Train to Time 8:48
Chapter 1: Arrival
The station was always noisy at 8:00 AM, but Shyam loved the chaos. It distracted him—just enough. Coffee steam twirled in the morning air, announcements echoed overhead, and tired souls chased their next destination. He sat on the same bench every day, back straight, notebook in hand, waiting for a train he never boarded.
He wasn't there for the train.
Shyam liked to watch people. Guess their stories. Write what he imagined their lives were like—sometimes happy, mostly not. He told himself it was for his next book, but deep down he knew the truth: it was the only place he didn't feel alone.
That day, at 8:43 AM, someone bumped into him—hard.
"God, I'm so sorry!" a voice said, breathless, followed by the soft crunch of a paper bag dying a tragic death on the pavement.
Shyam looked up, mildly annoyed. And then he saw her.
She had wind-tangled hair, a guilty smile, and eyes that seemed to carry too much past for someone so young. She was holding two coffees, and now one was dying a slow death on his shoe.
"...Well, that's one way to make a first impression," he muttered.
She laughed—a genuine, reckless kind of laugh. "You're not bleeding, are you? Emotionally, maybe?"
He smiled. "Only slightly. I charge per emotional scar, just so you know."
"Guess I'll be in debt then," she said, sitting beside him like she belonged there. Like she'd done it a thousand times.
He raised an eyebrow. "Do you… normally harass strangers at train stations?"
She extended the surviving coffee. "Only the ones who look like they've been ghosted by life."
Shyam took the cup. "Touché."
They sat there, sipping in silence for a moment. No names, no backstories. Just two strangers and a train they didn't want to catch.
Finally, she said, "I'm waiting for someone."
He replied, "I'm not."
She turned to him. "Then why are you here?"
He looked at the tracks. "Because I'm still hoping someone shows up."
Their eyes met, and for a split second, the world dulled. No announcements. No footsteps. Just 8:48 AM, frozen in time.
The train roared past, but neither of them moved.
It was the beginning of something…
...something that would end much harder than it began.
---
Train to Time 8:48
Chapter 2: Unspoken Departures
The days that followed became routine—not the kind that tires you, but the kind that your heart grows used to. Like the sun rising or your favorite song playing on shuffle when you need it most.
Raitha came back the next day. And the day after that. Same bench, same coffee, same nervous smile that tried too hard to look effortless.
They never exchanged numbers. No plans were made. They simply arrived, like clockwork, at 8:43 AM, and left after the 8:48 AM train departed. It was the most consistent thing in both their lives.
"I think I like this version of therapy," Raitha once said, stretching her legs and sipping coffee. "No sterile white rooms. No creepy therapists pretending they care."
Shyam chuckled. "You don't know creepy until you've had a therapist with a fake British accent and a Buddha statue he clearly bought from Amazon."
Raitha snorted into her drink. "I'd marry that man for the entertainment value alone."
Shyam smiled but didn't laugh this time. She noticed.
"You okay?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Just… don't joke about marriage. It's a cursed word."
That was the first time silence between them wasn't comfortable. It lingered like fog.
Raitha didn't press, and Shyam didn't explain. But the air changed—slightly colder, slightly heavier.
---
It wasn't love. Not yet. It was something more dangerous: the possibility of love.
They learned the small things about each other. She liked rainy days and the smell of old books. He wrote poems he never showed anyone. She hated loud chewers. He had a scar on his right hand from a childhood fall. She once wanted to be a dancer. He once wanted to be held.
But they never asked the big questions—where they lived, what they did, who they were outside the platform.
That was the unspoken rule: The station was a bubble. What existed outside didn't matter here.
One day, Raitha showed up wearing sunglasses. Her lip was slightly swollen, and she had a tremble in her fingers she couldn't hide, no matter how hard she tried.
Shyam noticed. He always noticed. But he said nothing.
Instead, he handed her coffee and a pen.
"What's this for?" she asked, confused.
"Write something. Anything. Doesn't have to be real."
She opened his notebook and scribbled for five minutes. When she handed it back, she said, "That's not me."
He didn't read it. Just closed the notebook and nodded. "Okay."
