Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“Enough. Just tell me what you want.”

Jaegyeom shot back, forcing down his irritation.

“Is the move coming along?”

With an expressionless face, Jaegyeom shot Yoon Taehee a sideways glare. He had never mentioned it, yet Taehee had already read his next move. The bastard really was quick on the uptake. He had already grasped, as a matter of course, that Jaegyeom would have to relocate, and that moving was the only way he would be safe.

“You probably already heard it from the little master, but those Naja from that day are going to stay quiet for a while. Their memories are definitely gone. I sounded them out just in case, and nobody remembers you. Nothing you said that day is going to leak out either.”

Team 1 of the Ritual Implements Department was still in the treatment room at headquarters, getting cleansing around the clock. They were throwing themselves into recovery with a never-say-die spirit, telling themselves they would get their bodies back in shape and go after the ginseng child again. But by then, the trail would already be cold.

Jaegyeom answered flatly.

“Why are you telling me that?”

Taehee was a Naja himself, yet he referred to them as “those Naja,” as though keeping himself at arm’s length. Nobody had asked him to, but he had taken it upon himself to play spy and kindly keep track of what the others were doing.

“No reason. I’m just telling you your secrets are safe, so you can relax.”

“I’m asking what you want in return for telling me that.”

Jaegyeom fixed him with a slanted stare. Information about a situation he had no way of seeing for himself was useful, obviously. But taking Taehee at his word and letting his guard down would have been idiotic. Jaegyeom still did not trust him.

“I was only trying to ease your mind, purely out of kindness...”

Resting his chin at an angle on one hand, Taehee went on.

“I didn’t have any other motive. Why? Don’t trust me?”

“Put yourself in my place. Would you trust you?”

“Me? Of course I’d trust me. I’d have to.”

When Taehee answered with a smile, Jaegyeom lifted his eyes sharply.

“I told you this morning. Just because I let you off once doesn’t mean everything you did magically never happened. Don’t think you can smooth this over and move on.”

His voice drew a cold line between them. They might be sitting across from each other now, but that did not mean any new trust had sprung up between them. Just because he was willing to speak to him did not mean Taehee got to mistake that for being on the same side. Jaegyeom had no intention of indulging his pathetic act of playing ally.

“You lied to me from the start, and now you expect me to trust you? I don’t even know what gutter you crawled out of, and I’m supposed to believe you just because you helped Mesan once?”

When Jaegyeom snapped that out, Taehee accepted it surprisingly easily.

“Ah. Right. I guess you don’t have enough information.”

As if it had only just occurred to him, Taehee straightened up. Then he crossed his long legs and sank into thought. He went quiet for a moment, head lowered, idly swinging one foot. Then, as if after careful consideration, he began to speak in an orderly tone.

“My name is Yoon Taehee. On paper, I’m twenty-six. I’m with Team 1 of the Spirit Suppression Unit at the Office of Narye. My rank is chief Naja. I own my place, I drive a sedan, and my average annual pay comes out to around two hundred million won, once you add the eighty-million-won base salary, hazard pay, special activity funds, performance bonuses, and everything else. Mm. And I don’t have any family.”

“......”

What was this all of a sudden? Sedan, bonuses, salary? The personal profile Taehee rattled off was almost incomprehensible to Jaegyeom. Breaking the brief silence, Taehee tilted his head.

“Want my height and weight too?”

As if.

“Then what else? Anything you want to know?”

Forget it. Jaegyeom shut his mouth and turned his head away. The sharp tension and wariness he had been holding onto evaporated in an instant. Taehee let out a short laugh and said,

“Nothing? Then it’s my turn now.”

“What.”

“You said you weren’t curious about me.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve got a lot I’m curious about when it comes to you.”

Before Jaegyeom could say anything, the question came at once.

“I didn’t get blighted. You know that?”

As he asked, Taehee jerked his chin at his own right shoulder, the one that had been pierced by the arrow. Jaegyeom paused and stared straight at him. He already knew. Mesan had told him that the skin, which should have blackened where the arrow struck, had remained clean.

“I know.”

Jaegyeom’s face stayed dull and unbothered.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Me neither.”

Jaegyeom answered sullenly.

“You’re the one who shot the arrow. How could you not know?”

“I really don’t know. Don’t make me say it twice.”

The answer was so cold and uncooperative that it barely felt sincere. Taehee’s brow twisted. Lost in thought, he tapped the table lightly with his fingertips. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. After hesitating for a while, as if clinging to a slim possibility, he finally asked:

“Did you go easy on me?”

