Chapter 340

We managed to get on a train heading for Se-gwang Station about twenty minutes later.

[My goodness, at this rate we’ll get trampled to death! What a filthy spectacle!]

We had to let several trains go by.

I almost got crushed trying to board.

Because this was the point when people who’d suffered serious injuries while running started refusing—desperately—to get off the train.

They realized it. That as long as they’re on the train, their bodies stay intact.

It was a madhouse of people trying to get on and people shoving them back.

...In fact, I saw someone get crushed to death.

...Hoo.

Watching the horrific scene splatter itself across everything without giving me a second to intervene, I ground my teeth and kept the other two close.

“This way.”

And without forcing it, we moved to the very end of the platform—where there were relatively fewer people—and tried to board calmly.

The doors are opening.

As expected.

People in a panic were surging to board along the same route like some kind of lemming effect, and the last car—away from that flow—was relatively rational.

...For now.

I shoved the two of them in and managed to cluster right in front of the door.

The screen doors are closing....

Good.

Hoo.

My insides felt so twisted up with relief and tension that it bordered on pain.

But Reporter Eun Haje looked at me and lifted one eyebrow.

“You’re pretty capable. You’re calm.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s chaos outside, but people in here aren’t in terrible shape, at least. From what I heard on the way, it sounded like a zombie virus outbreak.”

I answered evenly.

“The underground is relatively safe.”

“Is it? Weird. If it’s bio-chemical terror, toxic stuff settles. Normally the underground should be more dangerous.”

Sharp.

“And... how does that stiff over there know that kind of thing?”

“.......”

I checked our surroundings.

Even with all this noise, nobody seemed to have the spare focus to eavesdrop. Everyone was drowned in their own pain and desperation—trying to contact someone, trembling with acquaintances, staring outside.

I opened my mouth.

“...Please think of me as someone involved who’s used to situations like this.”

“Does that have something to do with being called an agent?”

“.......”

So he did hear it.

“Yes.”

I gave Reporter Eun Haje a brief explanation about the Disaster Management Bureau. As he listened, his eyes flashed.

Even if it sounds ridiculous, it’s an explanation that fits the situation.

And when I finished saying, “There are people I have to rescue and get out, and it’s already in progress,” he laughed broadly and said,

“Right. ‘Agent,’ then you’ve got to write a report too, don’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“Then you’ll need someone to record what you did. Right?”

Then he pointed at himself and grinned.

“I’m perfect for that.”

“.......”

“Not many people are better than me at tracking conspiracies and getting a handle on incidents. Objectively speaking, I’ll write it up with solid analysis and interpretation.”

No matter how I looked at it, he seemed completely full of the desire to publish.

Fine... whatever.

Holding back a sigh, I nodded.

“I’d appreciate that.”

“Okay. Good choice.”

Reporter Eun Haje gave me a wink.

But this man wouldn’t be able to write that article as a reporter anyway.

What was here wasn’t a real reporter, but Deputy Eun Haje’s contaminated form—fixed into a shape that suited Se-gwang Special City’s disaster day.

...In fact, that was why I’d also tried using the resort contract—using an “employer’s order”—to force him back to his original state.

It didn’t work.

All I’d done was add a single line of resort transfer to the existing contract, and beyond that, I couldn’t exert any power at all.

If I could have, he would’ve changed into resort workwear and even his injuries would’ve healed—so this meant it didn’t work at all.

My ability as a resort manager.

So in Se-gwang Special City, is the influence of other urban legends blocked?

Up to now I’d thought it was because everything was sealed off, but maybe it was the nature of the disaster itself—starting from City Hall....

.......

Wait.

The train shakes.

“Huh?”

The car is tilting.

“Huh? Huhhh?!”

“Wh—?”

“Oh my god!”

People grabbed the straps, but those who couldn’t—or who slipped—slid as they were, pouring to one side.

The opposite side from where we were standing.

To the right.

“Aaaah!”

My blood went cold.

With my arm hooked around a pole, I reached out to grab the other two. Reporter Eun Haje, already holding another pole, and Ryu Jaegwan, the student holding the same pole as me, crossed hands and clutched my arm and shoulder.

We were practically floating as we dangled crookedly against the left-side doors.

“What is this? What is this?!”

“H-hhk!”

The train was still moving, but it was terrifyingly unstable.

“Agent, there’s a strange sound....”

It wasn’t the friction noise of a curve.

It was....

Something breaking.

Ah.

A train running with more passengers than its load could handle.

And then, the train that couldn’t bear the weight anymore—derailing—

was overturning.

KIIIIIIIIIING—!

“Gaaah!”

“Save me!”

Screams came from the front car, and without losing speed, the train kept running as it rocked harder and harder—

then began to topple heavily, completely.

“Aaaah!”

The pole we were holding rose toward the ceiling. People collapsing in a rush piled up below like spilled cargo, bones snapping as they stacked.

