Inside the bending train, they struggled upward, clinging desperately to the ends of the seats. At the sight, Seoryeong’s legs moved first. Already the train’s tail had fallen into the gorge and vanished.

In an instant she passed through one carriage and flung open the door ahead. At that moment—screech! the sound of steel grinding tore out, and Wooshin’s rough shout rang. With a metallic shriek, the train suddenly came to a perilous halt.

“Stay back, it’s dangerous!”

His voice was torn raw, his words splitting apart. In the eyes that met hers boiled a searing flood of both cold reason and desperate urgency. Seoryeong froze, wincing at the sight of his skin scraped raw, the bullet-pierced bulletproof vest.

Kiya was no better, his throat blocked as though with a great thorn, unable to produce a voice.

Even so, the two fought upward, dodging falling piles of luggage and fire extinguishers. Clinging to the tilted train walls like a slide, they strained against gravity. Seoryeong shouted frantically.

“Hurry, hurry!”

But there was no chance to relax. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

The dead Yu Dawit’s radio crackled again, then clunk—an ominous sound rattled the train’s interior.

Seoryeong’s eyes widened in horror. The carriage carrying Wooshin and Kiya had separated from hers, severed like a string.

“Ah—ahhh!”

A scream-like cry pooled like blood in her throat. She could not tear her eyes from the cars plunging into the gorge. The agents seemed to have managed to save what remained of the train by cutting away car after car, but Seoryeong was left frozen in despair.

Then—using the carriage threshold as a foothold to leap—the two men clung with one arm to the tracks.

Seoryeong’s knees buckled, and she collapsed. Her nape was drenched in sweat, as though she had come back from the brink of death.

“Ha... ha...”

Below stretched a bottomless abyss, so deep the ground could not be seen. Dizzily, she stared down into the black chasm. Compared to that vast nature, they seemed like nothing but insects.

“W-wait... please wait...”

Her lips, blanched blue, trembled as she bit down, breathing raggedly. She had to help them somehow.

This height was nothing, not frightening at all. Not frightening. She had jumped even through fire.

Encouraging herself, she stepped out beyond the train. Yet when she saw only fingertips clinging, her jaw clattered.

“Please... hurry...”

Steadying her balance, she drew closer, the fierce wind battering their bodies mercilessly. Beneath their taut necks the throbbing veins pulsed, dark red, almost purple. Wooshin, spotting her, shouted furiously, even cursing, but his voice was quickly smothered by the raging wind.

Terrified, Seoryeong forced herself to think. She had to pull one man up first. Add her strength. Do something, anything. One of the two—

Yes, one first. Pull one up calmly, then together they could pull up the other.

But... which one—

Her guts churned, dizziness swept over her. Yet with trembling hands she reached out to one.

“—!”

She did not understand what happened in that instant. “Don’t you fucking let go!” Wooshin seemed to shout. The hand she had extended was suddenly seized, yanked away. Like a leech, Kiya’s hand dragged her mercilessly. Her body tipped dangerously out over the tracks. The freezing wind slashed her face.

“Sonia, you...”

Kiya’s squeezed-out voice barely escaped. His eyes were rigid with shock and despair. Startled by the wounded face staring at her, Seoryeong flinched.

“No, Kiya, no. I’ll pull you up. Just wait—”

“But Wooshin comes first?”

Her body went rigid as stone. She could have made excuses—that her instructor’s one eye was failing, that he was less steady than Kiya on the tracks, that his nails had gone even whiter with strain.

But what use were excuses? Kiya was already wounded, already furious. Her feelings had been exposed plainly. Denying them felt pointless.

“...I’ll save you too. You have to climb up here.”

“No need.”

“What?”

“There’s no need to drag me up, Sonia.”

“......!”

“I guess I can never become an adult.”

He laughed, pulling like a drowned man, dragging her down. The old obsession gripping her wrist cut deeper into her skin than any cuff.

