Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“From this moment forth, the Office of Narye is dissolved.”

Naturally, there was fierce backlash. The elders and several other Naja protested, insisting this was unacceptable, but Myojeong did not bend. Suhyang looked at Myojeong with eyes that seemed to say she had been betrayed. That was the last of it.

Myojeong gathered every item that had been bestowed upon him as the Bangsangsi and left the Office of Narye. His belongings were simpler than he had expected.

With the Bangsangsi—the symbol and foundation of the Office of Narye—gone, the focal point that had held the Naja together was gone as well. Even if they refused to accept it, the solidarity of those left behind would not last long. Like soil that crumbled no matter how tightly one packed it, they would naturally scatter.

He had, in effect, destroyed the very place where he belonged, yet surprisingly, it did not feel real. Hwirim had been wrong when she said the Office of Narye was not human. On the contrary, it was because they were so terribly human that they had become monsters. A group that could only survive by offering an innocent child as a living sacrifice had no right to protect this nation and its people. Their claim that they set the order of the human world right was nothing but empty, pretty words.

The days grew colder one by one. The season in which all things died was drawing near. Myojeong, who had been walking silently along the dark mountain path, suddenly stopped. He turned his head and looked back at the road he had taken.

“......”

The sun would set soon.

Myojeong clutched at his collar and quickened his pace.

Myojeong believed his final duty was to find and eliminate the calamity god. To do so, he first had to determine where it had gone. The first person who came to mind was Hwirim. He had first heard of the calamity god from her, so he thought she might have more detailed information.

Myojeong set out at once to find Hwirim. Thanks to the letter she had sent him a few months earlier, he was able to locate her home without difficulty. The moment Hwirim saw Myojeong, her expression hardened, and she hurriedly grabbed his arm.

“Has something happened? Are you hurt anywhere?”

It was Myojeong who was taken aback. Hwirim was not at all surprised by his unannounced visit. Not only that, she already knew the Office of Narye had fallen.

“What on earth happened?”

According to Hwirim, a rather ominous rumor was circulating among the Naja: “The incarnation has abandoned the Office of Narye and left.” Furthermore, a few days before Myojeong arrived, the elders had sent people to question Hwirim and ask whether she knew Myojeong’s whereabouts. They seemed to resent him.

“Where else would you go, Myojeong? I knew you would come here if you went anywhere.”

Hwirim pulled Myojeong into the courtyard while keeping a wary eye on the outside.

“So what will you do now?”

Hwirim’s face darkened as she said the situation looked grim.

“First, I must find and eliminate the calamity god.”

Myojeong handed her the bundle he had been carrying over his shoulder.

“I will be sure to come back for this later. Can you keep it for me for a while?”

Following the clues Hwirim had given him, Myojeong traveled the eight provinces for nearly several months in search of the calamity god.

What Hwirim had said about the elders tracking him was true. At times, he sensed several presences following him. Shaking them off while pursuing the calamity god was quite a nuisance.

They said the calamity god traveled with a red mist. At the time of its sealing, its force had raged so uncontrollably that plague and famine were said to follow in its wake. Myojeong used those rumors to deduce the calamity god’s path. The problem was that he was certainly not the only one searching for it. He had to find the calamity god before the other Naja did.

It was one night in early winter, when the wind was especially cold.

After discovering the calamity god crouched beneath an old, dead tree, Myojeong concealed himself at a distance and observed its movements. The description of its appearance matched, and more importantly, stray ghosts had gathered around it. A faint, inhuman force shimmered around the calamity god. The stray ghosts had undoubtedly gathered because they recognized that force. Myojeong waved his hand to drive off the ghosts and approached the calamity god.

“You do not need to be so frightened. I am human, just like you.”

The child stared at Myojeong with wary eyes. Myojeong said a few words to determine whether the consciousness at the surface belonged to the calamity god or to the human child.

“What is a gifted person?”

“The talent... to see ghosts...”

Fortunately, the child’s reason seemed intact. That meant he had not yet been completely consumed by the calamity god.

The child was bright.

And terribly ordinary.

This was a vessel containing the corrupt and wicked calamity god. Myojeong’s duty was to neatly dispose of this unnatural being—neither human nor ghost, a sacrifice born of the Naja’s greed.

When a human body was used as a vessel for a seal, the ghost’s influence grew stronger as the years passed. Once time eventually merged the two souls into one, the seal would break, and the calamity god would be released. He had to eliminate it as quickly as possible, before the calamity god’s soul completely devoured the child’s. For that reason, this very moment—the earliest possible point, not long after the sealing—was the most opportune time.

