The Commute
Greta took the 6:47 train every morning for eight years.
Same carriage, third from the front. Same position, near the door but not too close. The commute to her office took forty-three minutes. She knew every station, every curve in the track, every slight delay.
The man appeared on a Wednesday in October.
He stood exactly where Greta usually stood, in her spot, wearing a grey suit. When the train arrived, he didn’t move. Greta had to stand beside him, slightly to the left, her rhythm disrupted.
The next morning, he was there again. Same position. Same grey suit.
“Excuse me,” Greta said. “Could you move slightly? I usually stand here.”
The man didn’t respond. Didn’t acknowledge her at all.
On Friday, Greta arrived ten minutes early. The platform was nearly empty. He was already there, standing in her exact spot.
Greta moved to the side, irritated.
On the train, she watched him. He never moved. Never checked his phone, never read a newspaper. Just stood, facing forward, hands at his sides. When the train stopped at stations, he didn’t shift his weight or adjust his position. Perfectly still.
“Do you take this train every day?” Greta asked.
No response.
“I’ve been taking this train for eight years. I’ve never seen you before.”
Nothing.
At her stop, Greta exited. She glanced back through the window. The man remained in position, still as a photograph.
Over the following weeks, the man appeared every morning. Always in Greta’s spot. Always perfectly still. She began arriving earlier and earlier, trying to claim her position before he appeared. But no matter how early she arrived, the man was there.
“There’s someone standing in my spot,” she complained to her colleague, Miller.
“Your spot?”
“The place I always stand. This man takes it every day.”
“So stand somewhere else.”
“But it’s my spot. I’ve stood there for eight years.”
Miller looked at her strangely. “Does it really matter?”
It did matter. Greta’s entire routine was calibrated around that position. The exact spot where she could see the station displays, where the door opened most conveniently, where she had just enough personal space. Standing elsewhere felt wrong, disorienting.
She started documenting the man. Photographing him surreptitiously. But in every photo, he appeared blurred, indistinct, as if he was moving even though he stood perfectly still.
One morning, Greta spoke to him again. “Who are you? Why do you always stand here?”
The man’s head turned slightly. Not towards her, but as if noticing something she couldn’t see.
“Can you hear me?” Greta asked.
She stood close to him, studying his face. Ordinary features. Forgettable. But something about his expression was off. Distant. As if he was looking at something very far away.
At the third stop, an elderly woman boarded. She moved towards the centre pole, towards the spot where the man stood. She walked directly into him—through him—and grasped the pole, completely unaware.
The man didn’t react. He remained in position, now occupying the same physical space as the woman.
A profound sense of displacement washed over Greta.
She watched as other passengers moved through the carriage, passing through the man as if he wasn’t there. Because to them, he wasn’t.
Only Greta could see him.
That evening, she researched the train line’s history. She found an article from nine years ago. A man had fallen onto the tracks at her station. It was an accident, not suicide. He’d been waiting for the 6:47 train, standing too close to the edge. Someone’s bag had knocked him forward.
The article included a photo. The same face. The same grey suit.
His name had been Nakamura. He’d been a salaryman, thirty-eight years old. He’d taken the 6:47 train every morning.
Greta took some time off work. She wasn’t feeling too well.
After two weeks, the man was still there, in her spot. But now he was looking at her. Directly at her.
“I’m sorry,” Greta said, though she didn’t know what she was apologising for.
The man raised one hand. A gesture—follow me.
On the train, he moved through the carriage. Greta followed, watching as he passed through other passengers. He stopped at a particular spot near the rear door.
“Here?” Greta asked.
The man nodded.
Greta stood in the new position. It felt wrong at first. The angle was different. The door further away. But gradually, she adjusted. The view was actually better. The crowd less dense.
The man remained beside her, no longer occupying her old spot. He stood in this new position, and Greta realised—this must have been where he’d stood. His spot. The place he’d occupied before he died.
“You wanted me to stand here,” Greta said. “In your place.”
The man’s expression didn’t change. But somehow Greta understood. He’d been waiting for someone to see him. Someone to stand in his spot. Someone to continue the routine he could no longer complete.
“What happens now?” she asked.
The man began to fade.
“Wait,” Greta said. “I don’t understand.”
But the man was gone, and Greta stood alone in the crowded carriage, in a spot that wasn’t hers, completing someone else’s commute.
She continued taking the 6:47 train. She stood in the new position, the one the man had shown her. Her old spot remained empty.
Weeks passed. Then months. The routine became natural. Greta stopped thinking about the man, about the strangeness of it all. She rode the train to work, standing in a dead man’s spot, completing a dead man’s commute. She would do this for the rest of her working life, she realised. Not because she had to, but because the routine demanded it.
Because some positions, once taken, can never be abandoned.
Because the city runs on rhythms deeper than its inhabitants understand.
Because every commute is a ritual, and every ritual requires participants.
The train moved through the morning darkness, carrying the living and the dead to destinations they’d never truly chosen, following paths laid down long before they were born.
And Greta stood in her new spot, which was really an old spot, which would one day be someone else’s spot, in an endless chain of commuters replacing each other, none of them quite sure why they stood where they stood, or who had stood there before.
The train reached her station. Greta exited, as she did every morning.
Behind her, the spot she’d vacated remained empty for exactly seven seconds.
Then someone else took it, continuing the journey.
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