At 1:17 AM, seven people sat in the subway car on Line 10.
Li Ming had counted them. He worked overtime every night, caught this last train every night, and every night he counted how many people were in the car—not because he had OCD, but because it was the only way he could prove to himself he was still alive in this city. Seven. Three were sleeping, heads against the glass, mouths slightly open, drool at the corners. Two were staring at their phones, the screens casting a greenish glow on their faces like numbered tags in a morgue. One was an old woman in a dark blue cotton jacket, head down, staring at the floor, motionless as if nailed to her seat.
And one was himself.
The car swayed. The lights flickered. The subway tunneled through darkness, wheels screeching against tracks like something being slowly torn apart. Li Ming leaned against the corner by the door, eyes fixed on the route map overhead: little red lights lit up one by one, three more stops, then home.
He worked operations at an internet company, twenty-seven years old, single, renting in an old neighborhood from the nineties in the south part of town. Salary twelve thousand a month, rent thirty-five hundred, working twelve-plus hours daily. Today he'd worked until one in the morning—the fourth time this week. His boss said young people needed to push hard. He nodded and said okay, then kept staying up late, kept losing hair, kept riding this always-empty last train at 1:17 AM.
The car's announcement system crackled to life, a woman's voice mechanical and hollow: "Next station—Tianshuijing Station. Passengers please prepare to exit."
No one moved. The three kept sleeping. The two kept staring at their phones. The old woman kept her head down, as if she hadn't heard.
Doors opened. Cold air rushed in, carrying the tunnel's unique smell of mildew and rust. No one boarded.
Doors closed. The subway continued.
Li Ming glanced at the old woman. She hadn't moved, head still down. Her dark blue cotton jacket was washed pale, cuffs frayed like she'd worn it for years. At her feet sat a plastic fertilizer bag, bulging, contents unclear. Faded red characters on the bag: "UREA."
Strange. One in the morning, a woman in her seventies, wearing an old cotton jacket, carrying a fertilizer bag—where was she going by subway? Which stop? Where was her family?
Li Ming looked away, back at the route map.
Tianshuijing passed. Next stop, Huayuanqiao.
No one got off.
Next stop, Baishiqiao South.
Still no one got off.
Li Ming suddenly realized something.
These seven people, including himself—from the station where he'd boarded at Jianguomen until now, four stops later—not one person had gotten off.
The three sleepers still slept, same positions. The two phone-starrers still stared at their phones, screens lit, but their fingers never scrolled, their eyes never blinked—just fixed on the same spot, motionless, like three photos taped to seats.
Li Ming's heart rate jumped from seventy-two to one-ten. He felt it—that cold rising from the base of his spine, like someone writing on his back with ice.
The old woman moved.
She slowly raised her head and turned toward him.
Li Ming stopped breathing.
That face—not old, but white. Not normal white, but lime white, funeral paper white, morgue sheet white. Lips gray-purple, like someone who died from lack of oxygen. Eyes clouded as if covered with mist, pupils dilated, unable to focus.
She looked at him and opened her mouth. Dry, cracked lips shed tiny flakes of skin:
"Young man, what time is it?"
Her voice was raspy, dry, like sandpaper on rusted iron pipe, like static from an old radio.
Li Ming instinctively looked down at his phone. The screen showed 1:24.
His thumb moved to the power button, ready to lock the screen, ready to answer—
A flash of memory.
Summer when he was six, at his grandmother's village. Evening, almost dark, he was playing in the yard, Grandma cooking in the main room. A stranger passed by, stopped at the gate, asked him: "Kid, what time is it?"
He was about to run inside and check the clock when Grandma burst out, clapped her hand over his mouth, dragged him inside, slammed the door.
That night, Grandma held him under the dim yellow bulb, pointed at the pitch-black outside the window, and said slowly, deliberately:
"Child, you remember this. Walking at night, if someone calls your name—don't turn back. If someone asks you something—don't answer. Especially if they ask you the time. Day or night, if someone you don't know asks you the time, don't say a single word."
