The Empty Seat on the Last Bus

Lao Zhou has driven the last 307 bus for eleven years.

It is an old diesel, the steering wheel heavier than his own age. Every night at 23:40 it leaves the station, loops seven stops, ends at Huaishu Street, then runs empty back to the depot. On the night shift he is the only one on the route, driver and conductor both.

Huaishu Street stop was torn down two years ago for the subway. The sign was pulled out, the concrete steps scraped flat; now it is a fenced construction site that goes black and clammy at night. Yet every time the last bus rounds that bend, Lao Zhou still sees her in the mirror — a red coat, a cloth bundle, old cotton shoes — walking out of the site as if from the old platform, standing by the door, dropping a coin just like before.

She never speaks. She takes the window seat in the last row, bundle on her lap, watching the dark. At the terminus the other passengers leave; she stays. When Lao Zhou locks up and turns back, the seat is empty, a thin film of condensation on the glass, as if someone had just breathed there.

The first few years he was afraid. Later he was not. He looked into it: the last household to move out before the demolition was a young woman named Shen, a seamstress in the city who took the 307 home every weekend to see her mother. After her mother died she kept coming for a while, then stopped. Some said they saw her standing by the site, as if she could not find the door.

Lao Zhou told no one. He simply stopped announcing “Huaishu Street” — the stop was gone — but he kept the last window seat empty, never letting anyone sit there. One snowy winter night, after his shift, he passed the site and found the half-buried old signpost, a red string tied to the pole, swaying gently in the wind.

He stood a while, then switched off the little cabin light.