Honbul: Flame of the Soul

The boy lay there like a corpse.

Eyes open or closed, it made no difference. All he could see was darkness—thick, heavy darkness. Time itself seemed frozen. The boy wanted to remain buried inside it forever.

For the first time in a long while, the loneliness and isolation felt comfortable.

He wished this abyssal darkness would never end.

For the past two days, the blackout curtains in Jaegyeom’s room had remained tightly drawn day and night.

Back in his old home, he used to keep the curtains closed all the time because he hated sunlight. But after moving to Seoul, he had naturally stopped doing that. Whether sunlight or moonlight poured in, he simply left the windows uncovered.

This was the first time since coming here that he had shut himself away like this again.

For the first time in a very long while, Jaegyeom had sunk back into that cave-like lethargy.

Today marked the second day he had failed to show up at the Office of Narye.

Yesterday, his phone had exploded with messages.

[Kang Ibin: Jaegyeomie, why aren’t you coming in?]

[Kang Ibin: Are you sick?] 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Kang Ibin had contacted him first.

When he still hadn’t shown up after work hours started, she seemed to get worried. Jaegyeom saw the messages, but never replied.

When enough time passed without a response, she started calling him instead.

Eventually, after the phone rang over and over again, Jaegyeom simply turned it off.

He had no idea how much time had passed since then.

Blinking awake, Jaegyeom stared blankly into the darkness.

He couldn’t tell whether it was day or night.

Out of habit, he reached for his phone to check the time. Seeing the dead black screen, he powered it back on.

The moment it turned on, notifications flooded the screen.

Dozens of missed calls.

Dozens of messages.

Not only from Kang Ibin, but from the rest of Team 1 as well.

Even Im Hyomun had contacted him.

[Hyomun: Seventy-Seven, I heard you skipped work yesterday and today?]

[Hyomun: Did something happen???]

[Hyomun: (emoticon)]

[Hyomun: Sister Ibin asked if I’ve heard from you]

[Hyomun: You didn’t quit without saying anything, right????]

[Hyomun: Hey, answer me ㅜ]

The pale light from the screen faintly illuminated Jaegyeom’s face.

Reading Hyomun’s messages expressionlessly, Jaegyeom let out a quiet laugh.

Sister Ibin?

When had they gotten close enough for that?

Though honestly, it made sense. Hyomun probably clung to her the same way he clung to Jaegyeom whenever they ran into each other in the hallway.

That guy really was all charm and no dignity.

But the faint amusement vanished quickly from Jaegyeom’s face.

For two days straight, he had not left his room.

He had barely eaten.

He had done nothing except lie in bed.

Watching him fall back into his old habits again, Mesan and Jeongju became alarmed. They hovered anxiously outside his room asking what was wrong, but Jaegyeom only snapped, I’m fine, leave me alone, before locking the door.

It was Yoon Taehee who had pushed him back into this cave.

Right now, Jaegyeom was bedridden with a crushing sense of betrayal and loss.

Since that night, Taehee had not contacted him once.

There were no calls.

No messages.

No sign of Taehee arriving in front of the house before work to pick him up.

No knock at the front door.

So after talking about revenge and all that, he just doesn’t care anymore?

Closing his eyes, Jaegyeom carelessly tossed the phone aside.

He had accepted Taehee’s proposal when Taehee promised to kill him in three months.

That was why he came to Seoul.

Why he became a Naja.

Why he went to the Office of Narye every day.

But now Taehee had changed the terms on his own.

And Jaegyeom, who had been living only while waiting for the promised end, collapsed almost immediately.

Once the promise itself became uncertain, he lost sight of why he should continue going to the Office at all.

For the past two days, locked inside his room, Jaegyeom had spent the entire time thinking.

That night, after talking to Taehee, he had been furious.

But lying alone in the darkness afterward, he forced himself to calm down. He tried to think rationally. Carefully. Piece by piece, he sorted through everything Taehee had said.

The drunken Taehee had told him to postpone his death.

At first, Jaegyeom could not accept those words at all. It felt like betrayal. Like Taehee had broken his promise.

‘Don’t die. That’s what I want. No—you can’t die.’

‘Everyone dies eventually. You’ll die too someday. But not in two months.’

Jaegyeom tried to look at it logically.

What Taehee had said was not that he would never kill him.

He had said he wanted to delay it.

He wasn’t asking Jaegyeom to remain immortal forever. He was saying he would kill him later instead.

Of course Jaegyeom was still angry about that. But strictly speaking, Taehee had not completely revoked the promise. He had only postponed it.

Which meant that if Jaegyeom accepted Taehee’s proposal, he would have to continue living longer than those remaining two months.

In other words, Taehee had not abandoned the promise entirely.

He had only delayed fulfilling it.

And the reason he gave was because he loved Jaegyeom.

What a selfish bastard.

Jaegyeom clenched his teeth.

If he had known things would turn out like this, he should never have let Taehee grow attached to him in the first place. He should never have gotten close to him at all.

Yet every time he thought that—

‘Every day with you feels like my birthday.’

‘I like being with you.’

—moments with Taehee would suddenly flash through his mind.

Right. The promise hasn’t disappeared yet.

I can still die eventually.

He tried to think of it that way.

Honestly, whether he lived another year or several more years didn’t matter much to him as long as he could die in the end.

But even so, he could not understand the premise itself.

If he could die in two months, then why continue living longer?

No matter how much he thought about it, he could not come up with a single reason.

Why should he keep living?

For two straight days, Jaegyeom searched desperately for a reason to continue living.

And after all that thinking, he still had no answer.

Then there was the biggest problem of all.

“Fuck, I’m starving...”

At this point he was too hungry to think anymore.

After all, he had practically starved himself for two days.

