Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Yoon Taehee found himself wanting more and more to humble himself.

He wanted to lower his head, kneel, beg. Even after mocking the stupidity of people who relied on gods and sneering at their blind desperation, he kept wanting to pray to something. He wanted someone, anyone, to look upon these miserable emotions and these wretched days.

“Jaegyeom.”

Yoon Taehee dragged a rough hand across his jaw as if trying to crush it.

“How much more humble do I have to become?”

Jaegyeom stared blankly at the tear trembling from the tip of Yoon Taehee’s nose.

“...”

A tear clung beneath the bridge of his nose as Yoon Taehee looked down at him with reddened eyes. He looked dangerously unstable, as though he might collapse at any moment. There was something almost self-mocking in his gaze, as if he desperately longed for something while having already given up on everything.

“You tell me.”

Like someone who had forgotten how to speak, Jaegyeom could not answer.

“...”

Yoon Taehee was crying right in front of him.

A strange emotion surged through Jaegyeom without warning. It felt like falling somewhere deep. Heat rose into his throat. His breathing caught, and his hands trembled. He wanted to lick away those tears, and at the same time he wanted to run. Right now, Jaegyeom felt as though he were standing at the edge of a cliff.

“I told you to stop doing this.”

Like someone unable either to spit something out or swallow it down, Jaegyeom finally lowered his head deeply. The tip of his nose stung. His chest ached as though it were being carved open. Every time he forced himself to be cold and push Yoon Taehee away, it hurt him too. Jaegyeom was nearing his limit.

“Don’t act so pathetic.”

He desperately tried to keep his voice cold.

“Get a grip. Remember why we joined hands.”

But his voice ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) trembled faintly anyway. Realizing it, Jaegyeom clenched his fists tight enough to hide it.

“I can do anything.”

After swallowing down his emotions once more, Jaegyeom slowly raised his head.

“The only thing you need to care about is revenge. Use me as a shield if you want, or order me to clear the path ahead with nothing but my own body. I can do anything for your revenge.”

Jaegyeom looked straight into Yoon Taehee’s eyes.

“That’s why I’m beside you.”

Yoon Taehee stayed silent for a moment. Then, after a long pause, he finally spoke.

“Yes. That’s right.”

His voice stopped there. Emotion had risen too high in his throat. After staring off into the distance for a while and forcing it back down, Yoon Taehee looked at Jaegyeom again and gave a faint laugh.

“You can do anything.”

“...”

“And that’s why I fell in love with you.”

“...”

“That’s all it is.”

“...”

Staring somewhere far away, Yoon Taehee muttered after a long silence,

“This won’t happen again.”

It’s pathetic. Ridiculous, really, that something like this can make it feel as though the world is collapsing, that one cold look from you can ruin my entire day, that I can feel myself slowly drying up and dying little by little.

“Just for tonight, I’ll forget all of it once this night ends. You can pretend none of this ever happened. If you hate it that much, you can slap me again. Or you can believe that everything until now was a lie.”

Yoon Taehee cupped Jaegyeom’s face in both hands and lowered his lips close to his nose.

“Yeah. Actually, it was all a lie.”

His half-lidded eyes curved faintly as he whispered.

“I liked you from the moment I first saw you in the library.”

You caught my eye the moment I saw you. It felt strange watching you give a vengeful ghost a chance when you barely even knew it. The more I learned about you, the more curious I became. Looking back, there was never one special moment. Every moment we spent together became the cause. I didn’t want to like you, but in the end, I couldn’t stop myself. Maybe I knew from the beginning this would happen. A vague premonition. That the tiny spark which had somehow taken root in my heart would eventually destroy me completely and burn away everything I had.

“Destroying the Office of Narye, getting revenge—it was all a lie. I was only trying to seduce you. Everything about the Bangsangsi is nonsense, and you’ve been deceived by me this entire time.”

Yoon Taehee let out a quiet laugh after spouting such absurdities.

“So you can just think you couldn’t help it.”

Then he kissed him.

With both hands still cradling Jaegyeom’s cheeks, Yoon Taehee pressed his lips against his before Jaegyeom could even react. Jaegyeom was swept helplessly into the kiss. For an instant, it felt as though he were sinking into something deep.

Yoon Taehee’s kiss was affectionate and unbearably lonely.

It was a kiss that felt like an ending.

Their hot breaths tangled together messily, and only after a long while did their lips finally part.

“And that was a lie too. I just wanted to kiss you.”

Yoon Taehee spoke with their noses still touching.

“...”

Jaegyeom stared up at him blankly.

Yoon Taehee slowly lowered his hands as though everything was over. Then he staggered backward one step, then another, away from Jaegyeom. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“Get home safely.”

