Chapter Text
“Min! Come on, you have to hear me!”
Ryan pounded helplessly on the invisible door that stood between him and Min-Gi, his best friend, still inside of the art gallery car with a horrifying arm monster slowly overpowering him. He didn’t know what to do, there was nothing he could do if Min wasn’t able to visualize the exit himself. He could only shout and pound on the door until his hand felt like it might snap in half, Kez beside him yelling as well.
Inside the car, Min-Gi was forced to the ground by the monster, sprawled on his stomach as he desperately tried to get away, but it was as if a million hands were on him at once, holding him back. He grunted and yelled out for Ryan, and it was adamantly clear that neither of them could hear each other beyond the invisible barrier.
It was all so overwhelming and terrifying, Min was going to
die
in there if he didn’t save himself soon, and Ryan wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. He was going to watch his best friend die, and he didn't want that, but...
“It’s okay, Min! I’m not going anywhere! I won’t leave you.”
As soon as the words left Ryan’s mouth, there was a tremble, and a bright flash of light. He stumbled backward, catching a glimpse of his right hand in the process, and… the neon green number branded on his palm was at zero. He gasped, and spun around as he heard a loud whooshing sound, just in time to see a wormhole appear in front of him, much like the one that had gotten him and Min-Gi on the train. Only this time, it led to Dumpty’s Diner. It led home .
He had only a split second to contemplate, before he was dashing towards the exit. He knew he had just said he wasn’t going to leave, but… it wasn’t like Min could hear him. He had to go home, to tell someone, to get help, something . And then he was going to come back and get Min-Gi, and it would be fine. This would be fine, right?
“Kez, I’ll be right back!”
The small concierge bell turned around and gasped loudly, dramatically, though this time it was warranted as she watched Ryan sprint towards his exit portal. “Ryan, wait, you can’t-- ”
But it was too late - Ryan was through the portal before Kez could even finish her sentence, and it swiftly vanished up into a beam of light as quickly as Ryan had gone.
The moment that portal fully disappeared, Min-Gi burst out of the art gallery car, panting and trembling, his clothes torn and scratched. He hunched over, tears beginning to fall from his eyes, out of fear, out of anger, out of frustration.
“You… You left me t..” Min lifted his head, his searing anger quickly replaced by confusion. “Ryan…?” Ryan was nowhere to be seen. Kez was still there, though, hovering a few feet away and not facing him. “Kez, where’s.. where’s Ryan?”
Slowly, Kez turned around, and her bleak expression made Min’s stomach drop. She took a shaky breath. “Soooo… I’m not quite sure how to tell you this exactly, but, Ryan… left.”
“...Left? Like, he went to the next car?” Min would be pretty pissed off if Ryan had just up and left him behind like that. But Kez’s face contorted and she floated back a little, and Min could tell that something was seriously wrong.
“No, Min, he like… got his exit…?” Her voice increased in pitch as she spoke, as if it would somehow diminish the impact of the statement. But instead it hit Min-Gi like a sack of bricks. “He.. left left.”
“...What…?” In that moment, Min-Gi suddenly felt incredibly, horribly alone, and he fell to his knees, tears beginning to stream as he folded his arms and curled in on himself. “And he… H.. How could he just..?”
He could barely get the words out before he was wrecked with a horrible sob, sniveling and heaving and crying onto the metal of the connection bridge. He was feeling so many emotions that he could barely comprehend, but what kept repeating in his mind was that Ryan had left him. Ryan had left him to die. He knew, he knew that he shouldn’t have trusted Ryan, shouldn’t have even bothered trying to help him with his problems if all he was going to do was take off and leave him behind again.
It wrecked him, it hurt more than anything he’d ever felt. He had just begun to think that maybe he’d been wrong, maybe he should just go perform with Ryan like they’d- no, like Ryan had always planned. But now that was never going to happen. His best friend had left him to die on a magic wormhole train.
Kez, no longer her usual lax self, didn’t know what to do that could comfort Min-Gi. She just floated there as he practically fell apart in front of her. She felt responsible, in a way, she was just feet away from Ryan and he still… It was just like what had happened with...
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, Min had ended up laying on his side, arms strewn over his head and face and knees curled up to his chest. He had calmed down a little but was still shaking with tiny, quiet sobs, tears no longer falling as he probably had none left to shed. Min had never cried that much in his life, he felt like he was dying. A part of him had died, maybe.
Kez drifted down so that she was at eye-level with Min, face still full of an uncharacteristic concern, though she tried to smile. “Look, I know you’re sad about Ryan and all that, but my house is in the next car, so how about we head over there and just, chill out, eh?” She quirked an eyebrow, trying to be upbeat as usual, but Min didn’t move from his spot. Didn’t so much as bat an eye at her. Kez’s expression faltered but she kept it up. “Come onnn, it’ll be fun. Besides, these cars, like, get carried into the sky sometimes, and it’d be pretty bad if you fell and got crushed or something.”
Falling. Getting crushed. Min had come to terms with the fact that he was going to die on this train anyway, so neither of those options sounded particularly unappealing. He still didn’t move, but flickered his eyes to look at Kez, devoid of any discernible expression.
“That’s the spirit! Now come on, Min-Min, up we go!” Kez’s sparkly spectral hands appeared and attempted to nudge Min-Gi off of the ground, but he slumped back into place with every effort she made. She tried this a few more times, heaving and grunting as she went, until Min-Gi finally spoke.
“What’s the point?”
Kez stopped, and floated back over to Min’s face, an expression of worry back on her own, and spectral hands hanging limply underneath her. “...What?”
