Nine passengers

"When we entered the game, that voice said that if the number of passengers on the bus reached ten or more, we'd fail the game, and all of us would be trapped in this godforsaken place forever?" Although the White Qipao beside the tall, burly man was a spine-chilling special passenger, there was no trace of panic in his voice. Instead, it gave the two underage kids a sense of reassurance.

"Yes." Though young, the girl had been calmer than the boy all along.

"Right now, there are... seven passengers on this bus, including us?"

"Maybe eight." The girl glanced at the rearview mirror. "The guy behind me looked back earlier. He seemed to see something in the last row."

The girl tilted her head slightly, as if she wanted to look back but was afraid to.

"The twenty minutes probably aren't up yet. If you want to look, you'd better do it before the game starts." As the burly man said this, he seemed to have some ideas of his own.

Without any further prompting, the girl and the burly man turned, one after the other, to look at the last row of the Route 444 bus.

A dazzling splash of vivid red sat quietly in the last row. It was a bride in red, sitting upright and motionless. Strange silver bells hung from the corners of her exquisite bridal veil, beneath which the outline of her phoenix crown was faintly visible. The light inside the bus was bright enough to reveal the enormous hole in her chest. The wound had stained the surrounding fabric a dark red that was almost black, yet blood still flowed from the hole, running over her neatly folded hands and continuing downward.

A bride sitting on a bus with a wound like that... could hardly be a living human.

"So that's what they mean by special passengers?" the girl murmured, looking into the eyes of the boy behind her for the first time. "Was that red thing what you saw earlier?"

"Yes." The boy knew what they had seen without turning around.

"Don't get too nervous." Though the man in the back was in the worst position, he still tried to comfort the two kids, who probably hadn't even finished high school. "If they're passengers, they have to get off sometime. Maybe these special passengers will get off when the bus reaches the next stop."

"What if they don't? There are already eight passengers on this bus. If two more get on at the next stop, that'll make ten, and then we'll be fi-" The girl was still worried.

"Then we'll get off." The man cut her off, his voice firm. "Once we get off, the passenger-count rule won't apply to us anymore."

But that also meant leaving the relatively safe bus to face the unknown world shrouded in fog outside.

All three knew this, but none of them brought it up.

"My name's Qin Ge. Ge, as in weapons." The man in the back suddenly introduced himself. "The elders always say that meeting someone means fate brought you together. That's especially true when we meet in a place like this. I'd feel regretful if I didn't at least tell you my name."

"Wan Shasha." Reflected in the window was the girl's youthful face, with eye makeup and black lipstick. After another glance at Qin Ge and the boy, she turned back around, continuing to watch the bus through the rearview mirror. "I don't really have any regrets. I don't have any family around. Even if I disappeared, no one would look for me."

"What about you?" Wan Shasha tapped the window to get the boy's attention. "Hey, what's your name?"

The boy seemed the most dazed of the three. Only after hearing the tapping did he answer, as though he had just woken up. "Oh, I'm Zhang Yibu. Yibu, as in taking things one step at a time."

"High school student?"

"Yeah." Zhang Yibu nodded. "First year."

"That must be nice." There was genuine envy in Wan Shasha's voice.

"Attention, players. The game has officially begun. Every choice you make will affect the course of the game. Enjoy."

Almost the very next second after the three exchanged names, that same strange, mocking voice rang in every player's ears again, announcing the official end of the newcomers' twenty minutes of free time.

As if to lend a sense of ceremony to the start of the game, the Route 444 bus, which had been trundling slowly along, suddenly shifted gears with a creak and picked up noticeable speed.

"Next stop, Community Hospital."

It wasn't the automated stop announcement they had imagined. Instead, a hoarse voice announced the next stop, coming from the driver's seat. Naturally, the speaker was the driver of the Route 444 Last Bus.

Though Su Bai, seated in the front row, couldn't make out the reflection in the rearview mirror, he only had to tilt his head slightly to see the driver. The figure in the driver's seat matched his memory: a man as gaunt as a dead tree, with extremely pale skin and a face whose age was impossible to judge.

Although the driver of the Route 444 Last Bus was a very unusual figure, in Su Bai's memory, he seemed to do nothing except announce the stops. He had no positive or negative effect on either the novice players or the special passengers, refused to communicate with any passenger, and certainly never initiated a conversation.

