The Unbelievers

Chapter 8

“…Pardon?”

“I asked if you’ve been well.”

“Well… I don’t think I’ve been doing well.”

“You haven’t been doing well?”

Eunseong’s unexpected answer seemed to surprise him, and he chuckled. It was a smile that instantly broke down the other person’s defenses. Eunseong suddenly felt an inexplicable surge of emotion. It was partly because no adult had ever asked him if he’d been well before, and partly because he realized that this man wasn’t some scary loan shark-like figure.

“No… I haven’t been doing well.”

“I see.”

He didn’t add anything more, just nodding his head as he mulled over Eunseong’s response.

As they stood in awkward silence, reflecting on Eunseong’s difficult past years with this distant ahjussi he was meeting for the first time, the man spoke again.

“Were those your friends earlier?”

“Not friends… They’re kids who bully me. They followed me home to extort money… They’re totally delinquents who are even friendly with gangsters, beating people up and stuff. They’re good at studying too, so they don’t get punished at school.”

They weren’t people coming to collect for his father’s misdeeds. Eunseong felt relief wash over him like a shiver down his spine. Along with a long sigh of relief, his response came out like a complaint.

“I see.”

The man responded with just enough interest to not embarrass Eunseong.

“They’ve been bullying me at school, so I ran away, but they followed me home.”

“Bad friends indeed.”

“We were kind of close in middle school, but they’ve gotten weird lately. People change as they grow up, you know.”

Realizing that the man before him wasn’t some tracker sent by his father who had completely lost his trust, but actually a blood relative, albeit distant, Eunseong found himself unconsciously reporting about Choi Jung-eon to this adult relative in a depressed and plaintive voice.

“I kept shouting for help earlier. But dad was at home and didn’t even hear… He didn’t even come out.”

Eunseong bit his lip, feeling resentful and frustrated at his father’s existence, unable to act as any kind of shield for him. He shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if his distant ahjussi hadn’t shown up in time.

“Are you alright physically?”

“I didn’t get hit much.”

Assuming he was asking about the beating from Choi Jung-eon, Eunseong covered the injury on his cheek from being hit at the store yesterday as he spoke.

The distant ahjussi observed the swelling on Eunseong’s face that he was trying to cover with his hand. That obvious gaze made Eunseong feel both embarrassed and suddenly shy. Still, Eunseong didn’t dislike the man’s reaction of carefully examining him. The distant ahjussi had thoughtful eyes that seemed like they would listen to anything Eunseong might say.

Perhaps that’s why Eunseong showed his bruised face without hiding it.

“Your cheek is quite swollen.”

“This… it wasn’t from him earlier. I got hit by a customer yesterday at the part-time job where I work.”

“Hit by a customer? Why?”

“There was a bit of an altercation.”

“…I see. It must have hurt a lot.”

His hand, which was about to touch Eunseong’s cheek, hesitated for a moment. He slowly withdrew, putting some distance between himself and Eunseong.

“But this person, is he also my distant ahjussi?” Eunseong asked, gesturing with his eyes towards the middle-aged man still quietly standing by the door, waiting for their conversation to end. The distant ahjussi’s eyes naturally glanced at the man standing at the top of the stairs.

When their eyes met, the middle-aged man lowered his gaze respectfully, and at that moment, Eunseong realized their relationship was hierarchical. The man explained what Eunseong had noticed.

“This is an employee who works for me. Were you surprised?”

“No, not really… Oh, so he’s your subordinate.”

“Something like that.”

Eunseong found it fascinating. That he had relatives living in a completely different world. His father had cut ties with his paternal family for as long as he could remember, living without any contact. Eunseong had never seen or met his maternal family either, as his mother had passed away when he was young, leaving Eunseong and his father truly alone in the world.

Eunseong stared at the distant ahjussi standing before him. Judging by his demeanor, he seemed to be in his early thirties. At first, Eunseong was too surprised to examine him properly, but upon closer inspection, he noticed tattoos not just on his neck but also on the back of his hands.

As Eunseong’s eyes kept curiously glancing at the tattoos, the ahjussi seemed uncomfortable and rubbed his neck as if to cover it. While doing so, Eunseong’s gaze naturally shifted to carefully observe the tattoos on the back of his hands as well.

“I just found out today that I have relatives. Dad never mentioned anything about it. I thought we didn’t have anyone.”

“We had quite a hard time finding you too. I didn’t expect it to take this long.”

