The Unbelievers Chapter 66

As they walked further inside, a scene reminiscent of a horror movie unfolded. He had heard stories of them cutting open bellies to determine a target’s potential for pregnancy, but such things were usually carried out in the hygienic conditions of a Seongha Group affiliate hospital, not in a somber place like this where a ghost felt likely to appear. This place, much like Yoo Siun’s barn, was merely a location for disposing of someone.

Inside the operating room with its shattered glass doors, an operating table, a wheelchair, and faded surgical instruments lay scattered in disarray on the floor. Following the light of the flashlight Manager Nam was shining, the two men held their breath.

Bloodstains were vividly dried onto the operating table. On the floor lay discarded latex gloves and sanitary suits that appeared to have been thrown off just moments ago. Vivid traces remained of a cruel act that had taken place.

Manager Nam turned off the flashlight. They looked around, relying on their dim vision.

“Why would the monk have told us about this place?”

“He might have wanted to let us know that something is in progress, or it could have been a trick to get his hands on some pocket change. Or perhaps it is a trap set by someone. There are quite a few people besides me who stay close to Master Manpo, aren’t there?”

“Could it be one of them?”

With his hands thrust into his suit pants pockets, Yoo Siun’s shoe-clad foot pushed aside a stainless steel table blocking his path. A loud, screeching rupture that clawed at his spine struck his ears, and soon a bleak silence filled the air.

“Do you wish to look around further?”

“No. Let’s just go. I don’t think anything good will come of encountering someone.”

If they happened to run into one of his cousins like this, it would be awkward for everyone. Something felt unsettling, but this degree of unease was something anyone in the Seongha family lived with like a karmic burden.

As they left the operating room and rounded the hallway of the abandoned building, Yoo Siun’s cell phone vibrated. He took the phone out of his inner jacket pocket. When he came to a dead stop, Manager Nam, who had been following, stopped behind him with a tense face.

The name Seo Jeonggi was displayed on the phone screen.

“…”

He looked down cautiously at the phone, which continued to ring.

He had been in the middle of searching for Seo Jeonggi’s whereabouts. He felt he ought to tell him that Eunseong was going to study abroad in a distant place. He needed to tell him that the boy was safe now, and that things like being seized by someone, raped, and forced into pregnancy would not happen in his life. He needed to tell him that since the boy would live a peaceful and safe life, enjoying it more wealthily than anyone else, he should stop feeling guilty and live his own life with a light heart.

However, Yoo Siun was now in a position where he had to explain not Eunseong’s bright future, but his disappearance. He wouldn’t have an excuse even if he had ten mouths. Even if they weren’t blood-related, they were two people who had lived as father and son for a long time.

“Hello.”

—Hello? Ah, are you by chance an acquaintance of the owner of this number?

What came from beyond the phone was not Eunseong’s father, but the voice of a strange man, contrary to his expectations. The location of this phone had last been caught in Seoul before the signal was cut. Quite some time had passed since then.

Yoo Siun’s wary eyes stared sharply at something.

“…That is correct. Who is this? Where is my hyung-nim?”

—This is the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency. What is your relationship to the owner of this phone?

“He is my older cousin. Why are the police…”

—I see. Please do not be shocked and listen. Mr. Seo Jeonggi has passed away.

“What? Passed away? Hyung-nim?”

Yoo Siun’s eyebrows twitched. His shocked voice became stiff and rigid. Yoo Siun looked back at Manager Nam. Having heard the content of the call, he too was already frozen, staring at Yoo Siun in surprise.

—Can you come down here? We need a verification of identity.

“Passed away? What do you mean by that? My hyung-nim is dead? Are you sure it’s him?”

Unable to believe it, Yoo Siun asked back in bewilderment.

The police confirmed the name Seo Jeonggi once more. They also briefly described his appearance. Over the phone, it sounded as though it was indeed Seo Jeonggi himself.

At the police’s urging to come to the hospital for the identification of the deceased, Yoo Siun replied that he understood, as if finally coming to his senses, and hung up the phone.

It was Manager Nam’s voice that called him back to reality as he stood there vacantly.

“What was the call about? Did you say Mr. Eunseong’s father passed away?”

“It’s the police; they say he’s dead and they need an identity verification now.”

“What could have happened so suddenly?”

“…I suppose we’ll know once we get there.”

All sorts of imaginings floated confusedly through his mind.

