WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
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◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 62: Geochilsan Express Train (8)
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This was bad. I only had one key.
My head swam so badly that, for a moment, I could not hear the boiler room or even the train's noise.
'I need to open this to reset the time or find the final clue...'
I traced the edge of the clock with my fingertips. The spiral pattern had no ridges, as though it had been laser-printed on. The clock case was sealed so tightly, as though every seam had been welded, that I could not have forced even a strand of hair into it.
“I don't think I can break it open by force, either...”
The keyhole was the only opening. Even that differed from an ordinary keyhole, letting me see inside.
A spiral-shaped pattern had been engraved inside the keyhole. Just like the engine-room key, I probably could not even try without the exact key.
“...All right. Let's make an assumption. Hertz, what do you think is the worst possible scenario?”
Old jazz hummed in a faint vibration, as if considering the question.
“If we assume the worst... what if the executor had already finished their work, taken the key, and gotten off the train? Into the real world beyond the train, where we can never reach.”
“That's a convincingly terrible scenario. But I don't think that's it.”
“Why do you think so?”
“The train launched from Seoul Station with a roar loud enough to shock anyone. If the culprit activated the clock and tried to escape, it would have had to happen before the train left. Unless there was a timer. But I can't see one here. Which means the person with that key couldn't escape this train, either. They're enduring these seven thousand years in here with us.”
“That makes sense. Then, assuming the executor is on the train, let's form a slightly better hypothesis.”
“Such as?”
“There is a safe zone known only to the executor, like this dining car we passed through, or the narrow passageways that connect the cars. A place where seven thousand years can be compressed into just three hours.”
“We didn't run into one on the way here. But what about this?”
Avoiding the boiler room's heat, I lay down briefly on the cold floor and continued.
“First, the person with the engine-room key and the person with the clock key must be two different people. If one person had held both, Officer Ryu would have found the key belonging to the person who set this clock, too.”
“True.”
“And we found the engine-room key inside the 100 Million Years Train. That means its holder was also inside the train, and there's a good chance the bastard with the clock key was too.”
“You had already thought it all through and left me with only the role of being wrong. Then may I ask a question? Why would they remain on the train?”
“...Well, if we think simply, fanatics don't follow common sense. They might have pretended to be ordinary passengers and stayed inside, thinking they wouldn't mind spending seven thousand years insane.”
“You don't think that is the case.”
“According to what Officer Ryu wrote, around forty-eight passengers retained their sanity to the end even as their minds wore down. Far fewer were still capable of conversation.”
I rolled onto my side and dragged my fingernail along a groove in the floor. The faint grooves in what had looked like a tangled mess of wiring resembled tightly packed windows.
Like somewhere that could open.
“You think the people with the keys are among those passengers.”
“Right. They're crazy bastards.”
“By your reasoning, we would need to search through that place for the key of someone whose name we do not even know. They could also be in the rear cars we have not seen.”
“Right. I think they'll be in the rear. Suicide-squad types like them would want to seize control from one side.”
“That will take time. Even if you sprint at full speed, it will take nearly ten minutes to reach here from the dining car.”
“If we go back through that passageway, sure. But what if there's a shortcut?”
I set my flashlight on the floor and began drawing imaginary lines along the grooves with my finger.
“You said the rear cars just now, right? Hertz, do you think this train is running straight in a line?”
“Trains naturally run in a single line on rails. Are you suggesting a ghost-story train might be different?”
“Right. This train's coordinates are a complete mess, and time is stacked up like files. It tends to keep passing through the same coordinates at different points in time. Wouldn't it be stranger to expect the cars to be neatly arranged in a straight line?”
The time it had taken me to climb up from the dining car to the engine room alone was enough to travel from one end of the train to the other and back.
And the dining car had inserted itself into the middle of the train. That meant the train had been split in two, changing its shape, structure, or length.
“The ghost story that inserted itself is the Helical Cult. So let's assume the train is a spiral. Like a snake eating its own tail.”
“It's difficult to picture at a glance.”
“Imagine another train intertwined with this one, moving as a single whole... Then we unravel it and connect the vertices of the lines facing each other...”
For a brief moment, I regretted not studying math harder, not properly learning spatial coordinates or how to draw graphs. But even a genius could not draw this graph.
What I was drawing was not a form proven by some mathematical formula. It was a literally impossible shape, one that could only exist in a ghost story.
After several attempts, a clear shape of intersecting curves formed in my mind. A shape that passed through the same coordinates at different times. A spiral built on the assumption that, if space was the same, time could overlap.
“If this structure is right, we can use a car that descends from the area in front of this engine room and move directly to the dining car, then from there to the rear cars, without passing through the 100 Million Years Train.”
It would probably take less than three minutes. I checked the time again. A hundred years had passed in an instant. There were now one hour and fifty-five minutes left until arrival.
