Ch. 010| The Second Platform

Day 22, 09:40 A.M. Li Kaichen at his desk.

Day 21, 03:58 A.M., home. He'd sent "home now" to Ye Wenjia, slept four and a half hours, woken on Day 21 to review the Day 21 footage, spent the daylight hours picking through it in fits and starts, then slept a normal six hours that night. Day 22, 09:30 A.M., he'd gotten up, made coffee, and sat here ever since. Two things were in front of him.

One: the footage the GoPro had captured on Day 21. He watched it start to finish—the passage, the T-junction, the green metal sign, the chalk arrow, the sound of the diesel train as he made his exit—all of it there. No cuts, no dropped frames. The material was intact.

The other: that chalk arrow. He had to know—who had walked through ahead of him.

He opened Google and searched "Ximen Longshan Temple prewar underground tunnel."

The first page turned up all kinds of MRT construction histories, old route maps of the Xinyi Line and the Tamsui Line. By the third page there were two or three local-history blogs mentioning a "Japanese-colonial-era air-raid tunnel in Taipei's western district."

One of them, an article from 2019, was by a local-history researcher who'd written up an interview with a Ximen neighborhood chief born in the Shōwa years. The chief's account: before the war, under this stretch of Ximending, there had been an air-raid tunnel running from Ximen to Wanhua. In the early postwar years you could still go in. Later, after urban replotting and MRT construction, the authorities called it "backfilled / abandoned"—what had actually happened, nobody had gone and verified.

Li Kaichen screenshotted the article and saved it to the "Xingyun" folder.

He paged through old colonial-era maps. The 1936 Taipei street map showed the surface from Ximen to Wanhua (then called Bangka): Dadaocheng → Shinpu-chō → Longshan Temple. Nothing marked underground. But this was a civilian-edition map, and underground military installations were never drawn on those to begin with.

He pulled up another document, a 1944 military supply-line chart that had surfaced postwar from a collector and was now a scanned file in some university library's open-access repository. The chart marked a supply track in Taipei's western district numbered the "Xingyun Branch Line," running south from an unnamed transfer point to Bangka. Beside the two characters "Xingyun" was a small annotation in Japanese katakana plus kanji, the meaning close to "night supply track, military use only."

Li Kaichen stared at the two characters for thirty seconds. "Xingyun" wasn't a place name. It was the codename of an abandoned supply track. Later the overwrite system had borrowed that codename for a station name—or the station name had always referred to that track, and the overwrite system had merely brought it into view. He wasn't sure which.

He stopped, thought a moment, then wrote in his notebook:

That passage may not be a new structure the overwrite built. It may be old, already there, and the overwrite system just "activated" it.

If that was true, then the chalk arrow might be older than he'd assumed—not drawn that day, but left by someone who'd gone in early. The unset chalk dust was the overwrite snapping back "frozen" mid-moment, not fresh.

He wasn't sure. But the possibility was one he meant to keep on record.

---

Day 22, afternoon. He didn't go out. He sorted the Day 21 footage and made three backups.

He sent a LINE to Ye Wenjia: "Tomorrow 02:00–04:00, I'll be over in Ximen again, doing the same thing one layer deeper. If I haven't sent you 'home now' by 04:30, call the police, give them this message and my home address." A few minutes later Ye Wenjia replied: "Okay. I'll wait till 04:30." Same as Day 21.

He wanted to go again. But he also thought: should he go?

Go = walk to the end of the left-hand passage, confirm the direction the green metal sign at the T-junction pointed led to a platform, take one look, withdraw.
Don't go = he never steps in, and Xingyun Station stays, to him, only "physical evidence he filmed," not "a place he set foot in himself."

If he didn't go, he'd be chasing this forever at the level of records. If he went, he might step onto some line he couldn't pull himself back out of.

He sat for an hour. Then he wrote in the notebook:

I go. But I don't board.

---

Day 23, 01:48 A.M.

He drove to Ximen, parked in the same overnight pay lot, cash. Same gray hoodie, mask, ball cap. At 02:01 he walked to Exit 8, tapped in with the EasyCard whose number started 02.

The Ximen Station of 02:01 A.M. was still the "late-night version"—by rights the Bannan Line's last train ran at 00:30 and the first at 05:30, so there shouldn't have been any trains, but the Exit 8 gates were open, the platform lights were on, the announcements were running, the same overwrite continuation as Day 21. He knew this wasn't the real Bannan Line; what he'd entered was the overwritten MRT system.

The Bannan Line platform was thin of people even in the small hours. He worked his way to the bench at the platform's south end and sat down, steadying his breathing. His heart rate lower than that first time on Day 21—he knew what the next step was, and he wasn't groping in the dark anymore.

The 03:00 and the 03:04 passed through, both empty; he didn't board. At 03:10 the platform's color temperature began shifting, slowly, from cold white toward yellow. At 03:11:15 the whole thing locked in. The next-station readout on the platform screen flipped back to two block characters.

