Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom had the dizzy illusion that every part of the world around him had been paused in place.

In a vision gone distant and black-and-white, the only thing that remained vividly clear was Yoon Taehee.

“How do you feel about the hidden far side of the moon?”

“What do you think is hiding there, under all those layers?”

He had thought they were merely talking about books. The suggestive remarks that had gone circling around the edges like a hawk wheeling through empty air had, all along, been aimed at the one place that should never be touched.

Only now did Jaegyeom realize it. Every casual word had been meant for him.

“Isn’t it time we started being honest with each other? The pitiful little teacher-and-student act is over now.”

Yoon Taehee tilted his head slightly and gave Jaegyeom a long, measured look.

With kindness and gentleness stripped away, [N O V E L I G H T] his eyes were cold and sharp. He was no longer disguising himself as anything at all.

“Do you remember those two ghosts you saw yesterday? They’re spirits I’m rather fond of, and one of them can read the past. The name is Saero. If the chance comes, I’ll introduce you properly next time. Anyway, I asked Saero to identify you for me.”

The boy had exposed Taehee’s identity without permission. The clean loss of initiative had left him with a hollow feeling.

Then this time, it was his turn to expose the boy’s.

If the opportunity would not come to him, he only had to go and fetch it himself.

For the past several days, Saero had been under the sort of pressure that could drain the blood from a ghost.

“Not yet?”

Ever since ordering Saero to find out the boy’s history, Yoon Taehee had called Saero to the library every single day. It almost made a mockery of the words he had spoken about taking it slow and not hurrying.

Then, on the third day exactly, Saero appeared in front of him looking utterly haggard.

“You were right, Taehee! How in the world can something like this even be possible?”

As Saero clicked his tongue and poured out exclamations of amazement, a new light entered Taehee’s eyes.

When Taehee asked what had been read, Saero did his best to recount, in as close to its original form as possible, what had been seen and heard. There had been so little blood that all Saero had managed to glimpse was one brief moment from the past, as if brushing past it in passing.

“Judging by the clothes and the background, it looked like a memory from a very long time ago. The owner of the blood was wearing a robe, sitting in some old thatched house. And beside the child there was a man who looked like a teacher.”

A neat smile formed on Yoon Taehee’s lips. It was the moment suspicion turned to certainty.

Just as Saero had said, it matched Taehee’s guess in no small part. What that fragment of the past had confirmed beyond doubt was that the boy possessed a long-buried history, and that he had once been with a teacher.

Taehee let out a soft laugh.

An old boy. A contradictory phrase, and yet one that held true in reality. It struck him all over again that the world he belonged to stood far outside the bounds of ordinary common sense. The boy’s identity was extraordinary to the point of being uncanny, mysterious to the point of reverence.

“And?”

Yoon Taehee crossed one leg over the other.

“The man didn’t look all that old. But come to think of it, something about it was strange. That man called the owner of the blood his disciple. But if he really was a teacher, then it doesn’t make much sense, because...”

Rolling his eyes as he retraced the fragment of the past, Saero trailed off.

“A teacher wouldn’t harm his own disciple, would he?”

At Saero’s next words, Yoon Taehee’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean by that?”

“That man stabbed a knife into the child’s side.”

“...What?”

Stabbed him? Taehee asked back, sounding genuinely incredulous.

“And then?”

“The scene cut off right there, of all places, so I couldn’t see what came next.”

Scratching at his neck, Saero answered with obvious regret. If there had been just a little more blood, Saero would have been able to peer much farther into the past than this. It was almost miraculous that this much had been read from so little.

“...A teacher who drives a knife into his disciple.”

Murmuring to himself, Yoon Taehee tapped his fingertips lightly against the desk.

Even after stripping away one layer of the veil he had wanted removed, he was still curious about the boy.

What in the world had happened in that past of his?

For a moment, the idea of making him spill far more blood and digging out the entirety of his history tempted Taehee in earnest.

No. That would not do.

Anything valuable ought to be handled with care. If he intended to keep the boy by his side anyway, he would come to know in time. For the moment, he had planned to keep his knowledge hidden and pretend not to know. There was no need to be hasty.

But there was no need for that anymore.

The sandcastle he had built with such care had collapsed, and the board had been overturned with humiliating ease. Yoon Taehee decided to abandon the long game without a trace of regret. There was no reason left to keep trying to look good, no reason left to circle patiently around the edges.

Now it was time to brandish what he held in his hand without reserve.

Yoon Taehee simply returned, to the owner of that past, the fragment of past he had heard from Saero.

Jaegyeom, forced to hear a piece of his own history recounted through another mouth, wore an expression that revealed nothing. The old thatched house. The teacher who stabbed his disciple. He looked as though he had sunk into thought, and at the same time as though his mind had gone entirely blank.

“So that’s what gave you the nerve to show your face.”

As though he finally understood, Jaegyeom nodded after a long silence.

Yoon Taehee lightly lifted the brim of his cap, as if checking something. The clean line of his face, hidden until now in shadow, came sharply into view.

And then, at some point, a look of admiration touched Taehee’s face.

A terrifying ghostly force had begun leaking out from behind Jaegyeom.

