Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Bzzz.

The pager in Yoon Taehee’s hand shuddered.

Lounging deep in a soft cushioned chair, he straightened slightly, then tossed the pager across the table as lightly as if he were passing a baton.

“What are you doing, Youngshin?”

Lee Youngshin caught it neatly and looked at him like he had lost his mind. Turning around, he saw two drinks sitting side by side on the café pickup counter. He turned back to stare at Taehee again.

Taehee gave a calm jerk of his chin.

It meant: go get them.

“Wow. Seriously? I came all the way out here for you, and you want to put me to work?”

“I paid for the coffee, did I not?”

Taehee waggled his credit card.

Youngshin, who had only just arrived from Seoul, felt his insides start to boil. When Taehee had offered to pay the moment they walked into the café, Youngshin had been quietly delighted. Normally the bill was always his. When Taehee asked what he wanted, he had grinned and said an iced Americano.

So that was why he had ordered and paid without hesitation for once. He had actually thought the sun had risen in the west today, but of course not. No one in the world showed off quite like this bastard. True, he had not come all the way here for Taehee alone—he had happened to be in the area anyway—but it still pissed him off.

Honestly, what a pampered tyrant.

Still grumbling, Youngshin finally stomped over to the counter.

“Huh? What is this?”

Just as he picked up the two drinks, one in each hand, he stopped short, then leaned toward the register.

“Excuse me. I think these came out wrong.”

“Yes? Which part?”

“One of ours was supposed to be an iced Americano.”

Both drinks in Youngshin’s hands were crowned with thick swirls of whipped cream.

“Hm? Just a second.”

The barista tilted their head and tapped at the register screen.

“Oh? Did you not order two iced caramel macchiatos?”

“...What?”

“You ordered both of them as macchiatos. I can show you the receipt if you want.”

Youngshin stood there with a stunned look on his face.

He had very clearly told that bastard Americano.

With sudden suspicion, he turned his head and looked back at Taehee.

Taehee, who had been sprawled out in his seat, crooked one corner of his mouth upward. When Youngshin blinked, he nodded as if to confirm it.

“......”

That son of a bitch.

Only then did Youngshin understand what had happened, and his face went bright red. He hurriedly apologized to the barista, then came rushing back to the table with the two macchiatos piled high with whipped cream.

Breathing hard through his nose, he slammed them down onto the table.

“Thanks.”

When Taehee thanked him lightly, Youngshin trembled with rage.

“I told you I drink Americano.”

“How do you even drink something that bitter?”

“What? Hey. Are you the one drinking it? I said I would—”

“It is my card. I do not want to buy Americano.”

Faced with that breathtaking logic, Youngshin fell speechless and thumped his own chest.

“You think I’ve got a grade-school sweet tooth like you? I hate sweet stuff.”

“Then do not drink it. I will.”

Yoon Taehee loved sweets with all his heart. As Youngshin had just said, he really did have the palate of a small child. He would not touch bitter, tasteless vegetables, nor any food that was healthy and fresh. He preferred aggressive, sugary instant food and fast food.

He also loved snacking. On Taehee’s desk at headquarters, there was a year-round bumper harvest of jelly and chocolate. On one memorable occasion, he had shown up to a solemn meeting in a perfectly tailored suit and then sat there noisily crunching hard candy until Manager Seok threw him out.

Taehee crooked his fingers, asking for one of the drinks.

The bastard was doing this on purpose so he could drink both, was he not?

No. He refused to fall for such an obvious scheme.

Stubbornness flaring, Youngshin vowed revenge and dug into the whipped cream with savage spoonfuls. Whether Taehee noticed how completely his stomach had turned against him or not, he only sat there snickering.

Youngshin sighed and shot him a look.

“Manager Seok asks every day when you are coming back.”

“There is still more than a month left.”

“Then at least answer him once in a while. Why are you not taking his calls?”

“I am finally on break. Obviously you block your boss’s number.”

Taehee answered carelessly.

You are probably the only person alive who would block Manager Seok. Youngshin shook his head. Manager Seok wanted Taehee back as soon as humanly possible. He seemed to want Youngshin, as someone close to him, to help persuade him, but Youngshin decided there was no point in pressing it any further and changed the subject instead.

“So. How is finding a replacement going?”

“Well. I am trying.”

“Oh? Sounds like you found someone you like.”

Taehee smiled slightly, a shallow dimple appearing in his cheek.

“Yes.”

“What sort?”

“Mean. Violent.”

“......”

What, exactly, was there to like about that?

Youngshin frowned.

“And...”

Taehee trailed off for a moment with a blank face, then added,

“He has a pretty smile.”

“......What is that supposed to mean?”

Youngshin stared at him as though he had just heard the strangest nonsense in the world.

“He is wary by nature. He does not let anyone get close easily.”

“What, you still have not told him you are a Naja?”

Youngshin lowered his voice as he asked. Taehee nodded quietly.

“Why are you making this so difficult? If you are offering to make him a Naja without even making him go through the apprentice period first, he should be grateful. Just tell him you are a Naja and get him to stamp the papers. He will probably bow his head and say yes on the spot. Who among the gifted does not want to become a Naja?”

Taehee laughed soundlessly and whispered in a low voice,

“He cannot become a Naja of the Office of Narye. He has to become my Naja.”

To do that, a fair amount of care was required.

Of course, if it came down to it, he could always drag him in by force. Clapping irons on him and taking him by the nape would be simple. Efficient, too.

But Taehee preferred not to do that if he could help it. He wanted not only the shell, but whatever lay inside it as [N O V E L I G H T] well, whole and intact, and walking to him on its own two feet.

