Baek-gu was already on the hospital steps when Haru and I came up the hill.

He had a paper cup in one hand and his feet stretched out like a man at a beach.

"I beat all of you," he said.

"You got off two stops before us."

"And yet. First." He tapped his temple. "Route management. The company teaches it."

"The company is a bicycle," Haru said.

"The company," Baek-gu said, "does not have to explain itself to a teenager."

Minseo came through the glass doors before I could sit down, a plastic bag hanging from one hand. Coffee cans. Warm ones, from the lobby machine that apparently still ran.

Like she said she would, on a train platform, at the worst hour of her life.

"You made the coffee," I said.

"I said I would." She looked past me, down the hill. "Count's not right yet."

We counted with her. Baek-gu, Minseo, Haru, me. Four.

Then five. Chae-a came around the parking structure at a walk that wanted to be a run and refused on principle. She scanned us once, fast. Marked who was missing. Said nothing. Stood where she could see the road.

Then six. Mu-hyeon, from the north, axe on his shoulder, walking like he'd been out for bread. Something around his eyes had gone loose, like a rope after the load comes off.

"You rode to the end," Haru said.

"I got off at the beginning." He said it like that explained anything. He looked us over, all of us, one at a time. Head count. Exits. Then his shoulders came down a centimeter.

Haru dug a can out of Minseo's bag and pushed it into his free hand.

"Your coffee. As ordered. Minseo made it, I'm just the staff."

Mu-hyeon looked at the can for a second too long. Warm, orange label, ordinary. He turned it once in his fingers.

He didn't open it. He just held it, the way you hold something you plan on keeping.

"Thank you," he said, and it was too heavy for a coffee can, and nobody pointed that out.

"You don't even drink coffee," Haru said.

"No." He almost smiled. "But I wanted to be handed one."

"Where's Dohyeok," Chae-a said, to the road.

"Daeheung's the farthest stop," Baek-gu said. "He's walking the longest leg. He's fine. Kid's built out of rubber and good luck."

"He should have been here first. He got off first."

Chae-a watched the road. Seven minutes. I counted them, because standing next to her not counting was impossible.

Then a shape came up the hill at a dead sprint, arms going, jacket flapping, and Chae-a let out a breath through her teeth that she would deny for the rest of her life.

"Sorry, sorry." Dohyeok pulled up in front of us, hands on knees, grinning through it. "I took the shortcut through the fish market. Except the fish market's not where it was. I swear on my life, the market moved. Streets don't do that, so the market moved. I went around it twice, and both times it was somewhere el..."

Chae-a grabbed his collar and kissed him mid-sentence.

Baek-gu looked at the sky. Haru applauded. Minseo laughed once, actually laughed, and put her hand over her mouth like the sound had escaped without a permit.

Chae-a stepped back and straightened his collar, businesslike, face red.

"You ran the right way," she said.

"You said go." Dohyeok blinked at her, still catching up. "So I went."

"That's it. That's the whole finding." She turned away fast. "Data point of one. More study needed."

"Can we study it again right n..."

"No."

Seven. All seven. Off that train, on these steps, drinking bad warm coffee in the sun.

My phone buzzed. Then everyone's did, one after another, a little rain of buzzing.

[The Story 'The Last Train' has closed. The Critics enjoyed the ride.]

[Readers: 39 → 112.]

...One hundred twelve.

I read it twice. The number sat there, patient.

"Mine says 51," Mu-hyeon said, frowning at his screen like it owed him an apology.

"60," Haru said. "I'm winning."

"44," Baek-gu said. "The company demands a recount."

I turned my phone face down against my leg.

Double. Mine was double anyone's, and while I'd watched, it had gone from 112 to 113, and I was standing on a staircase doing nothing at all.

Climbing at rest.

Cold went through me, throat to stomach.

Then Haru was arguing with Baek-gu about whether a bicycle could legally be a company, and Dohyeok wanted to know everyone's numbers so he could rank us, and the morning was loud, and I put the phone in my pocket and let it go. For now. On purpose.

* * *

"Before we go back," Minseo said. "There's a door."

The steps went quiet.

"Sixth floor. East stair." She was looking at the doors, not at us. "I can do it alone. I climbed that stair four hundred times alone."

"Nobody opens the door alone," Haru said. "New rule. I just made it. It's very old and sacred."

"Seconded," Dohyeok said instantly.

"The company observes all sacred rules," Baek-gu said.

Minseo looked at us for a second. Seven idiots and a bag of coffee cans.

"Okay," she said. "Okay."

The stairwell was dark and our lights bounced off the paint. Minseo went first the whole way, and her steps never once slowed, because slowing was the thing she could not afford to do.