Anyone pinned at the very bottom would already be pulp—crushed to death.

Buried.

The train was still moving, the body bouncing.

No!

If I let go like this, I’d get swept away.

Calm down, calm down... fuck!

I clenched my teeth and prepared to land as carefully as possible.

Before it fully flips, I have to slide down to the floor.

I just had to slide down the pole.

The two people’s hands beside me were slick with tension and cold sweat. I sent them down first, then drew a breath and pulled the arm holding the pole—so I could slide down last.

And I saw it.

Outside the window, blue light is rippling.

“......!”

A goblin.

For a split second, I almost blanked out—then snapped back and twisted to look at the device attached beside the door.

Emergency release...!

I operated the manual mechanism, putting the door into a state where it could be opened.

Hurry!

And then, teeth bared, I climbed the pole again and reached for the door to open it—

“Agent, step on me...!”

“...!”

Using high schooler Ryu Jaegwan’s shoulder—his back offered as a foothold—I launched myself more easily and grabbed the door.

Then I cracked it open.

Whoosh.

A hazy light slipped through the gap.

The blue trace of the goblinfire hovered around the door.

To anyone watching, it would look like rescue....

...A trace?

I couldn’t see any expression or personality in the goblinfire.

A lump of energy that had lost its purpose.

Then...!

I released the hand hanging from the pole.

“...!”

Hanging on with one hand from the door mounted to the ceiling, I slipped my other hand through the gap—

and snatched the goblinfire’s trace.

Then I hurled it hard beneath the train.

Huk.

The sacred flame of a cooperative spirit—recognizing the status of my body as an agent—ran along my hand, connected down under the subway wheels.

Blue light flashed, and in the next instant—

With a grinding crackle, the train flips back again.

“...!!”

“Uegh...!”

Not too abruptly, the train rotated ninety degrees back the other way. The door I was holding shut on its own. I heard the wheels spinning uselessly—

click.

The sound of wheels locking back onto rails.

“.......”

The train is departing....

The scenery beyond the windows began to move smoothly again....

“...Ha.”

Gripping the door, I let out a long breath.

“Are you alright?”

“Haa... more or less?”

“Y-yes!”

My party was safe. With relief, I could hear my own heartbeat pounding inside my head.

“Seriously... that stiff guy is flying around.”

At Reporter Eun Haje’s admiration, I gave a weak smile.

But inside the car was already hell.

“Hhng....”

“Minjeong? Minjeong!”

The sounds of corpses crushed to death, and the wailing of people with shattered bones, filled the air.

Right next to us—close enough our bodies could collide.

In a car packed with people, now there were bodies too.

Damn it.

Reflexively, I pulled the high schooler away from there and shoved him even closer to the door.

Reporter Eun Haje, on the other hand, was watching the carnage with a surprising amount of focus.

My hair stood on end, but I still forced myself up on trembling legs and looked at the mass of people.

It was too horrific... but maybe because I’d seen too many deaths all day, I felt a strangely desolate, dry exhaustion.

Staggering, I started pulling survivors out of the pile. And when the inside of the car was more or less cleared up, I withdrew my hands—

“Wow, thank you. Agent I don’t know. If you weren’t here, I’d have died.”

...!!

I whipped my head around.

Over there, beyond the crowd, in the front car—several new figures had appeared inside the train before I even noticed.

Figures gathering the pinned bodies and the injured.

People wearing blue jackets shaped almost exactly like mine.

Rope restraints, glass hand cannons,

...blue goblinfire traces.

And.

“If this hadn’t been cleaned up before the next train came, it would’ve been a real disaster.”

A person wearing a traditional lion mask had appeared right beside me, chattering away.

Under the mask, on the blue jacket, I could see the letters.

Supernatural Disaster Management Bureau.

Disaster Management Bureau agents.

...!!

Se-gwang Special City’s disaster day.

The agents who’d been dispatched were standing right in front of my eyes.

Among them, the lion-mask agent looked at me—the one who’d helped reconnect the train to the rails.

Then, in a voice that sounded cheerful but faintly anxious, he asked,

“Wow, you even cleaned up this car in the meantime. You handled the goblinfire really well earlier—what branch are you from, Agent?”

.......

“I’m not from the Se-gwang City branch.”

“Hoo, got it.”

The eyes inside the playful, rough lion mask seemed to glint yellow as he looked at my jacket.

“...But that outfit—doesn’t look like regulation. Looks like a fake.”

“That’s right.”

I answered on purpose, a little awkwardly.

“I’m on break, so I didn’t have clothes. I borrowed a uniform in a hurry from a local cooperative spirit around here.”

“Ha. Yeah. ‘If you don’t have teeth, you chew with your gums’—that’s exactly something a field agent would say....”

“Ha ha.”

He laughed loudly along with my bitter smile.

