WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 59: Geochilsan Express Train (5)
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Hertz: Partner, I object.
“Think about whether you’ve agreed with me even once lately.”
Hertz: There are more than ten safe paths open before you. Why do you always choose the one that puts your life in danger?
“Just because a path is safe doesn’t mean it’s the right one.”
Hertz: To me, you are the right answer.
“Then shouldn’t you stop nagging me?”
Hertz: I’m worried about your safety.
“First, there’s one huge thing you’re mistaken about, Hertz...”
Clunk.
With a crash, the chandelier came down. The stack of tables I had made into a foothold swayed.
When I forced myself upward, I could reach the “upper side” of the dining car. I shone my phone’s flashlight around and spotted a ring not far away, something I could hook a rope onto.
“If I cared about safety, I wouldn’t have accepted something like your chain letter.”
Hertz: ...
“Or run a blog like Gii Yadam and make live experience posts.”
Hertz: That was because you believed ghost stories were fake, wasn’t it?
“I still think most ghost stories are fake. And it wasn’t because they were fake that I enjoyed them.”
If anything, I had dived in to find my own real ghost story among them. That one ghost story meant enough to me to risk my life for it.
The point was, bringing up my safety wouldn’t mean a damn thing to me.
I wasn’t a coward or a scaredy-cat, and I wasn’t the type to back off because I was afraid. Better to take the hit first. I could only rest easy after facing things head-on.
“Isn’t that why you chose me? You needed a lunatic who’d jump into a ghost story instead of whining that they couldn’t do it.”
Hertz: I chose you for your eye for things.
“Sure, sure. Let’s say that eye for things includes my insanity.”
Hertz sighed louder than the jazz playing from the speakers.
Ignoring Hertz, I threw the rope made from torn tablecloths until it caught on the ring. After about three tries, it hooked firmly into place.
“Good.”
After checking the knot once more, I tightened my grip. I kicked off the table and pulled myself up as though leaping, my upper body rising through the hole.
Once I hauled myself all the way up, I found a completely different scene from the one below.
“...Hm, just as I expected.”
If a train had a “ceiling,” there were normally one of two things above it. One was a cabinet crammed with complicated wiring and Wi-Fi repeaters. The other was a literal exit leading straight outside.
But this was neither. It was too low for a grown adult to stand upright, but high enough for children to run around in.
When I swept my flashlight around, I saw black threads spreading like spiderwebs along the walls, with wallpaper beneath them that looked like leather.
‘...I don’t think that’s leather of the usual kind.’
I quickly lowered my eyes. I was certain nothing good would come of looking at it for too long. It felt as if I had stepped inside a human body. Was this how it felt to watch a badly made art film?
Hertz: Partner.
Hertz grumbled again, seizing the moment.
Hertz: I don’t understand why you had to come up here. You said stepping outside the dining car would cause problems.
“I did.”
Hertz: You also said the flow of time is different, so it would be dangerous. That we couldn’t step out into the gap between the two timelines.
“So I didn’t step outside.”
Hertz: ...?
“Think about an ordinary train. A normal train with a dining car. If you opened the train’s roof, what would you expect to find?”
Hertz: Structurally speaking, the sky and wind, naturally. Outside the roof is outdoors.
“Right. But where are we?”
My flashlight swept over the space again. It was a nauseating place that seemed to imitate leather and blood vessels, but there was no wind and no sky.
Which meant...
Hertz: ...We’re indoors.
“Exactly. This is classified as being above the dining car. We haven’t entered a passenger car on the 100 Million Years Train, so there’s no problem with the flow of time, either.”
Hertz: Can we trust that device’s coordinates?
“There’s no problem. The coordinates match the dining car exactly.”
Hertz: As always, my partner makes the impossible seem possible.
When had a ghost story ever followed common sense or science? Ghost stories happened because impossible things happened.
And from now on, my job was to find the parts of that impossible ghost story that could make sense.
I began redrawing the layout in my head. Like a dollhouse. You know, one of those huge three-story dollhouses children played with.
I imagined opening the house sideways to expose every room, then arranged the trains within that visible blueprint.
On the first floor was an ordinary train. The train carrying us and every other passenger. Then, wrapped around it on the second floor, sat the Geochilsan Express Train, powered by the 100 Million Years Button.
The original train probably had not vanished and been replaced. The name Geochilsan was too old. It sounded like an old place name somewhere around Busan, but that did not fit the 100 Million Years Button at all.
The most likely explanation was that the ghost story of the Geochilsan Express Train had merged with the ghost story of the 100 Million Years Button, then overlaid itself on an ordinary train like a new game background.
Then the space beginning in this dining car could not simply be a passage connecting the two trains, or an isolated space hanging on its own.
It was a third ghost-story space that held the answer to the ten-minute discrepancy.
‘The question is how far it goes.’
It probably connected all the way to the engine car, but the question was whether I could get there while staying indoors.
And I had to move as quickly as possible. Time here passed at the same rate as on the original train, so I had to resolve this and return within three hours, then get everyone sorted out...
‘If I’m lucky... maybe I can find a way to end this ghost story without experiencing seven thousand years at all.’
They would forget it anyway, but thinking of the passenger cars below, where decades might pass with every step I took and chaos might be unfolding, made my stomach turn.
And if even one person from the Corporation remembered part of that time because I had become a variable... if they lost their reason and went mad...
That would be my failure. And I did not want to make failures or mistakes.
“Hertz, keep adjusting the sound in case something dangerous happens.”
Hertz: Don’t worry.
