Hell Train [4]

"It's been a while, Do-jun. If I had my way, I'd open with a 'how have you been' and ease into some long, rambling, erudite small talk, but we don't have time for that."

"...So the Baek shamaness has been dragged into this same mess as well?"

"'Dragged into it' is putting it a bit unfairly. This ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is my job, you know."

"Ha, fair point. Very well, then—ask me anything you like. I already owe you my life twice over, Master Yi-yeon, so I'll cooperate however I can."

"Thank you. Then..."

I gave him a concise rundown of what had happened so far and the hypothesis I'd built from the route map.

My first impression on seeing the route map of the [Station That Should Not Exist] was simply that so many of the names looked familiar. The very first station, Gwangjin, used a strange character for its jin, so I hadn't recognized it at a glance, but it almost ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠certainly meant the Gwangjin of Gwangjin District.

Setting aside Sambal, Dokseom, Dumo, and Gonghwa, every other name on that map was a place I knew well.

At first I'd approached it assuming these familiar districts belonged to some line of the Seoul subway. But no matter how hard I searched, not a single Seoul line ran a route like that. The effort hadn't been wasted, though—because somewhere along the way, I noticed one thing all those place names had in common.

Every single station on the route map sat in a district that bordered the Han River.

What's more, listed in the order they appeared, the districts connected to each other one by one from east to west along the river. Viewed through that lens, the incomprehensible names were probably old spellings or archaic nicknames of riverside areas. That was why I'd called Park Do-jun—to confirm it. A folklorist would be well versed in Seoul's historical place names.

And sure enough.

"Exactly as you suspected. Sambal, Dokseom, Dumo, and Gonghwa are all names that were used during the Joseon era—referring to what are now Seongsu-dong, Ttukseom, Jamsil, and Hapjeong-dong. And this is only my conjecture, but I'd say the route map itself was borrowed from the names of the old ferry crossings along the river."

Bingo.

That proved my hypothesis. The route of the [Station That Should Not Exist] followed the shape of the Han River. Which meant the core keyword of this anomaly was the river itself...

"Do-jun, by any chance—do you know of any folklore or ghost stories about a boat on the Han River that ferries people off to the underworld?"

"There are quite a few, if you go looking. Let's see..."

Park Do-jun rattled off every Han River ghost story he knew and then dug up whatever he could find online. Unfortunately, nothing matched our situation exactly. Just like with Lostco, I'd assumed this anomaly would have some kind of origin tale behind it—had I been wrong about that too?

"That ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠should about cover it. Phew..."

"I'm sorry. I called out of nowhere and put you through all that work for nothing."

"Oh, no, not at all. Searching Han River ghost stories turned up some rather unsettling material, that's all—it just gave me a bit of a shock."

Unsettling material? Oh...

"I think I know exactly what you mean. Anyway, thank you. Let's meet up in person sometime when the chance arises. Oh—before we hang up, anything you'd like to say to the viewers?"

"Viewers?"

"We're streaming live right now, actually. We just broke ten thousand viewers."

"I-if you tell me that so suddenly... ahem. Ah—greetings, viewers, Park Do-jun here! Please give our Psychic Society lots of love! The episode featuring Master Kim was an absolute ratings blockbuster, but the numbers have been in freefall ever since, and the network executives are very concerned—"

Just as I was about to wrap up the call with Park Do-jun—

The moment the announcement played, black, sunken arms forced the moving train's doors apart and wriggled their way inside.

"Kyaaaaaaaagh!"

"Wh-what the hell!?"

"Arms! Somebody block those damn arms!"

The arms that had pried the doors open thrashed about, snatching at the passengers like fishermen hauling in a catch. 'Shake off your fear,' apparently, meant overcome your terror and drive those arms away from the doors. Of course, in the process a few people would be grabbed and dragged off the train—and if we simply stood still, those things would pour inside and butcher every passenger on board.

Either way, it was a brutal mission for a car full of ordinary people. But...

"Wang Lingguan."

GRRAAAAAAARGH!

Wang Lingguan whirled his whip and sword, tearing apart the arms one after another as they tried to wrench the doors open.