He got off the bench, walked to the platform's south end, reached out and pressed the emergency door.

It opened.

He went in.

---

Seven steps down plus twenty meters of level passage, and he was through. An old-style fan was still turning along the way, slow, its blades corroded. The block-character warnings on the wall—he understood them now—were the "please proceed slowly" kind.

The chalk arrow on the wall by the fan was still there. The dust unset.

He reached the T-junction. 03:14:50.

He looked up at the green metal sign on the concrete wall straight ahead. Xingyun Station. Arrow pointing left.

He turned left.

The left-hand passage was a little narrower than the level passage just now, maybe seventy centimeters wide. More water on the floor. Along the concrete conduit overhead, the copper wire ran on into the depths of the left passage and disappeared.

He moved forward, keeping his step light, listening to the sound of his own soles against the water. Around the fifteenth meter, a faint yellow light began to appear ahead.

At twenty meters, he saw the end of the passage.

The end wasn't a concrete wall. It was an opening. Beyond the opening was a—

platform.

---

Li Kaichen stopped at the end of the passage and didn't go out.

He looked at the platform through the viewfinder of the Sony α7. Through the GoPro LCD too. Both agreed.

The platform was a long strip, maybe eighty meters long, five meters wide. The floor was red brick, the joints between bricks deep, some bricks worn down to half by being trodden. Four cast-iron pillars stood on the platform, rust on their shafts, the rivet rings around them common to colonial-era industrial work. The platform canopy was planks pieced together, some of them split, and through the gaps you could see a deeper layer of black above.

The platform wall—was a brick wall. Red brick, the same age as the pillars. Damp seeped from the joints, and the air carried a heavy reek of damp rust mixed with the smell of old fuel oil. There was a layer of fine dust on the floor at his feet; he could feel it underfoot, but he didn't step out of the passage, staying inside the threshold.

An old-style enamel sign was nailed to the wall. White ground, black lettering. Two block characters.

He "knew" those two characters—they were the station name.

Xingyun Station.

That wasn't the design language of the Taipei MRT. That was the kind of design you'd find on a small station of the colonial-era Taiwan railway, the sort in Tainan Prefecture or Hsinchu Prefecture. But this platform wasn't at the surface; it was underground, between the MRT's Ximen Station and Longshan Temple.

He looked up at the timestamp. 03:16:18.

He had under two minutes now.

---

An engine sounded in the distance.

Not the low-frequency hum of modern electrification. Diesel power. Heavy, muffled, the engine bouncing back amplified inside the tunnel.

The headlights of a two-car train appeared in the tunnel mouth at the far end of the platform. The light was yellow, not the cold-white of LEDs—an older incandescent.

The train pulled in slowly.

The floor underfoot began to shake. Not a hard tremor—low-frequency, resonating with the diesel engine, carried through the platform's foundation to his soles. The vibration came up his shins and stopped at his knees.

Four carriages. The bodies a dark red, rusted, the doors slide-by-hand, not powered. Each carriage's window frames were wood, some of the glass already fogged over so you couldn't make out the inside.

The train stopped. The vibration dropped a notch with it, into the low-frequency hum of an idle.

Li Kaichen stood at the end of the passage, not stepping out. He kept the Sony α7 trained on the platform, shooting in burst.

03:17:08.

The door of the carriage nearest him slid open sideways.

It was pulled by hand, someone hauling it from inside the carriage. But once that motion of opening was done, no one stepped off.

The light inside the carriage was yellow incandescent, dim. But Li Kaichen could see that there were people seated inside.

That carriage held maybe twelve seats. Full.

---

He looked for three seconds.

The seat by the door—masked, young, hair freshly cut.

That was A-Xiang.

Beside A-Xiang was the old woman from the end of the alley—dark blue thin jacket, gray hair pinned at both temples with two black hairpins, plastic sandals. Behind A-Xiang to the left sat an office worker in a dress shirt and slacks, somewhere between 30 and 40—Li Kaichen remembered the photos of the six missing on the 008 Bannan Line (A-Xiang included) clearly—that was the Jiangzicui one. A few rows further back were the Longshan Temple, Houshanpi, Zhongxiao Fuxing, and City Hall ones, all of them in this carriage.

Everyone in that whole carriage, Li Kaichen recognized. A-Xiang, the old woman from the end of the alley, the other five on the Bannan Line (Jiangzicui, Longshan Temple, Houshanpi, Zhongxiao Fuxing, City Hall), plus a few more cases he'd pulled from police missing-persons listings, the ones with scrambled early memories—from the families' descriptions they were the "the person came back but isn't quite right" kind. There might be a formal classification for them after Volume Two; for now he could only mark them pending verification.

All of them, here.

Li Kaichen's hands didn't shake. But he noticed he wasn't breathing. He counted "one, two, three" in his head, then let the breath out gently.

---

He watched A-Xiang.

