Honbul: Flame of the Soul

The next day, Jaegyeom left the house early as usual, in time for school.

Like always, he boarded Bus 17. He sat in the seat directly behind the driver and looked out the window. The bus kept running along the route that had already become familiar before he even noticed. Every time he happened to turn his head, there seemed to be more passengers inside than before. More than half of them, like Jaegyeom, were students in uniform.

“This stop is Daeryung High Intersection. The next stop is...”

As the announcement came over the speaker, every student sitting down got to their feet at once.

All the uniformed students poured off the bus like an ebbing tide.

All except one.

The driver, who had been glancing at the rearview mirror, spoke to Jaegyeom sitting right behind him.

“Hey, student. Why aren’t you getting off?”

Still sitting there blankly, Jaegyeom turned his head a beat too late. He knew, logically, that he had to get off right now if he wanted to complete the promised month.

But right now, Jaegyeom ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) was feeling an enormous gravity dragging on him.

It felt as if some massive boulder were crushing his body.

He had no confidence at all that he could overcome that weight.

“You’re not getting off?”

“No. I’m not.”

So Jaegyeom decided not to think about consequences and just follow how he felt right now. Even if the next stop turned out to be a cliff, he did not want to get off. If someone told him to throw himself off a cliff instead, he felt like he could do that hundreds of times over.

Today, of all days, he truly did not want to go to school.

The driver looked puzzled, then shut the rear door without saying anything else. The bus started moving again, leaving the school behind. Jaegyeom only kept staring out the window. Unfamiliar signs scraped past his eyes. Time passed at a speed very similar to the scenery flashing by.

Last night, Jaegyeom had tossed and turned in the dark room for hours.

Everything around him had been silent.

But his ears were so loud he could not fall asleep.

The faint, unpleasant noise was audible only to him.

You got fooled. You got fooled. You got fooled again. Fooled by a Naja again. Fooled like an idiot...

Yoon Taehee had asked him, Are you mad? and, just as Taehee had said, Jaegyeom had been angry.

But apart from that, Jaegyeom could not understand himself. He could not understand why he was this angry, this disappointed. Strictly speaking, the fact that Yoon Taehee was gifted and a Naja had nothing to do with him at all.

Yoon Taehee had hidden who he was and approached him.

The one good thing was that Jaegyeom had noticed beforehand, so nothing had actually happened yet.

That made it simple.

From now on, he just would not see him.

If Taehee came hovering around again, Jaegyeom could beat him like yesterday. If he kept quiet, Jaegyeom could just ignore him.

Even if Yoon Taehee really had been nothing more than an ordinary school librarian, once the promised month was over, they would never have had any reason to see each other again.

And yet he still felt bitterly disappointed. He still felt foul.

His heart felt rubbed raw, as though someone had taken sandpaper to it.

And Jaegyeom got angry at himself all over again for feeling that way.

Then and now, Naja were all—

“Fucking bastard.”

He had just closed his eyes and muttered it to himself when—

“Student, this is the last stop.”

The bus had come to a halt at the depot.

Pushed off almost against his will, Jaegyeom wandered the unfamiliar streets in a daze. There was a place he had come from, but nowhere he needed to go. So he walked wherever his feet carried him. He just wanted to keep moving, at least for now. He did not want to think.

Whenever he spotted a bench, he would sit and rest for a while. But he never stayed in one place very long.

He walked and walked without aim.

Then, at some point, a sign caught his eye.

The moment he read the words on it, Jaegyeom slowed.

“Green Meadow Books...”

It was a neighborhood bookstore of a decent size.

The whole front was glass, so the inside of the shop was plainly visible. The large shelves were packed tight with new books. Jaegyeom lingered outside, peering through the glass, and found himself drifting around the storefront for no reason.

Should I read something?

Suddenly, the book he had left half-finished in the library came to mind. Through the window, he could see a few customers inside already reading. After hesitating for a moment, he impulsively opened the door and stepped in.

“Welcome.”

The clerk greeted him kindly, and Jaegyeom answered with nothing more than a small nod. A thin strand of classical music was playing from the ceiling speakers. The calm melody suited the quiet, peaceful atmosphere of the bookstore fairly well.

When he checked the clock on the wall, fifth period had only just begun.

If he went home around the same time he normally would, Mesan would not suspect anything. Since he had left the house wearing his uniform, Mesan was probably assuming he had gone to school.

