Free Web NovelBack in China, most of my conversations with Kang Han-min were either mission briefings or idle talk about the weather.
At the time, I was even more rigid and closed-off than I am now, and Kang Han-min and I had completely different interests.
Even so, there are a few conversations that have stayed with me.
They were about life.
Kang Han-min often compared life to a railroad.
I remember him saying that during a standoff with hostile civilians, with only a single wall separating us.
As we watched the blood of the civilians we’d just killed pool into a puddle, I asked him out of nowhere,
“How did you endure it back there?”
I was talking about school.
Back then, I thought Kang Han-min wasn’t much in terms of combat ability, but I did believe he had above-average mental resilience.
And that made sense.
To withstand the abuse of instructors who wielded power over life and death—not just from one or two people, but from those with authority comparable to executioners—required a level of tenacity that most couldn’t achieve.
Among the sources contributing to that blood puddle was a boy who looked no older than a middle schooler.
Maybe that’s why I let the question slip out.
Kang Han-min didn’t seem particularly interested in the blood puddle we’d created.
Instead, he answered while gazing into the distance with a strangely peaceful look in his eyes, reflecting on the past.
“You can’t fall off the rails. Once you fall off, you can’t ever get back on.”
Life is often compared to a railroad.
Given how railroads have fixed beginnings, splits, and ends, they might seem too rigid a metaphor for the ever-changing nature of life—but in truth, that’s why they’re used.
Because the start, the splits, and the end are predetermined.
According to him, a so-called successful life follows a common form and progresses through a common set of branches toward a destination that everyone envies.
So a life that slips off the rails is worthless. A failure.
The “rails” Kang Han-min spoke of were an extension of that metaphor.
More than ten years have passed since then.
People who grew up watching Kang Han-min have started bringing up the same topic.
“Honestly, let me just say this. Everyone on this train, including me... we’re the ones who fell off the rails.”
According to Lee Ho-su, everyone on this train is someone who’s been poorly evaluated by the collective.
“That girl who caused a fuss earlier, Go Hee-seol? She’s got serious personality issues. Pretty much anger management disorder. She's undeniably talented, so she was accepted despite that, but during quiet times like now, when we’re not doing big-hole missions often, no one wants to deal with her. Then there’s Park Hae-min, another guy like me. Great personality, great skills—but he’s got a kleptomania problem. And he’s a gambling addict. Need I say more?”
Ho-su absentmindedly fumbled around inside his coat. Judging by the motion, he probably used to smoke.
The lack of any more cigarettes reflected his current reality.
“As for Moon Yang-gyeong... I have no idea why she’s here. She’s a model student—got praised by Savior Kang Han-min himself. A purebred inner circle. Maybe she got marked by him for something we don’t know about and got pushed off the rails too?”
Finally, Ho-su offered a brutally honest assessment of himself.
“I’m just tired. I only stayed in it for my family, but everyone except my brother is dead. And I don’t even get along with that bastard. Watching him try to act like the big brother when he’s just freeloading off me makes me want to scream. With things like this, you think I want to keep pushing? Eventually, I got a little ‘talking to’ from Savior Kang Han-min.”
“What did he say?”
“What was it... ‘That kid’s... not it’? Something like that.”
“That’s all?”
For a brief moment, Ho-su’s eyes trembled slightly.
“...Yeah. That’s all. And it’s everything. That’s probably why I was sent here, despite not causing any trouble or having low evaluations.”
In a way, among the Regular Awakened Four, Ho-su is the worst case.
He didn’t get cast aside by just anyone—but by someone considered a god.
There wasn’t much I could say to him.
“If you get off here, you’re not likely to live long.”
All I could offer was the truth.
Ho-su gave a hollow smile.
“I know.”
“And you’re still getting off?”
“I already fell off the rails anyway.”
“That’s just your perspective. From a first-person view, you can’t really tell whether you’re on the rails or off.”
Ho-su suddenly asked,
“Then, Commander... do you know where the rails are?”
Unfortunately, that’s a question I can’t answer.
The Panokseon finally broke through the Seoul Capital Area and entered the foothills of the Taebaek Mountains.