A-Xiang wasn't wearing a mask—he'd taken it for a mask before. Once he saw clearly, that wasn't a mask. That was the lower half of A-Xiang's own face, looking like a mask but in fact the skin tone blending into the surroundings, the outline faded out.

A-Xiang's eyes—looked toward the platform. Toward the spot where Li Kaichen stood.

But he wasn't looking at Li Kaichen.

Li Kaichen shifted half a step left, came back, shifted half a step right—A-Xiang's gaze followed none of it.

A-Xiang's eyes looked at the spot where Li Kaichen stood as though no one were there.

Same with the old woman. Same with the Jiangzicui one. In the whole carriage, every single person looked toward the platform, looked at the spot where Li Kaichen was, as though no one were there. There was no expression on their faces, not like "can't see," not like "pretending not to see." It was the feeling of: this spot I'm looking at had no one in it to begin with, so I'm not "looking at an empty spot" either, I'm just looking at the platform.

In his head Li Kaichen heard the echo of what the eighth Late-Nighter to reply had said—

"When I got off, I saw another train stopped across the platform, and none of the people on it looked at me."

He understood it now.

Looked at, but not seen. In their eyes, he didn't exist.

---

03:17:48.

Mechanical watch. Thirty-two seconds left to the shared end point of the overwrite he'd worked out himself in 008. Backing out the forty meters plus the seven steps would take thirty—he couldn't look any longer.

He had to withdraw.

He wanted to call A-Xiang's name. Once. To see whether there'd be a reaction.

He didn't.

Not out of fear—because he knew calling out would do nothing. If he really didn't exist in their eyes, then the sound wouldn't be heard either. Calling out would only put that one sound in his own ears, and make him feel more isolated in this spot for whatever came after.

He backed away slowly, the Sony α7 still toward the platform, hugging the passage wall, making no sound. Ten meters on he reached the bend in the passage, paused a second, turned, and switched to a fast run. Ten meters left to the T-junction, reached at 03:18:05.

Behind him, the train's diesel engine hadn't stopped. But he didn't look back.

T-junction, right turn. Twenty meters of level passage, about seven seconds by his estimate as he ran. Seven steps, two at a time, the top step nearly tripping him—his heart rate already over 140.

03:18:24, he shoved the emergency door open.

The platform, 03:18:30, flipped back to normal. The color temperature turned from yellow incandescent back to cold white.

---

Li Kaichen walked back to the middle of the platform and sat down. This time he didn't shake. But he sat with his eyes closed for five minutes.

A train pulled in at 03:38—the same "late-night version" overwrite continuation; by rights the first train was 05:30, there shouldn't have been one now. He boarded. He rode to Zhongxiao Fuxing, exited, walked 500 meters, the overwrite already over, the streets entering the hours of the early-shift taxis and the first buses. Back to the car. Home at 04:21.

He sent a LINE to Ye Wenjia: "Home now." A few seconds later she replied: "Got it."

---

He sat down at his desk, opened the waterproof notebook, turned to the 010 page. At the top he wrote:

Day 23, the second platform. Location: 30 meters left of the T-junction; red brick + cast-iron pillars + colonial enamel sign. Diesel-powered train, 4 cars, dark red, manual sliding doors.

Below that:

The carriage was full of the targets on this line. A-Xiang (missing; already among the six on the 008 Bannan Line) by the door of the first car. The old woman (didn't show on Day 10, reason unclear) beside him. The other five on the Bannan Line (Jiangzicui + Longshan Temple + Houshanpi + Zhongxiao Fuxing + City Hall) all present. The few more cases I pulled from police missing-persons listings with scrambled early memories—also present (families describe them as the "came back but isn't quite right" kind; pending verification).

He stopped. Wrote the most important line he could write right now:

Their eyes looked at the spot where I stood, as though no one were there.

He stopped. Wrote one more line:

If I don't exist to them, do they not exist to this world either. And if they don't exist to this world, then the wall of photos Ms. Lin looks at every morning when she wakes—the A-Xiang among those 41—is that long since not A-Xiang.

He shut the notebook.

---

It wasn't light out yet. Over toward Xinyi, a band of pale gray cloud lay against the edge of the towers. This time he didn't check whether that band of cloud was flat.

He thought: he didn't exist in their eyes—but he existed "in this world."

So they, right now, were in which world.

He started up the computer, opened the encrypted drive, and made three backups of the Day 23 footage, photos, and notebook page. That rust mark on the second platform's train body, every face inside the carriage—he tagged them all with timestamps and positions. If one day he had to prove this thing, these were the physical evidence. If proving this thing ended up turning into "proving that he, too, didn't exist in their eyes," then he didn't know what that would even mean.

【Ch. 010 End · Li Kaichen's place, Da'an District → Ximen Station Bannan Line platform → emergency exit door → steps + level passage → left at the T-junction → the second platform (red brick + cast-iron pillars) → exit → Zhongxiao Fuxing → home】