Now that the child had become the vessel of the calamity god, his life, regrettably, had already served its purpose. The end had already been decided. Either he would be devoured by the calamity god’s soul and disappear, or he would meet death together with the calamity god. Nothing could be undone. If left alone, the child would surely become the seed of disaster.

And yet, at some point, without realizing it, Myojeong found himself searching for a reason not to kill the child.

No.

This child had to die here.

Ssshhh...

A cold gust of wind blew past. Myojeong slowly reached his hand toward the child. The child flinched, drawing his neck in as he trembled. In his eyes, only Myojeong’s own reflection was caught. The child looked terribly grimy, as though he had wandered the roads for a long time. Bristling with vigilance, guarded against everything, he looked utterly exhausted. Like a wounded young animal.

Myojeong’s hand stopped.

“......”

Myojeong gazed down at the child’s face. Suddenly, he felt that the child’s circumstances and his own were similar. They were both trapped within innate limits that could not be changed through effort alone. The difference was that Myojeong’s life had contained warm and happy moments. The years he had spent at the charity home had been such a time.

But for a child who had wandered his entire life, such moments could not have existed.

Myojeong looked up at the night sky, where the cold wind blew.

“The weather is very cold.”

Myojeong took off the black robe he was wearing and draped it over the child’s shoulders.

“Will you come with me?”

Myojeong looked for a place where he could stay with the child. The innkeeper, perhaps recognizing the child from the way he had wandered around the area for the past few days, glared fiercely, ready to chase him out at once.

“Do you know what that thing is? How could you bring something like that in here? Get it out of—”

Myojeong said nothing and showed her a string of coins. The innkeeper’s eyes widened. He asked whether they could stay for a day or two. The innkeeper shot the child a sidelong glance, eyes narrowed, then reluctantly nodded with a displeased look. After she gave them a room, Myojeong asked for a meal.

“Hey, you.”

The innkeeper whispered in Myojeong’s ear as she brought in the food on a small table.

“I’m only saying this just in case, but you should stop meddling. You’d be better off getting rid of it before you get tangled up in trouble. The rumors around here are awful. All the begging children have been driven away.”

Myojeong deflected the innkeeper’s interference with a vague smile.

As if he had been starving for a long time, the child devoured the rice in his bowl in the blink of an eye. Seeing him scrape up every last grain clinging to the bowl, Myojeong gave the child his own portion of rice. The child glanced at Myojeong’s face with wary eyes before finally accepting the bowl. Myojeong pushed the side dishes closer to him.

“You should eat slowly. Otherwise, you will upset your stomach.”

Did this child know what had happened to him?

Myojeong tried to draw him into conversation. He wanted to know whether the child remembered anything about his parents, and if so, how much. After they had spoken for a little while, it seemed the child did not know his parents at all and had no memories of them. He only said that, at some point, he had found himself wandering the roads. At that, Myojeong felt a strange sense of relief—and, at the same time, an inexplicable guilt.

“Sleep well tonight.”

Myojeong asked for bathwater to be heated, washed the child clean, then prepared bedding for him on the warmest part of the heated floor. The child, who had been shivering in the cold all day, seemed exhausted and soon fell asleep.

Suddenly, Myojeong’s heart felt heavy.

He pitied the child, who had become the vessel of the calamity god without ever receiving a scrap of affection, not even a name. Although it was not what Myojeong had intended, the elders had said this had been planned long ago. That meant the child’s life had perhaps been decided from the moment he was born. Myojeong, too, could not be free from that chain of vice and responsibility. If this unknowing child had an enemy, it was the Naja.

The reason he had not killed the child immediately was a fleeting moment of pity and compassion. Even without the mask, which he did not have with him, it would not have been difficult for Myojeong to take the child’s life. Snapping that neck would be all too easy. But a moment’s hesitation kept making him falter.

Perhaps it was shallow pity. Perhaps it was a selfish kindness disguised as goodwill, offered only because he wanted to ease his own guilt. It would be more accurate to call it a grace bestowed for his own sake, given in the hope of lessening his guilt even slightly. Even so, Myojeong wanted to leave at least one warm memory in the child’s few remaining years of life, which must have been as cold as a tomb.

A few days would be enough, he thought.

Myojeong reached out.

He pulled the blanket up to the child’s neck, so the cold would not seep in.