Zero People Got Off

0 People Got Off

When the final lock indicator lit up red, Doyun stopped pressing the handle.

He pulled the tool wedged in the door gap and moved it toward the floor inspection cover. The compartment doors were for passengers. If every passenger door was locked, only the path passengers never used was left.

Seojin wrote the time on the confirmation form. 12:17 a.m. On the ad panel below the display board, the Seongan City Life Safety campaign was still playing.

Official death toll 41. Memorial week.

The line beneath it was brighter. 20 years accident free, the city of Seongan.

Between the smoke alarms, the ad's voice cut off short. "Safety begins with a record." The sentence never made it to the end.

Doyun loosened the cover screws and said,

"There's a lower inspection passage that goes to the driver's cab."

"Are passengers allowed in there?"

"You don't go in as a passenger."

Seojin looked at the duty field on the confirmation form. Kang Doyun, delayed door unlock and assistance accessing the driver's cab. The column next to it needed two witnesses.

Go Jeongae pulled a paper ticket and a small receipt from inside her handkerchief. The receipt showed the underground kiosk at Seongan Station, one bottle of water, 11:42 p.m. It took her a while to unfold the ticket. Her fingertip kept catching on the folded corner.

"What am I supposed to write that I saw."

Seojin didn't supply an answer for her.

"Write only what you saw."

Go Jeongae held the pen for a long time, then wrote slowly.

I don't know. I don't know why the door was locked. Kang Doyun opened the floor door.

Seojin didn't cross the line out. I don't know was better than a blank space.

Doyun lifted the cover. Below was barely wide enough for a person to crawl through. Even with the train stopped, a thin vibration traveled up the passage. When Doyun tried to climb down first, Seojin raised a hand.

"Can you hear a high frequency alert?"

Doyun was slow to answer.

"Can't hear anything."

Park Eunchae's voice came through the earpiece.

"There may be a high frequency warning near the driver's cab. If Doyun can't hear it, we need to cut in with hand signals. If he crosses the red line on the right, the auxiliary lock engages."

Doyun said, "Don't talk, just signal."

Seojin drew three hand signals on the back of the confirmation form. Stop, left, back. Dogyeong tried to photograph the drawing, then lowered the camera.

"This needs to go up right now. If this location gets buried, the recovery team gets here first."

"You promised delayed disclosure of location."

"That wasn't a promise. It was a temporary condition."

Dogyeong pressed the scheduled upload button on the recording screen. His finger hovered between cancel and post. Comment notifications kept coming in. Someone was trying to find the end of the Seongan Line, someone else was guessing the last train's car number.

"What if the agency covers this up."

Seojin didn't take his phone from him.

"No victim faces. Location delayed. No sharing before verification. Keep at least one of the three."

Dogyeong clenched his jaw and opened the video settings. He turned off automatic location tagging and put a temporary blur over the section showing Go Jeongae. He hit save three times. He didn't hit upload.

"I haven't agreed to no sharing before verification."

Even as he said it, he pushed the scheduled time back by 24 hours.

Doyun climbed into the inspection passage. Seojin lay flat on the floor and shone the flashlight in. A red line ran low along the side of the passage. The label beside the line read passage number 0. There were marks where a new label had been stuck over old tape.

Seojin only wrote down the label. She didn't write what it meant.

The driver's cab door was locked from the inside. Doyun reached through the small window but couldn't reach far enough. Park Eunchae called out a menu path.

"Check the emergency key for the driver's cab. You need employee ID contact. There's an employee number entry field."

The uniformed figure stood at the front of the car holding a remaining passenger checklist. The employee ID still showed no name, only a 0.

Seojin gestured to Dogyeong.

"Just the number on the ID. Don't shoot the face."

"There isn't a face."

"Don't disclose that yet either."

Dogyeong lowered the lens and filmed only the ID. The uniformed figure didn't stop him. If anything, it turned as if inviting verification. It stood like an employee going about normal duty.

Doyun read the number visible from the compartment and entered it into the cab panel. 0. The door didn't open. He entered it again and the auxiliary lock warning light came on.

Eunchae said,

"Employee ID 0 might not be an authorized user. It could be an unassigned value."