He asked why.
Grandma's hand stroked his head, her thin, dry fingers trembling slightly:
"Because the ones who ask for time—aren't always people."
Li Ming's phone screen still glowed: 1:24, the numbers glaring.
His thumb rested on the power button. He hadn't pressed it.
He looked at the old woman. She was still staring at him, waiting for his answer. Her mouth was slightly open, revealing a dark hole of a throat—empty, like a dry well.
The car suddenly fell terrifyingly silent. The wheel screech vanished. The wind sound vanished. The AC hum vanished. Even the breathing of those sleepers—if they were still breathing—vanished.
Then he heard another sound.
Very soft, very faint, like someone whispering right next to his ear:
"Tell her."
Li Ming whipped his head around.
Someone was sitting in the seat beside him. He hadn't noticed them before.
A woman in a white dress, long hair hanging down covering her face, head bowed, hands on her knees, fingernails purple-black.
"She's asking you the time," the woman said, her voice floating, like from far away. "Tell her. What time is it? I want to know too. What time? What time? What time?"
The last words came faster and faster, higher and higher, like a tape on fast-forward.
Li Ming tried to stand, tried to run, but his legs were lead. He tried to shout, but something blocked his throat—no sound came out.
In the car, the three sleepers slowly raised their heads.
Their faces—the young man's was gray-blue, eyes nothing but whites; the middle-aged woman's neck twisted at a strange angle, like it had been snapped; the bespectacled male student had nothing behind his lenses—just two black holes.
The two phone-starrers lowered their phones.
Their faces—an old man, skin wrinkled like tree bark, lips cracked to his ears; a middle-aged woman, thick makeup caked on, but underneath it, rotting flesh tones.
Seven people, plus the old woman and the white-dress woman—nine pairs of eyes, nine empty eye sockets, all staring at him.
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
The voices came from all directions, overlapping, high and low like a choir singing a hymn without words, like countless people asking the same question at the same time, asking for a hundred years, still asking.
Li Ming's mind went blank. His mouth opened involuntarily, his tongue lifted involuntarily, air rushed up from his lungs—
"One—"
"Shut up!"
The train door suddenly slid open. A hand reached in, clamped over Li Ming's mouth. Another hand grabbed his collar and yanked him out of the seat.
Li Ming hit the platform, rolled twice, slammed his back against a pillar. Pain shot through him, almost made him scream. But he couldn't scream—his jaw was dislocated from the hand covering his mouth too long.
He looked up.
The subway doors were closing. Inside the car, those nine people—no, those nine things—stood pressed against the glass, eyes fixed on him. Not eye sockets—eyes. Somehow, eyes had grown back into their sockets, black as ink, no whites, like nine bottomless holes.
The old woman's mouth still moved, mouthing three words silently through the glass:
What time is it.
The doors sealed shut. The train started, wheels turning, cars sliding one by one into the dark tunnel.
As the last car passed, Li Ming saw the white-dress woman pressed against the rear window, her long hair blown aside, revealing a face—
No features. Just smooth, flesh-colored skin, like a peeled egg.
The train disappeared into the tunnel's depths.
Li Ming collapsed on the platform, shaking uncontrollably, teeth chattering, tears and snot streaming down his face. His pants were wet—he realized only now that he'd pissed himself.
A boot appeared before him.
Black tactical boot, military spec, highly polished.
He looked up.
A man in a black jacket stood over him, Asian features, around thirty, short hair, eyes sharp as knives, looking down at him. Behind him stood two others—a woman with long black hair tied low, expression cold; a burly man holding a strange device.
"You almost didn't come back, motherfucker," the black-jacket man said.
Li Ming opened his mouth. Pain shot through his jaw. Nothing came out.
The long-haired woman crouched, grabbed his chin, and—crack—popped it back into place.
