My Mom's Blind Date Calls Me Senior - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Making every victim’s family hear the truth sounds simple, but it was anything but easy.
Over twenty years had passed since the Jiugang Accident.
Some families had moved away, some had passed on, and some refused to revisit it.
The police couldn’t accept the idea of a “ghost bus.”
But they could accept new evidence.
I handed over my dad’s lesson plans and the cassette tape to the unit that had handled the original case.
At first, they were unwilling to reopen the investigation.
That changed when Liang Yan produced the Old Work ID his uncle had left behind, along with a Maintenance Record hidden in the Liang family’s old house.
The Maintenance Record showed that, a week before the accident, the Route 312 bus’s Onboard Radio had been modified without authorization.
Signed by the person who did the modification: Liang Jianzhang.
The police finally filed for a case review.
The media also began paying attention to the Jiugang Accident.
I was in charge of contacting the families.
This was harder than I’d imagined.
The first auntie who answered the phone listened to me and was silent for a long time.
She said, “My son wasn’t supposed to take that bus that day.”
“He said he heard his dad calling him home for dinner.”
Her husband had passed away half a year before the accident.
The second family member was a middle-aged man.
His mother had died on that bus.
He said that before she left home, she’d answered a phone call. On the call was his voice from when he was a child, crying and saying he was lost.
But on that day, he had been out of town.
The third family member just yelled at me.
He scolded me for reopening old wounds, accused me of exploiting the dead for attention.
I didn’t hang up.
When he tired himself out, I said, “Uncle, my dad also died.”
Silence fell on the other end of the line.
I said, “I’m also terrified that someone might use his voice to trick me.”
The man wept.
Later, he came.
On the day of the Review Hearing at Jiugang North Station, it was raining again.
Many people stood in front of the abandoned platform.
There were elderly people, middle-aged people, and children who had grown up.
They held photographs in their hands, their faces heavy beneath their umbrellas.
The police had set up a cordon.
The media had their cameras.
Liang Yan stood beside me, still looking unwell.
My mom stood on my other side, holding that sugar jar in her hands.
She said this jar had more guts than I did, so it had to come along.
I said, “Mom, it’s made of porcelain.”
She said, “It’s still tougher than you were as a child.”
I had no quick comeback.
At 4:27 in the afternoon, fog rolled in from the river.
All sounds seemed waterlogged, as if soaked.
The Jiugang Line came.
The green bus stopped in front of the stop sign.
This time, everyone present saw it.
Some screamed, some backed away, and some dropped straight to their knees.
The doors opened.
Liang Jianzhang sat in the driver’s seat, his face grim.
“Xu Zhixia.”
I didn’t answer.
He switched his voice.
“Xiaxia.”
It was my dad.
My fingernails dug into my palms.
My mom immediately grasped my hand.
She said, “It’s fake.”
I nodded.
Liang Yan handed me a megaphone.
I turned on the Walkman.
The tape spun, producing a faint hiss.
My dad’s voice rang out from the megaphone.
“May 17, 1999. Jiugang Line Last Bus Record.”
The crying on the platform gradually subsided.
Inside the bus, the faceless passengers began to stir restlessly.
Liang Jianzhang slammed the steering wheel.
“Turn it off!”
Liang Yan stepped in front of me.
I kept playing it.
Over the speaker, my dad read out each passenger’s name.
Chen Lihua, who heard her deceased husband calling her home.
Zhao Xiaodong, who heard his father calling him to dinner.
Lin Yue, who heard her missing daughter calling “Mom.”
With every name spoken, someone on the platform cried out in response.
“She didn’t get on that bus willingly.”
“He was tricked.”
“I remember him.”
Inside the bus, the faces of those faceless passengers slowly began to take shape.
One turned into a young woman.
One turned into a boy in a school uniform.
One was in tears, looking through the window at family on the platform.
I also saw my future self.
She was standing in the last row, smiling at me.
Liang Jianzhang went completely berserk.
He threw open the door and charged down, heading straight for my mom.
“Zhou Lan!”
My mom didn’t answer.
She opened the sugar jar and held up that coin.
“I didn’t get on the bus.”
Her voice was quiet but steady.
“My daughter remembers.”
“My husband remembers, too.”
Liang Jianzhang stopped in his tracks.
Water began to drip from his body.
Staring at the passengers whose faces were gradually returning, he suddenly broke down and shouted, “I just wanted to see her!”
From the crowd, an old man said shakily, “But you made it so we could never see them again.”
At these words, the bus shuddered violently.
Liang Yan suddenly rushed forward.
I called to him, “Liang Yan!”
He turned back to look at me.
This time, he didn’t call me Senior.
He said, “Xu Zhixia, remember me.”
Then he jumped onto the bus.