Hell Train [3]

"Ah, ah—sorry for the surprise, turning on a stream out of nowhere. Today I'm live for some new content: Kim Do-sa Goes."

I flipped the phone around to frame the subway's announcement display on screen.

The reason the anomaly phenomenon was being captured properly on stream was the Gremlin OBS. I'd accepted the thing out of sheer curiosity about what it even was, and I never imagined I'd end up putting it to use like this.

As for why the broadcast connected at all from inside the I-myeon, that was thanks to the VIP perks of Nikola's Hyper-Radio Communication.

Just like with the Additional Narrative Reveal Plan, Nikola's Hyper-Radio Communication was remarkably thorough when it came to perks for people who spent money.

"Some of you have probably already figured it out, but this is The Station That Shouldn't Exist — the ghost story that's had all of Seoul talking lately. The lag and the quality drops are caused by the paranormal phenomena themselves, so please bear with me."

"Those of you who know this story already know how it goes: anyone who gets off at the Station That Shouldn't Exist dies. Which means—"

I swung the camera toward the Gwangjin Station platform.

"Getting off here means dying."

After checking the viewers' reactions, I turned the camera on the passengers bound hand and foot by Yoon Soo-ah's telekinesis.

"In other words, these people — who ignored a warning telling them not to get off and threw a tantrum trying to do exactly that — are essentially volunteers for suicide."

"Wh-what the heck!?"

"What do you think you're doing!?"

"Who said you could film my face!?"

The dissenters [?] belatedly grasped the situation and tried to hide their faces, but it was futile.

"Soo-ah, keep holding them tight — I want their faces coming through nice and clear."

"Y-yes, sir!"

"Oh, and the viewer count's climbing nicely? We just broke ten thousand live viewers!"

Human beings are fickle creatures: they would far rather be seen as a bad person than as a foolish, stupid one. And right now, I was pinning them down on stream as fools. Imagine being branded an idiot in front of ten thousand people. How mortifying would that be?

Sure enough, the effect showed itself almost immediately.

"S-stop filming! I won't get off! I said I won't!"

"I-I know the story too! The Station That Shouldn't Exist! I know you die if you get off — why would I get off!?"

The very passengers who'd been throwing a fit to disembark minutes ago flipped their attitudes as easily as turning over a palm. There was, however, one fool who dug in his heels all the way to the end.

"What the hell are you on about, damn it! I'm getting off!"

"If he dies, I can't turn it into a YouTube video, so that's a no."

I walked right up to the middle-aged man still stubbornly digging in his heels.

"Wh-what do you want!? I'm telling you now — no matter how you try to persuade me, I'm not falling for any of that nonsense—"

"Oh, just behave already!"

"'Huh?"

Tap!

I pressed lightly on the back of his skull, and the man slumped into unconsciousness — much as the Station That Shouldn't Exist anomaly had seeded energy into people's heads to drive them mad, I channeled Do-ryeok straight into his brain and forcibly switched him off.

"He's not dead."

I had no intention of wasting time persuading a troll. When I possessed the power and the technique to simply stomp a troll flat, why on earth would I reason with words? He could get rescued quietly and be grateful to serve as my video material.

"You don't look thrilled about this, do you?"

"...Don't worry. I have no intention of stopping you."

Yoon Soo-ah clearly didn't care for broadcasting the situation, but given the circumstances, she made no move to interfere. She, too, had noticed how much the passengers' anxiety had eased the moment my stream went live.

"Don't let it bother you. I'm the staged-footage fraudster Do-sa Kim, after all — nobody's watching this seriously anyway. Worry instead about taking care of these passengers once this whole thing is over."

After tossing out a bit of banter, I got down to business.

"Now then — may I hear what the Administration Bureau has managed to learn about The Station That Shouldn't Exist?"

"That's..."

Soo-ah hesitated, then gestured toward the phone streaming my broadcast. I shrugged.

"No need to worry. As of today, The Station That Shouldn't Exist won't exist anymore."

"...Understood."

She wavered for a moment, but seeming to come to a decision, she relayed everything the Paranormal Administration Bureau had learned about The Station That Shouldn't Exist. Unlike Lostco — an anomaly that had festered for years and left many survivors — this one was comparatively recent, and above all...

"There are almost no survivors."

"Yes... which is why this is all the information I can give you."

"No, this is more than enough help."

It was around then that the train, which had been sitting at Gwangjin Station, closed its doors.

Chik.

I couldn't have been imagining the note of regret in that voice. The train pulled away again, and an uncomfortable silence began to settle over the passengers — anxiety, fear, confusion. Before those negative emotions could take hold of them, I moved first.

"Now then, shall we do a little interview with the parties involved in our ghost story?"

"All right, starting with this young friend here — how does it feel to be caught up in a ghost story you'd only ever heard rumors about?"

"Y-yes! I'm not scared at all! Do-sa Kim is here, so I believe he'll handle everything somehow!"

"Oh, aren't you a brave one?"

Thanks to that, the heavy atmosphere lightened by a full notch. The unreal world of anomalies and the all-too-real world of internet streaming had collided, and the stream had bridged the gap between them.

Once I confirmed the mood had loosened, I began preparations for the next station in earnest. First, I checked the engine rooms at the very front and the very back of the train.

"...No one here."

Both engine rooms were empty. Which meant this train was running with no driver at all.

