“Hey—don’t bolt like a blown leaf.”

Watching Xiaoxiao Ji charge up onto the Soul Carriage, Nana Toki’s mind flashed to TV heroes roaring “Aim at me!” while smoke and shells bloomed like storm clouds over dying comrades.

Helplessness rolled in like low fog; Nana Toki could only sigh.

Nesting Phoenix, that lovable dunce, always worried her in the strangest places—like a sparrow suddenly trying to roost on a hearse.

She chased Xiaoxiao Ji into the Soul Carriage; the bus’s dim spine smelled of old metal and wet dust. In the rear bay, she found Xiaoxiao Ji standing there, face pinched like she’d swallowed gravel.

“What, you get on and don’t sit? Got the pee-pee panic?”

Nana Toki took the empty seat at her side, glanced at the Red Robed Wraith by the rear door like one looks at a winter camellia, then turned back.

Xiaoxiao Ji stayed silent; her own girl-ghost still had a voice that made people kneel, like a blade laid lightly on the throat.

“My… my legs went jelly… can’t move.”

She gripped the pole with both hands, cheeks flushing like dawn on frost. She’d sprinted hard to the very last row—only to find the red-robed woman who’d half scared her to death days ago sitting right there.

The Red Robed Wraith showed no malice now; her features were so fine they pricked envy like needles. Still, fear pooled cold as river-water in Xiaoxiao Ji’s belly.

Nana Toki clicked her tongue; figures—classic you.

“Welcome aboard Route 014. For your safety, please follow traffic rules when boarding or alighting. We’re departing. Sit tight, hold fast. Next stop—Dongsheng Plaza. Passengers getting off, please be ready.”

The synthetic female voice chimed like a brass bell in mist. Nana Toki dragged Xiaoxiao Ji to sit; the world outside reeled backward like a painted scroll, yet the bus itself glided steady as a swan.

Where’s the Protagonist Lord?

Once Xiaoxiao Ji settled, Nana Toki drifted deeper into the rear car, her mood a taut string. Maybe it was the Red Robed Wraith; the air felt hushed, eerie, like a temple after lamps are doused.

She floated mid-cabin, bold as a white moth in lamplight, making no effort to hide she was a ghost.

Passengers were few. Apart from three bowed figures in the last row with faces like smudged ink, the rest sat scattered like islands in fog.

On the left, by the window, three seats held only one man wrapped in mask and hood, a bundle of shadow. He tucked his face away like a thief hiding a moon. As Nana Toki drifted past, a sharp stink hit—like something scorched to charcoal.

Arsonist, maybe.

Her eyes narrowed, then slid on. The Soul Carriage ferried the dead, but sometimes strays boarded—misguided living, or those half a breath from dusk. Time gnawed at living riders here; ghosts seeped in like ground fog; life slipped away into a nameless wandering.

If he was a firebug, then this ride felt like karma snapping shut.

On the right, things looked more ordinary: two girls in different school uniforms sat shoulder to shoulder, whispering like crickets under leaves. Snatches reached Nana Toki—bullying, hair yanked, a rooftop jump. She guessed they were victims of campus violence, huddled together, sharing sorrow like rain from the same cloud.

Whoosh—whoosh—

Whoosh—whoosh—

Sometime outside, the sky broke, and rain came down in sheets, darkening the day like ink spilled over paper. Passing the Red Robed Wraith at the rear door, Nana Toki tipped her chin in a greeting.

The wraith still carried a shadow of Nana’s last trick; at Nana’s nod, the yin around her frayed like wind-tossed gauze, a touch of nervousness trembling the air.

“Hi. Mind if I bother you a sec?”

Nana Toki faced the last row and spoke to one of the young men there, voice low as snowfall yet razor-clear in the hush. Eyes flicked to her like minnows; she kept on, addressing the bowed, unfocused youth.

“Hey, hey?”

“Can you hear me?”

“Moshi moshi? You still alive?”

