For quite some time in 'A Way Station' it's not made explicitly clear that the film is a melodrama. We just have Ji-ah (played by Kim Jae-kyung) acting the role of an unremarkable salarywoman, in an oddly chaste-seeming relationship with her office boyfriend Seok-jin (played by Shin Ji-hoon). It's only over the course of a fairly awkward birthday dinner that we find out the horrible truth behind Ji-ah's medical condition, as she mulls over how to spend the rest of her limited time.