Inside the driver’s cab.
The conductor glanced back and forth between the agent uniform I was wearing and the commotion outside with a deathly pale face, then began spilling everything to me in a stammer.
About this train.
“Originally… originally you know this too, don’t you, that the subway trains were strangely safe from the very beginning….”
Apparently almost everyone had realized, nearly from the day of the disaster, the gimmick that “if you get inside the train, even injured people return to normal.”
“People shoved each other trying to get onto the train, fought over seats… there were fights, people died, it was total chaos.”
“Then had people already occupied this train the same way from the start?”
“No! This train appeared out of nowhere!”
…!
“They said a train that hadn’t existed before would be running the next day, and then it came into the station and the doors opened!”
I could picture that scene.
The people who had barely survived without managing to get on a train were gathered on the relatively safe platform, and then a new empty train appeared and its doors opened.
“…And Agent Chogae and the other agents must have been on board.”
“Th-that’s right.”
The conductor rolled his eyes, then tried to compose himself and spoke in an almost plausible tone.
“But I recognized this train. It was a broken-down train!”
“…!”
“You know how, if a train runs dry or breaks down in operation, they don’t always pull it all the way back to the depot. They sideline it. Normally, after subway service ends, they park the trains on hidden sidings at stations. It was probably there.”
“……”
“I don’t know how they repaired it, but they boldly drove it out and started taking the people who’d been left at the stations….”
They had probably used supernatural equipment or abilities to make the broken-down train function again.
It had been swallowed by a supernatural phenomenon in the first place, so there…