Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work

Inside the Driver’s Cab.

The Station Master, his face gone bluish, kept darting his eyes between the agent uniform I was wearing and the ruckus outside, and then began stammering out everything to me.

About this train.

“Originally... you know it too, right... the subway trains were, strangely, safe from the start....”

It seemed that almost everyone had realized the “when you get on the train, even injured people become fine” gimmick from the very first day of the disaster.

“They shoved to get in, fought over seats... fights broke out, people died, it was complete chaos.”

“Then were people already squatting on this train from the beginning?”

“No! This train just appeared out of nowhere!”

...!

“They said a train that wasn’t there before would be running starting the next day, and then it came into the station and the doors opened!”

I could picture that scene.

People who’d barely survived without being able to board, clustered on the platform that was at least somewhat safe—then a brand-new empty train appears, and its doors slide open.

“...And inside, Agent Choi and the other agents were on board.”

“Th-that’s right.”

The Station Master, who’d been rolling his eyes around, tried to set the mood and spoke in an affectedly plausible tone.

“But I recognized this train. This thing—it was a broken train!”

“...!”

“You know, when it runs out of juice in the middle of operation, you don’t always tow it all the way back to the depot. You shove it onto a side track. Usually when subway service ends, they park trains on the hidden siding in the station—this was probably sitting there.”

“.......”

“I don’t know how they fixed it, but they drove it out like it owned the place and started taking the people who were still in the station....”

They must have used supernatural equipment or abilities to make a broken train function again.

In the first place, once you’ve been swallowed by a supernatural phenomenon, you wouldn’t have any reason to hold back.

“I... yeah. They asked if anyone had train-driving experience, so, yeah. I helped Agent Choi a lot. Hahaha....”

So this man hadn’t even been the original engineer for this train.

So that’s why they called him the Station Master.

“Sure, subways these days are almost all automated driving, but still—having an expert versus not having one makes a huge difference, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I understand Agent Choi’s judgment.”

But I looked back at the paper stuck beside the control seat, with dozens of names and X marks slashed over them.

“However, it seems what he expected that expert to do after he disappeared was different.”

“No—Agent, Agent! You have to understand, this is something you really have to understand! Living for years with this many people—do you know what kind of ordeal that is?”

The Station Master spoke urgently.

“The people who called themselves agents, huh? They went out to the station to get supplies and then didn’t come back one by one! That happened because they kept trying to take all the refugees who came to the train. Food and everything was short, but they kept trying to procure enough to match the headcount, so it ended up like that!”

“...Is that what you think?”

“Of course! You know it too. When people are all together, you have to cut off what needs cutting off, huh? Throw away what needs throwing away, so the system can keep running.”

“.......”

“I did it all—this shelter, huh—following Agent Choi’s will! I was trying to keep it going, and then I ran out of strength, made mistakes, that’s all!”

I didn’t feel anger boiling up.

It just felt strange.

Because this man’s situation is exactly what it means to be “thrown away from the outside” under the very judgment of you have to throw away what needs throwing away.

And yet, hearing him say things that justify the situation he’s in—it made me feel weird.

And the thought that agents died one by one, overreaching to save a person like this...

A strange, empty exhaustion.

...This isn’t something I should be judging any further.

It was probably right for the people who’d kept living in the Train Shelter to do it themselves.

So instead of showing hostility toward the Station Master, I searched for information again.

“Tell me in more detail about the time Agent Choi went missing. I heard it was when he went to get food.”

“Huh? No, I think there’s some misunderstanding here, but I absolutely didn’t chase the agent out or anything!”

Hm?

I deliberately stayed silent. Then the Station Master, reading the room even more, poured out explanations as excuses.

“Th-that! You were going to say, why did he go out at that timing when food wasn’t short—aren’t you?”

[He’s spilling it on his own.]

“Absolutely not! I didn’t do anything to deliberately drive him out. He just kept getting off on his own—what was it—he said this train needed something more?”

...This train needs something more.

“What exactly did he say it needed?”

“Well, he never really answered properly. He just smiled and told me to wait and see. And there’s nothing to smile about, but he kept doing it, so it started getting on my nerves....”

I cut him off.

“Then did Agent Choi leave any words behind? Something he emphasized often, or something he said before leaving.”

“...Well, he tried to give the people on the train hope. Things like, someday we’ll be able to escape, I’m looking for a method....”