The people inside the bookstore remained absurdly peaceful. That vicious force was aimed at Yoon Taehee alone. Dense, naked hostility, strong enough to make his skin prickle, was leveled straight at his throat.

“Did it disgust you, having someone peek into your past without permission? Don’t misunderstand. I didn’t say it because I wanted to fight. I was just curious about you. And you already know this, but I take a great deal of interest in you.”

A faint smile touched Yoon Taehee’s mouth.

“Don’t pull that bullshit.”

The voice that came out of Jaegyeom’s mouth was cold enough to sting.

“I don’t think it’s such a bad thing if there’s at least one person in this world who knows what you’re really made of. I know you. Maybe no one else does, but I do. And you know me too.”

Jaegyeom glared at him with bright, burning eyes.

The still air tightened in an instant. The classical melody that had been flowing gently through the bookstore was building now into a frenzy. The merciless pounding of the piano drove into Jaegyeom’s ears like thunder.

“I want you to become a Naja.”

It was a proposition both courteous and insolent.

“I’m saying people like us, with nothing left to hide from each other, ought to be able to get along a little more comfortably.”

Yoon Taehee added that with a slight smile.

Just then, the cell phone in his back pocket twitched. Beneath the piano line came the faint vibration of a muted buzz. Without taking his eyes off Jaegyeom, Taehee pulled out the phone. He did not even check the screen before pressing the volume button to silence it.

“It would be much better than going to school like this. You’d be paid every month, of course, and if there’s anything else you want, I’ll give you that too. On paper you’d be my subordinate, but I promise I’d treat you as an equal. What do you think? At this point I’d say it isn’t a bad bargain.”

Yoon Taehee stared at Jaegyeom with unwavering eyes.

The phone, which had just gone still, began vibrating again. As though he could not have cared less about the call, Taehee went on speaking.

“Think it over. A tedious, miserable life ought to have at least one decent way to pass the time.”

At last Jaegyeom let out a dry little laugh.

Having thrown aside the mask and shown his true colors, Yoon Taehee was, quite literally, an impeccably mannered rogue. He was the one with more to regret, yet his tone was absurdly arrogant.

Stuffed. Betrayal. Tedium. Misery.

Every word Yoon Taehee spoke carried the same sickening sensation of a fall.

Jaegyeom withdrew the ghostly force he had been aiming at Taehee’s throat. Then he turned his head and gave the surroundings a brief, casual sweep.

And then—

Bang!

With a deafening crash, ghostly force exploded outward in a perfect ring.

“Ahhh!”

The customers who had been reading screamed and dropped where they stood. In an instant, the front windows of the bookstore shattered with a great burst of sound. The lights hanging from the ceiling burst as well, sending glass raining down in glittering sheets.

As though a storm had torn through, shards of glass flew through the air inside and outside the shop.

While everyone else panicked and scattered out of their wits, only two people remained standing exactly where they were.

Jaegyeom and Yoon Taehee.

A sharp fragment grazed Taehee’s cheek as it passed. Blood welled up from the long, thin cut.

“......”

For a moment, Yoon Taehee simply blinked, dumbfounded into silence.

To think he could even wield ghostly force as raw physical force.

The admiration came involuntarily. What kind of absurd monster—

Yoon Taehee wiped at his cheek with the back of his hand and let out an empty laugh.

At that exact moment, the phone began vibrating again.

Ignoring it, Taehee lowered his eyes to the blood on his hand.

“I’m bleeding again.”

Muttering to himself, he raised his head.

“You don’t do things halfway.”

His face was strangely flushed.

Jaegyeom, expressionless, brushed the shards of glass from the crown of his head.

The peaceful bookstore had already become a wreck. It was a wordless message: if he could not lay hands on Taehee directly with so many eyes around, then he simply would not do it directly.

“I’ve been sparing you, and now you’ve forgotten your place.”

A faint contempt showed in Jaegyeom’s eyes as he said it.

“You think you’ve uncovered some grand secret and now you’re pleased with yourself?”

Yoon Taehee had broken down the door, rudely, and stepped into Jaegyeom’s territory without permission. The past extorted from him lay at Taehee’s feet like a hostage taken in the present.

Jaegyeom had not seen any of this coming. He had been shaken. He had been caught off guard. That much was true.

But only that much.

“Yeah, that’s right. But fucking so what.”

Jaegyeom had no intention whatsoever of playing along in Yoon Taehee’s grip.

“I don’t care what you think you know about me. Maybe you figured if you used that against me, I’d come apart, shaking, and grab your pant leg and beg...”

Become a Naja.

That had been the real point all along.

“Not even if I died and woke up again. I’ll never become a Naja.”

“Why?”

Yoon Taehee asked it seriously.

“Because Naja are filthy swindling bastards by nature.”

Yoon Taehee had said that he alone knew Jaegyeom.

But the more Jaegyeom turned that over in his head, the more an incredulous laugh threatened to break out. It was ridiculous, truly ridiculous. If Yoon Taehee really knew him, he would never have said something as absurd as asking him to become a Naja.

“...You sound like you know Naja well.”

Yoon Taehee’s eyes gleamed, as if he had just heard something entertaining.

“I do.”

Jaegyeom murmured it with a blank face.

“My teacher was a Naja.”