The Unbelievers Chapter 7

The man asked, not particularly flustered by Eunseong’s action of hiding behind him.

“Yes. That is me. Are you a friend of my father?”

Eunseong asked the man who had saved him in a moment of crisis. The man looked back at Eunseong, who was hiding behind his back in terror, with a businesslike expression and asked.

“Is your father’s name Mr. Seo Jeonggi?”

“Pardon? Yes… that is correct.”

“Is he at home right now?”

“I am not sure. But who are you?”

Only then did the presence of this man, who was confirming his father’s name, feel more unfamiliar and frightening than Choi Jungeon. There had never been a single good thing associated with his father’s affairs. However, since it was impossible to go back to Choi Jungeon now, Eunseong asked while backing away to keep a distance from both the man and Choi Jungeon.

“It seems you are… friends, but it would be best if everyone went home now.”

They certainly did not look like friends, but the man, unable to find a suitable word for the relationship between Choi Jungeon and Eunseong, spoke while looking back at the group standing tense at the appearance of a stranger. Everyone was hesitating while watching the man’s face, but Choi Jungeon was an exception.

“Who are you? Eunseong is asking you.”

“I think it would be best if you left now.”

There was no inflection in the tone that repeated the same words. Usually, the adults around them would scowl or raise their voices at a delinquent student who impudently asked back who they were, but the man in front of them was completely different.

There was not a hint of agitation in his response to Choi Jungeon’s attitude as he glared and questioned him. Repeating the same words politely in a steady tone was more overbearing than random shouting. However, Choi Jungeon was no ordinary student either.

“Who are you? Ah, damn it. I should report this to the police.”

Choi Jungeon pulled his phone out of his pocket and blustered loudly enough for everyone to hear. A faint look of contempt flickered across the man’s forehead.

He turned his head and looked down the stairs. At some point, three or four sturdy men dressed in dark black suits had crossed over the narrow, peeling front gate and were coming inside.

“I have an important matter to discuss with Mr. Eunseong’s father, so I would like you to go home now. All of you friends.”

The man’s voice was calm, but it was laced with a warning that this was the end of the patience he could show. When several massive men, who appeared to be professional security personnel rather than neighborhood thugs, revealed their intimidating presence, Choi Jungeon’s group whispered among themselves—let’s go, let’s go fast, let’s just go—and hurried down the stairs as if fleeing.

The man turned his gaze toward Choi Jungeon, who was left standing alone with his phone in his hand.

Eunseong didn’t care about the likes of Choi Jungeon anymore. A cold sweat broke out on his back. His father must have caused an accident, or done something Eunseong couldn’t handle, and it was certain that it was no ordinary matter.

“Hey, Seo Eunseong. If anything happens, call me. Got it?”

In an atmosphere where several sturdy men were staring only at him in a silent, pressuring manner, Choi Jungeon reluctantly started walking and gave his reminder.

Eunseong was more afraid of these people than of Choi Jungeon. In an instant, various ominous imaginations flashed through his mind.

He might have incurred gambling debts, or he might have touched private loans. His father was a man more than capable of doing so. Not stopping at that, he might have signed a physical waiver. Horrible images of his father promising to pay back the money by selling his child’s organs if there was nothing else flashed through Eunseong’s head.

“Wh… where are you going?”

Eunseong unconsciously looked at Choi Jungeon with eyes that pleaded for him not to leave. Even so, acting tough until the end, Choi Jungeon, who was swaggering with both hands shoved in his pockets, said to the man standing in his way, please move aside.

“If you don’t show up at school tomorrow, I’m reporting it. You heard me, right? If this guy doesn’t show up at school tomorrow, I’m going to report it to the police. Ah, I can’t. I need to leave evidence. I can take a picture, right?”

Mister, did you hear me? With an insolent look, he pulled out his phone and tried to take a photo.

As the man standing silently gave a glance, one of the bodyguards in a black suit snatched the phone out of Choi Jungeon’s hand. Choi Jungeon, startled, froze up.

“I think it would be best if you just left quietly.”

At the man’s words, the bodyguard turned off the power of the snatched phone and returned it to Choi Jungeon. Perhaps surprised by the brute force that snatched it from his hand, Choi Jungeon’s hand was trembling slightly as he received the phone back. No matter how much he played the delinquent, Choi Jungeon was still only a teenager.

Thinking it might be better to have even someone like that by his side, Eunseong sent a desperate look for him not to leave, but Choi Jungeon, completely suppressed by the aura, passed them and headed down the stairs.

Once Choi Jungeon and his friends had all disappeared, the man asked Eunseong.

“Is Mr. Seo Jeonggi at home?”

