Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Yoon Taehee, staring down at the bloody water in the basin, spoke quietly.

“Read the history in the blood.”

At those words, Saero flinched and looked up.

“......”

The moment the Leader gave the order, Saero’s expression turned grave.

This durumagi was no ordinary object. The reason Saero had been drawn to it in the first place was the strange energy lingering around it. But now he finally understood why it carried such deep resentment and hatred.

Because of the blood.

If Jaegyeom was right and this really had belonged to Myojeong, then the blood of two different people had thoroughly soaked into it.

And once before, Saero had read the past through Jaegyeom’s nosebleed.

“Can you do it?”

Back then, there had been too little blood. All Saero had managed to glimpse was a fragmented sliver of the past. But the Leader’s durumagi was drenched in blood. With this much, he might be able to look far deeper into both Jaegyeom’s and Myojeong’s pasts.

“Yes. I’ll try.”

Saero nodded as he looked down at the basin stained red.

“Could you give me about half a day?”

Yoon Taehee nodded once.

Jaegyeom’s eyes moved back and forth between the two of them. Read the history in the blood. He could not understand what that even meant. Since he knew nothing about Saero’s ability, the conversation sounded incomprehensible to him.

Then Yoon Taehee met his gaze and explained,

“Saero can see the past through blood.”

Jaegyeom froze.

“The past...?”

He vaguely remembered hearing something like this from Yoon Taehee before.

‘Remember those two ghosts you saw yesterday? They’re intelligent ghosts I cherish. One of them can read the past. His name is Saero. I’ll introduce you properly sometime. Anyway, I asked him to look into you.’

After a long silence, Jaegyeom asked blankly,

“...The past?”

“Yes. We may be able to uncover things even you didn’t know.”

Yoon Taehee hesitated briefly before adding,

“And your master probably wasn’t an ordinary human either. At least, that’s my guess.”

Though he tried to stay calm, Yoon Taehee himself looked shaken.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did you know your master was the previous Bangsangsi?”

“...What?”

“Your master was the head of the former Office of Narye.”

The moment those words crossed the limits of what he could accept, Jaegyeom’s mind went completely blank.

He could not understand.

How could that be possible?

Yoon Taehee had clearly said the Bangsangsi was both the founder and a godlike figure of the former Office of Narye. But Myojeong had obviously been human.

None of it made sense.

As Jaegyeom sat there stunned beneath the flood of revelations crashing over him, Yoon Taehee continued calmly.

“If we look into the past, we’ll learn about your master too.”

The shock lasted only an instant before an indistinct terror seized Jaegyeom.

“No. I don’t want to know.”

His chest tightened painfully. It felt as though invisible hands were strangling him.

“It’s fine if I never know.”

Come to think of it, Jaegyeom had always learned about Myojeong indirectly—from other people’s words, or through his own assumptions. Digging up the stale remains of the past terrified him. It felt like opening a box without knowing what was inside.

And Jaegyeom did not want to know.

“No. You need to know.”

Yoon Taehee spoke quietly.

“You’re being unbelievably stubborn. I have absolutely no connection to that person. But since you refuse to believe anything I say, then judge for yourself after Saero reads the past. Decide whether that person is dead or alive. Decide whether he put me up to this or not.”

“I don’t want to. I don’t need any of that.”

Jaegyeom shook his head with difficulty.

“Just leave me alone.”

More than anything, he was afraid his suspicions would turn out to be true.

He wanted to know.

And at the same time, he wanted to remain ignorant forever.

Compared to all the years he had spent with him, Jaegyeom knew almost nothing about Myojeong. He had believed their connection had already been severed, buried somewhere in a distant past.

And yet Myojeong still lingered around him like a living shadow.

The terror of eventually facing whatever that shadow truly was overwhelmed any desire to learn the truth. Jaegyeom’s mind was dangerously unstable. He did not think he could endure it.

Everything about this situation felt suffocating and painful.

Perhaps learning the truth was the same as inviting disaster upon yourself.

Jaegyeom suddenly wanted to run away somewhere—anywhere.

Panic swallowed him whole. He could barely breathe, only sharp, ragged gasps escaping him.

“Jaegyeom.”