"Thanks," Li Ming rasped, then burst into tears. "Thank you... thank you..."
He cried for three full minutes.
The three just stood there, waiting. No one spoke. No one hurried him.
Thirty minutes later, in a twenty-four-hour McDonald's near the subway station.
Li Ming clutched a cup of hot water, hands still trembling. His face was deathly pale, lips purple, pupils still dilated. His clothes were half-wet, half-dry, smelling faintly of urine.
Across from him sat the three.
The black-jacket man who'd saved him called himself Mike Chen—Chinese American, spoke with a slight accent but fluently. The long-haired woman was Lin Mo—hadn't smiled once. The burly man was Zhao Tiezhu, currently staring out the window at the subway entrance like he was on guard duty.
"Name," Lin Mo said.
"Li... Li Ming."
"Age."
"Twenty-seven."
"Occupation."
"Internet operations. Jianguomen area."
"What time did you finish work today?"
"12:30. Got to the station at 12:50, caught the last train. Line 10, toward Pingguoyuan."
Lin Mo looked at him, jotted something in her notebook.
"You take this train often?"
Li Ming nodded. "Fourth time this week. Usually about the same. I live off Line 10."
"Every day at this time?"
"Every day at this time."
Lin Mo and Mike exchanged glances.
Mike leaned forward slightly, his tone warmer than Lin Mo's: "Li Ming, what did you encounter on the subway just now?"
Li Ming's body shook again. He looked down at the water in his cup, condensation beading on the plastic, his fingers leaving wet prints.
"An old woman... asked me what time it was."
"Did you answer?"
"No... no time. You pulled me off."
Mike nodded. "When you were a kid, did your elders teach you not to answer strangers' questions at night?"
Li Ming's head snapped up, eyes wide. "How do you know?"
Mike didn't answer. He looked at Lin Mo.
Lin Mo took over, her voice as calm as a weather report:
"What you encountered, we call 'yin people.' Not ghosts—something between human and ghost. For various reasons, they get trapped somewhere and can't leave. They need a living person to substitute for them—ask for the time, ask for directions, ask for a name. If you answer, they 'borrow' part of your existence. Borrow enough, and you become one of them, trapped in their place."
The cup nearly slipped from Li Ming's hands.
"Then... then can I still take that train?"
Lin Mo looked at him. Said nothing.
Mike patted his shoulder. "Go home and sleep first. Don't work overtime the next few days. Get home early. Take another line, or take a cab."
Li Ming stood up, legs still weak. He took two steps, then turned back:
"You guys are... police?"
"Something like that," Mike said.
"That old woman... who was she?"
Lin Mo was silent for two seconds, then spoke: "Three years ago, an old woman on Line 10 had a heart attack and died. When she died, she kept asking people around her what time it was, what stop they were at. No one answered her. She just kept asking, kept asking, until she collapsed."
Li Ming's face went even whiter.
"She... she's been dead for three years?"
"Three years and two months." Lin Mo closed her notebook.
Li Ming walked out of the McDonald's, disappearing into the night. His shadow stretched long under the streetlights, walking fast, like fleeing something.
Lin Mo watched him go. "Third case," she said.
Mike nodded. "What were the first two?"
"First one, last December. Male, thirty-two, advertising creative director. Also on Line 10, last train. Next morning found dead on the platform. Cardiac arrest. Face smiling. Autopsy said he experienced extreme pleasure before death—'more intense than orgasm,' quoting the ME directly."
"Pleasure?" Mike frowned.
"Yeah. Second one, this March. Female, twenty-nine, bank teller. Same train, same time. Missing. Surveillance shows her boarding, no footage of her exiting. Still missing. No body, no trace."
Mike was silent for a moment. "And that old woman? The one Li Ming described?"
Lin Mo flipped open her notebook and pulled out a photo, placing it on the table.
A subway surveillance screenshot. The car was empty except for Li Ming sitting alone in the corner, head against the glass, like sleeping.
