Chapter 195
If they had wanted to do something to him, they could have done it hundreds of times by now. Unable to voice this thought, Eunseong hunched his shoulders, trembling with fear.
He was fortunate that Yoo Siwoon was there. Eunseong finally realized that he had remained safe and unharmed all this time because Yoo Siwoon had protected him. He had been shielding him with his entire body.
Perhaps Yoo Siwoon had instinctively known that no one else could play that role, which is why he hadn’t let Eunseong go.
It was incredibly fortunate that Yoo Siwoon’s father had found him first, and it was Eunseong’s great luck that this father’s son was Yoo Siwoon. Even Seo Jeong-gi sending Eunseong to Yoo Siwoon had ultimately been the right choice.
“That bastard is dead too. Don’t worry.”
Yoo Siwoon spoke in a low voice, apparently sensing Eunseong’s trembling without even looking at him. Eunseong nodded heavily.
“Ahjussi…”
“…”
“Do you really believe that?”
Yoo Siwoon’s gaze, which had been fixed ahead, briefly shifted toward Eunseong. Rubbing his arms, which he was hugging, Eunseong asked again.
“You said you wouldn’t want a baby if I didn’t want one. Do you really believe the prophecy that I can get pregnant?”
“…”
“I heard it’s a very ancient prophecy. They say there are records of men who have been pregnant.”
Eunseong asked if he really believed that. The veins on the back of Yoo Siwoon’s hands gripping the steering wheel bulged white as he tensed.
No matter how he answered, Eunseong already thought he wasn’t in his right mind. Even at the risk of appearing insane, he couldn’t lie about this matter. Yoo Siwoon didn’t care what Eunseong thought of him.
Keeping his eyes on the road, Yoo Siwoon spoke in a firm voice.
“I believe that you are my partner.”
“…”
“What I believe is that the reason I was born was to meet you… that’s what I believe.”
Rather than believing in the prophecy or the god who came through a side path, Yoo Siwoon believed they were destined to love each other. That belief couldn’t be changed.
After driving for over two hours, the car slowly came to a stop in front of the main temple of the Yongse Pacheon Church. After parking on the roadside, Yoo Siwoon got out of the car and took his crutches. Eunseong followed him out.
True to his words about burning everything down, the temple and part of the buildings had been burned and collapsed, unlike when they had come before. It was even desolate with no signs of people. Some buildings had crumbled as if a bomb had exploded.
Eunseong looked around with surprised eyes. The talk of burning it down had not been a metaphorical expression. Yoo Siwoon also looked around, recalling the bizarre silence that had existed despite the bustling people.
It felt as if the elders’ council executives, dressed in black hoods, walking in single file without making a sound as they followed one another, might appear at any moment and quietly pass by them.
The magnificent golden hall, once glorious with Seongha Group’s financial power, didn’t have a single person, not even an ant, in sight. A wind carrying the smell of ash swept over them.
While pushing back the hair scattered by the wind, Yoo Siwoon inadvertently met Eunseong’s eyes.
“Aren’t you afraid of your god, ahjussi? If you do things like this, surely your god won’t leave you alone.”
“…I never believed in such things from the beginning.”
“…”
Behind the burned main church building, there was a path leading to the ancestral burial ground. Yoo Siwoon began walking ahead with unstable steps, moving slowly. Eunseong followed silently as they went up the mountain path.
After walking uphill for about twenty minutes, they saw gravestones placed on a sunny spot halfway up the mountain.
“…”
Those gravestones, tens or even hundreds of them, were arranged in rows and columns on the scale of a memorial park. The number was chillingly large. Eunseong flinched. For such a long time, they had maintained their family lineage, repeating the cycle of birth and death.
Waiting just for him.
Waiting for him to be born, for The Great Crevice with the evidence to come into this world.
Eunseong seemed to understand what Yoo Siwoon meant when he said he believed they were born to meet each other. If he were to believe that, he could understand that Yoo Siwoon’s blind devotion to him was an emotion close to faith. It was creepy and terrible, yet the existence of Yoo Siwoon, who had been born desiring him throughout generations, made Eunseong’s chest swell until he could hardly breathe.
Unconsciously holding his breath, Eunseong looked up at the bizarrely numerous gravestones.
“The bloodline of the Seongha family is buried here when they die. This is the record of the bloodline.”
On the gravestones, all of the same size and made of the same stone, were recorded the name of the buried person, when they were born and when they died, and what descendants they left behind.
