Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Part 1

Bluish light painted the usually white tiles on the walls a freakish otherworldly colour, conveying the changing feeling the environment had, a stark contrast between day and night. Usually it was bustling with life, barely a second of silence left in the air as people from all backgrounds crossed the polished tiled floor. Some rushing, some leisurely idling along, following the stream of people. During the small hours of the night the flocks of travellers and commuters became more sparse the farther apart the trains arrived and departed. It was almost time for the last one of the current day to stop behind the glass partitions that reflected the eerie lighting perfectly. Even the cleaners had already left, a job well done - home to whatever made their life worth living. A pair of loving arms, the soft hair of a child that wanted to stay up, a warm meal accompanied by a refreshing drink.

The platform began to fill with a few errand souls that looked worse for wear, a days worth of working, fighting, coping, surviving drawn across their tired faces. They had made it, another day brought behind them in their quest to fulfil whatever dreams and aspirations filled them with the necessary drive to get up and do it all over again the next day.

"지금 열차가 들어오고 있습니다. (The train is now arriving.)" - the voice that announced the train's arrival cut through the thick air of tiredness and slight melancholy with its recorded politeness. It seemed way too cheerful and not just one of the patrons waiting flinched visibly at the usual announcer - it had no place at this time of day.

The rush of the approaching train overshadowed the precarious moment and the shuffling of feet commenced after the gleaming doors had opened, swallowing the last passengers within its metal body. All of the scattered customers had boarded the train and only one got off, shoes clicking against the concrete with a confident step onto the platform. It seemed strange, the station was usually more used to depart at the end of a day, not located centrally and not many apartments nearby. It drew people out, not in.

Still, against the expected drag into the carriage, the man stood against the norm. Not only in his step into the otherwise deserted station, but also through his sheer being. The suit pressed too neatly for the end of a working day, the hair still too perfectly in place, not messed up by frustrated hands. The shoes still shone to perfection, not one speck of dirt or a single crease marred his appearance. He looked out of place, as if he'd stepped out of another time and into this apparently random weekday night in Seoul.

Only it wasn't random at all. Where at times he found them by sheer luck, most times he knew where they would settle to dwell on their mistakes, as big or small as they might be. People ranging from newly indebted to those in way over their own heads. Individuals brand spanking new on the radars of loan sharks, collection agencies and gangs mingled with those unfortunately more than familiar faces; bruises, cuts and other wounds their own mark as to what they owed.

This time though, he had been sent with a clear purpose, a tip encoded in their own cryptic language had reached him earlier - to stop by this particular station as the last of his night. And as always, his superiors had been correct, there was in fact one other person that had not boarded the last train, apparently lost in their own spiralling thoughts as their head rested on skinny knees pulled up onto the steel bench in front of them.

As he stepped closer, careful as not to approach too aggressively, the harsh lighting reflected off shiny hair like a blue tinted halo. The shine came not from expensive treatment, but through days, possibly weeks, of not being washed properly. It fell around the small woman's head like a veil, overgrown bangs obscuring the focus of her eyes from his own perceptive gaze. Even if she had not been the only person left at the station, she would have stood out to him even without the description of his employers. The hole in the sleeve of the dark green sweater that she toyed with absently, the faded colour of her once black jeans, one knee stained in mud as if she had fallen. The sneakers that had clearly seen better days and were equally smeared with drying mud that she had picked at at some point, but had clearly given up on saving. If not for the incessant mumbling, she could still have passed as a disgruntled or sad young college student. The syllables making her lips move made no sense from his distance and it seemed she had not noticed him yet, as she had no qualms voicing her sorrows like a softly spoken prayer.