The weather has been so biting, so insidious that even a short walk leaves your coffee cup hand shaking with some hot coffee spilled on your wrist. The wind kicks up, sending a stray fall leaf or two, along with some loose ice from the snow on the side of the road straight down your coat. It's cold, these days.

After a going away party for a friend of a friend, I got seperated from the group of people heading out to a dance club. So, I was alone when I crossed under the street through the subway station. I noticed that a door was ajar and stuck my head into the station proper. A few lights were on, flickering. It was long after the subway stopped for the night and I was wondering why the door was unlocked.

I slipped through, walked down the hallway, hopped over the till and went down to the platform. A train was at the other end of the platform and there were some flashlights glinting through the windows. A toolbox was on a bench and a shirt lying next to it. I slipped down onto the tracks and walked in the opposite direction. I didn't really want to get caught.

Being a foreigner, in a subway tunnel, where you're never supposed to be, especially late at night-- there's a war on terror going on and I didn't want to get deported to Sudan or anything. So I walked quickly and quietly up the rails.

I walked the kilometer length of track between the Hongdae subway station and the Sincheon subway station. About twenty feet after the platform ends and the tunnel begins, there was a pile of bricks between the center-line cement columns. Then an emergency phone. And an old generator. Rocks along the sides of the rails clattered and banged as I walked along. The entire length of the tunnel was pretty well lit, and the air was warmer. I took my coat off and carried it.

The Sincheon subway platform grew larger and brighter. There was a train being worked on there, too. Someone far away waved a flashlight my direction. I was having a hard time being quiet because of the loose rocks. I slowed down, hopped up onto the far side of the station platform from where the light had been and looked at the closed stairway grille. I slid back down onto the rails and walked back to Hongdae.

About five minutes after turning around I felt a cold wind pick up behind me and I stepped into the center-line to wait. About a minute later a single lead-car shot past me and everything was quiet and still again.

In Hongdae, the train was still there, but the workmen had gone. I walked up the steps and surprised ... *really* surprised a woman who was mopping next to the turnstiles. I smiled, hopped the stile and walked back out the same way I went in.

Twenty minutes later I was dancing with a couple of gray "souvineer" rocks in my pocket.