Yoo Siwoon walked ahead. He stopped in front of the gravestone of Yoo Jeong-gi, who had died without descendants.
Eunseong stood beside him. At their feet was a gravestone with Yoo Jeong-gi’s name written in Chinese characters. Eunseong bent one knee and sat down. He dusted off the straw that had fallen on the gravestone.
“…When did you do this?”
“Shortly after I brought you here. Before that, I couldn’t use a grave site because of Chairman Yoo and the elders’ council.”
“Because Dad ran away from the family with me?”
“Very few people knew that he had fled with you. Jeong-gi hyung was excommunicated from the Seongha family because he was born but didn’t fulfill his duty.”
“What duty?”
Eunseong, who had been looking at the gravestone for a while, raised his head and asked. Yoo Siwoon, who was leaning on his crutches with his weight on one leg, had been looking into the distance but felt Eunseong’s gaze and turned to him. His eyes moved to Yoo Jeong-gi’s gravestone.
“The duty of a breeder.”
“…”
“A breeder who inherits the bloodline must perform the family’s work, whether they like it or not. Once past the age of twenty, they must mandatorily start taking Jeokdan to prepare as a vessel that can produce gods. Jeong-gi hyung refused that.”
“You’re talking about that strange herb, right?”
“I refused it too. I tried it for the first time after meeting you.”
“…”
Eunseong seemed to know when that might have been. He could still picture in his mind the black shadow standing at the door, emanating a scent that constricted his chest.
The chirping of mountain birds and the wind, now desolate with no one dwelling there, brushed past their cheeks and napes. The wind was cool. It felt as if even the worries in their minds were being washed clean by the wind carrying the scent of pine.
Eunseong, who had been crouching beside him and endlessly staring at the gravestone, suddenly asked:
“By the way, that thing, that Jeokdan. It’s a drug, right?”
“No.”
“Then what is it? It’s something that makes you weird when you smell it, right?”
It was an accusation that he had malicious intentions when he produced the scent and made him smell it. Yoo Siwoon didn’t know how to explain it. It was an awkward question. Realizing that it was impossible to explain it in other terms, Yoo Siwoon spoke as thoughts came to him.
“…When you take it, you can recognize you.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Well, it’s… like knowledge. Without knowledge, no matter how much you look, no matter how close you are, you can’t know what it is.”
“…”
“When you take it, you can know you. You… you can feel your existence.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. So now that you’re not taking it, you can’t feel it, right?”
“…”
Since Eunseong wasn’t of their bloodline, he would never know what that feeling was like. It wasn’t simply for such a lewd purpose. When you take it, you can feel your partner’s existence more clearly. Very delicately. As if each breath pierces your heart.
Once imprinted, you could feel it whether you continued to take it or not. However, taking it would allow him to feel every single hair on Eunseong’s body more delicately than now.
Yoo Siwoon found himself staring intently at Eunseong. It was a gaze that automatically recalled the night they had spent together after he had taken Jeokdan. Eunseong quickly changed the subject, avoiding his serious eyes.
“Then doesn’t anyone who smells or eats that thing become strange?”
“Director Nam has smelled it repeatedly.”
“What?”
Eunseong looked up at him, startled. He became even more horrified as he imagined Director Nam becoming strange after smelling that scent.
“They can’t feel anything.”
Director Nam had to smell that scent unintentionally whenever he entered the mansion. They couldn’t feel it. It was an emotional and physical exchange that only Eunseong and Yoo Siwoon could experience.
“Did you really get rid of all of it? You didn’t keep some, did you? You didn’t hide it without my knowledge, did you?”
“…Do I have a reason to do that?”
“…”
Yoo Siwoon asked in return. It sounded like he was saying there would be no such occasion between them in the future.
Eunseong vaguely knew that Yoo Siwoon had let go of him after crossing death. That he had put everything down, like a compulsive cleanliness, saying he would no longer show greed or desire after ruining things by being greedy.
Both of them turned their gazes away from each other’s intense stares. Come to think of it, he was standing a step further away. It was the intentional distance they had kept from each other when they first met. It was an explicit avoidance that recalled those times. The talk about Jeokdan had only made the atmosphere awkward.
Eunseong glanced at him and asked:
“By the way, why did Dad hit me? You said he ran away to protect me. Listening to you, Dad sounds like a good person. But he wasn’t a good person.”
“…”
Yoo Siwoon didn’t answer. He didn’t know well why Yoo Jeong-gi had done that either. He could only guess.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
