Where the Siren Wails (4)

The girl in the school uniform fought with everything she had to shake me off.

When that failed, she twisted her whole body around and drove a kick at me with all her strength.

Thud—!

The blow landed square on my injured arm.

I nearly crumpled to the floor but forced myself to stay upright.

"Let go of me—!"

The girl tried to scream. I clapped a hand over her mouth at once.

"Mm—mmph…!"

The moment I wrapped my fingers around her jaw, her struggles grew wilder. So I kept holding on and murmured to her, desperate.

"It's okay. It's okay…!"

I felt her flinch at the sound of my voice.

Trying to calm her, I lowered my whisper even further.

"Sorry for scaring you. Just don't scream. If you do that, I'll let go."

At my plea, her resistance ebbed away.

Before long, the girl looked up at me and gave a small nod.

I peeled my hand away slowly, and true to her word, she didn't cry out. Instead, whatever strength she'd mustered seemed to drain away, and she collapsed where she stood.

She looked to be a middle schooler. An ordinary winter school uniform, long hair tied back in a single bunch, about average height. Her face was drained so white it was like a blank sheet of paper—impossible to guess what she normally looked like.

"Are you alone?"

At my question, the girl looked up at me. There was something fierce in her eyes rather than pitiable. So I changed my question.

"How long have you been here?"

"…I don't know."

"Who are you waiting for?"

The girl shut her mouth again. Apparently she didn't want to admit she was on her own.

"If you're alone, want to come with me?"

I only said it because I couldn't bring myself to leave a kid behind. But the girl stared at me hard for a moment, then said in a stubborn tone:

"Forget it. Just drag me along. In exchange, when we get out of here, all you have to do is tell my mom I died."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

When I asked again, not following her, the girl pressed her point as if it were obvious.

"You're going to kill me to buy a train ticket, aren't you?"

"What?"

"Why are you so surprised? It's right there on that paper."

The girl jerked her chin toward the paper lying on the floor. The rulebook I'd set down, only to drop it when the door opened. Sure enough, that rulebook did have a way out written in it. But what this girl was saying was news to me.

"There's no way to get a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ticket by killing someone in there."

Among the successful trades with "the one in an old military uniform," there were no corpses. No—as a matter of fact, corpses were prohibited items.

But the girl didn't listen to a word of it; she only knitted her brow.

Sensing the conversation was talking past each other, I simply pulled out my own boarding pass and showed it to her.

"Look. I already have a ticket. So there's no reason for me to kill you."

When she saw the ticket, the girl's expression wavered a little. But she didn't let her guard down completely. Before that crack could close, I hurried on.

"How old are you?"

"…Fifteen."

"Then you can walk right out of here."

"What are you talking about?"

The girl looked at me in surprise, and her reaction made me puzzled in turn. She'd talked about the rules as if she knew them. Yet the single piece of information most advantageous to her—she hadn't known it at all.

I picked up the rulebook from the floor. Then I showed her the section I'd skimmed past as useless to me.

In other words, for a twenty-eight-year-old adult like me, that route was impossible to even attempt. In exchange, this "Route B," with its restricted eligibility, was lower in difficulty. So that's when I'd thought, huh, they even have child-protection concepts in here.

And this girl happened to be fifteen.

Thinking she could finally relax, I looked at her. But the girl, far from relaxing, had started to cry, tears dropping one by one. Her face, lips bitten tight, looked unbearably frustrated and wronged.

"What's wrong?"

"This was right here, and nobody told me about it."

"There were other people?"

"Yes…"

"Where are they now?"

"Some of them died. Some of them left with the money."

At the word money, I grew puzzled again. When I kept failing to understand, the girl added:

"Those bastards killed people and turned them into money."

In that instant, I finally realized my mistake. I'd been thinking only of bartering with "the one in an old military uniform" this whole time. But that wasn't what the girl had been talking about at all.

Exchanging items for cash. That was the parcel locker on the first floor of the waiting room—the thing I'd given up on from the start.

No way.

I remembered the thought I'd had while passing by earlier. What if you removed the organs from a body and put them in there—wouldn't that fetch a decent price?

I'd dismissed it as a stupid idea. And people had actually gone and done it?

Feeling the blood drain from my face, I asked:

"How many of these bad guys are we talking about?"

"Three."

"And how many people did they kill?"

"More than two."

Calculations started spinning in my head. Somewhere—on the news, or in a movie—I'd heard something about the going rate for organ trafficking. The four or five major organs had seemed to go for somewhere around a hundred to two hundred million won apiece. Even calculated conservatively, one person's body was worth four hundred million. Seventy percent of that was two hundred and eighty million.

The price of a boarding pass was fifteen million, seven hundred and eighty thousand won.

