Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“I’m sorry. I like you.”

The hand clutching Yoon Taehee’s chest turned deathly pale. As if he didn’t know what to do with himself, Jaegyeom kept twisting the fabric in his fist, gripping and releasing it over and over as he murmured brokenly,

“I’m sorry I like you.”

“I’m sorry I like you.”

“I’m sorry I like you.”

Yoon Taehee stared up at him blankly, as though possessed.

The confession, smeared with tears, was a complete mess. And yet Jaegyeom repeated the same words again and again, like someone who knew no other way to speak, like someone finally exhaling after holding his breath for far too long. The emotions he had crushed down inside himself were spilling out all at once, like nausea rising uncontrollably to the surface.

I’m sorry. I like you.

To say that single sentence, Jaegyeom had traveled an unbearably long road.

When your sorrow became harder to bear than my own.

He had wanted to protect him from the pain and despair of life. He had wanted to free him from the rusted chains of the past. If the world ever pointed a sword at him with malicious intent, Jaegyeom had wanted to seize it by the throat and clear the way ahead. He had wanted Yoon Taehee to be free enough to live as himself.

But he couldn’t.

This was the first time Jaegyeom had ever told Yoon Taehee that he liked him. The first time he had ever told him he was sorry.

“I’m sorry” and “I like you” had fused into a single thing. To say he was sorry, he had to admit he liked him. And to admit he liked him, he had to apologize for it.

At first, he had wanted to deny everything. He had wanted to blame Yoon Taehee for all of it. To accuse him of ruining him. To resent his selfish love for infecting him with this sickness and making a wreck of him.

Jaegyeom had run desperately for a very long time.

But now he had reached the end of the road.

There was nowhere left to run.

And so, at last, he had no choice but to face the enormous emotion that had chased him all this time.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Taehee.”

The very first thing he felt was sorrow.

“I ruined your ten years.”

Going to the Gongju branch. Distrusting him and doubting him. Hitting him and hurting him. Failing to recognize him on The Island and wounding him. Dragging him out of the lake and pulling him into this hell. Lying to him just to deceive his own heart. Worrying about him. Saving him.

Every regret Jaegyeom carried existed because he liked Yoon Taehee.

“I’m sorry. It was because I liked you.”

It had started the moment Yoon Taehee began existing in Jaegyeom’s tomorrow.

“It was because I liked you...”

To deny Yoon Taehee’s past actions was to deny Jaegyeom himself.

I hope it’s you. The one who’ll join the rebellion.

You should never have chosen me.

I think I might have been born to meet you.

You and I should never have met.

Every day with you feels like my birthday.

You should never have reached your hand out to me.

“Suhyang wasn’t dead. She was alive. The Director called for me. And Suhyang was there.”

Barely able to breathe through his sobbing, Jaegyeom began spilling out everything about the day he reunited with Suhyang.

That he had met her again. That Cho Youngwoo had been beside her. That Suhyang had been prolonging her life by sacrificing gifted. That she had already seen through his entire plan.

The words poured out together with his tears.

It was clumsy and disordered, like someone learning how to speak for the first time. The sequence was tangled, the explanations incomplete, the thoughts spilling into one another without structure.

And yet somehow, Yoon Taehee understood all of it.

“......”

At some point, Yoon Taehee slowly raised himself from beneath him.

A moment ago Jaegyeom had been straddling him, but the instant Taehee sat up, their eye levels aligned. Tilting his head slightly, Yoon Taehee looked up at Jaegyeom sitting in his lap.

“Jaegyeom.”

He lifted a hand and cupped Jaegyeom’s tear-soaked face.

His skin was warm with feverish heat. His face was flushed red from crying, his eyelids swollen.

Yoon Taehee stared silently at him for a long time.

It was the first time he had ever seen Jaegyeom cry like this.

For the first time, Yoon Taehee realized that when Jaegyeom cried, he looked unbearably sorrowful.

“Jaegyeom.”

His lips moved again.

“Look at me.”

Tilting his head to catch Jaegyeom’s gaze, Yoon Taehee spoke softly while cradling the area beneath his ears.

But Jaegyeom kept trembling with sobs, shoulders shaking helplessly.

“Jaegyeom.”

He couldn’t calm down.

“Gyeom.”

Only then did Jaegyeom slowly raise his head.

“Do you like me?”

“......”

Jaegyeom said nothing. Tears simply continued falling one drop at a time.

“Do you like me?”

Yoon Taehee asked again, as if he needed to hear it clearly.

Jaegyeom lowered his head once more.

“I tried not to.”

His voice was thick and slurred with tears.

“But I couldn’t.”

You, who always asked what I ate.

You, who would immediately ask if it tasted good whenever I answered.

You, who remembered every tiny detail about me without missing a single one.

You, who said the world had been kind to you even though your life had been filled with more malice than anyone else’s.

You, who were gentle with the elderly and kind to children.

You, whose very name glittered.

You, strange and fragrant you.

“I couldn’t...”

He couldn’t help liking him.

In barren, desolate ground, a sprout had bloomed unnoticed.

Jaegyeom had been too exhausted for too long to care for it. A person’s heart possesses a strange elasticity, and Jaegyeom had failed to realize that warmth and vitality had quietly rooted themselves inside his daily life.

And so, despite never tending it, the fragile sprout had eventually become a vast forest so immense one could walk forever without finding its end.

Even then, Jaegyeom had forced himself to pretend not to know.

Fear of loss had crippled his heart.

He kept deceiving himself. Telling himself it was only a delusion. No—that the forest had never existed at all. That it was merely a fleeting mirage.

But strangely enough, whenever he came back to himself, he was still standing inside that forest.

The woods he had burned down returned again and again like an illusion.

And every time, Jaegyeom lost his way inside them once more.

Because escaping those strange, fragrant woods was beyond his control.

“Do you like me?”

Unable to properly open his swollen eyes, Jaegyeom nodded weakly.

“Yes...”

The instant he heard the answer, Yoon Taehee closed his eyes without meaning to.

“......”

Something violently trembled deep inside his chest.

As though suppressing whatever was surging upward inside him, his Adam’s apple bobbed once. He tried to maintain composure, but it clearly wasn’t working.

“I see.”

His voice shook faintly.

“So that’s what it was.”

A small breath of laughter escaped him.

At some point, his head lowered.

His entire body seemed on the verge of trembling from sheer exhilaration.

After that, Yoon Taehee remained silent for a very long time, as though he had temporarily lost the ability to speak.

“I like you too.”

When he finally spoke again, his voice was weak.

And the moment Jaegyeom heard those words, he realized Yoon Taehee was crying too.

Jaegyeom reached out and held his face.

Yoon Taehee had lowered his head like someone completely exhausted.

“I like you so much I keep wanting to die.”

Jaegyeom watched tears gather in his eyes.

“I like you...”

Yoon Taehee pressed his forehead against Jaegyeom’s shoulder and lowered his head further.

“......”

Jaegyeom wrapped both arms tightly around his neck and pulled him closer with all his strength.

Then Yoon Taehee wrapped his arms around Jaegyeom’s back and held him just as fiercely.

The embrace was so tight it almost hurt.

Like that, they clung to each other without the slightest gap between them, as though the world contained no one else.

Clarity arrived for Jaegyeom wearing the face of disaster.

Hot breath and damp tears shattered softly against the nape of his neck.

The two of them quietly struggled for breath together, like people sharing the same fever.

At some point, both of them had become visibly ill.

And it was something only they could recognize in each other.