Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“You were unconscious for two weeks.”

At Seok Juryeon’s words, Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened slowly.

...What?

He snapped his head up and stared at her.

“Why? Is something wrong?”

Seeing such undisguised agitation from him for once, Seok Juryeon asked the question immediately.

“...”

Two weeks.

Two whole weeks had passed?

For a moment, his thoughts completely stopped. It felt as though someone had struck the back of his head with a blunt object. After his expression stiffened briefly, Yoon Taehee forced himself to move his lips calmly.

“...No. It’s nothing.”

At that moment, Seok Juryeon’s phone rang.

She stepped out into the hallway to take the call, leaving Yoon Taehee alone in the hospital room. The instant the door shut behind her, he [N O V E L I G H T] lowered his head deeply and covered his face with both hands.

“Fuck.”

His brow twisted sharply as he clenched his teeth.

Two weeks.

He had wasted an entire two weeks lying unconscious.

People always said it was better to stay alive, even if it meant crawling through a field of dog shit. But before Yoon Taehee could feel relieved about surviving and returning to reality, a crushing wave of frustration swallowed him whole.

Lately, every single day had felt unbearably precious to him.

And now he had lost two weeks without accomplishing anything.

As long as he had opened his eyes again, there was something he absolutely had to do. By now, he should have already been moving pieces into place to destroy the Office of Narye. This was supposed to be the point when he inspected every cornerstone of rebellion he had spent ten years building and finally set the plan into full motion.

The carefully arranged schedule had collapsed in a single instant.

Two weeks gone meant there was barely any time left until the promised date with Jaegyeom.

Less than a month remained now.

Compared to the time left, there were still countless problems to solve. He still needed to find a way to break Jaegyeom’s immortality.

And he still had to destroy the Office of Narye.

Suddenly, Sisi’s warning resurfaced from the edge of his memory.

If you stray from the path I laid out for you one more time, you’ll lose everything you’ve built until now.

It was true.

At some point, Yoon Taehee had slowly begun drifting away from the blueprint he had spent ten years constructing.

Tracking the mermaid.

Going to Geoyeo-do.

Looking back, almost everything he had devoted his attention to over the past month had been unrelated to destroying the Office of Narye.

Even so, he refused to regret the time he had spent.

He had no intention of giving up either Jaegyeom or his revenge.

At some point, Yoon Taehee had begun imagining something beyond revenge itself.

A normal life.

A life where, after everything was over, he and Jaegyeom could remain together.

“Patient, are you awake?”

The hospital room door opened, and Seok Juryeon returned with the medical staff after finishing her call.

The staff began checking Yoon Taehee’s condition. Fortunately, the surgical wound was recovering well, and his blood pressure and pulse were stable.

The first thing he asked about was his discharge date.

The medical staff replied that because he had remained unconscious for such a long time and possible aftereffects still needed monitoring, he should stay hospitalized for at least several more days.

“How did this happen?”

Once the medical staff left and only Seok Juryeon remained, Yoon Taehee asked how he had ended up here.

After a brief silence, Seok Juryeon explained everything that had happened.

“...”

The moment he heard that Jaegyeom had contacted her, Yoon Taehee fell silent.

With lowered eyes, he repeatedly opened and closed his hand for no reason before finally speaking after a long pause.

“Where is Jaegyeom now?”

Seok Juryeon recalled the sight of the boy left alone outside the operating room.

Until Yoon Taehee’s surgery ended, Jaegyeom had remained there unattended like forgotten baggage, ignored by everyone around him.

Then, after Team 1 members who heard the news belatedly arrived at the hospital, they took Jaegyeom away almost as if they were cleaning up the aftermath.

“He’s safe. But I haven’t seen him recently.”

That had been the last time Seok Juryeon saw Jaegyeom.

“He hasn’t come to work since that day.”

For the entire two weeks Yoon Taehee had been unconscious, Jaegyeom had never once shown up at headquarters.

“He said he wouldn’t come back until you woke up.”

As she continued speaking, Yoon Taehee slowly lifted his eyes toward her.

“We can discuss the rest later. I’ll come back after work.”

