Honbul: Flame of the Soul

The next day, when lunchtime came, a white car pulled up in front of the house.

“Jaegyeom, good luck on your first day!”

“My lord, please be careful.”

With Jeongju and Mesan fussing over him at full volume, Jaegyeom bent down to tie the laces on his Converse. The moment he told them Yoon Taehee had contacted him about entering the Office, the two of them had been visibly on edge since yesterday. Jaegyeom himself was perfectly calm, but they had been making an enormous production out of it.

“I’ll be back.”

He slung a small crossbody bag over one shoulder and stepped out the front door. When he opened the massive gate, which still felt unfamiliar, and went outside, someone climbed out of the driver’s seat of the white car as if they had been waiting for that exact moment.

It was a young woman in a gray suit.

“Hello. Are you Jaegyeom, by any chance?”

Smiling, she walked over to him.

“Oh. Yes. Hello...”

Jaegyeom dipped his head slightly.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Lead Naja Kang Ibin from Team 1 of the Exorcism Unit, Office of Narye. It’s good to meet you. Chief Yoon asked me, so I came to pick you up in his place.”

Barefaced, with her long hair pulled tight into a ponytail, Kang Ibin introduced herself in a cheerful voice and stuck out her hand without hesitation. Jaegyeom awkwardly accepted the handshake, and she pumped their clasped hands up and down with exaggerated enthusiasm. His eyes went wide in surprise, and Kang Ibin burst out laughing.

“Ha! Did I startle you? Cute.”

Jaegyeom averted his eyes and quietly pulled his hand back.

“With the clothes too, you look like a little chick.”

Looking confused, Jaegyeom glanced down at what he was wearing. Jeongju had even picked out his outfit piece by piece before he left. Since he cared a lot about fashion, his styling had been absurdly detailed. A plain yellow sweatshirt. Loose light-wash jeans with ripped knees. He had even picked his socks. When Jaegyeom grumbled that he should be allowed to wear whatever he wanted, Jeongju had stubbornly insisted that socks were the single most important part of fashion. In the end, Jaegyeom had rolled up the hems of his jeans like Jeongju wanted and pulled on white socks with little mushroom characters on them. With his bangs hacked off unevenly and clothes like this put on him, he looked even younger and more blank-faced than usual.

“All right, all right. Let’s get you in the car first.”

Kang Ibin grabbed him by the arm with easy familiarity. Pulled along by her hand, Jaegyeom climbed into the passenger seat wearing a dazed expression. The second Kang Ibin sat down behind the wheel, she started driving.

“......”

Jaegyeom stared straight ahead, looking faintly out of it. It felt like sitting on a bed of nails. He was the type to be quietly shy with strangers. Being trapped alone in a narrow space with someone he had never met only made it worse.

And on top of that, she was a woman. In all the time Jaegyeom had been alive, he had very little experience being close with women. Because of that, he found them especially hard to deal with. For some reason, they automatically overwhelmed him, and whenever that happened, he tended to go blank just like this. Kang Ibin, meanwhile, kept hitting the gas and even humming to herself.

Once they merged onto a wide road, she spoke up.

“Chief Yoon told me about you. He said you were a sharp, impressive kid. He spent over a month hiding away while he searched for a junior, and in the end he found a cute, handsome one.”

Jaegyeom, who had been sitting rigid as a plaster statue and staring straight ahead, flicked a glance at Kang Ibin. A sharp, impressive kid? Hearing Yoon Taehee’s words relayed through someone else felt strange. Being called cute and handsome was embarrassing too. In the end, unable to think of anything proper to say, Jaegyeom just quietly nodded.

“Jaegyeom. Can I talk casually to you?”

“Oh. Uh... yes.”

Kang Ibin said they should get along from now on and that he could call her Lead Naja Kang. Then, in a joking tone, she added, “Noona works too.” “My little brother’s about your age, actually.” Maybe that was why she had taken to Jaegyeom the second she saw him. She kept talking to him, trying to loosen up the mood and make him feel comfortable. Her driving might have been rough, but she was cheerful and kind.

Still smiling, Kang Ibin said as she gripped the wheel, “Anyway, you seriously hit the jackpot.”

“With what?”

She shrugged and looked over at him.

“What do you mean, with what? You’re getting to work with Chief Yoon right from the start. Chief Yoon’s practically a star even inside headquarters. I transferred into Team 1 because of him.”

Kang Ibin had originally belonged to the Covert Division. She couldn’t even begin to describe how hard she had worked to transfer departments and make it into Team 1. Compared to the other departments, the bar for entering the Exorcism Unit was far higher, and openings themselves rarely came up. On top of that, Team 1 of the Exorcism Unit, the team Chief Yoon belonged to, was famous enough that the competition was brutal.

“Chief Yoon... is... that amazing?”

After quietly listening, Jaegyeom finally asked, watching her expression. Calling him Chief Yoon felt oddly awkward on his tongue. The words did not come easily, and his question came out stilted. Kang Ibin nodded hard.

“Of course! Do you know how old Chief Yoon was when he became Chief?”

She asked the question with a proud face. She seemed deeply pleased just to have such a capable superior. But Jaegyeom did not really understand the Office of Narye’s rank structure. He only vaguely knew that Yoon Taehee held a very high position.

“No, I... I don’t know....”

“He was nineteen. Nineteen.”

Even though she was the one who had said it, Kang Ibin still sounded amazed, like she could barely believe it herself. Jaegyeom was startled for an entirely different reason. Nineteen? Then that meant he had become a Naja even younger than that. Yoon Taehee was in his mid-twenties now, which meant he had already spent nearly ten years inside the Office of Narye.

