Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Back to square one.

“So my curse really had nothing to do with the immortality pill after all.”

Jaegyeom stared blankly at the palm of Shin Jihye’s mother.

The mermaid’s blood and his own had mixed together there in a shallow puddle.

If someone had taken the immortality pill, their blood should have turned blue when mixed with mermaid blood.

But the color created by Jaegyeom’s blood was only a murky brown.

“That’s enough.”

After standing there in a daze for a moment, Jaegyeom slowly withdrew his hand and spoke calmly.

At first glance, his expression looked indifferent. But Yoon Taehee could clearly read the disappointment and resignation in his back.

Suddenly, Jaegyeom realized something.

Ah.

I’d been hoping.

“I’ll kill you.”

Ever since the day he accepted Yoon Taehee’s proposal, Jaegyeom’s life had begun to change completely.

Ironically, the longing for death had breathed a strange kind of vitality into the endless lethargy that had consumed his daily life for centuries. More than anything else, he wanted to end this life and finally fall into eternal rest. He wanted to escape this exhausting, tedious immortality.

To Jaegyeom, expectation had always been another word for false hope.

And yet somehow, without realizing it, he had started looking forward to tomorrow.

Meeting new people. Going to unfamiliar places. Experiencing things he had never known before.

The vitality of life had begun to sprout inside him.

“Postpone your death. That’s what I want.”

“Everyone dies. You’ll die someday too.”

“But not in two months. You’ll live normally, grow old normally, and die normally.”

Only a few days ago, he had been furious at Yoon Taehee for changing the terms so arbitrarily.

But the moment the possibility appeared that he might break the curse and live like an ordinary human being, Jaegyeom had begun hoping without even noticing it himself.

If I could break the curse and live as a normal human...

The thought had quietly taken root inside him over and over again.

The result was cruel for both of them.

He remembered the moment life had finally begun flowing into his stagnant existence, the life he had drifted through for centuries under the inertia of endless time.

There had been moments that passed by beautifully and fleetingly, like falling stars.

And because those moments had been beautiful, Jaegyeom suddenly felt sick of all of it.

He realized he had started becoming greedy without knowing it.

He had started thinking that if he could die normally someday, then perhaps the rest of his life might become a little more precious too.

The faint vitality that had remained in Jaegyeom’s eyes ever since arriving on the island quietly disappeared again.

His gaze had already sunk lifelessly dark.

“...”

Jaegyeom spoke quietly to Shin Jihye’s mother.

“Thank you for coming all this way.”

Suddenly, everything felt meaningless.

Jaegyeom looked down at Shin Jihye’s mother, whose body remained submerged beneath the rocks up to her shoulders, then slowly turned away.

His eyes found Yoon Taehee standing behind him.

“Let’s go.”

After saying his farewell, Jaegyeom turned around slowly.

Just as he started walking back toward Yoon Taehee, his body abruptly stopped.

Something had grabbed him.

A cold, wet hand had wrapped around his ankle.

Jaegyeom looked down.

“...”

Then he glanced toward Shin Jihye, who stood farther away.

Shin Jihye, who had silently watched everything until now, had gone deathly pale.

“What are you doing?”

At Jaegyeom’s question, Shin Jihye’s mother muttered quietly to herself:

“So in the end, only we mermaids suffered for nothing.”

“What?”

“You humans finally found another way. You achieved immortality without needing mermaids anymore. Then why did my parents, my siblings, my friends all have to die?”

Jaegyeom frowned slowly at the incomprehensible words.

“For centuries, countless humans dreamed of immortality. Because of that greed, countless mermaids were slaughtered like sacrifices.”

She lowered her head as she spoke.

“It’s tragic, isn’t it? The immortality everyone desires becomes a curse to someone else. A blessing to some. A curse to others...”

The hand gripping Jaegyeom’s ankle tightened further.

“So what exactly are you trying to say?”

“Mermaids hate humans.”

Jaegyeom’s expression slowly hardened.

When he looked toward Shin Jihye again, she shook her head desperately, her face filled with panic.

As though she had hoped things would never come to this.

“This wasn’t the agreement...”

Finally, Shin Jihye spoke in a trembling voice that sounded almost pleading.

“What?”

As Jaegyeom frowned in confusion—

“You promised you’d let him go if it wasn’t related to the immortality pill!”

The mermaid who had maintained such a gentle expression until now instantly twisted her face and glared viciously at Shin Jihye.

“Shut up, you filthy half-breed!”

Jaegyeom’s face hardened immediately.

Half-breed?

At that moment, Shin Jihye — who had been anxiously fidgeting this entire time — suddenly screamed:

“Run away! That mermaid isn’t my mother!”

What?

Jaegyeom froze and turned toward the unfamiliar mermaid.

“She captured my mother and threatened me!”

At that instant, the whites of the mermaid’s eyes darkened completely.

Then her pupils slowly turned a deep blue.

Eyes like a fish’s.

“As expected of filthy blood mixed with humans...”

