Honbul: Flame of the Soul

At that moment, Jaegyeom suddenly knitted his brows and let out a groan. Yoon Taehee snatched his hand away at once and stepped back. His heart began pounding all of a sudden, as though someone had caught him in the act.

I heard he was unconscious...

He had been staring down at the boy’s face in the dim dark when those closed lips moved, and a faint voice slipped out between them like sleep talk.

“No, where are you going...”

Taehee listened without a sound.

“I’m sorry... I was wrong...”

The face that had been still twisted in an instant.

Jaegyeom began to whimper. Before anyone knew it, cold sweat had dampened his smooth forehead. Taehee narrowed his eyes at that incomprehensible pleading. Was he dreaming? What kind of dream could make him like this?

“Don’t go. Why. Why are you doing this...”

Jaegyeom slowly lifted an arm. As though he were trying to catch hold of something, his hand groped helplessly through the air, and the sight of it looked unbearably desperate, unbearably painful. In the grip of sleep, Jaegyeom let out a small, broken sob.

“......”

After watching him in silence, Yoon Taehee slowly reached out. His cool, broad palm covered Jaegyeom’s damp forehead.

At once, Jaegyeom’s groaning arm drifted back down. He mumbled something impossible to make out, and the face that had been drawn tight little by little eased.

“A dream...”

Only after a long while did Yoon Taehee take his hand away. Warm moisture clung to his palm. It was a strange warmth, one that made his heart churn. Something he had tucked away in his blazer pocket came to mind.

A nightmare. A nightmare, of all things. How fitting...

Yoon Taehee looked down at the palm that had touched the boy’s forehead for a moment. Then his gaze dropped to the bracelet hanging around his wrist. In the dim darkness, the black pearls glimmered faintly. After a brief pause in thought, he slipped the bracelet into his hand.

Closing his eyes, Yoon Taehee began quietly counting the lustrous black pearls. He ran his fingers over each bead strung onto the bracelet in turn, and at one point brought it to his lips and whispered softly,

“Black Emperor.”

At Yoon Taehee’s call, a faint breeze slipped into the tightly sealed room out of nowhere. The curtain stirred, and then from the shadow beneath it, a vague shape slowly rose.

The spirit called Black Emperor wore robes so white they were almost blinding, the complete opposite of his name. The pale moonlight spilling in through the window washed softly over those white robes.

“You called for me, Master Taehee.”

Black Emperor sank to one knee and bowed his head. Yoon Taehee raised an index finger near his lips. Hush.

Then he crooked his finger. Come here.

Black Emperor rose at once. He had killed his presence so completely that not even a footstep could be heard. Yoon Taehee did not waste words before getting to the point.

“Take the nightmare away.”

Black Emperor, who had been standing with his head respectfully lowered, lifted his eyes. Yoon Taehee had not even said who, but his gaze turned straight toward the bed.

The boy Yoon Taehee had soothed with his touch was already whimpering again, wandering through sleep.

Black Emperor was a spirit that lived off shadows, and it possessed the power to knead dreams into whatever shape it pleased.

Dreams, after all, were the shadows of reality.

By day, it moved from place to place in the form of a shadow; once darkness fell and night took over, it liked to come and go through the dreams of others, peering in, eavesdropping, and watching.

Most ghosts could appear in human dreams.

But Black Emperor did not stop at merely appearing. It could create dreams as it wished, or manipulate them however it pleased.

When they had once spirited away the soul of the young master of Jugyeong Construction, it had also been because of Black Emperor’s ability that his father was made to dream an ominous, suggestive dream, and clues were deliberately fed to the Naja of the Covert Division.

At Yoon Taehee’s order, Black Emperor bowed its head and said, “Yes.”

Compared to Saero or Paehyeon, Black Emperor was remarkably taciturn. Even when Yoon Taehee summoned it, it never asked why. Even when Paehyeon and Saero bared their teeth at one another and fought, it always kept silent and stood aside as a bystander.

Likewise, it did not ask who this boy was, or why Yoon Taehee wished to take away his nightmare, or any of the other questions most would have asked.

It simply carried out what it was told.

“Let him see only good things. Let him hear only good things.”

Using his fingertips, Yoon Taehee brushed back the boy’s bangs, damp with sweat and clinging to his forehead, as though smoothing them into place. Then he gazed at the boy for a long moment.

“At least while his eyes are closed.”

When he had finished speaking, Yoon Taehee turned away without hesitation.

*****

Jaegyeom opened his eyes four days later.

“Home.”

After staring blankly at the familiar ceiling, Jaegyeom abruptly sat bolt upright. The bed swayed from the force of it.

He sat still for a moment, then raised a hand and scratched at his head.

Whenever he dreamed Bima’s nightmares, his mind would be hazy and his body would feel heavy.

But for some reason, this time his head was clear and his body felt refreshed.

As though he had finally shaken off a ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ fever he had suffered for a long, long time.

Am I imagining it?

When he looked out the window, the sun was sinking low along the mountainside. Jaegyeom ran a hand over his body. There was not a single place that hurt. He was completely fine.

So that night, I went berserk. And Jeongju came...

Calmly retracing his memory, Jaegyeom looked around the room with a dazed expression.

Then his gaze landed on the nightstand beside the head of the bed. Next to the lamp sat some kind of object. He had never seen it before.

“What’s this?”

Jaegyeom reached out and picked it up.

Inside a clear half-dome of glass sat a tiny cabin. When he turned it this way and that, snow suddenly began to whirl down inside the dome.