So it would be nice if, when he knocked, the boy came out quietly.

He did not want to smash the door down and force his way inside.

As much as possible, he meant to postpone using hands that were rude and unbeautiful.

“But what brought you all the way out here?”

While Youngshin was still looking baffled, Taehee turned the conversation aside as if it were nothing.

“Well, look who asks—late as hell.”

Youngshin grumbled for a moment, then sucked hard enough on his straw to hollow out his cheeks. The sweetness was dizzying. After wetting his throat, his face turned serious. It was the expression he always wore when he was filing down and refining a ritual implement.

“I got word that something very rare has shown up.”

Youngshin glanced lightly around them and lowered his voice.

“Near here?”

“Mm. Near here.”

“What kind of thing?”

Youngshin’s eyes lit up.

“Wild ginseng.”

Taehee propped his chin on one hand. He did not look especially interested.

“Would you not find that lying around in piles if you walked into the herb room at headquarters?”

“No. Compared to what I found, all of that is just grass roots.”

“What sort of ginseng is it?”

“The kind that moves around alive.”

At that addition, Taehee’s eyes sharpened at once.

He narrowed them and straightened from his previously loose posture. The air between the two chief Najas changed in an instant. Noticing the shift in Taehee’s whole manner, Youngshin bared his teeth in a grin.

As expected. The bastard’s instincts were uncanny.

“It is a very precious ginseng child.”

A feverish gleam entered Youngshin’s eyes.

*****

Lee Youngshin, chief Naja of Ritual Implements Department Team One, had received a curious report.

The story came from a Naja on his team who had been away on assignment a few days earlier. He had been traveling through the provinces to gather materials needed for the development of ritual implements, and according to him, he had seen a very strange child right in the middle of the street.

While passing through an unfamiliar town, he had spotted a cat surrounded by onlookers. The animal was badly injured—so badly it looked unlikely to survive. Feeling sorry for it, he had decided to wait until the crowd thinned out so he could at least pour some medicinal water over it.

That was when a small child suddenly appeared and touched the cat.

A mysterious light burst from the child’s hand. The bleeding stopped. The wounds closed.

It all happened in the blink of an eye.

He had never in his life seen anything like it.

He had stood frozen like stone until some man suddenly ran in and took the child away. At that moment, only one thought struck him.

I cannot lose it.

The instinct honed sharp by years of work as a Naja hit him like a blow to the skull.

He pulled a small box from his bag. Inside it, curled up asleep, was a tiny meadow bunting small enough to fit in one hand. At a single whistle, the bird opened its eyes. He hurriedly sent it after them.

Half a day later, the meadow bunting returned safely.

He had successfully secured the child’s location.

He called Lee Youngshin immediately and reported the whole matter.

“It is a very precious ginseng child,”

Youngshin added, the corner of his mouth lifting in confident satisfaction.

“A ginseng child? You are sure?”

“It was a child with healing power.”

Taehee’s eyes widened with real surprise.

Since ancient times, wild ginseng had been called an herb bestowed by heaven, a gift sent down by the mountain god, because of its miraculous medicinal power.

Remarkably, that was not far from the truth.

Ginseng children grew from seeds sown by the mountain god himself.

After receiving a mountain’s spiritual force for centuries, wild ginseng became a sacred spiritual creature. Once transformed, it possessed the power to heal and could take on human form. Because that form was always that of a child, they were called ginseng children, or healer children.

Taehee murmured almost to himself,

“I had heard the ginseng children died out long ago...”

In the distant past, every mountain had once held them. But as the centuries passed, sightings became fewer and fewer, and then at some point vanished entirely.

The last known sighting of a ginseng child had been more than a hundred years ago. An unofficial document from that time still remained.

As the age changed, the mountains began to be damaged, and the humans who once offered devotion to the mountain gods gradually disappeared. Naturally, the mountain gods’ power weakened. As a result, the number of wild ginseng born from their scattered seeds dwindled, and the ginseng children vanished with them.

That was the accepted explanation.

“So what are you planning to do now?”

“What else? Catch it and study it.”

Until now, no matter how potent the ghostly force involved, at best they had only managed to amplify the body’s recovery through special medicines made from elixirs and herbs. The power to physically regenerate wounds and restore flesh belonged to the realm of sacred authority—something no ghost or human ability could ever imitate.

The Office of Narye had fought for that authority once before.

There had been a full-scale investigation in the past, launched in the hope of finding some surviving trace of the ginseng children. Elite Najas had been sent out to scour the eight provinces with fire in their eyes, but the expedition team had eventually been disbanded without a single meaningful result.

Which meant that finding a ginseng child now would go down as a discovery for the ages in the history of the Office of Narye.

Youngshin intended to uncover the truth of what a ginseng child was, pry out the secret of its healing power, and use it to create ritual implements. Even at that very moment, dozens of schematics for possible implements were already flashing through his mind.

“Just give me a few days, all right? I will bring our little ginseng child in and make something monstrous.”

Yoon Taehee said nothing.

He only stared fixedly at Youngshin. Sharp light flashed in the other man’s eyes, bright with excitement. There was a joke people at headquarters often made about Lee Youngshin: even if he had not been one of the gifted, he would have done perfectly well for himself as a scientist or inventor.

Taehee agreed with that assessment.

Usually, Youngshin was full of holes. But the moment he got fixated on something, he became a completely different person. His experimental drive, his constant hunger for something new, his reckless, near-mad desire to probe deeper—those qualities were exceptional.

“All right.”

Taehee smiled faintly.

“I will look forward to it.”