Clicking her tongue, the mermaid waved her hand once.

A massive wave instantly surged toward Shin Jihye.

Like a tsunami, it swallowed her whole and dragged her beneath the water.

“Aaaah!”

“Let go—!”

At the same time, some invisible force began dragging her away.

“...What are you doing?”

Now fully understanding the situation, Jaegyeom’s eyes turned cold.

He glared at the mermaid.

Blue scales had begun appearing across her hands. The gentle and kind expression she had worn until now had vanished completely, replaced by naked hostility.

The mermaid slowly released Jaegyeom’s ankle.

At the same time, her upper body rose higher from the sea.

Her lower half remained fused with the ocean itself, as though the entire sea had become part of her body.

The mermaid rose until she was level with Jaegyeom’s eyes—

—and instantly wrapped a hand around his throat.

It happened so quickly he barely had time to react.

“Jaegyeom—!”

Yoon Taehee’s face hardened violently.

The moment he reflexively reached toward Jaegyeom, the mermaid waved her hand again.

A violent gust exploded outward.

Caught completely off guard, Yoon Taehee was hurled backward and slammed against the cliff.

The wind roared like a storm. Waves crashed wildly against the rocks.

Veins stood out sharply across Jaegyeom’s forehead as the mermaid tightened her grip around his throat.

“Ugh...!”

Yoon Taehee pushed himself up from the cliff face.

And finally, he understood the source of the sticky unease that had clung to him this entire time.

In an instant, Sisi’s warning flashed through his mind.

Run away, Seonoh. Leave this island immediately.

Yoon Taehee finally realized it.

Coming to this island had been a mistake from the beginning.

No—

perhaps the mistake had started the moment they first met Shin Jihye.

Or maybe even earlier, from the moment they began searching for mermaids in hopes of breaking Jaegyeom’s curse.

This mermaid had approached them from the start with revenge in mind.

Shin Jihye had likely been threatened all along.

“You humans hunted us. Slaughtered us. We lost our parents, our siblings, our friends because of humans. This hatred was created by humans.”

Jaegyeom barely forced words out through his crushed throat.

“This... has nothing... to do with us...”

“No. You will pay for humanity’s sins.”

“...So you’re saying... I should die... in their place...?”

The mermaid only stared at him murderously.

“Let go...”

His breathing was failing.

Jaegyeom’s face twisted.

“I... hate... repeating myself...”

His eyes darkened dangerously.

“I said... stop...”

Then suddenly—

the mermaid whistled.

The raging sea abruptly calmed for a brief instant.

And then thousands of silver fish exploded upward from the water.

Flap flap flap—

Hundreds upon hundreds of flying fish shot toward Jaegyeom and Yoon Taehee.

At the same time, Yoon Taehee snapped back to his senses.

He immediately opened the umbrella in his hand and infused it with spiritual force.

It was pure reflex.

He intended to cut down the incoming school of fish—

But then he abruptly stopped himself.

Jaegyeom was directly in front of him.

If he released spiritual force carelessly, Jaegyeom could get caught in it too.

That ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ brief hesitation was enough.

The school of flying fish surged toward them.

“Ugh!”

SHHK—! SHHK—!

Every fish that grazed past them sliced flesh open like a blade.

Countless cuts instantly spread across their bodies.

“Fuck...”

The pain came all at once.

Jaegyeom tried to turn toward Yoon Taehee behind him, but the mermaid’s grip around his throat kept him from moving.

Finally, he raised a hand and grabbed the wrist strangling him.

“Hey...”

The mermaid’s eyes widened.

An overwhelming amount of spiritual force burst from the human hand gripping her wrist.

Jaegyeom glared at her with utterly deranged eyes.

“...you picked the wrong person...”

The spiritual force pouring from his hand intensified violently.

Stronger.

Stronger.

Until it completely overwhelmed the mermaid’s strength.

CRACK.

“Aaaagh!”

The mermaid screamed as her wrist twisted unnaturally.

The moment her grip loosened, Jaegyeom tore free and staggered back, coughing violently.

“Cough—! Cough—!”

He stumbled toward Yoon Taehee.

“Hey... are you okay?”

Just as Jaegyeom reached toward Yoon Taehee’s blood-covered face—

BWOOOOOO—

A deep horn blast echoed across the sea.

It sounded like a ship’s horn.

Both of them instinctively turned toward the dark ocean.

Shapes began emerging from the darkness.

At first glance they looked like half-naked men with massive builds and glowing green eyes.

Merpeople.

Five of them.

They had been waiting beneath the water the entire time.

Jaegyeom and Yoon Taehee’s expressions hardened simultaneously.

The merpeople spread out across the surface of the sea and began chanting something in low voices, their eyes gleaming eerily.

Then a violent whirlpool formed at the center of their formation.

The sea twisted upward.

An enormous pillar of water erupted into the sky—

—and glared down at the two of them.

Born from the whirlpool, it was a gigantic sea dragon.