Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That sugar jar was still there.

My mom was a very nostalgic person.

There were many things at home she couldn’t bear to throw away even after they broke.

The sugar jar was made of white porcelain. One corner of the lid had cracked from a fall and been stuck back together with clear tape.

After the kettle tipped over when I was ten, my mom was so frightened she held me and cried. Yet the next day, she washed the sugar jar clean and put it back in the cabinet.

She said, “From now on, whenever you see it, you’ll remember not to climb up high.”

Back then, I found it annoying.

Only now did I realize that she had actually been using her own way to suppress her fear.

I took the sugar jar down. Inside was half a box of rock sugar.

Pressed against the bottom of the jar was a yellowed piece of paper.

I froze.

I had never known there was something inside.

The writing on the paper was my dad’s.

[Lan, if you hear someone calling you again, don’t respond.]

When my mom saw that line, her face instantly turned pale.

“Did my dad write this?”

“You didn’t know?”

She shook her head.

My dad had been dead for ten years.

He had been an ordinary middle school physics teacher, as ordinary as could be.

He loved fixing appliances and tutoring students, and he didn’t know how to say pretty words.

He died of a heart attack, suddenly.

I had always thought he was the only person in this story without secrets.

Now it seemed he was not.

There was also a string of numbers on the back of the paper.

19990517.

The date of the Jiugang Accident.

I searched for information all night.

There were very few reports about the Jiugang Line River Plunge Incident back then. They only said that heavy rain had caused the road surface to collapse, and the bus had lost control and plunged into the Jiugang River.

Seventeen passengers died.

The driver disappeared.

But in old posts on local forums, someone said that a few days before the accident, strange things had already happened on the Route 312 bus.

Someone got on the bus during the day, and after getting off, found that the time on their phone had jumped ahead by three hours.

Someone said there was always an empty seat in the carriage, and whoever sat in it would hear the voice of a deceased loved one.

Someone else mentioned a name.

Liang Jianzhang.

Route 312 Driver.

I stared at that name for a long time.

Liang Yan’s surname was Liang too.

When it was almost midnight, my mom knocked and came in.

She had already changed her clothes and was holding an umbrella.

I frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Going with you.”

“No.”

“I’m not here to ask for your opinion.”

She placed the umbrella on the table, her tone very calm.

“Xu Zhixia, ever since you were ten, I’ve gone along with everything you wanted because I always felt that since you’d suffered once, I should let you suffer a little less.”

I froze.

She looked at me.

“But not this time.”

“You’re going to save someone, and I can’t stop you. But I’m your mom. I can’t let you go alone.”

My eyes suddenly stung.

My mom was rarely forceful.

Her forcefulness was always hidden behind gentleness.

For example, after my dad left, she taught classes during the day and cooked for me at night. Everyone urged her to remarry, and she smiled and said she would think about it later.

That wasn’t weakness.

That was her holding up our days all by herself.

I put the sugar jar into my bag.

“Then promise me, the moment something feels wrong, you leave.”

She nodded.

I didn’t believe her, so I added, “You’re not allowed to sacrifice the present you for my future self.”

She was stunned for a moment, then smiled.

“That really sounds like something my daughter would say.”

At 12:17 a.m., we arrived at Jiugang North Station.

The place had long been abandoned.

The bus stop sign was badly rusted, half the glass of the shelter was shattered, and weeds were growing from the ground.

The river wind blew over, carrying a damp, fishy smell.

I took out that bus ticket.

The surface of the ticket began to heat up.

In the distance, headlights lit up.

An old-fashioned green bus emerged from the fog and stopped in front of us.

The doors opened.

This time, there was someone in the driver’s seat.

The man wore an old uniform, half his face soaked pale.

He looked at Zhou Lan, his voice as if it came from the bottom of the water.

“Zhou Lan.”

“You’re finally willing to get on.”

I gripped the sugar jar tightly.

“Liang Jianzhang?”

The driver slowly turned his head to look at me.

He smiled.

“Little girl, didn’t your dad teach you back then?”

“When the dead call your name, don’t answer.”