Min-Gi rolled onto his back, staring blankly up at the red, neverending sky, a grim sunset that never quite finished setting. “Ryan left me. I’m never getting off this train on my own. So what’s the point in trying?”
His right palm exposed, Kez could see the number on Min’s hand changing. It was increasing. She didn’t say anything.
“Well… he… he did say he would be right back, but…” Kez began, then trailed off. Probably not helpful in this situation.
Min-Gi gave a cold, bitter chuckle. “But you can’t come back, right?” Kez’s silence told him the answer. “He was making excuses. He… he doesn’t want me around anymore.” Min wanted to believe that it wasn’t true. When they played together in the green room, in the bathroom… Ryan had seemed genuinely happy. And Min had been genuinely happy too, more happy than he had been in recent memory. It was like some empty part of him had been finally fulfilled. And as quickly as he’d gotten it, it was torn away again, leaving an even larger, gaping emptiness inside him.
“I don’t think that’s true… I mean, you guys came here together, right? There’s gotta be a reason for that.”
Min laid there and pondered it for a minute. What was the purpose of them boarding together? To rekindle their friendship? To make Ryan apologize for just up and leaving him behind? Clearly, that had failed. It was almost laughable.
“I.. I should have stopped him, I tried, I really did, but I didn’t realize it until he was already…” Kez trailed off again. Clearly she was beating herself up over this, but Min just lets out a huff of laughter again.
“No, he probably would have done it anyway. He doesn’t care about what other people think. He never has.” The number on his hand increased again. Kez frowned at this. Given what she had originally tagged along with Min and Ryan for, this should technically be a good thing. But now, it just felt horribly wrong. Before, the pair’s numbers had never increased past 202, and now Min’s number was going beyond that.
Finally, Min sits up with a heavy sigh, arm resting on his knee. “You said your house is in the next car, right? Let’s just go,” Min says almost monotonously, slowly standing up and grabbing onto the rails to steady himself. “Not like I have much to do anymore.”
“You don’t…” Kez begins carefully, with a gulp. “You don’t want to try and go home too?”
“For what?” Min snaps back, fists clenched at his sides. “For a life that would make me just as miserable?” He was slowly coming to terms with the fact that he didn’t want to go to university, study finance, or anything like that. He didn’t want to do what his parents wanted him to do. But what else could he do, especially now? Maybe it felt better to stay on the train than it did to go home and confront the fact that he was a disappointment, a failure.
Kez, understandably, does not press the issue further. Min’s demeanor was similar to how it was back in the art gallery car, angry and distant and cold . Only this time, Kez knew it wasn’t just the car making him say those things. She slowly flies ahead of Min, toward the entrance of the next car. “Right, okay, then.. let’s go! To Casa de Kez..!” She tried to sound excited but it was more of a fake, strained enthusiasm.
Min-Gi followed behind, boots clunking against the metal floor of the bridge. He realizes how quiet everything is without Ryan there to make some joke, or strum some stupid song on his guitar, and without Kez being her usual chatty self. He wondered what he did to deserve this, to deserve being trapped on a magic infinite train and being abandoned by his best friend. While at first he had been sad, and hurt, and devastated, all he felt now was a certain bitterness almost akin to resentment.
He didn’t need Ryan, since clearly Ryan didn’t need him.
--
As soon as Ryan stepped out of the portal, he was blinded by the mid-day sunlight of Powell Lake, standing in front of Dumpty’s Diner. Before his eyes even had time to adjust, he was stepping forward, panicked and shouting. “Help! Someone, please, my friend, he’s--”
There was a whoosh noise behind him, and he turned around to see the portal to the train begin to dissolve, a tube of bright light pulling it back to where it came from. No, no no no no -- Ryan rushed back to the portal, attempting to re-enter it, but an invisible force blocked him from doing so, much like the one that barred him from the art gallery car.
“No, no, you can’t- Min- Min-Gi..!!” He shouted as the portal fizzled away, and Ryan could only stare, wide-eyed and panicked as it did so. A gentle hand touched his shoulder, and he flinched, whipping around to see a middle aged man with a look of concern.
“Are you alright, sir?”
“Did you not just see that?!” Ryan shouted, gesturing to where the portal had once been. “I have to go back, he’s in trouble, he’s gonna die- ”
“Sir, just calm down, do you need me to call someone or-”
“What I need is to get back on that fucking train! Seriously, did you not see the wormhole? It was right there! All green and a big tube of light and- and...” He was hyperventilating now, he had to- how could he-
The train station. If he could get back to the train station, and get on a train, then maybe that train would appear again, and he could get back to Min.
“I have to-- Oh, Jesus, he’s gonna die, he’s gonna die- ” Ryan took off sprinting down the street, the man from before shouting after him. He could hardly think, hardly acknowledge the people he bumped into, the cars he nearly got hit by, adrenaline coursing through his entire body as he ran faster than he had in his whole life.
How could he be so stupid, leaving the train, leaving Min-Gi behind? What did he think would happen? He decided he could mentally beat himself up over being impulsive and not thinking things through later. There was no way he could drag anyone else into this, he realized. It had to be Ryan that helped Min. It had to.
It wasn’t until Ryan neared the train station, not unlike the night that he had stolen Min’s keys, that he became aware of a few pairs of footsteps running up behind him, and then he was being tackled to the ground, and told to stay where he was. He struggled to free himself, to get away, yelling that he didn’t have time for this, he had to get on that train, but then a sharp electric shock jabbed him in the side. He shouted in pain, every part of his body tingling as he continued to struggle, before he then felt a pinch in his neck, his vision blurred, and quickly everything went dark.