Honbul: Flame of the Soul

The sight of the mask drifting gently in midair was bizarre.

“Shall I open your mouth?”

Myojeong did not answer.

The reason Myojeong could not speak went back to the time he had moved his residence to Jaseonwon. The elders had opposed the incarnation’s successor going down to Jaseonwon, saying it might disturb order and cause confusion. The incarnation seemed to agree with them, and summoned Myojeong to place a binding spell on him so he could not reveal any secrets. From that day on, Myojeong had been unable to speak.

The talisman stuck over his mouth vanished with a puff of black smoke.

He could not understand how this was happening. In astonishment, Myojeong touched his own lips and throat. The stifling sensation disappeared in an instant.

Myojeong stared at the Four Golden Eyes that had appeared before him.

“You will never see your father again.”

“Will you look into my eyes for a moment?”

Myojeong looked into the four eyes.

Then, strangely, countless scenes flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. The Four Golden Eyes showed Myojeong the life he would live. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Myojeong watched what would happen in his life, and what kind of end he would meet. It was only a fleeting instant, yet Myojeong lived through an entire lifetime. It was a compressed life, but it felt like watching a short story. By the time he tore his gaze away and escaped the vision, he was utterly exhausted.

Drained, Myojeong fell backward. As he sat collapsed on the floor, the mask slithered forward until it was right in front of his nose. Myojeong flinched and drew his head back. The four eyes curved into a broad smile.

“Mark my words. There is one truly important thing that you will never be able to have.”

The Four Golden Eyes spoke with a chuckle.

“The one thing I can’t have... what is it?”

“You will find out soon enough.”

Myojeong lowered his head, his face pale.

For a long time, he had wondered what the “one thing you can’t have” from the Bangsangsi’s curse could be. If he knew in advance what he could not have, perhaps he could simply keep himself from coveting it and avoid suffering.

That was what Myojeong thought.

“Will you make me a promise?”

Myojeong opened his eyes, sensing a faint light spreading through the room.

The arm he had been using as a pillow was as stiff as a block of wood, and his complexion was terribly pale. As if possessed, Myojeong reached out and touched his cheek.

His skin was unbelievably cold, tough, and hard. Human flesh emptied of life felt startlingly unfamiliar.

Myojeong almost spoke without thinking, then stopped. He had never once called out to him before, so he did not know what he should call him. After thinking for a moment, Myojeong slowly moved his lips.

“...Father.”

His voice, unused for so long, sounded awkward.

There was no answer.

Myojeong gazed down at his face, now resting forever. He felt an emotion he could not describe.

The man who had been alive and breathing just last night was now dead.

He had passed away in his sleep. He had not been suffering from any illness, nor had there been any particular accident. It had been a day like any other, and yet he simply had not woken the next morning. If there was any blessing in it, it was that he had met his death peacefully, as if falling asleep, without any particular pain.

His death did not feel real.

To be honest, Myojeong was not sad that he had died. In Myojeong’s life, he had not been so precious a person. There was no sense of loss or grief at losing his only family. It was only a strange feeling, as if his stomach were churning.

The incarnation had known he was going to die, and so he had summoned Myojeong.

The man who had always been cold, who had never once given him so much as a proper glance, had held his child in his arms on the final night of his life. Myojeong tried to recall the warmth of the night before from that now-cold embrace, but the sensation was faint as a dream.

He wondered what on earth the man had been thinking as he held him and fell asleep.

He had wanted to ask, but in the end, he could not.

Last night, the incarnation had looked terribly tired. Yet, in a way, he had also looked at peace.

A thought suddenly came to Myojeong.

So this was what farewell was.

Calling out and receiving no answer. Speaking to someone who would not look at you. I am here, but you are not. Only belatedly realizing that perhaps, just perhaps, you had thought of me a little.

That was farewell.

Thinking that made him feel a little lonely.

Then he suddenly remembered the words the man had whispered in his sleep last night.

My child, you must never become human.

Do not live as I have lived.

Falling in love with someone. Becoming family with someone precious.

It was such an ordinary life.

