Chapter 172
“…You’re telling me to forget?”
“Yes. Forget everything. Losing parents in an accident and becoming an orphan isn’t something that only happens to Eunseong.”
“What did you say?”
“I mean it’s not like something that doesn’t happen in the world occurred.”
“But who gets it done to them by someone they trusted and loved!”
“……”
“Those kids didn’t have someone they trusted kill their birth parents! They weren’t lied to and deceived about everything!”
Eunseong screamed in anguish. Both his fists were clenched tight, trembling as they couldn’t overcome the internal pressure.
How could such words about forgetting come so easily, when he was still going crazy and jumping mad, when the more he thought about it the more his insides burst and his chest ached as if bruised, yet Director Nam was telling him to forget everything and disappear.
Even while fully reading what Eunseong’s feelings were like, Director Nam spoke with an even colder expression.
“So are you going to keep being like this? Destroying each other?”
“Did I destroy ahjussi? Can’t you see that ahjussi destroyed our family, my everything?”
“I know Eunseong did nothing wrong. Same with Eunseong’s parents.”
Director Nam put his hand on Eunseong’s shoulder with a low sigh. He gripped tightly, as if telling him to come to his senses, giving strength to his grip as if warning that this wasn’t the time to be like this. It wasn’t time to be swayed by emotions. There weren’t many opportunities or much time.
“Since you did nothing wrong, don’t stay buried here and escape overseas or anywhere. I’ll help you.”
When Eunseong tried to avoid that hand and shout something, a knock was heard. Eunseong and Director Nam were startled simultaneously as if they had been plotting treason.
Along with the knock, the door opened slightly and Yoo Siwoon poked his head in. His brow was seriously furrowed as if he had heard their argument. Why are you upsetting Eunseong’s mood, Yoo Siwoon looked at Director Nam with an expression telling him not to do unhelpful things.
“Hey, eat quickly. How long are you going to protest by not eating? If your body really breaks down, I’ll hospitalize you and force you to get injections. Listen when an adult tells you something!”
“…If I eat, that’s fine.”
Director Nam raised his voice and forcibly put a spoon in his hand, telling him to eat quickly. Eunseong also inadvertently gripped the spoon and scooped up some porridge. He brought the porridge toward his mouth but hesitated. He turned his head toward Yoo Siwoon who was looking inside.
“Close the door.”
“Can you eat it? Should I get you something else?”
“I don’t even want to see ahjussi’s face, so close the door.”
“…You need to eat something.”
“I hate hearing your voice too. I hate seeing your face too! I hate everything! I hate you constantly telling me to eat too! Why do you keep telling me to eat! Even sitting here right now in ahjussi’s house wearing clothes ahjussi gave me is driving me crazy!”
The Great Crevice he loved wasn’t here. Yoo Siwoon wasn’t worried about Eunseong but afraid that the body that had to carry his child might break down. He hadn’t loved Eunseong from the beginning, and it was the same now. He was anxious about what would happen to The Great Crevice, and Yoo Siwoon’s appearance like that made Eunseong even more insane.
Director Nam shook his head and gestured to Yoo Siwoon not to provoke Eunseong and to just close the door. Yoo Siwoon, who had been staring at Eunseong with aching eyes, closed the door and hid himself without even getting his money’s worth.
Eunseong, who had been shouting, caught his breath with heavy breathing.
“…Director Nam, why are you trying to betray ahjussi? When you two are accomplices.”
Eunseong asked while barely pushing porridge through his lips with trembling hands. As if being monitored by Yoo Siwoon, they didn’t even look at each other’s eyes as they spoke about other things.
“He wasn’t like that before meeting Eunseong. He was rational… and moral. He was a good superior who took care of his subordinates.”
“That police officer said the company itself is full of cult lunatics. I still can’t believe it, but he said ahjussi was also a brainwashed fanatic. He said all those people I saw at the temple were cultists and ahjussi was a chosen bloodline among them.”
Recalling Yoo Siwoon’s identity that had only seemed normal and remembering the many people he had seen at the temple then, Eunseong got chills.
“He was the only normal person among them. As you probably heard from Lee Joon-seung, Seongha Group is a group that doesn’t hesitate to commit murder for their own interests and those of the Yongse Pacheon Church. They’re cruel and also closed-minded.”