Ssssshhhrick!

The severed black presences recoiled from the doors in what looked unmistakably like terror.

Savoring the awe of the viewers and passengers alike, I waited for the train to stop.

Hisss.

"This stop is Songpa Station. The doors are on your right."

The instant the doors opened, I shot out onto the platform, combed the entire station at high speed, and hurried back inside the moment I confirmed there was no red snake. I half-expected them to pull another trick and slam the doors shut on me—but either they'd realized such antics wouldn't work on me, or they'd simply given up on that method.

After that, we passed through Dokseom, Dumo, Hangang, and Sebing. At Dokseom Station, poison welled up from the floor; at Dumo Station, just as the reports had said, a sinister miasma spread through the car, trying to drive the passengers insane. At Hangang Station, water rose steadily from below, and at Sebing Station, a killing frost crept in to freeze everyone solid.

How did we get through all of that?

Easy.

"How come nothing's happening at this station?"

"Right? Weird."

At Dokseom and Dumo, the pre-laid Ksitigarbha Ten-Wheel Sutra barrier cut everything off before it could even start.

"Whoa, shit, what is this fire!?"

"It's hot enough to boil water away, but it doesn't burn us!?"

The flooding water at Hangang Station and the freezing chill at Sebing Station were both severed at the edge of the Vairocana Mantra Barrier.

Leaving aside the gimmick at Sambal where the train car itself got hurled through the air, the challenges of the [Station That Should Not Exist] hadn't been all that difficult so far. If anything, that was exactly what was making me more and more anxious.

As long as this anomaly was grounded in a ghost story, Narrative Coercion had to be at work somewhere. If the in-car gimmicks weren't receiving the compulsion's buff, then it was most likely concentrated somewhere else entirely—and that somewhere was, with very high probability...

The concourse. Which means underwater, obviously.

And if the concourse really was where the narrative coercion had been piled up, then the difficulty of simply pushing through by force, should it ever come to that, would skyrocket exponentially. Unfortunately, that "should it ever come to that" was drawing closer by the minute.

Four more stations had passed, and still there was no sign of the red snake—or of the second escape method. Past Sebing, seven stations remained. Somewhere within those seven, I either had to find the crack in this ghost story's armor, or the escape method had to show itself.

"Don't tell me... Soo-ah!"

"Yes! That's almost certainly it."

Every station so far had twisted the hanja of its name into something grotesque while keeping the sound the same. This was the first station whose characters came out exactly as we knew them.

Astonishingly, although the engine room was completely empty, this train did have an 'operator' driving it. With the announcement, the subway pulled into the station without any gimmick whatsoever this time. Yoon Soo-ah and I immediately darted out onto the platform.

According to the testimony of survivors protected by the Paranormal Administration Bureau: at a station whose hanja was not distorted, an announcement would declare that the operator was being replaced, and the train would sit at the platform for ten minutes. On that platform stood a vending machine—draw a drink marked as a winner, and the operator would approach and exchange it for a train ticket. Anyone holding that ticket could leave the station without incident.

That was the second escape route of the red [Station That Should Not Exist].

"This gimmick is one steaming pile of garbage, isn't it? It's basically 'if you don't already know, die.'"

"That's probably why so few survived."

We found the vending machine right away. The problem was the lineup of products it carried.

"What a garbage set of names..."

Frowning at product names nobody in their right mind would want to drink, I pulled the least offensive option, the [Nose-Cutting Cola].

I frowned again at the warning printed on the bottle. I'd already heard about it, but it was still a warning label that made drinking the last thing on earth I wanted to do.

As you can see, this winning-draw lottery was the gimmick of this station. You gambled on some unknowable odds of hitting the winner, on a drink that outright told you drinking any of the others meant death. In a way, it was the cruelest trial of any station we'd faced yet. And of course—naturally—you couldn't confirm whether you'd won or lost unless you drank the entire bottle. Half-measures and clever tricks were out of the question.

"What on earth must the survivors have been thinking when they drank this...?"

Yoon Soo-ah's face darkened; apparently we were thinking the same thing.