Careful in case something sprang out at me, I started walking forward.
Step. Step.
Relying on nothing but the old jazz, I walked for another ten minutes or so. On a normal train, I would have reached Car 1 long ago, but the corridor still showed no sign of ending.
“?”
Objects began appearing here and there in the empty passage. Some were lodged between wires, while others looked as though they had been carved into the leather walls.
But they were definitely human belongings.
“...What is all this?”
All sorts of things lay scattered around like trash. Briefcases, backpacks, shoes, umbrellas. Crushed suitcases, convenience-store lunch boxes, plastic bottles, earphones.
Every item was in a different condition.
There was a brand-new umbrella still in its wrapping, and shoes so old they looked ready to crumble into dust the instant I touched them.
Coats and tote bags had rotted from the things inside them, their contents leaking out until holes had worn through the fabric.
But the frightening part was something else entirely.
“...They all have today’s date.”
The convenience-store lunch boxes, train tickets, even the receipt I found in a shopping bag all pointed to today or yesterday.
None of the clothes, shoes, or bags were out of fashion. Some were old and worn, but those were simply elderly people’s clothes, not things that had crossed over from another era.
“...”
A train magazine had decayed and faded until it was turning brown. A notebook protruded crookedly from between its pages.
The notebook held records written with a ballpoint pen that had barely worked, its writer pressing down again and again.
“Boarded the train~. Whoever recommended the katsusando place in front of Seoul Station deserves serious praise. Starting to scrapbook this trip with my friends!”
The writer was probably a college student. The first few pages were filled with different handwriting, as though friends had passed it around, along with doodles, bingo games, and jokes.
“Seven hours into the train ride. I would’ve died if we weren’t near an outlet ㅠㅠ But why aren’t we there yet? Did the train derail?”
The handwriting gradually became crooked. One side of the moldy notebook had crumpled, whether from tears or spilled water.
“The train won’t stop. It’s been running for three days already. It doesn’t stop. There aren’t even announcements anymore. No attendants, either. I’m not hungry. Why am I not hungry? Still, I forced myself to eat the remaining lunch box. No, I shouldn’t have eaten it. I should have waited until I was hungry. My battery is still at 84%. I didn’t plug it in, but it won’t go down. It won’t charge, either. It seems like it just stopped. I don’t know whether the calendar is wrong or the data is wrong. A fight broke out among the people. Someone stopped it. But nobody seems to be in their right mind...”
After two hundred days, the pressure of the writing had grown so hard that the paper was full of tears. The entries also became patchy.
They were no longer records of events, but traces of someone desperately trying to hold onto themselves so they would not go mad.
“Seoyeong got stabbed. But Seoyeong’s still alive. No, is that really Seoyeong? Seoyeong’s bleeding. Seoyeong’s bleeding but still alive. Seoyeong’s moving. Should I call Seoyeong a zombie? All the injured people were driven into the cars at the back. I had to send Seoyeong too. I’m alone now. Every day, I hear knocking from the rear cars. People tore out train seats and blocked the corridor. We can’t go past Car 8 anymore. I want to go home. I miss Mom. Where are we? There was a debate over when someone should be considered dead. They say that if it is according to what was decided, Seoyeong can come back, but the people who already left cannot. Who are those people to decide that? Thirty-nine years have passed. No, three hundred ninety? I don’t know. I can’t remember letters. What was my name? Kim Minji? Minji? Ji? What was Mom’s name? The knife I used to cut my nails broke. Now I scrape the floor with my fingertips. I’m bleeding, but it doesn’t hurt. But I have to hide this. If they know I’m hurt, they’ll drive me out. If I get driven out, I can’t come back here. Then I won’t be able to meet anyone or talk, and among the things left here, the thing that lets me communicate with people is... no, why am I writing this? I’m not insane I’m not insane I’m not insane I’m... Hell. This is hell. Hellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhellhell”
After that, it was no longer handwriting. Page after page repeated bloody marks where fingers had drawn countless rectangles like dollhouses, along with holes bitten into the paper.
“Kill me.”
“Kill me.”
“Kill me.”
“Kill me.”
“Die.”
“...Urgh. Ugh...”
This person had clearly boarded the Busan-bound train with me. Their belongings, handwriting, and the date written at the beginning all said so.
Had time really passed? Had the people below already gone mad beyond all help while I was looking at this?
I did not even dare look down.
I fled that scream as though backing away from it. This time, a phone with a half-shattered screen blinked with light, still functioning. Thousands of red exclamation-mark icons meaning failed delivery filled the display.
As though there were no option not to look, I picked it up in a trance. I painstakingly broke the text into fragments, processed them as information, and crammed them into my head. I swallowed the words, suppressing the urge to vomit with fear.
[Mom, I missed the last train, so I took the KTX. I’ll be home soon. 4:05 p.m.]
[Mom, the train is kind of strange. 3:14 a.m.]
[Please report this to 112. The train won’t stop. 7:40 a.m.]
[Mom, I miss you.]
[Please helpplease helpplease help. Date unknown]
[I’m still on the train. Why is nobody coming? Date unknown]
[My body isn’t aging. Date unknown]
[MomMomMomMomMomMomMomMomMomMom. Date unknown]
Countless messages glowed.
The letters screamed.
The endlessly repeating failed-delivery notification chimes sang like groans.
“Ha... Hahaha, ha...”
Time became sound and light, covering this space. It rippled like a shadow.
Then it began walking toward me.
Wriggle. Wriggle.
Hertz: Partner!!
Footnotes:
112 is the Korean emergency number for police.
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