Honbul: Flame of the Soul

The burning evening glow filled the wide window like something framed and hung in place. Between the steady ticks of the second hand, Jaegyeom heard the heavy sound of his own heart dropping.

“You—what did you just say?”

That sharp, lucid gaze fixed on him.

“You want to die. I’ll help ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) you.”

In the soaking sunset light, their eyes locked without the slightest gap.

“......”

After a brief silence, Jaegyeom finally spoke.

“No. You can’t. Nothing can kill me.”

There was nothing he had not already tried in his attempts to die. Every attempt had led to the same conclusion: nothing he did could kill him. And now Taehee was saying he would kill him? It was impossible to believe, and impossible to trust.

Yoon Taehee was obviously trying to beguile him with absurd words. And yet, even knowing that, Jaegyeom’s eyes wavered without direction because Taehee’s face was completely expressionless.

Yoon Taehee smiled easily. He was always wearing some faint trace of a smile. Maybe that was why, at first, the strongest impression he gave off had been one of gentleness and kindness. But ever since that day at the bookstore, Jaegyeom had realized that hidden behind that smiling face was a sharp pair of eyes that revealed not a single grain of feeling.

At times, Yoon Taehee became cold-faced like a bird of prey perched high in the treetops, looking down over a vast stretch of land.

And Jaegyeom knew this was Taehee’s real nature.

“You... I don’t know what kind of trick you’re trying this time, but—”

As Jaegyeom’s lips parted, Yoon Taehee cut him off.

“Have you ever heard of the Bangsangsi?”

“...What?”

“The Bangsangsi was the master of the former Office of Narye. The one who founded it in the first place, and the one who led it until the old Office of Narye collapsed.”

It had been about two hundred years since the old Office of Narye, which had carried its long history forward, was dismantled. The Office of Narye, which had vanished into the back pages of history, was officially rebuilt around the middle of the twentieth century, which meant that the modern Office had now been firmly established for roughly half a century. In the past, the leader of the former Office of Narye had been the Bangsangsi, but in modern times that place was held by the Office of Narye’s director.

“The head of the modern Office is the director, but the Bangsangsi and the director aren’t the same thing. The director is just a title. At the end of the day, he’s only another human Naja. But Bangsangsi was the name of a god that drives off evil ghosts. It was never human to begin with.”

Even inside the Office of Narye, very little was known about the Bangsangsi, and anything beyond the publicly available information was treated as classified. So naturally, Jaegyeom knew nothing about it. The man had concealed his past as a Naja, and besides, that had all been after the old Office of Narye had already fallen, so it was a realm that had been difficult to approach in every way.

“So the Bangsangsi possessed a special authority no human could ever covet. That power was hidden in the mask it wore. If you put on that mask and call the name engraved on a soul three times, then whether it’s a ghost or a human, the one whose name is called...”

Meeting Jaegyeom’s eyes, Yoon Taehee added slowly,

“disappears from this earth.”

The words came out one beat slow, and Jaegyeom’s eyes widened. At the same time, the hand braced against Taehee’s shoulder curled tight and seized a fistful of his shirt. Yoon Taehee flicked a glance at the hand gripping him, then looked back at Jaegyeom. As expected, the boy understood fast. One corner of Taehee’s mouth lifted.

“That’s right. The director of the Office of Narye has that mask.”

The area around one of Jaegyeom’s eyes twitched.

It felt like a huge window had just been driven straight through his skull.

Yoon Taehee wanted revenge on the director of the Office of Narye. And in that director’s hands was the Bangsangsi’s mask, capable of ending this life. If everything Yoon Taehee was saying was true...

“I’ll steal that mask and kill you. I don’t know what kind of curse you’re under, but if it has a soul, the Bangsangsi’s mask will work on it. It always will.”

Every living thing had a soul. Not only humans. Even mindless creatures with barely any awareness still possessed one, so long as they were alive. For life to end meant that soul leaving the body as soulfire.

In other words, for a soul to become soulfire was an unmistakable death sentence. If the body weakened or its vitality dimmed, a soul could slip loose from it, or even be pulled away—but that was only a living soul. Soulfire was a dead soul.

Which meant that once soulfire had left the body of the living, it could never be restored to life again. It either ascended to heaven and left this world behind, or clung to the earth and remained. The latter was a ghost. A ghost was born from soulfire that had already died once.

And the Bangsangsi was an existence with the authority to send soulfire back to heaven.

