Hell Train [2]
"The next stop is Gwangjin (Mad Quake) Station."
"If you wish to disembark, please go mad and kill the person beside you."
The subway announcement rang out through the silence of the car. The passengers froze at the sheer incomprehensibility of it, delivered in a voice so painfully familiar.
"What the hell kind of announcement is that?"
"Seriously, are they filming a movie or something?"
"Halloween was ages ago, for crying out loud!"
The flustered passengers scrambled to make sense of the situation within the boundaries of their common sense. But as long as they relied on common sense, grasping the true nature of what was happening was impossible. Understandable, though — what was unfolding right now was an anomaly. The common sense of the mortal world and the laws of science meant absolutely nothing here.
"Seoul really is becoming a demon capital of the inhuman."
I grumbled the complaint and scanned our surroundings. Fortunately, apart from the deranged announcements and the next station having turned into Gwangjin, there were no other problems yet. Well, that was only a matter of time.
Before anything else could happen, I went back over the report I'd received about the [Station That Cannot Exist].
"One day I got a strange phone call from a friend. It wasn't someone who usually called late at night, so I picked up, wondering what was wrong. My friend's voice was trembling with terror. I calmed down someone who sounded like their next breath might be their last, and asked what on earth had happened.
Here's what my friend told me. [I'll write the rest from my friend's perspective, for ease of reading.]
— That was the day my part-time shift ran absurdly late, and I barely squeezed onto the last train. I was riding along quietly when an announcement came on saying we'd be arriving at some strange station instead of the one I was supposed to get off at.
At first I thought, 'Oh, I must have boarded the wrong train. I should get off quickly.' And then the next announcement wiped my mind blank.
'The next stop is Dumo (Head-Harvest) Station.'
'If you wish to disembark, please pull out every hair on your head with your own hands.'
I was frozen solid at the sheer lunacy of it when something broke loose in the train itself. I was in the very last car, and most of the other passengers were up in cars one and two — and suddenly the passengers in the car ahead of me went berserk, clawing at each other's hair like lunatics.
Scared out of my wits, I shut the door of my end car and peeked out through the window, watching the whole thing unfold. What started as a fight of people yanking each other's hair escalated and escalated, until the passengers ahead began killing each other in earnest. And at the very end, a thuggish-looking bald guy pulled out a hidden knife, killed every remaining passenger, and flayed the scalps off their heads.
While I was choking back my breath at that hideous sight, the announcement came on again.
'This stop is Dumo Station.'
'The doors are on your right.'
The announcement ended, the train came to a halt, and the murderer, as if possessed by something, stepped off onto the platform. I was terrified to get off at the same station as a killer, but staying on the train scared me even more — so I got off right before the doors closed.
Yes. I got off at a station I had never once heard of in my entire life... —
But my friend, hardly listening to me, just mumbled incoherently for a while before saying this:
I can't get out of the station. I can't breathe. Something's wrong. In the first place... was getting off ever supposed to mean surviving?
The moment they said that, the call cut off. It was such an unsettling call that I tried dialing back again and again, but my friend never picked up. A few days later, my friend's body was found drowned in the Han River. Because they'd had mild depression, their death was written off as a simple suicide."
A station name that suddenly changed into something else. And the abnormal act demanded of you to arrive at that station. Then, even if you got off, the place you landed in wasn't a normal station but somewhere else entirely.
'According to the report, it seems to charm one or two passengers at a time as a trigger, in order to induce those abnormal conditions...'
Which meant that here, too—
"You ugly old— ack! D-don't you glare at the priority seats!"
Right on cue, one of the elderly passengers sitting in the priority seating suddenly started going berserk.
"KYAAAAAAAK!"
"Wh-what are you doing!?"
"You brats think old people who ride for free are parasites, don't you!"
"Eek! Eek!"
The old man flailed around swinging his cane, plunging my car into chaos. And it wasn't just our car where this was happening.
"Wh-what are you doing!?"
"D-don't!"
