Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom stared blankly at the scenery rushing past beyond the bus window.

[The next stop is Jongno 3-ga, Jongmyo. The stop after that is...]

Sitting by the window, he pressed the stop button with a familiar motion.

It was a clear afternoon, and his first day back at work after three days.

Last night, Jaegyeom had shared a bowl of bibimbap with Yoo Namsaeng and talked for a long time. He couldn’t tell Jeongju or Mesan, whom he had known for years, about how he had no reason to live. Yet somehow, with Yoo Namsaeng, whom he had met only recently, he had been able to open up and speak honestly.

So Jaegyeom had spent most of last night thinking.

Yoo Namsaeng had said that what a person needed in order to keep living was not a reason, but simply the desire to live. Still, Jaegyeom could not sort out his feelings.

The one thing that had not changed was that, one way or another, Yoon Taehee was the only person who could kill him.

Which meant he could not let things end like this.

He needed to meet Taehee properly and settle this.

When he arrived at headquarters, Jaegyeom paused for a moment in front of the office door. After two days of unexcused absence, he felt faintly nervous about going inside.

The moment he swiped his access card and stepped in, Kang Ibin shot up from her seat.

“Jaegyeom!”

She stormed over with a furious expression.

“What on earth happened to you?!”

Jaegyeom shrank under the force of her glare.

Kang Ibin grabbed him and immediately began scolding him, demanding to know why he had been unreachable for two days and what had happened. She was angry—or rather, she had been so worried about him that it came out as anger.

Apparently, if Jaegyeom had not shown up at headquarters today, she had been planning to go to his house herself.

Overwhelmed by her intensity, Jaegyeom mumbled some excuse about not feeling well.

“Then you should have at least called! Do you know how worried I was?”

“Yeah...”

“Jaegyeom, you know what kind of work we do! When we suddenly can’t reach someone, our hearts drop! We start imagining all kinds of awful things, like maybe a ghost got you!”

“Yeah...”

With his hands clasped politely in front of him, Jaegyeom stood there and endured the scolding for quite a while.

“Anyway, Jaegyeom, I’m just relieved nothing happened to you.”

When the lecture showed no sign of ending, Pyo Jiho, who had been quietly watching, smoothly stepped in and wrapped things up.

The rest of the team also told Jaegyeom, with obvious affection, to let them know next time if he was sick or if something had come up.

Jaegyeom nodded awkwardly.

After finally being released, he staggered back to his desk.

He had been thoroughly scolded, but for some reason, he felt unsettled rather than upset.

Scratching his forehead, he glanced toward the chief’s office. It was empty. Yoon Taehee had either not come in yet or had stepped out.

Jaegyeom decided to focus on work while waiting for him to return.

Time passed, and evening came.

It was already past eight.

Yoon Taehee still had not appeared at the office.

At last, unable to wait any longer, Jaegyeom turned to Go Junhyung, who was sitting beside him.

“Lead Naja Go, where’s the Chief?”

“Ah, the Chief?”

Go Junhyung glanced briefly toward the chief’s office.

“Oh, I guess you wouldn’t know, Jaegyeom. The Chief took a week off.”

What?

Jaegyeom’s face stiffened.

“Why did he... wh-when did that happen?”

“The first day you were out. He came in that morning, said something urgent came up, and took a few days of leave. He won’t be in this week. If you need to submit any documents or reports, give them to Senior Naja Pyo.”

So Yoon Taehee had not been coming to work for the past two days either.

Jaegyeom felt suddenly lost.

Did that mean Taehee was at home right now?

He frowned.

He had not considered the possibility that Taehee might take time off. He didn’t know the exact reason, but he wondered if it had something to do with their vicious argument that night.

He wished he had asked sooner.

What do I do? I need to meet him and settle this...

If Taehee wasn’t coming in all week, how was Jaegyeom supposed to see him?

Should he go to Taehee’s house?

Where had he said he lived again?

Or should he contact him first?

As Jaegyeom was lost in thought—

“...Huh?”

Across the room, Kim Semin, who had been looking at his phone, suddenly made a sound of surprise.

“What is it?”

The other team members poked their heads over their partitions with interest.

“Isn’t this the Chief?”

Kim Semin peered down at his phone.

Wondering what he meant, the team members gathered around his desk. Jaegyeom, of course, was among them.

“Let me see.”

When Kim Semin held out his phone, everyone’s eyes widened.

“It really is! That looks just like the Chief!”

Kim Semin liked browsing social media on a regular basis. As usual, while scrolling through various accounts, he had come across a photo containing an extremely familiar face.

The place seemed to be a café.

