Work Text:
The time interval between life and death was merely one station to another—of all the things this godforsaken train has taught you, this was the most memorable one.
The Twilight Train came to you under uncommon circumstances, a circumstance you never wanted to think about ever again and therefore, have long repressed the memory to the back of your head. It was a magical train, a miracle train, a never-ending train; with its miracle workers and an aloof conductor who were all just trying to finish their recycling, traumatic job. It was never spoken of anywhere; never in biblical contexts, never in folklores, never in children’s stories or adult rumors.
The Twilight Train was a train that was located nowhere and everywhere, at any time and in any place. And it saves people.
There are a total of two stations, two recycling stations, for the Twilight Train. You start with a tragic event; a terminal illness, a fatal wound, a conscious cut. Anything that threatens the on-going life, however normal, however disappointing, however glorious. That is everyone’s station one. Then you end with a patched-up body; bloody stitches across your stomach, soaked bandages around your wrists, a semi-covered hole in your chest. Whether you are hated by the majority or if you have a sweet, loving family, the workers on the train will patch you up regardless so you can leave. That is everyone’s final station.
Simply put, the train saves people from the brink of death just enough for them to survive long enough on Earth to get help, to be saved.
That was the basis of what the train was created for. You learned the gist of that very quickly, it was easy to understand.
Most of the inner-workings of the system were also absorbable. Seated in a single carriage that was only big enough for two people to maneuver around, with a table placed between two cushioned booth, a tube-like structure on the side that goes up to the ceiling for the ordered items, and a few buttons on the side for pulling up holographic charts, you would wait for another patient to appear across from you after the last one gets off at their final station.
(Although, sometimes you do use the button to bring out the microphone just so you could talk into it. You were sure the other end was just an automated system intelligent enough to heed your orders, but still, you needed an outlet.)
Your only job was always to fix people up, not in their entirety but just good enough that they could walk, or that they could breathe long enough for the ambulance to arrive.
That was easy, just understanding it and being given instructions on what you were supposed to do. It was a breeze.
The part that really stumped you the most, the one part that made you want to turn yourself inside out and jump out the train yourself was undoubtedly the healing part, the bloody part, the patching up the gun-shot wound part. That was where the actual work came in. You have sewed up drunken stab wounds, breathed into stranger’s mouths to keep them breathing under the water, and very rarely, sat and talked with patients that could never be saved.
You have made mistakes here and there, both fatal ones and minor ones, with your actions and your words. You learned from them, and none of them has ever left your mind since the first day you began working here.
But those were considerably better. Being able to heal people was fine, as scary as their condition could be. It was never so much the injuries and the blood that you couldn’t handle; you knew blood like the back of your palm, you have seen blood like a waterfall of beauty, and you have tasted blood within the gaps of your teeth. It was the pained scream of the conscious patients, the terrible cries as they told their stories to you, and, occasionally, their tearful departure that would rile you up so much.
They were always so grateful, so relieved, so happy about being saved and given a chance to go back to where they came from. You understood none of that. You watched their smiling faces and exhausted waves as they leave the train carriage, and you could never wreck your brain enough to understand where those genuine smiles came from.
What was so good about going back to Earth? What was so good about a moment of peace in return for a lifetime of suffering? What was so good about crawling on the muddy floor, using your strangled breath to scream for help from the same species that brought you to this hefty point in the first place? Nothing. Absolutely nothing was good and fine about that.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” You asked as you pressed the wet cloth against the back of Jeongin’s head, your brows furrowed as you stared at his comforting smile.
He perched up his glasses with his slender finger, giving you a nod of agreement. “Yeah! I can still feel the pain but it feels much better than when I first got here.”
“I would hope so! My job is to keep you alive, after all,” you said, continuously patting down the back of his head as you watched the light on the train window flash irregularly.
The station sunlight was coming nearer and nearer, it would be time for Jeongin to leave the carriage soon and head back to where he came from. He seemed giddy about going back, which you assumed was because of the text his mother sent him about cooking his favorite pork cutlet ramen for dinner tonight, and most possibly because he could stay alive to still see, and chase, the girl he has a huge crush on in the next class.
Oh, he sure as hell was a chirpy one. He spent the whole time telling you his life story while you stopped the bleeding, disinfected, and applied some cream to the disgusting wound on his head. It was supposed to hurt, but he had been far too invested in his verbal autobiography to process the painful feeling of you tapping the warm, soapy towel against the open injury. You didn’t hate it that much, though, it saved you a wave of nausea and he didn’t make that much noise with the usual wailing of pain.
“I think you did a pretty good job! The pain is… well, it’s not completely gone but it’s much less than before.” He nodded.
You looked at him, frowning with deadpan. “You repeat yourself, you know that?”
He looked at you, his eyes shining cluelessly before a small, dainty, awkward little smile spread across his face. He removed his gaze from you shyly, his hand fidgeting when he remembered he couldn’t exactly scratch the back of his head right now, and he let out a low chuckle. “Yeah, I know. I’m working on it.”
You hummed in acknowledgment, your lips quirking down with no remorse. “I never said it is a bad thing. I just pointed it out.”
“No, I do have to work on it,” he said. “My tendency to repeat myself transfers to essays and speeches a lot too, and whether I like it or not, my teachers will dock points for those. It’s not a bad thing, but for professional reasons, I’m still going to have to work on it.”
“Professional reasons, haha,” you huffed out quietly, pulling the cloth away from his head and grimacing at the redness stained on the fabric. “You got time, you’re still in high school.”
“I am graduating though, very soon too!” Jeongin exclaimed, pumping his fists before his chest excitedly at the mention of finally leaving the hellhole that was high school.
“I know, in four months, right? You told me,” you said. “Figured out what university you want to attend yet?”
He gave you a short glance, his eyes doubtful when he watched you.
What would you know about the universities of the modern world?
He hasn’t asked about the function of this train, nor the criteria for its employees. He knew close to nothing about what this train was for. When he came in, he was in too much of a mess for you to explain thoroughly to him what you were doing aside from the fact that you would be taking care of him, and he just never tried to ask more despite his raging curiosity.
Your less-than-modern clothing did give him the incentive to take a few wild guesses, although. The red-spotted—he assumed were blood—ruffles of your cream-colored Weddington blouse fit a little too big on your torso, yet the black slack pants fit just a little too tight around your waist as if it double functioned as a corset. Your outfit came straight out of a Victorian-era movie, but the clothes did not seem like they belonged to you due to the improper size adjustments.
Were there any other train workers that came from the modern world? Or were the workers all from an older era teenagers his age has suddenly begun to romanticize for their sophisticated outfits and mysterious architectures? Even if you were all from an older era, would you possibly have known a little about the future world through the many people who drop by this train?
He gave himself moments of wonders, but he never asked for any clarification. He would simply assume you knew nothing of the twenty-first century.
“Yeah, it is a very good school too,” Jeongin replied with a nod. “I am going in with a full scholarship.”
You nodded in approval. “That’s cool.”
“It is! It is a very good opportunity,” he sighed out in relief, eyeing up at the ceiling with a dreamy look. “I can’t wait to get out of high school. It’s going to be so much better in university.”
There was nothing you could say about that. Your knowledge of the modern world went up to senior year in high school, and then you were gone. You got sent to work in the Twilight Train before you had the chance to attend university. You had tried to think back behind your memories, hoping to find a trace to the reason why you were sent here in the first place—if you weren’t here as a nearly dead person, would it be that you had already died? But you had no recollection of dying at all!
You couldn’t remember anything at all.