"KYAAAAAAAAK!"
The same kind of rampage was erupting in every single car.
"Mo— Mommy!"
"Ji— Ji-woo!"
The little boy I'd taken a photo with, Lee Ji-woo, cowered into his mother's arms, terrified. In that instant, the berserk old man's eyes locked onto the pair of them. Presumably he'd judged them the easiest prey in the car.
"How the hell did you raise that brat!? You have to raise kids with beatings like in our day, that's how they turn out right!"
The old man took a full swing at mother and son with his cane.
Thwack.
I caught the cane bare-handed.
"Wh-what the—!?"
"Beat a kid half to death growing up and this is the personality you end up with, huh?"
"What?"
WHAAM!
"Ugh!?"
I yanked him in by the cane and seized him by the face.
FWHOOOOOOSH!
A flame kindled from my Do-ryeok roared over the old man's face. He shrieked in terror — but the fire didn't so much as singe a single hair on his head. What it burned instead was the vile, parasitic energy that had burrowed into his skull like a worm.
"H-huh?"
That instant, the old man came back to his senses.
"Wh-what did I just...?"
"Summon Tiger Method: Wang Lingguan."
— GRRRRRRROOOOWWWL!
"K-KYAAAAAH!?"
"H-holy shit, wh-what IS that thing, a tiger!?"
"Wh-what!? What the hell is happening!?"
"Whoa, holy crap...!"
"Hey! Film it, film it!"
Some screamed in terror; some couldn't process the situation and went straight for their phone cameras. I ignored all of them and gave Wang Lingguan his orders.
"Subdue the rampaging passengers in the two cars up front and bring them to me."
— GRRRRRRRR.
Wang Lingguan nodded his massive head. The moment I confirmed it, I bolted for the rear cars.
WHOOM!
One step, and I was in car four. The one rampaging there was a housewife who looked to be in her mid-fifties. I lightly dodged the handbag she was swinging, grabbed her face, and channeled Do-ryeok into it.
FWHOOOOOOSH!
Before I even confirmed she'd come to her senses, I was already running for the next car. In car five it was a strapping soldier. Whether he had some martial arts experience or not, he'd been flailing his fists around flamboyantly and bloodying several people's noses — but he couldn't dodge my hand.
FWHOOOOOOSH!
As I burned the energy planted in the soldier's skull, I sprinted for the final car, number six. Things here were worse.
A subway peddler — a breed I'd thought nearly extinct these days — had gone mad. The problem was what the peddler was selling. Knives. Several people were already bleeding, slashed by the rampaging vendor.
"Die! All of you die! Why won't you buy my knives!? Why won't you buy them!"
"Running a business on the subway is illegal!"
I grabbed the head of the peddler, who was mid-swing about to plunge a knife into a middle-aged man's stomach, and burned it with Do-ryeok.
"Uh... wh-what? Why was I...?"
This time too, the vile energy vanished and the peddler came to his senses. The passengers of car six stared at me with wide eyes as a man who had come sprinting up from the car behind suddenly subdued the screaming-mad vendor.
"Let's have a look at those wounds."
The people looked at me as if expecting some kind of explanation, but there was no time for one. First, I surveyed the victims of the peddler's knife to see who needed treatment most urgently. Most were lightly grazed, but one person had a deep gash across the wrist. Judging by the way the blood was spurting, it looked like arterial bleeding.
"Uuuh, uuuugh...!"
I approached the injured person clutching their wrist with a bone-white face and pressed down above the wound, channeling Do-ryeok into my hand.
"Huh? The bleeding...?"
"Well, the big fire's out, anyway..."
The arterial bleeding stopped as if by magic. It was a crude, hack-job version of pressure-point sealing. But even with the arterial bleed stopped, the veins and capillaries were still oozing. For all the improvising, this was where my slapdash methods were still half-baked. Fortunately, there was a fix for that too.
"Bear with the pain."
"Ugh...!"
Pfffff.
I sprinkled a white powder over the bleeding wrist.
