(Six) “The Absent: No Boarding”
Step one. Step two. Step three. The “Absent” on the platform did not run. They made no sound of footsteps, did not even breathe. They simply walked toward the train one step at a time, all at exactly the same speed. With every step closer, the temperature inside the cars dropped another degree. Frost began to spread across the glass, and a thin layer of white rime coated the seats.
Morse immediately pulled Asti behind him. “Back up.”
His partner did not resist. She simply watched the faceless figures calmly. “They aren’t enemies. It’s just their job.”
Morse said coldly, “The kind of ‘job’ you’re talking about usually gets people killed.”
His partner couldn’t help letting out a small laugh. “No. It’s lighter than death. At least the dead are still remembered. The Absent aren’t.”
The instant those words fell, the first Absent stepped through the train door. The moment his foot entered the car—boom! The entire train shook violently, and a shrill alarm rang through the whole car for the first time.
“Warning. Warning. The Absent are attempting to board.”
Then a mechanical voice that had never appeared before rang out, so cold it sounded unlike any human voice: “Under Article Zero of the Archive Train Operating Regulations, those whose archiving is incomplete may not board. Those who have become Absent may not board. Those currently becoming Absent—may board even less.”
As the final sentence ended, every door in the car slammed shut at once. Bang! Bang! Bang! And yet—the doors would not close. One hand of the Absent figure was caught between them. His hand had no skin and no bones, only page after page of yellowed paper. As the doors squeezed the pages, they slowly spread apart. Each page bore a different name—people, places, companies, stations, even stories.
Morse suddenly noticed that one page bore his own name. Morse. The next second, the name began to fade, as if someone were slowly erasing it with a rubber. At the same time, a sharp pain stabbed through his head, as though someone were flipping through his memories.
“Don’t look!” his partner suddenly shouted. It was the first time she had shown any real panic. “Names aren’t meant to be looked at!”
But it was already too late. Morse’s vision went black, and an image surfaced in his mind. It was neither the present nor the past, but a memory of something that had never happened and yet felt impossibly real.
He stood in another train car, with a girl beside him. She was not Asti, and yet she had Asti’s face. The girl handed him a train ticket and said with a smile, “This time, don’t lose me again.”
The image cut off abruptly. Morse came to with his forehead covered in cold sweat. The paper bearing his name had already returned to blankness, as though none of it had ever existed.
Just then, heavy footsteps came from deep within the train. Thud. Thud. Thud. They did not sound like human footsteps. They sounded more like some enormous presence slowly making its rounds through the cars.
His partner’s expression changed completely for the first time. Her smile disappeared, and she whispered, “Damn…”
Morse immediately sensed that something was wrong. “What’s coming?”
His partner did not answer at once. She only looked toward the depths of the train, her voice even lower than before. “The Conductor. The person truly responsible for the Archive is here.”
The heavy footsteps drew closer and closer. At the same time, every Absent figure on the platform stopped moving. In perfect unison, they lowered their heads, as though even they feared the presence that was about to appear.
At the dark end of the train, a figure slowly emerged. But the strange thing was this: whenever Morse tried to make out his face, it was like a page being turned. In an instant, it became another unfamiliar face. An old man, a child, a woman, a police officer, a street vendor, a passenger… Countless faces traded places without pause. In the end, nothing remained but blankness, like an unfilled file.
(Seven) “The Conductor: The Person Who Doesn’t Exist”
The footsteps stopped. The entire train car fell terrifyingly silent.
Morse looked toward the end of the car. The figure stood at the connection between two cars. There was no light and no shadow, yet he was impossible to ignore. He wore an old-fashioned dark train uniform, with fine silver thread embroidered along the collar, cuffs, and brim of his cap. There was no nameplate on his chest, only a badly worn metal badge. The badge bore no words, only a symbol—a circle crossed out by a horizontal line. It looked like “zero,” or like “nonexistence.”
Morse took a step forward without thinking. The next second, he discovered something bizarre: he could not remember what the other man looked like. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see him clearly. It was that the moment he looked away, even for an instant, and looked back, he would forget what he had seen the second before. It was as though the thing standing before him was not a person, but a memory that could not be saved.
“…Conductor?” Morse ventured.
