On the night his life completely flipped, Kai encountered the phantom train.
He wandered to a hill outside the city, after the cacophony of urban life—dejected, directionless. At the abandoned platform of an old observatory, the train appeared without warning.
A space‑train cloaked in stardust, silent as it slid in—Philosophia.
Legend said it only came at night. Only those who had lost their dreams could find its doors. Kai barely remembered the whisper of that tale.
Just days earlier, his institute shut down. His atmospheric‑circulation model for his planet was cancelled as “useless future‑prediction.” The title, the job, the dream—crumbling with noise. The man who once chased celestial truths was rendered powerless by terrestrial politics.
The train’s doors opened. Inside, no fanfare—just pale silver lights in the carriage.
Kai stepped aboard as though drawn in.
The train began moving, without any announcement. The window revealed a sea of stars, the deep expanse of space flowing past.
Within the cars, a handful of passengers sat. Each spoke softly—for themselves, or to the void—speaking their pasts.
“I was a pianist. Then I lost my hearing, and with it, everything I had.”
“I entered politics. But it was easier to lose my beliefs than to change humanity.”
“I believed in love. But she chose stability over the dream‑chaser that I was.”
They each held a story of dream, failure, the future given up.
Kai listened, quietly. He found a strange calm. Here no one mocked your dream. No “right” or “wrong.” Just fragments of thought drifting between stars.
After passing several star‑systems, the train entered one orbit.
“Next stop: Reyda star system. Some passengers will disembark here.”
The voice of the conductor echoed, the doors unlocked.
The planet below was a pale‑blue world, wrapped in wispy clouds and water. According to Kai’s research, its climate cycle mirrored Earth’s early years.
“This planet…”
He pressed his face to the window, sensing something stirring within.
It wasn’t his time that was lost, nor his title. It was him—the version who once gazed upward at the sky with bright eyes.
“Are you getting off?”
The woman beside him asked. She was, she said, a researcher of cosmic flora.
“Here there’s nothing yet. But precisely because of that, you can begin. From zero.”
The doors opened and the wind of a new world brushed in. Kai rose.
“Let’s go, then. To dream again.”
What lay beyond was a silver shore with no footprints. Two moons hung in the blue sky; the sea gently rippled.
Kai stood in that landscape.
There was no institute here. No budget or support. No team to prove theories. But there was the pulse of a grand cosmic system—and in his hands, the will to know.
“Alright… I’ll do it.”
As he looked up, he saw the Philosophia quietly depart.
In a window of the train, the silhouettes of fellow passengers glowed. Lost‑dreamers now riding the rails toward hope, bound for another star.
And Kai, too, took his first step on this new planet.
He would pursue celestial truth again. He would draw his dream’s continuation with his own hands.