Then what—? So those bastards had already secured their own tickets, and they'd killed more people anyway, just for the money?

"Where are they now? Were you hiding here because of them?"

"That's…"

The siren I'd heard earlier came wailing back. The rulebook said the siren sounded every forty-seven minutes. Apparently I'd been wandering around in here for close to an hour already.

I clapped my hands over my ears at the sound shaking the whole station. But the girl didn't cover her ears—she screamed and wrapped her arms around her head instead.

The siren cut off after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a few seconds, just like before. The instant it stopped, the girl anxiously glanced around. Then, seeing me, she let out a breath of relief.

"Those people are probably all gone by now. Because of this sound."

"This sound?"

"Every time the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠siren goes off, at least one person dies."

"What did you say?"

I swallowed hard. I'd never heard that before. But a scene flashed through my mind.

"How do they die?"

"They just… get crushed. Like bugs."

So that was it.

The reason the man who'd given me the rulebook was dead. A chill crawled up my spine. I'd already heard the siren twice. Which meant death had brushed past me twice already.

But why wasn't this in the rulebook? Had the author simply failed to figure it out? No—there was no way. Someone who'd worked out that the siren blared every forty-seven minutes couldn't possibly have missed that people died each time it did. This had been left out deliberately.

To what end? Knowing it wouldn't change anything—you couldn't dodge it or stop it anyway?

I forced down the shock and tried to reconstruct what the girl had been through here.

She'd apparently been with a group of people from the start. They'd gathered to discuss countermeasures, and they'd found the rulebook. Which budding Archimedes thought to stuff a person into a parcel locker, I couldn't say. In any case, they'd tried it, and it worked. Eureka.

After that—whether greed for money blinded them or bloodlust did, who knew—a few of them had begun hunting in earnest. Again and again they'd shoved people into the parcel locker. But it didn't last long. Because every time the siren wailed, inexplicable crushing deaths began to occur.

At first they must have taken it for coincidence. But by the second time came suspicion, and by the third, certainty. And at that point they'd fled without delay, bundles of cash made from other people's corpses stuffed under their arms.

Sighing as I pictured the scene in my head, I finally understood why the girl had stayed so wary. Even now she was watching me uneasily—as if afraid that having heard her story, I might turn into exactly the same kind of monster.

I watched the girl avoid my eyes for a moment, then opened my bag. Out came the portable first-aid kit that had been refused at the bartering window.

"Here."

"What's that?"

"There's a bandage in there. Put it on. Your neck is bleeding."

It had been bothering me for a while now. For some reason, the girl's nape was covered in scratches. They looked like fingernail marks.

The girl's eyes went wide, darting between me and the kit. Then she spoke in an even smaller voice.

"But you're bleeding way more than I am, mister…"

"Huh?"

When I failed to catch her meaning, the girl pointed a finger at my head. I felt around my forehead—and my fingers slid across something slick. Wondering what it was, I looked down to find my hand dyed a vivid red.

"Gah—!"

What was this? Blood? Surely not mine? Come to think of it, why had I been sweating so much this whole time—!

Did the shattering glass cut me earlier…?!

When I recoiled in horror at the sight of the blood, the girl stared at me blankly. Then she tore off a wad of tissues and handed it over, and I hurriedly pressed it against the wound on my head.

She dug the antiseptic and gauze out of the first-aid kit. Once the emergency treatment was finished, I somehow couldn't shake the shock and sat there dazed, staring into space. At which point the girl muttered, just loud enough to catch.

"And yet you managed to survive, huh."

Somehow, that remark had teeth.

"If you have a ticket, get out fast. What are you going to do if it gets stolen while you're flashing it around like that?"

I hadn't imagined it. The girl was lecturing me.

"I only showed it to you because you can get out even without a ticket…"

The girl snorted at my excuse. It was a thoroughly contemptuous little laugh—but it was the first smile she'd shown me, after all. Her guard seemed to have loosened somewhat, because she took out a bandage and started applying it to her own wounds.

Watching her, I broke the silence.

"What's your name?"

"Lee Sol."

"Lee… Sori?"

"Lee. Sol. One-syllable given name."

Sol, huh. As in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a broom. Isn't she afraid of getting teased about cleaning tools?

"Okay, Sol. I'm Seo Do-woon, and I have a ticket. You have another way out of here. And if we drag this out and the siren goes off again, next time it might be our turn. So for now, let's focus on getting out. Deal?"

Swallowing the urge to tease her about her name, I spoke with all the gravity I could muster. The girl—Sol—studied me for a long moment. Then she gave a small nod and said in a crawling voice:

"I'm sorry for kicking you earlier."

Right. That apology, I'd accept. I really did nearly die back there.

I couldn't quite bring myself to say it was fine, so I just nodded with a stingy little smile.