"E-excuse me...!"
That was when a man — who had been glued to the end of the car, kneeling and trembling in terror while the peddler was rampaging — crept up and shouted.
"What exactly do you think you're doing? I'm a med student, and shouldn't you stop the bleeding first, properly!? Do you even have a license? On what grounds are you applying some bizarre treatment to an injured—"
"Uh? The — the bleeding stopped completely!"
"What?"
The white powder I'd dusted onto the wound was Geumchang-yak — the fabled all-purpose salve of the wuxia world. It can be made from ingredients that are easy to source alongside Green Spirit Elixir, so I'd brewed a batch ages ago. Who knew I'd end up using it like this...
"You said you're a med student? Then watch over this person and go stop the bleeding on the others, please."
"Ah — yes? Y-yes, of course..."
By the time I'd settled the rampages in the rear cars and returned, Wang Lingguan was dragging two unconscious passengers over, one in each hand.
"Good work."
— Grrrrrrrrrr.
Wang Lingguan rumbled contentedly, pleased with himself. ...Wait, do tigers even purr? That thought crossed my mind as I burned away the energy planted in the two people's heads as well.
FWHOOOOOOSH!
And with that, the immediate fires were out. But our opponent clearly didn't intend to give up so gracefully.
"Uu, uuuuuh...!"
"M-Mom, what's wrong?"
"D-don't come near! Ji-woo, stay back!"
Ji-woo's mother suddenly clutched her head and began to stagger. And she wasn't the only one clutching her head.
"Honey, what's wrong?"
"Hey, what's gotten into you all of a sudden...?"
One person in each car was seizing their own head. Their pupils shaking, foam bubbling at their mouths — I could take a decent guess at what was happening.
"So every one I take care of, it plants a fresh fuse to replace it, does it?"
Fine. Then I had thoughts of my own.
I drew out a pinch of flower petals I always carried and scattered them into the air. At the same time, I formed the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva mudra and recited the Jizang Ten Wheels Sutra — now second nature on my tongue.
"Om bara mani dani svaha. Om bara mani dani svaha. Om bara mani dani svaha."
By laying down the precepts and binding the barrier's domain to the interior of this subway alone, I boosted both its duration and its power.
"The Great Sage Ksitigarbha's majestic divine power, vast as the sands of the Ganges, no kalpa of teaching could exhaust;"
"To see, to hear, to bow before him brings boundless blessing to heaven and humankind within a single thought;"
"Therefore I devote this heart and soul, and bow in utmost reverence."
⟨ Ksitigarbha Ten Wheels Sutra Barrier ⟩
Along with the sutra, the barrier of the Ksitigarbha mudra completed itself, filling the subway's interior together with the scattered petals.
"Ugh... huh?"
As the barrier settled, the people who'd been clawing at their own hair regained their calm.
So every one I glare at, you'll curse all over again? Fine, then I'll just lay down a field barrier and that's that~. It's on continuous application now — what exactly do you think you can do about it?
Apparently there was, in fact, nothing it could do, because a declaration of surrender came over the speakers.
"This stop is Gwangjin Station."
"The doors are on your right."
The train began slowly slowing down. And then—
Clunk. Clunk.
Hiss.
It came to a stop at the platform, and the doors slid open. Beyond them stretched a station not all that different from any other — and yet a station I had never once laid eyes on in my entire life living in Seoul.
Gwangjin Station — the Station of Mad Tremors.
And then—
"S-so we just... get off?"
The subway passengers exchanged glances and began drifting toward the doors one by one.
"If you get off, you die."
At those words, Ji-woo's mother snapped out of it and hugged her son tight, edging toward me. It wasn't just the two of them, either — a good number of the people who'd watched me resolve the crisis started toward the platform, then pulled back.
But not everyone.
"Wh-what's your problem? Who even are you, going on about who dies and who doesn't, you're full of shit!"
"That's right! We're getting off, and that's final!"
"Some of us have a mixer meeting scheduled!"
