WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Natty
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ How to Rewrite Ghost Stories ◈
Episode 64: Geochilsan Express Train (10)
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“Yes. What? No?! No!!”
There were limits to how badly someone could misspeak. I had nearly let it slip that I was part of a ghost-story cult in front of a civil servant who hunted ghost stories.
It was the unholy result of my brain chanting that I had to avoid giving a definite answer while my reflexive habit screamed that I had to say something quickly.
Lee Gangrim stopped walking and stared at me.
“Ah, well... That is...”
I desperately tried to think of something, anything, to smooth it over.
“...Pfft.”
A sound like air leaking through his lips escaped him. Then Lee Gangrim started chuckling. Before long, he was clutching his stomach and bursting into laughter.
“Pfft, hahaha! You got scared, rookie? Did you think I was going to eat you?”
“No, it’s not that...”
“Then what? Is our second rookie really a cult leader?”
“I’m not.”
“Do you have a religion, then?”
“No.”
“Any plans to start one?”
“...Why would I?”
Lee Gangrim’s face had come close enough to make me uncomfortable, but then his eyes curved. He threw an arm around my shoulders and gave my back several hard thumps.
“I know, I know. I was joking. If you really were the One Who Goes First those insane cultists worship, you would’ve hit me before that fanatic could smack me in the back of the head. Right?”
Lee Gangrim looked at me directly. He did not seem to suspect me. But did that mean he trusted me blindly?
Not that either.
I really could not figure this person out. It felt like dealing with a strange account manager who gave us a good quote even while we were showing competing estimates and had no idea whether they would actually work with us.
If I let my guard down, it felt like he would suck me dry to the marrow and shake every secret out of me. But if someone asked whether he was on my side...
He probably would be. Like he was now.
I could breathe easier, but it still felt like a tie was choking my neck.
Just like the question that landed in my ears.
“But that guy seemed to call you the One Who Goes First after seeing something on you...”
Lee Gangrim looked me over. I reflexively hid my hand behind my back, then held it out.
“Can you see this?”
“What is this, a magic show? Something appears out of nowhere?”
“...Uh, no. I was just waving an empty hand.”
So he could not see it. Did that mean only involved parties could? I was starting to understand why it had been sold off like clearance stock. If you needed qualifications to see it, then to a jeweler, I must have looked like some idiot trying to buy an invisible item.
“Senior, do you know about the Helical Cult? Section Chief Mok seems to know quite a bit.”
“...I do. They’re very old. Where did you see them?”
“On a ghost-story site... There was something like an encrypted code that nobody had solved. I decoded it, and some information came up. It was basically a page that looked like an application to join an ordinary cult.”
“Really? Tell me about that site later. Ah, you don’t have to tell me the code.”
“You probably know it already, but sure. In return, please tell me about the Helical Cult once we get out.”
“Yeah, sure. Let’s deal with this first.”
We quickly retraced our route upward. Without so much as a rope, Lee Gangrim easily jumped up and grabbed the opening two meters above us. His title was Archivist, but he moved like a national team gymnast.
Still, since Lee Gangrim cleared the way and helped pull me up, we reached the engine car much faster than I had when I was struggling alone.
“Senior.”
I called to Lee Gangrim when the engine-room door was nearly in sight.
“What? Tired? Want to rest for five minutes?”
“No. Before we finish... there’s something we need to think about. You and the others at the Corporation are more familiar with this than I am.”
I took the clock key from my pocket and held it up before him.
“If we can open the clock with this and turn back time, what do you think will happen to people when time returns to normal?”
I remembered the leather wallpaper we had passed, the masses of flesh clinging to Section Chief Mok Inha. A train where the bodies of countless people had fused together, their veins and fascia melding as they writhed like a gigantic intestine.
“...Hmm. If we intentionally reset the timer or rip the Distortion apart, there’s a chance those people could be fixed in reality exactly as they are?”
“The reason people return to normal is that the ghost story follows the core premise of the 100 Million Years Button. Once the assigned time runs out, they return to where they were.”
“But if we wait until it arrives like this, or force time to run faster to adjust it...”
“There’s a high chance we’ll be thrown out of the train or lose our memories when it arrives. We’ve only stepped outside of time for a while.”
“At this point, it might be better to just wait.”
Lee Gangrim roughly ruffled his hair and clicked his tongue.
Like he said, the easiest thing would be to forget all of this. We only needed to enter the passenger-car corridor a few seconds before the train arrived. Everything would return to normal.
But that still left a question.
Why was the Helical Cult trying to throw time into disarray and create a ten-minute discrepancy?
‘There might be something I’m missing.’
I went back through it from the other direction.
The train was randomly selected. It was not always a train heading for Busan that became the 100 Million Years Button train.
That meant the cultists brought a 100 Million Years Button device with them every time and boarded whatever train would become the Geochilsan Express Train. They made people suffer through tens of thousands of years just to create a ten-minute discrepancy.
“...Could time be stored?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, could there be some function that lets you hold time in something, like an hourglass, and use it somewhere else?”
“If there was, it would sound like a ghost story. The Corporation does not have any convenient equipment like that.”
The Corporation did not.
That did not mean something else could not.
Like an artifact of the Helical Cult being sold off cheaply at the Twilight Market.
Like buying D Corporation’s heart-stopping clock at Night Dream Home Shopping.
