Honbul: Flame of the Soul

In olden times, people believed that every calamity and every illness came from ghosts.

It was an instinctive fear born from the terror that circles life and death.

Ghosts were monstrous things: incomplete, yet beyond the human. They drifted through the heavens, slipping in among the living and throwing the world into disorder. Once parted from the body, the soul should have been light as breath. Yet the weight of lingering attachment, the residue left behind like settled dregs, was a heavy thing indeed.

People went to great lengths to drive ghosts away. But ordinary folk were capable of little more than keeping the superstitious taboos handed down among the people, futile household defenses of no real use. In the end, the only beings they could rely on were the rare few among humankind born with the ability to see ghosts: the gifted.

They were feared, rejected, and at times revered.

Those born with such gifts usually became shamans, or else withdrew from worldly life and entered the Buddhist path. More rarely, some were summoned into the service of the state.

These became Naja—official exorcists charged with performing Narye.

It was not only the common people who feared ghosts. The royal court feared them as well. And so, on the last night of the twelfth month, the palace held a grand rite to drive out evil spirits. This rite was called Narye.

The Naja of the Office of Narye presided over the rite while also defending the palace with all their power against malignant spirits, calamity, and supernatural misfortune. They were also called upon for a variety of court ceremonies, and whenever the king traveled in procession or foreign envoys were received, they accompanied the retinue and drove away any evil haunting the road ahead.

And there was one man who danced at the very front of the procession, opening the way with wild splendor, possessed of a divine force before which even the ruler of a nation was bound to stand in awe.

He had two pairs of eyes. With one pair he looked upon the world of the living, and with the other he looked upon the world of the dead. At a mere gesture of his hand, every ghost in mountain and field fled in terror and bowed its foolish head. The leader of the Naja, who stood over both humankind and spirits alike—the god who drove out evil ghosts—

his name was Bangsangsi.

Excerpt from Guna Sejeon

A bicycle cut through a street steeped in the colors of dusk.

Brilliant neon light swept softly across the rider’s face. He rode past a row of parked patrol cars and stopped at a bike rack set off to one side.

“Officer Hong, you’re early.”

When he turned his head, Sergeant Kim was there smoking a cigarette. Judging by the plain clothes, he seemed to be on his way home.

The man dipped his head in greeting, and Sergeant Kim waved a hand in return.

“Sergeant Kim, you’re still not off duty?”

“Don’t even ask. Something happened, and I’ve been stuck here ever since.”

Given the nature of the job, nobody expected the kind of peaceful daily life other people enjoyed. If there was one advantage to it, it was this: after a while, very little made you so much as blink. Sergeant Kim, who usually took most things in stride, clicked his tongue in disbelief for once.

“What happened?”

“We got a call earlier about some guy causing a scene at a hospital, so we went out. Then we checked his identity. You’ve probably heard of him too. You know Jugyeong Construction? He’s the president.”

Jugyeong Construction was a company that had risen to prominence under its young self-made owner. Not long after founding it, he began swallowing up other firms through mergers and acquisitions, drawing public attention. More recently, the company made the news again when its stock shot up after winning a bid for a golf resort project backed by local government investment.

“Wow. So he’s a really big deal?”

“Yeah. His son is six this year. The kid was in the hospital with pneumonia.”

Sergeant Kim stopped and took a deep drag from the cigarette in his hand.

“The child was perfectly fine until yesterday, then all of a sudden he fell unconscious. So the father went out of his mind and started blaming the hospital. Completely snapped. Smashed up the medical equipment, wrecked whatever he could get his hands on, even beat a doctor.”

“Damn...” Officer Hong clicked ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) his tongue. “Are they sure it was the hospital’s fault?”

“That’s the problem. We secured the medication records and had them reviewed, but according to the hospital there wasn’t anything wrong. The tests didn’t show anything unusual either, so no one can figure out what caused it. It’s the kind of thing that makes you think a ghost must have had a hand in it.”

Officer Hong’s expression darkened as well.

“Yeah. It really is...”

“The hospital’s in chaos, the father’s in chaos. We told him there was nothing we could do until some actual evidence turned up, and then he started saying all kinds of crazy things. Said his dream was evidence.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?”

“He says he had a dream last night. In it, someone took his son away. He chased after him, but tripped and fell, and by the time he got back up, the kid was gone. Now he’s saying it was a prophetic dream, saying he should’ve transferred his son to another hospital sooner, screaming his head off...” Sergeant Kim gave a hollow laugh. “He even showed us bruises on his knees and said he got them from falling in the dream.”

He sounded just as incredulous telling the story as anyone would have been hearing it.

“No way. That’s ridiculous.”

Officer Hong waved a hand dismissively, as though brushing away the absurdity of it. The police station was a place where every shade of human joy, anger, sorrow, and bitterness came flooding together, the frontline where new incidents broke every single day. Cases involving people making claims that defied common sense and still demanding answers were hardly rare.

As Sergeant Kim went on airing his grievances in detail, Officer Hong soothed him with practiced warmth.

“I’m sure it’ll get sorted out. Don’t worry too much. You worked hard today, Sergeant Kim.”

After grumbling for quite a while, Sergeant Kim finally said he should get going and left. After seeing him off, Officer Hong headed straight for the locker room.

Perhaps because he had come in earlier than usual, the room was empty. After confirming there was no one inside, Officer Hong immediately locked the door.

Then he focused his senses beyond it.

He listened for footsteps, straining his hearing. Fortunately, there was no sign of anyone nearby.

Expressionless, Officer Hong took out his phone and tapped the screen. 120.

He hit the call button and raised the phone to his ear. A familiar automated message began to play.

“Hello. This is the Seoul 120 Dasan Call Center. For traffic services, press 1. For water services, press 2. For general administrative services, press 3. For Seoul Metropolitan Government and district office phone numbers, press 4. For counseling for working mothers, press 5.”

As if he had been waiting for it, Officer Hong quickly entered a sequence of numbers.

1 2 3 4 5.

All five digits.

“You have made an incorrect selection. For traffic services, press 1. For water services, press 2...”

Before the message had even finished, his fingers moved again.

1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5.

This time, unlike before, he pressed each number twice in succession.

“......”

Nothing came through the receiver.

Not even the recorded notice telling him he had pressed the wrong numbers.

And yet Officer Hong did not hang up. He only tore at a bit of dry skin on his lip and stood there in silence, the phone still held to his ear.

How many minutes passed like that?

Then, all at once, the silence broke.

“We will now connect you to an operator.”

Click.

With that quiet sound, the dead stillness on the line gave way to the sense of a real place beyond it. Yet the operator who answered did not offer so much as a greeting.

For a moment, it was impossible to tell whether the call had connected at all.

After checking his surroundings one last time, Officer Hong adjusted his grip on the phone.

“Behold the man in the golden mask."

With a jeweled whip he commands the ghosts.

Light of step, quiet in bearing, he dances in elegant measure,

like a phoenix in flowing motion.”

Daemyeon, from Hyangak Japyeong by Choe Chiwon, late Silla.

The moment he finished reciting, a crisp, official voice cut into his ear.

“Office of Narye Situation Room. State your business.”

The hand gripping the phone tightened.

“Hong Minjae, Naja of Covert Division Team Three, Office of Narye. Coordinates 21-6. Incident classification: Type Ra. Requesting support from the Spirit Suppression Unit.”

“Submit your report.”

Officer Hong—no, Naja Hong Minjae—answered calmly.

“Reporting a soul-abduction case.”