“If you can hear me, squeak once, okay?”

After calling him three, four times, she grabbed his shoulders and gave him a shake. Awareness snapped back like a bowstring.

“Wha… what is it?”

He jerked up so fast his head nearly cracked her chin; Nana Toki slid aside like smoke.

“It’s fine. You’ve been out a long time. I didn’t want you sleeping past your stop.”

She noticed his school uniform, neat as new bamboo. “Which school you at?”

“Me?”

His eyes held fog. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Mm. When I came to, I was already on this bus.”

The answer dropped like a stone into still water; ripples ran through Nana Toki’s thoughts.

“Then why not get off and go home?” Suspicion pricked like thorns. “Wouldn’t your parents be worried if you just stay on the bus?”

This young man wasn’t in the original plot; Nana Toki felt like she’d brushed a hidden door in this world.

System: “…”

“I can’t get off. I promised my friend I’d wait on the bus so we could go home together.”

He shook his head like a reed in wind; talk of parents slid past him like rain off oil paper.

Nana Toki tossed him a few more small questions, straw by straw. He only stared, dazed, or shook his head, a clock with no hands.

So many doubts, piling like fallen leaves.

She turned to wake the next bowed shadow just as the bus knifed into Dongsheng Plaza and hissed open its rear door.

“Ding! Dongsheng Plaza. Passengers alighting, please take your belongings. Exit in order from the rear door.”

With the familiar chime, both doors opened. Rain-noise sharpened, like a drum-skin struck close.

Nana Toki glanced outside; no one waited on the platform. Still, the driver held the doors open, letting rain slant in like knives, and the cabin’s chill sank deeper, winter in a single breath.

“Shh—where are we? Dongsheng Plaza? Damn, how’d I ride this far?”

The figure beside the young man startled like ice water down the back, sprang up, and found half the bus staring. His hairs bristled like porcupine spines.

“W-what? Never seen a guy oversleep on a bus?”

He edged past Nana Toki, shuffled to the rear door, and eyed the black rain. A shiver ran through him like a wire. “What the hell—why’s it coming down like a broken river today?”

“Eh? Beauty, aren’t you cold, wearing so little?”

Li Kexin stood at the rear door, eyes fixed on him like pins. Her pale face, framed by a scarlet robe, held a sickly allure, a peony blooming under moonlight.

The man felt a chill snap his spine, a pressure like thin blades shaving his nerves.

“Uh… haha… you enjoy the rain, miss. I—uh—got stuff to do. I’ll just—go.”

He laughed brittle as dry wood. Before she could answer, he bolted into the downpour, as if he’d seen something unclean. A slipper flew, left behind like a shed shell; he vanished into the curtain of rain.

“Ding! Departing. Hold on tight. Next stop, Capital City Library.”

Front and rear doors closed like lips. Nana Toki slid her gaze back to the last figure in the row, the one still bowed like a willow.

So… that should be the Protagonist Lord.

She reached out—and the steady bus slammed its brakes. Momentum snapped; she almost got flung like a kite cut loose.

“What are you doing?”

She righted the white triangular kerchief on her head, anger rising like a hot tide.

If she weren’t the patient sort, always preferring virtue over violence, she’d have strode up and twisted that ghost driver’s head off like a jar lid.

“Passenger… please don’t walk around the bus… it’s easy to cause accidents.”

His face showed clear in the front mirror, sweat beading like dew on a fat gourd. Panic fogged him; fear clung like damp cloth—he was rattled by her just now.

This guy… stinks of trouble.

The driver’s off-kilter behavior rang like a cracked bell in Nana Toki’s mind.

What’s he afraid of?

She flicked a glance to the Red Robed Wraith at the rear door—just a heartbeat, but enough to catch it: when their eyes touched, a rare flicker of panic flashed in the wraith’s gaze, quick as lightning behind clouds.

Ah… so that’s it.

At the tail of the bus, Nana Toki suddenly grasped the root.