A change had come over the endlessly green landscape.
Patchy areas of ash-gray erosion zones began appearing—sometimes dotting the terrain, sometimes spread wide.
And in those wide zones, the all-too-familiar ominous fog lingered like a ghost.
We saw people, too.
As we passed a junkyard filled with discarded cars stacked like a landfill, we spotted skeletal people pulling carts, scouring the wreckage.
When Pyo Won-sang halted the train, they scattered in terror.
The train had stopped.
This time, no one objected to the halt.
Dozens of drones rose into the sky, and armed patrols scouted around the tracks.
Soon, soldiers made contact with a few of the locals.
“They say they’re staying here. We brought up Seoul, but they said they’re satisfied with their current life and don’t want to gamble on an unknown place.”
Pyo Won-sang gave them some food and medicine. In return, some of the survivors provided valuable intel that couldn’t be gathered through recon alone.
“There’s a raider group further south. They showed up last winter and crushed all the remnants of the local warlords.”
According to the testimony, the group is led by an Awakened.
The mention of a “shockwave” suggests he’s at least a Regular Awakened.
Woo Min-hee used to call these types “Wild Awakened.” As erosion intensified, the number of Awakened increased—and a pattern observed even in China was that some inevitably turned to the path of raiding.
Not all Wild Awakened are like King.
The one in the south is reportedly vicious and cruel—maintaining control through torture and public executions.
Soon, the drone operators confirmed a fortified residential zone to the south, and it didn’t take long before that same raider group contacted us.
“I don’t know where you came from, but this is my land. So get lost.”
Like most mid-to-large groups these days, the raiders had their own artillery.
Mortar shells—likely 81mm—landed nearby.
They weren’t aimed at us directly but at surrounding areas, likely to avoid full-on conflict while still delivering a clear warning.
Pyo Won-sang pulled the train back by five kilometers.
Of course, a dreamer like Pyo Won-sang wasn’t about to abandon the plan.
Too many resources had already been poured in—and among them was his own future.
“I’m sending in a special ops unit.”
Anything outside of dealing with the Princess isn’t my jurisdiction.
So all other operational authority lies with Pyo Won-sang.
He came to inform me, not ask for help.
“If nothing else, he’s very polite.”
As he left the room, Cheon Young-jae spoke with a mocking tone.
“Guys like him are the hardest to deal with.”
Woo Min-hee chimed in while tending to her nails.
She looked visibly annoyed.
Her sharp eyes turned toward me.
“These Kang Han-min kids...”
She clicked her tongue.
“Doesn’t it piss you off? These kids, still wet behind the ears, acting like zealots. They weren’t this bad before. What the hell did that guy teach them?”
I agreed, but didn’t show it.
It wasn’t even a few hours later that we heard news of one of those Kang Han-min kids dying in battle.
Even a minor name like Mgu has his uses.
Through a soldier who’d become friendly with Mgu, I got the details.
It had been a fierce battle.
The infiltration route and initial takedown of the guards went perfectly—but the leadership’s resistance was too intense to break through. fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com
Especially the resistance from the Awakened leader—it was overwhelming.
Let’s borrow the words of Sergeant Kwon for the specifics.
“I thought he just deflected bullets, but damn, he started pulling off some real magical shit. Like, there was this white line—and then it lit up.”
He got hit in the arm with what they call a ‘Judge Killer’—a kind of crossbow bolt. The wound wasn’t too deep, so he was just in for a short hospitalization.
“We had two Awakened on our side too. One was recklessly brave, and the other seemed scared. The brave one was a young woman. The scared one, a young guy. The woman shouted something at the guy—then suddenly he lost it, screamed like a maniac, and charged into the enemy stronghold swinging a machete. Multiple shockwaves went off, messing with everyone’s heads—and then it was over.”
The name of the fallen: Lee Ho-su.
He had wanted to get off the train.
And now he had, permanently.
There were multiple wounded, but only one fatality: Lee Ho-su.
