The Unbelievers Chapter 9

Eunseong, bewildered by the bizarre scene unfolding before his eyes, called out to his father. The back that had been flinching in surprise suddenly jerked its head up.

“Eu, Eunseong! Go outside. Hmm? Your father is talking to a guest right now. Go outside!”

“…”

The uncle turned his head and looked at Eunseong. He had a cold expression that made it impossible to tell what he was thinking.

His father, who had been kneeling and begging before a cousin much younger than himself, was flustered as if he had been caught in a scene he never wanted his child to see. His complexion, already dark from a bad liver, turned a purplish hue as he simply kept shouting for Eunseong to get out. However, the uncle maintained an attitude that such gestures of reflection from the father were perfectly natural and familiar. He stared at Eunseong without a hint of agitation.

“I, I was wrong. I’m asking you like this. Hmm? Just leave our Eunseong alone. Please, please, Siun.”

“I never said I was going to do anything to him.”

“Do you think this makes sense? She was the woman I loved! You know what she went through! Just leave us alone! Let us live normally!”

His father shouted at the uncle while kneeling and begging on the floor. It would be more accurate to say he was pleading rather than shouting.

There was no sympathy on the uncle’s face for the circumstances of his older cousin, who looked much older than his actual age. He merely acknowledged the fact that the startled Eunseong was staring at them with a low sigh.

“Living in hiding isn’t going to solve the problem. Everyone’s eyes are burning red looking for you, so how much longer do you think you can stay hidden?”

“Siun! Siun, please!”

“That’s why I’m saying I’ll take charge of him. So that those kinds of things don’t happen… No, hyung-nim, you and I both know it’s inevitable. To make sure nothing happens, it’s better for me to have him. That was the Father’s dying wish.”

“I, we’ll go somewhere else instead. To a place where no one knows us, even overseas… Just pretend you didn’t see us. Act like you couldn’t find us.”

“The movement on that side is unusual. It won’t be easy anymore. Hyung-nim, you know it’s a miracle we’ve managed to hide this far. It will be safer to be with me, under my protection.”

The father was kneeling and entreating as if to a high-ranking official, while the uncle naturally accepted his appeal like a king and continued in a calm tone. The uncle signaled to his subordinate to help the father up, but the father stubbornly remained on his knees, repeatedly brushing off the hands trying to pull him up.

“If we leave things like this, we don’t know who will invade first. Regardless, this is a problem that must be resolved within the family. Eunseong is getting scared. Get up, that’s enough.”

The uncle gave a subtle nod to his subordinate. This time, the employee used force to pull up the resisting father and sat him in an empty dining chair. The father, sitting with an exhausted and lifeless appearance, gulped down the water poured by the employee. Without looking at the stunned Eunseong, the father spoke while turning his head away.

“…Eunseong, come here. Come here and greet him.”

“I already greeted him outside earlier.”

The father couldn’t meet Eunseong’s eyes and just nodded weakly at the uncle’s words. Leaving his father behind with slumped shoulders, the uncle rose from his chair. He approached the fearfully standing Eunseong.

Every attitude of the uncle was peculiar. The way he spoke to the father kneeling before him was polite, yet he was still pacing the living room with his shoes on as if to disregard the entire household.

Eunseong looked down at the uncle’s approaching shoes. No matter how much he disliked his father, no matter how much he wanted to abandon him, seeing that father kneeling and begging someone else ignited a flame of hostility, regardless of how much he hated him.

“Eunseong.”

The uncle’s low voice softly called Eunseong’s name.

Eunseong kept his eyes on his shoes and spoke.

“Take off your shoes.”

“…”

“Don’t you know it’s common sense to take off your shoes when entering someone else’s house?”

At Eunseong’s point, the uncle finally looked down at his own feet. As if just realizing it now, he stared blankly at his shoes. He did not take off his shoes, nor did he give much of a reaction to Eunseong’s demand.

“The talk with your father is over, so pack your things.”

“What talk? Why is my dad kneeling to you, Uncle? My dad is much older than you!”

A sharp voice questioned him. The curiosity he had felt when first seeing him vanished in an instant, and in its place, only the sense of humiliation his father received remained as a disgrace.

“Eunseong, stop it. Come here. Come over here and sit down.”

The father spoke to Eunseong, who was demanding to know why he was being treated so disrespectfully, while waving his hand as if he himself found it troublesome. Eunseong had his fists clenched tight. His eyes were glaring at the uncle with his hackles raised.