For now, confirming that he had regained consciousness was enough.

With a noticeably gaunt face, Seok Juryeon finished speaking and took Yoon Taehee’s phone out of the bedside drawer. The phone that had once been soaked in blood had been cleaned completely.

Telling him to contact her immediately if anything happened, she turned to leave the room.

And at that moment, watching her thin, exhausted back, Yoon Taehee suddenly felt an intense sense of dissonance.

“...”

Something felt wrong.

“Department Head.”

Yoon Taehee called out to Seok Juryeon just as she reached the door.

She stopped immediately.

Turning her head slightly, she looked back at him with an expression that silently asked, What is it?

“Why aren’t you asking me anything?”

Her face looked visibly worn down. Yoon Taehee could easily guess how worried she must have been about him.

In reality, Seok Juryeon had worried so much over the past two weeks that her face looked almost half its usual size. She had been visiting the hospital twice a day without fail.

And yet she had asked him nothing.

Yoon Taehee knew Seok Juryeon’s personality well.

Normally, even if she had already heard the details from Jaegyeom, and even if Jaegyeom had managed to smooth things over somehow, she still would have questioned Yoon Taehee directly one more time.

“...”

At his question, Seok Juryeon remained silent.

Slowly, she turned her head forward again.

Now Yoon Taehee could no longer see her expression.

“I already heard what happened on the island two weeks ago from that child.”

Her voice was dry as she stared at the doorway.

“He said it was an accident during training to control spiritual force...”

Yoon Taehee hesitated as he stared at the back of her head.

“...”

The reason they had gone to a remote island with almost no people was to practice physically drawing out and wielding spiritual force away from prying eyes.

And during that process, an accident had occurred.

“He blamed himself for everything.”

Yoon Taehee remembered the sight of the dagger piercing Jaegyeom’s chest.

It was a memory he never wanted to revisit.

For the first time in his life, he had experienced the sensation of plunging into a bottomless abyss. His thoughts had shattered for an instant.

And then he had seen the boy opening his eyes inside that storm of red.

It had clearly been Jaegyeom.

And yet it hadn’t been Jaegyeom at all.

The reason Yoon Taehee had nearly died was because of that something sleeping inside Jaegyeom.

“...”

But he couldn’t reveal the truth.

Of course, he could invent a story about an outside attack, but even that created problems. If he claimed he had been attacked by some supernatural entity, then it would mean that Yoon Taehee—the chief of the Exorcism Unit himself—had been targeted.

The Office of Narye would inevitably launch an investigation. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

And once the investigation began, there was a chance they would uncover traces connected to the mermaid.

No matter what happened, the mermaid’s existence had to remain hidden.

If the Office discovered it, not only the elixir of life but Jaegyeom’s immortality itself could be exposed.

Everything was tied together.

They absolutely could not afford to leave a trail behind.

On the other hand, if this remained nothing more than an accident between the two of them, the situation became much simpler.

Moreover, because Yoon Taehee’s wound had been caused by spiritual force rather than ordinary means, Jaegyeom’s explanation had actually been remarkably clever.

At that moment, after remaining silent for a while, Seok Juryeon finally spoke again.

“Why?”

Her tone sounded casual.

“Is there something else I should know?”

The instant she asked, Yoon Taehee’s eyes darkened sharply.

“...”

It sounded almost as though she were probing him deliberately.

“No. That’s all.”

Without another word, Seok Juryeon opened the door and left the hospital room.

...What is this?

Left alone again, Yoon Taehee stared blankly at the closed door for a long while before lowering his head.

He was relieved things had passed more easily than expected.

And yet—

something about it felt deeply wrong.

As though he had overlooked something important.

A vague but persistent sense of foreboding continued clawing at him.

After sitting in silence for some time, Yoon Taehee pressed the power button on his phone.

The date confirmed it.

More than two weeks really had passed.

His thoughts were a mess, but he no longer had the energy to untangle them.

Right now, there was only one face he desperately wanted to see.

Yoon Taehee dialed Jaegyeom’s number and lifted the phone to his ear.

“The phone is turned off. You will now be connected to voicemail...”

Jaegyeom’s phone was powered off.