If they could act like this after just witnessing the freak phenomenon — and after watching me put a stop to it, no less...
...Honestly, at that point, dying of natural causes would be an improvement.
Still, in the name of basic human decency, I gave them the minimal warning. Whatever happened after this was entirely their own responsibility, so they could live with it~.
"W-wait, you can't! Everyone, please don't get off!"
Just then, Yoon Soo-ah stepped forward and began trying to block the people heading for the exit. Well, naturally — unlike me, she was a member of the Paranormal Administration Bureau, with a duty to protect civilians. But these were people who'd ignored even me, the one who'd directly shut down the anomaly. There was no way in hell they were going to listen to Yoon Soo-ah.
"Hey — just ignore her. Move, move."
"Some of us are busy, you know...!"
"Everyone, let's get off!"
And at that sight, Yoon Soo-ah finally—
"I said you can't leave!"
WHUUMMM!
CRASH!
The people trying to make for the doors jerked back inside, dragged by some enormously powerful force.
"O~h, it's been a while."
Yoon Soo-ah's telekinesis. She always claimed her output was nothing special, but against ordinary civilians, apparently it was anything but.
"Wh-what the—!?"
"My — my body won't move!?"
Five or six grown adults, squirming and grunting on the floor, unable to budge an inch. Seeing her ability act on six cars at once in a six-car train meant its range was no joke either. But whatever the caliber of her power, it wasn't exactly a wise move.
"That... that woman did that just now?"
"She's a monster..."
"She's a monster!"
Sure enough, the people already terrified by the anomaly were now thoroughly terrorized by Yoon Soo-ah's telekinesis. And excessive fear, sometimes, drives people mad.
"Un-unless we deal with that woman first, we...!"
"That's right! If we want to get off, we have to deal with her first!"
"Ki-kill her! Kill her!"
"Yeah, that's not a human being — kill her!"
Even the people who'd been planning to stay on the train with me were now glaring at Yoon Soo-ah with terrified eyes. And madness like this — the pure, homegrown kind — was something even my barrier couldn't do anything about.
"That's enough. Please let the people who want to leave go."
"But... you know as well as I do, Mr. Yi-yeon! If they go out there—"
"And you're confident you can fend off an anomaly while wrestling a crowd of civilians?"
"That's..."
"What can't be helped can't be helped."
Right then.
"You're all idiots!"
A young boy's voice rang through the train. It was Ji-woo who'd shouted.
"Nobody here knows this person at all! It's Master Kim! Master Kim!"
"Ji-Ji-woo!?"
Ignoring his flustered mother, Ji-woo stamped his feet, looking back and forth between the cars as he yelled.
"If Master Kim, the number-one exorcist in the whole country, says so, then that's how it is! If Master Kim says you can't go out, then you can't go out!!"
At Ji-woo's outburst, the people inside the subway began to stir.
"Master Kim?"
"Ah — the guy from that Paranormal Studies Society thing...?"
"But that whole thing was staged, wasn't it..."
The people too frightened to know what to do. The people hesitating as they watched the ones trying to leave. The people who, well, didn't really understand but didn't want to get off the subway anyway. Every single passenger's gaze turned toward me.
"No, wait..."
"Master Kim! You'll solve this one too, right! Just like when you blasted the fake Dragon King with a hundred fish! I believe in you!"
Ji-woo looked up at me with eyes shining like stars.
Dude... don't look at me like that! When you get stared at with eyes that pure... I want to live up to my fans' expectations, dammit!
"Tsk. Fine, fine. Nothing else for it."
Swoosh, swoosh.
"Whoooaaaah."
I scrubbed his head roughly enough to rock the boy's whole body.
"Congratulations."
"Huh?"
"You've made your glorious debut in the very first broadcast of [Master Kim Is Coming] — the exorcism of [The Station That Cannot Exist]."
And now that I'd committed to broadcasting it, casualties were absolutely not acceptable. For the simple reason that if anyone died, I couldn't turn it into a YouTube video.