Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom took one step back and stared at Jo Youngwoo.

What the hell... was this guy gifted?

A strange note of expectation lingered in Youngwoo’s eyes as he waited for an answer. While measuring him up, Jaegyeom fell briefly into thought. He had absolutely no intention of revealing that he himself was gifted. It made no difference whether the other person was an ordinary human or someone like him. Jaegyeom knew very well what happened once people found out. For now, he decided to probe first.

“You just now...”

Youngwoo hesitated, about to add something more, when—

“What butterfly? Where’s this butterfly?”

Jaegyeom cut him off cleanly and answered in a flat voice. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The moment he played dumb, just as expected, Youngwoo’s eyes flickered. He looked relieved, yet faintly disappointed at the same time. Keeping his gaze fixed on Youngwoo, Jaegyeom tracked the butterfly fluttering beyond the focus of his vision.

“Ah, no. Never mind. Sorry. I think I just imagined it for a second.”

“Imagined it?”

“Yeah. Lately I keep seeing strange things... maybe I’m run down? Ha ha. Sorry, that was weird. Just forget what I said.”

Youngwoo hurriedly waved his hands, fumbling over his words. By then the butterfly had lightly settled on his shoulder. Even so, Youngwoo showed no awareness of it whatsoever. Which meant he could not see it right now.

Maybe he could see it sometimes and not others...

Jaegyeom was not sure.

*****

Jaegyeom looked around the noisy cafeteria.

At some point, the butterfly that had been perched on Youngwoo’s shoulder vanished on its own. With practiced ease, Youngwoo picked up a tray and utensils, then beckoned to him. Still a little bewildered, Jaegyeom followed his lead and awkwardly took a set for himself. Trailing after Youngwoo, he found his tray growing heavy in no time.

He slowly looked over the food piled onto it.

The menu was multigrain rice sending up steam, seaweed soup with bits of clam meat in it, sweet pork bulgogi, glossy japchae, and cubed radish kimchi. Sitting across from Youngwoo, Jaegyeom picked up his spoon and poked through the side dishes. He tried the soup first, taking a noisy sip. It was his first time tasting school lunch, and his head jerked up at once.

Daryung High’s cafeteria food was famous in the area for being terrible. Students complained so often about the awful meals that some said they wanted to transfer schools over it. The kids usually picked out only the least offensive side dish and dumped the rest in the slop bucket. Because of that, the school store was always packed, and some of the teachers had given up and brought lunchboxes from home.

Seeing the shock on Jaegyeom’s face, Youngwoo gave him an awkward smile. So it was that bad, huh. It looked like the food was not to Jaegyeom’s taste either. Jaegyeom scooped up a huge spoonful of rice and dunked it straight into the seaweed soup.

“It’s kind of rough, right? Still, it’s gotten way better than it used to be...”

Murmuring self-consciously, Youngwoo trailed off. He had thought Jaegyeom was gathering everything in one place to make it easier to throw away, but instead Jaegyeom solemnly planted one arm beside the tray and began eating with complete dedication. Youngwoo stared at him.

“What?”

Jaegyeom, in the middle of picking up a cube of radish kimchi with his chopsticks, raised his head when he felt the stare.

“Oh, it’s just... you’re eating it like it’s really good.”

“Because it is really good.”

Jaegyeom answered with deadly seriousness.

“I-I see...”

Without another word, Jaegyeom devoted himself faithfully to the meal. Youngwoo started stacking pieces of meat one by one onto his spoon. Then, just like that, he transferred all the bulgogi from his own tray onto Jaegyeom’s. Jaegyeom’s eyes widened at the sudden increase in meat.

“What’s this?”

“Do you like meat? I didn’t touch any of it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really like meat.”

Jaegyeom looked at him suspiciously, with the expression of someone thinking there was no such person in the world. But at the same time, he looked secretly pleased. So he really does like the food. Youngwoo suppressed the smile trying to escape. When he gestured for him to hurry up and eat, Jaegyeom nodded with a doubtful look.

The truth was, Youngwoo had been bothered the whole time by the nonsense he had blurted out earlier about seeing things. He had been quietly worried that Jaegyeom might think he was weird. Fortunately, though, Jaegyeom did not seem to care. Watching him eat with quiet satisfaction, Youngwoo asked with a smile,

“Jaegyeom. Do you happen to like fortune-telling?”

Jaegyeom, who had been working his chopsticks steadily, looked up.

“If you do, I can read your fortune for you later.”

“You can?”

“My hobby is throwing yut sticks. Ha ha, sounds like an old man, right? Oh, if you don’t know, it’s where you throw the sticks three times and tell that day’s fortune from the result. It’s nothing major, but it’s weirdly fun.”

Youngwoo smiled sheepishly as he went on.

“I started doing it to kill time, but lately it’s been surprisingly accurate. Today I got a sign that said good news was coming. And then today, you transferred here. Crazy, right?”

Jaegyeom, moving his chopsticks absently, suddenly stopped.

“What did you get?”

“Hm?”

“You said you threw them three times. What came up?”

Youngwoo dug through his memory with a thoughtful look.

“Ah... um, first was Do. Second was Mo. What was the last one... Ah! Geol. It was Geol.”

“Do, Mo, Geol...”

When Jaegyeom muttered the words under his breath, Youngwoo nodded.

