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Jungkook sits on a splintered bench that presses uncomfortably into his thighs. His Timbs scuff on the ground, making all these little scratching noises that send his bench partner up into a frenzy.
“Can't you just sit still?” Yugyeom scowls, crossing his arms. “You make me want to throw you onto the tracks and let the train run you over.”
Jungkook looks at the ground, his mouth flatlining in contempt, “As if the train will really come.”
“It'll come. They say it comes when someone really wants to get out of here, so it'll come.”
“You've been waiting around here for days now, and it hasn't shown up yet,” Jungkook points out.
“Okay, yeah,” Yugyeom says, “but you're here right now. That's like twice the summoning energy!”
“You're so full of it,” Jungkook says, rolling his eyes, but he doesn't make any move to leave.
Instead, he stares across the moss-covered tracks and the cracked cement of the opposite platform, straight at what was once the train ticketbooth. There's only one window still open—the other four are covered shut with vines—and it's the sight of that one untouched window that makes Jungkook stay in his seat.
It almost seems like he can cross the railway and buy a one-way ticket to…wherever it is the train goes. Wherever "far, far away" is.
But that doesn't make him feel any better. The train is more myth than fact, more magic than science, more rumors than actual witness accounts. It probably isn't going to come, but Jungkook is still sitting on this goddamn rickety bench without luggage or money, waiting for the broken tracks to magically knit themselves together and hail the arrival of the train.
Jungkook snorts suddenly, and Yugyeom lies down on his back to stare up at him. “You okay there, bud?”
“Yeah, I just thought it's a bit funny.”
“What?”
“Us.” Jungkook gestures to the crumbling pillars and the deserted ticketbooth. “Here. Now. What are we gonna do if the train really comes?”
“We'll board it of course.”
“And after that?”
Yugyeom shrugs. “Dunno. I try not to think about it too much.”
“And you don't think maybe we should think it over?” Jungkook says, teeth clenched. “If we go, we can’t come back. You must have some plan, right?”
“Nah, not really.” Yugyeom shrugs again and rolls back over, lying prone.
“And what if the train doesn't come?” Jungkook says.
“We wait until it does.”
“We don't have that kind of time , Yugyeom.”
Jungkook doesn't know why it tears at his nerves so much, why it bugs him and makes him want to pull out his hairs one by one. But he's here now, and if he does go back home, it's to more lectures directing him toward a career he hates.
It's your due contribution to the society.
But this. How is this any better?
“Look I get that you're a little antsy,” Yugyeom starts and Jungkook scoffs derisively, “but it's only been four hours. Just...wait it out a bit, yeah?”
“Feels like I’ve been waiting an eternity.”
It’s Yugyeom’s turn to scoff. “Don’t be so frickin' dramatic. If you don’t want to be here, you can just go. No one is stopping you.”
Jungkook doesn’t have the energy to say he isn’t being dramatic. In a way, he's been waiting for the train ever since he started the academy. Fifteen years of school were composed of so many billions of moments that Jungkook had to endure, it might as well be an eternity.
"Maybe the train won't come because you don't really want to leave," Yugyeom says, flipping back over to his back, staring hard at Jungkook.
"You've been here for five days," Jungkook says. "I highly doubt it's my negative energy screwing this up."
"Maybe we need more people."
Jungkook just shrugs and goes back to scraping his Timbs over the platform. He settles down for another four hours of it. Then he'll leave. Four hours means he can make it to his dorm before dinner.
Four more hours.
His Timbs scrape the ground rhythmically. Scratch, scratch, scratch, honk , scratch—
Jungkook stills. "Yugyeom, did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
Silence, silence, silence, honk, silence.
"There! Again!" Jungkook stands up too quickly, blood rushing to his head as he desperately looks to either end of the tracks. His skull pounds in time to the chug, chug, chug of—
"Jungkook, what are you on?"
"You don't hear the whistle blowing?"
"Dude, that's not funny!"
Jungkook can't believe this. He rubs his eyes, rainbows bursting behind his lids, but sure enough, when he opens them, the tracks are shifting together like tectonic plates. Metal mountains flatten, wood valleys upturn, and gravel oceans between rail planks recede until nothing is left but a brand-new railway.
It hails the arrival of the train.
