Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“Spirit Saero has come, Taehee.”

Yoon Taehee smoothed back his disordered hair.

“Come in.”

With a faint smile, he tipped his chin lightly. The unspoken meaning was clear enough: You may rise.

Saero, who had been bowing with impeccable formality, immediately straightened and broke into a grin. Whatever solemnity he had been wearing a moment ago vanished at once. Stretching lazily, he looked around the library.

“Wow, Taehee. There are a hell of a lot of books in here.”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Totally. There are more books in this room than I saw in my entire life.”

Saero poked his head into every corner of the shelves, letting out one admiring sound after another.

Wow. No way. Seriously.

For a ghost, he sometimes felt more human than people did. He was curious, and he loved anything new. In many ways, he was not at all what one expected of a spirit.

Spirits were beings with intelligence and considerable power. Because of that, they hated being lumped together with mindless stray ghosts or vengeful ghosts that clung to life and caused trouble. That said, it was not as if they got along especially well with humans, either. Most spirits looked down on people for being weak and short-lived. Before meeting Yoon Taehee, Paehyeon had been exactly that sort.

The spirits who despised humans usually gathered among themselves and lived in tucked-away little groups. Far from human footsteps, they made companions of rivers and mountains and passed their time in elegant leisure. Then, when that peaceful, lofty life started to bore them, they would wander into places where humans lived for a change of pace. On the other hand, a small number of spirits were favorably inclined toward humans from the start. Those were the ones who slipped into human society from birth and lived by imitating human ways. If Paehyeon had belonged to the former kind, Saero belonged to the latter.

Spirits were powerful enough that, if they chose to, they could reveal themselves even to ordinary humans. Still, being ghosts, they cast no shadows, so to avoid being found out, they mostly roamed the streets at dusk, at night, or before dawn. A few of them even went so far as to indulge in human culture as if they themselves were human—shopping, going out for entertainment, living it up.

Saero, in particular, had an intense interest in fashion. Every time Yoon Taehee summoned him, his clothes and hairstyle had changed. Last time he had shown up in a raincoat with a head full of tight curls; this time he had appeared with his hair cut short and a garishly patterned cardigan in every color imaginable. The traces of the perm still lingered, leaving his hair faintly wavy. Whether his tastes differed from a human’s at all was anyone’s guess, but Saero’s fashion sense was invariably bizarre.

While Saero wandered around the library in fascination, Yoon Taehee went to the window where the deep sunset light was spilling in and opened it. With a grinding sound, fresh air poured inside.

“So what’d you call me for? Don’t tell me you’re making me read books?!”

Saero clapped both hands over his mouth and pretended to shiver.

Yoon Taehee laughed soundlessly.

As always, Saero was bright and high-spirited. He was the exact opposite of Paehyeon, who was grave and still by nature. Whenever the two of them were put in the same place, they spent the entire time bristling at each other. Paehyeon would sneer that Saero was a restless, frivolous little nuisance, and Saero would mock Paehyeon as a dull scholar too stiff to understand a joke.

“There’s something I want to ask you.”

At those words, Saero brightened at once.

“Anything you want. Just say the word.”

“There’s a human I’ve gotten curious about.”

Saero stared at Yoon Taehee’s back, where he stood with an arm resting on the windowsill.

A human he was curious about?

In all the time Saero had known him, Yoon Taehee had never been someone who took much interest in other people. Interest lit up Saero’s face. Against the vast red sky, Yoon Taehee’s profile seemed to melt into the scenery.

“There’s something I’d like to find out about that child.”

Yoon Taehee spoke in a low voice.

“Did you get something that belonged to him?”

Saero nodded immediately, without further prompting.

“Yes. I got lucky.”

Yoon Taehee turned and crossed the room slowly, then crouched in front of the trash can. Saero, who had followed after him, looked back and forth between him and the trash can in confusion.

Yoon Taehee lifted a finger and pointed inside.

Following the direction of his finger, Saero’s gaze landed on the heap of soiled trash inside. His eyes narrowed, and then his whole face twisted.

He looked up at Yoon Taehee with dawning horror.

“Taehee... the thing you meant isn’t...”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

What Yoon Taehee had pointed to was a bloodied tissue.

Only a few hours ago, it had been plugged into Jaegyeom’s nose.

“...Isn’t that, by any chance, a tissue somebody stuck up his nostril and then pulled back out?”

“Yes. A tissue with nosebleed blood on it.”

“Oh, come on, Taehee...”

Saero buried his face against his raised knees, unable to finish the sentence. Even at the sight of his despair, Yoon Taehee remained perfectly composed. If anything, he folded his hands together and encouraged him with calm confidence.

“Saero, if it’s you, you can do it.”

