Honbul: Flame of the Soul

Jaegyeom stared straight through the masked man ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) with an expressionless face. The grotesque mask hiding his face was unfamiliar, but the tall frame and the sharply tailored dark gray suit traced out a silhouette that felt strangely familiar. His gaze moved slowly from head to toe, and at some point sank deep.

“So it was you after all.”

Jaegyeom murmured it flatly, with hardly any sign of surprise. At that, one corner of Yoon Taehee’s eye twitched behind the mask. Taehee, who had been standing there with his head bowed in silence, finally let out a deep sigh.

“...Hi.”

The voice that emerged sounded resigned. Taehee raised a hand and took off the mask. Trying to hide it any longer would only make him look ridiculous. Better to reveal himself now, before the misunderstanding piled up any further. Once the absurd traditional mask came away, a face as flawless as a painting was laid bare.

“Huh...?”

At the sight of Chief Yoon’s face for the first time, everyone from the Ritual Implements Department except Lee Youngshin widened their eyes in shock. They had occasionally come face-to-face with him a few times, when luck allowed, but on every one of those occasions he had been wearing a mask. This was the first time they had ever seen his bare face.

“What? You know each other?”

Looking back and forth between Jaegyeom and Taehee, Lee Youngshin asked the question.

“A little...”

Taehee answered vaguely as he swept back the hair flattened by the mask. Youngshin blinked. They knew each other? Then had Taehee called him here? Youngshin flicked another look at the boy in the school uniform and spoke in an easy tone.

“Really? What kind of kid is he?”

With obvious reluctance, Taehee replied,

“The one I told you about before. The one I wanted to bring in as my successor.”

“What? That vicious, feral one you mentioned?”

Youngshin’s eyes flew wide as he looked up at the boy in the school uniform. He had already been curious what kind of person Taehee was putting so much effort into, so this was an unexpected treat.

He’s handsome. Looks prickly as hell, though...

Youngshin narrowed his eyes and gave the boy a thorough inspection. On the surface he looked perfectly ordinary. For someone Taehee coveted as a prospect, his presence felt oddly flat, without anything obviously striking about him.

Then the boy opened his mouth and muttered, almost to himself,

“I had a feeling. I thought maybe you were the one who took him. Even then I still thought, no way. But it was you after all. You were behind this.”

At that, Taehee pinched one eye shut and started to speak.

“No, this wasn’t something I did—”

But whatever explanation he meant to give died before it was finished, and he closed his mouth again. Even to himself, the whole thing was so absurd it bordered on funny. So that was who the “my lord” the ginseng child had been crying for turned out to be. Because it was a way of addressing someone above him, Taehee had thought there was a chance he served someone.

But for that to be a human being...

I never imagined it would be you.

Jaegyeom was clearly under the impression that this entire kidnapping farce had been Taehee’s doing. From the outside, it looked exactly that way. Stroking at his eyebrow, Taehee let out a self-mocking sigh. What a mess. He had thought things between them were already bad enough. At this point, though, there was no denying that they were only getting worse, with no end in sight.

“You probably won’t believe me, but it’s true. This isn’t something I did—”

“No. This is better.”

Jaegyeom suddenly nodded to himself, as if reaching a conclusion.

“I had something I wanted to say anyway.”

So that was it. In front of him, Taehee had talked about protecting Jeongju, about keeping him safe, about standing on the same side, about using him if he wanted. He had dressed it all up in persuasion. But behind the scenes he had been pulling something like this.

This time, it was Mesan. And now he was trying to wriggle out of it, pretending he had nothing to do with any of it. The sight invited ridicule. He had even hidden his face and planned it carefully. Then again, something about it had felt off. If Taehee knew about Jeongju, then it would only make sense that he knew about Mesan too.

He had deliberately kept Jaegyeom’s attention fixed on Jeongju and nothing else, keeping him off balance that way. He had meant to use Jaegyeom in one way, while at the same time secretly taking Mesan away behind his back to use him separately. Then he would have acted as though it had nothing to do with him, playing dumb the entire time.

“Everyone here is a Naja, just like you, right?”

Taehee did not answer. He only stared at Jaegyeom with a look that seemed strangely troubled. Jaegyeom gave a small nod. That was answer enough.

At that point, Youngshin suddenly cut in with a frown.