This sleek, black thing—only three cars long—trudges into the station. The whistle blows again, releasing steam that shines in the sunlight like a thin, white veil. Spluttering weakly, the train chugs to a stop right in front of Jungkook and Yugyeom's bench.
Jungkook pinches himself. Just to be sure.
"What are you staring at," Yugyeom says uneasily. He's on his feet, too, face drained of color and joy. " Jungkook."
Someone clears his throat. "Well, come on. Aren't you gonna board?"
Jungkook snaps his head back to the train's first car. A man dressed in an old-fashioned conductor's suit hangs out the window, an impish grin growing on his face. The mischief in his eyes and the blush on his cheeks suggest young age, but the way he carries himself says otherwise. Wisdom weighs down his shoulders.
"Make up your mind, kid," the conductor says, "I'm due for the next station in half an hour."
Jungkook glances back at Yugyeom, who is staring blankly at the train, as if all he can see is the platform on the other end and not the physical manifestation of myth, magic, and rumor right in front of him. It's unnerving.
"I don't have a ticket though," Jungkook says unthinkingly.
The conductor raises a brow and looks down. Jungkook follows his gaze, sees a ticket dropped amidst a tangle of vines, and blushes. He hastily bends down to pick it up.
"Okay, um, what about Yugyeom?" he asks, louder this time. Yugyeom flinches in his peripheral view.
The conductor shrugs. "Guess he doesn't wanna board."
"What do you mean? Of course he does! He's been waiting here for five days!"
"Look for yourself, kid. Some people are all bark and no bite."
Jungkook turns to look for himself. The veil-like steam from the train hovers hesitantly over Yugyeom, then all at once, it drowns him in mist. When Yugyeom moves, it follows, and when he starts to walk away, it floats after him like a ghost.
The horror of it slowly sinks in; dread laced with venom diffuses through Jungkook's blood.
"Yugyeom," he says, slowly, cautiously, "Hey, bud, the train is here."
Yugyeom stops, looks back, and shakes his head 'no'.
Jungkook pleads, "Aren't you gonna get on with me?"
Another no .
"What the hell, man! You just said you were gonna board the train. You said when it comes, you were gonna get on and not look back. What are you doing right now? Snap out of it!"
But no matter how much Jungkook screams, the other boy doesn't even react, much less turn back. There's a relieved smile on Yugyeom's face, even as he's surrounded by the ghosts of ignorance and cowardness. Just like that, he takes the stairs out of the station.
It doesn't feel real, yet. Jungkook's hopelessness feels like it's happening to another person, and he's just watching it through a first-person screen, watching his arms stretch out, watching Yugyeom leave. In fact, this could all very well just be a dream.
Jungkook isn't here. He's asleep at home while his brain conjures up insanities about a station, a train, and Yugyeom's imaginary ghosts. He finds that thought more real, more grounding.
But then again, dream or not, why would he be chasing phantom trains out of the city unless he wants so desperately to get out?
This isn't even a dream anyway , Jungkook thinks sardonically, I pinched myself earlier.
When Jungkook hesitates for a moment too long, the conductor rolls his eyes. He leans further out the window and snatches Jungkook's ticket from his hand.
"You have five seconds to make up your mind," the conductor says, even though he's already stamping the ticket. "I'd rather not be late for the next station."
Then he meets Jungkook's eyes and smiles kindly, and somehow that makes the mess in Jungkook's head straighten out. There are a million trains of thought screeching and whistling in his mind, but then they all coalesce into one single train—the one in front of him.
In the blink of an eye, Jungkook's earlier anxieties melt into steel-hard determination, and the resolve settles into his heart like an old friend.
He grabs the handle on the car's door and hauls himself onboard.
"Atta boy," the conductor says, laughing heartily. Jungkook hears it rumble through the entire train. "Welcome aboard! Next stop: Omelas!"
The whistle blows twice, then the chug, chug, chug of the train starts up.
Jungkook sticks his head out the window , watching the rail planks behind the caboose shift back into their decrepit positions. They look like the debris of his world, the one that shattered when he boarded the train.
He looks up just in time to see the open ticket booth window slam shut before the station fades from view. Still with his head out the window, he shifts his gaze forward, and feels the soft warm breeze on his face.