I could see him rolling his eyes as if it were obvious talk.

Even that alone told me enough.

...That agent must have suffered terribly.

Disaster Management Bureau agents—no, as agents, they would have known even better than anyone.

That beneath the ground where countless citizens had died in heaps, inside this city’s subway ghost story, they had no way of knowing how much longer they would be trapped with survivors.

At some point, he must have realized it was sealed.

An agent versed in rites and rituals might even have grasped, however vaguely, the signs that human sacrifice had been made.

But he couldn’t show it.

With little time left—yet to an individual, an overwhelming number of survivors—to reassure them all and keep this shelter from plunging back into carnage, that wouldn’t have been normal work....

“.......”

“Ah—r-right! Agent Choi left something behind! A belonging—his only keepsake, you could say. Over there....”

“Don’t move.”

The Station Master glanced up and started to rise, but when I grabbed his shoulder, he froze again.

Keeping one hand pressing down hard on his shoulder, I opened where he pointed.

A small drawer beside the control seat.

The moment I pulled it open, in the empty space, a single small object emerged with a puff of dust.

“.......”

Five-color threads for escape.

Issued gear for an agent—something that can’t perform its true function in this place.

It was neatly tied like shoelaces, with dust layered over it.

...The ends were slightly worn.

Like someone had often fidgeted with it to find calm.

“.......”

The desire to leave.

And... it even felt like a thread of hope that declared an intention to leave someday.

That was when I realized it.

He did something.

-Just, he kept getting off on his own, saying this train needed something more, and he kept going out to look for it!

He had definitely planned a rescue operation beyond mere survival.

Even if he thought there was no chance, there must have been something he was trying—some attempt to make people rescue citizens outside.

Like the agents at Se-gwang High.

If so, then where?

“Th-then I’ve answered everything, Agent....”

“Shh.”

I kept scanning the Driver’s Cab.

If there was a core facility of this train, it would naturally be here. What on earth did he think this train “needed”?

I peered into the control area. But with all these complicated-looking devices and monitoring screens, would the agents have dared touch them without bringing an expert along?

If they did, then where....

-Teacher.

-What if you think in terms of users, not facilities?

Users.

A place the agent himself could access and use and protect in daily life.

But also somewhere that anyone else entering [N O V E L I G H T] this Driver’s Cab would find hard to notice, or to touch even by accident.

“...!”

I turned to the Station Master.

When our eyes met, he looked like he’d seen a ghost—and when I reached out with my other hand too, not just the one gripping his shoulder, he panicked.

“Huh? H-heeuk... huh?”

I lifted the Station Master up as he was.

Shifted him aside.

Then flipped over the chair he had been sitting on.

The “engineer’s” seat for running the train.

“...!!

***

A little later.

“E-everyone!”

The Station Master, bursting out from the Driver’s Cab seat area, raised both hands and shouted.

“I was short-sighted. Rabbit dolls are the perfect friend of humanity! Of course I approve refitting the train!”

“Waaa!!”

Dopamine at its peak!

A sense of victory filled the train, like they’d won a sports match. People drenched in the narrative hauled the Station Master along as a group, straight toward the Rabbit-Doll Worship Religion’s Representative.

Naturally the crowd surged, and like an ebb tide, people began to stream toward Car 3.

And there was someone who quietly followed that crowd.

Section Chief Lee Jaheon.

He had such a conspicuous build that anyone who already knew him could pick him out at a glance even in this chaos.

“Section Chief?”

“Deputy Eun Haje.”

Deputy Eun Haje approached with a pleased expression and whispered.

Now that, for the moment, the atmosphere had shifted so that even outsiders were socially “permitted” as long as they wore a rabbit-shaped badge, after all.

She spoke with faint amusement.

Deliberately without mentioning that she had died.

“I heard you did part-time work in the Late-Night Talk Show ghost story. What did you do?”

“Audience guidance, guest service, staff assistant, and porter.”

“...You did four at the same time? Wait—if you were doing one, didn’t someone come over, get angry, or sigh, and then tell you to do something else? Right?”

Section Chief Lee Jaheon answered immediately, blank-faced.

“Yes.”

“Ha! Hahah!”

Deputy Eun Haje burst into laughter.

But given the situation, she couldn’t laugh for long.

Because she spotted their wandering companion over there.

“Ah, there he is.”