Across from him—empty space.
"No old woman," Lin Mo said. "Nothing in the footage."
Zhao Tiezhu walked over and put his device on the table. The screen still flickered with numbers.
"I just tested the platform," he said. "Readings peaked at ninety-seven. Twenty-four higher than the wedding gown, thirty-one higher than the Kumathong."
Mike stared at the photo for a long time.
"That old woman," he said. "She asks for the time. How many years has she been asking?"
Lin Mo didn't answer.
Outside, the last subway's rumble came from underground, fading, finally disappearing.
The next night, 11:50 PM.
Mike, Lin Mo, and Zhao Tiezhu stood on the platform at Tianshuijing Station on Line 10.
Ten minutes until the last train.
Seven or eight people dotted the platform. A young man with headphones leaned against a pillar, scrolling through short videos, exaggerated laughter coming from his phone. A middle-aged man with a briefcase, suit and tie, kept checking his watch. A young woman held a child—the child slept, head on her shoulder. A few other passengers, all staring at their phones.
All looked normal.
Zhao walked along the platform with his detector. The numbers jumped but stayed within normal range.
"Readings normal," he said. "Between twenty and thirty. Nothing special."
Lin Mo scanned the passengers. Her gaze stopped on the woman with the child.
The woman looked about thirty, wore a regular down jacket, jeans, sneakers. The child in her arms was about two, in a little blue jacket, face buried in her shoulder, sleeping deeply.
"That child," Lin Mo said. "Hasn't moved since we got here."
Mike looked. The child was indeed motionless—no rise and fall of breathing.
"Zhao," he said quietly.
Zhao aimed his device at the woman and child. The numbers jumped from twenty-five to forty.
"A bit high," he said. "But not dangerous."
The woman seemed to sense something, looked up at them. Her expression was normal—tired, indifferent, the typical look of someone with a child late at night. She looked for two seconds, then went back to waiting.
Lin Mo looked away.
"Maybe just sleeping very deeply," she said, but her voice held uncertainty.
11:59.
Lights appeared in the tunnel. The train arrived.
Doors opened. Seven or eight people got off, hurried toward the exits. Mike and the others boarded.
The car was mostly empty. Five or six people sat scattered, heads down, faces unclear. Three seats together in the corner were empty; Mike sat there. Lin Mo sat across from him. Zhao stood, pretending to look at his phone, actually scanning every passenger.
The train started.
One stop. Baishiqiao South. No one got off.
Two stops. Huayuanqiao. No one got off.
Three stops. Cishousi. Still no one got off.
Mike checked the route map. Three stops left to the end.
The car lights flickered.
Not normal flickering—the kind where they go completely dark and then come back on, like voltage instability, or like something passing through the tubes.
When the lights came back, he saw her.
An old woman in a dark blue cotton jacket, sitting in the middle of the car, head down, a plastic fertilizer bag at her feet. Faded red characters on the bag: "UREA."
Mike's hand moved toward the talisman pouch at his waist. Lin Mo hadn't moved, but her eyes had narrowed slightly. Zhao glanced at his device—the numbers had jumped from thirty-five to ninety-four.
The old woman slowly raised her head.
Her face—white as lime, lips gray-purple, eyes clouded with mist. But looking closer, it wasn't mist—it was a thin, translucent film, like the cornea of a dead fish.
She looked at Mike and spoke:
"Young man, what time is it?"
Her voice was raspy, dry, like sandpaper on rusted iron pipe, like static from an old radio.
Mike didn't answer. He looked at the old woman, mind racing through what Lin Mo had said: answer, and they borrow part of your existence.
But what if you don't answer?
She saw he wouldn't answer, slowly turned to Lin Mo:
"Miss, what time is it?"
Lin Mo didn't speak either, just stared at her.
She turned to Zhao Tiezhu:
"Big man, what time is it?"
Zhao glanced at her, then went back to looking at his phone. His other hand already gripped the peachwood rod behind his back.
