Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom returned home exactly five days after leaving for Geoyeo Island.

It was dawn, before the darkness had fully lifted. In the silence, a faint commotion stirred outside the front door.

Woken by the unfamiliar noise, Jeongju went to the entrance. The moment he opened the door, his face drained of color.

Jaegyeom was standing there in torn clothes, dried blood smeared all over him.

“Jaegyeom!”

Barely managing to stay upright, Jaegyeom swayed once and collapsed on the spot. Jeongju caught him before he hit the floor.

“W-what the hell happened to you...?”

From the state he was in, Jeongju assumed he had been gravely injured again. He hurriedly called for Mesan to heal him, then stripped off the blood-soaked T-shirt to check the wounds more closely.

But Jaegyeom’s body was completely unmarked.

Not a single injury remained.

“Jaegyeom, can you hear me? You went to the island, right? What happened? Where’s Taehee?”

Jaegyeom stood there blankly, like someone who could neither hear nor speak. After a long silence, he finally forced out a reply. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

But Jeongju only managed to understand two things.

Yoon Taehee had been badly injured and hospitalized.

And—

“It wasn’t me.”

Words whose meaning he couldn’t understand at all.

After that day, Jaegyeom locked himself in his room and never came out.

He stopped going to work at the Office of Narye. He contacted no one. He did not watch television or play games. Every trace of routine vanished.

He refused food and water alike, curling beneath the blanket with it pulled over his head.

And then the sleepless nights began.

Jeongju believed Jaegyeom was suffering from guilt.

After agonizing over it for a long time, he eventually decided to visit the hospital where Yoon Taehee had been admitted. Even if Jaegyeom had injured him, Jeongju could not believe it had been intentional. There had to have been circumstances they could not avoid. And above all else, if Taehee had truly nearly died, it was only natural for Jaegyeom to be shaken.

That was why Jeongju went to the hospital.

He wanted to find out what had ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) happened on Geoyeo Island and heal Taehee himself if necessary.

But in the end, he never got to see him.

The one fortunate thing was that while lingering outside the hospital room, he learned that although Yoon Taehee still had not regained consciousness, he had passed the critical stage and was no longer in danger of dying.

For the moment, that was enough.

Jeongju returned home immediately and told Jaegyeom the news. He thought hearing Taehee was safe would ease his guilt. More than anything, he thought it would bring him relief.

But contrary to Jeongju’s expectations, Jaegyeom showed no sign of relief at all after hearing Yoon Taehee was recovering.

Jaegyeom’s mind was still trapped in hell.

Inside a room where not even a sliver of light entered, he remained unable to sleep.

Lying motionless on the bed, staring into the darkness, he sometimes began seeing things.

If he fixed his gaze on one point long enough, suddenly he would find himself standing atop a cliff with violent waves crashing below.

It was an eerily familiar sight.

It resembled the vision the calamity god inside him had once shown him. Like watching a screen. Or looking down from high in the sky.

Everything appeared small from that distant third-person perspective. He could clearly see the surrounding landscape. And as he stared blankly at himself standing there, another figure suddenly appeared.

The broad back. The rigid shoulders.

For a moment, he thought it was Myojeong.

The figure stood with its back turned, face obscured and blurry, but Jaegyeom suddenly realized it.

That isn’t Myojeong. It’s Taehee.

At that moment, the Jaegyeom standing on the cliff began walking toward the other figure.

The ‘real’ Jaegyeom watching the scene realized there was a knife in the boy’s hand. He had no idea where it had come from.

And instantly, instinct told him the rest.

If this continued—

‘I’m going to stab Yoon Taehee.’

The realization hit him like lightning.

‘Stop!’

He shouted desperately.

But the boy did not react.

‘I said stop!’

He screamed himself hoarse trying to stop him, but nothing changed. The distance between them had already closed to arm’s length.

Finally, the boy lifted the knife.

‘He’s not Myojeong!’

The moment Jaegyeom screamed with everything he had, the movement stopped.

At the same time, the boy’s head snapped sideways.

And stared directly at him.

Like an actor suddenly looking straight into the camera during a performance, their eyes met precisely.