Even if you wanted to give him pointers for marching into another chapter of his life, there was not much actual advice you could give him aside from emotional support, and you figured some mere emotional support from you wouldn’t exactly solve any of his pending problems so you were better off saving yourself some energy and keeping your mouth shut about universities and its people.
However, while knowing nothing about the world beyond high school, what you could tell him was the world within it.
“A word of advice for you to go on from today, bicycle boy,” you opened your mouth to say, then you stopped when the bright light outside the window flashed before your eyes.
The train has arrived at his final station. He has to leave now or he would be stuck in the carriage forever.
Jeongin looked at the opened doors, his head moving slowly and his eyes widening in realization.
The platform was not an actual platform. It showed the sight of a downward hill, which was exactly the same as the short, downward road near his school. He remembered it, it was where the tire of his bike burst, causing him to trip off his bike and roll down. The next thing he knew was that he was in this carriage. Seeing it again probably meant something, very likely that it was his cue to leave this carriage now.
Turning to you, he sucked in a soft huff of air and he looked at you with patience in his eyes. “I never got your name.”
Well, that was not a first. People have asked for your name all the time around here, but you were always very reluctant to tell them. Identity wasn’t a concept here; all that you were was that you were an employee of the Twilight Train. You should save the reveal of your name and tend to the patients instead. Even if you have the time to spare, they weren’t ever going to remember your name anyway, so why bother telling them?
Or, a better way to say it, giving your name gives away your identity, and giving away your identity gives you an attachment.
An attachment was unneeded on this train. You are better off without it.
You pulled away from him. Setting the wet cloth aside, dumping it on the edge of the table, you pulled him up by his shoulders and pushed him toward the exit doors of the carriage. He let out a startled yelp, stumbling across to the platform where he could walk until he was transferred back to the real world, and he quickly turned around to flash you a bewildered expression, obviously wanting to know what you had wanted to tell him.
You usually don’t feel much sentiment in watching the patients leave. You could never find the time and space to feel sorry for their experiences when you’ve had to meet more than twenty people a day (not that time was even a concept on the Twilight Train) and try to patch them all up before the train meets the end of their final station.
And you didn’t feel much sentiment watching Jeongin on the other side of the train either, but something resonating stirred in your chest upon the experiences you heard from him, and you told yourself this did not come from empathy but sympathy.
It was to save his life. You were merely doing your job.
“If I see you here again, I’ll kill you myself!”
Jeongin frowned at you. That was the least of what he had expected from you, but he wasn’t surprised that you would spill something like that as a farewell gift. He gave you a quick thumbs-up, his smile dimming in a deadpan, then he shouted again, “What about your name?”
The train began to rumble when his voice dropped, singling its fifteenth restart of the day. You stared at his confused face, mirroring it with your bland one, and you shrugged. He would be saved, you knew, very likely by a stranger but if God was feeling generous, by the girl he liked in the the other class. He could be fine. He suffered, but he would be fine. Not that you were worried, though. You could never be worried about these people,
It was until the doors began to close when you pursed your lips into a smile and pointed at him with your index finger.
“Don’t ever let me catch you lurking around this train again, Yang Jeongin!”
You could see the look of utter disbelief on Jeongin’s face through the windows. There was a split second before the train started to move. It started slow at first, giving Jeongin a moment to realize you were leaving. The sudden yet small step of his feet made it seem like he planned to chase after you, but he thought better of it and took a step back instead.
He calmed himself down before he gave you a smile, and before you could read his lips fully, he was gone in a flash and the scenery was replaced with a rush of black again.
You smiled to yourself, replaying the exact moment his expression switched from being baffled to being baffled and annoyed. What a pretty face, such a bright smile as well. It was a shame his classmates didn’t know how to cherish it while they still could. Soon enough, someone sane and mature would snatch him up, and it’d be too late for everyone to go through their redemption arc and pursue him anymore.
You sure hoped he would have a good life starting from today, even though you didn’t get to give him your professional advice.
“Okay,” you whispered to yourself, quickly pushing the thought out of your head so the almost heartwarming memory wouldn’t last too long in your head.
There was no time for you to reminisce, you’ve got important work to do. The next patient should be in the booth by now.
Taking a deep breath, you turned around to greet the newest patient. It would be brief because after a short ‘hello’ you would usually have to pull up your irritating, unflattering, always-getting-in-the-damn-way sleeves and try to both tend to the patient’s injury and calm them down at the same time.
Your eyes searched around the carriage after you spun on your heels. It moved around the familiar space before they settled on the patient side of the booth. Standing unfazed, you looked at the pale man—not an effect of his injury, it seemed—seated slack against the cushioned seat. His hand covered his abdomen, fresh blood seeping through the gaps of his rough fingers as his chest heaved with glistening sweat.
What a shocker. Haven’t had one of these profusely bleeding log in a while.
You tilted your head, thinking of all the possible causes for such amount of blood loss. According to your past experiences, it could either be a gunshot wound or a deliberately deep knife gash. Either way, you should probably get to work immediately if you wanted to keep him alive long enough.
Moving over to the table, you reached over to the buttons located just next to the tube-structure and pressed the green button. A hologram of a chart and a graph showed up, revealing the patient’s necessary information: his name, age, life percentage, and his injury. You read through it quickly, your finger already fumbling over to the red button so you could call for backup equipment.
“I have a GSW to the abdomen hitting very close to the aorta. There is no exit wound and he’s losing blood rapidly. His percentage is going dangerously below seventy, inching close to sixty…” You furrowed your brows. They usually come in at around eighty percent; sixty percent was the recommended life percentage, going below that would lead to likely death when they head back to Earth. “You guys sent him here minutes after he started losing blood! Do you have to be that legitimate about the near-death criteria? Ugh, god, why do I bother!”
You closed your mouth after an exasperated exhale, then removed your eyes from the hologram to the man as you yelled.
His eyes were unfocused but he wasn’t lost. He was looking at you, his brows furrowed and his lips slightly parted so he could release the pain through silent huffs of hot breaths. As always, complete confusion was present in his eyes, paired up with flashes and flashes of discomfort at the knowledge that he was close to bleeding his body dry. But, after a moment, an alarmingly quick moment, he seemed to have relaxed and he looked to the side where the windows of the carriage doors were.
His eyes were wistful as if he knew his purpose here and he wanted to have nothing to do with it. But that would be nonsense. Nobody ever remembers their experience on the Twilight Train, or at least you have never met a miracle case.
“Just give me a some lap sponges, a chest tube, and… uh…” you grimaced, not knowing what else you could use, “whatever you guys have. I’m sure you know what to send down already, this isn’t your first gunshot wound!”
Removing your finger from the red button, you got off your booth before quickly heading over to the man’s side. Your eyes never once left his panting body as you reached over across the table and opened the box that was directly attached to the end of the tube. After fishing out a pair of gloves, you urgently put them on as you stopped before the man’s body and leaned down to his eye-level.
“Hello, Chan. I’m sure you heard what I said, and you probably also know what happened to you,” you said as you snapped the gloves on quickly and proceeded to push his shoulder so his body wasn’t turned to the side. “But, just for procedure purposes, I’m going to tell you what happened to you anyway. You’ve got a–“
“Gunshot wound to the abdomen, the bullet is very close to the aorta, and I am losing a lot of blood,” he gritted out with a muster of his strength, his eyes squeezing as pain zapped through his veins like water on electricity. He looked at you when you nodded, your hands fumbling about the air indecisively. He tiredly rolled his eyes then.
