Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Yeonok’s performance began.

His vision blurred as though he had fallen into a hallucination. It felt as if a colossal weight were pressing his whole body down. The sorrowful sound of the geomungo bored into his ears like an awl.

The melody, steeped in an inexplicable nostalgia, unfolded a vision of hell. Naja with weaker minds groaned in agony and collapsed unconscious; most either vomited or fell into panic. The mental blow was severe. Old, ugly memories rose like bile.

That was when Lee Youngshin clutched his mouth and writhed in pain.

“Our Yeonok plays the geomungo so well.”

At some point, a voice cut through their chaotic minds.

“You can stop now.”

The mournful, heartrending performance came to an end.

“Leader!”

Yeonok, who had been absorbed in playing the instrument, beamed and lifted her head.

The Leader opened his arms toward Yeonok as she rose from her seat. As if she had been waiting for it, Yeonok sprang up. The Leader caught her with practiced ease and held her on one arm.

“Did I do well? Tell me I did well.”

Yeonok wrapped her arms around the Leader’s neck and acted shamelessly cute.

Of course our Yeonok did well. Is there anything our Yeonok can’t do? What does our Yeonok eat to grow so strong and pretty? Our Yeonok did everything herself...

“Then shall Yeonok go stand next to me for now?”

That affectionate voice, cutting through the groans of pain rising all around them, was violently out of place.

It was a voice he felt he had heard many times before.

No.

It was a voice he knew.

Lee Youngshin clenched his teeth and forced his eyes open. His mind, which had gone blank for a moment, snapped back into place.

Only after barely regaining his senses did he manage to lift his head with difficulty. In the very center of the open-sided musicians’ hall stood someone holding a child on one arm.

For a moment, Lee Youngshin doubted his own eyes.

A red robe worn over a suit.

And a Fool mask.

“Hi.”

Before entering the grounds of Jongmyo, Yoon Taehee had spotted three Naja from the Covert Division patrolling along the shrine wall.

Wearing a Fool mask, Yoon Taehee abruptly appeared in front of the three men on patrol.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

The three Naja recoiled at his sudden appearance. For a moment their faces tightened with caution, but once they saw the mask on his face, they seemed to realize he was another Naja, and their guard eased slightly.

The three men knew that the person before them belonged to the Exorcism Unit, but they did not know he was Chief Naja Yoon Taehee.

After greeting them casually, Yoon Taehee suddenly let out a sound of surprise.

“Oh! Up there in the sky...”

Yoon Taehee abruptly raised his hand and pointed somewhere behind the Naja.

The three Naja flinched and whipped around to look in the direction Yoon Taehee was pointing.

A powerful force approached without a sound and struck each of them on the back of the neck in succession.

It was Black Emperor, who had been hiding in the shadow of the wall.

With muffled groans, the three men lost consciousness in an instant and collapsed on the spot.

Yoon Taehee approached the fallen men. He went down on one knee for a moment and searched through their jacket pockets and other places. Before long, he found the ID cards hanging from their lanyards.

Yoon Taehee carelessly tossed the confiscated ID cards aside.

Then he rose to his feet, nudged two of the fallen men with the toe of his shoe, and jerked his chin.

“You can go in now.”

Black Emperor worked to sink the three men’s consciousness deep into sleep.

Then Black Emperor, Saero, and Paehyeon each took over one body.

Saero wore the expression of someone forced into clothes he hated.

“Leader, do we really have to go this far?”

As Saero grimaced and complained that he disliked the style, the Leader laughed softly.

“Bear with it for a little while.”

The lanyard name tags issued by the Talisman Unit functioned as protective talismans, preventing ghosts from possessing or haunting the wearer. As long as a person carried one on their body, a ghost could not invade them. The talisman was powerful enough that even touching it directly was difficult for a ghost.

“If we don’t do this, even you three will have a hard time holding out.”

Jongmyo was a shrine where state rites had been held during the Joseon dynasty, a place where the spirit tablets of kings and queens were enshrined. On top of that, with a barrier erected there, any ghost that carelessly set foot inside the grounds would quickly be overwhelmed. As intelligent ghosts, they could endure it to some degree, but they would not last long.

Their destination was the twentieth chamber of the Main Hall.

To reach the Main Hall, the three intelligent ghosts had to open the way.

“Let’s go.”

Around then, the sound of a geomungo began drifting from somewhere in the distance.

When the performance stopped, the Naja who had not lost consciousness struggled to their feet.

