Chapter 105: Returning Home

Sitting in the last row of the bus, the artificial leather seat beneath him emitted a faint damp mildew odor; the curtain tied to the window bore tiny patches of mold, and the bus looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years.

The glow of the streetlights slowly shifted forward, turned a corner, then receded backward as the bus pulled out of the West Suburb Station parking lot onto the road.

But after driving only a short distance, the bus stopped.

Ji Taimei instinctively lifted his head, gazing over the seats ahead, and saw the bus door open again as a tall middle-aged man clad in a straw rain cape, wearing a conical hat, and stepping in straw sandals climbed aboard.

“Where are you headed, sir?” the ticket seller asked in a sweet voice.

The man stood still without uttering a sound, yet the ticket seller seemed to have heard him reply, and asked next: “One-way or round-trip?”

The man remained silent; the ticket seller took a ten-yuan bill from his hand, returned one yuan in change and a handwritten receipt.

The man took the receipt and change, boarded the bus, and walked straight toward the rear row where Ji Taimei sat; his large feet, bound in straw sandals, made no sound as they touched the floor, as if a phantom ghost had glided past.

Ji Taimei’s heart leapt to his throat; he instinctively rose to move to another seat—when suddenly, a low male voice came from the direction of the door:

“Heian-kyō.”

Who spoke? Gathering courage, Ji Taimei looked up: the driver still sat in his seat, the ticket seller leaned against the railing without a word, no one stood by the door—yet a man’s voice had just spoken:

“One-way.”

“He’s answering the ticket seller’s question?” Ji Taimei widened his eyes, not daring to blink; the man reached a seat some distance from Ji Taimei’s row, bent down, and sat.

Then, footsteps of straw sandals on the floor, and the rustle of straw cape against fabric, came from the door—step by step, one, two, three, quietly approaching until they reached the rear seats and vanished.

Ji Taimei’s Adam’s apple moved; he thought he now understood what had just happened: “He spoke those words seconds before I heard his voice?”

The footsteps had also sounded only after he had finished walking and sat down—almost as if his voice and his body were two separate entities: the man moved first, the sound followed.

This man was not normal…

Before Ji Taimei could ponder further, another person stepped onto the bus at the door.

This time, a woman in a long dress boarded—elegant, graceful, her full, noble figure cinched by a waistband; her round, goose-egg face was veiled in purple silk, obscuring her features, yet her alluring softness was unmistakable.

“Where are you going, sister?” the ticket seller asked.

“Yanglao,” the woman replied, her voice gentle as autumn’s misty lake waters, making Ji Taimei feel dazed.

“One-way or round-trip?”

“Round-trip.”

After paying the fare, the woman took her receipt and change and boarded; her low-heeled sandals tapped softly against the floor, without the eerie separation of body and sound seen with the man earlier.

Ji Taimei exhaled slightly, thinking at last he’d encountered someone normal—but then he glanced down, and what met his eyes made his blood run colder: beneath this woman’s feet… there was no shadow.

The bus interior glowed with dim yellow light; rows of seats cast long shadows, yet as the woman walked, the light fell upon her as if passing through completely transparent glass—her feet trod the dim illumination beneath her dress, yet no shadow clung to the floor.

“This person isn’t normal either…” Ji Taimei’s breath froze; his heartbeat slowed. He lowered his head carefully and sat back in his seat, not daring to move.

The tapping footsteps drew nearer; a faint fragrance drifted toward him; the woman took a seat in the very last row—the same row as Ji Taimei—but sat by the opposite window, several seats between them.

Ji Taimei exhaled again—thankfully, she wasn’t sitting beside him.

He pulled back the curtain and looked out: the streetlights outside flickered weakly, the bus door closed, and no one else boarded.

The bus left the station, traveling along the suburban road away from Yun Du City at night; two new passengers had boarded, yet silence remained—neither man nor woman spoke; both sat motionless in their seats, unmoving, while cold evening wind howled through the windows.

Ji Taimei cautiously pulled out his phone, opened the map navigation app, hoping to check the bus route—but the moment he tapped the icon, a small notification popped up at the bottom of the screen:

【No Network Connection】

After a blank advertisement page flashed by, the offline map interface appeared; Ji Taimei’s phone memory was filled entirely with games—he never downloaded offline maps—and now, without network, the navigation app showed only ambiguous color blocks, no online markers or landmarks visible.

=9+ Shu _ Ba

“Damn…” Ji Taimei helplessly closed the app, glanced at the status bar—4G signal was full.

He tried opening his browser to use online maps, but the network remained disconnected.

After several failed attempts, Ji Taimei turned off his phone and returned it to his pocket; he vaguely understood one thing—since entering the station, he might already have entered another world.

The distance from Yun Du’s West Suburb Station to Yanglao Village was fifteen kilometers; the bus stopped and started at various points along the way, cypresses along the roadside blurred backward; for over twenty minutes, no one else boarded.

Around ten-thirty at night, the bus pulled over at a crossroads and the door opened automatically.

“Yanglao Village is just ahead—will the two of you be getting off here?” the ticket seller called from the front.

Ji Taimei glanced sideways at the woman by the window; seeing she showed no sign of rising, he quickly said: “Yes, we’re getting off here.”

Immediately, Ji Taimei stood and hurried through the aisle, fleeing off the bus.

The suburban road had no streetlights; beneath the pitch-black night sky, only the bus’s high beams remained lit, illuminating pale weeds on either side of the road; a narrow path branched off from the highway, stretching into distant fields.

Ji Taimei took a deep breath, turned back one last time to look at the bus parked by the roadside—he remembered the note’s warning: once you step onto this path into the village, you can never turn back.

(End of Chapter)