn’t be able to see that beautiful garden again.

The astronomical telescope they looked through together, the scent of his body and his body temperature as he stood close to adjust the angle.

The feeling of his hand hurriedly grabbing the back of Eunseong’s hand, telling him not to touch the nest.

He should have captured everything in his eyes a little longer. He shouldn’t have thrown away the phone, just taken out the USIM chip. There were quite a few photos taken on it.

The sunlit garden, a single bird perched on a branch that used to wake Eunseong up, and even a photo taken from afar of Yoo Siun’s back as he got into his car to go to work. With thoughts flooding in belatedly, regret arose that he might have left the house too suddenly without any plan.

While his head thought it was a relief that there wasn’t a single photo of Yoo Siun and that he would never see him again, one side of his heart ached with longing.

While he was lost in various idle thoughts, he felt a gaze scratching his cheek. Eunseong turned his head and blinked his eyes wide. At some point, Choi Jungeon had stealthily turned his body toward him and was staring intently at Eunseong’s profile with his head propped on his arm.

Light spreading from the building in front seeped through the window, tinting the room dimly. In Choi Jungeon’s face shrouded by darkness, only his two pupils glowed intensely with eye-light as he scrutinized Eunseong’s face in detail.

“You’re fucking pretty.”

“…”

“You got even prettier since I last saw you. What I said earlier was right. Those bastards were trying to make you into a male whore after scrubbing you up and making you shine.”

“Jungeon-ah.”

“Yeah.”

“If you knew the real me, you’d be appalled. You won’t like me then.”

“What ‘real you’. Is it different from the outside when I strip you?”

Eunseong looked at him. Even if he seemed ignorant, he was a kid with remarkably fast intuition. Or perhaps all of his thoughts were simply connected in that direction. Just as Eunseong’s were now. Just as Eunseong’s head had become completely filled with thoughts of Yoo Siun. All those thoughts flowed toward a suggestive side. He felt he now understood the path through which the shout of a classmate—who had suddenly screamed that he wanted to have sex during self-study—had emerged.

“It’s different.”

“I’m fucking curious.”

“…Would you still like me even if I were a monster?”

“What is it. What kind of monster and how. Is it fucking small? Right? It’s fucking small, isn’t it? Is it only as big as a pinky finger?”

Choi Jungeon’s voice was steeped in secret curiosity.

“I think that part isn’t particularly on the small side.”

“That’s probably just your own opinion. Want me to show you mine? It’s fucking big. When I go to the bathhouse, old men stare at mine like crazy. It goes thud-thud when I walk.”

Choi Jungeon lowered his eyes slightly to look blatantly between his own crotch, then looked back up at Eunseong, twitching his eyebrows as if showing off.

“The size isn’t the problem.”

“Then what’s the problem. Is somewhere else a bit different…? Where?”

He propped up one shoulder and rose to look down at Eunseong. A large shadow was cast over Eunseong’s upper body.

Eunseong looked up at Choi Jungeon and fell into agony. Holding a big secret alone was heavy and painful. The urge to tell him surged up abruptly.

He wanted to lighten his heart by hearing a reproach—that having no testicles was no big deal, that having something on the skin was fine too, that there must be over a hundred such people in the whole world, and why worry when it wasn’t a rare disease that made the body sick. The shroud of night had a shamanic power that made one divulge all hidden shames.

“You see, actually…”

It was at the very moment Eunseong started speaking seriously, raising his upper body slightly just like Choi Jungeon. Choi Jungeon’s throat pulsed as he swallowed hard. Simultaneously, a sharp bell rang. The sound of the intercom ringing at two in the morning shattered the quiet air of the living room at once. Both of them were startled enough to shrug their shoulders.

“…What is it?”

Choi Jungeon got up first, and Eunseong also raised his body. Before he could even turn on the room light, the living room became noisy. It seemed his parents had also woken up from the sound.

What is it? Who is it? Who on earth is it at this hour? Is it the downstairs neighbor again? It’s not just once or twice, are they crazy?

Grumbling sounds and fearful voices could be heard murmuring. Choi Jungeon also opened the door and went out to the living room. Eunseong started to follow him but hesitated.

