Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“You hurt your hand?”

It was a wound he had deliberately made earlier so he could write on the talisman. It was not deep, but blood was still slowly seeping out. Apparently the young man had noticed it when Jaegyeom reached up for the book.

Jaegyeom hesitated for a moment, then gave a rough excuse.

“I got cut turning a page.”

“You got cut on paper and it ended up like this?”

“Yes.”

“It looks like the skin’s actually gouged.”

At the young man’s wide-eyed question, Jaegyeom’s eyebrow twitched. He found it irritating that the man would not just let it slide and had to make a fuss. Besides, it was not even a serious wound. Without answering, Jaegyeom quietly pulled back the hand the man was holding. The young man let go without a word. Turning his back and heading to the desk, he bent over to open a drawer and started rustling around for something. Jaegyeom took the chance to quickly shove the crumpled paper he had been holding into his pocket.

“Here, give me your hand.”

What the young man pulled from the drawer was a bandage with a sunflower printed on it. He peeled away the wrapper, then took Jaegyeom’s hand before he could say anything. Jaegyeom, who had only been standing there blankly, flinched and tried to pull it back. At that, the young man lifted his eyes slightly and looked at him.

“Does it hurt?”

After a brief silence, Jaegyeom lowered his gaze.

“No.”

It did not hurt, but for some reason the whole thing felt strange. The young man adjusted Jaegyeom’s finger this way and that, making sure the bandage adhered properly to the skin, and only then let go. For a moment, the two of them looked each other in the eyes.

“All done.”

Right then, a vibration buzzed across the top of the desk.

“Hello?”

The young man answered his phone, sitting sideways on the edge of the desk. A faint voice flowed through the cell phone, but the contents of the conversation could not be heard. Jaegyeom rubbed at the neatly attached bandage while glancing at the young man from the corner of his eye.

At that moment, a bright melody flowed from the speaker hanging from the ceiling. It was the bell announcing that class had ended and break had begun.

He told me to come down when the bell rang...

Remembering what Mr. Seo had said, Jaegyeom came around from behind the desk and picked up his bag. The young man was listening to the person on the other end, occasionally giving short replies like “Yeah,” “But,” or “Really.” He seemed completely occupied with the call, so Jaegyeom walked past him without any particular goodbye. Just as he quietly opened the library door—

“Friend, are you leaving already?”

When Jaegyeom turned his head, the young man was looking at him with the phone held away from his ear. His gaze swept leisurely from Jaegyeom’s head to his feet, and then, at some point, he smiled.

“Come visit often.”

With the hand that was not holding the phone, he lifted it lightly and gave a small wave in Jaegyeom’s direction.

“......”

Without a word, Jaegyeom dipped his head in place of a goodbye and left the library.

As he walked through the noisy hallway, his gaze fell suddenly to the bandage the librarian had put on him.

He’s ridiculously overkind for no reason.

Jaegyeom did not trust humans. If ghosts were creatures that laid their malice bare on the surface, then humans were creatures that disguised their malice as kindness. Based on everything he had experienced, that was the truth. Which was why human kindness had always made him uncomfortable and irritated him.

There had been only one reason he had nodded, pretending reluctance, when Jeongju suggested school. Once he got that one thing, he would never have any reason to come to a place swarming with humans like a school ever again. Jaegyeom rubbed the bandage on his index finger. The texture was rough, but he did not dislike it.

“Friend...”

Murmuring the word to himself, Jaegyeom headed down the stairs.

*****

In the hand of Lee Youngshin, chief Naja of Ritual Implements Department Team One, was a block of wood he had been diligently carving.

It had been cut from a maple tree struck by lightning. To make ritual implements, one needed numinous materials. The wood he had gotten his hands on this time had housed a fairly powerful wood spirit, so felling it had taken some effort. One had to be careful when laying hands on numinous natural objects like trees or rocks. If it went wrong, the offended spirit could strike back with misfortune.

To prevent that kind of backlash, one had to perform a rite or use a talisman. A rite took too long, so in most cases they simply had a talisman issued from the talisman department and used that instead. This time as well, they had taken the most standard option, a Grade 3 logging talisman—a talisman attached to the tree or carried on the body when moving or cutting a large tree.

