Hell Train Hijack
[Ah, this is your announcement. Our Hell Train will soon arrive at the thirty-fifth station, the 'Tardiness' Station. Judgment equivalent to your lifetime of lateness will be carried out, so please take note and enjoy your train ride.]
"……."
Something was off.
Was the Hell Train ever this long?
No, never like this.
The Hell Train's route was random—how many stations it passed, which ones—nothing was fixed. Usually around ten, give or take. Even at its longest, maybe twenty. This was blatantly abnormal.
"Yeah, detective. I'll look into it."
Sua said that. Look into it? How?
Sua stood up and grabbed a passing hellhound attendant.
"Final stop—when do we arrive?"
"Sorry. Can't tell you due to company policy."
"……."
Sua glanced at Ari. Ari nodded and flicked her finger slightly.
Weeeeng—
A single fly latched onto the attendant's nape.
Aha.
Sua cleared her throat. Then, for some reason, she modulated her voice.
"Let me ask again. When exactly does this train reach its final destination?"
"Ah, well... I don't really know."
"Aren't you the attendant? You work here and don't know? We're paying customers, and this is how you treat us? What's this company policy crap!"
"S-Sorry! It changed recently when the engineer switched..."
"Engineer? The engineer changed?"
The hellhound attendant nodded at Sua's question.
"Yes, that's right."
"What do you mean the engineer changed? Can your engineers just swap out like that on a whim?"
"Well... the previous engineer died, so we picked one of us attendants as the new one... The current route map was planned by the new engineer."
"So we just go complain to the current engineer?"
"No, you can't... We all get paid by the engineer, even if it's peanuts. The attendants would all stop you."
That was the story we heard.
"How about it, detective? Did Watson do good?"
"Yeah, you did great. You're capable."
"Detective's praise makes me happy. Having a capable Watson by your side benefits you too, yeah."
Mentally unstable, sure, but otherwise a capable assistant.
Sua grabbed a few more passing attendants after that, but they all told the same story.
"Engineer changed, huh..."
I muttered absently.
I'd played monster games, studied the lore pretty thoroughly, and watched tons of monster game V-tuber streams. I figured I knew a fair bit about monsters, but I'd never heard of the Hell Train's engineer changing. This was a development I didn't recognize.
Only one thing came to mind.
"The cult must've pulled something again. Sigh..."
I let out an involuntary sigh.
Us boarding the Hell Train wasn't normal procedure. We'd gotten tangled up chasing a cult wanted poster. High chance the cult tampered with something.
"Come to think of it, unni, what exactly is the cult?"
"Huh?"
"I know they're dangerous, but I don't really get what they do."
She basically asked if they weren't just terrorists.
The cult activated Moon's Fall. The cult mutated Fox Possession. The cult unleashed Assimilation.
Thinking about it, the cult hadn't directly intervened much. During Ambiguous Hairdresser, they stepped up and got wiped out. With Magical Girl's Birth, they tried and got curb-stomped into oblivion.
From Nao's perspective, who'd never properly talked to a single cultist, they probably just seemed like terrorists.
"The cult is an apocalypse-worshipping group. They believe humanity will face a horrific end someday."
When the end comes, humans will die in agony. So better to die painlessly as humans beforehand. Or become monsters and survive the apocalypse.
"Even more dangerous than I thought... But isn't that kinda contradictory?"
"Exactly."
I nodded.
The cult splits into the Choir and the Resolutionists. The Choir believes in dying with human dignity. The Resolutionists believe in shedding humanity to survive post-apocalypse.
They agree on the end coming and humans can't endure it with body or mind alone, but their doctrines are polar opposites. That's why cult storylines feel surprisingly political. Who holds more power in the Choir or Resolutionists?
Ambiguous Hairdresser was Choir-led; they planned to gift humanity death via it. Assimilation seems Resolutionist work; merge tons of humans into it to overcome the end.
This Hell Train mess was Resolutionists. And their goal—
"...Turn me into a monster?"
Resolutionists' goal was always that. Turn as many living humans as possible into monsters, build allies to survive the end together.
I recalled that hopping ghost from earlier. The missing person turned monster.
"Sua."
"Yeah, detective."
"If it's not too much, can you check if there are any missing people on this train? And whether they're still human..."
"Detective's orders are absolute to his assistant, yeah. Watson doesn't wanna be abandoned. So she'll follow every word."
With that, Sua got up and headed off somewhere.
...She's gonna overdo it someday, and it scares me.
Sua was gone a while but thankfully returned.
No need to spell out the investigation results.
'Your Very Own Watson'
Hell Train?: The train engineer is under High Church control. The Hell Train has become a monster train, planning to turn all passengers into monsters.
The train's goal was clear. It'd keep running until I became a monster.
I realized this train would never reach the living world.
"No final stop? So we can't go home...?"
"Yeah."
That was the situation. Precisely, only I couldn't go home.
Per Sua's investigation, I was the only pure human on this train. If I accepted becoming a monster, the office staff—Ari, Lisa, Nao, Sua—might get to go home.
Like if I got off at some station. Or if endless judgments ground down my stamina and sanity.
"That'd just mean unni sacrifices herself."
"Don't want detective sacrificing alone. Together even in death, yeah."
"I prefer Mayuri-nim as a human. People call this 'hotter human,' right?"
"No... Lisa needs more Korean studies."
That was just an example anyway. There were safer ways.
The office staff weren't pure humans, so the train might let them slide. If Nao turned me into a vampire too, maybe it'd pass?
"Eh? Unni, gonna become a vampire?"
"Last resort."
Sorry, staff, but I wasn't sacrificing myself... They probably saw me as the kind, pushover ultimate cutie of the universe, right? I could toughen up too!
Above all, wasn't I the ultimate cutie? If I turned into a hopping ghost or something and marred this beauty, it'd be a cosmic loss.
So living for myself was living for everyone! I'd live for me! For my beauty!
"Unni lacks confidence in everything except her face."
"Eh, not really...? This isn't confidence—it's fact, like 'the sun rises in the east.' An immutable law..."
"So to unni, it's just common sense."
Nao nodded like she got it.
"Yeah, if you're the ultimate cutie, you gotta live. So what'll our ultimate cutie unni do?"
"No point just taking judgments forever."
The train had no intention of reaching the end. More judgments would just lead to my breaking point eventually.
Time to act.
"Let's hijack it."
"Hijack...?"
I nodded.
If the engineer wasn't driving to the end, what choice? Take the train ourselves and drive it. Or threaten/blackmail the engineer into doing it.
"Is that possible?"
"Possible or not, if we don't, the ultimate cutie dies."
"True..."
"Ari, the carrier."
I called Ari. She brought the carrier.
Luckily, we kept our pre-anomaly belongings. My Fun Shadow Swap in my shadow was intact. Anything in the carrier came with.
I opened it.
Inside—
A doll. Flowing pink-blonde hair. Sleeping eyes. Doll joints visible everywhere.
Looked like I'd kidnapped someone and stuffed 'em in here.
No choice. Couldn't carry a person-sized doll around, and waking her drew eyes. Hiding joints was tough.
So into the large carrier she went.
I gently touched her ear.
Soft, springy earlobe. Stroked it, nudged the outer ear.
Baesena's eyes opened.
"Hi, Yuri! What's up?"
Baesena climbed out. I looked at her and said,
"We're taking over the train. I need your power, Sena."