It was not as if he had anywhere else to go, or anything else to do.

He intended to kill the rest of the time here.

Jaegyeom drifted around the bookstore as though he were simply out for a walk. The smell of new books and the settled stillness of the air were not bad. Strangely enough, he could feel himself gradually calming down.

He was loitering around one of the display tables, looking through books, when he stopped short.

A promotional band wrapped around one of the covers had caught his eye.

On the fluorescent strip were printed the large words:

Must-Read for Middle and High School Students

Without even thinking, Jaegyeom reached out and picked up the book.

Am I allowed to read this?

After glancing around for a moment, he simply started reading where he stood. Something about the words on the band had made him curious. From a quick look, it seemed to be a famous work, but it was completely unfamiliar to him. He read each sentence with care, and just as he was turning the page with cautious fingers—

“Is it interesting?”

“Yeah.”

At the quiet question drifting toward him, Jaegyeom gave a distracted little answer.

A few seconds passed.

The hand touching the book suddenly froze.

Still looking down, Jaegyeom snapped his head up.

“...”

His eyes widened.

Because Yoon Taehee was standing right across from him, where there had been no one at all just a moment ago.

The white cap pulled low over his face made him harder to see clearly, but there was no mistaking him.

In one hand, he was holding a book.

It was the same book Jaegyeom had been reading.

“Why aren’t you at school? What are you doing here?”

Taehee asked it playfully.

The question he had tossed at Jaegyeom was just as applicable to Taehee himself, but Taehee did not look as if he had given that side of it a second thought. Unlike Jaegyeom, who had gone slightly stiff in surprise, Taehee looked as calm as ever.

“What the hell are you?”

Once he had regained his composure, Jaegyeom stepped back a little.

Taehee, who was always in shirts, was wearing a black collared T-shirt and ripped jeans today. With the backpack slung over one shoulder, he looked, at a glance, like an ordinary college student.

“You left your bag behind. I came to give it back.”

As if it belonged to him, Taehee pointed at the backpack hanging from his own shoulder.

Only then did Jaegyeom recognize his bag.

Now that he thought about it, he had not even noticed it was missing. He must have left it in the library yesterday. The realization made him feel newly pathetic, wandering around with his mind that scattered.

“Fine. Then hand it over and get lost.”

Jaegyeom said it flatly.

But Taehee blatantly pretended not to hear. He had just said with his own mouth that he came to return the bag, and now suddenly he started acting like he was absorbed in reading.

“You picked a good book. I like this one too.”

“Give me the bag and fuck off.”

At Taehee’s easy shamelessness, Jaegyeom’s face hardened at once. The voice that came out low and warning made Taehee slowly raise his head. Their eyes met.

So that won’t work...

A faint smile touched Taehee’s mouth.

“Do you know the stuffed genius?”

Do you know the stuffed genius?

I am cheerful.

At times like this, even romance is cheerful.

(Yi Sang, Wings)

At the abrupt words Taehee tossed out, Jaegyeom lifted his eyes sharply. The situation suddenly felt familiar. It was the opening of the book he had been reading just moments ago.

Just like before, Taehee had memorized the lines from a book.

“I think it’s an incredible opening sentence. What about you?”

Taehee lowered the book in his hand.

The moment he leaned his upper body slightly toward him, Jaegyeom, who had been pressing his mouth shut, made a point of widening the distance between them.

At that, the trace of laughter gradually vanished from Taehee’s face.

His expression went completely blank.

In that blankness, he looked nothing but cold.

And even then, one cheek was still slightly swollen.

“But if it were me, I don’t think I’d feel cheerful...”

Letting the words trail for a moment, Taehee added in a careless tone,

“What does it feel like to be stuffed, Jaegyeom?”

Jaegyeom slowly raised his eyes.

He felt an indistinct sensation—something he could not put into words—crawl up his spine. The loaded phrase drove deep into his chest. Standing face to face, the two of them looked straight through each other. Taehee’s darkly sunken eyes were glinting with a bleak light.

“I figured this might make you a little more willing to talk to me.”

Taehee bent slightly at the waist and whispered it softly.

“I get that you’re wary because the teacher you trusted betrayed you. But don’t push me away quite this hard. I’m trying this much, aren’t I? I came all the way here myself. At least give me a chance to talk.”

In that instant, a sickening shiver speared through the back of Jaegyeom’s neck.

His eyes shook violently.