Jusha Lale closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, trying to control himself. He could not let Agur Suhi find out anything or he would refuse to tell him the rest, pretending that it was something else. Which was a matter of course. Who would want to slander their friends like this? Naturally, if he could keep quiet about it, he would do so. No, he had no trouble understanding why he had behaved like this.
Jusha Lale finally managed to calm himself down somewhat, even though he still sounded a little breathless. "Even if you say it, I have a hard time seeing it. I guess I never paid much attention to what he was doing. He always seemed so … well, a bit distant."
Agur Suhi nodded. "Yes, that was always the impression I got from him as well. I couldn’t quite understand it, to be honest. Seeing how he was with his sister growing up and how he got along with his parents and everyone else, I wasn’t quite sure why he was like this. Especially since I also didn’t feel like he had a problem with your father. But it was as if … things just fizzled out with your family over time. It was strange but since it was a gradual thing, I didn’t think much about it."
Jusha Lale raised his gaze to Agur Suhi’s face and couldn’t help but try to make sure. "When do you think it started?" Most likely, it would be best if he didn’t know. But on the other hand, he couldn’t help but want to know. After all, this was about his own life, about the person who had helped him. He did not want to stay ignorant.
Agur Suhi looked even more uncomfortable when he asked that but since they were already talking about it, he also didn’t dare to keep anything back. "I think it was a few years before your father died. When you were about twelve or thirteen maybe."
Jusha Lale nodded as if he was completely calm but when Agur Suhi looked up at him, he couldn’t help but notice how pale he had gone. Well, he couldn’t blame him. This kind of thing … it was hard to swallow. He had probably already felt like this after he had heard from zhireng Susha what this was about in general. Now getting a few more details … it definitely wouldn’t make things better. Not with the details being like this, at least.
"If it helps you at all, I think that the reason he kept away from you was that he realized it was wrong. So him growing more distant with you and your family was also a sign that he wasn’t such a bad person. He didn’t want to hurt you."
Jusha Lale gulped but forced himself to nod. He knew that Agur Suhi was also saying this because he had been his uncle’s best friend. Naturally, he wanted to tell himself that he wasn’t a bad person. But it was harder to see it like this if you were the person this concerned. He never would have thought that things were like this. But he couldn’t ignore it.
"Do you think it was just me or … do you think that maybe these feelings were transferred from my mother?" Truth be told, this was the only explanation that he could find. It was not a secret that he had taken very much after his mother in terms of his looks. If there had been some repressed feelings for her, it would make sense for his uncle to finally have similar thoughts about him who wasn’t somebody else’s already.
It would not make things much better if this was true but at least it would be an explanation that did not require him to think that his uncle had actually somehow started to feel attracted to him while he was at such an age. It was a little better. Because no matter how he looked at it, at thirteen or maybe fourteen years old, he had still been a child. After all, hadn’t he still been considered a child when his father died when he was sixteen? At an age where he was even younger, how could his uncle have seen him as an adult? There was no way that was the case.
Agur Suhi shook his head though. "No. I might not know much for sure but I definitely don’t think that that was the case. Your mother and your uncle always had a close relationship. They were like friends. Or it’s probably better to say that they had a very normal relationship as siblings.
"He was also happy when she met your father. I remember how proud he was when he told me that it’s just expected that his older sister would be able to make even a man like the king fall for her. He laughed at that, he wasn’t distressed all. That is not what a man would feel when the woman he loves marries another man."
Jusha Lale furrowed his brows. So much for that. Well, he was a little happy that his mother hadn’t been part of this but it meant that there was no explanation for his uncle’s feelings for him. He really had a hard time understanding it.
Jusha Lale kept quiet for quite some time. Agur Suhi didn’t speak up either. He knew that it wasn’t easy to come to terms with this. Even if the zhireng had told him some of what he knew beforehand, it still wouldn’t be easy to hear all of this addressed again by somebody who really knew.
After a while, Jusha Lale closed his eyes, sighing gently. "I guess even if I can’t understand it, it has to be the truth. You might be right that at least he never tried to act on it."
Agur Suhi nodded. "It’s no wonder that you have a hard time understanding it. To be honest, if it was just these things and I hadn’t seen him with that prostitute, I never would’ve believed it either, even if somebody told me. Heck, even if he told me himself, I wouldn’t have believed it. Seeing that scene …" He shook his head. "I guess there’s no way to pretend that he didn’t hold those feelings."
Jusha Lale stared at him, his eyes widening. A … prostitute? And something that had made Agur Suhi believe that his uncle held forbidden feelings for him? In other words … while his uncle had never acted on these feelings with him personally, he had acted on them with somebody else as a substitute?
Jusha Lale turned his head away, staring out the window. He had tried to find something good in all this. The fact that his uncle would pull back, that he wouldn’t harm him, that he wouldn’t give in to desire when the object of his desire was so close …
He had thought that if he held onto these small things, then he could somehow forgive him, then he could somehow pretend that while his uncle had been wrong, he had known it and he had acted in the right way. But it seemed that this was wrong as well. His uncle hadn’t actually been that much of a good man.
"Minister Agur, tell me if I’m wrong but … my uncle only held back because you asked him to. He only distanced himself originally because my father was still alive. When he was dead, he came close to me and he only pulled back again when you found out about all of this. If it hadn’t been for you, then maybe my uncle wouldn’t have been satisfied with using somebody else in my stead anymore. Isn’t that right?" He stared at Agur Suhi, not even daring to blink. He wanted an answer to this question. He definitely could not go on if he did not hear it.
Agur Suhi paled when Jusha Lale suddenly put it like this. "That … no. No, Reng wasn’t that kind of person. He never would have …" He shook his head but there was something in his eyes that told Jusha Lale that at this moment he had the same fear.
"You don’t know it. You are unsure yourself. I know that you want to protect me. This is why you didn’t tell me. This is why it needed another person to tell me what my uncle had done before I could find out. But in the end, you can’t say for sure if he really was the person he pretended to be."
Agur Suhi wanted to deny it but after opening his mouth, no sound wanted to come out. Yes, he really couldn’t say it. A few years ago, he might’ve been able to. But now?
It was the truth. If Jusha Lale put the timeline like this, then it really seemed that Shaun Reng had just been waiting for the right moment. And after he was found out, after it seemed that as long as his best friend lived, he would never have a chance to obtain his nephew, he had actually summoned a demon and finally been killed by his desire.
Agur Suhi lowered his head and furrowed his brows, unable to say what he had wanted to say. Finally, he could only shake his head again. "I’m sorry. I thought I knew him but maybe … maybe I didn’t after all. And maybe I was thinking too well of him based on the many years of friendship between us to see the true picture beneath all of this.
"I’m really sorry. I wanted to protect you but I might have done the opposite. If not because your uncle was killed first, then you would have been the one who suffered."
And how he would have. After all, this demon had not been summoned because his uncle wanted him gone. He would’ve lived but at what price? He didn’t know if for Jusha Lale, this kind of serious person, death wouldn’t have been preferable.
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