Eugene Jiang, PD7, 5/9/23

 Creativity and Fiction

A man stirs, awoken by a ray of light shining directly into his face. The sun was angled in such a way that its light reached into the alleyway where the man was sleeping. He removes the tattered fabric that he was using as a makeshift blanket off his chest and, with his other hand, grabs hold of the dumpster he is sitting next to. With a grunt, he lifts himself up onto his feet with the dumpster as support. The man walks out of the alleyway into the bustling street where a few passer-bys glanced at him in such a way that one would think they had a handful of dung under their nose. Though the homeless man is used to the looks he gets, this time he heard something new. A conversation between 2 middle-aged women that just walked past him went something like this: 

“Hey, did you listen to the news today? Apparently there’s been violent riots all over the city today. It’s gotten so bad that the government is starting to deploy the military.” 

“Yeah I did. I bet you that riots like these are started by people like that.”

The woman walking closer to the road said, pointing to the homeless man

“These poor people have literally nothing better to do so they go around causing a ruckus until the government gives them benefits to calm them down.”

Annoyed by these remarks, the man speeds up his pace to put some distance between him and the rather rude ladies. It’s hard to believe that people are so inclined to judge another person’s character solely based on their appearance. Our unfortunate soon-to-be hero here is not homeless because he’s lazy, rather, he’s a victim to circumstances. Being born into a poor family, he couldn’t pursue higher education, and so he had primarily lived off of menial labor- specifically construction work. However, due to a worksite accident, the man received a substantial injury to his leg that didn’t fully heal, resulting in the limp in his walk. Naturally, he couldn’t continue construction work and combined with the hefty cost of the medical bill, he struggled to stay afloat financially. It only went downhill from there. Anyways, that’s enough of a tangent, back to the story at hand.

After walking far enough, the man slows down, coming to an eventual stop outside of a random store and peers into his reflection on the store window. Looking back at him was a ragged man with messy hair that ran down to the tip of his nose. His face is coated in a fine layer of grime and dust. Perhaps in an attempt to comfort himself, he jokingly told himself that the man in front of him could’ve seen better days. He turned back around to continue walking, but was stopped by a large crowd of people directly ahead. People had their phones out, filming something that the man could not quite discern. The crowd of people looked quite concerned and that concern quickly turned into horror as screams began to break out in the crowd. It looked as though people in the far front were getting knocked down by something- another person? The crowd began to scatter as people started to turn around and run. As the crowd thinned, the man got a clearer view of what was happening. People were clawing and biting at other people, blood drenched the streets, and the people who were bitten by the feral people would convulse, lay still, and get back up to start rushing at other people in a rabid manner. The scene before him wasn’t really processing in his mind, but instinctively, he knew to run. He turned to run and caught sight of a flight of stairs leading down into the ground. The subway! If he could make it onto a train there might be safety in a different part of the city. The man swiftly sprinted down the stairs and into the station, ignoring a security guard shouting at him to stop. In a stroke of sheer luck, a train is at the platform and the man took the opportunity to rush into one of the carts, straight into one of the restrooms and slammed the door shut behind him. The train took off shortly after the man boarded.

Now that the man was in a safer area, he had some time to recollect himself and only now did the scene that he’d just witnessed begin to dawn on him. He curls up into a fetal position before the bathroom door and begins to mutter to himself. “All dead… they’re all dead…” It wasn’t long before this chant was interrupted by a sharp knocking on the door. The door opens, but the man does not notice, continuing to repeat the phrase, “all dead.”. A male train attendant, a man in a business suit, and a young girl stare at him. The train attendant speaks, “Sir? Excuse me? May I check your ticket?” The man does not respond. “Sir, if you do not have a ticket, you’ll be escorted off at the next station.” At this, the man finally turns around, but instead of responding to the attendant’s questions, he simply stutters, “Everyone’s dead. All dead.” The young girl gives the man a look of concern and the old businessman turns to her and says, “If you don’t study, you’ll end up like him” The girl retorts with, “Mom said whoever says that is a bad person.” To which the businessman responds, “She must’ve flunked school.” Then, the businessman walks off to the back of the cart. Our homeless man exchanges one last glance with the young girl before she walks off to the next cart to find a different bathroom. Soon enough, the train attendant returns to tell our homeless man to exit the bathroom and prepare to exit the train on the next station. The attendant beckons the man out, but the homeless man refuses to budge. Before the attendant could take any further action, his walkie talkie rings and after hearing whatever was said on the other end, he rushes away into a different cart. The homeless man pokes his head out of the bathroom and turns to look in the direction that the attendant sped off towards. There appears to be some commotion in the rear carts of the train, and, after experiencing a sense of deja vu, the homeless man decides to move in the opposite direction into the front carts. He finds himself a seat and sits there until a horde of people begin to enter and pass by. Looks like something did in fact happen. Abruptly, the speakers on the train come to life and the conductor announces that, due to circumstances, the train will be stopping at Daejeon station.

