Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom stood in front of the school gate with the face of a man heading to his death.

In case the same disaster as yesterday happened and he ran into the librarian again, he had left the house ten minutes later than usual that morning. Uneasy, he ran a hand over the base of his throat. The tie was snug around his neck, reassuringly tight. This time he felt around the nape of his neck and the rims of his ears. Thanks to the freshly hacked-off hair, all he touched was bare skin. After making sure of everything, Jaegyeom took a deep breath and nodded to himself.

Then, like a general marching onto a battlefield, he stepped through the gate.

Far off at the entrance to the main building stood the dean of discipline. At last, the man’s eyes met Jaegyeom’s.

“......”

“......”

A taut silence passed between them, as if mortal enemies had met on a narrow bridge. The dean looked Jaegyeom up and down with a deeply disapproving expression, but that was all. Thankfully, he was not stopped like he had been yesterday.

Having made it into the main building in triumph, Jaegyeom wore a quietly satisfied look. Inside, the place was chaos from the students coming in for the day. The stairwells and hallways were full of noise. He was passing the second-floor landing, where the Faculty Office was, when he stopped.

The young librarian was coming down the stairs straight toward him.

He was leafing through a stack of paperwork as he descended at an unhurried pace. Then he looked up.

“Ah...”

Again.

At this rate, there had been no point leaving the house ten minutes late.

Keeping his mouth shut, Jaegyeom stared blankly up at him. With each step the man took downward, their eye level drew lower and lower. He stopped three or four steps above Jaegyeom. Then he gazed down at him for a moment and smiled.

“Hello.”

It was the same smile as yesterday.

Jaegyeom dipped his head in a perfunctory greeting. He was sure the man was about to start bothering him again, asking pointless questions just like yesterday. Why are you late today? You remembered your tie this time. Things like that. They had barely known each other any time at all, but Jaegyeom could already see perfectly clearly what he would say and how he would act.

The annoyance was already setting in.

With a sour expression, Jaegyeom waited for the young librarian to approach. The man, still paused a few steps above him, began descending again at a leisurely pace. The closer he came, the stronger the fragrance became. Just like yesterday. One step, two, three, four.

And then five, six...

The young librarian passed right by him.

Jaegyeom turned, bewildered, to look after him. Every other time they met, the man had always at least said something. But today that brief greeting was the end of it. After passing him, the young librarian walked straight into the Faculty Office. Maybe it was his imagination, but he felt strangely distant today.

This was not how Jaegyeom had expected it to go.

He scratched at his forehead.

Yesterday the man had gone on about becoming friends and all sorts of other nonsense. Exchanging even a few words with him was already irritating enough, so what was all that ridiculous talk about friendship? And when Jaegyeom had rejected it cleanly, the man had only replied, Is that so? What a shame, with that shameless ease of his.

And yet now—

“......”

Jaegyeom gave one small shrug and started walking again.

Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with him.

*****

The first thing Jaegyeom did when he got to class was glare at the lunch menu board.

A real day did not begin until he had confirmed the side dishes and seen what had changed from the day before. By now he was starting to look almost like a real student. He nodded off during class. When the bell rang for break, he dashed to the school store with Jo Youngwoo. At lunchtime, he stood in the lunch line and glared daggers at anyone who tried to cut in.

Before he knew it, more than a week had passed since he became the transfer student.

Even after that encounter on the stairs, Jaegyeom and the young librarian kept crossing paths. Sometimes Jaegyeom would finish eating and be sitting on a bench when the other man happened to walk by on a stroll through the school grounds. Sometimes, while running across the field in gym class, he would look up and find him standing by the library window, looking back.

But just as he had on the stairs, the young librarian would only smile and say, “Hello,” and then keep walking.

At other times their eyes clearly met, and he ignored him altogether without so much as a greeting. Whenever that happened, Jaegyeom was left with a strange feeling. It was easier, in a way, now that the man was no longer coming closer than necessary.

But for some reason, it bothered him.

Whether he was near or far, the man had a talent for making other people uncomfortable all the same.

In any case, life was passing by smoothly. At least on the surface it was.

Except for the small incidents of unknown cause that had started happening a few days ago.

Usually it was about once a day, and most of the time it happened while Jaegyeom was away from his seat. He would come back from the bathroom and find trash on top of his desk. Or someone had poured water into his bag and soaked his books. Or there would be dirty shoe prints left on his chair. Things like that.

Up to that point, Jaegyeom had not thought much of it. He had assumed someone had done it by accident.

But eventually he realized that, for a series of accidents, it all felt rather malicious.

What made him realize it happened when he went to the bathroom to wash his hands.

After rinsing them at the sink, he stepped into the last stall and tore off a few sheets of toilet paper. He was drying his hands slowly when something dropped from above with a thud.

It was a milk carton thrown over from the next stall.

He was lucky he had been standing close to the wall.

It did not hit him, but the carton burst when it hit the floor and splashed milk onto his shoes. He stood there blankly for a moment. Then he heard someone running off in a frantic clatter of footsteps. Jaegyeom snapped back to himself and rushed out, but by then the only person left in the bathroom was him.

“......”

The only things childish enough to pull a stunt this pointless, Jaegyeom thought, were stray ghosts.

