Honbul: Flame of the Soul

At dusk, the pavilion was as quiet as if it were holding its breath.

Standing in the empty corridor, guarding the door, Black Emperor gazed out the wide-open window. The red evening glow was washing over the mountain ridge as the sun sank. Only a chilling silence lingered in the corridor. The intelligent ghosts, who would normally have been running around making a racket, were unusually quiet today. Having heard the gist of the story through Saero, the intelligent ghosts remained quietly in their rooms, refraining from moving about.

Before long, the sun was setting.

Once darkness fell, this day too would soon pass.

The Leader had eaten nothing since yesterday, nor had he slept. Shut up in his room all day, he did nothing. If a living person went several days without sleeping or eating, his life would inevitably begin to crack. Black Emperor, who had been quietly guarding the door, knocked cautiously. But even after waiting for a long while, no sound came from inside. After some hesitation, he opened the door and entered the room.

He saw the Leader’s back as he sat in a chair placed before the bed.

The Leader sat with his legs crossed, his chin propped at an angle on his hand, his gaze fixed on the bed in front of him. On the makeshift bed, a boy with a youthful face was sleeping soundly.

As if sensing his presence, the Leader glanced briefly at Black Emperor before his gaze quickly returned to the boy. Black Emperor had wondered whether he might have fallen asleep, but the Leader was in the exact same posture he had been in that morning.

The fading sunlight pouring in swept across the boy’s face, its angle shifting little by little.

It was impossible to tell how many hours it had been. From the moment the sun rose until the moment it set, the Leader had done nothing but stare at the boy’s face, as if captivated by something. All the while, he kept drumming his fingertips on the table, as though playing piano keys.

The only sounds in the room were the boy’s breathing and the steady, compulsive tapping—tok, tok, tok. The Leader’s face was expressionless, his emotions unreadable, but Black Emperor knew he was in an extremely unstable state.

“Leader.”

“......”

“Perhaps you should get some rest.”

“......”

The Leader remained silent.

“Forgive my presumption, but you must look after your health.”

The boy’s consciousness was firmly shut away. Black Emperor did not know what had happened, but it felt as though an immense, insurmountable wall was blocking the way. Black Emperor, who had remained silent until then, parted his lips.

“It seems he will not open his eyes for some time. Perhaps for quite a long while...”

Just then, the Leader, who had been completely silent, spoke quietly.

“Get out.”

He had been told that when a rampage occurred, one might not wake for several days. Once, when Jaegyeom had caused a rampage by spilling his own blood, it had subsided quickly, and he had opened his eyes the very next day. But this time, the rampage had not even run its full course. It had been stopped using the black bird. And yet a full day had passed, and Jaegyeom still had not opened his eyes. He wanted to believe that Jaegyeom was simply in a deep sleep for a little while. Yoon Taehee approached the soundly sleeping Jaegyeom. Slowly, he knelt down. Bending over, he pressed his ear to the boy’s chest.

You are here.

Thump, thump, thump...

Listening to the regular heartbeat, Yoon Taehee quietly closed his eyes.

But the next day, and the day after that, Jaegyeom did not open his eyes.

Yoon Taehee stayed by Jaegyeom’s side for days. Jaegyeom, whom he had thought would open his eyes at any moment, did not wake even by the second day. And so, on the third day, Yoon Taehee finally got up.

Yoon Taehee called Black Emperor, left him with instructions to watch over Jaegyeom, and moved to another room.

The room Yoon Taehee moved to was the one with the bookshelves, which also served as a reception room for guests to the pavilion. Yoon Taehee pushed aside the beaded curtain with his hand and entered the deeper room beyond it.

A red traditional robe was hanging from the clothes rack that had previously been empty. It seemed one of the intelligent ghosts had brought it back sometime over the last few days. Though it had been soaked in water to remove the blood, the robe still held a dark, vivid red. Yoon Taehee touched the garment stained with the blood of his father and of his beloved boy.

“......”

His face impassive, Yoon Taehee toyed with the hem of the robe before sitting down at the table.

Over the past few days, watching Jaegyeom not wake, Yoon Taehee had thought about a great many things. About his own life, about certain people who had died long ago, about the grandfather he had loved and hated, about the water ghost he missed, about the boy he loved, and therefore about everything that was his.

Yoon Taehee took out a cigarette and lit it. Then he smoked it very slowly, very deliberately.