Once the announcement concluded, a younger businessman enters the cart that the homeless man is in while on the phone with somebody. The homeless man didn’t pick up on all of the conversation, but he did hear a few crucial components. Daejeon station is not safe and that this businessman is receiving help from whoever he’s calling. The instructions were to not go to the main square and instead head to the East side. 

The train eventually reaches Daejeon station where the conductor instructs all passengers to exit. Our homeless man follows the crowd out, staying closely behind the young businessman that he listened in on. Surely enough, when everyone else funneled to the main square, the businessman pulled his daughter, the young girl he’d seen earlier, to the side. The two seem to have a disagreement, which ends in the young businessman looking up, right at him.  By now, the homeless man has learned that this businessman goes by the name of Seok-Woo, and his daughter, Su-An. Seok-Woo steps forward and apprehensively states, 

“What is it?” 

“I’m going this way too” 

“Main square is that way, just follow the others”

“I think I’ll be going with you. I heard your call. About pulling you two out. I know the others go in quarantine.”

With that statement, Su-An gazes up at her father

“It’s not true Su-An.”

“I’ll go tell the others” said Su-An as she attempts to rush off, only to be stopped by her father grabbing hold of her arm. The pair has another argument, but the man pays little attention to this. He notices a military soldier round the corner at the end of the hallway and begins to try and get the attention of the soldier. The man runs towards the soldier. Roughly halfway down the hall, the man felt that something was wrong with the soldier, but pushed back his gut instincts. Sometimes in times of crisis, people would rather cling onto any notion of hope than to face reality. A horde of zombies show up, directly behind the soldier and pounce onto him. The homeless man skids to a stop, falling onto his back. He scrambles back onto his feet and begins to make a dash back to the train. Seok-Woo had already run back at this point, but zombies had appeared behind them too. A zombie pounces onto Seok-Woo, and in the spur of the moment, the homeless man removes his coat and throws it over the zombies head in an attempt to help him. The man continues to run towards a bunch of baseball students that beckoned people to them and onwards to the train. There he saw Su-An along with a pregnant lady as they boarded the train. The man made a mad sprint for the compartment that they entered, and made it just before they shut the door on him, catching the door with his arm. In a desperate plea, he cries “Me too! Let me in! Please!” To which, his request was granted as the pregnant lady opened the door to let him in. He firmly shuts the door behind him and breathes a sigh of relief. 

The train begins to move and leaves the station. While the pregnant lady, whose name he’d found to be Seong-Kyeong, and Su-An looked out the window at the passing scenery in silence, the homeless man decided to check out the train compartment they were in and was stopped dead in his tracks by what he’d seen. The man stared in disbelief into the train cart, and, from the corner of his eye, saw the pregnant lady pull out her phone, presumably to call her husband who she’d be separated from. His arm shot out to stop her, but he kept his gaze fixed to the cart. The others finally shift their attention to what he has been looking at: hordes of zombies surrounded them on both sides. Seong-Kyeong acted quickly, inching towards the restroom that had its door ajar. She peeked into the restroom-it was clear- and gestured for the group to get inside. Su-An went in first, followed by an old lady and the homeless man. As Seong-Kyeong is about to enter, however, a zombie notices her. She quickly slips into the restroom and tries to shut the door, but the zombie blocks it with its head. The homeless man joins in on the effort, but the ruckus caused by this zombie attracts the attention of all the other zombies in the cart. Eventually, there’s a large group of zombies piling on the door, trying to get inside. Since the situation was getting dire, the man decided to take a risk and kicked the zombie blocking the door in order to get his head out of the way. Surprisingly, these things are rather resilient so the first kick did little in dissuading the persistent pest, resulting in a few more follow-up kicks from the man. It really doesn’t matter how tenacious you are, when you take 8 kicks to the face without getting anywhere, you know that it’s time to give up. This held true for the zombie because he finally fell back, allowing the door to slide shut and giving a moment of peace for the 4 people that are now trapped in this tiny restroom. 

The pregnant lady immediately pulls out her phone and dials her husband who also immediately picks up. Su-An screams into the phone for help followed by Seong-Kyeong shouting that they’re in cart 13 and to hurry up and come help them. The zombies sure did not like all the screaming on their end though, because they began to bang on the door, hard. Our bathroom campers braced themselves for the worst, but the banging subsided after they kept quiet for a bit. Real lucky that these zombies have an attention span shorter than a toddler if I may add my personal anecdote. After what felt like an eternity, somebody knocked on the door of the restroom and a friendly face appeared. Prince charming had arrived to save the damsel in distress by fighting through several carts of zombies.

- I think I’m going to end this Train to Busan told through the perspective of the homeless guy here. The fanfic is getting kind of long, and I’m not sure if a 6+ page long blog is ideal. I just thought it’d be cool to tell the story through a side character. Homeless guy is kind of a less appreciated hero in the film. Everyone likes Seong-Kyeong’s husband because the man is a giga-chad and I’d agree, but the homeless man literally saved the MC, Seong-Kyung, and Su-An. If anything his sacrifice is just as great as Mr. Giga-Chad, but I don’t see many people talk about him. I wanted this story to give him a little more character, but I may not have done that too well since I wrote this up in like 4 hours. Was fun though.