Special passengers

Under cover of night, a battered Route 444 Bus swayed along a fog-shrouded street. The whole world seemed to have only three sources of light left: the faintly yellow lights inside the bus, the streetlight dimly visible through the fog ahead that marked the next stop, and... the full moon, still blood-red despite the darkness and mist veiling it.

Inside the rust-covered bus, eight passengers sat scattered throughout, none of them seeming to be traveling together.

Near the rear door, a boy of fifteen or sixteen in pajamas and glasses fidgeted in his seat, undisguised terror mixed into his nervous expression. It was not because he was sitting in a priority seat, but because he had inexplicably appeared on this eerie bus, with a strange voice in his ears introducing this "game."

The boy only remembered hiding under his covers and secretly playing games until the early hours without his parents knowing. By the time he came to his senses, he was already sitting on this bus. His eyes still ached a little, and his empty hands still held the lingering sensation of his phone's heat.

"Maybe it's just a nightmare..." To the boy, the only reasonable explanation was that he had accidentally fallen asleep while gaming and then dreamed about an eerie bus.

"But this feels way too real." The boy turned toward the window. Even with the bus's lights, he could only faintly make out the silhouettes of buildings through the fog in the darkness. That sense of obscurity and the unknown made everything feel even eerier.

His gaze returned to the bus's interior. He was sitting on the left side, with seven other passengers scattered in front of and behind him.

Directly ahead of him sat a girl with dreadlocks. She did not necessarily look older than him, but she reeked of alcohol and cigarettes, and her clothes looked as though she had just finished a night out in the big city.

In the row of seats on the right, an old woman with white hair sat diagonally ahead of him. She kept staring out the window, where her reflection revealed a wrinkled, expressionless face.

Another passenger sat in front of the old woman. From that distance, the boy could only tell by the passenger's school uniform that this was another student. The uniform even looked very similar to his own school's, except that it was completely soaked.

The boy in pajamas twisted around for another look, and his eyes met those of a tall, burly man sitting a short distance behind him. The man's imposing build and stern expression frightened him a little.

Beside that burly man sat a woman in a white cheongsam. She was young, with a somewhat pale face and strikingly heavy makeup. A smile lingered at the corners of her mouth, but her eyes seemed unfocused as she stared straight ahead.

Farther back on the right sat a middle-aged man in a rumpled suit. His face was flushed red and he hiccupped drunkenly, like a busy office worker who had only just finished entertaining clients in the early hours.

The boy's gaze slowly fell on the very last row. A moment later, he jerked his eyes away and lowered his head as though he had seen a ghost, inwardly complaining over and over about why something so terrifying would appear in his dream.

Though he had only glanced at her, it was unmistakably a bride dressed in red wedding robes, her head covered by a bridal veil.

If that had been all, the boy would merely have marveled at how strange the passengers were. But the bride sitting silently in the last row had a horrifying hole in her chest!

She was no ordinary bride. She was a terrifying ghost bride!

"Hey!"

In the end, the boy did not dare look back again. Even as he reassured himself that this was a nightmare brought on by playing too many horror games, he could not help feeling afraid. The image of blood flowing from the hole in the ghost bride's chest still rose in his mind. He could even imagine it spreading forward from the last row of the bus. His own imagination frightened him so badly that his breathing grew rapid.

"Hey!" The hushed, insistent voice reached his ears again. "You suddenly appeared on this bus too, didn't you?"

The voice finally snapped him out of his terrifying imaginings. It came from the nightclub girl sitting directly ahead of him. She kept her voice very low and never once turned to look at him.

"You..."

"I saw you in the rearview mirror above the driver. You were looking around in a panic just now, weren't you?" The girl ahead of him had indeed lifted her head slightly and was looking at the mirror some distance away, above the driver's seat. "Unfortunately, that mirror's a little crooked. I can't see the last row from this angle. All I can see are the three fairly normal-looking passengers behind you."

The boy tried looking at the little rearview mirror up front too, but even with his glasses, he could not see it clearly.

"What did you see just now?" The girl lowered her voice further. "I saw you suddenly look really scared."

