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It’s not a terribly scenic stretch, this far down the line. Just sparse clumps of grass sprouting from the clay shoulders between riveted metal, and the occasional half-buried bottle or cigarette box left to bake in the sun. The train must have kept going south toward Cheonan or beyond, but you—you were left behind somewhere past Pyeongtaek, maybe, or another station sign you must have passed but missed entirely.
How did you end up like this? It takes a few quick blinks for your mind to start; no matter how much you try to reason why, you figure there really isn't too much to it. There must have been something, a neat line of events that you might have been able to trace back, but nothing comes to you now. The only part you’re certain of is this: that you’re nowhere near Sejong, and you are alone. You don’t remember falling asleep but the rhythmic rumbling of the tracks underfoot must have lulled you into it.
You think maybe you were dreaming about walking, always walking, endlessly moving through heat and gravel, through that long, bright corridor of sun. Perhaps it's possible then—and the rest of it falls all too easily into place—that you, bone-weary and sleep-blurred, might have slipped from one dream into another, and then ended here. Sprawled on the tracks, left behind and forgotten, like a coin falling through a tear in a pocket.
You’ve been tired, far too tired recently; sleep doesn’t come easily to you, not with the background racket of your roommate in the adjoining room as your lullaby.
Still exhausted, you scrub the sleep from your eyes, and when your fingers reach higher to pass through your hair, something makes you pause. There’s a stick in your hair; a thorn too, maybe from the narrow band of brush that sometimes flanks the track. Other sensations are fighting for your attention, especially your back, which smarts like hell—you’ve probably been supine across the rails for some time and that neat ladder-lattice has branded your skin with criss-crossing indents. Your left arm, still pinprick-numb, bears the worst of the marks.
This place feels too real to be a dream, and yet not unreal enough to be a Darkness, you think. Either way, it is familiar enough that you’re certain you can draw out the name eventually, though it’s now caught somewhere between the salty sheen of your tongue and the cracked gravel beneath your palms.
Sitting up slowly, you check your pockets first, for what might be in it: your phone, your wallet, cards, anything. Your search comes up empty. Another quick pat-down, then a quick squeeze of the flesh at your thigh, just to be certain you're not dreaming again, but the ache is real and there’s still nothing.
No use waiting around for no one, so you pull yourself up quickly. Your joints creak in protest, the brown dust clinging to your sleeves and neck. You don’t bother dusting it off.
At least you have your shoes.
There’s no platform in sight, no underpass, just the infinite narrowing of tracks—behind you, the smog-silhouetted outline of a steel tower; ahead, a mirage that had for a moment looked like a corner store. When you chase it down, you realise it's the shattered roof of a run-down electrical shed. Square one again, then. You don’t know where you are, but you know you must keep moving; you just haven’t picked which way to go yet.
You are not the kind of person to mind minor trials, like the weather beating down on you, or being directionless without a map. There are bigger things that are more important—you have things you were supposed to do, goals that you are moving towards. You were supposed to be in Sejong by one-thirty, for one, to meet an acquaintance of your Squad Leader’s, for useful information. That said, all of this running around makes it feel like a bigger deal than it probably is.
The sun is high but somehow not burning on your skin. Still, sweat rolls down from your temple and collects in the collar of your shirt. When you raise a hand to wipe it away, it comes back red. Feeling around the wound with your fingers, you note the bump across the back of your head, near the outside edge of your ear. There’s a cut there. Nothing too bad, and certainly not a priority for now.
There’s barely a shadow; you place the time to be slightly after noon, then, when the sun shines the brightest. Still, despite the blinding rays, there’s this hard to ignore mugginess in the air, the scent of salt, wet loam, the rain coming. When you look back at the direction of the tower, you can almost see the dark clouds gathering, so you choose the direction of the electrical shed.
Soon, any time now, they seem to say. You pray it won’t change that fast.
You climb off the rails, to stay right beside it, following. It’s just a direction, after all, just like any other. Forward or backwards or sideways, it hardly matters. Once you reach a place with other people in it, you’ll be fine.
So you go. Move. Run, when you can, though you don't run for too long.
Eventually your pace slows. Somewhere a stubborn pebble has lodged itself into the soles of your feet, but when you try to roll it out with your toes it won't budge. You peel off your shoes to shake it out and then you are back to running again. When you think you’ve gained enough distance, you look down to check your shadows and the shift of it—barely any change; no straightforward marker for the time that must have passed—then tilt your head back towards that tower. The clouds obscuring the tall spire makes it hard to tell how far you've come from and how much you've left to head towards. You must be the only person for miles.
Then back to half-jogging and half-running again.
Time. You should check the time. Muscle memory makes you raise your wrist until you’re faced with that pale strip of skin and remember there’s nothing there. The sun is still so burn-bright in the sky that it’s almost like no time has passed at all. So what now. You’ll just have to keep going in the same direction.
You tell yourself again: forward—just forward and away from where you started. That your feet will know when to stop or your eyes will recognise something when it matters.
There is also this nagging thought at the back of your mind though the voice is still small and soft and not at all loud. If you had fallen—and this is just pure suspicion—near Pyeongtaek, then you ought to have found someone or something by now. It is telling you to head back to turn towards the dark clouds instead.
You tell yourself even louder that you're going to find a way to Sejong by following the tracks ahead and the voice replies are you certain are you sure—what if. What if.
Still your initial assessment of not a true Darkness persists and your stomach twists.
You want to believe this was a choice that came from reason and that you—not some latent fear and not the faint thread of blood at your collar—had made the decision that was most logical but it feels more like being pulled along by gravity instead. You hope you’ll catch the loud rumble of the tracks in the distance or the scent of smog perfuming the air. Just something—anything to point you towards a path to a factory plant or some sort of industrial breakaway. There has to be someone else along this path.
Your throat feels dry and your tongue is sandpaper against the roof of your mouth. There’s a rumble that threads through your vertebrae down to the vein-lines of your knees. The dark clouds beckoning. Deep down inside you is a knot that’s tugged toward it like a magnet. Your mind is resisting and fighting against the pull. You have to go forward. Your mouth, your teeth and even the sweat are resisting. You have to run faster and quicker before the rain catches you. You have to go.
You are being split down the middle.
You keep running and you won’t stop running until both your feet ache. You could be running anywhere north south with your eyes as your only compass as is the needle of your body. The rain is coming soon and you have to make a decision whether to make a run for or back towards it. You have to keep making that decision.
Where will you go now the voice asks between measured puffs of breath. Turn back. You don't know where you are reaching except the not-here and the away-from-this.
And you run and you keep running and you keep running-running-running. The clouds swell grey and enormous and patient like they’ve been watching you move from miles off and they know the end before you do.
The voice asks you again more insistently So where will you go now. It gets louder and louder like a scream. Where now. Go back. Tell me. You don't answer to all of it because deep inside you are afraid you already know.
It might never leave you and you understand that it is here to stay but so are you and you tell yourself that. You don’t stop telling yourself that and you don’t stop running.
You don't stop running. You can't stop.