And just like that, he offered her a silence that felt more comforting than any conversation.
---
Then came the Tuesday.
It was cold, raining, and the station smelled like wet concrete and burnt toast from a nearby tea stall. Shyam was early that day. 8:20 AM.
He waited, watching the clock like it owed him something.
8:30.
8:40.
8:48.
No Raitha.
He stayed until 10:00 AM, writing the same sentence over and over again: "She's just late."
She didn't show up the next day either. Or the one after that.
Days turned to weeks. He still came. Every 8:48, the train would arrive, people would rush past him, and the bench beside him remained heartbreakingly empty.
He started writing again—not poems, not fiction, but letters. All to her. All unsent.
> "You didn't say goodbye. That's not fair."
"I miss your coffee that tastes like regret."
"Do you think of me? Because I think of you… and it hurts."
He wrote like it was the only way to bleed without dying.
---
One cold evening, a mutual friend—one of those distant people you only meet once and forget—ran into Shyam at the station.
"Hey! Weren't you the guy always sitting with Raitha?"
He froze. "Yeah. You… know her?"
The friend hesitated. "I mean, kinda. She got married last month. Fancy wedding. Rich guy. Thought she moved away or something."
Shyam didn't reply.
He didn't cry. Didn't rage. He just looked at the empty bench like it was laughing at him.
That night, he wrote:
> "You didn't say goodbye because you didn't want to see what leaving did to me."
"I was always just a station. A stop before your real journey."
---
Weeks later, someone sat next to Shyam on the bench. A stranger. She asked, "Is this seat taken?"
He looked at her, blinked, and shook his head. "No. It's been empty for a while."
But it wasn't. It was full of echoes. Of laughter. Of ghosts with coffee stains and broken hearts.
As the 8:48 train passed, he didn't look at it.
He just whispered, "Safe journey, Raitha."
She wouldn't hear it.
But maybe… just maybe… time would.
---
Chapter 3: The Return
Raitha stepped off the train with a silence in her steps.
The city hadn't changed much. Still loud, still fast, still unapologetically alive. But she had. Her hair was shorter now—less wild, more controlled. Her eyes were tired, and her ring finger bare. She wore the kind of smile people put on like makeup: convincing from afar, but smudged up close.
It had been three years.
Three years since she last stood on that platform. Since she'd last seen Shyam. Since she chose a life built on expectations instead of feelings.
And all it took to shatter that choice was a man who spoke in apologies and moved like a hurricane.
Her divorce wasn't dramatic. It was quiet. Cold. The kind of ending that doesn't slam doors, just… fades out like a dying song on a broken radio.
"I'll be better on my own," she told herself, packing her bags.
But deep inside, she knew the truth—she wasn't returning to be better.
She was returning to see if she could have been better… with him.
---
It was exactly 8:30 AM when she arrived at the station.
Platform 9 looked the same. Maybe a little rustier. The same tea stall was still there, still burning the toast. The same pigeon was probably still plotting its next poop attack. But the bench—their bench—looked untouched by time. Like it had been waiting too.
She approached it cautiously, like it might vanish if she got too close.
And there, tucked beneath it, wrapped in an old plastic bag sealed with stubborn tape, was something that made her heart skip.
Shyam's notebook.
She stared at it like it might explode in her hands.
It hadn't moved. No one had taken it. No one cared enough to notice. It was just there, waiting—just like him.
She sat down slowly, fingers trembling as she opened it.
Page 1:
> "I liked her. The kind of 'like' that sits in your chest and quietly hopes it's not temporary."
Page 8:
> "She asked me once if I believed in fate. I said yes. What I meant was: I believe in her."
Page 27:
> "She didn't come today. My coffee didn't taste the same. Neither did the air."
Page 44:
> "She got married. I found out by accident. Is it weird that I hope she's happy and also not?"
Page 63:
> "I think I was just a layover. A human version of a train station. People pause, rest, and then leave."
The tears came silently, sliding down her cheeks as she read. His handwriting got messier with each page, more desperate, more raw. Some pages had scribbles, some had ink smudged like water had fallen—tears, maybe.