And yet, would you believe it? It had not helped in the slightest. Two senior Naja from the Ritual Implements Department sent out for the logging had ended up contaminated. Still, fortunately, it had stopped short of damaging their souls or taking their lives. It had only rendered one arm unusable. With the help of the Purification Unit, the two of them underwent cleansing for a full two days before they were finally able to use their arms normally again.

As a result, the Purification Unit had made no effort to hide its displeasure toward the Ritual Implements Department, and an already irritated Lee Youngshin had gone out personally and cut the tree down himself. The block of wood in his hand was that trophy.

Ordinarily, crafting ritual implements was a highly advanced task that required infusing a steady stream of ghostly force throughout the entire process of carving and refining. While everyone else would hole up in a back room and pour their entire concentration into the work, Lee Youngshin was making one while talking on the phone with his cell phone wedged against his shoulder.

Of course, that was only possible because he was a chief.

“Hey, looking at it rationally, what did my people do wrong? Isn’t this because the talisman department gave us the wrong talisman? If they’d handed over a Grade 1 logging talisman from the start, would my people have been contaminated at all? Am I wrong? But then the Purification Unit gives us attitude, and fuck me. I was this close to going over there and tearing the whole place apart, but I held back.”

Lee Youngshin was passionately venting into the phone. But from the other end came no response. Still busily carving the wood, he finally stopped moving his hand.

“Hey. Are you listening?”

“Friend, are you leaving already?”

The voice on the other end had suddenly become distant.

“Come visit often.”

Lee Youngshin blinked.

“Hey. Chief Yoon.”

“Not you. I was saying goodbye for a second.”

“What the hell? I thought you were alone. Sounds like you were with somebody.”

“I’m alone now.”

“Where are you?”

“The school library.”

“The library? Why the library?”

“I’m undercover. I infiltrated as the librarian.”

Lee Youngshin took the phone he had been propping on his shoulder and gripped it with both hands. The block of wood, still only half carved, slipped free and rolled across the desk.

What?

As what?

“......”

Lee Youngshin sat in silence for a moment, his nostrils flaring a few times, and then suddenly broke into peals of laughter so hard he nearly lost his breath.

*****

Lee Youngshin and Yoon Taehee were close friends.

Lee Youngshin had entered the Office of Narye before Yoon Taehee and reached the senior rank first. Yoon Taehee entered a year later, but the moment he did, he overtook Lee Youngshin and shot upward through the ranks at lightning speed. It would have been the perfect situation for Lee Youngshin to resent and envy him.

But Lee Youngshin did not care about things like that.

If anything, he had followed Yoon Taehee around like a puppy. It had been the first time he had ever seen someone his own age stronger than himself, and he had pestered Taehee to be friends with him. Of course, that had only been possible because Lee Youngshin had enough confidence and ease in his own abilities to do such a thing. He had never doubted that even without rushing, he would become a chief one day. And in fact, that was exactly what happened.

“Youngshin. You’re gonna burst my eardrums. Move the phone away if you’re going to laugh like that.”

For a long time, Lee Youngshin kept snickering, unable to stop.

“Hey, if you were me, how could you not laugh? Of all things, you go undercover as—pffft!”

Usually, apprentices were recruited from teenagers. The gifted were born with different total amounts of ghostly force, and depending on how strong that force was, they could see ghosts, hear them, and even make physical contact with them. Put simply, ghostly force could be understood as spiritual energy. When people were young, that force was usually at its greatest. There were exceptions from time to time, but that was how it was in most cases.

If they passed a certain age without ever learning how to handle that ghostly force, it gradually dulled and faded. Which was why, before that time passed, they had to undergo training and learn how to refine and wield it. Taking someone born with strong ghostly force and teaching them to use it freely was like melting down precious gold and forging it into the desired shape.

A Naja with strong ghostly force could draw out far greater effects from the exact same talismans and ritual implements than anyone else. For a Naja, ghostly force could be said to be the total sum of talent itself. So when apprentice recruitment season came around, Naja of the Covert Division lurked around schools all over the country looking for gifted children.

