Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Yoon Taehee left the head of the Exorcism Unit’s office and walked down the empty hallway with purposeful steps.

There was no hesitation in his gait. Yet after moving on instinct without any clear destination, Yoon Taehee suddenly stopped.

This was the way to the Team 1 office.

And at the end of this path, Jaegyeom was not there.

The sound of his shoes echoing through the silent corridor came to a halt.

Inside the Unit Head’s office, while facing Seok Juryeon, he had calmly seized control of the conversation and remained composed until the end. But that had only been an act. Right now, Yoon Taehee was wound unbearably tight. The bitter emotions he had been holding down were surging up to his throat, on the verge of bursting out.

For a moment, he lost his sense of direction.

He didn’t know where to go.

Jaegyeom had been right. Seok Juryeon was definitely acting strangely, and she clearly knew something. Then what, exactly? How much? Since when?

The long chain of questions that followed choked Yoon Taehee. He clenched his teeth ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) and bowed his head deeply.

Seok Juryeon knew something.

He couldn’t tell what had gone wrong, or where it had begun.

What are you afraid of? I told you I’d make you win.

Let’s finish everything, then come back.

Even though he had returned to reality after nearly dying, Yoon Taehee felt like a defeated soldier.

The truth was, he was in terrible pain right now.

His heart hurt more than his body. His mind was in chaos, his stomach churned, and his mood had sunk deep into the mud. Eyes open, he glared down at his own feet.

How much did Seok Juryeon know?

From their conversation just now, he had gained a strong suspicion that she knew something. But there was no way to determine exactly how far that knowledge went. She was not someone who revealed her hand easily, and if he pressed too hard, he had to be prepared for the possibility of getting blindsided.

What was strange, however, was that she herself seemed unwilling to reveal that she knew anything.

Looking back, Yoon Taehee had been the one testing and probing from beginning to end, while Seok Juryeon had only kept avoiding him. As if she wanted to deliberately ignore whatever Yoon Taehee was thinking.

“...”

All at once, he felt sick.

Standing still, Yoon Taehee closed his eyes and roughly pressed a hand to his forehead. It was a nervous gesture, as though thorns were pricking at him. Holding his breath, he waited calmly for the nausea twisting in his stomach to subside.

He had lost two weeks. Seok Juryeon had caught on to something. The plan was slowly coming apart.

And Jaegyeom had decided to die.

Something kept rising inside him.

You said you lost everything right in front of your eyes. Then you shouldn’t be doing this.

Forget everything and focus only on your revenge.

In the end, even now, Yoon Taehee was thinking about how to hold on to Jaegyeom.

The time for revenge was approaching.

And as revenge drew closer, love was moving toward its end.

Yoon Taehee knew that Jaegyeom had wavered a little when he brought up the possibility of breaking the curse and living an ordinary life. On Geoyeo Island, Jaegyeom had been vividly alive and peaceful enough.

Looking into Jaegyeom’s eyes, which had been brimming with the vitality of life, Yoon Taehee had thought—

Perhaps you might keep living with me like this.

He couldn’t understand what had driven that same Jaegyeom to decide on death.

Perhaps the hope of escaping the curse had shattered, leading him to the conclusion that he should let go of everything. In the end, what remained was the brutal reality that he had to hold on to someone who could not be held on to, no matter what.

But he couldn’t stop here and despair.

Yoon Taehee had no intention of giving up on Jaegyeom.

He remembered the sight of Jaegyeom’s blood mixing with the mermaid’s blood and turning brown.

His curse had nothing to do with the mermaid.

If the mermaid and the elixir of life were irrelevant, then they could return to the beginning and search for another way.

From the moment he realized it had nothing to do with Jaegyeom’s curse, Yoon Taehee had emptied his mind of everything related to the mermaid and the elixir of life.

Of course, separate from that, he still felt indebted to Shin Jihye.

Yoon Taehee had ordered the intelligent ghosts to find Shin Jihye’s whereabouts. But her location remained completely unknown. He had tried calling her just in case, but her phone had been turned off for days. She had vanished without a trace after being dragged into the sea that day.

Since she had been taken hostage by the mermaids, all he could do for now was wait for her safe return.

After standing in the corridor for a long time, Yoon Taehee finally began moving again.

The place his steps led him was the Office of Narye’s archives.

He had come here several times before, searching through old books for clues about the curse of immortality, but each time he had failed to find any meaningful information. Even so, it was the only thing he could do right now.