No way…?

No way.

It can’t be.

I threw away the phone, and I got off the taxi immediately. It was impossible to find out where Eunseong had gone this quickly even if they combed through the whole country. It was something impossible even for the police, and as Choi Jungeon had guaranteed, it was something impossible even for the NIS.

“What is it? Who is it?”

“…What? Who are you?”

Choi Jungeon’s father pressed the intercom button and spoke. Eunseong, his heart trembling with anxiety, went out to the living room and stared at the face appearing on the screen from a distance. Even from afar, the presence standing before the camera casting a deep shadow was clearly visible. It was Yoo Siun.

―I apologize for the late hour. I am student Seo Eunseong’s guardian.

The startled Choi Jungeon and his parents turned back to Eunseong at the same time. Eunseong’s face, having already realized it was Yoo Siun, was deathly pale.

Choi Jungeon’s father quickly exchanged glances with his wife.

“It’s not like we’re being hit by a bolt from the blue, but what on earth are you talking about? Who? What student? There’s no such person in our house!”

Choi Jungeon’s father, firmly believing that Eunseong was being chased by low-life loan sharks, exercised his own brand of wit and got annoyed with a sleepy voice. It was an outburst asking why he was waking people up in the middle of the night by pressing the wrong bell.

―I came because I know he is with student Choi Jungeon. Open the door. Otherwise, I will report this as kidnapping and enticement of a minor.

Eunseong’s hands began to tremble violently. Yoo Siun’s voice was different from usual. It was a cold and fierce tone he had never heard before. His voice carried a wearisome annoyance toward Choi Jungeon’s father who was telling lies.

Turning off the intercom, Choi Jungeon’s father looked back at his wife in fluster.

“What should we do? What on earth is going on?”

“Don’t open it. Who knows who it is. Let’s report it to the police. It’s true that Eunseong is being chased. I’m telling you, I saw it.”

Choi Jungeon snatched the phone that his mother was holding, not knowing what to do. On the screen, he could catch a glimpse of Yoo Siun’s brow furrowing fiercely. He pressed the bell again.

It was the moment Choi Jungeon, instead of his panicked parents, was about to press the intercom talk button and shout that he would call the police.

―I will call the police.

Yoo Siun said he would call the police first.

“No, what’s a loan shark being so confident for? Isn’t this kind of thing illegal debt collection?”

Choi Jungeon’s mother hurriedly cut off the intercom connection. As if she finally noticed something strange, she turned toward Eunseong. Eunseong, who had been standing there looking only at his feet while tightly clutching the hem of Choi Jungeon’s loose t-shirt, raised his head at her questioning gaze.

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

“For what? What are you sorry for?”

“…I lied. I… ran away from home.”

“What?”

“Hey, Seo Eunseong, don’t you lie. I saw you being dragged away with my own eyes, so what kind of bullshit are you talking about?”

“…I’m sorry, Jungeon-ah. I ran away from home.”

Choi Jungeon’s father, clutching his forehead in dismay, quickly pressed the intercom button and opened the common entrance door.

“Eunseong is lying right now. I’m telling you, I saw Eunseong being dragged away! If you ran away from home, you should just stay quiet, why would you run away!”

“…I’m sorry.”

Eunseong spoke in a crawling voice and closed his eyes tight before opening them. No matter how much Choi Jungeon shouted, his parents didn’t listen; they looked angry at the fact that they had been played by believing only the words of a child without any suspicion. At the sound of the bell arriving at the door, his mother opened the door immediately while fastening the cardigan she was wearing over her pajamas.

The one who opened the front door wide and walked in was Yoo Siun. He discovered Eunseong standing in the living room. There was no change in his expression. He seemed annoyed, he seemed angry, and he also seemed to have no particular thoughts.

He wore an expression like an office worker exhausted by overtime, silently resolving leftover work. There was no emotion other than the feeling that protecting Eunseong from something was a bothersome duty he had been tasked with. However, since he had taken it on, the tedious sense of obligation to carry it out distorted minutely upon seeing Eunseong, who had caused an accident.