"The people who drank it had already lived through the other stations' gimmicks."

By the survivors' testimony, the ticket-exchange station never appeared first. Which meant these were people who had already endured the anomalies but, on some instinct, had refused to climb up into the concourse—and they'd gambled their lives on that drink as their final hope.

Of course, my circumstances were a little better than those survivors'. I wasn't an ordinary person; I was one of the 'special individuals.'

The problem is that word, though... 'Contamination.' The nuance is deeply unpleasant.

Death or a curse I could wrap my head around. It was that vague word—contamination—that prodded my imagination toward far darker places. But what choice did I have? To get the ticket, drink it I must.

What I really wanted to do was drag every passenger over here and announce, 'Everyone's responsible for their own bottle—bottoms up!' But...

That would completely ruin the dignity I've been maintaining for the sake of this broadcast.

Trusting in my ability as a psychic power user, I was just about to twist the cap open when—

Tap!

"Master Yi-yeon, I will drink this one."

"Soo-ah?"

Yoon Soo-ah had plucked the bottle right out of my hand.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"If it comes down to one of us remaining—you or me—leaving you standing is far more useful to everyone."

"You mean because I'm stronger than you, so the danger to me is comparatively lower."

"Of course I know you are the more capable psychic power user, Master Yi-yeon. The toll if you draw a blank would be smaller than for me, too... but it would never be zero."

"......That's..."

This was what Yoon Soo-ah was saying: that for the sake of the passengers, I had to stay in peak condition at all times. And so, the comparatively 'useless' one would step up to take the bullet.

"...Then I won't refuse. You won't regret this?"

"Not at all. If anything, I'd like you to promise me something, Master Yi-yeon."

"Promise you what?"

"That until I find the winning drink, you will not try to stop me. Not once."

"I'm sorry, what does that even—"

Instead of answering, Yoon Soo-ah cracked the cap open. And before I could say another word, she downed the drink in one shot.

"Whoa. That was intense... Are you all right?"

"...Pwah! Yes, nothing really—urk!"

Before she could finish the sentence, Yoon Soo-ah fumbled the bottle and retched violently.

The wrapper on the fallen bottle shifted, plastering itself over with the word [BLANK].

"Huuurrrghhh!"

At the same moment, Yoon Soo-ah vomited blood.

"Soo-ah!"

"I'm f, fine! Khh—khk!"

After spitting out the blood lingering in her throat, she waved a hand to say she was all right—and immediately drew a fresh drink from the machine.

Thunk.

And with no time for anyone to stop her, she downed that one in a single shot too.

"Ugh!"

A torrent of blood burst from her nose. It gushed and gushed, staining her crisp white dress shirt crimson.

"Hhk—!"

But Yoon Soo-ah paid it no mind. She pinched her nose hard, blew out the blood clogging it, and drew yet another drink.

Another one-shot.

Shrrrrrrk!

Blank again.

Both of Yoon Soo-ah's eyes went scarlet, weeping tears of blood. Still she simply smeared them roughly dry against her sleeve and reached for yet another bottle.

Only then did my stunned mind—paralyzed by the sheer, indescribable ferocity of what I was watching—snap back to me.

Grab.

"That's enough."

"L-let go of me, please."

Yoon Soo-ah said it with a face caked in blood.

"Keep this up and you'll die."

"I'm perfectly fine. I promised, didn't I? That you wouldn't stop me until I found the winner?"

"To hell with the promise—you shoved it in your mouth before I could even answer!"

"D-did I?"

Yoon Soo-ah smiled bitterly through the blood.

"Why on earth are you doing this?"

"It is a strategic choice, to minimize the sacrifice."

"Strategic choice my ass—this is just you volunteering to be the sacrificial lamb!"

Come to think of it, Yoon Soo-ah had been like this from the very first day we met. In the Corner Man's alley, she hadn't cared in the slightest about losing face. In every case since, I'd seen her time and again throw her own body around without a second thought for it—as though, if it meant saving someone else's life, her own death simply didn't frighten her.