The car suddenly fell silent. The wheel screech vanished. The AC hum vanished. Every sound vanished.
Then the old woman smiled.
Her mouth slowly stretched sideways, all the way to her ears, splitting into two deep crevices. But no blood in the crevices—nothing, just dark gaps, revealing rows of uneven yellow-gray teeth.
"You won't tell me," she said. "Then I'll see for myself."
She stood up.
As she rose, the other passengers slowly raised their heads.
A young man, face gray-blue, eyes nothing but whites.
A middle-aged woman, neck bent at ninety degrees, head tilted onto her shoulder, like it had been broken.
An old man, skin wrinkled like tree bark, lips cracked to his ears.
And—the woman with the child, somehow also on the train now, sitting in a corner. The child in her arms slowly turned its head.
That child's face was upside down. Mouth on top, eyes below. The eyes blinked, fixed on Mike and the others.
They all stood and moved toward them. Their steps were light, almost soundless—just a faint shhhhh of soles on the floor, like countless snakes crawling.
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
"What time is it?"
Voices came from all directions, overlapping, faster and faster, higher and higher, like a tape on fast-forward, like a stuck record, like a hundred people asking the same question at the same second.
Zhao dropped his phone and pulled out the peachwood rod—not ordinary peachwood, but lightning-strike wood consecrated by Daoist Yunxu, covered in densely carved talismans, treated with cinnabar, empowered by rituals.
Lin Mo stood, her right hand in her pocket gripping a handful of sticky rice.
Mike pulled out talismans, held them between his fingers, ready to slap them on—
The lights flickered again.
Went out.
In the darkness, nothing visible. But they could feel them—those things were still there, right next to them, so close they could smell them. The smell of earth, of decay, of long-sealed coffins being opened.
Lights came back on.
The things were gone.
The car was empty except for Mike, Lin Mo, Zhao—and the old woman, still sitting in her seat.
Head down, motionless, like a sculpture.
"She's still here," Zhao whispered, rod held across his chest.
Lin Mo walked slowly toward her, stopping three steps away.
"Old auntie," she said, voice soft but steady. "What do you want to ask?"
The old woman slowly raised her head.
Her face had changed. No longer that terrifying lime-white. Now it was an ordinary, aged face—wrinkled, eyes sunken, cheekbones prominent. Lips normal gray-white, eyes cloudy but without that dead-fish film.
"I've been trapped here a long time," she said. Her voice was no longer raspy—just tired, like someone who'd walked too far and couldn't go on. "Three years? Five? I can't remember."
"How did you get trapped here?"
The old woman looked down at her hands. They were withered like branches, knuckles prominent, skin covered in age spots.
"I was taking this train home. My son is abroad—calls once a year. That day was his birthday. I went into the city to buy him a present—candy he liked as a child, from an old shop, only in the city." She pointed at the fertilizer bag. "Put it in here. Bought the candy, took this train back. Found a seat, sat down, and then..."
She didn't finish.
"And then what?"
"And then I never got off." The old woman looked up at Lin Mo. "I tried. Every stop, the doors opened, I wanted to get off, but my legs wouldn't obey. I wanted to call out, but my voice wouldn't come. Those people—the ones riding with me—they never got off either. Just kept sitting, kept sitting, until now."
The lights flickered again.
She looked up at them, then back down.
"Later I understood," she said. "I died. That day on the train, my heart felt wrong. I asked the people next to me what time it was, what stop we were at. No one answered. I just kept asking, kept asking, until I didn't know anything anymore."
Lin Mo was silent for a moment.
"And your son?"
"He... doesn't know. One call a year, I couldn't answer. He probably thinks I'm dead. Maybe he looked for me, maybe not." Her voice was calm, like talking about someone else. "I don't blame him. He has his own life over there."
She looked up at Lin Mo. Her eyes held something strange—not resentment, not malice, not even sadness. Just pleading.