His eyes widened at the strange thing, unlike anything he had ever seen.

Then he noticed a small winding key jutting out near the base.

What now?

Jaegyeom tugged on the key.

Ding-ding, ding-ding.

A melody suddenly rang out.

Startled, Jaegyeom dropped the music box onto the bed. Buried in the blankets, it kept on playing, and the thick snowflakes swirling around the tiny cabin showed no sign of stopping. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

He was just picking the music box back up, one hand pressed to his startled chest, when—

There came a loud crash from outside the door, and the closed bedroom door flew wide open.

Jaegyeom slowly lifted his head.

Mesan stood there staring at him with his mouth hanging open.

Beside him, Jeongju was wearing an apron, and in one hand he was inexplicably holding a single green onion.

“......”

“......”

“......”

All three of them stared at one another in silence.

From outside the room came the gentle bubbling sound of something boiling on the stove, mixing oddly with the sweet melody of the music box.

Something smelled delicious.

At last, the green onion slipped from Jeongju’s hand and dropped to the floor.

“Jaegyeom!”

“My lord!”

Jeongju and Mesan screamed and ran at him.

Arms flung wide as if diving, they threw themselves at Jaegyeom where he sat on the bed and clung to him all at once. The bed nearly gave way under them.

Jaegyeom frowned and tried to shove them off, but it was useless.

“Jaegyeom, who am I? Hm? Do you know me?”

“My, my lord, I waited, ugh, waaah, sob, sob...”

In the end, Jaegyeom snapped.

“Will you let go? Get off me.”

But Jeongju and Mesan were not even slightly discouraged by his irritation. If anything, they hugged him even harder.

It was enough to bring tears to their eyes with relief.

He was exactly the same prickly person he always was.

He had really woken up.

At last, everything felt as though it had returned to where it belonged.

“My lord! Are you feeling more clear-headed now?”

“Jaegyeom. How’s your body? Hm?”

Jaegyeom rubbed at his eyes with a sullen look.

“Why are you both acting like this all of a sudden?”

Just then, something in the kitchen sounded as though it was boiling over.

Jeongju, who had been sprawled across the bed, finally came to his senses and sprang up in a panic before dashing out to the kitchen.

“Oh no!”

Using that chance, Jaegyeom slowly slipped out of bed.

The moment his feet touched the floor, the world finally felt real.

“My lord, you’re really all right, aren’t you? Right?”

Sniffling, Mesan clung to Jaegyeom around the waist.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m perfectly okay.”

Jaegyeom nodded, then asked,

“How many days was I out?”

“Today makes five.”

“It’s only been five days, and you’re making this much fuss...”

Jaegyeom muttered awkwardly.

He had thought it had been at least a month.

It was a relief he had woken earlier than expected.

If it had taken even a little longer, the thing that collapsed might not have been the bed, but the whole house.

Five days, that was all.

What was there to be this happy about...?

Something kept trying to stir inside him for no reason, so Jaegyeom quickly changed the subject.

“But what is this?”

He pointed at the music box he had set back on the nightstand.

“Ah! That...”

Mesan, who had been rubbing his cheek against Jaegyeom’s side while clinging to his waist, froze and lifted his head.

Hesitating, he stole a glance at Jaegyeom’s face, then another toward the kitchen where Jeongju had gone.

“That, that person left it.”

A few days ago, Jeongju had scolded Mesan so severely he nearly cried himself dry.

Because he had let that person into the house without permission.

When Jeongju came back from outside and learned that a Naja had visited while he was gone, he had been furious.

“You opened the door for him?!”

Mesan had protested that it was unfair, that the man was not a bad person and had done nothing before leaving, but he had still been made to stand with his hands raised for an hour.

“After everything that happened, you still haven’t learned your lesson!”

Jeongju had lectured him all night long, saying he must never trust anyone except Jaegyeom and Jeongju, and told him to throw away the thing the unwelcome guest had left behind.

But Mesan had not been able to do it.

Because he had been asked to make sure it was delivered.

Jaegyeom frowned faintly at the corners of his eyes and asked,

“That person? Who?”

As promised, the uninvited guest had left the room after only a moment.

Then he had taken something out of his blazer pocket—something he had clearly brought in advance—and handed it to Mesan.

Mesan had asked what it was, and the unwelcome guest had said,

“If you tell him it’s a gift for collecting stickers, he’ll understand.”

Mesan repeated the words exactly.

“He, he said it was a gift for collecting stickers.”

Jaegyeom’s face stiffened just a little.

“......”

He looked down at the music box in silence, then touched the winding key again, just as he had before.

At once the melody, which had stopped, began to play again.

He held it in one hand and gave it a light shake, and once more the snow began falling in flurries.

It was a song strange enough to make his heart settle just from listening to it.

After standing still for a while with his ears tuned to the music, Jaegyeom finally asked,

“What song is this?”

Mesan rolled his eyes as he tried to remember.

The man had explained it already.

What had he said again...?

Mesan squeezed his brain for the answer with all his might, and then suddenly his eyes lit up and he jumped.

“!”

“What? What kind of dream?”

“He said it was .”

Jaegyeom’s expression turned peculiar.

“......”

At some point the melody came to an end.

Jaegyeom stared wordlessly at the tiny cabin where snow was falling in a flurry, then touched the winding key once more.

Ding-ding.

The halted music began again.

Only after a long moment did Jaegyeom mutter,

“Crazy bastard.”