The Last Bus

Lin Yuan first noticed the woman on a rainy Wednesday.

"Noticed" isn't quite right, because she had been getting on this bus every night. Route 37, the last run, departing the train station at 11:40 PM, winding through half the old district and reaching the terminal well past midnight. Lin Yuan had driven this route for three years. He knew every regular, every one-off passenger. But this woman—he couldn't pinpoint when she started appearing. It was as if one night she was simply there.

She always boarded at Tianfu Road. She was the only person waiting at that stop. The streetlight had been broken for half a year and no one had fixed it. She stood in the dark, materializing only when the headlights swept across her.

She tapped her card, walked to the back, always the third row from the back, window seat. Always carrying a cloth bag, clutched tight, like she was afraid someone would take it.

Lin Yuan had glanced at her in the rearview mirror a few times. Early forties, short hair, neatly dressed. Not homeless, but wearing something on her face that said she'd already given up. In eight years at the bus company he had seen every kind of passenger: mothers taking sick children to the hospital, waitresses just off shift, middle-aged men drunk beyond recognition. Everyone had a destination. This woman didn't look like she did.

"Tianfu Road."

After three nights, Lin Yuan turned off the automated announcement and called the stop himself. He wasn't sure why. No one else got on or off there. The recorded voice felt like overkill.

She gave a small nod each time. A kind of thank-you. Nothing more.

Things changed on a Friday, the fourth week.

It was pouring. The wipers couldn't keep up even at full speed. Lin Yuan slowed to thirty. He pulled over at Tianfu Road and opened the door.

She got on. But she didn't tap her card.

Rain blew through the open door, soaking the first two rows. She stood in front of the card reader and pressed her card against it—"Insufficient balance."

She tried again.

"Driver," she said, her voice so low it barely cut through the rain, "can I make it up tomorrow."

It was the first time she had spoken to him. Lin Yuan closed the door, shifted into gear, and pulled out.

"Go ahead and sit."

He watched in the rearview mirror as she walked to the third row from the back, sat down, and placed the cloth bag on her lap. When the rain stopped, a layer of fog settled on the windows, blurring her outline.

"What's in the bag," Lin Yuan said, breaking the silence. "You hold onto it every night. What's the treasure."

A silence of maybe five seconds.

"My son's."

Lin Yuan didn't ask anything else.

At the terminal, everyone got off. She was last. Before leaving, she paused by the card reader.

"Driver," she said, "you drive the last run every night. Be careful going home."

Then she stepped off. Lin Yuan watched her in the rearview mirror. Her back faded into the night. Beneath the dim streetlights on Tianfu Road, she walked fast—but not like she had anywhere to go.

She didn't show up the next night.

Or the night after.

On the fourth night, after his shift, Lin Yuan didn't go straight home. He parked the bus at the depot and searched for missing-person notices in the old district. Half an hour later, he found something in the local news from a week prior: a woman living alone in an apartment on Tianfu Road had been found dead. Cause of death: sudden cardiac arrest. The article included a blurred photo. Short hair.

He turned off his phone and started the engine.

That night, Route 37 underwent a schedule adjustment. Tianfu Road station was permanently removed.

But every time Lin Yuan drives past that intersection, he still slows down. Whoever's in the passenger seat always asks what he's looking at. Nothing, he says.

He just can't shake the feeling that in the rearview mirror, the third row from the back, someone is still sitting there.