WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 58: Geochilsan Express Train (4)
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“Got any good ideas?”
“Why are you asking me?”
I was so flustered that the words came out before I could stop them. Lee Gangrim smiled.
“I was just thinking. I don’t think our youngest got on this train deliberately. After putting my detective skills to work, I’m thinking Seon-u hyung sent you. What do you think?”
So the self-proclaimed ace had not been bluffing. If I ruled out Seon-u In here, they would conclude that I had boarded because I knew a Distortion would occur. It was checkmate.
‘Then I’ll push the blame onto Section Chief Seon-u In.’
Even though I was an Irregular, I tried to put the best possible spin on why Section Chief Seon-u had gone out of his way to approach a civilian in private and call me in when Corporation personnel were aboard.
I needed to emphasize that I had a role to play, and that I needed information the Corporation did not have.
‘Section Chief Seon-u In probably sent me expecting things to be revealed this far. He deliberately spoke as if I were here on official business.’
One section chief, and one librarian with a rank comparable to a section chief. As far as I knew, they were Haetae’s core personnel.
Maybe Seon-u In’s game plan had been to put all my cards on the table, put our heads together, and bring back new information.
“Our records say there is nothing wrong with this train, which is the problem. But you... You’re awfully calm right now. You know something else, don’t you?”
After a brief pause, I raised both hands.
“That’s right. Section Chief Seon-u sent me. But I’m a victim too, you know? I was only asked to test an item, and this happened.”
“A test?”
I laid all the materials Seon-u In had given me across the table.
“It’s a horizontal coordinate system. Why do you have that?”
“Wait. It looks different from our issued equipment.”
“Yes. This is a prototype Section Chief Seon-u gave me. I don’t need zero-point coordinates, so its coordinate tracking works differently.”
“Did you hear what it does?”
“He said they would be measuring the coordinates from outside.”
Mok Inha took the coordinate system and began inspecting it from every angle.
“It cannot get our coordinates at all. The anchor and zero point are fixed, but our coordinates have completely drifted away.”
“This is an unrecorded situation. What if we request rescue and suppress the Distortion from outside?”
“That won’t work. The problem isn’t that there is no problem. The problem is that nobody remembers it.”
I quickly explained my hypothesis. The story of the 100 Million Years Button, the non-stop story, and how the time on the display board matched the passengers’ characteristics.
Lee Gangrim frowned several times as he listened, then looked impressed, then scratched his head hard.
“It’s hard to believe. Every time they board, they spend thousands or tens of thousands of years neither dead nor alive, and then their memories are completely erased when they get off.”
“The records would say there were no anomalies. No unusual conditions or aftereffects found in any passenger. That’s exactly what we’d expect. If their memories were erased, this hypothesis fits perfectly.”
“Common sense says there is no way it would leave no effect.”
“That raises the second question.”
The moment they returned to reality, the fact that they had gone mad on the train for thousands of years was cleanly cut away, and they went back to their ordinary lives.
Did that mean they had suffered? Were the person who had no memory of it and the person on the train the same being?
“I think they are.”
“I don’t think so.”
Ryu Hyeon-u and Lee Gangrim disagreed. Mok Inha gave no comment and waited for me to continue.
“For now, I’ll assume that the person who boarded the train and the person who arrived are the same being. Then how is the seven thousand years of time resolved?”
“Resolved? Wouldn’t you just assume it disappears?”
“No. Even if you turned them into mummies, that would be enough time for them to shrivel up and rot away. Yet when the train arrives, everything disappears. Isn’t that an enormous waste of time?”
“It could be restored by turning back time. Like a reset. The flow of time itself is a complete mess in a Distortion to begin with.”
“Then why does it always arrive about ten minutes early? If it resets, shouldn’t it arrive on time?”
“Maybe today’s train was simply destined to arrive ten minutes early?”
“I can see it arriving late, but I can’t imagine it getting there early. Besides, the fact that it happens every time, always by about ten minutes, bothers me.”
Mok Inha’s eyes sharpened.
“So you’re saying those few minutes are this ghost story’s actual purpose?”
“Yes. If the 100 Million Years Button combined with the train to become the main ghost story, only a few seconds should pass in the real world once the suffering ends. Otherwise, it would not be much of a would-you-rather choice.”
“Endure one hundred million years and gain something in ten seconds, versus just living normally. Without that advantage...”
“Then another Distortion, one whose main purpose requires ten minutes, must be mixed in!”
“Since this restaurant car should not exist, we should focus our investigation on that part of the Distortion.”
They could infer ten things from one. So that was the level someone needed to reach to become a government official.
“What will you do if that is not the case?”
“Then we’ll have to find another way to end the Distortion, even if we have to force the train to stop. That’s why it would be best to split up.”
“Fine. What should we start with?”
“Officer Ryu Hyeon-u, please check the number of passengers with the train staff. Also, I’d appreciate it if you could gather anyone likely to cause trouble, like the people involved in the violence earlier, in a separate car.”
“If we’re doing that, I’ll go with Hyeon-u. Two will be better than one. Hyeon-u, start from the front. I’ll start from the rear.”
“Yes. We’ll regroup in the restaurant car as soon as we’re done.”
Mok Inha and Ryu Hyeon-u headed in opposite directions.
“Youngest, what should I do?”
Lee Gangrim still looked entertained, without the slightest sense of crisis.
“Officer Gangrim should...”
“What do you mean, Officer, between us? Call me sunbae. Just sunbae.”
“...”
“You’re not going to call me that?”
Lee Gangrim had the look of someone who would become three times more annoying if I didn’t answer. I should just play along.
“Yes, yes. Gangrim sunbae.”