“Does it mean I’m dying?” He asked, sounding more relieved than afraid.
You clenched your hands, weirded out. “Yes, you will be if you don’t let me help you now.”
He glanced down at your hands again, seeing the way they steadily planted in the air with twitches of an urge to fix him up. It was a familiar sight, but it wasn’t the most comforting. That was all you robotic workers knew how to do, wasn’t it? Your steady, unpanicked expression told him all he needed to know. He couldn’t remember the details of his past few trips to this train but his best guess was that you people would push everything aside to fulfill your duty. For whom, exactly, he didn’t know. He didn’t have the time to do enough research about that the last few times he was here.
This service was probably good to him before, considering he got to live even after the devastating situation he had gone through. He liked the second chances given to him, they had all been miracles to him, whether it was an innocent lady taking who happened to take the detour home or the rich old bastard that consistently got him stuck in this stupid train. But, honestly, just between him and the lord, he could only take a few dozen of those before it started to get boring and worthless to him.
At some point, the miracles were more of a curse than a gift. Sometimes he just wants to get it over with and die a painful death he couldn’t feel, on this bright train, with the company of a stranger he has never seen before. There would be no panic, no wondering when he could hit the end road and die; panic and worse than pain, pain you can get over with, and he’d rather get over it and leave the world for good.
“Yeah, I know the drill. Just forget it,” he rasped out, his throat dry as he slowly shook his head. “Just sit down.”
You titled your head to the side, feeling beyond baffled that he was refusing your aid, and also that he talked as if he knew what you were here to do. “I think you heard me wrong, sir, but I said you are going to die if you don’t let me help you now.”
His eyes trailed from the side to you. You shivered, you weren’t used to this. There was not a trace of fear in them, and his face was so well-sculptured that it felt like an obnoxious painting was staring back at you. No matter how far you’ve walked away, you could still feel it’s haunting gaze at your back, watching everything you do and counting every breath you take.
You didn’t like this, you would rather stare at the blood dripping past his white shirt than at his face.
“And I think you heard me wrong, darling,” he said, “but I said forget it.”
You pursed your lips. Your hands dropped to your side with trembles and uncertainty. Your mind raced to recall the previous encounters; all of them were broken people, both inside and out, and all of them were willing to receive help. Some of them even jump at the chance to be given another chance at life. You have seen it all, you really thought, and that was how things have always been, that was how things should always be. It was what you understood.
And then there were times—times? This happened once, and right now was the one time, when a patient comes in and tells you to leave them out to die.
That was when you realized that maybe, maybe you understood nothing at all.
You were humoring him.
Chan could look from the look on your face that you were humoring him when you decided you would listen to him and sit down. You took off your gloves, aggressively dumping them on the table while you stared at him with those judgemental, emotionless, impatient eyes. You were humoring him when you chose to sit down across from him, as per his request, and you were waiting for him to come to his senses about dying before you could jump to work on his gunshot wound.
“You know my name already,” he said, smiling at you. “I’d reach out for a handshake but I’m pretty occupied right now. Also, I’m tired.”
“Not a problem. I’m not the shaking hands type anyway,” you replied blandly, still staring down at him.
You repeatedly told yourself you weren’t interested in this man, that the only reason why you decided to sit down was to subtly talk him into wanting to live again. All you needed to know about him was on the holographic chart, and it told you that you have a time frame for him to calm himself before you absolutely have to force the care onto him.
Even though he has a gunshot wound to his abdomen, even though he was dying and didn’t want help, even though you had once resonated with his rash decision in the face of death, you were not interested in knowing why he made that choice. You weren’t angry, or scared, or curious. You were impatient, but you would soothe that feeling out. You always do.
Desensitization is the key to survival.
However, one thing you did want to know about was how he seemed to remember being here before. The Twilight Train is a subconscious activity. It does not exist the same time as it exists. It is the scientific part in a biblical story and the miracle story in a science fiction. What you, and all the other workers, do for these people on this train would all be boiled down to one thing in a hospital: luck. Everything that happens in here are not supposed to be remembered by anybody else but the workers.
Was Chan bluffing when he said he knew what you were supposed to do? Did he bump his head and mistake the location for a hospital? Or were you simply looking too far into things and Chan had actually made a perfectly normal—and insane—response?
“You know you won’t be too occupied if you would just let me help you,” you said, gesturing toward his bleeding wound.
Chan looked down at his stomach. He lifted his hand, seeing the stained part of the expensive white shirt he got from murder money and watching at the soaked fabric squeeze out drops of red. He could even feel the bullet inside him, lodged between his fragile flesh with a staggeringly numb graze he was surprised he had the senses to feel. Maybe he did want to feel it. Maybe he knew feeling pain meant he could stay alive longer, even though he had wanted to die.
Heaving a soft sigh at it, he clamped his hand back onto the wound. He did that to reduce the pain.
Chan leaned his head back, resting his eyes painfully at the ceiling light as he recalled the moment before he was sent here.
He was probably at a trade? He was not informed about the product, he never was when he went out for these kinds of job. He just knew he had them in a suitcase and all he ever needed to do was count the money and take it, then he could get a generous amount of income. It had been dark, it was always so dark for security reasons. People couldn’t see their faces clearly under the gunfire, he supposed. Nothing much happened; talking and talking and more talking, and the next thing he knew, he was shot.
Oh, but he sure did remember the money laying in the other suitcase, though.
The income. Dangerous work always came with that kind of figures, whether it was being hated by a majority or being in constant danger. How hilarious it was to think about it now. It was the source of life for him before, for him and his wife and his darling little girl. Now? Now he was bleeding dry for it, he was bleeding dry because of it, and he suspected nobody cared.
He was kind of done having to deal with the panic of potential danger, honestly. Once or twice he hoped he wouldn’t bounce back from it, but then he thought of the people he would leave behind and he stepped up again.
This time was not one of those times.
“I know, but I don’t want any help,” he said.
You hummed out loud. It was a short hum, it sounded like a one syllable word made to sound demanding, and the way your eyes criticized Chan made him feel uneasy on his seat. You barely knew him yet you were already showing how much of a burden he was being, simply by the decision he made over life. You were certainly the ideal person he wanted to be with during his last minutes on this universe, what a joy for him.
“Sir, do you know what it is that we do on this train?” You asked, tapping your thighs.
Chan smirked. “Are you supposed to tell me?”
“No, but there isn’t consequences in doing so,” you said. “You won’t remember this when you leave.”
“No, I won’t,” he huffed out, reaching an arm up suddenly and holding it to the side of his face. “Except I do. I do remember this place, I know I’ve been here before.”
You leaned against the back of your booth, watching intently as human ingenuity happened right before your eyes. Chan uncovered his wound by removing his hand, swiftly he pulled down his sleeve and revealed an array of tiny, carved scars on the inside of his forearm where visibility to the outside world would be less of an option. You furrowed your brows at him, your hands tightening at your lap upon seeing the bladed tragedy on his skin.
There was a familiar prick at your skin. You knew how those felt.
“I knew I wasn’t allowed to remember a place like this, so I made sure I won’t forget as much as I could,” Chan said as he flashed you his intricately inflicted scars. “T-H, T-W-L, T-R, stands for the Twilight Train. That was the first time I was here, I am thinking it had something to do with my gastrointestinal tract.”
You pursed your lips. You have never seen this man before, but that didn’t matter. Whoever treated him the first time he was here must have done a god-like job for him to still have time for informational chit-chat with them, not to mention whipping up a painful plan as such while he was already in enough pain just so he would have an idea of this place. You wanted to frown; this train wasn’t worth him remembering it.