Yoon Taehee slowly reached a hand toward him.

“Don’t touch me!”

The violent reaction stopped Yoon Taehee’s hand cold before it could reach him.

“......”

What strangled Jaegyeom was the trap of the past itself.

Even without fully understanding what had happened before, his thoughts had long since hardened into something extreme. The more desperately he tried to escape, the deeper he sank into the swamp. He was driving himself into a corner.

After a long silence, Yoon Taehee slowly withdrew his hand.

He looked down at Jaegyeom, who had curled into himself like a frightened hedgehog.

Then, after a moment, Yoon Taehee lowered himself onto one knee to meet Jaegyeom at eye level.

“I was wrong.”

Only then did he finally understand.

Myojeong’s garment had merely been the spark that pushed Jaegyeom to the edge. The real fuel feeding the flames had been the distrust Yoon Taehee himself had planted.

“It wasn’t your master’s orders. And I wasn’t manipulated by him.”

If Jaegyeom ran now, he would never escape Myojeong’s shadow for the rest of his life.

“......”

“The reason I lied to you and deceived you until now...”

Yoon Taehee paused briefly.

“...was because I wanted you to stay beside me. That was the only reason. It won’t happen again. So...”

He reached out and gently cupped Jaegyeom’s face.

“Calm down.”

Jaegyeom said nothing.

But his ragged breathing slowly steadied, and the trembling throughout his body gradually faded.

Maybe... in the end, I still want to believe Yoon Taehee somehow.

It would take time for Saero to read the past.

Yoon Taehee asked Black Emperor to stabilize Jaegyeom’s consciousness so he could sleep for a while. Sleep was the easiest way to escape reality and regain composure.

Later, Yoon Taehee sat alone in the room, deep in thought.

In some ways, perhaps this was a good thing.

If they could use Myojeong’s blood to see the past, they might uncover clues about what was hidden inside Jaegyeom... and perhaps about the former Office of Narye and Suhyang as well.

He had the feeling the answer lay at the very beginning.

To untangle a hopeless knot of thread, there was no choice but to return to where it first began.

Late at night, everything had grown still.

The pavilion was silent, as though the earlier chaos had never happened at all.

And within that brief stillness, Yoon Taehee suddenly felt a chill crawl down the back of his neck.

‘Long ago, I went into the mountains to trim branches. But then I heard a baby crying. I followed the sound, and strangely enough, it was ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) coming from underground. So I dug there, and found a stone monument. On it was the character hye, meaning “to wait.” I thought it was strange, so I moved the monument aside. And underneath it was a coffin. I opened that too, and our Seonoh was sleeping inside. Our Seonoh was a gift sent from heaven.’

Without warning, Yoon Taehee found himself thinking about his own birth.

It was a ridiculous story.

After running away from the house that had been little better than a garbage dump and taking refuge at a hermitage, Seonoh had once confessed everything to the head monk there.

The monk listened quietly to the entire story before telling him to sever his ties to the secular world and forget about it all.

At the time, Seonoh had asked whether the monk knew anything about his parents.

The answer he received was this:

One day, someone had abandoned a newborn infant in front of the temple. Yoon Wonjoong happened to be visiting then, heard what had happened, and decided to take the child in.

No matter how he thought about it, that explanation sounded far more believable.

After hearing it, he had stopped caring much about who he was or where he came from.

Yoon Taehee still believed Jaegyeom’s suspicion—that he might somehow be connected to Myojeong—was a ridiculous leap in logic.

And yet, for some reason, a faint unease lingered deep inside him.

Perhaps what unsettled him was the fact that, like this mysterious garment, he too came from an unknown origin.

Tap. Tap.

Yoon Taehee continued drumming his fingers meaninglessly against the table.

But what if...

What if, by some impossibly tiny chance...

He truly was connected to his enemy?

Yoon Taehee turned toward the open window.

The mountains beyond it lay drowned in darkness.

Rustle. Rustle.

Wind swept through the leaves.

Yoon Taehee slowly lifted his eyes toward the waning moon hanging in the night sky.

The moonlight stared straight back at him like a watching eye. 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

“Paehyeon.”

Still gazing into the darkness, Yoon Taehee finally spoke.

“I have something I need you to do.”