He had already spotted a few of them around the school. Whenever he bothered to look at what they were doing, they were only writing in the air with stolen chalk, or amusing themselves by tying and untying the curtain cords, or pretending to study at empty desks. He had left them alone because they did not seem the least bit interested in humans.

But the situation was getting stranger by the day.

This had gone too far to dismiss as harmless mischief. Jaegyeom lifted a hand and felt over his chest. Beneath his school jacket, he found something thick tucked inside.

A talisman he had prepared earlier.

He always kept one on him just in case.

Now it seemed he had a use for it.

“You filthy little stray-ghost bastards...”

He could not just sit there and take it.

*****

The mirror in the makeup room was crowded with dozens upon dozens of cosmetics and tools.

“Mr. Jeongju, we roll in thirty minutes! Makeup team, please finish up!”

Jeongju sat quietly in the chair with his eyes closed. He could feel the soft touch of a brush tapping here and there around his eyes and cheekbones. As the stylist worked on his face, he opened one eye and nodded toward the staff member standing in the doorway.

It had already been close to ten days since he brought Jaegyeom to school on his first day.

Time had rushed past like a fine horse with its mane flying.

And in all that time, not a single message had come from Jaegyeom.

Jeongju had told him again and again to call if anything happened. Even while being dragged from one packed schedule to the next, worry for Jaegyeom kept suddenly lifting its head.

He had begged more times than he could count for Jaegyeom to get a cell phone, but Jaegyeom would not listen to a word of it. Jeongju regretted not pushing harder. Of course, he had long ago installed a landline at the country house, but that telephone might as well not have existed. Jaegyeom always unplugged it. Jeongju had tried calling anyway, just in case, but naturally the line would not even ring.

Once, while Jeongju was in Seoul, he had called the country house like usual.

Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Jaegyeom had been in the middle of dueling a boss monster in a game.

The sudden ring startled him. His hand faltered for just a second, and he died.

Or more precisely, his character died.

Enraged, Jaegyeom had unleashed a torrent of savage abuse °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° at Jeongju, and after that, it became a miracle if the landline stayed plugged in for even one month out of the year.

“Well. No news is good news.”

Jeongju murmured it under his breath, and the stylist paused.

“Sorry?”

“Ah. No, it’s nothing.”

The stylist tilted her head, then went back to work. Jeongju sighed soundlessly.

He had considered contacting the school, but calling to ask Is our boy doing all right? felt like the kind of fuss that would only make him look absurdly overprotective. It would be better to finish his schedule as quickly as possible and go down there himself. The film he was shooting with heavy investment behind it was already nearing the end.

And in the middle of all that, Jeongju’s stock was climbing fast.

Not long ago, he had even taken first place in a newspaper poll called The Celebrity Netizens Chose as the Most Inhumanly Beautiful. Jeongju had clipped the article and saved it away with great satisfaction. When he first saw the word inhuman, he had nearly foamed at the mouth, thinking his true identity had been exposed. But once he realized that was not what it meant, he had been delighted.

He would have to brag about it to Jaegyeom.

Once this schedule was done, he would finally have a few days of breathing room. He planned to go down as soon as he could.

“Sir, you’ve got a call.”

At that moment, the manager standing nearby held out Jeongju’s phone.

“Who is it?”

“Unknown number.”

The manager turned the screen toward him. It was an unfamiliar number, not saved in his contacts. Any casting or work-related calls would go to his manager’s phone. This one had come to Jeongju’s personal number.

Normally, he never answered numbers he did not recognize.

He was just about to wave it off and tell the manager to ignore it, when a thought flashed through his mind.

What if it was Jaegyeom?

What if he had borrowed someone else’s phone to call?

“Give it to me.”

Jeongju took the phone from the manager. He stared at the screen for a second, then touched it and slid to answer. A moment later he brought it to his ear.

“...Hello?”

“Yes, hello?”

Any hope that it might be Jaegyeom scattered at once.

The voice on the other end belonged to a woman. Disappointment was just beginning to rise across Jeongju’s face when she said:

“This is Daeryung High. Are you, by any chance, Kim Jaegyeom’s uncle?”

“Huh—!”

Jeongju, who had been lounging in his chair, shot upright.

“Yes! Yes, that’s right. I’m Jaegyeom’s uncle.”

“Ah, yes, hello. I’m Seo Mijin, Jaegyeom’s homeroom teacher.”

“Oh! Yes, hello. I really should have come by and introduced myself properly before now—”

Holding the phone with both hands, Jeongju bent forward as he spoke. At his strangely flustered, almost helpless manner, the stylist and manager beside him widened their eyes. He and Ms. Seo exchanged a few polite formalities, then moved into a brief conversation. Once the civil introduction was over, she quickly came to the point.

“But... why exactly are you calling?”

A bad feeling flickered through him. Jeongju swallowed hard and asked with care.

“Well, the reason I’m calling is...” 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Ms. Seo let the words trail off for a moment, then continued in a grave tone.

“I think you’ll need to come to the school for a little while.”

“...What?”

“Jaegyeom...”

Jeongju waited, visibly anxious.

“Jaegyeom... got into a fistfight with one of his classmates.”

Jeongju’s mouth fell open.

He could hear only fragments after that.

We don’t know what happened, but he won’t say a word... the situation isn’t good... the other boy’s parents have come to the school...

Ms. Seo’s voice seemed to drift in and out, sometimes near, sometimes far away.

It was the moment all that silence finally came flying back as bad news.