The schoolbag's zipper was half-open. The student looked extremely nervous—his hand was gripping something inside, though he hadn't pulled it out.
"A fruit knife?" Xiao Gu caught a glimpse of something reflective through the narrow opening. He couldn't tell whether it was a mirror or a blade.
The bus had already started moving. Xiao Gu returned to his seat and sat down, his eyelids twitching uncontrollably, a growing sense of unease settling in.
The rain outside was getting heavier. Through the glass, he could no longer make out the buildings beyond.
The bus was eerily quiet. Not a single person spoke. The atmosphere was suffocating.
"The people on this bus are so strange."
Xiao Gu leaned his body against the window. Across the aisle, the doctor kept glancing in his direction, wearing a bizarre smile on his face—as though he'd discovered some exquisite work of art. His expression was deeply unsettling.
Xiao Gu pulled out his phone, swiped across the screen, and tapped the front-facing camera option.
He held the phone up and used the screen to look at the male student sitting in the very last row.
The kid seemed to be motion sick. He'd placed his schoolbag on his knees, his expression growing paler by the second. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead, yet all this time, his hand had remained inside the schoolbag, never once pulling it out.
"Are you feeling unwell?" Xiao Gu felt a flicker of worry for the boy. But before he could even stand up, the student in the back row had already noticed Xiao Gu sneaking a glance through his phone.
The kid didn't seem to want to be caught on camera. He shielded his face with one hand, then quietly pointed at the doctor in the white coat sitting next to Xiao Gu, and gently shook his head.
"Is he warning me? There's something wrong with the doctor?"
After gesturing, the student bowed his head, hugged his schoolbag, and fell completely silent.
Xiao Gu lowered his phone and stole a glance at the doctor beside him using his peripheral vision. He suddenly remembered a news story he'd seen before boarding the bus: "Latest Progress on the Central Hospital Corpse-Theft Case—Crawling Figure Caught on Surveillance."
He opened the webpage. The report came with a very blurry image, apparently captured by the hospital's security cameras.
A figure draped in a white coat was crawling on all fours, scurrying rapidly across the ground and squeezing into the morgue.
"A white coat?" Xiao Gu enlarged the image. The lighting inside the bus was dim, and he stared intently at the photo. "I can't make out the face, but the build looks a little similar."
A phone ringtone suddenly blared inside the bus. Xiao Gu, whose attention had been completely absorbed, flinched in shock and clutched his own phone, looking up.
The ringtone was coming from the bag of the woman in professional attire sitting in front of him. The woman pulled out her phone and glanced at the caller ID. Her mood seemed to sour instantly.
She answered the call, and a man's anxious voice came through the line: "Huang Ling, where are you? Still working overtime? The lights in your office building have all gone out."
"I left ages ago. Where are you? You said you'd come pick me up—I've been waiting for half an hour and you never showed!" Huang Ling's voice was full of grievance. It was pouring rain, she'd been forced to work overtime until this hour, and she'd stood at the company entrance exhausted and worn out until now.
"You left? How come I didn't see you?"
"Quit the act. This isn't the first time you've been late. You've never once kept your promises to me. I'm so sick of you!"