“…Where’s the normal part? No, since when wasn’t he normal? He made me smell that grass scent for the first time after moving me somewhere else. Even so, is ahjussi a rational and moral person?”
To confirm Eunseong’s identity, Yoo Siwoon had taken that herb he had never eaten in his life for the first time. Director Nam also knew he was talking about the day he went hoping Eunseong wasn’t The Great Crevice. Eunseong had reason to misunderstand. Everything felt like intentional approach and planning.
“It wasn’t such an impure intention – the CEO was trying to confirm it. He needed to know that Eunseong wasn’t the one in the prophecy… so he could sort out his feelings.”
“What feelings to sort out?”
Even while sniffling, Eunseong asked accusingly while slowly eating the porridge. As he started eating something, his energy seemed to return and the intensity of his resentment was becoming clearer.
“The CEO probably acknowledged his feelings of being drawn to Eunseong from that time. Even while believing it wasn’t true, he couldn’t help but consider the remote possibility…”
It would have been around that time. Yoo Siwoon had asked if he knew that “surely not” referred to a possibility of less than 1%. The Yoo Siwoon of that time was indeed the person Director Nam knew, believed in, and followed. He wasn’t cruel or closed-minded, and he wasn’t someone who ignored others’ words and advice.
「I mean, do you know what percentage of possibility people have in mind when they say ‘surely not’?」
「Well… about 20, no 25%?」
「They say it’s less than 1%. Everyone talks about possibilities less than 1%.」
That barely “surely not” possibility of less than 1% had come all the way here.
Eunseong also remembered that day.
Yoo Siwoon had made excuses about non-existent germophobia and pushed him away while tenderly caressing his cheek as he asked if it was okay to like him, refusing and saying it wasn’t allowed. Then he told him to smell it. Forcibly holding Eunseong who was rejecting it and telling him to smell this scent, he looked at him with desperate eyes as if begging him to please say it was nothing, that he felt nothing.
Eunseong vividly remembered the sensation of his body and mind simultaneously crumbling the moment he encountered his body scent. Even Yoo Siwoon’s expression falling into despair at Eunseong’s unusual reaction.
After that, he had left Eunseong alone for three whole months and said he would be going abroad to study.
As if this was really the end. As if they would never meet each other again.
“Eunseong just needs to disappear. I have the same opinion as Lee Joon-seung. If Eunseong disappears, the CEO will have a hard time at first, but he’ll come to his senses and eventually return to how he was before.”
“…You’re telling me to disappear?”
Is all of this my fault? Eunseong asked back, still incredulous even in the midst of all this.
“That’s the only way to protect Eunseong. I don’t know how much you know, but Seongha Group is working to produce breeders, and there are several boys before secondary sexual characteristics who will qualify for seed production in ten years.”
“……”
Eunseong felt chills down his spine. A scene he had seen in an animal documentary came to mind.
The phenomenon where hundreds of males competitively tangle and clump together to mate with one female snake is called a mating ball, and Eunseong felt as if he was trapped in that disgusting mass of hundreds of snakes.
“CEO Yoo Siwoon is trying to kill those kids.”
Eunseong’s startled eyes wavered.
“…So what it means to be safe now is…”
“It means he won’t leave any other possibility except himself… not in ten years, not in twenty years.”
“……”
It meant that because of him, Yoo Siwoon was trying to take the lives of innocent young boys who had committed no crimes.
Stunned, Eunseong could only stare at Director Nam without saying anything. Director Nam also ran his hand through his hair as if he couldn’t believe that Yoo Siwoon was doing such things even after saying it himself, as if frustrated.
“I’m worried about this abnormal obsession toward Eunseong.”
“……”
“Being born into a cult family that’s continued for thousands of years, it was impossible not to go crazy from the beginning, but the current CEO… will definitely regret it later. What he’s done.”
“Did I make ahjussi like that? Did it happen because of me?”
Eunseong asked. His clear eyes were still directed toward Director Nam blankly, as if he still couldn’t believe it.
“I’m scared that the CEO will end up destroying Eunseong too.”
“…By making me pregnant?”
Director Nam shook his head saying it wasn’t that.
“No, I mean it’s scary that the CEO believes Eunseong can get pregnant.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