“Yeah. Do-Mo-Geol. If you look it up online, the meaning comes up. It was in classical Chinese, so I don’t remember exactly, but I think it meant something like good things would happen.”

“......”

“Oh! I can just look it up on my phone right now—”

Jaegyeom, who had been listening in silence, set down his chopsticks with a sharp clack.

“Hey.”

Youngwoo, who had been reaching into his pocket for his phone, froze and looked at him.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

The voice was colder than anything Youngwoo had heard from him before. Startled by Jaegyeom’s sudden chill, he fumbled.

“Ah... s-sorry...”

When Youngwoo apologized in a small voice, Jaegyeom muttered dryly,

“That’s what you get for letting your mind wander to nonsense like that. No wonder you keep seeing things.”

“......”

“Get a grip.”

“......”

Youngwoo was speechless. Every word Jaegyeom said was completely correct, and yet somehow it felt like they stabbed right into the heart of it. As if nothing had happened, Jaegyeom started eating again.

He left every bit of the meat Youngwoo had given him untouched.

*****

Jo Youngwoo had been a frail child ever since he was young. Endless minor illnesses had kept sending him to the hospital, and healthy days were rare enough to count on one hand. By the time he reached high school he had gotten a lot better, but even so, once or twice a month he still ended up missing school sick or leaving early.

Because he missed school so often, Youngwoo never really managed to form close friendships.

That was why, when he heard a transfer student was coming, he had made up his mind not to miss the chance this time. He was definitely going to become friends with the new kid. And then it turned out they even lived the same way, and on top of that they rode the same bus. The coincidence had felt almost unbelievable.

And now...

Youngwoo was walking alone toward the bus stop.

On the way back from the cafeteria to the classroom, neither he nor Jaegyeom had said a single word. It stayed that way afterward too. When the final homeroom ended, Youngwoo had gone to the restroom for a minute, and by the time he came back, Jaegyeom was already gone. They had said they would go home together after school, but apparently that had fallen through too. He had tried not to expect too much, but it still hurt.

Youngwoo let out a sigh.

“Damn it... I really had to go and say weird stuff...”

It had not even been a few hours since they met, and he had already started babbling about seeing strange things. As if that were not enough, he had gone on about how his divination readings were accurate. From Jaegyeom’s point of view, of course it would be annoying.

Youngwoo had started throwing yut sticks a year earlier, after watching a television program that shared random little lifestyle tips. It seemed simple, but also oddly systematic, so he had tried it once on a whim—and somehow it had felt like it kind of worked. Of course, sometimes it was hopelessly vague. But as he kept doing it to pass the time, more and more of the readings started coming true. Youngwoo had figured it must be one of those things you got better at the more you practiced.

Then one day, while walking down the street, he happened to catch sight of himself reflected in a shop window. There was some sort of butterfly fluttering near his ear. Without thinking much of it, he turned his head to confirm it. But no matter how much he looked around, there was no butterfly anywhere nearby. Feeling strange, he looked at the shop window again—and there it still was, fluttering beside his reflection in the glass.

There was a butterfly over there, but none here.

‘W-what the hell...’

Panicked, Youngwoo hurried home, but afterward nothing happened. Life went on as usual. Several more days passed, and it seemed like he was going to forget the whole thing. But before he truly did, he saw the butterfly again. This time not in a reflection, but with his own eyes.

At the time he had been down with a feverish cold. Half out of it, he had stared blankly, thinking only, Oh, a butterfly. But as he kept watching, a sudden sense of wrongness hit him. The butterfly’s body was transparent, and objects showed through behind its wings. At the same time, it abruptly hit him that it was winter.

‘......’

That day, Youngwoo eventually lost consciousness.

Maybe that was when it began.

From around then on, he started seeing the butterfly for real. Sometimes he could see it, sometimes he could not, but it would appear without warning. And around that same time, whenever he threw the yut sticks, the result began to predict that entire day perfectly, every single time.

The butterfly and the yut divination. Youngwoo had no idea what was happening to him.

‘That’s what you get for letting your mind wander to nonsense like that. No wonder you keep seeing things.’

Was that true? Maybe... maybe it really was.

Jaegyeom’s cold words kept ringing in his ears. With a troubled face, Youngwoo adjusted the bag slung over his shoulder. Today of all days, the road to the bus stop felt strangely long.

“Excuse me, student?”

At the sound of someone calling out, Youngwoo, who had ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) been walking with his head down, looked up. A strange woman was standing a few steps away, looking at him.

“Yes?”

“You dropped something.”

“M-me?”

“Yes.”

Youngwoo glanced around at his feet. He turned in a small circle, searching the ground where he had been standing, but there was nothing there except a tattered bread wrapper rolling across the pavement in the wind.

“Uh, there’s nothing here...”

“I just picked it up.”

“...What?”

Youngwoo stared in confusion. Then why not just hand it over? Tilting his head, he looked at her as the woman, who had been standing several paces away, strode toward him. At first glance she looked ordinary enough. Coming close, she held out her hand.

“Here. Take it.”

Her fingers were curled as if she were holding an egg, cupping something fragile so it would not break. Still bewildered, Youngwoo opened his palm beneath her fist.

“Uh... this...”

His eyes went wide. The woman smiled brightly.

“This is yours, right?”

From inside her hand, a transparent butterfly floated out, fluttering its wings.