“I don’t know. He might be… or he might not be…”

Eunseong mumbled, unable to even lift his head. Whatever his father had done, it had nothing to do with him, and he wanted to insist that it didn’t matter.

“May I go too? If you are looking for my father… I have to go to my part-time job.”

He spoke in a shrinking voice and slightly lifted his gaze. The man was looking at the front door of Eunseong’s house.

“Could you open this door for me?”

He spoke with an expression that said they could just pick the lock and enter themselves, but they didn’t want to go through such a bothersome procedure.

Eunseong hesitated before unlocking the front door’s electronic lock, opening the door halfway, and setting the doorstop. He looked at him with eyes that asked if he could leave now that he had opened the door.

The man opened the door wide that Eunseong had left open and was checking things like the shoes in the entryway. While watching his reaction, Eunseong turned around. He was about to go down the stairs as if running away, but men in intimidating suits were clearing a path for someone.

Eunseong stopped dead in his tracks.

“….”

A perfectly formal, deep black custom-made suit, the toes of shoes without a speck of dust as if they had just been polished, a tidy hairstyle—the handsome man in front of him had an appearance that seemed to have no point of contact with this dirty and destitute neighborhood that knew nothing of life beyond mere subsistence. However, his cuff buttons and necktie were somewhat untidily disheveled, giving off an image like a trace of an intentional mistake left in the corner of a suffocatingly perfect painting.

Eunseong’s eyes were not fixed on his handsome face, but toward his thick neck. On the nape of his neck, extending below his left ear, there was a brilliantly shaped tattoo in the form of a beast—either a tiger or a wolf—with eyes that seemed to glare.

The eyes of the man who met Eunseong’s gaze momentarily distorted slightly as if he had seen filthy trash. It was a gaze that made Eunseong cower as he was running away after defenselessly opening the door to his house for men he didn’t know, as if selling out his father.

“…Seo Eunseong?”

Faced with Eunseong’s presence, the man didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding his unpleasantness or hostility. Eunseong just stood there startled, blankly staring at the man and the beast-shaped tattoo that resembled him. Rather than being scary, it felt like a strange sense of awe.

Watching the man, who seemed to be a realization of the idea that a person with the kind of looks that could create a narrative in any way could exist in the world, he had an eccentric thought.

Because it is not common to have looks where an unpleasant expression does not transmit the unpleasantness to others.

“What about this kid’s father?”

The man asked while looking at Eunseong, who had stopped in his tracks. The middle-aged man who had been opening the door and looking inside turned back and bowed his head as if addressing a superior.

“I believe he is inside.”

At the man’s report, Eunseong was startled. His father was at home, yet he had been collapsed in a drunken stupor, failing to hear even though I was screaming at the top of my lungs for help while dealing with that mess with Choi Jungeon.

Even in this situation, irritation and disgust toward his father swirled violently, and at the same time, seeing the appearance of the Grim Reapers who had descended upon the house like the result of his father’s actions, a momentary sense of cathartic satisfaction that he got what he deserved arose—only to be followed by a new blooming of fear, sensing that his father would harm him this time as well, just as he always did.

“Can I… can I go now?”

“Hmm?”

“Since you came to see my father, I… I can go, right? It has nothing to do with me.”

He asked the man who was standing a few steps below him, yet whose eye level seemed equal as they stood facing each other. He didn’t have the leisure to admire the man’s appearance, which exuded a delicate yet heavy atmosphere, anew. It was because ominous premonitions, as always, had never been wrong.

“….”

The man was scanning Eunseong’s features with an excessively obvious gaze. It felt like he was evaluating him, or perhaps appraising him. A mysterious gaze whose inner thoughts could not be guessed lingered on Eunseong’s face for a long time. As he did so, his brow distorted faintly. Eunseong, who lacked the leisure to gauge such microscopic changes, was the first to avoid the staring eyes.

Perhaps noticing Eunseong’s mind, which was looking for an opening to escape like a small animal caught in a trap, he finally opened his mouth with an “ah.”

“My introduction is late. I am… well, I am your relative. I am not some scary person.”

“Pardon?”

“I am your father’s cousin, so for you, that would make me a first cousin once removed.”

“You are my father’s cousin?”

“Your paternal grandfather’s youngest brother is my father, and between you and me, the degree of kinship is fifth degree.”

“Like an uncle?”

“Yes. Your father and I are cousins, and with you, it’s fifth degree. In a way, it’s like being an uncle.”

“Ah, yes… Uncle. Ahh, I see. I’m sorry I couldn’t greet you properly. I was a bit out of it.”

Eunseong did not miss the bitter energy that flashed across the man’s face. The man was realistically aware of the fact that the other party was young enough to need such things explained.

“It is the first time I’ve seen you since I last saw you when you were very young, and you’ve grown a lot. Have you been well?”