The man's body was pressed against his girlfriend, but his sleeve was clutched in Chen Ge's hand.
Standing at the front door of the Route 104 bus, he looked regretful. "How about… let me think about it a little longer?"
"You did me a big favor today — I really need to thank you properly." Before the man could finish, Chen Ge hauled both him and his girlfriend onto the bus.
The doors closed, and the Route 104 hearse crept forward. Hearing the ice-cold announcement crackling over the speakers, the couple felt a deep chill settle over them.
After the three of them dropped their coins, the couple made their way toward the back of the bus under the driver's venomous stare.
Chen Ge, however, stood next to the driver with one hand resting on the electric scooter. He turned his head and looked at the man without saying a word.
Cold sweat slid from the driver's forehead down his cheeks. He wore a ragged bus company uniform, both hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that veins stood out along the backs of his hands.
"You don't look too well?"
"It's nothing, just an old ailment." The driver didn't dare meet Chen Ge's eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on the road ahead. "Um… new passengers, please move toward the back. Company policy — drivers aren't allowed to chat with passengers while the vehicle is in motion."
"Your company won't let you talk to passengers? Did your company also have a rule about not picking passengers up at night?" The hearse trial had nearly ended in failure. Chen Ge had pushed himself to the limit chasing the bus on his scooter for three stops just to catch it. That was the kind of thing that could make anyone's blood boil.
"I saw you on the scooter, and I figured you were just sheltering from the rain at the stop, so… I didn't stop." The driver was visibly nervous. After a long pause, he managed to come up with an excuse.
"That's actually a pretty good excuse." Chen Ge silently slipped the skull-crushing hammer back into his backpack. He studied the driver and nodded with meaningful intent. "What's your name?"
"Tang Jun. Jun as in 'fine steed.'" The driver felt as though he were being pinned down by a predator. His calf was twitching involuntarily.
"Not bad at all." This driver had a decent attitude toward passengers, wasn't rigid, and was quite alert — exactly the kind of spirit Chen Ge needed.
He didn't push the driver any further. Instead, Chen Ge turned his attention to the other passengers on the Route 104 last run.
Besides the couple sitting at the very back and Chen Ge himself, there were eight more passengers on board.
One was a man whose entire body was wrapped in thick clothing. He wore a mask and a hat, with only his pair of eyes showing.
Sitting next to him was a man who had boarded at the previous stop. His four limbs were strikingly uncoordinated, as if he were a mechanical doll freshly assembled in a toy factory that had never been calibrated.
Aside from these two passengers Chen Ge had watched board with his own eyes, there were four women dressed in hospital gowns. They sat by the windows with their heads bowed, their long black hair draped over their faces — a rather unsettling sight.
Chen Ge's gaze swept past them and finally settled on a middle-aged woman sitting in the third row.
She was an ugly woman, broad and stocky, and she was gripping the hand of a small boy sitting beside her.
The child looked no more than four or five years old, leaning against the woman's body. No matter how roughly the bus jolted, he never opened his eyes.
"He doesn't look so much asleep as unconscious."
This was Chen Ge's first time riding the Route 104 last run. The situation inside the bus wasn't quite what Xiao Gu had described. He didn't see any high school students or the thoroughly drenched man she had mentioned. The only person he could match to the account was that middle-aged woman.
"The child beside her — could that be the Red Raincoat's child?"