Last Train to Seoul: 운명
Photographs and Ghosts
The air was thick with summer heat and cicada song as Ha-eun sat alone in her sunlit studio in Gyeongju. The little room smelled of old paper and the faint trace of dried wildflowers pressed between the pages of her favorite photo book. On the sturdy wooden table before her lay photographs slowly emerging from the dim red glow of the developing machine.
Carefully, she lifted a fresh print from the tray, holding it up to the light. It showed a rainy platform somewhere far from this quiet town an empty bench, slick rails, and a shadowed figure standing just beyond the frame’s edge. The figure’s posture was familiar, yet distant, as if caught in a moment of deep thought, unaware of the camera’s quiet witness.
Her breath hitched.
It was Ji-won.
A ghost caught in a photograph.
The ink had barely dried, but the memory of his soft voice and the near-silence between them on that wet night swept over her like the same cool rain. Her fingers traced the edge of the photograph as if to bridge the miles and moments tangled between them.
Outside, the cicadas continued their summer chorus, a delicate lullaby weaving through the leaves. Ha-eun wondered how moments like these could be so vividly captured in a lens, yet the whole story always felt just beyond reach like fate teasing her with glimpses but never revealing the full picture.
Her phone buzzed, sharp against the stillness. She jumped slightly, eyes catching the screen’s glow: a message from Ji-won.
*Your photos speak louder than words. Can we meet?*
The words felt heavy in her palm. They lifted hope and fear in an impossible balance hope for connection, fear of what it might unravel.
Ha-eun’s gaze dropped back to the photograph, to his quiet silhouette standing beneath the storm-soaked sky. Those captured moments pulled her toward Seoul’s restless lights, to a story still unwritten.
Her heart whispered yes.