WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 56: Geochilsan Express Train (2)
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Click.
[Geochilsan Express (Nonstop)]
Click.
[Next Stop: Geochilsan]
The display glitched with a sound like wooden slats being flipped.
Then a familiar KTX announcement came through the speakers.
“Passengers, are you having a pleasant day? This is the Geochilsan Express, running nonstop to its terminus. We hope you enjoy a comfortable journey aboard our train, which will take you to your destination as quickly as possible.”
‘...That voice sounds familiar.’
Ah. It was exactly like the voices from the mountain lodge radio and the Langwidere gallery staff. It sounded human, but if someone asked whether it was human, I could never say yes.
Once the announcement ended, the glitching display finally showed the remaining time until the next station.
Click.
[Time Remaining Until the Terminus: 7,182 years, 4 months, 12 days, 9 hours, 41 minutes]
“...What?”
I could not have been the only one stunned. Murmurs rose from throughout the car and soon filled the train.
“What’s that? Is the display broken?”
“Seven thousand one hundred eighty-two years? Hey, take a picture. I’m putting this on Insta.”
“I feel like I boarded this thing back in ancient Gojoseon.”
“Shouldn’t we file a complaint about this?”
Fortunately, or unfortunately, none of the voices I heard sounded seriously worried. A train running for seven thousand years was ridiculous, after all. They probably thought it was a glitch like a subway display saying the next train was twenty-five minute-years away.
Everyone except me.
‘...Could it really be a glitch...?’
“No, Partner. For now, this has departed from normal human phenomena. I do not know whether that number means seven thousand years by the human calendar, but please be careful.”
‘...Should I get off?’
“What about pressing the emergency button to request a stop? It may be a nonstop train, but surely that does not mean passengers cannot get off in an emergency.”
‘I don’t know if the ghost story is detailed enough to account for that, but it might be too soon to hit the emergency button...’
It was a KTX bound for Busan on a weekend afternoon. Including standing passengers, a single train could hold around a thousand people. Even if the Corporation had pulled strings to keep the number as low as possible, there had to be at least five hundred aboard.
‘Section Chief Seon-u clearly said this was a ghost story where nothing being wrong was the problem.’
That meant it was not a ghost story in which more than five hundred people vanished without a trace or suffered something terrible. It was a ghost story safe and stable enough for the Corporation to test new equipment in.
‘For now, I should watch.’
Making a rash move could cause a problem on an entirely different scale from directing five or six people at the lodge. A crowd that had lost its reason was scarier than any ghost story.
If I was lucky, or unlucky, I might even find a clue about the SOSA universe or another ghost story. For now, I would not move.
A direct KTX from Seoul to Busan went Seoul → Daejeon → Dongdaegu → Busan... If we reached Daejeon within thirty minutes, I would have a better sense of things.
...Or I should have.
‘Looks like we’re screwed.’
When I glanced at the clock, it read 6:30 p.m. The train had not slowed once, nor had it passed a single station. At some point, the view outside had become nothing but pitch-black darkness, as though we were submerged in thick ink.
Voices laced with irritation and fear began erupting throughout the car.
“What the hell? When is the internet coming back?”
“The Wi-Fi’s out too. Is this a joke? Can a tunnel really be this long?”
“Was there even a tunnel this long?”
“Hey, call a crew member.”
“I have to get to Daejeon! Why hasn’t this thing stopped yet?!”
Of course, the crew did not have any answers either. They looked more panicked than anyone.
“We apologize. An unknown error has occurred in the communications network, and we are working to restore it... The train should arrive soon, so...”
“Then why isn’t the train stopping? There are several stops in between, but it’s just been running the whole time!”
“Th, that is... We cannot contact the control center...”
Nobody had an answer. Nobody understood the situation. The radios produced nothing but static, while everything that relied on the internet or electricity shut down one by one.
Then, at last, someone exploded.
“Open the door! I know the engineer is in there! Stop this train right now!”
Several people who looked like they belonged to a hiking club were pounding on the wall leading to the engine room, their faces red.
A wall?
‘Wasn’t there supposed to be a door there?’
There was nothing where the door to the engine room should have been. Just in case, I checked the photos I had taken when boarding.
‘...The door is gone. Maybe the train itself changed.’
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The announcement came on again, cutting through the noise of people trying to break down the wall.
“Passengers, please remain calm. This is a nonstop express train and is scheduled to arrive at its destination as planned, so please remain in your seats.”
The announcement repeated until the commotion died down. Its volume rose little by little, as though someone were turning it up one notch at a time.
Until everyone, unable to endure the noise any longer, sat quietly in their seats with pale faces.
Then more time passed.
‘...11:40 p.m.’
We had long since exceeded a normal train journey. Forget Busan, we should have passed Jeju and Okinawa by now. Yet the train was still running. And...
‘...It’s warm.’
Only when I picked up the packed meal I had been too distracted to eat did the final piece of my unease click into place.
The meal was still steaming hot. The dumplings, the kimbap, even the iced coffee I had brought still had ice in it.
Why had I only noticed now? Because I had not been thirsty.
It had taken me eight hours to realize that I had not taken a sip of water or a bite of food in all that time. I had not even gone to the bathroom once.
It felt as though basic human bodily functions themselves had stopped. When I looked up, the display still flashed that hateful number.
[Time Remaining Until the Terminus: 7,182 years, 4 months, 12 days, 1 hour, 41 minutes]
The time was steadily decreasing. But to endure seven thousand years...
‘Ah, the report.’
I quickly flipped through the report Seon-u In had given me.
[Case 1: Kim OO, 42, male: “I think I dozed off for a bit after boarding. When I opened my eyes, I was in Busan. I guess I was tired and passed out.”]