“You bunch–you save people like us on Earth, don’t you all?” He asked then, dropping his hand back down on the seat.
“We do, we save you here so you can have the time to receive help in real life.” You gave him a faint nod. “We don’t heal you, we just keep you alive until the actual help comes in.”
The time interval between life and death, between near death and actual death. The raging, panicking, life-changing moment standing between a beating heart and an unmoving corpse, where the workers jump to aid the ones in need. They call it the Restoring Period.
Chan raised his brows. That was a solid answer he has always been doubtful about, plus a new piece of information he never once laid his hands on. It was like a breath of fresh air. The carvings on his skin were helpful, but not helpful enough that he wouldn’t suspect if he was going insane or not. But his luck with all the past, horrifying injuries was beginning to look more like a pattern than blind luck that he thought perhaps he wasn’t all that crazy at all.
It was great to know that he wasn’t, that he was right all this time.
“Kind of like paramedics,” he commented with a chuckle.
You mirrored his smile. He wasn’t wrong.
There was a faint trace of light shining at the windows. Your heart picked up its pace at the notion of those lights, then you looked back at the exhausted man sitting across from you, who hasn’t spoken a single word since the last smile you flashed him.
Scooting over to the side, you eyed the tray at the end of the tube and grimaced inwardly at the supplies given to you. You still weren’t able to use them, and you weren’t sure if you could push Chan hard enough to want you to use them.
Ignoring the sight of them, you pressed the green button so his body chart would show, and your expression dimmed when you saw that his life percentage has dropped down to an unfortunate seventy percent.
Sixty percent is the minimum threshold. Letting a patient go when they are below sixty percent is not an ideal situation, and zero percent means death.
Chan looked up from the floor he had been staring at. His eyes trailed along your figure, his head turning to think.
You looked young, way too young, almost as if you got fresh out of high school. Your clothes were a few sizes too big and a few sizes too small on you, therefore he could conclude that they were likely not yours, to begin with. Your sleeves were weird, not the clothing but the skin underneath it, but he couldn’t tell. And your eyes were just as tired as his, if he could even see what his wrinkled lids looked like right now.
They were probably droopy and asking for a good night’s rest, but he has long lost the privilege to have that.
“Stop looking at the chart, it’s not going to change anything.”
He broke your concentration with a quick comment, and his eyes immediately snapped to your small hands when you jumped at his words.
Red lines—he saw that, but they could be anything. They looked like drawings, but they also looked like scars, scars he knew all too well about. Before he could take another look, you have quickly retreated your hand and pulled the cuffs below your knuckles.
It wouldn’t have meant anything to him if you hadn’t hesitantly pulled the fabric over your hand, now he thought you were hiding something from him. Now he wanted to know what those red lines were.
“Your life percentage has dropped to seventy,” you informed. “It won’t be good as we approach sixty.”
“Why? I’ll die?” Chan asked, tilting his head and adjusting his position with low groans of pain.
“You won’t die yet, but when you hit zero then you definitely will.”
“I thought I made it clear that I don’t care about my death.”
You tilted your head to the side, blinking almost innocently in a way that quite pissed him off. “You don’t?“
“No.” He nodded, trying to roughen up his voice so you would feel intimidated, but he figured who would feel intimidated with an unarmed man who has a wound to his abdomen? “I am ready to sit here and welcome my inevitable death.”
“And you are so sure that you are ready to leave?” You questioned, putting your hands upon the table and fiddling with your fingers. You stared at him, still and unflinching and confident; he wished he had this stance when he was sent to face those powerful figures in sketchy locations, maybe they would have taken him more seriously.
“Sir, do you have a family?”
He chuckled in disbelief at your question, indirectly telling you the mind game would not work on him. Bring up family members were one of the most widely used tricks to gain sympathy, or just to make someone rethink a difficult decision they planned to make.
Having family members meant standing to have something to lose, having family members meant your choice would become a hassle were it to fail by your hands, having family members meant you are a human being who has loved, or has been loved, despite the path you’ve taken.
These things make you freeze, they make you think. They had, once or twice, made him rethink his choices. Once he shook a man’s hand, twice he signed a contract, thrice he pulled a trigger, and it was all for the family he made for himself that he was ready to leave behind now.
It is the better option. It has to be.
"Are you trying to talk me out of dying?” He asked.
“Absolutely,” you nodded immediately, “but do not mistake it as me caring about you. I am just trying to do my job.”
“How interesting. Do you get fired if I die?”
You laughed through pursed lips, shaking your head. “Nobody gets fired no matter how many people they kill on this train. We’re all just trying our best, there are no real consequences aside from an occasional bloodied floor we have to mop.”
That was a lie. Chan could see it, he was trained to see it.
“If there are no consequences, why don’t you just let everyone die?” He asked, genuinely curious.
“For many reasons. One, we’re not heartless monsters. When people are in pain, we do want to stop it,” you said. “Second, we’re not that tolerant. Being stuck in such close quarters with a wailing patient is painful for us as much as it is painful for them.”
That was a lie as well.
You were hell-bent on playing out the professionalism, but Chan knew the truth. He knew it more than anybody in the world when it came to putting on a stoic face when you were staring straight into Hell’s eyes.
This job—seeing people get soaked up in blood, hearing people scream in pain, putting your gloved hands between flesh and bones. It has taken an emotional toll on you, and a huge one at that.
You grow desensitized to it, but that means nothing aside from the fact that you have failed and the tragedy has won.
There is nothing glorious about shutting yourself down as a defense, there is nothing brave about being too weak to face the reality. The truth hides in emotions, and you are lying to yourself. You do feel for everyone, but you couldn’t afford to care about them all if you wanted to keep them alive, neither could you do it if you wanted to stop yourself from winding down a path of insanity.
One could only take so much pain at a time, even if it wasn’t inflicted upon them.
“You must be in luck then,” Chan scoffed, “I am not crying.”
“I would be lucky if you don’t keep dodging my questions,” you said, your voice light with nonchalance. “Do you have a family, sir?”
Chan kept his smirk directed at you. He was trying very hard to suppress the pain, keeping the rough groans at bay so he could keep this confident act up with you. You could see that, but you decided to do the bare minimum of insisting.
“I do, actually. Got a wife at home, and a daughter coming,” he said with a dimpled-smile, his eyes softening at the mention.
But he was quick to bounce back to his original state, the gentleness that once brimmed behind his eyes fading as he let out a violent cough before he smirked. “I still don’t want your help, though.”
“That is very unfortunate for your wife then, having to lose a husband and the father of her unborn child,” you said, with a chilly tone down your throat rather than sounding emotional so it wouldn’t sound like you were persuading him of anything. “Your daughter would be born fatherless, and you would have never seen her, or held her, or told her you love her. Not even once.”
Chan kept his smile, unfazed despite the coldness in his chest growing. He was freezing over time, not because of the physical wound but the fact that this would be the last time he could even think of seeing his wife in his head, let alone seeing her again in real life.
What did he say before he left the house today? He could barely remember with the migraine hanging his head. It must have been something insignificant, though. It was early morning, after all, and she had always dealt better in the morning than him. She was always ready with breakfast and folded clothes, and he—the best thing he could give in the morning was a goodbye kiss and, occasionally, sex.
He remembered what she told him, though. It was the same damn thing every morning: be careful, have a good day at work, stay safe, come home for dinner, see you later, I’ll be here when you come back. He could never get tired of it, he could never. It was all his rotten life has left on Earth.
