Inside the train that departed from Se-gwang Station.
thudududuk...
The sound of the car running on rails boomed; the handholds swayed with the vibration—modern, everyday space.
Only after we dove in just before the screen doors closed did we finally look up and take stock of our surroundings.
“.......”
The inside of the train was clean.
Like a lie.
And—
People were seated in every seat.
“.......”
On the typical rows of subway seats stretching to left and right, ordinary-looking people in everyday clothes filled the places.
No sign of contamination.
Earbuds in, eyes on smartphones—that peaceful mood was enough to make us, for an instant, mistake it for having boarded a train and returned to reality.
But—
thudududuk...
The suffocating stillness.
...No reaction.
With half a dozen masked people suddenly pouring into the car, you’d expect at least a glance—but only silence flowed.
Those seated, those standing and holding the straps—
All of them sat or stood expressionless, each in their own bubble.
As if they’d seen nothing.
“.......”
“.......”
We traded looks and quietly edged back.
To another car.
Since we’d jumped in through the doors right by the stairs, the car we were in now was likely to be particularly crowded.
And in an urban legend, it’s wise not to “accidentally” bump into a situation that will only make things worse.
Don’t brush against them.
With an unspoken agreement to move to a car with fewer passengers, no one made any sudden moves; we shifted to the next car.
Taking extreme care not to brush up against any passengers.
Hoo.
At the same time, I tried to pick out anything unusual about the train interior.
The ad boards.
[Hm. The colors are a bit tacky, but they’re spotless.]
Right.
Intact.
Judging by the design, they weren’t completely recent ads, yet it was oddly impossible to feel any passage of time from them.
Only the names and numbers were jumbled beyond recognition or missing, making it impossible to guess the year or to actually get a contact number....
As if something had processed them to be unrecognizable.
“.......”
And above the doors opposite the ad board was a massive graphic occupying the whole panel.
mark
It lit up, with not a single letter on it, yet by symbol and placement alone it begged a guess....
A subway map?
At that moment—
A faint buzz trembled from the smartphone in my pocket.
“...!”
A chill ran down my spine at the fact I’d forgotten to set it to silent—but none of the passengers reacted.
Suppressing a sigh of relief, I checked the page on my smartphone at once.
Newly registered page
(1) Se-gwang Subway
...!
Se-gwang Subway
The public transit system of Se-gwang Special City, consisting of seven stations. A loop line circling Se-gwang’s main industrial and residential districts. The outer loop is currently inoperable; only the inner loop runs.
If you board this train, it seems your outward appearance can be restored to what it was when you entered the stations on Disaster Day in Se-gwang Special City.
Outward appearance?
I reflexively swept a glance over our party.
Just then, Section Chief Lee Jahaeon raised a hand to grab the handle on the door to the next car.
...! Wait a second.
With a gesture I asked Section Chief Lee to lift his hand briefly.
And I looked.
The glove that had been torn and half-ruined, ripping through nooses and corpses—it was back to its original, pristine condition.
Everyone confirmed it.
“.......”
Only after we passed into a car with comparatively fewer passengers did we finally begin to talk about it.
Keeping our voices extremely low, of course.
We confirmed that the passengers did not react at all to ahem-ing, footsteps, greetings, or conversation, and we huddled near an empty doorway.
“Section Chief, your glove seems to have returned to normal.”
“Yes.”
True to seasoned hands, they also took note of the emergency door release—so we could bolt if needed.
And, as expected of them, they quickly caught the train’s gimmick.
“Looks like a phenomenon where everything resets to its original state while we’re on this train.”
“Yes.”
“Hm. In game terms, you could call it a recovery spot, but... it doesn’t feel that reassuring.”
Deputy Eunhaje stroked his jaw with a look like his cigarette had gone stale.
And he was right.
There’s no way somewhere so safe and °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° comfy would exist openly inside a place wrapped in an extinction-class legend.
This train was, to anyone’s eye, part of Se-gwang Special City, and we hadn’t escaped.
On my smartphone—
“Podo. What have you been looking at all this time?”
“...!”
Was I that obvious?
And Agent Cheongdong immediately recognized what was stuck to the back of my phone.
It was probably just a different color variant of gear the SDRA issues to agents.
“...A Memorial griptok?”
“Close, but a little different.”
Was now the time?
I hesitated a moment, then decided to explain the relevant info properly.
We need to share exploration intel anyway.
It would be easier if I could give a source. They couldn’t see the screen, so there was no risk of exposing the Exploration Log of Darkness.
Of course I couldn’t say, ‘It came out of a merch box. Surprised?’—so I circled around it.
“I acquired a damaged Memorial griptok and, with the Elder’s help, had it repaired.”
“Our Elder?”
“Yes.”
Which was, for the most part, the truth.