When one wore the Bangsangsi’s mask, the Four Golden Eyes allowed one to see the name engraved upon a soul. If that name was called three times, then whether it was the soul of a living human or a ghost that was itself soulfire, any soul at all could be made to vanish from this world. Absolute power that governed the order of things. An authority worthy of the name of a god that drives off evil ghosts.

“Why... why are you only telling me this now?”

The bones stood out starkly on the back of Jaegyeom’s hand as he clenched Taehee’s shirt even harder. Right now, Jaegyeom was struggling to keep doubting. Cruelly, there was only one possible choice. That was why he was confused.

Even if he could not believe it, he had to. He wanted to. He had no choice but to.

That day, Jaegyeom had exposed his own weakness. The threat had become meaningless, and with it the justification for making him become a Naja. Then Yoon Taehee had personally picked up the secrets Jaegyeom had thrown down and handed them back by erasing the other Naja’s memories. In the end, after all the circling around, they had returned to the starting point.

And Yoon Taehee was still relentless.

This time it was neither a threat nor persuasion.

Help me.

That was what Yoon Taehee had said. Help me take my revenge. And in return, I’ll kill you. That was his offer.

It was dizzyingly sweet.

“Why... why are you only saying this now? You lied to me, threatened me, and then when none of that worked, now—now of all times?”

Once, Yoon Taehee had asked him, What does it feel like to be stuffed and mounted? He had not asked because he was curious. Even then, Yoon Taehee had already known the answer exactly. But only now was he opening his mouth. After planting distrust in him from every direction, after making him unable to believe, he was now saying something that he had no choice but to believe.

Yoon Taehee gazed down at the boy’s face.

“That’s right. The threats stopped working, the weakness I got hold of turned into nothing, and after exhausting everything else, I’m saying it now. With this, there’s nowhere left for me to retreat.”

In truth, Yoon Taehee had never had any intention of revealing his plan to bring down the Office of Narye. Not if he had succeeded in making a successor who was loyal to him rather than to the Office. If Jaegyeom was going to do as he was told anyway, there would have been no need to share something that dangerous.

Yoon Taehee counted out the possible moves with the meticulousness of someone solving a sudoku puzzle.

The mere fact that Jaegyeom hated Naja was too flimsy and precarious a foundation for laying out all of his plans. After all, Yoon Taehee himself was still, for now, a Naja. He had no certainty Jaegyeom would listen to him. And besides, the reason Jaegyeom hated Naja was because his enemy had been one. That was not the same thing as Yoon Taehee, whose enemy was all of them. So whether Jaegyeom would cooperate in a plan to destroy the Office of Narye had always been uncertain.

“I’ve been making plans for a long time to bring down the Office of Narye.”

Yoon Taehee spoke without expression.

“One wrong step and everything turns to nothing. Naja are everywhere. You could walk outside right now and tell someone that Yoon Taehee is going to destroy the Office of Narye. Without any security in hand, I couldn’t very well offer up my own throat.”

Just as Jaegyeom could not trust Yoon Taehee, the reverse was equally true. Yoon Taehee did not trust Jaegyeom either. Originally, he had planned to draw him in without ever revealing the plan itself. But every attempt he had made so far had ended in failure.

“I know you don’t trust me. You don’t need to. You just have to trust what’s in your hand. I’ll trust what’s in mine. Now each of us is holding the other’s weakness, aren’t we?”

Then there was only one thing left.

“So being friends is out of the question. And if we’re not even fit to share a table, then let’s be the sort of people who keep hold of each other’s throats.”

A gentle hand slowly wrapped around the back of Jaegyeom’s neck.

“If I live, you die. If you die, I live. What do you think? It’s pretty intimate. Romantic, even.”

Yoon Taehee lowered his head and met Jaegyeom’s eyes. Through the palm cupping the back of his neck, he could feel the living pulse beating there exactly as it was. The skin under his hand was far softer, far hotter, than he had expected.

“......”

Jaegyeom slowly closed his eyes.

Yoon Taehee had said he did not regret what was already over. That even if he apologized, it would be no help to Jaegyeom, so instead he would rather offer him something real. He had denied nothing. He had not regretted a single choice he had made. He had only gathered each failure one by one, taken them all upon himself, and stood before Jaegyeom yet again.

Holding a new card in his hand.

You just have to trust what’s in your hand.

I’ll kill you.

Breaking the long silence, Jaegyeom finally spoke.

“If I...”

He fixed his eyes on Yoon Taehee and glared.

“What do I have to do?”

At the warmth of the boy still lingering against him, the tips of Yoon Taehee’s fingers trembled.