[Case 2: Lee OO, 28, female: “I was chatting with my friends, ate, then slept for a little while. But the funny thing is, we were supposed to arrive at 18:40 and got there at 18:20. I’ve seen KTX trains run late, but it was my first time arriving early.”]
[Additional Investigation Results: Passengers scheduled to get off at intermediate stops such as Daegu and Gyeongju were also confirmed to have disembarked safely at the relevant stations on time, or slightly early. Nobody noticed anything unusual.]
︙
All the accounts reached similar conclusions.
After boarding, people fell asleep from unexplained fatigue.
When they woke, the train was entering the station where they were meant to get off, arriving ten to thirty minutes ahead of schedule.
Even passengers whose destination was not the terminus safely got off at their intended stations and went home without incident.
There was no testimony about abnormal records such as nonstop travel, Geochilsan, or seven thousand years.
A ghost story with no problems.
The problem.
“No way. ...No way.”
An urban legend flashed through my mind.
“...That was it.”
“Partner?”
“That was it, Hertz. The 100 Million Years Button!”
It was a famous Japanese urban legend, like a balance-game question. It started with a question: if pressing a button gave you one million won in cash instantly, would you press it? But there was a catch.
Whoever pressed the button was sent into an empty three-dimensional space and had to endure one hundred million years with nothing. It was cosmic horror, where they went mad with their mind fully awake for one hundred million years, without hunger, sleep, aging, or death.
The instant one hundred million years passed and they returned to reality, only ten seconds had elapsed in the real world. Their memories of those one hundred million years were erased, and every physical change they had experienced during that time was reset as well.
From the perspective of the person one second after pressing the button, one million won had simply fallen into their hands the moment they pressed it. They would never even dream that they had endured the terrible eternity of one hundred million years.
“In other words, Partner, you believe that the moment the train departed, it left the trajectory of reality and entered an entirely different spacetime axis... Then it wanders for the amount of time shown on the display. If fortunate, a few years. If unfortunate, tens of thousands of years, or one hundred million years.”
“Right... And once that time passes, it arrives at the station a few minutes earlier than its scheduled arrival in reality, and all memories are erased.”
With the memories perfectly erased, the Corporation could only regard it as a Distortion where nothing being wrong was the problem.
Since the entire train had left the spacetime axis, the horizontal coordinate system could not lock onto its coordinates and only showed that the train remained there.
“Then how do the people who get off at intermediate stations escape?”
“...They probably experience the same amount of time. Then, when they get off, they remember getting off at their station on time.”
“What about people who were supposed to board at those stations?”
“I don’t know that far. Maybe they miss the train for some reason... Or perhaps they think they boarded as usual, and another new train appears.”
The condition for this train to occur might be that there were no passengers boarding at intermediate stations. It was a nonstop express, after all. That was likely why it had been so difficult to enter under normal circumstances.
“Then we are trapped.”
“...Yeah...”
I stared at the food that would not grow cold, then put one piece into my mouth and chewed. I could barely taste it.
Everyone trapped here, including me, had now left reality’s axis. According to the 100 Million Years Button, nothing flowed, nobody could be hurt, and everything necessary for life stopped.
No, at least with the 100 Million Years Button, someone could go mad alone. This was worse. Could five hundred people survive seven thousand years together?
Seven thousand years would take us back beyond the era when the pyramids were built. It was enough time to build the whole of human history from the ground up. Had we not already seen, in countless experiments and stories, the tragedies a small closed society could create?
People would fight, go mad, give up, then repeat it over and over until their minds were ground to dust, all without even being able to die. They would become zombies.
“Partner.”
Hertz called softly, interrupting my thoughts.
“I can keep you safe on this train, Partner.”
“What do you mean?”
“By letting you rest for a while inside the radio here, as though we were taking a commercial break... Your body and mind alike.”
“...I don’t really understand what you mean.”
“You would not need to experience these seven thousand years. You would simply sleep through them as though taking a short nap, then wake two hours later. Ah, the train would have gone through seven thousand years. You would have only that sense of it.”
It was a tempting offer.
I knew the urban legend of the 100 Million Years Button, yet I would not have to suffer at all. I could arrive in Busan, report, “It turns out there was another ghost story on the train,” and collect the rest of my payment.
“...”
Seven thousand one hundred eighty-two years. Human willpower. Five hundred people. Money. Sleep. Time. Life...
“Then are you ready to sleep, Partner?”
“No.”
“Ah, is there something else you need to do first?”
“No, Hertz. I’m not going to sleep. Not yet.”
As though surprised, the radio in my ear made the sound of a phonograph needle skipping once.
“Why? I believed I had made the most rational proposal, one that could protect my Partner. As you know, this is not simply a matter of being unable to escape or worrying about physical injury. Nor is this train registered in the Depth Gauge.”
“...I know. I know there’s nothing in it for me. But I don’t think I should do that.”
I remembered the students disappearing into the tunnel. I remembered the people at the market who cast aside their lives and vanished, becoming ghost story pages.
If I could have stopped them a little more, if I had stepped in a little sooner, they would not have had to go through it. Shouldn’t I at least try?
And it might sound reckless, but my instincts tended to be right. Right now, they were telling me to face this head-on.
With no appetite, I stuffed a dumpling into my mouth, grabbed my water bottle, and stood.
“Besides, you said there might be Corporation people on board. I’ll share information with them and look for another way.”
“...If that is your opinion, Partner, I must accept it...”
“Don’t worry. If it gets truly dangerous, I’ll ask you then.”
“Of course. I will wait.”
Without hesitation, I stepped into the corridor outside the car.
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