“That’s harsh, kid,” he laughed.
“I am trying to get you to let me help,” you said with a shrug, your eyes moving down to look at his bloodied hand. “I will be as harsh as I need to be.”
Chan only smiled. But he knew he was determined, and he figured the last bit of entertainment he could get was to see you try.
There was a kind look in his eyes, an enamored and kind look that you guessed someone in love would make.
“Missing your wife?”
Chan looked up at you, and he chuckled in approval. His eyes gleamed with knowing—as monotonous and unsympathetic as you claimed to be, you sure knew how to read someone’s emotion well.
He wouldn’t have pegged you to be the clueless type, though. He could see it all in the eyes.
“I am always missing her,” he replied.
“Yet you won’t go to extreme measures to see her again,” you said. “I can’t seem to see past your contradictions, sir.”
“I have my reasons, alright,” he nagged, scrunching up his face and waving his free arm about for a second before it went down in exhaustion.
His loving look changed then as if he was remembering something. You also knew this look. The look of reminiscent, but instead of the good times, these people were drowning in regret.
The mistakes they’ve made and the consequences they’ve had to burden on other people. These pitiful looks usually appear when someone is about to reveal their whole back story. But occasionally, you do meet a quiet soul that doesn’t speak.
You doubted Chan was one of them.
“I have my reasons,” he muttered under his breath with a breath of regret, his eyes casting downward at his wound obsessively as if he was truly afraid of his death, then he faced you once again. “It would be better for them this way.”
“Uh–huh,” you hummed.
Your guesses were off, way off.
Even with the gunshot wound to his abdomen, your best guess was that he met an unfortunate end at a very wrong time. He was probably just any other ordinary man—has a wife, a child on the way, a dead-end job he never envisioned to have when he was picking his classes in university, a normal relationship with his parents, a couple of friends but nobody too tight with him.
However, just any other ordinary man wouldn’t think in such burdening ways. There would be no reason for his leaving to be in any way beneficial to his family, considering your assumption that his wife was a stay-home wife and him the only working person in the family. The consequences of his death would overwhelmingly outstand the benefits.
There has got to be something more to his background than what you had habitually cultivated for him the second you saw him. Some not so ordinary but also not special, something his entire life encompassed up until this point, something that caused the gunshot to be fired.
What was it?
“I joined a crime syndicate. A mafia, if you will,” he began after seeing your less-than-curious eyes. He knew enough to fill the air without being prompted. “Ever since I was young. I never went to college, I dropped out of high school during my senior year after this random man picked me off the street after I was–”
“Beaten up by people stronger than you?” You cut him off, the downward quirk of your lips a condescending frown.
“You were young and pissed off. You think you could win but you ended up getting your ass kicked, and you’re mad they left you on the floor in the alleyway like a stray dog. But, most importantly, you’re ashamed, you’re embarrassed that you were so, so weak against others. And the man gave you merely two simple things to snatch you up from the streets,” you held up a peace sign and counted off, “power and vengeance.”
Chan watched you with wide eyes, his jaw clenching as he forced himself to sit up a little straighter. “You… you know?”
You raised a brow. You were right?
How boring. He was just like everyone else.
Well, given, the unique ones wouldn’t have to be on this damn train.
“Of course I know.”
Chan pursed his lips then, his face softening into a mindful halt.
He hadn’t thought much of you or even this train. It was subconscious, right, so there should be nothing to be wary about. But the way you shot a hole through his entire life, picking the needle from the haystack within a mindless second, made him realize something—you were an entity.
You looked human, but you weren’t one. You work for the gods, you meddle with life, and you jeopardize the concept of death. You were an unexplainable entity; all-knowing and graceful. No matter what kind of power he holds on Earth, sitting in front of you with a hole bleeding on his stomach, he was just another expendable human being ordered to be taken care of.
He was a burden, here on this train and back on Earth. Nothing has changed for him.
“Then you would understand,” Chan said then, his voice higher with a hope of receiving approval. “It will be better for them if I’m gone.”
You furrowed your brows, your fists clenching.
These people. These inadequate, incompetent, burdening people would have such low self-esteem and lack of self-worth, yet somehow when it came to making decisions for others, they think their opinion would be absolute.
“It would be better if I’m gone.”
Who gave you the right the make that decision? Who gave you the power to choose what others should or should not have in life? Who gave you the knowledge to know what is good and what is bad for other people?
People like them act as if their disappearance would be beneficial to the world. For the last minute, they wanted to make it about other people. For the last second, they wanted to act as if they contributed to society and did something good for once. When in reality, they just too cowardly to admit that they’ve given up on life, that they’ve lost, and that until the last breath they have done nothing.
These people were a burden. You hated these people.
You were these people.
“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen,” you said as you crossed your leg and leaned back, your gaze dark and critical, causing him to taken back a choke.
You were going to give him none of the approval he hoped for, and he should have known that. It was just another disappointment he could have well avoided if he weren’t so desperate.
You gave him no time to settle down, simply divine straight into what you needed to say.
“You will die. Your wife loses a husband, your child loses a father. Your boss wouldn’t bother to give you a proper burial, neither would your family have enough money to plan a funeral for you because your wife would be too busy taking the money so they can escape your boss’ grasp.”
You leaned forward suddenly then, your hands slapping against the table surface and startling the man.
“You were a member of the mafia, Chan. But now that they couldn’t be sure you have never leaked anything to your wife, and you won’t be there to keep her in check anymore, she becomes a liability. Without the code of conduct reinforced by your being alive, your wife and your unborn child will die by their hands.”
“And then there comes me.” You leaned away calmly then, raising your brows. Chan didn’t know what to do, your eyes were goat-like and scary. "Do I treat your dying wife and let your death be in vain, or do I tell her the truth when she asks? Because surely she would be curious about his husband’s real job.”
The rest was silent but he could see it in your eyes.
His wife would have to make a choice—die and leave the hell on Earth forever, whilst dragging the baby in her tummy with her because daddy wanted to be selfish about his choices in life. Or, she could choose to live and bring her daughter into a runaway environment where both of them have to constantly look out for each others’ back, all because daddy wanted dirty money.
Would it be oblivion after death, or would it be hell after birth?
Could his wife pick her poison wisely?
Why should she have to make that kind of choice?
Chan was breathing heavily now, and it was not because of the pain stemming from his wound. He was afraid. You were using his misguided judgment of your omniscience against him, making him feel fear for his loved one’s life when you couldn’t be sure if that was how things would unfold.
You learned those in movies, that was all. But if it was convincing enough that Chan felt scared, then there might be a small possibility that it could actually happen.
The world… how cruel, but it was nostalgic that nothing has changed since you left it.
“What would you choose, Chan?” You asked, “Would you hesitate? Would you think your decision is the best there is? Would you make life-changing choices for others because you thought you knew better?”
“I do know better!”
The train rumbled the second his holler dropped. There were no tunnels for the train to go through, only the pitch-black outdoors and the bright beyond, but it sure felt as if the train just went inside a tunnel with the sudden tremble and the newfound roar of wind slapping through the air outside. Aside from that, the air was silent as a coffin.
You looked at him—stared at him. His voice reverberated in the walls of your ears. Such familiarly arrogant words, you have heard those in your head before, paired with flashes of sweat and fear.
There was fury in your eyes now, an annoyance he has never seen in anybody else, not even his boss when he made a careless mistake. It was not the kind of anger he was accustomed to seeing, not the surprising kind nor the defeated kind.