“Is that hard?”

At the innocent question, Kang Ibin shouted, “Obviously!”

“I’m the same age as Chief Yoon, and I only just made Lead Naja. Ugh. When I was nineteen, I was studying for the college entrance exam. But Chief Yoon became the youngest Chief in history at that age. When he first entered the Office, I heard headquarters went crazy. They said a monster had arrived.”

To a great many Naja, Chief Yoon was an object of admiration. Kang Ibin, his teammate, was no exception. Chief Yoon was someone far away, high above them. Before joining Team 1, she had never even seen his bare face once. That alone said enough. After struggling through the # Nоvеlight # difficult process of getting into Team 1, Kang Ibin found Jaegyeom, the junior Chief Yoon had personally picked out, both enviable and fascinating.

“He’s incredible. Really.”

That strong? To Jaegyeom, the whole story sounded deeply suspicious. Then again, the only version of Chief Yoon he knew was the one getting the shit beaten out of him by Jaegyeom....

“Jaegyeom, you might not know yet, but with time, you’ll understand. Working with Chief Yoon is good fortune. He’s a really good person.”

She had been praising Chief Yoon for a while now.

He has a good reputation...

Jaegyeom twitched a brow and looked out the window. Well, of course he did. The bastard was a born manipulator. Everyone had clearly been fooled. Just like I was....

The more he listened, the more unpleasantly twisted up he felt inside. He was sitting there with a sullen face, fidgeting with his fingers, when—

“My mom was really sick last year. She needed surgery right away, but I didn’t have the money. Ah, I’m the head of the household, you see. Anyway? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t come up with a way to get the money, and it honestly felt like the sky was falling....”

Kang Ibin smiled brightly and tapped the steering wheel.

“I couldn’t tell anyone and just kept suffering through it on my own. But somehow, Chief Yoon found out and paid the entire hospital bill for me. I seriously thought I was going to pass out.”

Jaegyeom, who had been staring out the window, paused and turned to look at her.

“He even hired a caregiver and gave me a month off. Used his own vacation days for it too. I told him I didn’t have the money to pay him back right away, but if he gave me time, I’d pay every last bit of it. And do you know what he said? That this was employee welfare for his team, so I shouldn’t do that. That if he took money from me, he’d have to take money from the other team members in the future too, so absolutely not....”

Halfway through the story, Kang Ibin suddenly scrunched up her face.

“Like, how is that even real? Fuck, just thinking about it still makes me want to cry.”

She started fanning at the corners of her eyes with one hand. Jaegyeom was a little taken aback. For a second he thought she might actually start sobbing, but fortunately she shook her head and took hold of the wheel again.

“Ah, sorry. I seriously talk way too much.”

Way too much...? Jaegyeom scratched his cheek. The fact that she talked a lot did not bother him, but the story she had told him was unexpected. The Yoon Taehee in Kang Ibin’s story did not sound like the Yoon Taehee he knew. Yoon Taehee stepping in to help someone else in their misery... The Yoon Taehee Jaegyeom knew was not that kind of person.

“Anyway, I’d do anything for Chief Yoon. The other team members are the same. If you’re a junior he brought in himself, then everyone’s going to welcome you.”

Team 1’s trust in Chief Yoon was solid. Jaegyeom could feel it just from hearing her speak, and the sensation left him unsettled. The favors and kindness Yoon Taehee showed were all tainted, and beneath his smile he carefully concealed a twisted, dark interior. That was the true Yoon Taehee Jaegyeom knew.

After sitting in thought for a moment, Jaegyeom cautiously spoke.

“Does everyone like Chief Yoon?”

After a brief pause, Kang Ibin answered with a faint flush on her face.

“Yeah. They do.”

Yoon Taehee hated the Naja and was plotting revenge against the Office of Narye. Kang Ibin could not possibly imagine that. The fact that Yoon Taehee had brought in a junior in order to destroy the Office. For some reason, Jaegyeom felt slightly confused. How could someone like that be kind to his teammates and earn their trust?

For the first time, he felt the faint stirrings of curiosity toward Yoon Taehee. At first, he had thought everyone simply failed to see the real Yoon Taehee—but maybe there was another side he did not know either... It felt as if the outline that had once seemed so sharply defined had suddenly been swallowed by a hazy fog.

“Honestly, there’s no reason not to like him.”

Kang Ibin said it with a shy smile. Jaegyeom turned his eyes toward her. If he said, I have plenty, she might tell him to get out of the car....

“Do you need a reason to like someone?”

Instead of starting a scene, Jaegyeom asked the question with complete seriousness. Kang Ibin burst out laughing. It really did sound like he was sincerely curious, without any hidden intention behind it.

“Well, I guess a kid your age still doesn’t know what makes a man attractive.”

With a sly grin, Kang Ibin jabbed him in the arm. Then she suddenly yelped, “Oh, shit. Red light. Red light,” and slammed on the brakes. Jaegyeom’s upper body pitched forward. A second ago she had been blushing shyly, and now she was hearty as anything.

“All right, Jaegyeom. Noona will explain it to you. Listen carefully. Since you’re coming into our team as a rookie, I’m giving you special instruction. First, a man has to be handsome and tall. It’s even better if he looks good in a suit. And he has to be gentle, kind, and rich too. Got it?”

Like Chief Yoon, she went on solemnly.

“A promising young sprout like you should take notes and learn.” 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

Ah. Why am I already exhausted... Jaegyeom straightened up again weakly.