The other man did not answer. He slowly raised a hand and lightly tapped one finger against the wall of the car.
Knock.
Just one knock, but the entire train seemed to receive some kind of command. The announcement came again:
“Routine Archive beginning. Confirming passengers. First passenger—Morse. Confirmation complete. Second passenger—Asti.”
The announcement stopped. There was no “confirmation complete,” nor was there a next sentence. The entire car sank into a suffocating silence. Several seconds later, hesitation appeared in the announcement for the first time:
“…No records found.”
The Absent figures outside the doors raised their heads at the same time. His partner’s pupils contracted slightly. “Just as I thought.”
Morse immediately pressed her. “What does that mean?”
His partner did not look at him. She only stared at the Conductor. “The train can’t find Asti. It’s not that it can’t find her name. It can’t find the person.”
Morse’s heart sank. “How is that possible?”
His partner slowly exhaled one sentence. “Because Asti was never supposed to exist.”
Boom—the words struck like a heavy hammer. Before Morse could react, the Conductor finally moved. He took one step forward, and lines of white text surfaced on the floor of the car. They were not projections. It was as though the words had always been hidden beneath the floor and were only now slowly emerging:
—Archive Number: ERROR. Name: Asti. Birth Record: None. Household Registration: None. Train Registration: None. Absence Record: None. Death Record: None. Proof of Existence: No Record Found.
Morse stared at the words. “That’s impossible…” He remembered working with her, eating with her, investigating cases with her, and going through Market Zero together. Everyone knew Asti. Those memories couldn’t be fake.
Just then, the Conductor raised his hand again and gave it a light wave. Countless transparent screens appeared all around the car. They showed Morse’s life—the underground parking garage on the Night Shift, his first encounter with Market Zero, the first time he received a train ticket, the first time he boarded the train… Every memory was there. Except—in every image, Morse was alone. Asti, who should have been standing beside him, had disappeared from all of them. The place where someone had handed him documents was filled with empty air. The passenger seat was vacant. No one sat across from him at the table. Even the arguments and conversations had become Morse talking to himself.
Morse froze. “No… That’s not real…”
His partner said softly, “These aren’t hallucinations. The train is playing ‘the archived facts.’”
Morse whipped around. “How much do you actually know?”
His partner remained silent for a long time—so long that even the Conductor did not interrupt her. At last, she looked toward Morse and gave him a faint smile that was almost sad. “I’ve always known. Asti just didn’t.” She raised a hand and gently placed it against her chest. “She and I have never been two personalities, and we aren’t the same person either. I’m the ‘Archive’ she left on the train, and she is the ‘Absent’ who escaped the Archive and continued living.”
The Conductor spoke for the first time. His voice sounded like countless voices layered together, impossible to identify as young or old, male or female: “Error. Archive record correction. Absent detected. Beginning—” He paused for a moment, and every light in the train went out at once. In the darkness, only one cold declaration remained: “Recover Asti.”
(Eight) “Recovery Procedure”
The lights went out, leaving only the gray-white glow from beyond the windows. The train did not move, yet the regular sound of rails came from somewhere.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
It was like some procedure had officially begun running.
The announcement sounded again. This time, it was no longer a cold mechanical voice, but Asti’s own: “Archive procedure activated. Recovery Subject: Asti. Executor: the Conductor.”
Morse stepped forward and blocked Asti. “No one is taking her.”
The Conductor did not answer. He merely opened a black file in his hands. Morse had never seen it appear and had no idea when it had arrived. The cover had no title, only a familiar seal—Archive.
The pages turned by themselves. With each page, a scene appeared in the car. On the first page, Asti appeared at the parking garage for the first time. On the second, the two of them entered Market Zero together for the first time. On the third, they investigated the Roadside Stall Murder Case together for the first time. On the fourth, they escaped their pursuers at Platform Four for the first time… The scenes were exactly the same as Morse remembered them. Yet in the corner of every page was a tiny note—Observation Record. Personality stable. Not yet aware of her own absence.
Morse’s breath caught. “Observation?”
His partner’s eyes dimmed slightly. “So… someone has been recording us all along.”
The Conductor turned to the final page. It was blank. He picked up a fountain pen without any ink and lightly touched the paper with its tip. At the same time, Asti suddenly clutched her chest. “Ugh…!” Her breathing became ragged, and her body gradually turned transparent—not disappearing, but like a photograph being slowly erased.
