Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Sparks drifted through the murky night sky like stars driven into it.

The isolated thatched house deep in the mountains was wrapped in violent flames. The pillar of fire swallowing it rose as though it might reach the sky. Within the mountain slope drowned in darkness, only the ground around the house was bright as day.

The man standing in the yard, staring absently at the burning house, lowered his head.

A boy with a young face lay collapsed on the dirt. The blood spilling from his body had pooled into a great dark puddle. In the hot wind, the black robe the man wore rippled and snapped.

“If it were not for me, your life would have ended long ago.”

The man’s gentle voice scattered softly over the crown of the boy’s head.

The boy writhed with a groan full of pain. His hand had gone white from clenching the dirt so hard it seemed he meant to crush it. He tried to look up at the man standing before him, but the blood running down from his forehead blurred his vision. The man looked as though he might be smiling. Or as though he might be crying.

“You should’ve just killed me back then....”

The boy ground his round forehead mercilessly into the dirt.

“I would have died quietly anyway. I could have!”

The anguished roar flew weakly toward the man.

“It is a life I took in. Which means I am the master of your life.”

The man answered in an untroubled voice.

“All living things die when their time comes. But to kill you outright felt too wasteful. So I decided to leave you behind in this world as a mark that can never be erased. You will become the proof that I once existed in this world.”

Blood poured from the wound in his side where his teacher’s hand had pierced him. Warmth fled his entire body. Fierce cold entered his cooling flesh, and all four limbs trembled violently. The boy forced strength into eyes that kept trying to close. His gaze would not stay up. Death, now close before him, stood with both arms outstretched.

“No one will be able to kill you. You as well, of course. Even if you wish for death, you will not be able to die. In this mortal world, you alone will never vanish. I wonder very much whether time will devour you, or whether you will devour time.”

The man laid the black robe over the boy, who was trembling like an aspen leaf.

Ah. Warm.

Just like that first time.

The vacant thought that slipped into his flickering consciousness filled the boy with sorrow. The man’s clothing, which had once felt so impossibly spacious, now wrapped around his body with only a little room to spare. The blood that had pooled like water seeped into the black robe. The thatched house where the man and the boy had spent the years together quickly turned to ruin in the flames.

“Gyeom, where did your life first go wrong?”

The boy only moved his lips blankly.

From... the moment... I met you....

The voice he forced out never became words. It slipped free like breath. Yet the man somehow understood him. He nodded once, then drove the final nail in with a voice so kind it was almost cruel.

“That’s right. Your life went wrong because you met me.”

The boy’s eyes, which had been chasing the sparks drifting like flower pollen before him, slowly lost their focus. The man turned his back. At the sight of those wide, solid shoulders, the boy’s chin began to tremble. All strength drained from his body.

“My poor disciple, do try to defy your fate.”

Tears ran from the boy’s eyes.

*****

“Precious child, would you come with me?”

Jaegyeom remembered with perfect clarity the moment the man had held out his hand.

There was no possibility of forgetting it. That hand had been the first kindness Jaegyeom had ever been offered in his life, at a time when he believed without doubt that the world was malicious.

The man had called him precious. And if the man said so, then it was so. If he said Jaegyeom was precious, then precious was what he felt. Jaegyeom, who had been no better than a roadside stone, had gone willingly into the man’s arms. Ghosts, humans, life, death. In the man’s warm embrace, Jaegyeom had slowly begun to understand the great order of this world, one piece at a time.

The man also taught him many other things he would need in order to live as one of the gifted. Starting with how to tell ghosts apart, he trained Jaegyeom every day so that a child still young and weak could protect himself in the space between ghosts and humans. The gentle man was, at times, a strict teacher.

Jaegyeom was the sort of child who understood ten things once he learned one. Whatever the man taught him, he never once let it slip by. If the man drew a single talisman for him, Jaegyeom grasped at once the pattern written into it and made it his own in no time. He truly was a vessel worthy of the name gifted.

And yet even Jaegyeom had one thing he lacked.

He was unusually poor at handling ghostly force.

He had been born with an exceptional quantity of it, but the problem was that it flowed out of him regardless of his will. So the man made him begin by learning how to control it.

“To let your ghostly force show is no different from announcing what you are to the whole world.”

Only then did Jaegyeom understand why ghosts had always lingered around him. They had known he was gifted because of the ghostly force that kept leaking out on its own. On the day they first met, the man had recognized Jaegyeom at a glance for the very same reason—that wild, unruly ghostly force rampaging in all directions.

Learning to control it was not easy. Whenever he was happy or angry, the force leaped out with the turbulence of his emotions, and every time it happened, the man’s face went frighteningly cold. If they were somewhere crowded, he was colder still. That particular look was enough to make Jaegyeom’s heart drop.

“Gyeom, did I not tell you to hide your force?”

