The Last Train Still Waiting for Her — Complete Story

AI translation from the Thai original ไทย

Original fiction and illustrations created with AI for STORY.RED. All characters and events are fictional.

Eva had not been home in seven years. When her father died, she sent money for the funeral and stayed in Seoul. She told her mother the flights were too expensive, which was only half the truth. The other half was that she still remembered the day her father left her suitcase outside the door.

“If you want to leave so badly, then go,” he had said that day. So she left without looking back.

At twenty-nine, Eva found an old biscuit tin in a parcel from her mother. Inside lay a ticket to a small station outside Seoul and a cassette tape. The date was the day she had first arrived in Korea. Her father's handwriting spelled her name on the back.

She called her mother, but could not bring herself to ask the whole question. Her mother only said, “Listen to the tape first, sweetheart.” Eva had no cassette player. All night, the little tape sat heavily in her palm.

The station on the ticket would close in five days. Eva went there with the biscuit tin, telling herself she would turn straight around if the answer hurt more than she could bear.

Do-yun, thirty-two, was sorting through the station's archive of announcements. He took an old tape player down from a shelf.

“We shouldn't try an old tape in a player with a jammed belt. It could chew it up.”

While he cleaned the tape head, she waited. His unhurried care drew the story of the ticket from her, though she had not meant to tell it.

When the sound came through, it was no station announcement. It was her father, stumbling over a sentence in Korean, then laughing before saying in Thai, “Could you help Dad read the signs? I've come to see you.”

Eva hit stop. Her hand shook so badly that Do-yun had to steady the player.

Her father had arrived in Korea two days after she did. He had meant to apologize, but the phone number no longer worked after she changed SIM cards, and her dorm address was still listed as the recruitment agency's old address.

Eva and Do-yun found a message slip in the lost-property files. One letter in her father's name was wrong, so the note had never reached her. It held only a few short lines.

“I was afraid you'd struggle after you left, so I spoke as if I didn't want you to have a life of your own. I was wrong.”

There was no order to come home. No conditions attached.

Eva stood on the platform where her father had once waited. She was angry at the seven years she could not get back, and at herself for believing he had never tried to follow her.

“I won't tell you to stop grieving,” Do-yun said. “But you don't have to make sense of everything today.”

Eva sat on the same bench and called her mother. This time, she did not ask about the papers.

“Mom, I'm sorry I didn't come home.”

There was silence on the other end. Then her mother asked whether she had eaten. That ordinary question made Eva cry harder than the tape had.

Eva did not ask her mother to say everything was all right, and her mother did not pretend it was. They spoke about the days that hurt, and the times they could have reached out but chose silence. Then they settled on a date for Eva to come home.

Do-yun had waited a little way off. When she ended the call, he handed her a cup of hot tea and asked if she wanted to be alone.

“No,” she said. “Would you sit with me for a little while?”

He stayed until the last train passed, without trying to fill the silence.

The station closed as scheduled. No one changed the railway plans for Eva's sake. But Do-yun arranged to preserve the station's history in a small room at the municipal library, and Eva helped translate the recordings and write captions.

They asked permission from everyone whose voice they recorded. Her father's tape was marked private. Eva kept the original and chose to play only the part with his laughter, which her mother had agreed to share.

On the night the listening room opened, Eva watched older visitors hear the names of familiar stations and squeeze their partners' hands a little tighter.

Do-yun asked if she would come back to help next time. Eva said she would return for the work, and because she wanted to see him.

“I was hoping you'd say the second part,” he replied, blushing enough to make her laugh for the first time all week.

Two months later, Eva returned from visiting her mother with a new family photograph that left a place for her father. Her grief had not vanished, but she no longer believed it had to bring her life to a standstill.

Do-yun was waiting for her at the new station, two tickets in hand. He invited her to spend the holiday in a seaside town. She said yes and reached for his hand first.

On the train, Eva set the biscuit tin on her lap, looked once more at the old ticket, then gently closed the lid.

“Did you tell your mother this time?” he asked.

“I did. She asked you to send her a picture of me smiling.”

He raised his phone. His solemn concentration made her laugh. The first picture came out blurry; in the second, morning light fell perfectly across her cheek.

Eva sent the picture to her mother at once, then leaned against the person making this journey with her. This train could not take her back to change the past. It was carrying her forward.

The End