Page 91:
> "If I see her again, I won't ask questions. I'll just ask her to sit. Just once more."
She closed the book, pressing it against her chest, and for the first time in months—maybe years—Raitha cried like the world was ending.
Because for Shyam… it had.
---
She asked around the station. The old tea seller remembered him—called him "the quiet writer boy."
"He stopped coming a while back," he said. "Sad fellow. Always looked like he was waiting for a ghost."
Raitha smiled weakly. "Do you know where he went?"
The man hesitated. "There was talk. Some say he moved. Others say… he jumped."
The words hit her like a slap. "Jumped?"
"Building not far from here. No one's sure. He left no note, just… vanished."
Her chest constricted. She needed more. She needed to know.
After hours of desperate searching, someone finally told her.
A neighbor. A landlord. A closed room and a locked desk.
The landlord pulled out a single page, yellowed and folded too many times.
> "Why did everyone… everything I loved… betray me?"
No name. No date. Just those words.
And in the corner, barely visible in fading ink:
"8:48"
---
That night, Raitha returned to the station.
Same bench. Same time.
She sat alone, holding his notebook in one hand, the last note in the other.
The 8:48 train rushed past, wind whipping her hair.
She didn't look at it.
Didn't move.
Didn't breathe for a second.
Because the world had just stopped.
---
Chapter 4: The Final Stop
The next morning, she brought flowers.
Not the kind from fancy shops wrapped in glittery paper, but the kind you find from a roadside vendor—real, messy, and honest. The kind Shyam would've liked. The kind that didn't pretend.
She placed them gently on the bench. The same one where laughter once lived. Where silences once said everything.
She didn't speak. Not yet. Just sat.
Watching.
Waiting.
Hoping for a ghost that wouldn't come.
---
That day, Raitha didn't board the train. She let it pass. And the next day. And the next. She became the new fixture at the platform. Some people assumed she was waiting for someone. Others avoided the bench entirely—because something about her presence felt like grief made flesh.
Every day at 8:48, she'd sit with the notebook in her lap, reading pieces of Shyam's soul, one page at a time.
It became her religion.
---
There was one page she never touched before. Folded twice. Tucked in the back cover. Like he hadn't wanted her to see it unless he was gone.
When she finally opened it, her hands were shaking.
> "Dear Raitha,
I never asked you to stay, because I didn't want to become another reason for you to feel trapped. You were meant to fly, not rot beside someone broken like me.
But if there's a universe where we both sit on that bench at 8:48 and smile without carrying our pasts like chains…
…I hope we meet there someday.
Until then, I'll keep this seat warm.
—Shyam"
She broke down right there. Sobs loud enough to silence the crowd. For once, the world paused for her.
---
The funeral wasn't official. There was no grave. No ashes she could scatter. Just… an absence. A painful one.
So Raitha made her own ritual.
She printed all his writings, bound them into a single copy. On the front, she wrote:
"Train to Time 8:48 — A Love Letter to Silence"
She placed it on the bench, under the flowers. For anyone who sat there next. For anyone who felt a little too much and said a little too late.
---
Weeks passed.
Then one day, a child sat on the bench, beside the book. She picked it up and asked her mother, "What's this?"
The woman smiled softly. "A story. About two people who almost made it."
The child frowned. "That's sad."
The woman nodded. "Yeah. But beautiful, too."
---
Raitha eventually left the city.
Not because she was healed. Not because she was done grieving. But because she knew the station would always hold too much of her. Of him.
Before she left, she carved something under the bench, just out of sight.
> "For the ones who waited. For the ones who stayed. For the ones who loved in silence."
She didn't need anything more.
She didn't need closure. Closure is just a myth people sell to feel better about loss.
She had truth.
And heartbreak.
And memory.
And love—burnt out, but real.
---
EPILOGUE
Years later, a new couple sat on that bench.
Laughing. Holding hands.
They saw the book. Opened it. Read a few lines.
The girl whispered, "This is beautiful."
The boy nodded. "It's sad."
They stayed a while longer. And when the 8:48 train came, they didn't get on.
They just… sat.
Just like he and she once did.
Just like love always does.
Waiting.