The Midnight Route
The asphalt of Route Nine was never meant to be driven after the sun dipped below the horizon.
E.g. ：At the Grand Ball, my husband proposed to my best friend, shattering my entire world.
- 1、The Midnight Route
- 2、The Stop That Didn't Exist
- 3、A Voice From 1994
- 4、The Mirror Never Lies
- 5、The Cycle of Route Nine
In the small town of Oakhaven, the locals knew that the old county roads belonged to the fog and the memories of 1994.
Elias Thorne was the only man brave enough, or perhaps broken enough, to stay behind the wheel of the old Blue Bird bus.
For thirty years, he had been the self-appointed guardian of the transition, driving the empty vessel through the rain.
He told himself he was just doing his job, maintaining the equipment and keeping the battery from dying.
But deep down, Elias knew he was waiting for a signal that the debt had been paid.
The rain tonight was a torrential downpour, turning the red clay of the shoulders into a thick, bleeding sludge.
The bus groaned under the strain of the weather, its headlights cutting weak yellow tunnels into the darkness.
Elias adjusted his brown jacket, feeling the dampness in his bones that no heater could ever truly touch.
He checked his watch, and the hands were spinning backward, a frantic metallic dance of time losing its grip.
The Stop That Didn't Exist
At the corner of Blackwood and Nine, a single streetlight hummed with a sickly, dying electricity.
There shouldn't have been a stop there, as the wooden bench had been hauled away by the county years ago.
Yet, as the bus rounded the bend, the silhouette of a child appeared, standing perfectly still in the deluge.
The girl was small, her frame swallowed by a bright yellow raincoat that seemed to glow against the darkness.
Elias felt a cold spike of adrenaline, his foot hovering over the brake as his mind screamed for him to accelerate.
But the "Shepherd’s Code" he lived by wouldn't allow him to leave a child in the maw of a storm like this.
The air hissed as he pulled the manual lever, the folding doors creaking open with the sound of a rusted tomb.
A gust of wind carried the smell of lake water and old lilies into the cabin.
The girl didn't move for a long moment, her head bowed so her face was hidden by the deep hood of the coat.
"Is this still Route Nine?" she asked, her voice vibrating through the floorboards rather than the air.
A Voice From 1994
Elias felt his throat tighten, his weathered hands trembling against the cracked leather of the steering wheel.
He knew that voice, or at least, he knew the frequency of the grief it carried.
"Route Nine stopped in 1994," he answered, his voice a raspy whisper that barely cleared his own lips.
He wanted to tell her to go back to the woods, to return to the shadows where it was safe from the living.
The girl stepped up the first riser, her boots making a wet, squelching sound that echoed too loudly in the quiet bus.
She didn't pay a fare, and she didn't look at Elias as she passed his seat.
"The others said you were still coming," she murmured, her breath coming out in a cloud of white frost.
Elias watched her through the corner of his eye, noticing that her raincoat wasn't just wet; it was dripping black ink.
He realized then that this wasn't a random encounter, but a scheduled extraction.
The girl wasn't seeking a ride to a destination; she was the conductor of a very different kind of orchestra.
