Honbul: Flame of the Soul

“So I’ll pass this down to my disciple who takes after me.”

The boy flinched in surprise, his eyes going round.

“You managed to cut the tie from my robe. I’ll give it to you as your reward.”

“Really? You said it was something good. I can have it?”

Smiling, Myojeong nodded.

“It’s rather a difficult thing to handle, but I’ll teach you little by little.”

Wow!

Beaming, the boy gripped the bow stave in both hands and lifted it high over his head. This was his now. The bow Myojeong had given him. The wooden stave was a little long for a boy who still had growing left to do, but he was delighted all the same. It did not matter if he was poor with a sword. He took after his teacher, so he would grow stronger with this bow.

“Well, this is good. I may be good with a sword, but I’m hopeless with a bow. Your teacher, though, is excellent with both. Work hard and learn. There’s nothing Myojeong can’t do.”

Hwirim clapped the boy on the shoulder in encouragement.

“All right, I get it.”

The boy answered with a grin, and Hwirim shot back in disbelief,

“I knew that before you did.”

Myojeong turned his head and stared at Hwirim. A breeze that had come from far away in the mountains ruffled through Hwirim’s short hair and passed on.

“......”

After a brief silence, Myojeong took an empty canteen from his pack.

“Jaegyeom. Would you go to the spring and fetch us some drinking water?”

He asked it as calmly as if it were nothing.

“Huh? Oh. Okay.”

Just as the boy nodded and reached out to take the canteen, Hwirim started rummaging through the small pouch hanging at his waist to stop him. There was still water left in the canteen he had brought with him. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

“Wait, here—”

The moment Hwirim started to speak, Myojeong, standing behind him, /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ seized his sleeve and gave it a sharp tug. Hwirim turned back with a puzzled look. Myojeong opened and closed his eyes quickly, then gave the faintest shake of his head.

“Ah.”

Hwirim shut his mouth.

Silently, Myojeong and Hwirim watched the boy’s back as he hurried away with the canteen in hand. There was a spring nearby, so he would not be gone long. At last, his retreating figure shrank until it was too small to make out. Glancing around once, Myojeong moved behind a thick stand of trees. Hwirim followed with an easy sway.

“Myojeong. It seems you’ve been getting along with the child very well.”

Hwirim spoke in a bright voice. The boy he had only heard about was prickly by nature and stubborn to the bone. When Hwirim had leveled a sword at him, the boy had exploded into a stream of furious curses, startling him. How could someone like that have grown up under gentle Myojeong... He had not looked like the sort of child who would take to anyone easily, and yet he followed Myojeong exceptionally well.

“Did you give him his name yourself?”

“I did. I named him Jaegyeom.”

As some memory came to him, a soft smile spread across Myojeong’s face.

“One day he demanded to know why he didn’t have a family name. He kept pestering me, saying he wanted one too, so I told him to go out to the roadside and, if he found a family name he liked, he could pick it up and attach it to himself. He said he liked Kim, and from that day on he started calling himself Kim Jaegyeom.”

The moment he heard that, Hwirim burst into loud laughter.

“How adorable.”

A little vicious, a little wild, yes... but the child must have originally been clear-hearted and warm by nature. Now that he had seen him with his own eyes, Hwirim thought he could understand why Myojeong had grown so deeply attached to the boy.

“What do you intend to do with that child from here on out?”

After laughing for a good while, Hwirim let the mirth fade from his face and asked.

“......”

Myojeong gave no answer at all. Hwirim’s question fell, and a heavy silence settled between them. Looking down at him with darkened eyes, Myojeong finally spoke in a quiet voice.

“You truly are heartless. Aren’t you.”

At those words, Hwirim only blinked at him blankly.

“As long as you know. You disappeared like that six years ago without even looking back...”

Myojeong stretched his head slightly and cast a sidelong glance in the direction where the boy had vanished, then lowered his gaze to Hwirim standing before him. It was their first meeting in years. The first since the Office of Narye had collapsed. Hwirim had not changed at all since then.

“How have you lived these past six years, Hwirim?”

Myojeong asked in a low voice.

“I traveled mountains and rivers, and only recently put an end to my long life abroad. I met all kinds of people. The world is truly vast. Ah, and lately I came to know a spirit with quite extraordinary talent. A real find, that one. Ha ha. You’ve shown me your adorable disciple, Myojeong, so if the chance comes, I’ll introduce you someday as well.”

Smiling, Hwirim patted Myojeong on the back.

