The Unbelievers Chapter 56

“Then that is good.”

Yoo Siun’s eyes were carefully scanning Eunseong.

He would often look at Eunseong with a gaze that seemed to have many things to say. Like right now. Even if it was not in the same sense, at the very least, the fact that he cherished him was not a lie. What made Eunseong feel despair was the fact that the emotion was not based on affection, but entirely on a sense of responsibility.

“I heard you were going to have an after-party with your friends; have they all gone back?”

“I just told them not to come. I wanted to be alone.”

“…Is it alright, living alone?”

“And if it is not? Can I live with you, Mister?”

“….”

“Even if it is not alright, I have to live alone. Because no one is going to come check on me anymore just because I say I hear strange noises.”

“…I see.”

Eunseong belatedly realized that he was standing at a distance that felt strangely intentional. It was a distance quite far for having an awkward conversation. It was a physical interval that made it difficult to catch his scent. Eunseong did not move any closer, either. When he smelled the scent of the man’s skin, he felt strange; his stomach would churn and his head would grow dizzy. Eunseong’s unrequited love took a form that could not possibly be hidden.

Only then did Yoo Siun utter an “Ah,” and gestured toward a small box he had set down next to the front door.

“I brought this for you to eat with your friends.”

“….”

Who said I liked this kind of thing? Eunseong pouted his lips. To avoid looking at him, his gaze remained directed downward the entire time. He caught a glimpse of the tattoo that the man always used to hide with things like dressing bands whenever they were together. He had worried that his own delinquency might have a bad influence on Eunseong’s sensibilities. In front of him, he had covered his tattoos and avoided smoking carelessly.

Eunseong suddenly wondered how far the tattoo, which began from the prominent knuckles, extended up his arm and across his chest. He wanted to confirm it after stripping off the man’s clothes. Having lived with so little sexual desire that he had questioned if he was asexual, Eunseong had many erotic fantasies after realizing his own heart. The fantasies always began from the back of Yoo Siun’s hand.

Eunseong’s pupils, which had been fixed on the vanishing point of Yoo Siun’s hand where blue veins and tendons stood out roughly, moved up the back of the hand, past the wrist, toward the chest where the tattoo would be engraved.

Having read the movement of his gaze, the man wiped his own face as if troubled. The pupils that had been following the tattoo hidden beneath the clothes moved toward Yoo Siun’s face.

Eunseong’s eyes and his eyes belatedly met.

“….”

“….”

I don’t know why I keep staring at him so vacantly like this. When Eunseong was in the same space as him, his chest tightened. He could feel his heart rate accelerating, and the breathing he hadn’t been conscious of became a distraction, making it so he couldn’t even exhale properly.

At the fact that the man was now trying to send him to a place where it would be hard to even see his face once every three months, tears threatened to spill out even as he just stared. He had been so disappointed when the man didn’t come, yet now that he had actually appeared before his eyes, he felt only resentment and hatred. And he realized anew just how much he had missed him.

“Are you in touch with my dad? If I say I’m going to study abroad… I should at least talk to Dad before I go.”

“I suppose so. I’m looking for where he is right now. I’ll find him soon. I’ll tell him to contact you.”

“You don’t know where he is?”

“Not yet.”

“Because he’s originally that kind of person… Because he’s selfish and a mess.”

“There must have been circumstances he couldn’t talk about.”

“So he beats his child to vent his anger?”

Eunseong’s eyes looked up at Yoo Siun provocatively. For Eunseong, who couldn’t even imagine a hidden circumstance, there was no choice but to judge it that way; and as Eunseong said, Seo Jeonggi’s conduct had been poor. One thing that was certain was that Yoo Siun would not have acted that way toward Eunseong.

“It must be cold. Go on inside.”

“…About last time.”

Eunseong’s lips moved slightly as he hesitated, his hand lingering on the doorknob. From his hesitant attitude, Yoo Siun also noticed that he was trying to talk about what had happened between them that day.

“The way I acted strangely that day.”

“…Do you remember?”

“Not everything… but a little. Acting like a crazy person, I mean, like someone in heat; I don’t know why I was like that either.”

Eunseong spoke painfully, with an expression that said he truly could not understand why on earth he had acted that way. It was because Yoo Siun had made him that way. He had deliberately given off a scent to put him in heat and moved close to touch the clearly thumping pulse.

He stood still, listening to what Eunseong was saying.