Apparently satisfied, Lee Gangrim beamed. I had heard earlier that Lee Gangrim was the same Grade 5 as Section Chief Mok. Had Lee Gangrim been the perpetual youngest with no junior staff under him...?
“Sunbae, please check whether anything else on this train has disappeared or appeared separately, like this restaurant car. From what I noticed on the way here, the connection to the engine compartment in Car 1 had vanished.”
“So figure out everything that differs from the map inside the train. O... okay. Trust this sunbae, and see you later.”
Once Lee Gangrim left too, I finally had some time alone.
Hertz turned up the volume, and ghost stories linked to the blog began competing to flag their relevance in alert windows.
“Now, where do I start...?”
Getting out alone would probably be easy. My problem had started because I was trying to tear the entire train free from the 100 Million Years Button.
Hertz: Why not begin with a simple solution, then eliminate the impossible elements?
Thinking simply, the easiest method was for the train to reach its terminus. Even if the 100 Million Years Button had intervened, the ghost story would end once the train arrived. That much was certain.
Hertz: Time is the problem.
If I could make time pass quickly, or return it to normal...
“I need to look up every train ghost story connected to time.”
I carefully entered hashtags into the blog search bar.
#train #railway #subway #time #delay #disappearance...
More than several thousand ghost stories appeared in the search results. After passing through the Depth Gauge app’s filters, they divided into categories I had made, such as true-story-based, community, and fiction, then began sorting themselves with colored tags based on priority and relevance.
‘Not this one. This is useless... No. The logic on this one is weak too.’
I scrolled through the torrents of text from ghost stories that had emerged everywhere, regardless of country or website, from ones originating in Tongsintel communities over twenty years ago onward.
Total-annihilation endings were out. Napolitan horrors with no explanation were disqualified.
Manual-style ghost stories would be even harder to control.
Kisaragi Station... No, absolutely not. That would be worse.
‘A train station serial killer and detective ghost story... No, I can’t pile splatter on top of this too.’
My eyes felt dry.
It would be nice if this were a world that had copied an entire wiki, with one unquestionable correct answer. Why was I doing project planning even for ghost stories?
After a brief moment of existential emptiness, I blinked and clicked the next ghost story.
Next. Next. Next. Next.
And next.
At last, my scrolling hand stopped.
“...”
Hertz: Partner’s eyes are sparkling. It seems you have found a good answer.
“Yeah. I think I have.”
I unfolded the car map I had photographed earlier. The simple schematic of Cars 1 through 18 marked the locations of vending machines, restrooms, fire extinguishers, and more.
“When I heard that this restaurant car had appeared, I wondered where the people from the passenger cars had gone. But this car... is between Car 9 and Car 10.”
As far as I knew, Korea probably did not have them, but some trains overseas separated their front and rear sections along part of the route.
Cars 1 through 8 would head down Line A, while Cars 9 through 12 would head down Line B. In that case, the rear section would connect to another front section headed for the same destination.
“No one vanished in the first place. This restaurant car was wedged between the front and rear sections that should have been connected.”
Hertz: Then how did this car appear?
“Another ghost story must have slipped in. But Hertz, remember? Ghost story cores do not interfere with one another.”
Hertz: They do not. Since you mentioned it, that is also why there are limits to the range in which I can protect Partner.
“Thanks for the sudden explanation. But the important thing is that this restaurant car is not part of the 100 Million Years Train.”
Hertz: What do you mean?
I took out the prototype horizontal coordinate system and set it on the table. The numbers, which had been rising and falling for a long while without finding coordinates, locked into place with a clear bell sound.
“This means that coordinates are fixed in this car, and time may move differently here too.”
The clock attached to the coordinate system began moving.
Hertz: 3:45 p.m...
“...Less than five minutes have passed since the train departed. If we stay in this restaurant car, the train will probably arrive in Busan in two and a half hours.”
Hertz: That’s good news. Doesn’t that solve the problem?
“This place may be spacious, but it cannot hold nearly five hundred people.”
Hertz: Five hundred? Oh, surely... Partner. Are you truly thinking of saving the entire train?
“There’s a way right in front of me. I can’t just refuse to try it. Still, we can’t bring everyone here immediately.”
I sorted through the variables that could arise from moving between ghost stories, one by one.
First. Is immortality maintained here?
Second. If immortality disappears, will someone who dies in the restaurant car reset to their original living state when the train arrives?
Third. Conversely, if someone is injured in the restaurant car, or dies there, then is moved to an ordinary passenger car, which current state will they retain?
‘And the most important question.’
Was there a time difference between the restaurant car and the ordinary cars?
Cold sweat ran down my back. Lee Gangrim had only said that there was a restaurant car. He had not said anyone had entered and left it. We had all entered this restaurant car for the first time, and I was the only one still here.
I ran a simple calculation. If a journey of roughly two hours and forty minutes, accounting for stops and delays, equaled seven thousand years, then even rounding roughly, one hour was 2,695 years. That meant forty-four years passed every minute.
Even if only five minutes had passed since the train departed...
“No, that can’t be it. If it were, the two of them should have returned the moment I stepped outside. The time it takes to count passengers outside would be a blink of an eye here.”
Hertz: What if, once someone leaves, the way back here disappears?
“...”
Hertz: The time it takes to detach this train may be the reason for the seven thousand years outside, and the reason it arrives ten minutes early.
It was a plausible hypothesis. If so, and if there was a chance I could not return here, I needed all the more reason to find the Corporation personnel and gather them in another safe zone.
“...Ah.”
What if I went there?
Footnotes:
Hyung is a familiar Korean form of address used by a man for an older man.
Napolitan horror is a Korean internet-horror genre presented through ominous rules or instructions without explanations.
Kisaragi Station is a Japanese internet urban legend about reaching a nonexistent railway station.
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