Morse immediately caught her. “Asti!”
Asti struggled to raise her head. “I’m… fine…” But her voice had begun to break up too, like a radio with poor reception. “He’s… writing… me…”
Morse whipped his head toward the Conductor. The instant the pen began to write its first character, Morse charged forward without hesitation. He didn’t know whether he could stop him, but he knew that if he let the pen finish writing, Asti would truly disappear from the world.
The Conductor did not dodge. He only calmly raised his eyes. The instant Morse’s fist was about to hit him—time stopped. It wasn’t that Morse couldn’t move. It was that the entire world had been paused. Frost drifting through the air, shattered glass, the Absent outside the train, even the hem of Morse’s raised coat—all of it froze. The only beings still able to move were the Conductor, Morse, and his partner. Asti remained suspended in that moment, as if asleep.
The Conductor looked directly at Morse for the first time. “Do you know what you’re interfering with?”
Morse did not back down. “I don’t care what you are. She’s my partner.”
The Conductor was silent for a moment. “No. She’s only the partner you believe her to be.”
Morse clenched his fist. “So what? Even if the whole world says she doesn’t exist, as long as she’s standing in front of me, she exists.”
Silence filled the car. His partner stared blankly at Morse. For the first time, those normally calm eyes wavered.
The Conductor slowly closed the file. “Interesting.” He raised a hand and gave it a light wave. Time began to flow again. At that exact moment, Morse’s fist passed through the Conductor’s body—not because it missed, but because the Conductor’s body was like a sheet of paper turned over by the force of the punch. The next second, he was already standing behind Morse.
“You can’t touch someone whose Archive is complete,” he said calmly. “But you can rewrite an Archive that isn’t complete.”
The Conductor placed the black file in front of Morse. “If you want to keep her, then prove one thing.”
Morse frowned. “Prove what?”
The Conductor looked at him and said, word by word, “Prove that Asti is not an ‘existence that was created.’”
As his voice fell, the black file opened by itself. The first page contained only one line: “Proof of Existence.” Beneath it, the first question waiting to be answered was simply—“What day did you first meet Asti?”
Morse froze. Because he suddenly realized he could not remember at all.
(Nine) “The First Question”
Morse fell silent. He stared at the line in the file, cold sweat beading at his temples—What day did you first meet Asti?
It was an ordinary question, so ordinary that anyone should have been able to answer it. But… he couldn’t remember. It wasn’t that he had forgotten the date. The day itself seemed to have been carved out of his memory in one solid piece.
He tried desperately to remember. The first time they met… At the company? No. At the parking garage? That wasn’t it either. At Market Zero? They already knew each other by then. When was it? The harder he thought, the worse the pain in his head became. One contradictory image after another began surfacing—Asti greeting him at the company entrance. The next second, the image shattered. Asti sitting at a stall in Market Zero, as if she had been waiting for him all along. It shattered again. Asti standing on the train platform, handing him a ticket. The image collapsed once more. Every memory felt real, yet not one connected to form a complete beginning.
“Answer.” The Conductor’s voice held no urgency, yet it made the entire car feel heavier. The black file began counting down by itself. A string of numbers slowly appeared in the corner of the page: 00:59, 00:58, 00:57…
His partner said quietly, “Don’t answer randomly.”
Morse did not look away. “What happens if I get it wrong?”
His partner was silent for a while. “The train will treat the ‘wrong beginning’ as fact. After that, every memory connected to Asti will be rearranged according to that answer.”
Morse’s pupils tightened. “So that means…”
“If you answer that you met her at Market Zero, everything in your past will become something that began at Market Zero. If you answer the company, the train will fill in a stretch of a life that never happened. Over time, you’ll forget the real Asti.”
Morse finally understood. This wasn’t a test of memory. It was choosing a new reality. The Conductor didn’t want an answer. He wanted Morse to acknowledge one version.
When the countdown reached 00:30, knocking suddenly came from outside the train window.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Morse turned his head. A little girl stood outside, about seven or eight years old. She wore an old-fashioned uniform and hugged a thick file to her chest. She had no facial features, only a pale-red “Absent” stamp on her face. Yet when she saw Morse, she slowly raised one hand and pressed her palm against the glass.