“...I should allow ninety minutes or so to get things under control and return to my place. I need to move faster.”
At this point, saving people, taking revenge, and carrying on someone's will were not the issue.
A ghost story had inserted itself into another ghost story, and someone was using it. All I wanted was to tear this thing apart, remake it completely, and teach it a lesson so it could never rise again.
So this train could never cause trouble again, and so I could personally confirm this Irregular phenomenon of ghost stories inserting themselves into other ghost stories.
“Hertz, can a ghost story possess a self and personality, then affect reality? I mean... could a ghost story with clear free will and a personality like yours exist?”
Hertz was silent through my earphones for a while. Its voice brushed my ear, lower than usual but still not lacking in warmth.
“Usually, no. A story is fundamentally a self-contained entity. No matter how vividly the characters within it move as though they are alive, they are like predetermined NPCs in a story. It would be difficult for a ghost story to have free will and change its assigned script.”
“...Hmm. I see. That's difficult.”
“Are you hoping for a setting where anomalous entities from ghost stories meet one another, talk, and hold class reunions?”
“Mm, no. I don't think entities that eat people have that kind of humanity to begin with...”
A few more words lingered in my mouth, but I swallowed them. I had finally found a door at the floor's boundary, hidden behind a thick pile of cables.
“Found it.”
I forced the door open and carefully climbed down.
Thud.
The soles of my feet hit solid ground. It was the dining car.
“...All right!”
The first thing I did was search the dining car for food. I could not believe how much I missed the lunch box I had devoured earlier. From now on, I needed to carry calorie bars and a water bottle in my bag.
Fortunately, I found sealed water bottles and several packaged snacks inside the dining car's shelves. If I met someone else, we would need at least some food, so I ate only a few and packed the rest into my backpack.
The ones still left were Section Chief Mok Inha and Lee Gangrim. Given Section Chief Mok's personality, she was definitely alive. There might even be more survivors than in the front cars.
And Lee Gangrim... He was smart, so perhaps he had reached the same conclusion I had and was alive somewhere in the passageways between the train cars.
If so, he was probably quite hungry by now. Hunger and bodily functions seemed to exist only while inside the 100 Million Years Train.
Once I had roughly filled my stomach, feeling began to return sharply to my hands and feet. I started searching the dining car, feeling my way around for a door leading to the rear cars.
I pushed aside every chair, overturned the tables, searched the curtains, the gaps around the windows, and even crawled across the floor. In the end, I found a door behind the fire-hose cabinet.
When I moved aside the hose inside the cabinet, a new narrow gap opened behind it. The smell of metal pipes and dust stung my nose, but I did not hesitate before forcing myself inside.
'Ugh, the smell. What kind of ordeal is this?'
“Ugh, ah!”
The bottom of the fire-hose cabinet, which I had entered facedown and sideways, opened downward. I barely caught the hose, but my feet, with nowhere to step, flailed in empty air. Soon, I fell with a Crash!
“Ow...”
Everything in this world had its use. At least I had not fallen from very high up, so my body only ached. The half-uncoiled hose dangled above my head.
As if it were taunting me...
Climbing back up later by holding onto that thing was going to be quite a struggle.
“Seon Jaehyeon.”
A low, eerie voice called my name. Had I heard it wrong? I froze where I lay spread-eagled on the floor.
“Seon Jaehyeon?”
No. I had not heard it wrong. I sprang up and hurriedly shone my flashlight around.
Wires. Suspicious skin wallpaper. And piles of scrap metal on the floor. It was just like the last train. Where had that voice come from?
“Over here.”
The voice came again. My flashlight swung to the side.
“...!”
My body froze so completely that I forgot to breathe for a moment. Mok Inha's face shone pale in the round beam of my flashlight, as though it were a spotlight.
Faint flecks of blood spattered her face, but her hair was still combed as neatly as though measured with a ruler. It was Mok Inha exactly as usual.
From the neck up.
Something red ran down the piled scrap metal. Mok Inha's neck and arms dangled amid it as though hooked there. Her upper body was buried. Flesh, blood vessels, and bones were piled up and tangled together.
It was not scrap metal. What looked like scrap was human body parts that had blackened after being exposed to the air for too long.
Mok Inha's body hung at the place where a star should go, like a proud ornament atop a Christmas tree made of people.
And yet she was alive. Like everyone else on the train.
Now and then, I heard breathing pass through the piles of bodies. The sound of people sobbing drifted like wind leaking through cracks.
Among the buried flesh, there were occasional holes that whistled. Glossy eyeballs rose and fell without even being able to blink.
That thing in Mangnyang Tunnel had at least been a ghost. This enormous mass of flesh... was alive.
It was human.
“How... How did this happen?”
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