"N-nothing." The boy adjusted his glasses and shook his head. "I'm just dreaming anyway. Once I wake up, I'll..."

"Get a grip!" The girl's voice rose despite herself, her tone irritated. "Do you think I'm just some imaginary person in your dream? Well, sorry, but my mind couldn't be clearer!"

"I don't know." The boy lowered his head, trying to avoid reality.

"You have no idea what's going on!" The girl sighed. "Haven't you watched the news? Lots of people have been going missing in cities everywhere lately. Men, women, old people, kids... if you follow the relevant topics, you'll find that people disappear almost every day."

"...I think I've heard about that." Rumors connected to the keyword "missing" did surface in the boy's mind, but even when he went online, he usually only paid attention to gaming and entertainment. Sneaking around his parents to use his phone was hard enough. How could he spare any attention for news like that? At most, he had heard a little from the living room television during meals.

"Could those missing people have gone through the same thing as us? Or do our parents and friends already consider us missing right now? Is it really like that voice said earlier-that we can only go home if we survive forty-eight hours in this game?" A trace of panic gradually crept into the girl's voice. "Is this really just a game? What's that nightmare world the voice mentioned? And what are the special passengers on this bus?"

"And what exactly did you see when you looked back just now? A special passenger?"

With every sentence the girl spoke, the image of the ghost bride that the boy was desperately trying to forget grew clearer. The more she pressed him, the more vividly he could imagine the ghost bride rising from the last row and walking toward them step by step, trailing blood!

"I..."

"To be precise, apart from the three of us, all the other passengers might be special passengers." An unfamiliar, somewhat deep voice came from behind them.

The girl glanced up at the rearview mirror. The speaker was the tall, burly man beside the White Qipao. Compared to his bulk, the bus seat looked rather cramped. Worse, he was pressing himself against the window, seemingly doing everything he could to get away from the motionless White Qipao beside him. It left the big man looking extremely uncomfortable in his seat.

Despite the White Qipao's pretty face and carefully applied makeup, the burly man kept desperately pressing against the window on his left, as though a venomous monster were sitting beside him. He looked as if he would have jumped out had the window glass not been in the way.

"When we entered this game or whatever, that voice said we were safe on the bus, and that we had twenty minutes to talk and find companions before the game officially started, right?" The burly man in the back seemed to gather his thoughts. "How could any ordinary person keep quiet after something like this happened? Or rather, how could anyone who can sit quietly after something this horrifying, in a place this creepy, possibly be normal?"

"Is it really just the three of us?" Besides the three of them who had now spoken, the girl could see several others in the rearview mirror: the soaking-wet boy at the very front whose face she could not make out, the old woman on the right staring out the window, the White Qipao beside the burly man, and the middle-aged man in the rumpled suit farther back on the right.

As for the bus's last row, although the girl could not see it in the mirror, she felt that the boy behind her might have seen something.

"But... what's so special about the special passengers?" Though she asked nervously, the girl knew the others did not know much either.

"I don't know any more than you do, but as for special passengers..." The man behind them seemed to deliberate for a moment, his eyes darting repeatedly toward the White Qipao beside him, his tone cautious. "Have you ever seen something with a face and body more or less like a human's, but whose hands are just two thin sheets of paper, with fingernails painted on in red watercolor?"

Pressed against the window, the man carefully extended his left hand to point at the White Qipao beside him. The movement was tiny, but his fingers were working hard to convey something.

"..."

In the rearview mirror, the White Qipao beside him still wore that smile, her eyes still unfocused as she stared straight ahead. Yet her pale, heavily made-up face suddenly seemed sinister and terrifying.

Meanwhile, Su Bai sat quietly in his seat at the very front of the bus, enduring the discomfort of being soaked all over. Perhaps he had grown used to the nightmare world's torments. Compared with how lost he had felt in the real world earlier, this Route 444 Last Bus and the atmosphere of the nightmare world around it actually made him feel more at ease.

As he listened carefully to the three passengers behind him boldly talking aloud, he began to consider how good his chances were of clearing the game again.