Chapter 173
Yoo Siwoon was similarly lost in thought somewhere. Director Nam spoke to Yoo Siwoon, who was standing there stupidly staring at the water droplets falling through the filter paper, having stopped making coffee midway.
“The main church fire seems to have been completely sorted out. The scriptures and genealogy were definitely lost, and the whereabouts of several executive directors who fled are still unknown.”
“…”
“CEO?”
“…Yes?”
Yoo Siwoon, who had been drowning in the depths of his own thoughts, finally came to his senses at the voice calling him, turning his head with eyes that seemed to newly confirm where he was. Then he discovered Director Nam standing beside him and blinked.
“Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
“What did you say?”
“The whereabouts of several executive directors who fled from the main church still haven’t been identified. We can’t even specify who they are, and the remaining council of elders members are keeping their mouths shut and not cooperating. We’re trying to send a tracking team to deal with them. I’m thinking of recruiting specialists to handle it.”
They weren’t ordinary believers but executive directors of the council of elders. There was no telling what they might do if they gathered together. They already knew that The Great Crevice existed in this era, and they had fled after noticing Yoo Siwoon’s intention to eliminate the Yongse Pacheon Church by even committing arson.
Leaving them alive was dangerous for both Eunseong and Yoo Siwoon, and at the same time, he planned to use the tracking team to prevent the breeding partner elimination that Yoo Siwoon was planning.
“Just leave them be.”
“That won’t do. They’re hardline executive directors from the main church – do you think they’ll just stay quiet? They might do something like suicide bombing.”
“…Ha.”
He let out a hollow laugh at Director Nam’s concerns, which sounded divorced from reality.
“These are people who knew about the apostle’s embezzlement and tried to fill their own pockets first by raiding the vault. There’s no way they have any faith left.”
“Did such a thing happen?”
“You saw them only taking gold bars from the apostle’s private villa.”
When they caught those who had tried to flee with Eunseong, the first thing they discovered was bundles of gold and cash in shopping bags in the car.
“There probably aren’t many of them, so you don’t need to worry about that side. With the council of elders in that state, there won’t be any more rituals or worship services.”
Yoo Siwoon said there was no need for needless worry as he tilted the kettle over the dripper. The already cooled, lukewarm water fell onto the coffee grounds. Bland coffee that had lost its aroma flowed down.
“I think it would be better to move Eunseong to the penthouse where he used to live. Being here itself seems to be difficult for him—”
“No.”
Before Director Nam could finish speaking, Yoo Siwoon cut him off decisively. It wasn’t the tone he had just used when dismissing the fled executive directors as bothersome and insignificant. Even his expression had changed to be coldly stern.
Even though he had eliminated all threats, even trampling out small sparks that weren’t even threats to remove any possibility of targeting Eunseong, Yoo Siwoon was insisting that it had to be him, that it had to be this place, stubbornly for reasons unknown to whom.
“Even if it’s difficult for both of you, you need to stay here.”
“Even when he keeps refusing to eat and rejecting everything like that? Do you want the kid to starve to death?”
“…”
“Don’t do that and just send him away.”
The one who was starving to death wasn’t Eunseong but Yoo Siwoon. His handsome face looked gaunt as he turned to Director Nam.
The insomnia and headaches caused by losing Eunseong and not being in his right mind, plus the self-loathing he felt toward Eunseong who rejected him, were making Yoo Siwoon’s face increasingly pitiful with melancholy, like someone with some tragic story.
“Lately I feel like Director has become particularly cruel to me, but that’s probably just my paranoia.”
“You’ve seen correctly.”
“…Is there a need for even Director to be like that? Did I do something so wrong?”
“You should have told him the truth.”
You should have told Eunseong the truth about everything, Director Nam was saying – you should have told him how his birth parents became involved with Yoo Siwoon’s family and what happened to them, and you should have told him exactly how Seo Jeong-gi who raised him died. If you had done that, at least this situation where Eunseong hates you, despises and abhors you, wouldn’t have happened.
At the reproach that everything was his fault, Yoo Siwoon didn’t even have the energy left to protest.