"Did it drag only the passengers here — the driver excluded?"

After that, I gathered all the passengers scattered across the six cars into a single one. The mass seizure at Gwangjin Station had proven the point: people were far easier to manage in one place. Fortunately, it was an off-peak hour, so even with every passenger from six cars packed into one, there was room to spare.

Then—

Bang bang bang bang!

Vroooooom...

With the announcement, the doors of every car slid shut, and a text message arrived on my phone. A voting message sent by the anomaly.

"Good thing I gathered everyone when I did."

Had collecting the passengers taken even a little longer, we would have fallen straight into the anomaly's dirty trick.

"Everyone, please vote for the last three cars."

The passengers followed my instructions and cast their votes for cars four, five, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and six. And the moment the final person finished voting—

KUGUGUGUGUGUGUGUNG!

Wondering what on earth was happening, I went to the sealed coupling between cars and peered through the window—

"Holy..."

Starting with the rearmost car, car six, the train cars were being torn apart one by one, ripped to ribbons and vanishing into the darkness. Where the vanished cars had gone, there was no way of knowing.

And so, after three cars of the train disappeared—

The train came to a stop once more, accompanied by the announcement.

"......"

This time at Sambal Station, nobody threw a tantrum about getting off. The passengers had all seen the train cars vanish through the coupling window, and that sight had made one thing absolutely certain: the station before ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their eyes was not a normal one.

Except for me.

Shwk.

"Everything I do, I do to save people."

Yoon Soo-ah had said there were hardly any survivors of the Station That Shouldn't Exist anomaly. But think of it in reverse, and it meant that while few, there had been survivors. According to their testimony, which station you got off at didn't particularly matter.

The survivors' accounts pointed to two common methods of survival. The first was finding the platform with the red snake on it. Everyone who disembarked at a platform with a red snake was later found unconscious on the platform of the subway they had originally boarded. The conditions were simple, and unlike the second method, there was no limit to how many people could survive this way. In other words, the red snake was a kind of cheat key for escaping The Station That Shouldn't Exist.

However...

'Not here.'

I scoured Sambal Station from corner to corner with my superhuman physique, but there was no sign of anything resembling a red snake. Clicking my tongue, I was on my way back to the subway when something occurred to me that I wanted to verify, and I broke into a run toward the concourse stairs.

"What the heck?"

Above the stairs leading up to the concourse, a surface of water spread out upside down.

"Oh no—!"

I tore down the platform as if flying at the announcement ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that ambushed me out of nowhere. Chik! Slipping through the doors a hair's breadth before they sealed shut, I slid back into the subway.

At Gwangjin they'd waited heaven and earth for people to get off — and now they were slamming the doors shut in under a minute?

"This thing is just brimming with malice, isn't it."

Letting out a breath of relief, I was scanning the chat to see if any viewer had spotted something I'd missed when Yoon Soo-ah came up beside me.

"That was far too reckless."

"There was something I needed to confirm."

In the reporter's account, and in everything the Administration Bureau had verified, every single victim's cause of death had been 'drowning.' And while the water surface above the concourse stairs was visible to a psychic like me, ordinary people would never have seen it. In other words, the people who passed the insane conditions The Station That Shouldn't Exist imposed had climbed unknowingly into that water and drowned. But even with this much, there was still far too much I didn't know about this anomaly.

"Viewers — if you know anything about the ghost stories related to the Station That Shouldn't Exist, dig it all up for me."

"Kisaragi Station?"

The moment the sponsorship message appeared, a text arrived on the Anomaly Strategy Squad channel. It was Lee Ha-ram's write-up on the Kisaragi Station ghost story.

"Thanks, Ha-ram."

I reviewed the information Ha-ram had sent. It was a forum post that had relayed, in real time, the situation of a woman who — while riding a train — ended up getting off at a mystery station called Kisaragi instead of her intended stop. The detail of arriving at a station that didn't exist, rather than the one she was supposed to reach, overlapped neatly with The Station That Shouldn't Exist.

The story's authenticity was hotly debated, but whatever the case, it offered plenty worth referencing in my current situation. Why is there that old lore about never riding a bus or a boat in a dream? Because the destination of any vehicle you encounter in a dream — a boat, a bus — is always the afterlife. By the same logic, Kisaragi Station was widely speculated to be another world, or the land of the dead. Seen in that light, the Station That Shouldn't Exist I was riding through now very likely had the afterlife as its terminus as well.

Well, even getting off somewhere that wasn't the terminus killed you all the same.

"Die if you get off, die if you don't — talk about a rigged game..."

Then a certain fact suddenly surfaced in my mind.

The Additional Narrative Reveal Plan.

If The Station That Shouldn't Exist was exerting its narrative as a ghost story, then that plan would be in effect. And if so, even if it hadn't yet initiated its narrative the way Lostco had, somewhere there simply had to be an additionally revealed narrative—

"Found it."

Thankfully, the additional narrative was there, exactly as I'd predicted.

"Miss Yoon, do you see the route map over there?"

"Huh? Yes."

"How does it look to you?"

"It's just a standard Line 8 route map?"

The route map above the entrance — on it was displayed the route of The Station That Shouldn't Exist, invisible to everyone but me.

The moment I confirmed that route map, a single powerful hypothesis about this anomaly took shape in my mind. And to verify that hypothesis, I placed a call to a certain someone — who would tell me whether my guess was right.