Most of the time, they disguised themselves as teachers, but—

“If I go undercover as a teacher, I’d have to teach classes. I’m terrible at teaching.”

Sometimes there were exceptions.

“Hey, come on. Even so. Who goes to the library?”

“Youngshin, you shouldn’t assume everyone’s like you. Plenty of kids go there to read.”

As he soothed Lee Youngshin, who was resisting with all his might, Yoon Taehee carefully slipped the hand that was not holding the phone into his pants pocket.

Inside his pocket was a jade seal.

It was a seal Youngshin had made for him. The jade seal was a special ritual implement used for detecting ghostly force, mainly for finding gifted people. Once cinnabar paste was applied to the seal, and with ghostly force gathered into the hand, if the seal was stamped on each corner of the floor, insects would emerge within that space.

Those special inchworms created through ghostly force were capable of detecting people who possessed ghostly force, yet they were wondrous little things invisible not only to ordinary people but even to most gifted individuals. Only those whose ghost-sight was open beyond a certain threshold could see the insects with the naked eye.

Yoon Taehee had stamped the seal inside this library.

If a gifted person entered, the insects would emerge and climb onto that person’s body.

And so far, Yoon Taehee had encountered two gifted students.

But he had not shown either of them any particular reaction. He intended to watch ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) them for a while first. The number of inchworms that clung to someone varied according to how strong their ghostly force was, and in both cases, each of them had only managed to attract a single one. Yoon Taehee wanted someone strong if possible. Since he had a full two months anyway, he planned to wait patiently.

Yoon Taehee pulled the jade seal from his back pocket, where it had been resting neatly the whole time. He had been idly turning it in his fingers while speaking with Youngshin, but then, at some point, his hand stopped.

“Have you tried that new place across from headquarters? The pork cutlet there is—”

“Youngshin.”

“Hm?”

“That jade seal you gave me.”

“Yeah, that one. Why?”

Yoon Taehee lowered his gaze to the seal resting in his palm.

“It’s cracked.”

The seal Youngshin had made was split directly down the middle. It was a clean, exact fracture, as if a blade had sliced through it. Startled, Lee Youngshin shouted.

“How the hell did it crack?!”

“I don’t know. I just looked at it and saw it was broken.”

“Hey! Do you have any idea how much hell I went through to make that thing?!”

A cracked jade seal could no longer function properly. No more insects would appear, and the fact that the library had been stamped with the seal was now completely useless.

“Why did it crack...? It was fine this morning.”

Lost in thought, Yoon Taehee murmured to himself.

“Why do you think? Because you dropped it!”

“I told you, I never dropped it.”

Youngshin sounded baffled.

“It cracked even though you didn’t drop it? Wait, did you maybe kill all the insects? If every single insect dies, the seal cracks.”

“What are you talking about? I never touched the insects.”

“Exactly! Then you must’ve dropped it and broken it.”

“I had the seal on me all day, so how would I have dropped—”

Ah.

Yoon Taehee stopped midsentence.

A sharp flash crossed his still eyes.

A seal he had never dropped was broken on its own. If every insect died, the seal cracked. And the insects were visible only to people whose ghost-sight was open. The seal had been perfectly fine in the morning, and then it broke within a short span of time.

Then...

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to carve jade? Even after only one hour, every ounce of ghostly force gets drained out of your body! And that jade was something I could barely get my hands on in the first place. One time I went to this haunted well and there—”

Yoon Taehee held the phone away from his ear. Lee Youngshin’s nonstop chatter buzzed like a mosquito. Yoon Taehee stared fixedly at the cracked jade seal, then shifted his gaze to the neat desk.

A single book was lying there.

Knowledge and Love.

No way...

Even after looking him over from head to toe, there hadn’t been a single inchworm clinging to him, so I thought he was a disappointment...

Resting his chin on one hand, Yoon Taehee recalled the boy who had seemed cool and aloof somehow. His long fingers tapped lightly against the desk as though playing a piano.

“Sexy.”