After finishing his story, Sergeant Kwon frowned briefly, then seemed to remember something and said to us,
“Oh yeah, that Awakened guy? It was weird. He was terrified at first, but then after hearing a few words, he just lost it and rushed in like he wanted to die.”
Woo Min-hee didn’t even try to hide her displeasure.
“...This is why I hate the Kang Han-min kids.”
She stared at me with sharp eyes.
“That girl. Can I have a word with her?”
She probably meant Moon Yang-gyeong, the leader of the Kang Han-min kids.
She must’ve realized it too.
Three of the four Awakened Kang Han-min sent us were trash. One was a commissar.
That one is Moon Yang-gyeong.
I figured it’d be better if I spoke with her first.
Otherwise, we might end up with two corpses instead of one.
“I’ll talk to her.”
Moon Yang-gyeong was outside the train.
They were holding shovels and pickaxes, and before long I saw a freshly dug patch of dirt next to the tracks—a small, humble grave.
The other Awakened avoided my gaze, but Moon Yang-gyeong stood tall, as if she’d been waiting.
“Did you come to ask what happened?”
I nodded.
We moved to another spot.
Cosmos flowers bloomed beside the tracks.
They’re fall flowers, but sometimes seeds out of season bloom anyway.
While I looked at the flowers, she looked out over the tracks stretching into the horizon.
“Ho-su had a prior incident of desertion. He ran from a monster. It was the first rift battle after coming to Seoul—and, unfortunately, Savior Kang Han-min was there. He saw the whole thing.”
“...”
“He used to be insanely brave. But I guess he’s the type who gets worn down.”
There was something Ho-su didn’t tell me.
He had committed desertion in the face of the enemy—one of the most disgraceful crimes for a soldier or hunter.
“He had two options left: take off the uniform and live as a civilian, or stay. He chose the latter.”
Her eyes remained fixed on the railroad.
“He wanted to stay on the rails.”
Then she slowly turned her gaze to the humble grave.
As she looked, the others quietly stepped aside.
I had plenty to say, but I knew we wouldn’t see eye to eye.
So I kept it short.
“How did he die?”
She answered.
“It was instant.”
“Really?”
“But I think... he died smiling.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because... in the end, at that moment, he was back on the rails, wasn’t he?”
I don’t know.
I think differently.
No one knows where the tracks of life are, or where they lead.
Sure, you can point to a few standardized templates and say, ‘This is the right path.’
But can you really say those lives are successful?
More importantly, the one who taught them about “rails”—Kang Han-min—was already someone who had fallen off.
I remember what he said just before becoming an Awakened.
“...Aniki. I’m really sorry, but... can you give me a higher score on the evaluation this time?”
“...”
“Oh, it’s nothing serious. Just some issues. Haah. Fuck. I thought I’d get better marks if I was on your team, but no dice.”
“...”
“If things stay like this, I’m going to get dragged back to Korea. You know what that means, right? Guard duty in front of the rift. One-year contract. Fucking dog work.”
It wasn’t official yet, but his repatriation was practically guaranteed.
“...”
I made the call.
I pushed him off the rails he clung to so desperately.
And his future will be exactly what he said.
Go to Paju, Yangsan, or—if lucky—Jeju, live out his days in leisure, retire quietly, and follow in the footsteps of Ha Tae-hoon or Baek Seung-hyun, filming the pathetic sequel of his life under the label “Second Act,” before being quietly erased from social media.
On the rails built by the man who fell off the rails, bright young elites with names like “Jeju Elite” play and willingly die.
But I won’t say any of this.
I don’t feel close enough, loyal enough, or deluded enough to think they’d even listen.
“Depart!”
The train moved again.
As the hundreds of tons of steel roared forward, the humble grave trembled helplessly.
Eventually, the tiny mound of dirt collapsed under the vibrations.
Something that looked like an arm poked out from the fallen earth—but the accelerating train had already carried me far beyond it.
I stood between the cars, leaning sideways to glance down the rails in the distance.
I know where this railroad ends.
But what lies between here and there... no one knows.
Not even whether we’re really standing on the rails.
That’s why I couldn’t answer Ho-su’s question.