You were angry in a way that you knew he was wrong, that you knew a lot of people were wrong, and you were delirious that everyone always seems to think they’re the center of it all even when the world that was orbiting around them has long been burned to ashes.
You were angry because you never got to see anybody fail with their stupidity. You just have this never-ending train and these never-ending people with fixable problems they refuse to fix.
He might be the first one to fail.
“Sure you do,” you whispered, sitting down as the noise hit against the solid window.
Chan gulped. You were still humoring him until this moment. He was expendable in your eyes, he was just another human being in need of saving. But in this case, he felt that he wasn’t too alone because there must be other carriages on this train filled with nearly dying people. He might be the only person who asked to be left alone, though.
He turned to the side, looking at the very faint trace of light shining at the window. If he stared longer, it looked as if the light was increasing steadily, but for now he could still see his reflection in the dark panels. He took a good look at himself, as good as his wounded vision allowed—old, beaten up, shot, bloodied, tired.
It has been like that for a while, he has been like that for a while no matter how much he denied it. One’s reflection could never lie, after all. And he knew the man he saw in the window didn’t know better, he knew that. Because he wouldn’t be on this train if he did.
It was still moving. No matter what sort of condition his body was deteriorating toward, the train never once slowed down in its journey to bring him back to Earth.
He couldn't be mad at it, though. There were other passengers littered all over the carriages, being aided and ready to go home. Why should the train stop for him? Why should time stop for him? It should never be asked to hinder the progress of others simply because he got stuck in small havoc, and neither do the other patients deserve to suffer because he couldn't make up his mind whether to accept death or not.
The train slows down for no one.
You had graciously thrown him a white napkin when he began coughing up blood. The pain was starting to numb already, he supposed that meant he was getting closer to his death, and he realized the fear wouldn't truly show itself until the moment was near.
He made all that talk about making a sacrifice, but now he was having second thoughts because he was getting scared of it. It was embarrassing.
He was quite done with being an embarrassment.
“Enough about me!" He clutched the bloodied napkin in his hand, then he pointed at you. "What about you? What happened to you?”
You tilted your head to the side. Nobody has asked you that in a long time. Even when they did, you knew they were never looking to hear about your life story but rather about what your role on this train was. You have not had to explain your life story to others in so long that you had forgotten all about who you were outside of this job you were urgently given.
You couldn’t remember anything about yourself at all.
“I work here,” you replied.
“I know you work here, but what happened to you?”
“I have not the faintest idea,” you said with a shrug. “I woke up one day and then I was here.”
Chan pulled the corner of his lips to the side, giving you a look of defeated disappointment. He could sit you down and help you figure out what happened in your past for you to get here, but he figured there would be no need for that. Now was probably not the time, the sunlight at the train window was still seeping through steadily.
“What a shame, then. I was curious to see what made you so bright and charming,” he said, pulling his hand away from his abdomen before gestured toward the tube at the side, looking for another lap sponge to replace the soaked one.
You ignored his snarky remark as you scooted over to the side. You reached out for the box attached under the tube and flip open the glass. You callously grabbed a hold of a few more sponges before setting them to the side, and you took one on top to throw it at Chan.
He discarded the bloodied one next to him, mixing it up with the few others his blood had already stained, and he slowly pressed the brand new sponge to his wound just to apply some pressure on the drying blood.
“You do have other people’s stories, right?” He asked when he faced you again. He smiled when you gave him a short nod. “Give me one of those, then. An interesting one, and pretend like their story is yours.”
You stared at him with reluctance. If he thought you had ever cared about anybody’s background enough to remember all of them to a detailed degree, then he was wrong.
Less than half the time, you were never actually listening to the people, you simply allowed them to rant about their struggles because it was better than hearing them whine about physically hurting. Most of the time, you would remember some parts of their life so you could make easy conversation, but after two to three more patients, you would have forgotten about them.
You couldn’t even remember who came before Jeongin.
"Well, there is this boy–"
"Nuh-uh! I said pretend the story belongs to you," he cut your off with a wave of his hand. "Let it be your story."
You pursed your lips together upon the difficult task. You could never speak of another's life as if it was your own, it would not feel the same as speaking about yourself. The drive to be known wouldn't be there. Looking up at Chan, you cursed under your breath and sighed. Every time you look at him, you felt an overwhelming urge to agree as if all he said was a dying man's last wish.
And as terrible as you could be, you would not stoop so far as to ignore that.
"Okay... um," you began, relaxing yourself to think better of a story you could resonate with. "I am seventeen years old, currently studying in high school. I don't have a lot of friends, I am never the top of my class, and people were always decent to me."
You have tried your hand at making more tight-knitted friendships, or even just normal friends you wouldn't feel awkward sitting together at lunch with. But somehow, whenever anybody invited you anywhere, your first instinct was to decline their offer in fear that outside activity would build attachment.
They liked you because they didn't know you, and you couldn't run the risk of letting them know you and leave you, so you kept everyone at arm's length to be safe.
Your parents worked full-time jobs—your mother was a dentist and your father was a baker. You were always asked to bring free cookies and cakes to school for holiday celebration days, and you thought your teachers and classmates often really enjoyed that. You didn't always get to see your mother, but you were once allowed to study in her office back when you couldn't go home by yourself.
Your family was an upper-middle-class family. You had birthday parties, Christmas gatherings, Thanksgiving dinners every year. You always got what you wanted because your parents had the money to provide extra for you, but it never made you arrogant nor snobby either. Your family was well-off, you had that knowledge and that was about it.
"What happened to them, then?" Chan asked, snapping you out of your telling trance. "A car crash? Terminal illness? Went down the wrong path and got themselves into trouble with other bad kids?"
You looked up at him, your eyes illuminating a gleam of calamity he has yet to see from you. You opened your mouth, admitting it for the first time after so long. "They suicided."
Chan widened his eyes in shock, but not too much that it felt insincere or dramatic. The surprise took over him for a moment and fueled him to make up reasons for such (ironically) irrational behavior, and then he allowed his mind to settle down so he could face the present.
He asked, then, "Why?"
You looked at him, a shadow draped over your eyes and ceasing your thoughts. You merely gave him a shrug.
"I don't know," you muttered, "I just know that it was stupid of them to do so.”
The train never once stopped. It rumbled on and on and on, not letting both of you a moment of thought to why you suddenly felt such a wave of sadness when you spoke of the unexplainable tragedy of a person you met. Outside, the sunlight shone brighter.
“Have you changed your mind yet?” You asked, your eyes grazing across at the window to check the blazing sunlight.
Chan furrowed his brows at the brief aversion of your eyes. You had looked to his side of the mirror for the light again, obsessively checking to see if the time would be up soon as if you would get punished if he died. You already told him you wouldn’t be if he did die, that he would just be another unfortunate case, but he was started to think you might have lied.
After all, being the clueless one of the two, he was at a heavy disadvantage.
“All those family talk won’t sway my decision,” he mumbled. “What you said will happen is not a guarantee. I heard that even if God gave you a life plan, things can still go astray, an unpredicted choice made by us people. We call it–”
“–a miracle,” you whispered.
He raised his brows, amused. “Where did you hear this one from this time?”
You didn’t reply to him for a specific reason. Instead, you simply clenched your jaw and huffed out a disapproving sigh at him. “You are so sure that your wife can make a miracle happen? You can’t guarantee that either.”
“No, I can’t,” he said softly, shaking his head. “But she’s my wife. I know she is more capable than I have ever given her credit for. This is my chance to give her the benefit of the doubt that if she does get caught in a web, she can slip her way out of it with my daughter.”