Until now, I'd written that off as the makeup of a genuinely good, righteous person. But what she was showing me right now was, no matter how I looked at it, not normal.

"...I can't help it. For someone like me—a sinner—this is the only way I can be of any use to people. Urk!"

Yoon Soo-ah swayed dizzily and leaned into my chest.

"Do you absolutely have to be useful to other people? Isn't the most important thing in this world supposed to be yourself?"

That was my own personal philosophy. But Yoon Soo-ah answered without backing down an inch.

"...It's for my own sake, too."

With her blood-smeared face still resting against my chest, she spoke.

"The Yun family... it may sound laughable to say this in front of you, Master Yi-yeon, but we're one of the rare old psychic bloodlines in Korea, with a history going back generations... The ancestors of my ancestors, my grandmother, my grandfather, my father, my mother, and all of my older brothers and sisters above me—every single one of them fulfilled that duty."

Her grandfather and father, her mother, her brothers and sisters had all died along the way. And Yoon Soo-ah said she took even that as a badge of pride.

"Grandmother always told me... that they all left doing what was right. That they all fulfilled their responsibility to the end..."

And so Yoon Soo-ah had wanted to walk the same road as the rest of them. But...

"Unlike my parents and my siblings... I had no talent for sorcery. So I had no choice but to lean on this shabby little ability of mine... which means I have to work that much harder to make up for what I lack... to be of use to people, for all that I'm lacking... and—only then can I be a daughter and a little sister my late parents and my brothers and sisters wouldn't be ashamed of..."

So that was the root of the almost pathological altruism Yoon Soo-ah had always shown. But no matter how I turned it over, this wasn't altruism at all.

This was nothing more than a survivor's guilt.

"Hnngh...!"

Yoon Soo-ah barely recovered her balance and lifted her face from my chest. Then, with a face filthy with blood, she smiled.

"So please—give me the chance to fulfill my duty."

I couldn't bring myself to say to that face, You know your precious old hag at the Bureau gaslit you, right? And even if I did, that was a remark owed to the one responsible, not to Yoon Soo-ah. And so I put into words something she might never have heard in her entire life—the words Baek Gong-ju should have said to her long, long ago.

"Forget all that garbage. I just want Yoon Soo-ah to live a good life. Your dead parents and your brothers and sisters would want exactly the same thing."

"......"

For a moment, Yoon Soo-ah stared at me in silence, eyes wide. Then a smile spread across her face—loose, unguarded, carrying not a trace of tension.

"You're the first person who's ever said that to me... thank you."

It suited her so much better than her usual bearing—that awkward, over-laden stiffness she always carried—so much more natural, that I almost wondered whether that smile wasn't the real Yoon Soo-ah.

But only for a moment. Her face snapped back to its usual solemn expression, and she drew another drink from the machine. And drank.

Gulp. Gulp.

"Pwah...!"

"......"

Once again I silently studied Yoon Soo-ah, who had downed the whole bottle in one go. But this time she didn't vomit blood, didn't bleed from her nose, didn't weep tears of blood. And then—

The outer wrapper had plastered itself over with the word [WINNER].

"Ah, that's it, we got—"

The instant she confirmed it, Yoon Soo-ah smiled through her bloodied face and lost consciousness. I caught her before she hit the floor and checked her over.

Tap. Tap.

Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned—and there stood something dressed as a train operator, wearing no face at all.

Shoop.

It held out the train ticket in its hand. The meaning was clear: exchange it for the winning bottle.

"Right on schedule, huh."

I handed the unconscious Yoon Soo-ah over to Wang Lingguan and extended the winning bottle. The moment the operator reached out its hand, as if declaring the transaction sealed—

GRAB—

I snatched its wrist.

"But if I just beat the living daylights out of you right here, I don't need ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠any ticket at all. Everything works out fine, doesn't it?"

The train could not run without its operator. But the engine room stood empty. Given those circumstances, the only way to lure out the unseen operator was this train-ticket exchange. In other words, from the very beginning, my goal in hunting down the winning bottle had never been the ticket itself—it had been summoning the operator.

"For starters, I'm in one hell of a foul mood right now. So let me land one on you."