"Miss, can you help me?"
"Help with what?"
The old woman pointed at the tunnel outside the window.
"This train never reaches the end. Every stop, the doors open, I can't get out. I want to get off, want to go home, but I don't know where home is anymore. I just want to ask someone the time. Maybe if I know the time, I'll know when to get off."
She lowered her head, her voice growing fainter:
"I just want to get off."
Lin Mo stood there, looking at her.
Mike walked over and stood beside Lin Mo. He looked at the old woman, at those pleading eyes, and suddenly remembered his own grandmother. She'd died at about that age too. Before she went, she kept saying she wanted to go home—to her childhood home.
"She's not an evil spirit," he said in English, very softly. "She's just a lost old woman."
Lin Mo nodded.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small copper bell, about three centimeters tall, rusty but with its clapper still intact. Daoist Yunxu had given it to her—said it was from the Song Dynasty, could "guide souls."
"Old auntie," Lin Mo said, crouching to meet her eyes, "listen carefully. When the train reaches the next stop and the doors open, when you hear this bell, walk toward the door. No matter what you see, no matter what you hear—don't look back."
The old woman looked at her, and something flickered in those cloudy eyes. Hope.
"Will it work?"
"We'll try."
Lin Mo stood and walked to the door.
The train pulled into a station. Light streamed in through the windows. The platform was empty.
Doors opened.
Lin Mo rang the bell.
Ding—
The sound was clear, resonant, echoing through the car.
The old woman stood and walked toward the door.
First step. The lights flickered but didn't go out.
Second step. The other bowed heads appeared again, standing beside her, watching. Their eyes held no malice—just emptiness, just bewilderment.
Third step. The upside-down-faced baby suddenly cried out, sharp and piercing, like a siren.
"Don't look back!" Lin Mo shouted.
The old woman didn't look back. She kept walking.
Fourth step. Fifth step.
She stepped through the door.
Onto the platform.
Night wind blew through the tunnel entrance, lifting her white-streaked hair. She stood there, feeling wind for the first time, feeling cold for the first time, feeling for the first time that she still existed.
She turned back and looked at Lin Mo. Her lips moved, no sound, but Lin Mo understood: Thank you.
Then her figure slowly faded, like watercolor soaked in water, edges blurring, finally vanishing.
The platform was empty. Only the wind blowing.
Doors closed.
The train continued.
Inside the car, those things still stood, staring at Mike and the others. The upside-down-faced baby still cried, the sound muffled in its throat, like from very deep.
But their eyes had changed—no longer malice, no longer emptiness. Something more complex: envy? Despair?
"What about them?" Zhao asked.
Lin Mo looked at them for a long, silent moment.
"They can't leave," she said. "They've been trapped here too long. Years, decades, maybe centuries. That old woman was the most recent—she could still go. These... they've grown together with this train. Train exists, they exist. Train gone, they're gone."
Mike looked at those faces—no, the faces of those who had once been people.
"No other way?"
Lin Mo shook her head.
"Unless..." She paused.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we find the root of why they're trapped. Why did they get on this train? Why can't they get off? Everyone has their own reason. That old woman wanted to go home. What about them?"
The train tunneled through darkness, wheels screeching against tracks.
The lights flickered.
When they came back on, the car was empty.
Only the three of them.
But Mike knew those things were still there. In the seats, in the air, in this last train forever traveling through the deepest night, forever asking that question that would never be answered.
What time is it?
Three days later.
Mike sat in Bureau 749's archives, flipping through every document related to Line 10.
Lin Mo pushed open the door, holding a yellowed newspaper.
"Found it." She placed it on the desk.
It was a local evening paper from three years ago, dated November 17. In the lower right corner of the front page, a small item:
Accident on Subway Line 10: Elderly Woman Dies Suddenly in Train
Below it, a blurry black-and-white photo. Emergency workers carrying someone on a stretcher—dark blue cotton jacket, face unclear. Beside the stretcher, a bulging plastic fertilizer bag with characters too faded to read.