“Hey, Taehee. I don’t know what you two are talking about, but did you call him here? If you’ve got business with him, then go meet him somewhere else. What are you doing right now? This is no time to be standing around all relaxed—”

Jaegyeom cut him off.

“You asked me to become a Naja. I thought about it.”

There was no subject attached to the sentence, but Taehee knew perfectly well that Jaegyeom was speaking to him. Their eyes locked without the slightest gap between them.

“I’m going to talk now, so you’d better listen too.”

Jaegyeom, who had been standing atop the tree, dropped lightly to the ground. He swept his gaze over the Naja one by one, then said in an even voice,

“My name is Kim Jaegyeom. I’ve never counted properly, so I don’t know exactly how old I am, but I’ve lived around two hundred years. I don’t die, and I don’t age.”

At that instant, Taehee’s face went rigid.

“......”

“......”

“......”

Every eye turned to Jaegyeom at once. Mesan stood there with his mouth hanging open. His lord looked perfectly calm. He did not even seem angry. He looked exactly as he always did.

“A man I once made my teacher seems to have put some kind of curse on me, but I don’t know exactly why or how it works either.”

What?

Youngshin let out a disbelieving laugh before he could stop himself.

“...Hey, what is this kid talking about all of a sudden? What the hell is he saying?”

At a glance, he looked like a boy with nothing particularly unusual about him. His presence was flat and quiet too. And yet this perfectly ordinary-looking high school student was calmly reeling off things too absurd to believe. The Naja, who had been too busy gawking at Chief Yoon’s face to think straight, now looked at one another with matching expressions of disbelief.

Jaegyeom continued without wavering.

“I’m in school right now, and a guy named Jeongju is pretending to be my maternal uncle. For the record, Jeongju is a celebrity, and his real identity is one of the Fox Clan. He’s probably lived over a hundred years too, more or less. And I don’t know exactly how he did it, but he secretly forged and fabricated enough things that both of us have been living as if we were ordinary people.”

“......”

“......”

“......”

This time, the laughter vanished from the Naja’s faces.

“What? What did he just—what did he just say...?”

“W-wait. Who’s one of the Fox Clan?”

Fox Clan?

Taehee’s eyes widened.

“And that one’s named Mesan. He’s lived with me for a long time. You probably already know the rough outline, but even if he looks like a little kid, inside he’s a wild ginseng that’s aged for several hundred years.”

Mesan looked up at Jaegyeom, turning deathly pale.

“M-my lord! W-why would you...?”

At that, the Naja—still reeling from the boy’s words—turned their heads and stared at the little master. He had definitely just called him my lord. It was the title the little master had been crying out the whole time. Which meant every unbelievable thing that had come out of the boy’s mouth until now had just been proven true.

“Are you insane?”

After standing there blank for a moment, Taehee finally snapped. The unexpected fact that Jaegyeom and the ginseng child were connected was already more than enough to give him a headache.

He had warned him clearly: a Naja would never let an opportunity slip by. Once they got hold of something on him, it was over. He had said that less than half a day ago. And that much, at least, had been the truth.

At a time like this, when Jaegyeom should have been hiding his identity more tightly than ever, he had walked out and revealed it himself. And not in front of just anyone, but in front of a group of Naja.

Taehee could not understand what Jaegyeom thought he was doing. His face looked calm, but in reality he had to be cornered badly enough to lose all rational judgment. If that were not the case, there was no way he would make a self-destructive blunder this stupid.

Taehee had just cast a sideways glance at the other Naja when—

“If someone gets hold of your weakness, then all you have to do is throw that weakness away.”

“You’re not the only one who knows what I am anymore. From this moment on, there’s no secret left for me to protect.”

Taehee, who had been about to ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, fell silent instead. A single thought flashed through him and caught him by the ankle.

No way...

The moment his gaze wavered—

“Rather than let someone else ruin me, I’ll ruin it with my own hands. And the reverse goes too. Instead of asking a bastard like you to protect me, I’ll do it myself. Block my way, follow behind me, do whatever you want. I’ll do whatever I feel like too.”

That deep, sunken gaze bored straight through him.

“Understood?”

Jaegyeom added, his voice viciously cold,

“With that, your threat is void, you fucking bastard.”

Taehee’s face stiffened in a strange way. It felt like he had just been struck in the head. A current seemed to race through him from top to bottom. Some sensation he could not even locate the beginning of—something vile and thrilling—wrapped itself around his entire body.