On the wide table lay a Korean chess board. The board was quite crowded, with pieces placed in their respective positions. It was the same arrangement he had laid out before. Yoon Taehee swept the chess pieces he had arranged one by one into a jumbled pile. He poured the Cho and Han pieces back into their containers and cleared the board.

Whenever he faced a difficult problem, or whenever his mind was in chaos, he played Korean chess. He would take Cho for one round, then Han for the next, and as he played against himself, there would inevitably come a moment when something he had not been able to see before came into view. Yoon Taehee overturned the board and scattered the pieces several times.

The day Jaegyeom and Suhyang had promised to meet again was now only two days away.

Coincidentally, that was also the day they had planned to seize the wooden tag. Only two days remained. In two days, everything had to end. Jaegyeom had to be there. Yoon Taehee was certain Jaegyeom would return within two days. No, he was wishing for it so intensely that he was mistaking his wish for certainty.

Nothing was over yet.

So he had to start over, one thing at a time.

He had learned many truths by returning to the past of two hundred years ago. But he had to filter out what was unnecessary and keep only what was useful in his hands. Yoon Taehee closed his eyes and organized his thoughts.

The god of calamity had been inside Jaegyeom’s body for a very long time.

The fundamental reason Jaegyeom had become immortal was the double seal Myojeong had cast. The god of calamity and Jaegyeom’s soul had been bound as one, a fence had been erected to prevent them from assimilating any further, and as a final safety measure, Myojeong had borrowed the power of a Namer to call the god of calamity’s name, then cast a spell so that it would remain unchanged.

And I am the last successor of the Bangsangsi.

If I can just retrieve the Bangsangsi mask, there will surely be a way.

What matters is that I must retrieve the mask, and that I must confront Suhyang.

With that, the objective became very clear and distinct. Reclaim the mask and protect his lord. But now, it felt as though this entire affair had slipped beyond his control. Jaegyeom had once said that the world was inherently malicious. Now, he thought he might understand what that meant. Yoon Taehee stared at the empty Korean chess board.

Just as his neat fingers picked up a chess piece and rolled it in his palm.

“Hey, Seonoh.”

His hand froze. Yoon Taehee, who had been staring straight ahead with a blank face, slowly lowered his head. A faint tickle arose near his wrist. He rolled up his sleeve and looked down at his wrist, and there he saw a tiny eye, small as a millet seed and red as a drop of blood, looking up at him. Sisi shifted its body and flicked its tongue.

“That child will not return.”

It had been quite a while since Sisi, who had left him a warning on Geoyeo Island, had opened its eyes.

“......”

Yoon Taehee narrowed his eyes and looked down at Sisi. He was about to ask how it could possibly know that when he suddenly felt a strange sense of unease. An indescribable intuition. Or something like realization. Yoon Taehee finally understood that he had been missing something. Myojeong, Hwirim, Suhyang, the Bangsangsi, the god of calamity. He had thought about all of them.

But not a single thought had been about Sisi.

“Sisi.”

Suddenly, Yoon Taehee recalled his first meeting with Sisi.

Sisi was his first vassal. One day, Sisi had suddenly popped out of a shamanic painting, offered to become his vassal, and taken up residence in Seonoh’s body. Sisi had taught Seonoh many things. Sisi taught him how to break talismans, and it was the one who allowed him to set foot in the outside world for the first time in his life. When he was lost and shivering from the cold, it guided him to a hut and taught him how to take ghosts as vassals. The fact that he was a human with the mark of the hometown was also something he had learned through Sisi.

The more he thought about it, the stranger it seemed.

Suddenly, it occurred to him that Sisi might have known everything from the very beginning. Yoon Taehee himself could not say why he thought so. But the beginning of everything had started from the moment he opened the door on that winter day and started the fire. The one who had helped him open the door was Sisi.

Even after that, whenever Yoon Taehee lost his way and wandered, Sisi would invariably open its eyes.

Sisi had saved him from moments of crisis several times and had left warnings of danger. He had asked it many times why it helped him like this. But each time, Sisi had repeated that it was acting as his guide because he was a human loved by the hometown, a human who bore its mark.

Then what was the mark of the hometown? It was something invisible to the eyes of ordinary humans. Something not given to just anyone. Something only the chosen could obtain. Perhaps it was...

“You. What are you?”

Sisi itself.