“Just come with me. Come with me.”

“Wait, Kiya...!”

Panicked, she struggled, but he seemed resolved now, seized by frenzy.

Kiya laughed and gasped, as though crying and laughing at once.

Her torso was helplessly dragged down, her shoulder jolting. Then, just as she was about to lose her grip on the tracks—

Wooshin kicked mercilessly into Kiya’s groin, once, twice. “Fuck!” The coarse roar echoed back and forth. Fingers slipped one by one. Wooshin bit down savagely into the leech-like hand clutching Seoryeong. Blood seeped between his teeth, Kiya’s pained scream echoing, but he tore through the flesh without stopping.

“Y-you... fucker, why... why always block me—”

Kiya’s grip slackened. Seoryeong fell inward, sprawling onto the tracks. Half out of her mind, she sat with her hips on the rail bed, numb, her heart stilled.

“Don’t look back.”

Wooshin’s low, tender voice wrapped around her. She forced herself to hold onto consciousness, gazing down at him, rigid on the verge. Yet in contrast to his soothing tone, his expression was taut, bristling.

From then on, time seemed to slow. Incredibly, Wooshin let go of the track.

“Instructor...!”

He threw both arms around Kiya’s back, and with the cross-slung rifle Kiya carried, aimed toward Seoryeong. With the sudden weight, Kiya too lost his hold.

Bang, bang! Bullets grazed her hair, striking dead-on the two agents who had just burst out from the train. Seoryeong froze, watching blankly as the men fell.

The ruthless wind whipped her hair, but her eyes could not leave the sight of the two men plunging endlessly.

Even in freefall, Wooshin pulled the trigger again—bang, bang!—without losing focus.

Through swelling tears, Seoryeong heard his desperate shout.

“Shoot—!”

In an instant he tore Kiya’s rifle free and swung it in an arc. Seoryeong stared at him vanishing beyond her sight, falling forever into the abyss of the gorge, then seized the rifle caught on the track.

In the unbelievable reality, even her own breathing was inaudible. The raging wind that had seemed to tear her skin was gone as if it had never been. She felt nothing.

Yet her body moved by instinct, obeying his last command. Seoryeong opened fire mercilessly into the bodies of agents spilling out of the train. Each pull of the trigger pierced the hearts and heads of unfamiliar foreigners. The gunfire shrieked on without pause.

You won’t die. You won’t leave me behind. You wouldn’t disappear again, not leaving me alone in this world. Not again...

Seoryeong closed and opened her bloodshot eyes and stepped into the train. She trampled Dawit’s corpse without pause and headed for the engine room.

“...Find it! Bring it back—!”

“Understood—!”

“...Report in, contact backup, handle the derailment—!”

“This mission’s a failure—”

Sensing multiple presences nearby, she darted into cover, clutching the rifle Wooshin had thrown to her, holding her breath.

But on her collapsing face welled deep sobs. Her lashes trembled, her entire face convulsed in waves.

She clamped a hand over her mouth, but tears streamed, dripping onto her white knuckles. With blood-red eyes she seized the electric controls and wrenched them down. At once, the train plunged into darkness.

“—!”

Sensing agitation in the air all around, she pounced like a beast. Until every intact seat was shredded to rags, the flashing gunfire did not cease.

Until the casings littered the floor in heaps, until no one spoke or responded over the crackling radios.

“......”

Her chin was soaked from tears that would not end. Wooshin was not dead. He could not be. He would not leave her alone in this world again.

Not again—!

Seoryeong seized the pistol clutched in a dead agent’s hand and raised it to her own head. Wooshin’s voice, Shoot—! thundered in her ears like an echo.

Was it all because of this? Was it because of her, her life, and him—that everything had become so unbearable? Her finger tightened on the trigger.

But she would not give him up.

Even if the god of death dragged him away.

She would, she would find him again.

In her worn eyes, a fierce conviction was born.