Chapter 6

Chapter 6

My mom’s hand suddenly tightened.
She didn’t answer.
Neither did I.
The smile on the driver’s face faded.
“What a pity.”
The bus was lit by dim yellow light.
I saw Liang Yan sitting in the last row.
His head was lowered, his hands bound to the armrests by black water cords.
There was even more white in his hair than there had been that afternoon.
I wanted to rush over, but my mom held me back.
In a very soft voice, she said, “Not yet.”
I looked down and saw that she was clutching the note my dad had left behind.
Liang Jianzhang seemed to hear. He looked over coldly.
“Xu Mingyuan left behind quite a lot, didn’t he?”
Xu Mingyuan was my dad.
I kept my voice low. “You knew my dad?”
“He stuck his nose where it didn’t belong.”
Liang Jianzhang raised a hand and tapped the steering wheel.
The fare box by the door gave a clatter.
Inside weren’t coins.
They were teeth, one after another, soaked until they had turned white.
My stomach churned.
“The Jiugang Line collapse wasn’t an accident, was it?”
Liang Jianzhang smiled.
“Of course it was an accident.”
“It’s just that some people were never supposed to live.”
He looked at my mom.
“Zhou Lan, if you’d gotten on that day, we would have been full.”
My mom’s face went pale, but she did not step back.
“So because I was missing, you’ve been trapped here all this time?”
“The one missing wasn’t you.”
Liang Jianzhang’s eyes suddenly turned venomous.
“It was your daughter.”
My heart sank.
“Me?”
“What the Jiugang Line takes isn’t passengers. It takes people called back by voices.”
The faceless passengers in the bus slowly turned their heads.
Liang Jianzhang said, “Before each of them got on, they heard the person they most wanted to see calling them.”
“Some heard a dead mother. Some heard a missing child. Some heard an ex-lover.”
“They answered, and so they boarded.”
I suddenly remembered the voice in the kitchen when I was ten.
Zhou Lan, don’t open the door.
It hadn’t been calling me.
It had been calling my mom.
What my dad had written on the note was: do not answer.
Liang Jianzhang stared at me.
“Xu Mingyuan discovered the rules of the Jiugang Line. He dragged your mom off the bus, and left you, the anchor, on the shore.”
“Anchor?”
“The memories of the living.”
Liang Yan suddenly raised his head.
His voice was hoarse. “Don’t let him talk you in circles.”
The black water cords cut into his wrists, and he winced in pain.
“Senior, the jar.”
Liang Jianzhang’s expression changed.
I immediately opened the sugar jar.
The rock sugar inside began to melt, revealing an old coin at the bottom.
A small piece of tape was stuck to the coin.
Under the tape were words in my childhood handwriting.
[Mom didn’t get on the bus.]
I froze.
I didn’t remember writing it.
But my mom suddenly started crying.
“You did write it,” she said.
“After you were scalded that day, your fever wouldn’t go down. You kept saying a bus had come to pick me up. Your dad had you write that sentence down. He said as long as you remembered, I wouldn’t be taken away.”
I looked at that coin and finally understood what an anchor was.
It wasn’t anything mystical.
It was one living person firmly remembering that another living person was still here.
Liang Jianzhang reached out to snatch it.
My mom suddenly stepped forward and shielded me behind her.
“She remembers me.”
Her voice trembled, but it was very clear.
“And I remember her too.”
The lights in the bus suddenly dimmed.
The faceless passengers began to sob softly.
Liang Jianzhang roared, “Zhou Lan!”
My mom did not answer.
She only turned to look at me.
“Zhixia, call his name.”
I froze. “Whose?”
“Liang Yan.”
Liang Yan raised his eyes to look at me.
I suddenly understood.
He also needed someone to remember that he was still alive.
Clutching the coin, my voice shook.
“Liang Yan.”
The black water cords paused for an instant.
I called again.
“Liang Yan, come back.”
His eyes reddened.
“Senior.”
“Don’t call me Senior.”
Holding back my tears, I shouted at him.
“I’m only twenty-nine now. I’m not that old.”
He laughed softly.
The water cords snapped apart inch by inch.
Liang Jianzhang lunged forward.
Liang Yan abruptly stood up, grabbed the handrail for leverage, and kicked the fare box.
Those water-whitened teeth rolled all over the floor.
The passengers screamed in unison.
My mom pulled me backward.
Liang Yan rushed off the bus, and the door slammed shut behind him.
The bus did not drive away.
It remained where it was, its lights growing dimmer and dimmer.
Liang Jianzhang looked at us through the window.
His face slowly returned to that of an ordinary middle-aged man.
It was not the face of an evil ghost.
Just the face of a very exhausted, very unwilling person.
He said, “What gives you the right to get off?”
No one answered.
Liang Yan stood beside me, his voice very low.
“Because the one who made an entire busload of people get on back then was you.”