You let out a strangled noise of dismay, a voice of disbelief laced with an undertone of arrogance you have convinced yourself you get to have. Your eyes twitched at Chan’s complete lack of fear and doubt whenever his wife was brought onto the table. He trusted her so much he wouldn’t have to be worried about dying at all, and that may well be the downfall of his name.
“Your faith in her concerns me,” you commented.
“We have been together for more than twenty years now, I say that kind of trust is justified,” he said. “We would have never worked if I didn’t trust her so much.”
He watched your expression relax into a thoughtful hum. He could feel his muscle of his heart soften. You looked more youthful this way, much more like the age your face presented yourself to be. It was a shame that you’ve had to spend your time stressing about other people’s tragedies and taking on the responsibility to change their lives.
“It was a gamble, for her more than it was for me. I’m sure she has her suspicion about me, but she pulled through even after I told her about what my actual work is about.”
You looked up, surprised. “She knew?”
“She did. I wouldn’t lie to her about it if I wanted our relationship to work, even though it took me a very long time to tell her.” He nodded with a reminiscing smile. “We stopped seeing each other for a while, but we found our way back to each other anyway. After that, we promised we’ll always stay together, and we did.”
“Until now…” you whispered unintentionally, your nails digging into the fabric of your pants.
Chan’s smile dimmed, and he looked away as he gave you one faint nod. “Until now.”
You bit your lower lip, feeling jittery all of a sudden after hearing only a fraction of their love story. It has only made you want to help him more. You couldn’t understand why. Why would Chan refuse help? Why would he let this be his last moment? What about the people he loved? What about the people who loved him, or the people who should have been able to love him?
He wouldn’t make it to see his wife again, he definitely wouldn’t! And his unborn daughter! She should have a dad, he should get the chance to hold her once!
He should have a family! You needed him to have a family!
“No!” You suddenly yelled, your hands slamming on top of the table surface while you stood up.
Chan gulped when you glared at him, fire dust swirling in your eyes like a tornado as you moved out of your seat and stomped toward him. He tried to lean back, one arm pressing against his abdomen while the other reaching out to stop you from getting any closer to him.
“Woa–hey! What are you doing?”
“I’m keeping you alive!” You growled under your breath, hitting his arm away repeatedly no matter how much he was struggling to keep your away. “You have to live! This can’t happen to me, this can’t happen to me!”
Chan panted, sweating heavily as he attempted to grab onto your flailing arms. “Kid, I need you to calm down!”
“You can’t be responsible for destroying your own family, it stays with you forever!” You said with vice, feeling the anxiety knock at your door.
Too late, you were too late and too careless. You thought you kept your anger and anxiety in check, but you weren’t enough. The second you let even one drop of dignity slip past your fingertips, you were gone. Your mind lit itself a match and started burning your entire body with rapid heart palpitations and destructive memories.
“This can’t happen, this can’t happen to me. This can’t. It can’t happen again, it’s can’t happen again.”
Blood, knives, mistake, loneliness, murder, identity, death, regret, insensitivity, trust, love.
Nothing.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
“No, no, no. It can’t happen, it can’t happen, please don’t, please.”
Your eyes were so lost in your own depression that you couldn’t see what you were doing anymore. All you knew was to spit and crawl a path for yourself, to do something about this terrible hollowness your past mistake has left you. You needed to find a light to follow, a flesh to grab at; you needed help but the only way you learned to ask for it was through violence, so here you were.
Chan struggled with your lack of senses for a while before he finally had it in himself to throw his modesty away. Taking a deep breath, the roaring of the train giving him a sudden burst of bravery, and he endured the pain from the movement so he could stand up to tower over you.
Removing his hand from his wound, he grabbed a hold of your shoulder, his bloodied hand circled your small neck, and he crashed your back against the table to pin you in place.
“Look at yourself, kid!” He hollered at you, causing you to snap out of your episode.
Tears dropped past your lids, staining your cheeks and rolling past your dry skin. Chan was using no strength against your neck, it was all in the shoulder so he could keep your breathing. You were always being kept breathing, you were almost sick and tired of it. His eyes asked you to look again, and knowing very well what you were about to see, you reluctantly turned your head.
The sunlight blocked out half the window, but you could still see your head and the top of your body. Your victorian clothing, stolen from the last worker in this carriage you murdered to stay alive on this train, was long gone and replaced with your bloodied school uniform.
You could remember your past, you simply chose to forget it because you were ashamed of everything you have done. As a helpless baby, as a boring classmate, as a distant friend, as an aloof child—you were never good enough, nor were you bad enough. Opinions about you could never drive something into anything, no pride and no anger.
You didn’t have friends. You were lonely. You got everything you wanted because you didn’t want anything. Your grades were average. You followed the rules. You were ordinary. You were normal. You were less than adequate and more than inadequate.
You were just a blank sheet of a used paper, the side character drawn with a low budget, a paperclip someone dropped onto the floor and got kicked to the corner.
Nothing. You were boring, and you were nothing.
“I had no reason–” you choked in a hefty breath, sucking in the tears circulating your lungs, “–to be upset.”
You were looking at yourself in the reflection of the window. Tears—rare tears—rolled down your crystalline eyes, you thought you looked pathetic but well-deserved.
“I had no reason,” you forced the words out, “to kill myself.”
You were nothing, but you could have lived being nothing instead of causing a ruckus on Earth by dying. You didn’t know how anybody reacted to your death, but you thought it wasn’t good for others to have to deal with it, especially for your parents. You could have lived being ordinarily content with your life, not special but at least not suffering either.
But you were lonely. You were upset and lonely because you couldn’t settle with being an ordinary person. Yet, everyone around you kept telling you that it is okay if you’re not enough to be what you wanted to be, that there are bigger fishes to catch. Everyone kept persuading you off your ultimate goal, thinking they were being comforting when all that they have provided was an incentive for you to give up.
“It’s okay.” They say. “It’s okay to not have a dream.” They say. “It’s okay to not meet the expectation.” They say. “Take however long you need.” They say. “You don’t need those, we will be here regardless.” They say.
How the hell were those words of useless pity supposed to ever help you? Where was the drive when you needed it? Everyone was so mellow to you, you’ve let yourself sunk into the depths of despair and melted into one with it. You needed someone to remind you not to dwell in your past, to tell you that you can do it, and none of them did.
And you felt lonely because people coo at you that it’s okay to not achieve a goal, and you listened.
You did what you could think of, and you woke up on this train. You panicked with a second thought when you saw yourself laying in your room, a pool of blood spread like a bed of roses underneath your lifeless body.
It was as if your life flashed before your eyes at the exact moment, and you realized you stood to lose a lot of things—you would never see your parents again, you would never talk to your classmates again, you would never get the chance to befriend anybody, or listen to music, or watch a movie, or fall in love, or become something great.
You would lose your chance to leave a mark on this world.
You had refused to leave the carriage. However, since this carriage was made only for two people, you aimed for your last resort and got blood on your hands to survive.
It was a mistake. You have made a mistake and sinned for it.
You put on their clothes, pushed your memories far back into your head, and you pretended to be someone else as compensation for ruining your own life. But the blood was still there, and your reflection would never lie to you.
You were still the high school kid who suicided because [ ].
Chan let go of you when you moved. You rolled off the table and dropped to the floor, your legs folded underneath while your torso hunched forward. Your fists shook against the floor, your shoulders trembled, and you squeezed your eyes tight to cry it out.
“I made a mistake! I made a mistake, I’m so sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” You cried, shrieked, screamed. “I had no reason, I had no reason to do this! I’m so sorry, mom, dad!”