And I added that, in the process of fixing it, a function sometimes manifested beyond “reading info already stored in my head.”
“So if you attach the griptok and enter a supernatural phenomenon, sometimes it gives you a bit of information about the place?”
“Correct.”
I nodded.
Before suspicion or questions could rise on the agents’ faces, I added:
“...It might also be affected by my current Security Team state.”
“.......”
The mood dipped for a beat, but Choi Agent kept up an easy smile, as if nothing were wrong.
He even let out a low, soft whistle.
“Our Podo—this new ability of yours is pretty handy...”
I can feel the gaze of all the passengers.
“...!!”
The office workers, students, old men, people in tracksuits, business suits, dresses, and jeans, everyone seated and standing in the car...
They’re looking at Choi Agent.
“......”
They turn their heads and stare.
When I hold my breath and check, even from the next car they’re watching us. An oppressive sense that, without leaving their seats, only turning their eyes, those gazes will meet ours every time we move our heads.
“......”
Choi Agent moved his hand, ever so slightly.
The gazes didn’t change.
Choi Agent took a single step near the door.
The gazes didn’t change.
Choi Agent took the smartphone I was holding out.
The gazes didn’t change.
Choi Agent casually sat down in an empty seat. He made a show of looking at the phone.
Just like the other passengers.
......
......
The gazes vanished.
“...Phew.”
We quickly moved closer to Choi Agent.
He wiped off cold sweat with a crooked grin.
“I thought all hell was about to break loose.”
“I thought my guts were about to drop out, sir. Ah, a figure of speech, section chief.”
“Yes.”
After trading words that sounded like banter, we confirmed one piece of information, like a sigh.
“A whistle, huh. That’s the trick.”
The reward for this cold-sweat disaster:
—Passengers respond to whistling.
‘Why?’
“Something like the Pied Piper line? What do you think, Cheongdong?”
“...I was thinking more of zombies.”
Zombies, huh.
‘It did look like an instinctive reaction.’
I turned my head and observed the passengers. The closer distance let me see more details.
And I realized.
“...They’re holding their books upside down.”
“...!!”
A shiver ran all over me.
We hurried to check the other passengers.
...All the same.
“The knitting needles are just going through the motions.”
“...Their phone screens are off.”
The passengers weren’t simply failing to notice us.
They were only repeating meaningless mimicries of what people normally do on the subway—
Something.
“......”
What the hell is this?
And as if to reflect that dawning awareness, the wiki page update alert sounded.
New lines had appeared.
Among the train passengers, those confirmed to be ordinary citizens are in fact irretrievably addicted, long-term missing persons, completely contaminated by ■■■ ■■.
“...!”
They only board the train by inertia and reproduce the routines of daily life before Disaster Day. They do not respond normally to anything except acts connected to their own addiction. Do not provoke them.
“......”
I recalled the faces of the long-term missing persons I had seen in Looky Mart.
And the words described on the front page of this wiki.
When boarding this train, you appear to return to the same outward condition as when first entering the Se-gwang Special City underpass.
‘Outward.’
Meaning only the appearance is intact, while those passengers are already...
‘...horribly contaminated.’
A condition one might write as addiction but read as total contamination.
They’ve lost their human shape, their minds collapsed, leaving only the desire to return to reality—becoming the very long-term missing persons of urban ghost stories.
Trapped in the Se-gwang Special City’s ghost lore, unable to escape.
“......”
I shared my inference, based on the wiki, with the others.
Their expressions hardened bitterly.
The emotions of those who have seen it before.
“...The principle is not to attempt reckless rescues of long-term missing persons. On the train... please take care not to draw attention, or get into a dangerous situation.”
“...Let’s do that.”
The mood sank.
Thankfully, since they were seasoned people, they weren’t completely swallowed by it.
It was just... the train now felt terrifying and desperate.
“...You said ‘addicted,’ right, Podo?”
“Yes.”
“And they respond to whistling... just what are they addicted to?”
Baek Saheon answered as if the question was obvious.
“Something that lets them forget the pain of being trapped in this darkness, or gives them brief happiness. Isn’t it obvious?”
“Oh, our cult-survivor village native speaks with authority, huh?”
“...!”
Baek Saheon glared at Deputy Eunhaje. Eunhaje only shrugged.
“We met there, remember. I was a reporter.”
“...That was you, deputy?”
“Yep. From the villagers’ perspective, I guess the ‘banquet guests’ weren’t supposed to know who I was, huh?”
“......”
Baek Saheon answered with silence—implicit confirmation.
“But funny how the old man over there managed to recognize me.”
“It’s obvious. Outside of that, there was no situation where a Disaster Response agent could possibly recognize me.”
Quite a solid deduction.
[Hm. So Mr. Roe Deer’s supposedly ordinary ex-roommate isn’t completely brain-dead after all!]