In the center of the shot, a woman was smiling and flashing a V sign. But she was not the only person in the photo. Beside her sat Yoon Taehee, bangs down, dressed casually, legs crossed as he looked at his phone.

“...”

The moment Jaegyeom saw Taehee in the photo, his expression hardened.

“Wait, whose photo is this?”

“I know her. She’s a celebrity, right?”

As the team began buzzing with excitement, Kim Semin explained.

“It’s Shin Jihye. She used to be a model, and she’s really famous now.”

Shin Jihye was an influencer with a large social media following.

“Oh my God. How do they know each other?”

No one had ever imagined they would learn about Chief Yoon sitting in a café with a famous person through a celebrity’s social media instead of seeing it in person.

As the team murmured over the photo, Go Junhyung tilted his head.

“Huh. Then the person I saw earlier really was the Chief.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“I went to Garosu-gil earlier today, and I saw a man who looked like the Chief walking arm in arm with a woman. I thought it was just someone who resembled him, but looking at this, I think it really was him. The woman looked like this person too.”

Go Junhyung added that the outfit matched as well.

“What? Seriously?”

The team’s reaction was explosive.

“Damn, the café is in Garosu-gil too.”

“If they were walking arm in arm, then ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ it was definitely them, right?”

“That’s insane. They must be dating.”

Jaegyeom stood frozen, face stiff.

Then—

“I-I don’t think that’s it...”

The words slipped out before he could stop himself.

The team members, who had been debating whether Taehee and Shin Jihye were dating, all turned toward him at once. Flustered by the sudden attention, Jaegyeom stammered.

“W-well... um...”

Because Yoon Taehee was gay.

And because that bastard had said he loved him.

As Jaegyeom trailed off awkwardly, Pyo Jiho shrugged and added,

“Well, we can’t know for sure from one photo. Even if they aren’t dating, really close friends can walk arm in arm. And if they were dating, wouldn’t the photo look more intimate? They might just be acquaintances.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Just then—

“Oh? Another photo just went up!”

Still holding his phone, Kim Semin exclaimed in surprise.

The café photo had been uploaded earlier that day. It seemed they had moved somewhere else later in the evening, because the new photo appeared to have been taken at a bar.

A large table was covered with expensive bottles of alcohol, and Yoon Taehee’s side profile had been captured as he rested his chin on his hand, looking somewhere off-camera.

But this time, it was not just a photo.

There was a line of text beneath it.

[My sweetheart has such a handsome profile]

My sweetheart.

At that decisive phrase, the team members exchanged looks.

“...”

“...”

After a brief silence, they all nodded.

“They’re dating.”

Jaegyeom’s heart sank.

He knew the word sweetheart too.

In dramas, couples often called each other that.

Kang Ibin finally frowned and slumped her shoulders.

“Ugh. This is so annoying. I didn’t want to know this. I wish I hadn’t seen it.”

“What’s with you, Kang Ibin? Why are you upset?”

When Pyo Jiho teased her, Kang Ibin grumbled in frustration.

“It’s just one of those things! You wouldn’t understand even if I explained it.”

“I know, right? I’m annoyed too.”

Kim Semin nodded as if he understood completely.

“Semin, what’s with you? You have a partner.”

“It’s like... you know that feeling? Like you lost everyone’s sweetheart?”

“Exactly, Semin! That’s exactly it.”

Kang Ibin agreed enthusiastically, then added,

“It feels like something was taken from you, even though it was never yours.”

For some reason, that expression struck Jaegyeom hard.

“...”

While the team members gossiped about Yoon Taehee’s private life, which had remained mysterious despite all the years they had known him, Jaegyeom stood among them in silence, expressionless.

The emotion filling his chest right now was betrayal.

But it felt strangely different from the betrayal he had felt when Taehee changed the terms of their promise.

This was stickier.

Darker.

More unpleasant.

For the past two days, Jaegyeom had shut himself in his room and thought about reasons to live. He had agonized over why he should continue this life, and how he could keep the promise without breaking it.

Since Yoon Taehee had also been absent from work, Jaegyeom had thought maybe Taehee was struggling the same way he was.

But that had been nothing more than his own delusion.

Far from struggling, Taehee had been drinking tea and spending time with someone else.

The realization made Jaegyeom furious to the bone.

I didn’t want to love you either.

Just as Jaegyeom had thought about distancing himself from Taehee, maybe Taehee had also decided to sort out his own feelings.

The thought made Jaegyeom’s stomach churn and his heart suddenly pound.

Amid the commotion, he approached Kim Semin and asked politely,

“The bar in this photo... where is it?”