The next instant, a line of words appeared on her palm: “Don’t answer.”
Morse stared. The little girl wrote a second line: “Because you never met for the first time.”
His partner jerked her head up. “Impossible…”
The Conductor turned toward the window for the first time. His tone remained calm, but a trace of surprise entered it. “The Observer.”
The little girl ignored the Conductor. She only looked at Morse. A third line slowly surfaced: “Every time you meet is a reunion.”
Boom—the seal deep in Morse’s mind cracked open. He saw countless different worlds, different cities, different identities, different endings. The only thing that never changed was this: every world had him, and every world had Asti. Sometimes they were coworkers, sometimes strangers, sometimes enemies, and sometimes they only exchanged a brief glance as they passed. But in every world, Asti disappeared in the end, and he boarded this train again.
At that moment, the countdown reached zero. 00:00. The black file did not wait for an answer. It automatically turned to the next page. A line of bright red text appeared in the center: “Question One Voided.”
The Conductor slowly closed the file. For the first time, his expression shifted almost imperceptibly, like confusion or perhaps confirmation of something. He said quietly, “I see… This isn’t the first time you’ve come here.”
Morse, however, stared blankly at his hands. At some point, an old, yellowed train ticket had appeared in his palm. The date on the ticket had completely blurred, but the passenger’s name remained clear—Morse. Beneath the name was another line he had never seen before: “Number of Times This Passenger Has Boarded: Seven.”
(Ten) “The Seventh Boarding”
The writing on the ticket did not disappear. It only grew clearer and clearer—Passenger: Morse. Number of Times This Passenger Has Boarded: Seven.
Morse stared blankly at the ticket in his hand. “…Seven times?” he murmured. “I’ve only boarded the train once.”
His partner did not answer. She only looked at the ticket, her expression more complicated than ever before, as though she had finally been waiting for this to happen, or as though she had been afraid it really would.
The Conductor closed the black file. “Passenger Morse, confirm your identity.”
Morse raised his head. “I haven’t boarded seven times.”
The Conductor did not argue. He only said indifferently, “How many times you remember doesn’t matter. How many times the train remembers is what matters.”
With that, he pointed at the ticket. It began to burn on its own. There were no flames, only line after line of text floating away from its surface. They were not ordinary words, but a series of “boarding records”:
—First. Passenger: Morse. Companion: No Record Found. Result: Archive Failure.
—Second. Companion: Asti. Result: World Reset.
—Third. Companion: Asti. Result: Birth of the Absent.
—Fourth. Companion: Partner. Result: Personality Separation Complete.
—Fifth. Companion: Asti. Result: Train Deviated from Route.
—Sixth. Companion: Morse. Result: Passenger Lost.
At last, the seventh entry appeared:
—Seventh. Companion: …Record Terminated.
The entire train car fell into absolute silence. Morse stared at the records. Each one seemed to describe another world, yet each carried a familiarity he could not deny. The fourth entry in particular—Personality Separation Complete.
He slowly turned to his partner. “You’ve always known?”
His partner nodded lightly. “Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
She gave him a bitter smile. “Because every time I told you, you tried to change the ending, and then…” She paused. “We went back to the first station.”
Morse said nothing. The gray-white scenery outside the window began to move. For the first time, the train truly started forward. What flashed past outside was not a city or a mountain forest, but one different world after another. Some worlds had already been destroyed. Others still functioned normally. And in some of them—Morse saw himself. One wore a police uniform. One wore a researcher’s white coat. One was covered in blood. One had white hair. There was even one sitting alone at a stall in Market Zero, as if waiting for someone.
Every Morse raised his head at the same time and looked toward this train across the different worlds. Then—they all said the same thing together: “Don’t trust the train.”
The air inside the car instantly solidified. For the first time, the Conductor furrowed his brow—not because of Morse, but because of those worlds. He murmured something he had never said before: “…They’re interfering again.”
At that moment, the little girl who had remained silent appeared outside another train window. This time, her face bore more than just the “Absent” stamp—a crack had appeared in one corner of it. She slowly wrote new words on the glass with her fingertip: “Next stop.” She paused, then wrote a second line: “Platform Zero.”