“You were offended because of me that day, right? That’s why you haven’t come here once since then. You ignored all my calls and texts and didn’t answer. Leaving someone on read is the most offensive thing in the world.”

“….”

If it were me, I would not have brought that matter up.

Yoo Siun was realizing in this situation that Eunseong was pure and honest, and that he had as much courage as his heart was clear; even that shook his heart.

Eunseong was mentioning an event that he could have felt ashamed of, even while hesitating. Asking if it had been unpleasant, Eunseong’s eyes watched him carefully. Even as he was hurt, pushed away, and rejected every time by Yoo Siun—who had to deny him—he was not hiding his feelings.

A dull pain arose in Yoo Siun’s chest at the sight of Eunseong. An anxious craving to embrace Eunseong was causing a pain that made his insides twist.

“I don’t really know why I was like that that day. I’m really not crazy. I’m not a strange person.”

“….”

Yoo Siun’s hand reached out toward Eunseong of its own accord. His large hand cupped Eunseong’s cheek. Like that day, his thumb caressed the flesh.

Startled, Eunseong flinched. His eyes flew wide toward him. With a jolt, he lost his grip on the doorknob he had been holding tight, and the front door shut. The door lock automatically locked the door.

After a period of staring vacantly at each other, the sensor light turned off and the surroundings were blanketed in pitch-black darkness. Only the red letters indicating the emergency exit held any color in the dark.

Only the sound of breathing, the touch of the cheek he was holding, and the feeling of the palm cupping his entire face overwhelmed them as their vision was blocked. In the empty space, a sensual tension toward one another hovered like a haze.

“…It wasn’t unpleasant.”

His voice murmured low. Eunseong’s heart plummeted. It was a sensation like the ground he was standing on suddenly giving way and collapsing.

Eunseong’s hesitant hand overlapped on the back of the hand cupping his cheek. He stroked the man’s protruding knuckles and tendons as if tickling them.

“Then why… why are you trying to send me abroad?”

“Because it is right.”

“….”

“It is the right thing to do. Is it not?”

This kind of emotion was not moral. He gripped Eunseong’s cheek and made a low appeal. He was steadying his own heart, believing he had to choose the wise and less painful side so they would not be a source of hurt to each other anymore.

Eunseong closed his eyes. The palm cupping his cheek was warm. He had the illusion that the man’s warmth was spreading not just to his face, but through his entire body.

He pulled the body scent of the man he had missed—regretting that he hadn’t stolen even one of his shirts just to smell it—deep into his lungs.

The first adult fence he ever had, the man who had never once shown a sign of dislike even if he knocked late at night. Even though he had been a man who struggled not to become any closer emotionally to him, Eunseong knew through intuition that Yoo Siun liked the time he spent with him.

It was true of the coffee and milk they drank together in the morning, and it was true of the times they inspected the garden together late at night to find the source of strange noises. Even without a proper conversation, they liked the moments they were together, conscious of one another.

Because he was a man who had permitted everything except for touching, he might be putting his spoiled behavior forward even with these emotions. He felt like he was going to act unpleasantly toward him again. His heart throbbed and soon his lower body began to tremble; the skin lesions that flared up sensitively at a mere brush began to shiver with an intense sexual sensitivity as his skin broke into chills.

“It isn’t… it isn’t right. It’s a bad thing. It’s wrong.”

Yoo Siun realized with a crumbling heart that the painstaking effort of keeping Eunseong at a distance during the changing seasons was going to waste. If it was going to be like this, he felt that his obsession, which he had guarded like a conviction during that time, was nothing but hollow and foolish.

Even so, Yoo Siun knew by instinct that in the end, he would not be able to lay a hand on Eunseong. Yoo Siun knew best what kind of person he was. He was a person who kept promises, and a person who believed that beauty could not stand above ethics. He was a person for whom conviction was more important than desire.

That was why he could not acknowledge this feeling toward Eunseong any further. If he acknowledged his heart, Yoo Siun did not have the confidence to suppress his desire. Even for the extremely small possibility that the “Great Rift” could have his child—a “God who came through the Side Path”—he had to stop here.

No one knew whether the “God who came through the Side Path” worshipped by his family would become human, or destruction, or what kind of beast. He could not endure the very idea that because of him, Eunseong would come to have and give birth to such a thing.

Nevertheless, he could not take his hand off Eunseong and spoke. His emotions bled through to the point that he himself was startled by his muffled voice.

“Then why do you keep asking such things.”

“Because I like you, Mister.”