The train rattled along the tracks, fluorescent lights flickering like nervous eyes. Outside, the city blurred into streaks of rain-stained neon, dissolving into color without shape or meaning. Baeksan's gaze wasn't on the view—it hadn't been on much of anything for months.
The seat seemed to swallow him whole, his spine curved inward, shoulders hunched as if bracing for a blow that might never come. He barely registered the few other passengers—the muffled coughs, the soft crackle of newspapers turning.
Except for him.
An old man sat two rows across, hands folded neatly over the head of a cane. His hair was silver-white like his own, but full, untouched by the frailty of age. His posture was ramrod straight—not the stiffness of pain, but the discipline of someone who'd spent a lifetime standing tall.
When their eyes met in the reflection of the darkened glass, he didn't look away.
At the next stop, the train lurched, brakes screeching against steel. Without a word, the old man rose fluidly and crossed the narrow aisle. He sat directly opposite of him, knees brushing mine.
"Young man," he said. His voice was calm, gentle, yet it cut through the air like a taut wire ready to snap. "If you woke tomorrow without your dominant arm… what's the first thing you'd do?"
Baeksan stared at him. The rumble of the train, the faint hiss of the doors, even the rain-streaked city outside—all of it seemed to fade.
"…What?"
"Not what you'd feel. What you'd do." The old man's gaze was steady, as though this were the most natural opening to a conversation. "No thinking. First action. Answer this old man's question."
Baeksan's mouth opened, then closed. "I… don't know."
"You're thinking about it wrong," the man said, leaning forward. "Your body will still want to move the way it did before and reach for a cup with a hand that isn't there. Slice vegetables with a knife you can't hold. Your nerves will scream at a limb that's gone. So I ask again—what's your first action?"
Baeksan stared at the floor. The rumble of the train pressed into the silence between them. "…I'd tie up my sleeve," he said at last. "So I don't… keep trying to use it."
The old man's mouth curved—not warmly, but like he'd just solved a puzzle only he had been working on. "Damage control. Interesting. Most people talk about learning to write or feed themselves. You think of stopping yourself from making mistakes."
?
Baeksan wanted to ask What does that mean? but the words caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, heavy as wet cloth.
The train began to slow. The man rose with the same quiet precision he had sat down with. "One more thing." His voice dropped low, the rumble nearly drowned by the squeal of the brakes. "The first mistake people make when they lose a part of themselves… is assuming they're still whole."
The doors opened. In the blink of a moment, he was gone—absorbed into the blur of coats and umbrellas on the platform, leaving Baeksan with nothing but the damp, metallic smell of rain-soaked air and the echo of his question clinging to the inside of his skull.
That night, sleep never came.
The week crawled by like an animal with a broken spine.
Work, commute, eat, sleep—the pattern repeated, but without any true rhythm. His body moved through the necessary motions, but his mind kept looping back to that train car.
The old man and his question. The way those eyes had seemed to scrape the rust off his thoughts, leaving them raw and exposed.
Baeksan told himself it was nothing at first—a stray encounter, the kind a city swallowed every day. Harmless. Forgettable.
But each time he reached for his keys or lifted a cup, the thought slipped in. The quiet, impossible image of his own arm—absent. A sleeve pinned flat against nothing. The phantom ache of a limb he still possessed.
The more he imagined the loss, the more real it felt.
By Friday, he'd had enough of his own looping thoughts. Without ever quite admitting it to himself, he boarded the 8:43 again. Same carriage. Same seat.
And there he was.
The old man sat exactly where he had been the first time, as though the days in between had never passed. The same long grey coat. The same unyielding posture—
straight-backed, still, the kind of stillness that looked less like rest and more like endurance. As if he could sit through a hurricane without shifting an inch.
Baeksan told himself he wouldn't acknowledge him. He even turned his head toward the window, ready to let the train carry him past without incident. But when their eyes met, it was like stepping onto a sheet of ice—balance gone before he'd even thought about resisting.
The old man didn't smile. Just stood, crossed the narrow space between them, and lowered himself into the seat across from Baeksan.
No greeting. No small talk. Only the faint smell of rain-damp wool, and the weight of a gaze that made the carriage around them fade into irrelevance.
"Young man," he said, his voice low and steady, "If you lost your sense of smell entirely, how would you test if food was safe to eat?"
It has started.
The question was so absurd it nearly slipped into laughter. "What is this? Some kind of… puzzle?"
"Answer."
My eyes locked on his, trying to hide the sudden unease creeping up my spine. "Look at it? Maybe check for mold?"
He tilted his head slightly. "And when it's boiled in water, looks perfectly fine—no mold, no discoloration?"
Baeksan hesitated. "Then… I'd taste it. Just a small bite."
The old man's lips twitched—not quite a smile, more like the barest flicker of something knowing and cold. "That's what they all say. Until it's too late to adjust."
"Too late. You've poisoned yourself." His tone was flat—no threat, just cold fact.
"Okay, then what's the right—"
"Right?" He leaned in, the faint scent of dried herbs drifting from his coat. "There is no right. Only less wrong."
"The answer is heat. Boil. If the water's been rolling for ten minutes or more and the food still makes your tongue itch… spit it out. You live another day."
"That's… disturbingly specific," Baeksan muttered.
He didn't respond to that. "Every sense is a limb, boy. Lose one, and you discover what you've been leaning on without even noticing." His eyes sharpened. "Most don't realize how blind they are until the lights go out."
The train swayed beneath them. An announcement crackled overhead; station names blurred past. Baeksan tried to speak, but the words died in his throat.
He sat back, eyes narrowing slightly. "You have good instincts. But instincts rot if you never test them."
The doors hissed open. Without a word, he rose and stepped out into the crowd, never once glancing back.
This time, Baeksan didn't watch him disappear. Instead, his gaze stayed fixed on the empty space he left behind, his words echoing loud in my mind.
He didn't know why, but a growing certainty settled in him: these weren't random questions.
That old man wasn't telling him what to think.
He was teaching him how to survive.