His partner’s face instantly went white. “Impossible…”
Morse immediately looked at her. “What’s wrong with Platform Zero?”
His partner took a deep breath. “It isn’t a platform. It’s where all trains begin.” She looked toward the Conductor, genuine wariness showing in her eyes for the first time. “It’s also where all worlds were first ‘archived.’”
The train announcement immediately sounded again. This time, the voice had returned to its cold mechanical tone: “The train is about to enter—Platform Zero. All passengers, prepare to confirm your existence.”
The gray-white scenery outside began to disintegrate. In the distance, an enormous platform with no sky and no horizon slowly emerged from the endless darkness. An ancient station sign stood alone at its center. It bore only two words: Starting Point.
Part Two, Chapter One (Eleven) “Before the Starting Point”
The train began to slow. There was no screech of brakes, no inertia, as though the very act of “moving” were being forgotten by the world.
The enormous platform outside drew closer and closer. It had neither a ceiling nor a sky. Looking up revealed only a sea of white pages turning endlessly. Each page was like a file, and each recorded a world. Some pages were intact, some had been burned, and some had been torn away halfway. They turned silently overhead, making a faint rustling sound, as though the entire world were reading another world.
Morse stared at the sea of paper. “What is that?”
His partner answered softly, “Worlds. Each page is a version that once existed. Some completed the Archive. Some failed. The failed ones… are torn out.”
Morse fell silent. A question suddenly occurred to him. “If a world is torn out… what happens to the people inside it?”
His partner did not answer immediately. She only looked out the window. After a long while, she said quietly, “I don’t know. No one can remember a world that’s been torn out, including the people from that world.”
The train finally stopped. There was no announcement and no sound of doors opening. The doors simply slid open on their own. The platform was empty. There were no Absent, no Conductor, not even footprints. Only the station sign remained. Beneath it was another line that had not been there before: “Do Not Search for the First Passenger.”
Morse frowned. “The first passenger?”
His partner’s body visibly stiffened, but she did not answer. The Conductor stood beside the door and, for the first time, made a gesture unlike that of a supervisor—he shifted slightly to one side, clearing the way, as though inviting them forward, or waiting.
“Please disembark,” he said calmly. “This is where all answers begin.”
Morse stepped through the door. The instant his shoe touched the platform, countless overlapping voices suddenly rang in his ears. Someone was crying. Someone was laughing. Someone was shouting, “Run!” Someone kept repeating the same sentence: “Don’t look back.”
Morse spun around. The train was still behind him, and Asti and his partner were still inside. But…the entire train had begun to turn transparent, like a photograph slowly fading.
His partner immediately shouted, “Don’t look at the train! The rules here are the same as on board! The more you confirm it, the faster it leaves!”
Morse immediately looked away. Only then did the train’s outline stop vanishing. He finally realized that the rules of Platform Zero were entirely different from those of reality—in this place, “perception” itself was power.
Just then, a sharp snap came from deep within the platform, like someone closing a book. An old man sat on a bench in the distance. He wore an ordinary gray coat, with no uniform, no stamp, and no sign of belonging to the train. He did not even look like someone from an anomalous world. He simply sat there quietly turning the pages of a yellowed notebook, as though he had been waiting for someone all along.
Morse approached without thinking. The old man did not look up. He only said softly, “The seventh time.”
Morse stopped. “You know me?”
The old man smiled. “No. I know every version of you who comes here.”
The words froze the air around them. Morse was about to ask another question when the old man finally raised his head. His face was utterly ordinary—so ordinary that it would be forgotten in an instant. But his eyes held the calm of someone who had lived through countless ages. He closed the notebook and set it beside the bench. There was no title on the cover, only two handwritten characters: Absence.
The old man looked at Morse, his tone like someone recounting an event that had already happened countless times. “Do you think the Conductor is the administrator of this world?”
Morse did not answer. The old man gently shook his head. “The Conductor is only responsible for the Archive. And I…” He pointed to the copy of Absence beside him. “I’m responsible for remembering those who were never archived.”
Asti’s breath suddenly caught. She looked at the old man, genuine shock appearing in her eyes for the first time. “…The Bookkeeper.”
The old man looked at her and smiled faintly. “Long time no see, Asti.”