While taking Eunseong, he had provided Seo Jeonggi with enough funds to settle down somewhere and said he would help with a clean slate for his identity if necessary. The contact had been cut off since the end of summer. He had tried tracking the location through the cell phone, but after a signal was caught in Seoul, the power had been turned off completely and had never been turned on since. Since he didn’t know Seo Jeonggi’s whereabouts, he had been searching for him to deliver the news regarding Eunseong’s upcoming study abroad.

They immediately moved to the hospital designated by the police. The officer who had spoken with Yoo Siun was already waiting in the hallway of the mortuary. The man, who had been talking to someone on his phone, hung up when he saw Yoo Siun and Manager Nam approaching through the hallway.

“You are the one who said you are Mr. Seo Jeonggi’s younger cousin, correct?”

An inspector belonging to the Gangwon Police Violent Crimes Team, who offered a handshake with a rough hand, briefly introduced himself.

“What happened? You say hyung-nim passed away?”

Yoo Siun asked with a face that showed he still couldn’t believe it.

“He was found yesterday as a corpse by the side of a road where cars rarely pass. He was discovered about three or four days after the estimated time of death. We found the cell phone while searching the surrounding area. When we restored the data that had been initialized, only one contact showed up. That is why we contacted you.”

“…A corpse?”

At the same time his heart thudded, Yoo Siun thought of Eunseong.

They had found out about Eunseong’s existence.

Even the family had not regarded the peculiar tracks of Seo Jeonggi—who was the eldest grandson yet had turned his back on the family—as a simple desertion. There were those who were suspicious. There had been several attempts to track Seo Jeonggi after he suddenly vanished. However, each time, they had ended in failure because Yoo Siun’s father had created confusion, and as time passed, the matter had fizzled out.

There had been several people before who had felt disgusted by the reality of the cult that worshiped the God who came through the Side Path, or who, out of fear, had refused to participate in the family’s business or had given up their inheritance. While Yoo Siun’s father and Yoo Siun knew every detail of Seo Jeonggi’s movements and always kept people monitoring him, those others had shown no interest even in Seo Jeonggi’s life or death since that last tracking attempt. The sudden death of such a man and Master Manpo’s memo implying the location of that death… it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“According to the autopsy findings, it was a cerebral hemorrhage caused by external impact.”

“Does that mean…”

“It seems there was harsh treatment and a beating. Do you have any idea about this? Financial problems around Mr. Seo Jeonggi, for instance. Friendships. There was no record of what kind of work he did. His tracks during that time were ambiguous as well.”

“…No, none at all. I was also in the middle of attempting to contact him. Because the news suddenly cut off.”

“At any rate, I ask for the identification of the body first. After that, we plan to convert this to a murder case and proceed with the investigation.”

While having a chilling intuition about what had happened to Seo Jeonggi, Yoo Siun pretended not to know and followed the police officer’s words.

“You may enter through here.”

Yoo Siun entered the mortuary under the guidance of the police.

On a stainless steel table lay a body covered with a white cloth. As he approached, a faint chill was felt over the cloth, perhaps because it had been taken out of storage right as he arrived.

The medical examiner came forward and pulled back the cloth covering the face. The traces of the beating remained starkly. The corners of his eyes distorted minutely as he identified Seo Jeonggi.

The lifeless gray skin that revealed it was a corpse, the lips turned blue, the bodily fluids that had flowed out and hardened at the corners of the mouth, and the red lines where a sharpened blade had sliced down.

He looked like someone whose instinct had no choice but to recognize him as such, even without rationally determining that he was no longer alive.

Yoo Siun slowly closed and opened his eyes, then turned his gaze away, unable to look any longer. Hot saliva swallowed down stickily through his throat.

“He is… indeed my older cousin.”

A sense of exhaustion, as if his knees were buckling and breaking, rushed over him.

They had tried to find out. They had tortured him to find out where Eunseong was.

There was no way to know how much Seo Jeonggi had said. Seeing that it had turned out like this, it could be that they hadn’t found any clues, or it could be that he had become worthless after they found out, so they disposed of him.

Only Yoo Siun and his father knew the whereabouts of Seo Jeonggi, who had become a forgotten existence to the family. It was Yoo Siun’s father who helped him with his life on the run, and it was Yoo Siun’s father who had handled the traffic accident that had driven Eunseong’s biological father and mother to their deaths at the time.

Could it be that they hadn’t found Seo Jeonggi, but that Seo Jeonggi had perhaps tried to contact them first?

Ominous imaginings began to consume Yoo Siun.