The Office of Narye, once so solid, had collapsed overnight, and already six years had passed since that day. Six years. The same length of time since Myojeong and the boy had first met and lived together until now. During that span, the child who had once been nothing but small had grown and grown until he became a boy.

“Is that all you have to say to me?”

Myojeong asked lightly, and Hwirim suddenly clapped his hands.

“Ah! Myojeong, have you heard anything about Suhyang? Not long ago, by some twist of fate, Suhyang came to me asking where you were, so I asked why. She said she’s gathering Naja who share her will because she plans to rebuild the Office of Narye. In other words, Suhyang is desperately searching for you. Wait... Myojeong? Are you even listening?”

Myojeong, Hwirim, and Suhyang had known one another since childhood. They were old friends, and they had also gone through thick and thin together at the Office of Narye. But when the Office was dismantled, all the Naja who had belonged to it scattered to the winds and each went their own way. Hwirim and Suhyang were no exception. After leaving that life behind, Myojeong had suddenly disappeared, and ever since then he had wandered all across the eight provinces.

“No, I didn’t know...”

Myojeong bowed his head, then thunked his forehead against one of Hwirim’s shoulders.

When you drifted wherever your feet carried you, you would sometimes hear news of former Naja whether you wanted to or not. One had entered a temple. Another had become a shaman serving a spirit. Another was simply living an ordinary life, farming the land. News he had not particularly cared to hear somehow reached his ears with ease. Yet the news he had secretly hoped for, wished for, and waited for with aching patience never came, as rare as a shower in a season of drought. There was something cruel in that.

“The heartless one isn’t me. Isn’t it you... I sent letter after letter all those years... and you never sent back a single reply...”

Myojeong muttered to himself, his forehead still pressed to Hwirim’s shoulder. Hwirim scratched at his short hair, looking somewhat awkward.

“Well. Even so, I came to see you now, didn’t I?”

“Mmm. No.”

At that, Hwirim’s eyes darted around of their own accord.

“All right, I got it, so move already!”

From far away came the boy’s voice, echoing back from the spring.

Myojeong... where did you go...?

That day, the boy called for his teacher again and again.

*****

“My teacher is dead.”

And after a very long time had passed, the boy answered.

“I killed him with my own hand.”

Yoon Taehee’s lips curved slowly.

The boy had been betrayed by the teacher he trusted and followed. The teacher had gifted his disciple a curse of immortality. And the disciple had given his teacher death.

“So how did it feel, getting your revenge?”

Yoon Taehee asked, resting his chin at an angle on one hand. Jaegyeom stared at him expressionlessly. Sunset light spread across the window side of the library. The ticking of the second hand sounded unusually loud, and the books packed tightly into each tall shelf gave off a calm, weighty smell.

Revenge. Was that what he had done?

Ordinarily, someone would have asked how it had come to that. But Yoon Taehee, perversely, was asking about the feeling after revenge. Yoon Taehee always put the emphasis in strange places.

“It was nothing.”

Jaegyeom, who had been silent the whole time, answered only after a long pause.

“Why? If it were me, I think I’d have felt relieved. Or thrilled.”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t relieved, and I wasn’t thrilled.”

One corner of Yoon Taehee’s mouth lifted as he whispered teasingly,

“As expected of someone so kindhearted.”

Then he flicked his straight, neat fingers against the table and added,

“You killed your enemy. You should be happy.”

It was advice whose content did not suit the gentle tone at all. With a dry, blank face, Jaegyeom looked silently at Taehee’s hand.

“At first, I was glad too. No, I thought I was.”

Yoon Taehee frowned faintly around the eyes and asked,

“What do you mean, there was another enemy?”

Jaegyeom murmured, his face sunk in thought.

“I was my own enemy. This life was my enemy.”

Feelings stained with betrayal, hatred, rage, and blood swelled like a snowball and pressed down on the boy’s chest. The pit of his stomach had felt tight and heavy. At first, he had believed that once he paid the man back, he would finally cast off that weight and feel light.

But only after killing the man with these hands had he understood at last. He had been mistaken. Once the man he had thought of as his enemy disappeared, the life that man had left behind remained as his true enemy.

“You are the master of your life.”

Now he could understand those words the man had left behind. Truly, painfully understand them. Revenge was over, but this life left behind as revenge’s residue would never end. I can neither keep it nor throw it away. Everything was under his teacher’s shadow.

His teacher was gone from this world, but the master of this life was still his teacher.