That made sense. He hadn’t been promoted to section chief and given a codename for nothing.
Agent Cheongdong’s stiff voice broke in.
“Then Agent Podo is...”
Baek Saheon snorted.
“That’s Mr. Roe Deer, I know that much.”
“...?”
“What I’m asking about is the agent who went into Jisan Village with him.”
The same person, though?
Cheongdong was thrown into confusion!
But I quickly flicked my eyes in denial, and Cheongdong shut his mouth.
‘As expected.’
Baek Saheon seemed not to know that the ‘agent in Jisan Village’ was the same as ‘Agent Podo,’ and also Kim Soleum....
I sat down, turning away from Choi Agent, who was clutching his mask and trembling with laughter.
Don’t laugh.
“...I can’t tell you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Baek Saheon fell silent.
Still, talking about this had at least lifted the mood a little.
Which was fortunate—because it was beginning to seem like a long haul to find Deputy Lee Seonghae.
‘Did he get off at another station? Or...’
......!
A chill crawled up my spine.
‘Wait.’
Could it be—
‘Is there a chance Deputy Lee Seonghae is also just sitting on some other train like that?’
If he were stuck like them, unable even to die, just sitting there....
“......”
The prospect alone was horrific.
And then the wave of dissonance.
‘Why am I only realizing the seriousness now?’
It had been days since our colleague went missing in an extinction-class supernatural disaster.
From the fact that Deputy Lee Seonghae had not awakened, the possibility of complete contamination was already something we could infer—and we had in fact reasoned something like that. But....
‘It hadn’t hit me.’
We had scrambled to form an exploration team as fast as we could, yet none of us had shown extreme urgency.
Even though, of all people, we knew better than anyone how serious this was.
We had failed to perceive it.
“......”
Swallowed by a city that makes you ‘fail to perceive.’ Thanks only to entering by the medium of a dream, our bodies remained, so we weren’t forgotten—but the seriousness of the disappearance itself had been swallowed.
I drew a ragged breath.
“Mr. Roe Deer.”
“Ah, I’m fine, section chief.”
Now, at last, a surge of urgency, worry, fear was welling up inside me—but I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to spread it.
At the same time, something else became clear.
‘I need to learn more about Se-gwang Special City.’
What I had ‘naturally’ forgotten wasn’t just the seriousness of Deputy Lee Seonghae’s rescue.
The well that served as the passageway into Se-gwang Special City.
The thing that triggered it was...
A Yukwae Institute employee ID.
‘...Something’s there.’
Ho Yuwon, Baekilmong, the Yukwae Institute, and the Disaster Response Agency....
I had a gut feeling that Se-gwang Special City held some hidden incident or truth, something in which these groups and individuals were deeply entangled.
Something like a decisive event in this entire ghost-story world.
‘...If I dig into that side too, along with Director Cheong, maybe I’ll find out.’
The foundational knowledge leading to why I was summoned at all.
Things even Exploration Record of Darkness hadn’t described.
‘Of course, only after rescuing Deputy Lee Seonghae first.’
I shoved aside all those tangled thoughts and fixed our objective in mind.
At that moment—
♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪♪
“...!”
A bright chime rang through the train, and text began scrolling on the announcement board instead of ads.
“We’ve arrived.”
The next station.
[This stop is Midnight, Midnight Station.]
[The ■■ City Royal Casino at Midnight Station is no longer foreigners-only. Passengers are welcome to enjoy the machines anytime.]
“...Casino?”
[The doors are opening.]
Out of the darkness, a new station came into view.
And then—
The passengers who had been sitting quietly suddenly tumbled out toward the doors like lunatics.
“...!”
[Oh, casino and addiction—what a fitting pair of keywords! Could almost be a word-association quiz!]
Wait.
Because of the crush of bodies, I couldn’t see outside properly. Damn it...!
“Damn it, we need to decide—are we getting off or not?!”
Deputy Eunhaje shouted.
“Hands up if you think we should get off!”
Choi Agent, Deputy Eunhaje.
“Then hands up if you think we shouldn’t get off!”
Agent Cheongdong, Section Chief Baek Saheon.
“Section chief! Roe Deer! What’s it gonna be?!”
“There’s no middle ground.”
“Shit!”
Eunhaje gave up waiting for answers and turned to me.
“Roe Deer!”
Think.
If he had boarded a similar train, what would Elite Field Investigator Deputy Lee Seonghae have done?
Would he really have stayed on?
‘...I doubt it.’
A moment ago my worry had made me overly cautious, but the moment he realized it was a loop line, Deputy Lee would surely have gotten off to find food and a way out.
And as for how to choose which station....
.......
“Roe Deer!”
I opened my mouth.
And ten seconds later—
[The screen doors are closing.]
“Phew!”
We stepped onto the platform at Midnight Station.
At the casino stop.