Chapter 145
Eunseong slowly lifted a photograph.
“…H-how is this possible…?”
It was a wedding photo. It was the same half-torn photo of his mother’s wedding that Eunseong owned—his treasure. Except this wasn’t a torn half, but a complete photo with the missing part intact.
But his father wasn’t in it. Instead of the father Eunseong knew, there was a completely unfamiliar man in the photo with his mother. Next to his mother’s smiling face was a stranger—clearly the groom. And his face somehow resembled Eunseong. The man who looked like Eunseong—who until now had thought he only resembled his mother—was smiling brightly, looking at his mother. They were gazing at each other with eyes freshly in love.
“…”
Shocked, Eunseong stared at the photo for a long time, lost in thought. He kept looking at it until he lost track of how much time had passed.
With his bare legs growing cold and chills running up his back, Eunseong finally got up as if in a trance, clutching the photo, and returned to his room.
As he quietly opened the door and entered, he saw Siwoon’s sleeping back. He was still hugging a pillow, mistaking it for Eunseong, in a deep sleep. His back rose and fell gently with his regular breathing.
Eunseong took out his mother’s half-torn wedding photo that Kim Dongjun had fortunately not discarded from the drawer and quietly left the room.
He placed his mother’s half-photo on top of the complete one he had brought from Siwoon’s study.
They were the same photo. And the person next to his mother wasn’t the father who had raised him, but a completely unknown man he’d never seen before.
“…What is this? Who is this person?”
With both his mother and father deceased, Eunseong didn’t know who to ask. Since Siwoon had neglected the belongings sent by Eunseong’s father without even opening them, he probably wouldn’t know who this person was either. And if he had known, he would have told him.
Eunseong returned to Siwoon’s study. He turned over the box he had believed was sent to Siwoon by his father.
Examining the photos and documents inside, his suspicion grew that these weren’t his belongings sent by his father to Siwoon. They were things Siwoon had possessed from the beginning. Not Eunseong’s possessions, but materials collected about Eunseong.
Though his childhood memories weren’t precise, one document recorded the history of Eunseong’s moves with his father. Eunseong and his father had moved frequently. They had lived in the same multi-family building since purchasing it when Eunseong was in the third year of middle school, but before that, they had relocated often. From the upper grades of elementary school, Eunseong had memorized addresses, so he vaguely remembered where they had lived.
Siwoon had said he had been searching for Eunseong. He had said that Eunseong’s father had run away with him to hide him from becoming the family successor, and that Siwoon had searched for Eunseong for a long time. He had mentioned how difficult the search had been when they first met.
This box contained records tracking Eunseong’s life, not his belongings sent by his father.
“…So ahjussi knew where I lived all along?”
Yet he had spoken as though he had searched for Eunseong for quite some time.
“I only found out today that I had relatives. My dad never mentioned it. I thought I had no one.”
“It was quite difficult for us to find you too. Even I didn’t know it would take this long.”
Despite knowing where he lived and how he lived since childhood, he had appeared later and taken him away. At that time, Eunseong had decided to cut ties with his father and was preparing to run away.
“He knew that…?”
The timing was uncanny.
Was he brought here because it might become difficult to find him if he actually ran away?
Eunseong felt a chill. He got goosebumps. These weren’t simply records of monitoring Eunseong, but evidence that his entire life had been watched from birth.
He calculated Siwoon’s age. Siwoon was fourteen years older than Eunseong. When Eunseong was born, Siwoon was only in the first year of middle school, and a first-year middle schooler wouldn’t be able to track and manage the life of a newborn distant cousin.
He had an instinctive feeling that this wasn’t simply Siwoon’s obsession, but a meticulous plan that had begun even before Siwoon.
“He did say it was a family that valued sons… When we first met, ahjussi told me that boys like me were very precious.”
Though Eunseong wasn’t worldly, he occasionally felt that the family’s treatment of him was far from normal. Still, until now, nothing seriously concerning had happened (probably because Siwoon seemed to block any potential trouble), and his father had never indicated they needed to be careful about anything despite supposedly having run away with him. According to Siwoon’s promises, there wouldn’t be any issues in the future either.
Only now, upon seeing these records of how his supposedly precious existence had been tracked and managed for so long, did the reality sink in—how valuable his existence was to this family.
“But… who is this man? The person next to mom. It’s not my dad. No matter how I look at it, it’s not my dad.”
Eunseong tilted his head, comparing his half-torn wedding photo of his mother with the complete one again, looking at the man beside her.
Since Choi Jung-eon had secretly given him the phone, ominous suggestions had been occurring one after another, but Eunseong couldn’t ask the person who would know best—Yoo Siwoon.
He didn’t know why. It just felt like something he shouldn’t ask about. Especially not to him.
∞ ∞ ∞
“Does it not taste good?”
“Huh?”
“Why aren’t you eating properly?”
Siwoon asked, watching Eunseong picking at his dinner. Unaware that Siwoon had been observing him for a while, Eunseong was lost in thought, neither eating nor rejecting the food, counting each grain of rice one by one.
“Did something happen?”
“…No.”
“Did something happen while I was gone?”
“When you’re not here, Director Nam is, so nothing could happen. If anything happened to me, Director Nam would report it immediately.”
“…”
Unable to refute this, Siwoon didn’t ask further but carefully examined Eunseong’s complexion. Eunseong glanced at him.
From his birth, they had closely observed and managed him, and Siwoon—no, Siwoon’s family—was continuing to do so even at this moment. Suddenly, Eunseong felt uncomfortable with Siwoon’s attentive, scrutinizing gaze.
“If you’re bored, you can go out to meet friends.”
“…When are we going to New York?”
“Soon. Once this matter is sorted out, we’ll be able to go.”
Since announcing Eunseong’s existence to the family elders, Siwoon had been very busy serving as Eunseong’s representative. Something Eunseong didn’t understand was changing urgently.
Eunseong knew from his online searches that the CEO of Seongha Momentum had changed. It wasn’t Siwoon’s name but someone else’s, and Siwoon’s position had changed from Seongha Momentum to Seongha Industries, the holding company of the Seongha Group. He had become an executive at the holding company, not just a small affiliate. Eunseong thought it was a promotion, but Siwoon hadn’t mentioned it, nor did he seem particularly happy about it.
“I’ve been studying English hard, and I want to go soon. With all these delays, I don’t know when I’ll ever get to use it.”
“You’ll get to use it, why wouldn’t you?”
“…Because you’re always busy with company work.”
“I’m sorting things out. When it’s done, we’ll leave.”
Siwoon reassured Eunseong with kind words, telling him not to worry. While he kept saying he was wrapping things up, he was taking on one important position and task after another. Obviously, with him taking on more work, the “wrapping up” wouldn’t be as easy as he claimed. The revenue scale of Seongha Momentum and Seongha Industries were on completely different levels.
“I can’t go to New York alone without you, right?”
“…Did you want to go that badly?”
“No, just… It’s not that I’m desperate to go. It’s just that you keep saying we’ll go but we never do. You keep building up my expectations.”
At Eunseong’s words, Siwoon looked disappointed. He stared as if wondering how Eunseong could think of traveling without him.
“Then how about we finish what’s urgent now and take a short trip?”
“What? Really?”
“Yes. We can’t go for long, maybe a week? I should be able to make that much time. But only if I finish the current work cleanly. It won’t take long.”
“Really? Wow, I want to go. It’s better as a trip. Even better if it’s just the two of us.”
A bright smile bloomed on Eunseong’s previously gloomy face.
He couldn’t bring himself to ask about the strange man in his mother’s wedding photo to someone who cared for him so much—especially since Siwoon might already know.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