In exchange for living an extraordinary life that no one could look down on, he had not been permitted the ordinary life anyone else could have.

The man had been terribly tormented by that fact.

The words “Do not live as I have lived” were, in a way, the last will left behind by a parent who loved his child. He had felt guilty for passing his debt down to that child.

Perhaps that had been a human heart.

Myojeong thought the life of the incarnation, who had only managed to hold him on the last day of his life, was foolish and pitiful.

He had met Myojeong’s mother knowing he would lose the person he loved, and he had a child knowing this life would be passed on. Even though he knew everything, he had ultimately failed to escape the shackles of the curse placed upon him.

Myojeong made a decision.

I will not live like you.

I will sever this karma and end this chain of suffering.

I will not make the mistake of keeping a loved one by my side. If I do not covet them, if I do not harbor the desire to be with them, then I will not lose them. I will not pass down my sin. I will not leave this life of suffering to someone else. I will live as a god and die as a god.

Myojeong rose from the cold embrace.

The incarnation had passed on.

The departure rites lasted for several days.

Because he was not human, but a god, a memorial rite was held in place of a funeral to honor his passing. The body that had lived for thirty-three years was cremated, and the ashes were scattered over the mountains and the sea. No tombstone was erected, and no grave mound was raised. The clothes he had worn in life and the objects his hands had touched were all gathered and burned.

Myojeong inherited his position.

He looked down at the Four Golden Eyes, which had come into his possession. At first glance, the wooden mask looked ordinary. But it did not speak to him as it had in his dream. Myojeong sat before a mirror and put the mask on.

After the departure rites ended, days so busy he had no time even to breathe followed one after another.

Normally, he should have received training for the succession in advance. But because Myojeong had spent several years of his childhood at Jaseonwon, there was a mountain of work to do. The duties of a Bangsangsi were more numerous than he had imagined.

Each season, he had to gather ghosts and perform rites for the dead. He had to take part in the king’s processions to and from the royal ancestral shrine, drive stray ghosts out of the palace, and regulate ghosts among ordinary people to prevent disorder.

From the moment he put on the Bangsangsi mask, Myojeong was no longer an ordinary human.

He thought like a human, ate like a human, and slept like a human, but people treated him not as a human, but as one who was united with the Bangsangsi. Before he was a human being, he was the incarnation of the Bangsangsi.

The elders of the Office of Narye revered Myojeong as though he were a god. They treated him with courtesy and deference, as if he were the Son of Heaven sent down from above, the highest master in all the world.

Myojeong went along with all of it, drifting like a leaf on a river.

It was a position of enormous responsibility and pressure. The weight of the mask, though it was nothing more than carved wood, was as heavy as a great mountain.

Whenever everything felt overwhelming, he thought of Hwirim and Suhyang.

He had disappeared without even telling them he was going to the capital, so Suhyang and Hwirim must have been worried about him. Myojeong wrote a letter to Hwirim and Suhyang. He worried over how to begin and could not easily start. After much deliberation, the words he finally wrote were utterly trivial.

He wrote that he had come to the capital and was doing well, and that he was waiting for the day they would meet again when the time was right.

Several years flew by like an arrow.

Season after season passed, and the cold winter that had stripped the trees bare retreated. Spring arrived, bringing sprouting buds with it.

Today was the day new Naja were to be appointed to the Office.

“I am Hwirim, newly appointed.”

“I am Suhyang, newly appointed.”

Myojeong, who had been sitting behind a screen, strode down and removed the mask from his face.

The two, who had been bowing their heads, looked up in surprise. When their eyes met, Myojeong grinned.

“It’s been a while.”

Hwirim and Suhyang flinched, their eyes widening like startled rabbits.

“Myojeong?!”

Now on the threshold of adulthood, Myojeong had grown much taller and was fully mature. His voice was lower, neither high nor deep, and it was one they had never heard before. Even so, Suhyang and Hwirim instantly recognized the person before them as Myojeong.

Realizing that the Myojeong they were meeting again after several years had become the Bangsangsi, Suhyang and Hwirim were bewildered.

“H-How....”

The two were speechless, staring at each other in a daze.