“I’m trying. It just doesn’t work the way I want it to.”

Hurt and sullen, Jaegyeom snapped back with a sour face.

“Rein it in quickly, before something picks up our trail.”

“They’d only be stray ghosts anyway. Why can’t you just drive them off for me?”

The man was very strong. Which meant he clearly could. If a ghost noticed what Jaegyeom was and came clinging to him, then the man only had to drive it off. It would be troublesome in its own way, perhaps, but compared to the power the man possessed, any evil ghost at all would be no more than a minor nuisance.

“Gyeom.”

The man, who had been silent for a moment, spoke slowly.

“It isn’t ghosts I’m worried about.”

“What?” 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

Wasn’t that the reason? Jaegyeom was still wearing a puzzled expression when—

“Gyeom, do you dislike ghosts?”

The question came out of nowhere.

“Why are you asking that all of a sudden? I mean....”

Of course he disliked them. Ghosts were troublesome things that played tricks whenever they could and lashed out with malice. They hovered nearby, searching for cracks in human beings, and the moment they sensed a heart grown weak or vulnerable, they tried to meddle. Jaegyeom knew that very well.

“Then do you like humans?”

Jaegyeom gave a slight nod.

“Then are ghosts evil and humans good?”

“Well, humans are obviously better than ghosts.”

“Do you truly think so?”

Ghosts were uncanny and alien from the moment they existed. For that reason, it was only natural for a human being to feel an instinctive aversion toward them first. But the man did not seem to think so.

“It depends on the human, just as it depends on the ghost.”

The man murmured the words low.

“Ghosts strike when your guard is down. Humans make you lower it.”

“What do you mean, make you lower it?”

“There are humans in this world more vicious and crooked than ghosts.”

“...Who?”

The man bent down to bring himself level with Jaegyeom’s eyes.

“Naja.”

A Naja? Jaegyeom stared blankly.

“A Naja is one of the gifted who belongs to the Office of Narye. And only those among the ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) gifted who are truly strong and capable can become one. They were originally sacred beings, called by the state to protect the palace from ghosts and guard humankind, but....”

Trailing off, the man looked up at the sky for a moment.

“The sense of duty to protect this country and its people turned the Naja into monsters. They committed every kind of evil while believing what they did was righteous and good. If it serves their purpose, they do not care what means they use. They are merciless. Cruel. A Naja is the sort of human who would offer even his own child as a sacrifice.”

His voice had sunk deep and heavy.

“So you must never let yourself catch a Naja’s eye. If you ever meet one, you must run. Do you understand? Gyeom, remember my words. And if, by some chance, a time comes when you cannot run....”

The man stopped there and looked quietly at Jaegyeom.

Jaegyeom had been about to ask what any of that had to do with him. But under the weight of the man’s gaze, he found himself falling silent instead. He did not know why, exactly. It only felt as though he ought to.

“In that case....”

The man hesitated for a long time before speaking again.

“Never forgive them.”

His voice seemed to tremble just slightly as he said it.

*****

The man had asked whether he liked humans.

He had.

The man had told him that there were humans worse than ghosts, that he must never trust human beings too easily, but Jaegyeom had been helpless to do anything except feel affection for them. The reason was simple.

Because the man was human.

Before he met him, Jaegyeom had hated humans and ghosts alike. But once he came to know the man, he had, as naturally as breathing, begun to like human beings.

He had liked them.

“Because my teacher was a Naja.”

But not anymore.

“So I hate Naja. Very much.”

At the flat words that slipped from Jaegyeom’s mouth, Yoon Taehee’s eyes slowly widened.

He had assumed there had to be a story behind that hostility the moment Jaegyeom first showed open hatred toward the Naja. But a teacher who had betrayed him and turned out to be one—he had not expected that. Taehee’s face showed surprise for a moment, then turned properly grave. Soon he narrowed his eyes and asked,

“Who? What was his name?”

It was a question born of pure curiosity. Judging by the period, the man had to have been one of the earlier Naja, from before the old Office of Narye was dismantled. It might even be a name Taehee had heard before. And even if it were not, there would still be records left in the Office archives.

“......”

Taehee studied Jaegyeom’s face with relentless attention. Jaegyeom moved his lips as if to say something, then closed them again. In the end, the choice he made was silence.

Did he hate the thought of speaking the name aloud?

When no answer came back no matter how long he waited, Yoon Taehee gave a small nod, as though to say that was enough of that.

“All right. Well, I understand one thing clearly enough for now. Your teacher was a son of a bitch. But....”

He let the words hang for a moment and idly touched the brim of his cap.

“Even so, it stings a little to be lumped together with him. It feels unfair, being hated on account of some former Naja I’ve never even seen. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t think quite so badly of me.”

A cold, contemptuous smile settled over Jaegyeom’s expressionless face.