The boy glared at him with murderous hatred.

Jaegyeom’s heart dropped.

Cold chills crawled down his spine.

“If he’s not Myojeong, then who is he?”

The voice was strange.

H-he’s Yoon Taehee.

“So then who is Yoon Taehee?”

It was a bizarre question.

Who was Yoon Taehee?

Yoon Taehee was Yoon Taehee. What else was there to explain?

He has nothing to do with Myojeong.

Jaegyeom answered in a trembling voice.

“Do you really believe that?”

W-what?

“Then why did you do it?”

What are you talking about—

Instead of answering, the boy raised the blade.

Blood sprayed everywhere.

Jaegyeom’s eyes flew open.

Gasping for breath, he stumbled out of the room. Hearing the noise, Jeongju hurried over. Jaegyeom was drenched in cold sweat, still trapped in the aftermath of the vision.

“Jaegyeom, what happened? Are you okay?”

Pale-faced, Jaegyeom stared at Jeongju.

...What was that?

Only then did he realize none of it had been real. It had been another hallucination.

His thoughts were in complete disarray.

“Y-Yoon Taehee?”

Grabbing Jeongju by the arm, Jaegyeom asked desperately,

“What?”

“Where’s Taehee right now?”

His mind was chaos.

Maybe it really had just been a dream. Another meaningless nightmare like the ones he sometimes had before. He wanted to believe that.

“Taehee’s in the hospital. You know that.”

But it was real.

“...What?”

Jaegyeom’s eyes widened.

Reality crashed down on him like a tidal wave.

Slowly, he lowered his gaze to his own hands.

His fingertips trembled violently.

His hands were clean now, but over them he could still see the memory of Yoon Taehee’s blood.

That’s right.

On Geoyeo Island, he had stabbed Yoon Taehee with these hands.

“Jaegyeom... what happened over there?”

“So it really was me.”

“What?”

“I stabbed Taehee.”

And after saying those words, Jaegyeom fell into a deathlike sleep.

Until now, there had never been anything he feared.

His immortal body was a terrible curse that dragged him into the stagnant abyss of endless time and boredom.

But it had also been power.

A power that let him break through anything as long as he made up his mind.

You’re safe.

That was what Jaegyeom had told Yoon Taehee that day, standing before him while facing the mermaid.

Countless times before, Jaegyeom had placed himself between Taehee and danger.

Wrapped in the armor of immortality, he had been nearly invincible. And he himself had believed absolutely that he would never lose.

But Geoyeo Island shattered that belief completely.

Yoon Taehee had nearly died.

Not because of the mermaid.

Not because of anyone else.

Because of Jaegyeom himself.

The failure to protect Yoon Taehee.

The terror he felt at the possibility of Taehee’s death.

The fear that he might lose control of himself.

Those tangled emotions finally broke something inside Jaegyeom.

“I’ll definitely find a way to break the curse.”

“No. There’s no need.”

“I’ll die in two months, just like we originally agreed.”

The moment those words left his mouth, Yoon Taehee’s expression froze.

To Taehee, who had no way of knowing what Jaegyeom had gone through during the past several days, it was like being struck by lightning out of a clear sky.

A heavy silence settled over the hospital room.

Yoon Taehee stared at Jaegyeom without speaking for a long time before finally turning his head toward the window.

From the hospital room high above the city, the world below spread out in full view.

Slowly, Taehee closed and reopened his eyes.

Then he tilted his head slightly and looked back at Jaegyeom.

“What did you just say?”

After hovering between life and death for days without properly eating, Taehee looked noticeably thinner. Yet somehow, the sharpness in him felt even more pronounced.

Without saying another word, he stared intently at Jaegyeom.

Head lowered, Jaegyeom spoke quietly.

“You said you liked me.”

He clasped his trembling hands tightly together so they would not shake.

“If that’s true...”

Then kill me with your own hands.”

Jeongju believed Jaegyeom was suffering from guilt.

But the truth was different.

The thing consuming Jaegyeom was not simple guilt.

It was fear.

The fear of a world without Yoon Taehee.