With those final words, Yoon Taehee turned away.

Jaegyeom could not stop him as he staggered toward the far end of the alley.

When Jaegyeom finally returned to the table some time later, his teammates looked up at him.

“Jaegyeom, where’d you go?”

“I got a call for a minute.”

“Did something happen? You don’t look so good.”

After a brief silence, Jaegyeom answered that nothing had happened.

Then, at some point, his gaze drifted toward the seat where Yoon Taehee had been sitting.

It was empty.

He had already left.

Noticing Jaegyeom staring at the vacant seat, Kang Ibin spoke up.

“Ah, the Chief left early.”

Jaegyeom nodded without saying anything.

“He looked like he drank a lot.”

“Yeah. He must’ve been having a hard time lately.”

The team exchanged worried remarks. It was the first time any of them had seen Yoon Taehee drink that heavily. Normally he never lost control of himself.

Of course, even after drinking that much, he had still looked perfectly sober. Since the rest of Team 1 were drunk themselves, none of them realized how intoxicated he actually was. When he came back after briefly stepping out and calmly paid the bill, they assumed he was fine.

But then—

“Look. He even left his phone behind.”

Kang Ibin waved the phone in her hand.

Only after Yoon Taehee had already left did the team realize he had been completely drunk. But by then it was too late. He had long since left the restaurant.

“Ah, right. Yibin, Jaegyeom’s the most sober out of all of us.”

Pyo Jiho nudged Kang Ibin from the side.

“We’re all drunk enough to forget again. Let’s leave it with Jaegyeom.”

“Should we? Jaegyeom, hang onto it and give it back to the Chief tomorrow.”

Kang Ibin handed him the phone.

After hesitating briefly, Jaegyeom accepted Yoon Taehee’s phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

The others were already talking excitedly about going somewhere for a second round.

Meanwhile, Jaegyeom quietly slipped out of the restaurant alone.

The last train had already stopped running, so he would have to take a taxi home.

But instead of calling one immediately, Jaegyeom started walking aimlessly.

He just wanted to walk for a while.

Jaegyeom wandered without any destination in mind.

After trudging along for some time, he spotted a brightly lit bus stop in the distance. Since buses no longer ran this late, there was no one there.

Jaegyeom dropped heavily onto the bench beneath the stop. The cool night air stirred through his muddled thoughts.

He sat there blankly, staring at the empty road.

Occasionally, a taxi passed by.

At times like this, it felt as though he alone had been left behind in the world.

Suddenly, he thought that sitting alone at a bus stop where no one came anymore resembled his own life.

Everyone has somewhere to go, and I’m still here.

I stay behind like a bus stop. Everyone who comes eventually leaves again. In the end, I’m always left alone.

No one is coming to get me, and there’s nowhere left for me to go.

No matter what bus I get on, it will never take me where I truly want to go. He had spent an entire lifetime wandering despite having nowhere he wanted to reach.

It was time to stop now.

It was time.

Yes. This was enough for him.

Wrapped once more in that familiar loneliness, Jaegyeom slowly steadied himself.

How much time passed after that?

A vibration suddenly buzzed from inside his jacket pocket.

It was Yoon Taehee’s phone.

An unsaved number was calling.

Jaegyeom hesitated over whether he should answer, but before he could decide, the vibration stopped. For a moment he wondered if it might have been Yoon Taehee himself, but he had no desire to call back.

Yoon Taehee’s phone had no separate lock set on it.

Once the call ended, the screen returned to the home page. Jaegyeom looked down at it quietly. As he absently touched the screen here and there, he noticed the notification banner crowded with unread messages and alerts.

Then something caught his eye.

Friends Pang.

He had once been obsessed with the game, playing it every day. But after returning from The Island, the endless notifications had started irritating him, so he deleted it.

Yoon Taehee, however, still had the app installed.

Jaegyeom tapped the icon.

Once the game opened, he saw there was no recent activity. Yoon Taehee had not been playing either.

Without thinking, Jaegyeom tapped the heart storage.

The moment his finger touched the screen, he froze.

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (23 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (23 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (23 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (24 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (25 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (26 days ago)

Kim Jaegyeom sent a heart. (26 days ago)

...

...

...

No matter how far he scrolled, every single line was filled with hearts sent by Jaegyeom.

Even though other members of Team 1 also played the game, not a single other name appeared among them.

No matter how endlessly he scrolled down, all he saw was “Kim Jaegyeom.”

Anyone with eyes could tell they had been deliberately kept.

Suddenly, his eyes burned hot.

“...”

In the end, Jaegyeom covered his face with both hands.