He slumped down on his knees in front of you. He was just taking a wild guess; the reason why you never looked at the window was because you could see yourself in it, wasn’t it? He guessed it, that was all, and turned out he was right all along. You had been lying, not just to him but to yourself as well.
His brows furrowed with shots and shots of pain speeding through his veins as he listened to you repeat your apologetic words. He could still see himself in you; just a kid who couldn’t have done anything more. It was like you were apologizing for all the pain he’s caused toward people he has ever known, like you were shouldering the burden for him, like you were crying his pain out for him.
He reached out for your head, lightly patting it to comfort and to praise you. His hand slid down to your side then and he attempted to hoist you up, bringing you away from the ground so he could push you forward to his chest. Your head landed against his shoulder, one hand pressed against the back of your head while the other still lingered on his aching wound. He nudged his cheek against the side of your head, your hair moving against him.
“It’s okay,” Chan whispered.
You let new tears brim at the back of your eyes and you shook your head. “It’s not okay. None of this is–I didn’t have a reason to kill myself.”
“You did. You wanted to, you thought you had to, and that was a good enough reason,” he said. “Sometimes people get tired and they just want to go. It’s okay if they do, we don’t hold it against them.”
It’s okay.
“You made a choice, and you regretted it later, and it’s okay,” Chan told you. “You did all you could, and you did well, and I’m proud of you for breathing until now. You are good.”
It’s okay.
The metal tire of the train scratched to its nearing stop. It moved with an urgent halt, but the momentum was not strong enough to break Chan’s grip from your body. His embrace was tight, tight as if he realized his time was finally up, and he would miss everything he’s made for himself only a few seconds after. He held you tightly because this was his last hug, he held you tightly because this was his last chance to be human.
He made a choice, and this was his last.
The warm sunlight seeped through the last corner of the windowpanes, soaking both of you in its golden shower.
It’s okay.
Ah… it sounded so nice for once.
You touched your wrist when you saw him off. You stood where you had always stood, also where you would stand for the last time, and you watched him leave the carriage doors.
“Your wife will be okay,” you said when he turned around, pale skin and exhausted eyes. “Her and your daughter. They will both be okay.”
Chan widened his eyes in surprise. After everything you have told him, it was surprising to hear that you had faith in them after all. Or perhaps you just felt guilty, which was still amazing, because it would mean that you’ve finally come to your senses and stopped hiding behind a facade. Either way, he was glad to see you out of the shadow.
The number of times you have brought him down since he arrived at this train vanished into pieces of glass that once scraped over his skin. Everything you have done was just little grazes, nothing too deep that he has the heart to hold a grudge against, especially when he found out that you were someone you showed yourself to be.
You were just trying to help. You were knocking him down the same time you were bringing him up, but you must have believed it would ultimately result in him raising above then falling below.
“I know they will,” he said.
You pursed your lips then, your grip around your scarred wrist tightening. “I’m going to leave the train too! At the next station!”
It was the only way for you to be free of your past. The train held too much of your mistakes—your death, your killing, the words you have spoken to others, and the way you have felt. You needed to get away from them, and the only way for you to feel released was if you bring acceptance into the remaining of your life.
It is the last thing you can do for yourself. It is the last choice you will make for yourself.
Chan flashed you a warm smile when the door began to close. You couldn’t hear him anymore when he spoke, but you thought you saw him say something along the lines of “you will be okay.”
The train started to move again, ready for its next destination, and ready to house another patient in need. You, too, prepared yourself to shove back your feelings so you could help the next person. But you wouldn’t be condescending, or arrogant, or faithless this time. This time you would learn, you would talk, and you would comfort.
Turning around, you blinked in surprise when you saw that there was nobody sitting (or laying) on the booth. Taking another look to make sure you weren’t hallucinating because of the dry eyes, you walked over to the table with utter confusion until the tube started to sound. It coughed out something—a piece of paper and a bag of tissue.
Curiously, you reached in to take out the items. Setting the tissue down on the table, you opened the note to read the messy handwriting on top.
The next station is yours.
Thank you for saving everyone all this time.
I will always remember you.
—Seo Changbin
“The supplies provider…” you muttered to yourself, your eyes watering. “Somebody was listening.”
At that moment, an epiphany came across you. It was that you weren’t so alone, and you needn’t the same kind of people to not be alone. A stranger you spent half an hour with, or even a person you have never talked to could be your other person. They could be somebody. And you are cared for, by your mistakes, by your regrets, by your determination, and by your tears.
You are loved, by the boy who fell off a bicycle, by the man who would never see his daughter, and by the teenager who regretted slicing their wrist.
Life sees that you are good. Even with the burdens, and the rocks on your shoulders, it made sure you breathed. No matter where you go, or what kind of scars you have, she made sure you breathed until you finalize the choice not to. Life lets you choose, and it lets you breathe.
Sitting down on the edge of the seat, you licked your lower lip as you reread the note, again and again, letting your tears soak the paper until you could no longer read clearly anymore.
The darkness surrounded him as he walked. Chan wasn’t sure where he was heading toward despite being able to see everything (there was nothing to see), but he had a faint idea that he would be heading toward the gates of Hell after everything he has done on Earth.
Footsteps trailed after him slowly. He counted to himself the pace of the stranger—one, two, three, one, two, three. It stopped for a moment, causing his heart to pound, then it suddenly began to move at a quicker pace—one, two, one, two. He turned around when he heard that the footsteps were near, and immediately you bumped into his chest with a yelp.
“What is wrong with you!” You complained as you stumbled back a few steps, regaining your balance and looking up at him with a glare.
Chan was very taken back by the sight of your face, but simultaneously he was glad to see a familiar face. You weren’t wearing that uniform of yours anymore. You were dressed in a high school uniform, one he couldn’t not recognize, and it wasn’t as bloody as the reflection made it out to be.
“Yes, I did!” You boasted, putting your hand on your hips. “I’m quite proud of myself for that one.”
He could only smile. If you were here, it could only mean that you and he would be heading toward the same flaming place. Or maybe you won’t be, maybe this was just the same path to a different result. Either way, he was glad to have you walking by him.
Relaxing slightly, you clenched your fists before forcing yourself to suck in a giant breath. You breathed it out and soothed your nerves out before you asked, “Want to walk together?”
“Sure,” he nodded, his feet bringing him to follow you.
The footsteps echoed in this place, reminding you that there was nothing else for you to do aside from walking until you reach your destination. You two did so in silence, moving together, side by side, waiting for anything to happen. Maybe a door, or maybe a bright light, or perhaps even another train to ride on.
“Oh!” Chan suddenly let out, his fist bumping against his palm. He turned to you then, looking. “I never got your name, kid.”
You halted, your eyes blinking wide at the sudden question.
It has been a while since you last said it.
“Um… it’s [Name],” you replied. “That’s my name.”
“Okay, cool,” he nodded, “want to be friends, [Name]?”
You wanted to scoff, to laugh at his attempt to cool himself off in this weird place. But you were just as scared about the unknown future as he was, at least Chan was doing something about it. Furthermore, a friend—he remembered you didn’t have those back when you were alive, didn’t he? Was this another sappy attempt to make you feel better again?
You looked at him, his clueless expression genuine and uncalculating, and you nodded.
“Okay, let’s be friends.”
Your chest heaved at his laughter, listening to him tease you about how rigid you were and how you weren’t supposed to make this situation awkward.
Your chest heaved with him when he laughed, and you breathed.