While calling him to come, the father tilted a dreaded bottle of soju, filled a glass, and gulped it down as if quenching a parched throat. Eunseong glared at the uncle while breathing slightly heavily, but at his father’s call to come here, he approached obediently, as if he had always followed and carried out his words very well.

“Sit here.”

“Who is that person? Is he really your cousin, Dad? Why were you kneeling earlier? Are you an idiot, Dad? Why kneel? Who is that person?! Exactly what did you do wrong! Why are you kneeling in front of someone younger than you!”

The scene of his father kneeling meekly and pleading was replayed in his mind, and Eunseong’s voice grew louder and louder. Even if he hated his father, he couldn’t help but take his side.

“Siun is… well, to you, he is your first cousin once removed. There are things your father hasn’t been able to say all this time.”

“Let’s not talk for long. I will explain as we go. Please pack the kid’s things.”

It was when the father was clutching his aching forehead and trying to offer some explanation. He hurried the father along.

“…Yes, I’ll do as you say.”

The father looked back at his cousin listlessly and stood up. With every breath he exhaled, the smell of alcohol wafted out.

“Things? What things?”

“Listen to the explanation from your uncle on the way. He’ll handle the school transfer procedures over there. You’re moving schools now and living in a better place, in a better environment. There’s no need to live with a father like me.”

“…What does that suddenly mean?”

Eunseong, who had prepared for a long time to break ties and run away from his father once he secured enough deposit for a room, now had to listen with a dazed face as the person in question told him first that there was no need to live with him.

“You knew all along that I couldn’t take responsibility for you until the end.”

The father looked both drunk and not drunk. His eyes were blurry, but every word he spat out was steeped like a blade with Eunseong’s own hidden feelings that he had never dared to voice.

“…Is your lack of ability something new? To suddenly, just like this, send me away out of nowhere? And to someone I just met today for the first time?”

“Listen well to your uncle. He will protect you from now on. Got it? Quickly, just pack what you need.”

“Who is that person? Is he really our relative? If he’s a relative, why was Dad kneeling there! Is he a relative? Aren’t you trying to sell me off? What kind of debt did you incur? Did you gamble? Is that why you’re trying to sell me?!”

“Stop talking nonsense. Hurry up.”

Even though it was a house he wanted to leave on his own and a father he wanted to leave, it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Eunseong got angry as if to insist he never had even a tiny intention of abandoning his father.

“How much did you get! How much debt did you have!”

“Ha, come here. Come here and listen to your father.”

Faced with the situation where his father was trying to cut him off first, Eunseong poured out sorrowful resentment. Tears pooled blurrily in his eyes as he shouted while huffing. A surge of sorrow, embarrassing even to himself, welled up.

The father grabbed Eunseong’s wrist and looked over at the uncle with eyes seeking understanding. Once the uncle gave a nod, he led Eunseong into the room.

Once they were alone, Eunseong shouted even more. No, he demanded answers.

“Didn’t you hear me screaming outside earlier? Didn’t you hear me calling for you over and over, Dad!”

“What are you talking about. Calm down and listen to your father.”

“You didn’t even hear that! You weren’t going to take responsibility anyway! How can you do this. How can you sell your son to someone you don’t even know!”

“It’s not like that, you punk.”

The master bedroom, steeped in a stale smell, was bleak. The father’s hands, as he pulled a cigarette and lighter out of a jacket hanging on wallpaper turned yellow from cigarette smoke, were shaking so slightly it was almost unnoticeable.

He put the cigarette in his mouth and hurriedly lit it. He seemed more concerned with calming his own startled heart than with soothing his son, who was crying and asking why he was being abandoned.

Inhaling the cigarette smoke until his chest expanded and exhaling a long breath, he opened the window. Only then did the faint sounds of life from the alley outside leak into the room, which had been as silent as a vacuum.

“There were some circumstances. After your mother died, I cut ties with the family. I don’t know what kind of bravado it was… but at the time, that was the best I could do. I simply didn’t have the confidence to live in that family. All I could think about was protecting you, whom Yunhui gave birth to. Maybe just living there without running away would have been better than the state I’m in now, but…”

Approaching the window, he leaned his elbows on the windowsill and continued speaking intermittently, inhaling and exhaling smoke in between.

“If I hadn’t seen the image of Yunhui being happy while holding you, things wouldn’t have ended up like this. If I hadn’t met her back then.”

The father, lost in regret, muttered words that Eunseong couldn’t understand as if talking to himself.