On the Geochilsan Express Train that did not stop, time...
‘...Ah.’
“I understand.”
“What?”
“Why it had to be a train, and why they created this Distortion.”
Lee Gangrim looked interested.
“There is a ghost-story item that can store time. They created this loop to gain time to store. They combined a train ghost story that does not stop until the terminus with the 100 million years of the 100 Million Years Button, extending the terminus.”
I chose my words carefully, hoping he would understand exactly what I meant.
“That is where the discrepancy occurred. Everything should return perfectly, but time was stolen from within it.”
“That’s why it arrives ten minutes early? Because ten minutes disappeared? But making people suffer for tens of thousands of years just to store ten minutes is a terrible deal.”
“The discrepancy in reality is ten minutes. I think they probably gained more than that. Then we just need to check the machine, release the time, and finish running the timer. Rather than forcibly resetting it, we’ll prevent it from being used as intended.”
Lee Gangrim closed his eyes for a moment and touched the area near his ear. He seemed to be carefully considering my theory.
“And if we take the machine with us, unless there is another box somewhere, this phenomenon should disappear too.”
He nodded.
At last, Lee Gangrim brought his palms together with a clap.
“Good. I’ll trust you, rookie. So what do we do first?”
“You are fine because you were checking the train blueprint and stepped outside the train, right?”
“That’s right. I went out through the side instead of one of the cars. I did not want to see people.”
“And you did not see anyone else out there?”
“Yeah. Not even an ant. Nothing else unusual either. We did not find any abnormal coordinates in the Distortion.”
“...Then please stay outside in case anything happens. I’ll enter the engine room alone.”
“What? Wouldn’t it be better to go in together and hole up?”
“No. We need to secure a way back into the train when we finish this.”
I had another motive, too. If I wanted to properly understand the ghost story in the engine room and speak with Hertz, it would be best to keep Lee Gangrim out. I hoped he would not become suspicious of me...
“Fine.”
Lee Gangrim obediently stepped back and leaned against the wall.
“Go on, then. Call me if it gets dangerous.”
“Yes. Don’t worry.”
The engine room was no different from before. It did not look as though anyone had come in, and the electronic clock box was right where I had left it.
“...All right. Let’s see what kind of ghost story this is.”
When I held the key to the keyhole, it turned as though it were being sucked in. With a click, the lid sprang open, revealing the inside of the clock.
“Holy shit. What is this?”
The inside of the clock was far more complicated than it had appeared through the hole. Over the clock parts that should naturally have been there, such as green circuit boards and microchips, what looked like a hundred tiny gears turned in a tangled mass with wires.
The red wires repeatedly contracted and relaxed like the organs of a living creature. I could not even begin to tell where one component ended and another began.
Even when I examined the parts that could be removed, they only had a few grooves. I could not begin to guess what they were supposed to be.
“If I touch the wrong thing and it explodes, I’m screwed...”
I carefully pushed through the wires. Something warm and soft squirmed beneath my fingers.
No. This was just freshly boiled pasta. Thin noodles.
I brainwashed myself as I gently cleared away the things on top. At last, in the deepest part of the board, I found different things tangled together in one place.
The clock circuit board for the timer.
A button made of gears tangled with vein-like wires.
And a black box, so black that it looked almost perfectly circular.
How did you decide there was an item that could store time? It might not even have taken this form.
“D Corporation sold a heart-stopping clock. I could expect that ghost-story items related to time might exist. The problem is, no item that stored time had ever been sold in the SOSA universe.”
Was that not also true of the other things you had seen? From what I observed, I do not think there were any ghost stories that sold time, though time travel itself was common.
“That is exactly why, Hertz.”
After carefully putting on gloves and clearing the space around the box, I lifted it without severing anything connected to it.
The black object, no larger than half my palm, gave off a warm heat. It pulsed softly in my hand in time with my heartbeat.
“...There are no ghost stories about storing time. People do not make them often because the story would be absurdly empty.”
Then all I needed to do was find a story about storing time.
“The Ghost Story Records Corporation divides ghost stories, or Distortions, into three broad categories.”
Urban legends, ghost stories, and...
Hertz’s voice produced a burst of static, like a needle skipping on a record. If Hertz had been human, those eyes would probably have gone wide.
“Folk tales.”
A story about saving a toad and finding jade inside it.
A story about trying to take out a rabbit’s liver, only to show the rabbit around the Dragon Palace instead.
Folk tales and old legends sometimes give lessons. Sometimes they inspire fear. Snow women, centipedes, winged strongmen, tigers, and nine-tailed foxes that eat livers are excellent source material for ghost stories.
“And there is a fairly famous ‘box’ item in that category.”
Urashima Taro learned that the turtle he had saved was the Dragon King’s daughter. Invited to the Dragon Palace, Urashima received lavish hospitality.
On the day he returned to land, the princess gave him a box and told him never to open it, no matter what happened.
“But when he returned to land, three hundred years had already passed. Grief-stricken because his family and home were gone, Taro opened the box. White clouds came out and made him old. What was inside the box...”
The time he had spent in the Dragon Palace had been locked away, then released into reality.
“Right. In Corporation terms, this is an F-Th, a folk tale-based tool-type ghost-story item. A box that stores time.”
Now it was time to rewrite it.
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