There Are Four Top Idol Uncles - Chapter 235

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Part 2, Episode 61
* * *
After snapping roughly a hundred million photographs, the boys and girls relocated to a lodge not far from the quiet beach and began unpacking.
The lodge was a well-maintained, rustic hanok with such generous proportions that even the large group didn’t feel cramped.
“Wow. Yewon. Your uncles must’ve spent a fortune on this. We’re not imposing too much, are we?”
Jeongyun, who’d won the coin-flip game and earned a spot in Yewon’s room, threw herself onto the bed with a grin.
“We rented the whole place, but it wasn’t that expensive. A friend of theirs lent it to us.”
It wasn’t expensive at all—the rental was zero won.
Why?
Because it was a vacation home owned by the Hyun Family.
Yewon swallowed the rest of her words. She wouldn’t breathe a word of that to her friends.
Just then.
“Yewon. Can I come in for a second?”
Lee Doha’s voice came from beyond the door, accompanied by a knock.
“Yeah, come in.”
The door opened the moment Yewon gave her permission.
Lee Doha, already dressed in comfortable clothes, promptly handed drinks to both girls.
“We’re heading to the mart for a bit. Looks like we’ll need to pick up a few things if we’re going to grill meat later. Jeongyun, if there’s anything you’d like to eat, just say the word.”
“Me? I’ll eat whatever you bring. But it’s Uncle Weon who’s cooking, right? Not Uncle Ian?”
“Um…well…”
“Then I’m eating ten servings myself!”
After sampling Ian’s cooking once, Jeongyun had made a point of avoiding it at all costs.
That couldn’t possibly be called cooking.
“Right… at least we’ll eat well…”
Knowing why Jeongyun had asked, Lee Doha chuckled ruefully before turning his gaze back to Yewon.
“But you two will be okay on your own, right? The mart’s farther than I thought—probably take about an hour.”
“I’m not a child anymore. Of course we can stay here by ourselves.”
……
But you always will be our baby.
Lee Doha thoroughly denied it to himself without letting the thought escape his lips.
Today, he had to be careful not to upset Yewon.
“Got it. We’ll be back soon. Don’t fight, you two.”
“Come on. Why would we fight? What do you think we are, elementary schoolers? We’re practically high schoolers now.”
…
Was there really that much difference?
At Jeongyun’s words, Lee Doha laughed and slipped away.
Yeah, as long as they didn’t fight, all was well.
* * *
A thought he had no sooner settled on than it was proven false.
“…Aren’t those two fighting right now?”
“Looks like it…”
“It’s not two of them—it’s three fighting.”
“They’re just staring each other down. Boring. They should just throw a punch and get it over with.”
The reactions came in turn from Jeongyun, Yewon, Harin, and Kang Seoa.
Why?
Once they’d finished unpacking and stepped outside, they found three boys in the yard staring each other down.
What was going on?
“What’s the matter with you all?” Yewon asked, tilting her head as she approached them.
She approached them with a tilt of her head.
“Nothing.”
“It’s nothing, Yewon.”
“…It’s nothing much.”
All three boys answered in unison, then snapped their mouths shut.
This was really strange.
Yewon narrowed her eyes and studied the boys, but they deliberately avoided her gaze.
The reason they’d started fighting was…
* * *
“When the adults come back, let’s grill the meat ourselves. We’ll do all the errands too.”
Hyuk had just declared this to the other two people he’d end up sharing a room with.
There had been two double rooms and one single, but the three of them had fought so fiercely over who should get the single that they’d ultimately ceded it to Ian and decided to share one room among themselves.
“…You don’t need to tell me that. Of course I will.”
Yoo Eun-o appeared suddenly with glasses on and answered irritably.
“….”
Hyuk looked at Eun-o with a slightly furrowed expression.
Who was he to be annoyed right now….
In truth, Hyuk had sensed something off in the way Yewon looked at him earlier and had been seized by unease.
On the flip side.
Eun-o had noticed that while Yewon was always tense or had a strange expression whenever she stood beside him, that same girl never lost her smile when she was next to Hyuk—and his mood had darkened with the realization.
And Baek Yun?
He had no concrete reason, but he found both his older brothers utterly intolerable.
If they at least bothered to check him, he could understand it—but the fact that he watched them treat him as not even worth competing against made him all the more resentful.
“Eun-o, did you always wear glasses?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t usually wear them though. Why suddenly?”
“…?”
