The driver pulled out his phone and sent a voice message to their group chat while waiting at a red light.
He had just dropped
"The cab's equipped with a dash cam, a GPS system, and a partition barrier. Nothing should go wrong." The driver was a cautious man. He deliberately spoke loudly when sending the voice message, making sure the passenger in the back could hear every word.
"It's been pretty chaotic around here at night lately. Keep your eyes open."
"Got it."
The light turned green. The driver set his phone aside and started the taxi.
The scenery on both sides blurred past, and the cars on the road grew fewer and fewer.
The driver quietly checked the rearview mirror. The passenger wasn't very tall, wearing a black hoodie with a pale red shirt underneath.
The man had rushed into the cab, stated his destination, and hadn't said a word since.
Stranger still, after getting in, he hadn't taken off the hood pulled over his head. Because of the angle, only half his face was visible.
"Brother, we night drivers have our rules. We generally don't go to that area." The driver was getting uneasy and started rambling. "But since I let you in, I definitely won't overcharge you. I just can't drop you right at the door. I'll get you as close as I can, and you'll need to walk a hundred or two hundred meters in yourself. That okay?"
This was exactly how it had been the first time he'd driven Chen Ge — he'd been a bundle of nerves, mapping out his escape route before even reaching the destination, and the moment the passenger got out, he'd floored it in the opposite direction.
"Don't do that. I'm just picking something up. I live in the city." The man raised his head slightly. His voice sounded perfectly normal. "If you leave and strand me at the crematorium entrance, how am I supposed to flag down a cab after I'm done? What taxi driver would be picking up passengers at a crematorium in the middle of the night?"
Old Zhang thought about it. The passenger had a point.
"You drop me off, then come back for me. Two fares instead of one. Isn't that better than driving back empty?"
After hearing that, Old Zhang felt his resolve wavering. Why not make an extra fare if he could?
Before, he would have agreed on the spot. But ever since driving Chen Ge, he'd developed a psychological trauma. Now he was careful about everything. "Alright, but I'll wait at the intersection. You pick up your stuff and come back to find me."
"Deal. As long as you don't mind the wait." The passenger in the back had both hands in his pockets, looking perfectly agreeable.
"This guy's normal enough aside from the hood. Seems way more reliable than that weirdo who wanted to go on a date at the abandoned campus."
Old Zhang muttered to himself, thinking that with so many night cabs running around Jiujiang, it was statistically impossible for every strange passenger to end up in his back seat.
Running into that lunatic twice in a row had already been astronomically unlikely. By all rights, his luck should have turned by now.
He ran through every rationalization he could think of, but his hands on the steering wheel were still slick with sweat.
The cab moved fast, clearing the old downtown district in just ten minutes and heading toward the crematorium on the outskirts.
People on both sides dwindled to nothing. The glow of shop signs disappeared entirely. On the highway, only Old Zhang's taxi remained, speeding through the dark.
"Almost there."
The driver kept stealing glances at the passenger through the rearview mirror. The man sat perfectly still in his seat. For the entire ride, he hadn't so much as shifted.
"Could you drive a bit further? You don't need to stop right at the entrance — just get a little closer." The passenger's voice was soft, almost breathless, as though he were inhaling as he spoke.
For nearly a hundred meters in every direction, there wasn't a single light. The place was eerily quiet tonight. The taxi crept along the concrete road like a moving black coffin.
"Stop here." The night wind blew in through the window. Old Zhang gripped the steering wheel with both hands, a gnawing unease settling in his chest.