Mike stared at that jacket for a long time.
"She was the old woman."
Lin Mo nodded. "Died on the last train. When she died, people said she kept asking the time—what time it was, what stop they were at. No one answered her. She just kept asking, kept asking, until she collapsed."
"Did she have family?"
"One son. Abroad. They contacted him after it happened, but he didn't come back—work was busy, he said. The community handled the funeral arrangements."
Mike's fingers rested on the newspaper.
"That bell—did she really leave?"
Lin Mo looked at him, her expression complicated.
"I don't know. That bell can only guide, not liberate. She could leave the car, but whether she can leave the train entirely depends on her."
"What do you mean?"
"She's trapped in the moment of her death. When she died, she was asking the time, waiting to get off. So after death, she kept repeating that moment—asking the time, waiting to get off, never able to. That last train is her轮回—her endless cycle."
Lin Mo stood and walked to the window.
"If she can let go of that fixation, she can leave. If she can't, she'll come back. Keep asking, keep waiting, keep never getting off."
Mike was silent for a long time.
Outside, night had fallen. Office buildings in the distance blazed with light—people working overtime, people waiting for the last subway.
A question occurred to him.
"That old woman, when she got off, she looked back. She said thank you."
Lin Mo didn't respond.
"If she does come back," Mike said, "does that one look back count as breaking the rules?"
Lin Mo turned to answer—
Mike's phone rang.
Luo San.
"Brother Mike, got fresh merchandise." His voice was hushed, like hiding from someone. "Line 10, Tianshuijing Station. Someone just took a photo. Want to see it?"
The photo came through.
The image showed the Tianshuijing platform, empty, harsh white light illuminating the space.
But against one pillar, someone was leaning.
An old woman in a dark blue cotton jacket.
Head down, face unclear.
At her feet, a plastic fertilizer bag. Faded red characters, two barely legible:
"UREA."
Exactly the same as three days ago.
Mike stared at the photo, fingers tightening slightly.
In the distance, the rumble of an approaching train.
The last train was coming in.
His phone screen still glowed. The old woman in the photo kept her head down, motionless. But in the lower right corner of the image, a tiny detail—
The mouth of her fertilizer bag was slightly open.
Something inside caught the light.
Colorful. Wrappers reflecting.
Candy.
The old-brand kind, only available in the city.
Mike zoomed in. The candy wrapper showed three characters, blurry but recognizable:
White—Rabbit—Milk.
White Rabbit creamy candy.
The kind he'd eaten as a child. His grandmother used to buy it for him.
His fingers froze on the screen.
The phone rang again. Luo San's second message:
"One more thing. The guy who took the photo said when he pressed the shutter, that old woman looked up at him. He ran. Checked the photos later—only this one came out. The rest were all black."
Mike looked up, out the window.
In the darkness, the subway entrance glowed with light. Someone was walking in, catching the last train.
He couldn't see clearly who it was.
But the way they walked—
Back bent, moving slowly, step by step, like someone who'd walked too far and couldn't go on.
Mike stood, grabbing his jacket.
"Where are you going?" Lin Mo asked.
"Tianshuijing Station."
"Too late. The last train's already pulling in."
Mike stopped, looking out the window.
At the subway entrance, that figure had already disappeared down the stairs.
In the distance, the sound of the train starting came through—wheels beginning to turn, cars sliding one by one into the dark tunnel.
He stood there, phone screen still lit.
In that photo, the fertilizer bag's mouth slightly open, White Rabbit candy wrappers catching light.
She bought candy. Wanted to bring it to her son.
On his birthday.
Three years ago, November 17.
Mike looked out at the night, thick as ink.
Deep in the tunnel, the subway's rumble faded, finally disappearing.
But he knew that train was still running.
Running forever.
Carrying those who couldn't get off.
Again and again.
What time is it?
No one answers.