Eun-o looked at Hyuk with eyes that seemed to say, ‘Why are you even paying attention to that?’ His expression was genuinely baffled.
But Hyuk had his reasons.
What if Yewon liked glasses? Father sometimes wore them…!
He’d heard Yewon mention in passing once, ‘Dad told me to find someone like Dad himself’—and Hyuk didn’t realize that her four uncles had all heard the exact same line from her. He didn’t understand either that ‘someone like Dad’ didn’t mean a person who wore glasses, but rather someone who would smile and offer up his own life if it meant protecting her.
“Stop being difficult and get out of the way.”
Eun-o said this and brushed past Hyuk with a sharp nudge.
Discontent was heavy in his voice.
Shoved aside unexpectedly, Hyuk felt his own irritation flare.
“I just want to ask you one thing.”
“Don’t ask.”
“You never come to things like this normally. You didn’t even go to that English composition club trip once.”
“….”
At Hyuk’s words, Baek Yun’s gaze fixed on Eun-o too.
Right. Now that I think about it, he’s not even that close to us, and he doesn’t seem like the type to come to a place like this. His motives are too obvious, aren’t they?
“There was no reason to go to that one.”
“….”
“But there’s a reason to come here. So what’s the problem?”
At Eun-o’s words, Hyuk’s face grew darker. He thought he understood all too well what that ‘reason’ was.
If it had been someone else, he would have immediately challenged them and tried to drive them away somehow.
But….
This was Yoo Eun-o.
Since starting middle school, the friend he owed the most gratitude to, his benefactor. The only person who had called him first with ‘What are you doing? Come on,’ when no one else wanted to include Hyuk in their group projects.
Hyuk knew well that Eun-o, despite his indifferent airs, was the most sensitive and thoughtful person in the world.
Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to notice Hyuk’s needs so uncannily before anyone else each time, coming to him unbidden. Sometimes it seemed he knew what Hyuk needed before Hyuk himself did.
That’s why he hoped—of all people, not Yoo Eun-o.
“…Check your camera.”
“….”
“Can you show me what you took earlier?”
At Hyuk’s words, Eun-o let out a hollow laugh.
“Why would I.”
“Just curious?”
“I can’t show you.”
“So you are hiding something.”
At that remark, Eun-o’s eyebrows twitched. The truth of it seemed to sting.
“What? Seriously? Did you secretly take pictures of us? You didn’t, did you??”
Baek Yun was the one who sprang up suddenly.
Hyuk and Eun-o watched him for a moment in silence, then turned their gazes back to each other.
At that reaction, Baek Yun’s frown deepened. These guys really knew how to offend him!
“Show me. Unless you took something weird!”
“If I were you, I’d be worried I might end up in my camera too, but don’t worry. Even if you begged me to photograph you, you’d never make it into my lens.”
“Wow, what a—”
At Eun-o’s ice-cold words, Baek Yun stared at him with a wounded expression.
It was the first time he’d ever heard such coldness from him.
As the three boys glared at one another like this.
“Is something the matter with you all?”
It was Yewon who had appeared.
At her arrival, the three boys fell silent and turned their heads away as though they’d rehearsed it.
And in that same moment, each thought: ‘I never liked these people anyway.’
* * *
So it was that the boys continued laying out the table in grim silence, waiting for the adults to arrive.
Whenever the girls tried to help—
“Just rest, will you?”
“Go on. Take it easy.”
“Everyone, leave it. Let them rest. That’ll put us more at ease.”
They rebuffed her this way, coldly (or so they thought).
“It’s certainly admirable, but couldn’t they at least manage a smile while they’re at it?”
Jeongyun tilted her head in puzzlement, watching the boys emerge from the kitchen with various dishes in hand.
“Leave them be. They’re at that age where they’d fight over falling leaves.”
“…You mean they’re at an age to laugh, not to fight? Why are you suddenly changing genres?”
At Harin’s remark, Seoa shot back as if to say she had no idea what she meant.
But Harin simply smiled at the boys and tilted her chin to rest on Yewon’s shoulder.
As if to say: ‘You can’t do this, can you? All you know how to do is puff yourselves up over there?’
“…!!!!!!!!!!”
“Hahaha…”
“…”
At this provocation, Baek Yun snorted sharply, Hyuk released a detached, hollow laugh, and Eun-o merely cast a cool gaze from beneath his glasses.
“…?”
And Yewon—the unwitting source of all this tension—simply leaned back against Harin, wondering, ‘Why is everyone so irritable?’
It really was strange…

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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