As always, books were his compass.

Entering the dusty archives, Yoon Taehee focused on searching through the old texts arranged by era, looking specifically through records from roughly two hundred years ago.

It was the period Jaegyeom had lived through.

It was also around the time the former Office of Narye had collapsed, so there might be some clue left behind.

The first thing that came to mind was the former-generation Naja who had been Jaegyeom’s teacher.

His name was Myojeong, wasn’t it...

Yoon Taehee remembered the name Jaegyeom had mentioned while drunk.

As things stood, Myojeong was the only person who held the key to the curse. If he couldn’t approach Myojeong, then it would be impossible to uncover the truth behind the curse of immortality.

Even the smallest clue would do.

He wanted to get his hands on something.

How much time passed after that?

The books piled beside Yoon Taehee had already grown to several dozen. For hours, he searched through old records, looking for anything connected.

But once again, he failed to obtain any useful information.

A significant amount of material on the former Office of Narye had been lost.

Then an old book tucked away in the corner of a shelf caught his eye.

...In the year of the Water Ox, an unknown plague swept across the eight provinces, and famine followed, causing countless deaths. There was no household in any village untouched by suffering; the situation was tragic, and all the people groaned in pain. Droughts and floods occurred repeatedly, and because blight struck the plants and trees, almost nothing could be harvested. The calamity was so severe that those who survived starved, and those who did not starve died of disease...

Yoon Taehee slowly read through the passage and turned the page.

His sharp eyes moved over the ink-written classical Chinese characters. Then one phrase on the next page caught his attention.

...A wicked male shaman misled the people with the absurd claim that “a vicious evil ghost bringing red mist has descended and must be driven away,” and this foolish rumor spread widely throughout the capital and beyond, earning the people’s faith. Thus, he was seized and punished for his crimes...

The hand that had been about to turn the page out of habit suddenly stopped.

“Red mist...”

Yoon Taehee muttered under his breath, hesitating.

He returned to the beginning of the sentence he had just read.

—A vicious evil ghost bringing red mist has descended and must be driven away.

The moment he saw the words “red mist,” another word followed naturally.

Rampage.

Yoon Taehee recalled Jaegyeom standing in the middle of a storm of red spiritual force.

At last, his eyes slowly widened.

No way.

Could it be...

The year of the Water Ox. Evil ghost. Red mist. Wicked male shaman.

The timing and everything else fit together strangely well.

A scene he had set aside for a while rose back into his mind.

Jaegyeom, as Yoon Taehee had seen him on Geoyeo Island.

That day, Jaegyeom had been possessed by something.

If so, what on earth had it been?

It certainly had not been human force.

Jaegyeom clearly remembered stabbing himself. In that case, Jaegyeom must have known that something had possessed him.

And yet, when Jaegyeom reunited with Yoon Taehee after two weeks, he had not said a single word about what had happened that day.

Looking back, the two of them had never properly talked about what had happened then.

Leaving the archives, Yoon Taehee drove straight to Jaegyeom’s house.

After parking the car in front of the alley and turning off the engine, Yoon Taehee took his phone from inside his suit jacket.

He called Jaegyeom.

But once again, Jaegyeom did not answer. The ringing continued for a long time. Yoon Taehee could feel Jaegyeom’s firm intention not to speak to him until he got the answer he wanted.

[The person you are calling is unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone...]

As the automated message played, he began typing a text.

[Come down.]

He immediately sent another.

[I’m in front of your house.]

After sending the messages, he lightly tapped the steering wheel while keeping his eyes fixed on the side mirror.

Through the mirror, he could see the front gate of Jaegyeom’s house.

But no matter how long he waited, the gate did not move.

Several minutes passed like that.

Yoon Taehee, who had been tapping the steering wheel, picked up his phone again. There was no reply to the messages he had sent.

But Yoon Taehee thought Jaegyeom must have seen them.

Jaegyeom would keep rejecting him like this until he agreed to keep his promise.

Yoon Taehee typed one more message.

[Should I break down the door and tell them everything?]

It was a half-mad threat implying that if Jaegyeom did not come out, he would tell Jeongju and Mesan everything.

Only a few minutes after the message was sent, the firmly closed gate finally opened.

Watching through the side mirror, Yoon Taehee lowered the window and looked outside.

With a clang, the gate was flung open violently.

Jaegyeom stood there, wearing a terrifying expression.

Yoon Taehee greeted him casually.

“Hello.”