Sixth floor. Pediatrics. Animal stickers on the walls, an elephant with its trunk raised toward a fire extinguisher.

And a door. Hall door, steel frame, wired glass. The latch plate worn silver from years of clicking shut.

Minseo put her hand flat on it and pushed.

Ward six was full of sun.

Six beds. All of them made. Corners tucked, blankets flat, the way beds only look when a night nurse has nothing left to give anyone except neatness. The window blinds were half open and the light came through in bars and lay across the room, and the third bar of light lay across bed three.

Nobody said anything. We spread out along the wall and let her walk in alone, together. There's a way to do that. It turns out there's a way.

Minseo stood at the foot of bed three for a while.

Then she opened the drawer of the little side table, like she already knew, and took out a notebook. Spiral, small, a robot sticker on the cover, the corners chewed soft.

She turned pages. Her face did something complicated and held.

"He kept rankings," she said. Her voice was level and quiet. "Of the nurses. Which ones were soft touches about pudding. Extra pudding. He rated us."

"Where'd you place?" Haru asked, gently.

Minseo turned the notebook around.

A list, in fat pencil letters. Names, some crossed out, some with frowny faces. And one name circled. Circled twice, actually, the pencil pressed so hard it had torn a little.

Next to the circle, a star.

"First," Minseo said. "With a star."

"Obviously," Haru said. "Look at you."

Minseo closed the notebook and held it against her sternum with both hands for one long breath. Then she put it in her jacket, inside pocket, left side.

She walked back to the hall door. We moved to follow. She stopped us with a look.

A rubber doorstop lay kicked into the corner, gray with dust. She picked it up, set the door wide against the wall, and seated the wedge under it with her toe. Pressed it in. Tested the door with one hand. It didn't move.

Open. Held open.

"It's open," she said. Not to us. To the room, to the six beds, to the bar of sun on bed three. "I left it open. You can stop counting now."

The ward said nothing back, because it was just a room.

She stood there another second. Then she turned around, and her face was wet and her spine was straight, and both things were true at once.

"Okay," she said to us, in her work voice. "Visiting hours are over."

It hadn't fixed her. Walking out, I could see it hadn't, and I think she could too. The thing in her chest hadn't moved a centimeter.

But it had stopped bleeding. A scar is also a thing skin does.

* * *

We came up the last road to the station in the late afternoon, and Gureum spotted us from the bay door and ran.

Full sprint, sandals slapping, one dinosaur in each fist. He hit Dohyeok first because Dohyeok crouched and made himself the biggest target. Then he stood in front of Haru and held up the long-neck dinosaur, silently, until she took it. Payment. Or proof he'd kept it safe. With him you don't always know.

"You're all thinner," Yeonhwa said, and had my wrist before I finished saying hello. She counted something in my pulse, gave the wrist back. "Tea. All of you. Sit."

Insik stood by the door with his ledger, and I watched him mark us in, one stroke at a time, and I watched his shoulders let go of a night's worth of weight with each stroke. Seven strokes. His pen hovered, checking. Then, quietly: "Everyone's home."

Mrs. Hwang cried a little and blamed the kettle steam. Mr. Hwang held her hand and pretended to believe her.

Tea in fire-station mugs. Haru telling the train story with sound effects and a completely fabricated part where Baek-gu fought the conductor. Baek-gu not correcting her. Mu-hyeon sitting where he could see both doors, the unopened coffee can standing on the table in front of him like a small brass trophy.

I sat in the middle of the noise and let it be everything for a while.

* * *

Dusk came.

I took my tea up to the roof and looked southwest, toward Dalbit-ro. You can see it from the station roof, just barely. A pale pink box between two gray buildings, catching the last light.

Baekrok Wedding Hall.

Day 5. Today was Day 5. I'd counted every dawn since the Turning, and I'd never needed the notebook for this one, because the draft had printed it into me years ago. Day 5, a Tragedy opens its cover at the pink wedding hall. I knew the venue. I knew the genre. I'd been carrying that page since the night the fountain ran red, waiting for it to fall out of the sky.

The sky went orange, then gray, then dark.

No page fell.

I stood there until the stars came out, until my tea went cold, watching for four minutes of white paper over the rooftops.

Nothing. The city stayed quiet. Downstairs somebody laughed at something Dohyeok said, and the wedding hall sat in the dark being an ordinary building, and the story I knew by heart didn't come.

It should have felt like mercy.

It felt like counting stairs in the dark and running out one step early. The foot comes down and there's nothing where the world was supposed to be.

Tag had come on schedule. Then a train that wasn't in any chapter I'd ever read. And now Day 5 had passed clean, no page, no lamplight, nothing.

My calendar was bending.

I knew four hundred and twelve chapters, in order.

The order was breaking.