Jaegyeom finally dragged himself upright from the bed. Quietly opening his bedroom door, he stepped out into the living room.

Only then did he realize it was nighttime.

The house was dark and silent. Everyone seemed to be asleep.

Suppressing the sound of his footsteps, Jaegyeom slipped into the kitchen. He carefully pulled out a large bowl without making noise.

When he opened the rice cooker and found rice still inside, relief washed over him.

He piled several scoops into the bowl, added leftover side dishes from the refrigerator, then mixed in a spoonful of gochujang and a drizzle of sesame oil.

Standing at the sink, he secretly mixed the rice together—

Then suddenly he felt someone staring at him.

A chill shot down his spine.

Jaegyeom spun around sharply.

Something sat alone in the middle of the moonlit living room.

Yoo Namsaeng blinked sleepily up at him.

“...”

“...”

Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.

Leaning against the sink, Jaegyeom calmed his racing heart.

Then he grabbed the bowl, scooped Yoo Namsaeng up off the floor in one motion, and carried him back into the bedroom.

Dropping down onto the floor, Jaegyeom hugged the bowl against his chest and shoveled a huge spoonful of bibimbap into his mouth.

He barely finished chewing before taking another bite.

Then he held a spoonful out toward Yoo Namsaeng.

Yoo Namsaeng immediately opened his mouth wide and devoured it eagerly.

“Good?”

“You seriously need to ask? It’s incredible.”

Yoo Namsaeng never asked what was wrong.

Jaegyeom never asked why he was awake.

The two of them simply shared a secret late-night meal together while everyone else slept.

Suddenly, Jaegyeom let out a quiet laugh.

Yoo Namsaeng looked up.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing.”

Jaegyeom shook his head.

It suddenly struck him as absurd.

A person who wanted to die this badly was still sitting here in the middle of the night stuffing his face with bibimbap from a giant bowl.

For some reason, the thought was strangely funny.

Still chewing, Jaegyeom glanced down at Yoo Namsaeng.

“Hey. Don’t you ever get tired of living?”

Yoo Namsaeng looked up at him with puffed cheeks.

“You said you spent ages trapped alone as a rock in some cave nobody ever visited. Didn’t you ever want to die?”

This really was not the kind of conversation people should be having while eating bibimbap under moonlight.

For a moment, painful memories crossed Yoo Namsaeng’s face.

“Of course I did. There were countless times I wondered what the point of living was. If I’d actually been capable of ending my own life back then, I probably would have.”

Then he tilted his head.

“But why are you suddenly asking that?”

Jaegyeom nodded absently while picking a grain of rice from the corner of his mouth.

“Then what about now?”

“Now?”

Yoo Namsaeng thought for a moment.

“...Now I’m glad I didn’t die back then.”

“Why?”

“Because if I had died, I wouldn’t be here eating late-night snacks with you right now. I have Mesan and Jeongju too. I live in a nice house. I’m happy now.”

At those words, Jaegyeom silently looked down at the bowl resting in his lap, still half full of rice.

“But that’s only something you can say afterward.”

In the end, Yoo Namsaeng was speaking from hindsight.

“You might be happy now, but someday all this could disappear. You could end up alone again. Wouldn’t it make more sense to leave while things are still at their happiest?”

“...Are you telling me to leave this house?”

Yoo Namsaeng’s expression turned gloomy.

Jaegyeom immediately looked flustered.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m speaking hypothetically.”

What Jaegyeom wanted was a reason to keep living despite everything.

If he could find a reason strong enough to justify living longer instead of dying in two months, then maybe he could keep this promise.

“What I mean is... even if you’re happy now, bad things will happen again eventually. And when that happens, it hurts even more. There’s a saying, right? You never realize what you /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ have until it’s gone.”

“That’s true.”

“So wouldn’t it be better to leave before that happens?”

“...So you really are telling me to leave.”

Yoo Namsaeng looked devastated again.

“I’m not talking about you, idiot.”

Finally reassured, Yoo Namsaeng picked a grain of rice from the corner of his mouth with one paw.

“Then I’m staying here.”

“Why?”

“Because even if everything disappears someday and I end up alone again... I think I could endure it now.”

Yoo Namsaeng looked up at him calmly.

“I already know from experience that if you keep living long enough, good days can come again.”

Good days might come if you kept living.

Or maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe things would only grow worse.

The future was uncertain.

But Yoo Namsaeng had experienced it once already.

He knew good days could exist.

And because he knew that from experience, he could keep going.

It was not empty optimism.

It was memory.

“But you said being happy scares you too.”

“It does. But I get over it quickly.”

Stretching his neck toward the bowl, Yoo Namsaeng added,

“More rice.”

“...I see.”

Jaegyeom stared down at him quietly.

“But honestly, I still don’t have a reason to live.”

Yoo Namsaeng paused.

“Do you really need one?”

“What?”

“I don’t think reasons matter that much.”

As he spoke, Yoo Namsaeng picked up a clump of fallen rice near his feet and stuffed it into his mouth.

“When there’s food right in front of me like this, I don’t think about my reasons for eating it first. I just want to eat it.”

He looked up at Jaegyeom.

“Isn’t living the same?”

Jaegyeom froze halfway through lifting another spoonful.

“...Why are you looking at me like that?”

Reaching out, Jaegyeom tapped lightly against Yoo Namsaeng’s shell.

“You’re seriously hard to deal with.”

Yoo Namsaeng tilted his head in confusion while gathering more rice grains into his mouth.

“Huh? Of course my shell’s hard.”

“Yeah.”

Jaegyeom let out a quiet laugh.

“But your heart’s even harder than your shell.”

The two of them finished the rest of the bibimbap together, passing the bowl back and forth in the silence of the moonlit room.