Perhaps Su Bai had been staring too intently, practically trying to bore a hole into the back of the driver's head. In the blink of an eye, the driver, who had been focused on the road, suddenly twisted his head around. His bloodless face wore an eerie grin that stretched almost to his ears, and his tiny eyes narrowed into slits.

Su Bai wasn't afraid, merely a little surprised by the driver's sudden interaction.

What surprised him even more was that the driver froze when their eyes met. The corners of his ever-smiling mouth stiffened and sagged, and his already tiny eyes widened as though he had seen a ghost. He stared at Su Bai in a very strange way.

Seeing fear on the driver's face, Su Bai wondered whether he had imagined it. But when he looked again, the driver had already twisted his head back around.

How could those eerie things be afraid of humans?

No, that wasn't right.

Su Bai recalled the driver's gaze. Rather than saying the driver had looked at him in fear, it would be more accurate to say he had been staring at something beside or behind him.

What had he seen?

"We've arrived at Community Hospital." The driver's hoarse voice rang out again, but this time it wasn't as calm as before. He sounded flustered instead. "Passengers getting off at Community Hospital... sorry... please use the rear door."

Hearing his tone, Su Bai couldn't help wondering whether the cold, indifferent driver in his memory had ever been... this polite.

After the announcement, the driver pulled the handbrake, and the Route 444 bus stopped somewhere. On the equally battered electronic display above the rearview mirror, with its edges chipped and corners missing, the incomplete words "Community Hospital Stop" appeared, flickering in and out.

The players instinctively looked through the windows on the right. They had expected to see buildings associated with a hospital, but all they could see was fog. Compared with the "scenery" along the way, the only additions outside the windows were a streetlight piercing the mist, its pole, and a blurry sign beside it.

After a ding, the bus's front and rear doors creaked open.

The trio, too afraid to move, held their breath nervously. More than wondering whether the special passengers already aboard would get off, they were probably worried that a whole soccer team with missing arms and legs would charge onto the bus the moment the doors opened.

Several minutes passed in the oppressive gloom. Just as everyone thought this stop would bring no new passengers, sobbing sounded outside, drawing steadily closer. It wasn't the long, mournful crying of a horror movie. It sounded more like an ordinary person faced with some inexplicable heartbreak, weeping and sobbing in waves. Even the trio inside the bus was affected, painful memories surfacing uncontrollably in their minds.

Wan Shasha's eyes reddened almost instantly.

All sorts of jumbled memories began surfacing in Su Bai's mind as well, but he wasn't particularly sad. Perhaps he had shed all the tears of his lifetime before ever encountering the nightmare world.

The sobbing soon reached the bus, and a figure in a white nurse's uniform and cap boarded without a sound. The nurse wore no shoes, leaving muddy footprints with every step. Her crying continued to echo through the bus. Though it wasn't especially piercing, it was deeply unpleasant to hear.

"Quiet!" The driver's impatient warning came from the front. He paused, then added, "Please don't disturb the passengers who are resting."

The crying stopped abruptly, and the players who had sunk into sorrow slowly shook off its influence.

The doors closed behind the new passenger. The nurse had stopped crying after the driver's warning, but she remained where she was instead of moving farther down the aisle. From her movements, she seemed to be planning to sit in the first row, beside Su Bai.

"Move along. Ahem, would the passenger who just boarded please move farther inside? Don't crowd the doorway, and don't disturb the other passengers' rest." A second warning came from the driver's seat.

Crowd?

Wan Shasha resisted the urge to look around. A bus with only eight... no, nine passengers could hardly be considered crowded, could it? The trio, not daring to move, watched the new passenger shuffle toward the back in her filthy nurse's uniform. Though she had stopped crying, her hair was disheveled beneath her cap, and blood was smeared over her right ear and neck. Her face was obscured by her tangled hair, with only faint traces of blood visible on her cheeks.

The nurse, who looked nothing like a living person, dragged her feet to a stop beside Zhang Yibu. Finally, she sat quietly in the single priority seat on the right, with only the aisle separating them.

The driver, who had issued two warnings, checked the new passenger's movements in the rearview mirror, then swept his gaze over Su Bai's reflection with apparent casualness.

"Next stop, Commercial Street."

The Route 444 Last Bus now carried nine passengers.