There was a strange note of expectation in the question.

“No. I shot to kill.”

The boy answered blankly, as if asking what kind of nonsense that was.

“I was aiming for your forehead, but you moved a step.”

“......”

“If you’re that curious, want to get hit one more time? Just say the word. I’ll ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) shoot you again anytime.”

“......”

This time, there was a different kind of expectation in Jaegyeom’s eyes.

No, there’s really no need to go that far... Taehee’s face turned awkward. Jaegyeom was more scientifically minded than he looked. Strictly in the spirit of experimentation, of course.

“Well? Want to try it?”

When Jaegyeom pressed him for an answer, Taehee turned his gaze away and once again pretended to check the time. The ticking of the second hand sounded strangely loud. He flexed one foot and quietly smoothed the end of one eyebrow.

“Then where did you get that bow?”

Before the silence could deepen any further, Taehee changed the subject.

“No matter how you look at it, that thing wasn’t made to be in human hands.”

The moment the subject changed, Jaegyeom’s edge visibly dulled. The mood in the library cooled the instant Taehee asked about the bow’s origin. Taehee watched him closely.

That crude wooden bow stave he had pulled out by splitting open his own arm. At first Taehee had thought he was dragging out bone and nearly jumped out of his skin. And the arrows that had formed by themselves from blood, the black blight spreading through the flesh where the arrowheads sank in like ink soaking into paper—even seeing it with his own eyes, it had been hard to believe.

“It was my teacher’s bow.”

Taehee’s eyes widened slightly at the answer that came from Jaegyeom’s mouth. He had asked the question, yes, but he had not actually expected Jaegyeom to answer so readily. And yet the answer came without much resistance, and the truth behind the bow was startling.

“Your teacher... wasn’t human?”

Leaning forward, Taehee asked the question.

“No. Human, definitely.”

Jaegyeom slowly shook his head.

“Then how did your teacher get a bow like that?”

“He said it was a gift.”

Taehee frowned slightly around the eyes.

“A gift... from who?”

“I don’t know the details either. He never told me.”

Jaegyeom added the words in a dry, flat tone.

“And later, he passed it down to me.”

“Then why did you keep it inside your arm?”

“Because, like you said, it’s not something human hands should be holding.”

He had wanted to throw away every trace connected to his teacher. But he had not been able to get rid of the bow because it was too dangerous. To blight something was the domain of divine punishment—in other words, an authority no human being should possess. This bow was not something just anyone could handle. If it fell into someone else’s hands, it would inevitably bring disaster.

It would have been best to destroy it, but the bow his teacher had left him—though slender for an ordinary stave—would not break no matter how hard he tried, and it came out unscathed even when he threw it into fire. There had been no way to destroy it. He could not simply store it anywhere, and it was not something he had any reason to use in ordinary life. At that point, only one option had remained.

“So it’s fine as long as it’s in your hands?”

Resting his chin on his hand, Taehee asked.

“Well, either way, I’m this bow’s owner.”

“Then where is your teacher now?”

The blankness drained from Jaegyeom’s face in an instant, replaced by something cold.

“What a stupid question.”

A short laugh escaped Taehee at that answer.

“If your teacher had been an ordinary person, then sure, asking where he is would be an idiotic question. But you said he cursed you. If it’s someone who left his own disciple behind in this world unable to die and unable to age, then I’d say it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask.”

Asking after the whereabouts of someone who had lived centuries ago was foolish. But the person in question was the boy’s teacher. If he had somehow remained alive all this time, that would not have been the strangest thing in the world. By any normal standard it was impossible, but the living proof was sitting right in front of him.

“And if he was your teacher of all people, then he must have been a powerful gifted. Which means even if he did die, there’s still a chance he became a spirit.”

It was a rational, incisive observation. Jaegyeom stared straight at him.

“You... really are smart.”

Taehee smiled brightly and gave a little scrunch of his nose.

“I hear that a lot.”

“......”

Jaegyeom shot him a dubious look, then finally spoke.

“My teacher is dead.”

“Dead?”

“He never became a spirit either.” 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

“You’re sure? How do you know?”

Jaegyeom answered expressionlessly.

“Because I killed him myself.”

Taehee stilled for a beat, then stared at Jaegyeom with an odd look in his eyes.

I killed him myself? So that means he knows because he saw it happen with his own eyes...

It was a long moment later that an attractive smile slowly spread across Taehee’s face.

“As expected. You really are my lord.”