I quickly scanned his condition....

...Male? Female?

I couldn’t even tell.

Like a Daydream mask, the presence clouded perception—making it hard to grasp appearance or traits.

I couldn’t tell whether the voice was high or low, either. The lion mask’s playful impression felt like it pressed all individuality flat.

...Or is it the goblin’s power?

Sure enough, in a slightly troubled voice, he brought up goblins.

“Agent, do you also have a goblinfire that travels with you? My partner goblinfire suddenly evaporated this morning. Just vanished—left only an afterimage.”

Of course it did.

The real goblinfires would’ve all been pulled out before the sealing ritual was carried out.

They wouldn’t exist inside Se-gwang Special City’s May 4—trapped in disaster day.

But I didn’t show it.

“...I’m on break, so I don’t have goblinfire or equipment. But if what you’re saying is true, this isn’t normal.”

“Mm.... Yeah. Normally that guy sticks to me like a rice cake.”

Scratching his mask, the lion-mask agent said,

“What’s weird is, there are still plenty of traces. Like... the goblinfire’s self is gone, but some auxiliary-battery kind of thing is still left behind.”

“.......”

That was—

Could it be that the goblinfire power used on Se-gwang Special City’s disaster day is still trapped in here, lingering?

Like what happened at Se-gwang Technical High School.

“Did you hear anything else when you borrowed that uniform from the cooperative spirit?”

“Nothing in particular.”

Instead, I relayed what the “Counseling Teacher” had said—that he would go to Se-gwang Station to end this disaster.

“I see. Mm....”

The lion-mask agent turned his head.

From the front car, I watched agents more or less calming people down and separating the bodies, and swallowed.

And my party....

“So you’re both in the same Disaster Management Bureau, but you don’t know each other? Sounds like departments are pretty split up, and there are separate branches by region?”

“Aha ha. Yep. That’s right.”

The lion-mask agent breezily waved off Reporter Eun Haje’s words, then suddenly ruffled only high schooler Ryu Jaegwan’s hair and said with a smile,

“Looks like you’re the rescue requesters? Are you Blue Dragon Team?”

I gave a bitter smile.

And before I knew it, I answered.

“Actually, Black Turtle Team. But I don’t have equipment, so... I’m just doing what I can to rescue people.”

“Wha! That’s awesome. Fellow agent.”

Then he dug through his pocket and pulled something out.

A shining jade-colored firearm made of glass.

A glass hand cannon.

“I’ll give you this. I brought a spare.”

“...Thank you.”

“No. I’m the one who should thank you—I lived because of you. Seriously, I almost died trying to stand the train back up with only a goblinfire afterimage.”

I quickly tucked the glass hand cannon into my chest. Watching, the lion-mask agent nodded and said,

“Then you’ll be getting off at Se-gwang Station. You’ll check the cooperative spirit’s condition and re-map the rescue route.”

“Yes.”

“Then....”

The lion-mask agent hesitated a little and took in the train’s carnage and the citizens’ condition.

During our conversation, he’d seemed cheerful the entire time, but now, underneath that expression, anxiety and unease flickered into view—then vanished.

And so my party wouldn’t hear, he lowered his voice and whispered in my ear.

“Hey, I’ve got a bad feeling. I’m catching the smell of that vicious tin-can bastard in here.”

“Tin-can... bastard?”

“I mean the Daydream Inc. director. That fraud!”

......!

Which director was he talking about?

And tin-can... bastard.

In other words, “steel bastard.”

A wicked fire-breathing imugi monster... wasn’t it?

[Hm, a folktale that was popular in my friend’s hometown! Should I call it classic, or just old? Of course, if he’s been a famous figure since the seventeenth century, we could treat it as a classic.]

Right. But there’s a director like that at Daydream Inc.?

No—more importantly.

“You can smell... that?”

“I’m not wearing this hot, heavy mask for no reason. I wear it for its sacred effects.”

“...!”

The lion mask rippled as he rolled those yellow eyes playfully.

“Especially this guy—he sniffs out evil, strong bastards and unfair contracts like nothing else! He’s basically a bloodhound, right?”

O-oh. I see.

But before that, another realization hit.

Pleasant Research Institute was ruined because of Daydream Inc.

If so, then there’s a high chance Daydream Inc. is also involved in the Se-gwang Special City incident tied to Pleasant Research Institute...!

Maybe even right now.

I asked urgently.

“Do you think Daydream Inc. is deeply connected to all this?”

“Probably, yeah. And there’s something else that bothers me.”

What?

At the lion-mask agent’s gesture, I moved closer and put my ear near him.

In an even lower, smaller voice, he said—

“That smell is coming off you, too.”

I froze.

“Agent. Did you sign some kind of contract with a Daydream Inc. director? Maybe....”

“.......”

“Maybe you’re impersonating an agent, stirring up trouble?”