Doyun swallowed a curse and stopped entering it. Seojin folded her hand. A stop signal.

That was when the driver's cab speaker switched on by itself.

"Evacuation completion report not received. Continue checking for remaining passengers."

The audio quality was old. The last word came out slightly flattened. Doyun didn't look toward the speaker. He just gripped the handle, like someone not failing to hear but refusing to.

Seojin pulled out the second page of the duty log.

"Everyone, confirm your assigned task again."

She didn't explain. She called names.

Go Jeongae was holding the strap of Kim Taehu's laptop bag. Kim Taehu checked Go Jeongae's handkerchief and paper ticket. Im Jiyeon checked Oh Minseok's umbrella, Oh Minseok checked Im Jiyeon's cart. The man identified only as Park Seong, one character unconfirmed, pointed at the fire extinguisher's location through the glass of the next car, and Dogyeong logged the position and time of that handprint.

Seojin added a new column next to the evacuation staff column.

Individually approved.

It wasn't on the original form. But zero crew members, a blank evacuation staff field, delayed authorization, and locked doors were all in effect at once. Whichever one they wrote down as the cause, the rest would stay blank.

Control belatedly connected the station duty officer.

"This is the current night duty officer. Registration of temporary cooperators is subject to after the fact approval."

Seojin pressed the pen tip into the blank space.

"I'm leaving a current approval for the sake of the after the fact approval. Please state your name."

The other side didn't answer right away.

"I need the duty officer's full name."

"Park Yonggyu, Seongan Line operations control room."

Seojin wrote the name down and beside it noted a 4 second response delay. Once the field was filled, the number on the compartment display board changed.

Current evacuation staff: 8.

Passengers who got off: 0.

Go Jeongae read the display board.

"We got off and it says zero. That's strange."

Seojin pointed to the task completion column. Go Jeongae signed once more next to the completion time by her name. The number on the screen stayed the same, but Go Jeongae's name disappeared from the remaining passenger checklist.

Go Jeongae checked the vanished line with her finger, then folded the ticket back up.

The uniformed figure's checklist moved down a line. It didn't stop in front of Go Jeongae, just counted the empty seats. There were eight empty seats. It checked the empty compartment, then walked to the next car.

The door lock indicator turned yellow.

Doyun pulled at the driver's cab panel. This time the door opened. The moment he stepped in, he looked for the automatic operation release button. The button was behind a plastic cover, and the cover read approval from duty officer required in case of accident.

Seojin pressed the duty log against the window glass.

Park Yonggyu's name, eight passengers, eight temporary cooperators, zero passengers who got off.

Doyun looked at that paper and pressed the button.

The train began moving very slowly. Not toward a platform, but a narrow maintenance walkway drew closer beneath the left side window. Blood trickled slightly from behind Doyun's right ear. He wiped it with the back of his hand and said nothing.

"Can you hear anything?"

Seojin asked.

Doyun turned his left ear toward her.

"What you're saying, yes."

That answer wasn't enough. Seojin wrote suspected hearing impairment under the injury section.

The maintenance platform door opened only halfway. When Doyun tried to go out first, Go Jeongae folded her handkerchief and handed it to Kim Taehu.

"Look at this and write down that I passed through. If I lose my ticket, I become a person who never existed again."

She didn't say it like a joke. Kim Taehu looked at the handkerchief and paper ticket and signed the confirmation form.

None of them got off as passengers. Each checked the belongings and name of the person they were assigned to and wrote the time in the task completion column. Go Jeongae corrected the last character twice. Her handwriting was slow, but she never wrote someone else's name for them.

The man identified only as Park Seong, one character unconfirmed, still couldn't write the last character even after stepping onto the maintenance platform. He dug through his pockets looking for his ID, but only came up with a damp receipt and a folded medicine packet. Seojin didn't rush him.

"Just say the characters you remember."

"Park Seong... I can't see what comes after. Since a while ago."

He lowered his head as if ashamed. Dogyeong didn't raise the camera. Instead he kept a photo of the handprint on the glass and the current faceless back side by side. Seojin wrote on the task completion form: Park Seong, one character of the name unconfirmed, awaiting self identification.