The statement that he had spent a long time searching for them, despite there being no apparent benefit, sounded more like a pleasant rhetoric than something to be taken at face value. Eunseong was in the process of gathering minimal funds for independence to permanently separate from his father, whom his distant ahjussi claimed to have searched for with such difficulty.

“You were looking for us?”

The large hand that seemed like it could cover Eunseong’s entire face kept stroking his neck as if to hide the tattoo.

“Of course we had to find you.”

He murmured in a low voice.

Eunseong felt like he was in a dream. The existence of this man, claiming to be his distant ahjussi, appearing at the greatest crisis of his life, felt no different from a dream. His appearance, his voice, even the faint scent of adult cologne he was now perceiving. It was completely different from the fishy sweat smell emanating from Choi Jung-eon.

“You say father is inside?”

“I’ll wake him up. He’s probably sleeping drunk. Wait here. I’ll bring father out.”

The inside of the house was a mess, and there would be a nauseating layer of air filled with the musty smell of alcohol emanating from his father. If the distant ahjussi saw how they lived, he might wrinkle his nose in disgust. Eunseong, who until just moments ago had only been thinking of avoiding the place, now tried to climb the stairs ahead of him.

“No, there’s no need for that. I’ll do it. Would you mind waiting here for a bit?”

“What?”

“I have some urgent matters to discuss with your father. Just wait here with the gentlemen.”

Eunseong didn’t want to show the dirty and shabby interior, but not knowing his feelings, the ahjussi indicated that such effort wasn’t necessary and gestured for him to step back.

“Ah… okay.”

He opened the front door and entered the house, guided by his subordinate. The ahjussi and his employee stepped into Eunseong’s living room with their shoes on. As if having seen something he shouldn’t have, Eunseong lowered his head in embarrassment.

“…”

He had been mistaken for a moment. In the end, it wasn’t a good thing.

It couldn’t have been a good thing. It was certain that there was another reason why his father had lived cut off from his paternal family, and this person claiming to be Eunseong’s distant ahjussi had appeared to collect on the debt his father had incurred by cutting ties with them all this time, not out of any tender familial reconnection. Eunseong recalled the menacing tattoos on the ahjussi’s neck and the back of his hands.

He shifted his gaze to the men in black suits standing alert, as if keeping watch. His eyes met with one of them. The man’s gaze was sharp, as if Eunseong was also included among those being monitored. Eunseong quickly averted his eyes. He nervously gripped the railing, looking down at his feet.

“…”

Despite quite some time passing as he observed them, there was no sound coming from beyond the front door where the distant ahjussi and his neat-looking subordinate had entered with their shoes on.

There was no noise of waking up his father who would be sprawled out drunk, nor any drunken shouting. There was only an eerie stillness, like the chilling silence that followed Eunseong’s earlier screams as he tried to escape from Choi Jung-eon’s grasp.

The time stretched on – ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes – as Eunseong kicked at the toe of his sneakers, feeling like he was waiting for some kind of sentence. The initial tension and ominous premonition loosened as time passed, and Eunseong let out a small sigh, turning to look at the silent front door of the house.

No matter how long he stared, there was no sound from inside.

“What’s going on, what are they all doing in there…”

Eunseong crouched down on the stairs. Unlike Eunseong, whose tension had eased and who was growing bored of waiting, the ahjussi’s employees maintained their initial vigilance, keeping watch on the surroundings.

He craned his neck, peering unnecessarily over the fence into the alley. He could see two black sedans parked side by side in the narrow alley, presumably what they had arrived in. It was an incongruous sight, out of place in this neighborhood.

Curious about what was happening inside and worried by the complete lack of sound, Eunseong finally couldn’t stand it anymore and got up.

“Why aren’t they coming out…”

Muttering loud enough for the men to hear, he climbed the stairs and stood in front of the front door. The men just watched Eunseong’s actions without stopping him.

Whatever demands the ahjussi was making of his father, Eunseong was still the ahjussi’s relative. The fact that no one stopped him as he opened the front door made him realize that he wasn’t someone they could casually push around.

Eunseong opened the door and took off his shoes first. Just as no sound had been heard outside, the house was completely quiet. He stopped after taking just a few steps into the living room.

The distant ahjussi was sitting in a chair pulled out from the dining table, and his subordinate was standing silently by his side with his hands clasped. And Eunseong’s father, Seo Jeong-gi, was kneeling on the floor, bowing deeply in front of the distant ahjussi as if prostrating himself.

“…Dad?”