He did not mean it lightly.

Yoon Taehee trusted Saero’s ability. That was why he had called him. Spirits were far rarer than stray ghosts or vengeful ghosts, so there was a great deal about them the Naja did not know. Narrow-minded as they were, the ones who treated every ghost they encountered as an enemy could hardly be expected to know that just as a gifted person’s abilities varied according to the strength of their ghostly force, the same was true of spirits.

Saero possessed the ability to read the history carried within blood.

“Taehee... even so, this is still too much. How am I supposed to touch some stranger’s used nose tissue?”

“It’s not a used tissue. It’s blood from a nosebleed.”

“No, I mean... that’s basically the same thing...”

“What does it matter?”

“And besides! Doesn’t this make me look like some kind of stocker?”

“Stalker, not stocker.”

Yoon Taehee corrected the word calmly.

For all that his tone remained loose, Saero’s face was deadly serious. Through fresh blood, he could read the whole course of a person’s life. The blood running through a body inevitably held that person’s history.

“Don’t you have anything else? Fresh blood, maybe?”

Saero looked on the verge of tears as he added the plea. Usually he was handed blood in a small bottle or some sealed container. Never in his existence had anyone presented him with a tissue used to wipe a nosebleed.

“If not, I’ll go get it myself. Cut him a little or something.”

“I don’t know. I’m not too fond of that.”

“What?”

“If he gets hurt, it’ll be unpleasant to look at.”

“...”

At that easy answer, Saero was left with complicated feelings as he glanced back into the trash can.

“But why do you want to know this person’s history in the first place?”

“He looks like someone with too many secrets.”

“If I may ask, what sort of secrets?”

Yoon Taehee rose from his crouch. Leaning one shoulder against the wall, he stood there a moment in thought.

“He’s a young gifted. But he read classical characters with ease. No matter how well someone knows them, in this era it’s hard to recognize and understand them instantly without even the slightest pause. Unless you’re talking about someone in his seventies or eighties. Which means he lived under conditions where reading classical characters was part of daily life. Take the Naja of the Office of Narye, for example. Even when they’re young, they handle talismans and chant the scriptures, so naturally they become familiar with them.”

“Well now, that is mighty peculiar.”

Saero’s eyes went round.

“And though I didn’t witness it with my own eyes, there’s a high chance that child can control ghostly force freely. Even after years of training in the Office of Narye, it isn’t easy to command ghostly force at will. But an eighteen-year-old gifted child using it that skillfully?”

Yoon Taehee narrowed his eyes, thinking of the shattered jade seal.

“There are only two possibilities. Either he studied under someone from a very young age, or...”

“Or...”

“He’s been alive for a very long time.”

“Huh?”

Saero gaped like a fish for a second, then fluttered one hand and laughed.

“Oh, come on, Taehee. Your imagination’s still as wild as ever. Didn’t you just say he was a young gifted? No mere human lives longer than the thread of his allotted life.”

“Do they? The distance between imagination and reality is smaller than people think. In the same way ordinary humans cannot even imagine that a spirit like you is living in this world.”

As he said it, Yoon Taehee rubbed the back of his neck.

“That’s why I called you.”

“I understand what you mean, Taehee, but...”

With an uncertain expression, Saero peered into the trash can again.

“This is too little. Even if I collected a chick’s tears, I’d probably get more than this. With this tiny amount of blood, reading a history won’t be easy. You know that, don’t you? To see someone’s whole life, I’d need at least a decent bowlful of blood.”

“It doesn’t have to be his whole life. Even one scene from the past is enough. Anything that might serve as a clue.”

Whew.

Saero bowed his head and let out a sigh heavy enough to sink the ground. A brief silence fell between them. The ticking of the wall clock sounded unusually loud. After thinking for a moment, Saero suddenly lifted his head.

“I’ll try, at least. But... honestly, I can’t promise anything. And with this little, it’s probably going to take some time. If I fail, you won’t scold me, right?”

He looked utterly lacking in confidence. The droop of his eyes made him look especially dejected.

“That’s fine. Don’t rush. Take your time.”

Saero had said # Nоvеlight # it would take a while, but Yoon Taehee truly did not mind. Better slow and perfect than hurried and incomplete. If he wanted the result he was after, what mattered was applying steady care and waiting calmly.

“Why? Because I don’t want to get close to you.”

A silent laugh slipped from Yoon Taehee.

Of course, he had never expected Jaegyeom to agree obediently. Still, he had not thought the boy would reject him so openly. A direct approach did not seem to work, which meant he would have to go the long way around.

Yoon Taehee looked at his shadow, now stretched much longer than before. If he waited long enough, sooner or later the float that had sunk beneath the surface would twitch.

Looking back, time had always been on his side.