Because the blank wasn't filled in hastily, the zero passengers off text on the display board flickered. The number didn't change. But the sentence demanding a check for remaining passengers didn't come back either.

Outside the maintenance door stood two station staff and a firefighter. One was counting people, the other was already looking for the driver's cab's storage device.

"What caused the fire?"

Dogyeong asked.

The station staff member didn't answer and instead pulled out a sealed envelope. The label on the envelope read driver's cab broadcast storage device, version 0.

Dogyeong's camera rose again.

Seojin didn't cover the lens with her hand. Instead she moved toward Go Jeongae and blocked her face with her body.

"Are you recovering the original footage first?"

To Dogyeong's question, the staff member said, "It's procedure."

An announcement that the entire line was suspended spread through the station. Delayed commutes, substitute buses being arranged, treatment on standby. Several passengers called their companies, and Oh Minseok muttered that he was going to be marked as an unauthorized absence. Even after the rescue ended, the costs didn't end right away.

Go Jeongae looked at the tablet the station staff held out, then set down her pen.

"It says here that zero passengers got off."

The station staff member said, "That's because it's marked as task completed." Go Jeongae pulled out her paper ticket and unfolded it again. The ticket only showed the boarding station, no station of arrival. She set the receipt down beside it too and wrote slowly on the complaint intake form.

The tip of her pen lingered on the paper for a long time.

I did get off. I don't know which station.

Seojin looked at that sentence and drew one more witness column beneath the intake form. Kim Taehu signed it, and Im Jiyeon also wrote her name while still gripping her cart handle. The station staff member said there was no room for it and held out the tablet, but Seojin had already photographed the paper first.

"If there's no room, scan it and attach it."

The station staff member paused for a moment. Maybe because it sounded less like a complaint and more like a work order, he took the paper.

Dogyeong was filming that scene. This time, instead of Go Jeongae's face, only the ticket and receipt on top of the handkerchief were in frame. Right after filming, he changed the file name.

cash_fare_departure_record_unverified.

Still, his hand stayed over the upload icon.

"Things like this only change if they go out fast."

"If it goes out fast, someone will start looking for Go Jeongae's address."

Dogyeong didn't answer. He checked the location data on screen once more and changed the sharing destination from his own account to an encrypted storage vault. It was a reluctant order of operations, but the order changed.

The firefighter was measuring the passengers' oxygen saturation. Kim Taehu hadn't lost his laptop bag, but his hands shook so badly he kept mistyping his password. Im Jiyeon's cart wheel had come off and she couldn't call a taxi. Oh Minseok got a reply from his company asking if he was using a subway ghost story as an excuse.

Seojin wrote down each person's losses, one line at a time. Waiting for treatment, delayed return home, damaged belongings, disadvantage in attendance record. The damage section of the incident report didn't end with just deaths and injuries.

That was when two recovery team staff passed by toward the driver's cab. One didn't ask the firefighter about the cause of the fire, and the other called out the storage device's seal number first.

"B0-011, recovery priority."

Dogyeong's camera moved again.

"Why does the file come before the cause investigation?"

The staff member didn't dodge the camera. Instead of dodging it, he simply didn't answer. The recipient column written on the sealed envelope was also blank.

Dogyeong started to ask another question, then stopped. Instead he framed the staff member's hand, the empty recipient column, and the electrical box the firefighter still hadn't been able to look into, all in the same shot. Priorities got captured before words did.

Seojin pointed at the blank column.

"Write the recipient's name."

"It gets entered afterward."

"If you're taking it now, write it now."

The staff member didn't pick up a pen. Doyun was watching the scene from inside the driver's cab. He didn't step in. Instead he slipped his hand behind the panel, checking whether there was another auxiliary port besides the storage device the recovery team was looking at.

Doyun looked at the sealed envelope, then held out a small storage device to Seojin. It was an auxiliary storage device that had been left behind the driver's cab panel.

The label was even more worn.

Passage 0 / version 0.

Before Seojin could take it, the radio crackled. It was Seo Miran's voice.

"Yun Seojin. Don't listen to that file. Just hand it over."

A moment later, a lower sentence followed.

"Before any other report."