Bronze Agent, staring at the Rabbit-Doll Worship Religion and the stuffed doll enshrined in the central Velvet Case, muttering, “Pink...?” with a bewildered face.

For the past few days, under the pretext of procuring food, he’d been visiting the place where Jang Heoun... that is, Agent Hwagog, was. He couldn’t adapt to the train’s sudden, transformed chaos.

So much so that it even made him forget the bitterness he’d been carrying while going out of the train to manage bodies so they wouldn’t rot and to keep watch.

And then, at last, he’d met someone he knew.

“...!”

Bronze Agent rushed over and blurted out the main point first.

He didn’t know why that lizard employee who hadn’t been here before was here now, but what mattered was something else!

“That— isn’t that the doll Agent Podo used to carry around?!”

“It isn’t.”

“Then that’s a relief—”

“It’s a replica of that doll.”

“.......”

Bronze Agent went speechless, but barely managed a reply.

“Then is this... Agent Podo’s doing?”

“Yes.”

“...!! Have you seen where he is? We have to go find him right—”

Section Chief Lee Jaheon grabbed Bronze Agent by the nape and hoisted him up.

“?!”

-Section Chief. Could you bring Bronze Agent from the rear cars?

It was to grant both requests at once!

And so, a little later.

Knock, knock.

With a brief knock, the Driver’s Cab door opened once again, and Section Chief Lee Jaheon shoved the person he’d brought inside.

“...Agent Podo.”

“Bronze Agent.”

Bronze Agent hurried up, frantic.

“What in the world have you done?! Don’t tell me you tried to get into the Driver’s Cab—”

But he stopped.

Because Kim Soleum was staring at him with a tense, anxious, expectant expression, lips twitching as if he were about to speak.

“Agent, could you confirm something for me?”

“Huh?”

“Here.”

Kim Soleum showed him the chair in front of the control seat, flipped over.

“...There’s a talisman here.”

“......!”

“It looks like something the agents who turned this train into a shelter pasted on, but I don’t have specialist knowledge about talismans. So, Agent....”

“Please wait a moment.”

Bronze Agent cut off every remark he’d been about to make.

And he looked again at the pattern beneath the overturned chair.

Straight lines.

Blocked patterns.

Repetition and confinement.

It was clearly drawn by kneading some kind of fully burned ash into a viscous liquid. Ritual elements barely forced into shape—squeezed out in an environment that lacked everything.

But it was a talisman.

And he had already seen agents who tried to use talismans like this to make an improvised opening—back at the high school in Se-gwang Special City.

With frightening concentration, Bronze Agent’s blue eyes shone as he began to grasp the talisman’s meaning.

“.......”

“.......”

Only after half an hour did he finally straighten up.

“...What kind of talisman is it?”

Bronze Agent, after returning the chair to its original position with extreme care, opened his mouth.

“This is not a warding talisman.”

“Huh?”

“I mean it isn’t meant to drive off something evil. ...On the contrary, this is a talisman that draws something in.”

...!

“A fortune-seeking talisman—so... you could say it’s a talisman meant to draw in blessings, luck, circumstances.”

“...Like an exam-passing talisman?”

“Yes. But the type is a little different.”

Bronze Agent explained calmly.

“This is, strictly speaking, a bond talisman.”

...A bond?

“You mean this train is a talisman for meeting someone?”

“Not so much someone... as if it’s trying to meet something.”

Something.

“In other words, that talisman was made with the purpose of making this train inevitably meet something. And if you add supernatural rules on top of that....”

Bronze Agent declared.

“To meet it, this train will move on its own.”

......!

“Yes. If you use this talisman properly, the train itself will move as a whole to somewhere.”

“...! Could it move completely outside Se-gwang Special City?”

“I don’t think so.”

Bronze Agent frowned.

“You can’t just draw strokes that make it break free of its role as a train. So it would be moved to somewhere the train can still perform its role....”

“.......”

“That is how I interpreted it.”

A place where the train can perform its role.

“...Then it would be on the tracks.”

Kim Soleum’s mind spun rapidly. He hurriedly checked the monitor attached beside the control area.

The train’s route map.

If you use this talisman properly, does it go to the opposite set of tracks?

Until now, service on the opposite tracks had been suspended. But because there were hints over there, perhaps that agent had wanted to make this train run in the reverse direction....

Then what’s the order?

Kim Soleum urgently recalled the stations in order on the Se-gwang subway route map.

Se-gwang Subway Route Map