The Leader, who had been standing in the open-sided musicians’ hall only moments before, was now on top of a high tiled roof. The little ghost who had been playing the geomungo beside him had vanished without a trace.

Lee Youngshin, who had been groaning on the floor, lifted his head.

A Fool mask?

Don’t tell me...

His gaze met the eyes beyond the mask. When Yoon Taehee noticed Lee Youngshin looking at him, he raised one hand near his shoulder and wiggled his fingers.

“Hi?”

His voice was utterly indifferent.

It was hard to believe he was the same person who had spoken so affectionately to the child just moments ago. There was not a single trace of warmth in it.

Lee Youngshin’s lips parted in disbelief.

“...Chief Yoon?”

The capillaries in his eyes had burst, and veins stood out on his forehead, but Lee Youngshin’s consciousness remained surprisingly clear. It was impressive that he was still holding on when a considerable number of Naja could not regain their senses.

He usually seemed like a fool, but seeing him like this, he really was worthy of being called a chief.

“Wh-what in the world is going on? Why are you...”

Just then, Yoon Taehee, standing on the rooftop, took a step forward and walked briskly across the tiles. With every step, roof tiles crunched beneath his dress shoes.

Everyone stared up in silence at Yoon Taehee, who stood outlined against the moonlight.

Yoon Taehee seemed to adjust the mask on his face with one hand. Then he slowly lifted his other hand, the one holding a sword.

“I’ll only say this once, so listen carefully.”

Pointing the sword’s tip into empty air, Yoon Taehee began to speak slowly.

“From here... to here.”

Looking down at the Naja positioned around the musicians’ hall, Yoon Taehee marked out an area. It was a fairly wide span.

He drew a straight line with the tip of his sword, then abruptly added,

“I’m going to send ghostly force flying with my sword.”

What?

That was when Lee Youngshin’s mouth fell open blankly.

“I even told you where I’m going to strike, so if you can’t dodge it, you must be an idiot, right?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Yoon Taehee pulled off his scabbard and threw it behind him.

Then he swung the sword.

RUMBLE!

The ghostly force carried by the blade shot out in the shape of a waning moon.

Their bodies reacted first to that merciful warning. The Naja gathered around the musicians’ hall split left and right, reflexively throwing themselves out of the way. No one took the attack directly, but the surroundings were utterly devastated, and a building at the back collapsed.

Although it had been a sudden attack, perhaps because of the warning, most of them managed to dodge quickly. Still, some were injured by splintering trees and shattered buildings.

Groans erupted here and there.

“Yoon Taehee! Are you out of your mind?”

Lee Youngshin, who had barely dodged, shrieked from where he lay sprawled on the ground.

“Don’t you know Naja aren’t supposed to attack each other?”

“I know, Youngshin. You think I wouldn’t know that?”

“A guy who knows that is—”

Lee Youngshin, who had been about to add, what the hell are you doing, froze.

“You... Don’t tell me...”

Just then, Yoon Taehee raised the sword in his hand, held it up to the moonlight, and murmured impassively,

“Well, I guess this much is fine.”

Lee Youngshin’s mouth fell open.

The reason he had so kindly announced his attack.

Yoon Taehee had been testing the limits of his own actions within the taboo, checking how far he could go.

“Are you crazy?”

A faint smirk escaped Yoon Taehee’s lips.

“Probably?”

Breaking into the Office of Narye without being freed from the taboo was no different from a suicide mission.

Yoon Taehee was currently unable to use his power freely. Because he had not been released from the restriction that forbade him from harming a Naja or using ghostly force without warning, everything was stacked against him.

If Yoon Taehee used his ghostly force directly to cause harm, a corresponding backlash would follow. If that happened, he would obviously be struck by pain so severe that he would be unable to stand before he even entered the grounds of the Office of Narye.

He knew from past experience exactly how terrible that pain was.

However.

“Come to think of it, the reverse is also true.”

Though he stood here as the master of Byeoksadan, Yoon Taehee was also a Naja.

Lee Youngshin would never know how much effort Yoon Taehee had poured into overcoming that restriction.

Nor would he know that all of it had now become useless.

Even though the very reason he had dragged Jaegyeom into this in the first place had been to retrieve the wooden tag, Yoon Taehee now stood here with neither the wooden tag nor Jaegyeom.

Suddenly, he felt like laughing.

Yoon Taehee was a man who always moved only after finishing every calculation.

He was not the type to charge ahead recklessly, and he knew that about himself.

Then, all at once, he had a thought.

He was becoming like someone.