“I once beat that area with a club trying to hold back.”
“…What?”
At Yoo Siwoon’s sudden words, Director Nam instinctively grimaced before even understanding what he meant.
“It was bruised black and blue, so painful it felt like I’d collapse just from touching it, and do you know what I said to Eunseong that day?”
“…”
“I grabbed him, held him tight, kissed him and said I wanted to get him pregnant. I was out of my mind, it was such a short, very short moment, but the words I blurted out losing my reason… when I was in pain from beating that area, what I said was that.”
For the first time he was honest with that kid, but what he said on instinct was just, barely that. That’s all Yoo Siwoon amounted to. He was only that level of human being.
“What’s there to say honestly? You said everything honestly.”
“…”
Yoo Siwoon readily admitted it. That was the only thought in his head, that only the instinct of wanting to have that kid remained and he didn’t know what to do – he was the epitome of this family. Just like Yoo Seongil and Yoo Oseon, prioritizing base instincts. He was the best among those he so despised.
He poured the lukewarmly brewed coffee into a cup. He drank the coffee using the pretty pottery he used to specially pour for Eunseong. He couldn’t taste or smell anything. Only bitterness filled his mouth. It was the same no matter what he swallowed or ate. Yoo Siwoon knew that Eunseong was in a similar state.
Knowing all this, Yoo Siwoon couldn’t let Eunseong take even one step out of this house. After acknowledging his true feelings of wanting to keep Eunseong confined here even if it meant being hated by him, his mind felt rather at ease even while being criticized as trash.
Even though it felt like his flesh was being sliced with a sashimi knife, he could now face Eunseong who glared at him with deadly looks.
What drove Yoo Siwoon mad was that even in the midst of all this, he had the base desire to grab the nape of Eunseong’s neck as he looked at him fiercely with resentful eyes and roughly kiss him.
Eunseong, who was being stubborn and claiming to hate him, looked maddeningly beautiful in his eyes. His face, which had become thin and sharp from not eating well, was like that. His sunken, deeper eyes were like that. The color of his lips that he bit tightly whenever he saw him was like that. His disheveled gaze and expression, as if something was broken, gave him a mature feeling as if he were not twenty but the same age as him. Eunseong, whose entire body had been swept over by the hardships of the world and misfortunes no one else had experienced, was no longer the person he had known and been attracted to.
It was a different kind of emotion from when Eunseong used to run to him saying he liked him unconditionally. It was an ominous and dangerous stimulus that drove him more intensely. Yoo Siwoon was now feeling with his whole body the saying that aesthetics takes precedence over morality.
Although he hadn’t wanted a child before, now he feared Eunseong might leave, might abandon him, so he even hoped there would be a child between them. Because even if Eunseong abandoned him, it didn’t seem like Eunseong would abandon a child. Yoo Siwoon kept his mouth shut because it was obvious he’d be called even crazier if he said such things.
“What did you two talk about for so long inside?”
“…”
“Didn’t you agree not to leave out a single detail when telling me?”
Yoo Siwoon was pressing him about what he and Eunseong had discussed alone behind closed doors. Director Nam was displeased, but now wasn’t the time to argue about such things.
“I confirmed what happened.”
Director Nam gave him the answer he expected. If it wasn’t that topic, there would have been no reason for the two of them to sit facing each other for so long.
“…How did Eunseong find out?”
Yoo Siwoon asked painfully, as if feeling guilty.
“It seems one of the executive directors who was dealt with that day was acting on Yoo Oseon’s orders. When I asked Eunseong, he mentioned Cheon Gwanghangja. He knew everything – what The Great Crevice was, what kind of prophecy it was… what function the herb called Jeokdan had. Even that all of this wasn’t coincidence but was meticulously planned from the beginning.”
Yoo Siwoon hadn’t anticipated the possibility of Lee Joon-seung at all. Director Nam blamed the executive director who had tried to hand Eunseong over to another breeding partner. He was already dead. The dead couldn’t speak. They couldn’t claim their innocence.
Fortunately, Yoo Siwoon didn’t suspect Director Nam.
“…He’ll misunderstand me.”
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
