Bus travel in F City has never seemed especially orderly. Every time I go back, I still can’t tell whether the fare is one yuan or two. Around the battered old station, there often isn’t even a proper bus stop sign in sight. Still, that chaos comes with one convenience: buses will sometimes stop as long as you wave them down.
This year I returned later than I did last year, but I reached F City a little earlier than usual. After the coach came off the highway, it jolted along for more than twenty minutes before turning into the old station.
There was still one last stretch to go before I could really be on my way home. For that, I had to get to another small station known locally as the 68 Team—the place where buses to the surrounding towns depart. The bigger station serving other districts and counties in the city is called the Passenger Transport Center, or Guoben Station. Years ago, there had even been a port station nearby.
The Passenger Transport Center isn’t far from the 68 Team. On foot, with luggage, it takes more than ten minutes. By bus, just a few. Since buses in F City often stop wherever people signal them, most travelers do what I do: step out of the station and wait by the roadside.
But that day was different. Bus after bus passed without stopping, and the taxis were all practically full. At the curb, a middle-aged man kept trying to pull in passengers. I asked him whether the buses had stopped picking people up there. He asked if I was heading to the 68 Team and told me I needed to walk a little farther ahead to wait at the actual stop.
Next to me stood a petite girl in a light blue down jacket, one hand holding her suitcase, the other her phone. She turned and asked, “Are you going to the 68 Team too? Want to share a ride and split the fare?”
I was a little surprised that she spoke to me so directly, though I didn’t show it. But during the New Year travel rush, strangers sharing a car is the most normal thing in the world.
After I said yes, she called a Didi. A driver accepted quickly, but the car remained stuck where it was on the map, not moving at all—maybe traffic, maybe something else.
The man nearby kept chatting as if casually making conversation. “For such a short distance, nobody wants to take the trip. I used to drive for Didi too...”
On his suggestion, she canceled the ride, and we walked toward the bus stop instead.
When the bus to the 68 Team finally came, I helped carry her suitcase on board first and found a place to set it down. She got on after me and scanned the fare code twice with her phone.
Actually, I had wanted to test whether F City’s buses supported transit cards in Apple Wallet. To avoid the humiliation of trying it and having it fail in public, I’d prepared two yuan in cash in my pocket. But neither option felt certain enough in the moment, and I still didn’t know whether the digital card would work.
After we sat down, I said, “Let me scan your code and send you the money.”
She shook her head, though not too insistently, and eventually opened WeChat.
And just like that, my heartbeat sped up—only a little, but enough. At the same time, I got nervous. What if she thought I was just using this as an excuse to add her on WeChat? If I kept insisting on paying her back, would that make things awkward? In a way, that felt even more embarrassing than tapping my phone on the fare reader and getting no response.
Then she held out her phone. On the screen was not a chat QR code, but a payment code.
That was when I realized I had been overthinking everything. She was not planning to add me first and let me transfer the money afterward. Flustered, I closed the scanner screen, opened the payment page—and then suddenly realized that scanning a payment code and scanning to add a friend both begin with the same button.
I sent her two yuan. After that, we didn’t speak during the rest of the ride.
At the 68 Team stop, there was a short stone staircase leading up into the station. I picked up her suitcase again without saying much. She offered to help carry my laptop, but I refused. A man in his twenties can’t act like he’s too weak to carry his own things. I couldn’t let a girl look down on me for that.
We ended up boarding the same long-distance bus. She took a window seat toward the back. I walked over and asked, “Can I sit here?” She nodded, and I put my things on the seat beside her.
While I went to the restroom, I bought her a bottle of water on the way back. I can’t remember the brand now, and I have no idea whether she even liked that kind. She thanked me and set it on top of her backpack without opening it.
The bus soon filled up and began slowly pulling out of the station. When the conductor came around for fares, I found myself stuck in another round of hesitation.
Should I pay for her ticket too?
If I did, would she think—again—that I was trying to create a reason to add her on WeChat?
If I didn’t, why did it still feel like I’d somehow regret it?
When the conductor reached me, I asked, “How much to xx?”
She turned to me with visible surprise. “You’re getting off at xx too?”
“No,” I said. “I’m going a little farther than you.”
Then I scanned and paid both fares together.
She opened WeChat’s payment page and said she would send me her share. I shook my head.
“Next time we run into each other, you can pay me then.”
She looked at me as if that was impossible—which, of course, it was. People who meet by chance like this almost never cross paths again.
While she was on a phone call, I took out my earphones and got ready to listen to music. A Bluetooth connection prompt popped up on the screen. I had renamed my earphones LonelyGod. The song I most wanted to hear at that moment was Mercury Record—a song I used to feel nothing about, but that had, for some reason, been playing on repeat in my head these past few days.
She finished her call quickly, turned back, and once again tried to return the fare. I still wouldn’t accept it. After that, we each fell silent.
By then I was already thinking that I wanted to write about this someday. Not to prove anything, not to attach some grand meaning to it—just to record something I had never experienced before, something only slightly unusual, but enough to stay with me. I remember thinking that whoever she might meet in the future, I hoped he would be gentle with her.
More than halfway through the journey, she suddenly turned and started talking again. We exchanged the usual details first. She was a senior at the University of Business and Industry and was currently doing an internship. I told her I was already working.
She looked as surprised as she had the first time we spoke before boarding the bus.
“I thought you were really still in high school.”
From there the conversation widened. We talked about where we had gone to university, whether we had siblings, and the relationships and marriages of people around us.
“I feel like most people around me aren’t dating,” she said. “Only one or two seem to have partners.”
“One of my college roommates already has a kid old enough to ask for soy sauce,” I said with a laugh.
“Doesn’t your family pressure you?”
“They do, but not that hard.”
As we kept talking, I tried to explain as objectively as I could why I was still single. I also told her that, in my mind, she reminded me a little of a girl who had interned at my workplace earlier that year.
“Then you have to seize the chance,” she said.
But I can’t.
One morning on the way to work, I saw that girl standing outside on a phone call. I became so tense I didn’t know where to put my hands. In the end, I walked around her instead. Before the holiday break, her internship ended, and we never exchanged a single word.
It had happened before, two or three years earlier, almost exactly the same way. There had been another girl I often saw in the staff cafeteria. I would steal glances at her while eating, and again on the road home. She always seemed composed, elegant, untouched by hurry. I still remember one day after lunch when a fine rain started falling outside. I posted a ridiculous line online: I want to hand an umbrella to a passerby, then walk home in the rain with you.
“I think I tend to ruin things,” I told her.
It was the first time I had ever put it that way. And in that instant I thought of so many lonely walks home, and of all the girls I had quietly liked and never spoken to. No matter how much I liked someone, my insecurity always outweighed it. They left, and whether half a year passed or a whole year, I still wouldn’t dare say a single word to the person I had silently cared about.
She encouraged me, saying that when that kind of thing happens, I need to be more proactive.
I turned and looked into her eyes. They say you can’t hide the way you look at someone you like. I wasn’t expecting to discover anything in that brief eye contact, and I had never imagined being the kind of person who could inspire love at first sight in anyone. But in that short moment, she felt as luminous to me as all the girls I had once liked in silence and never spoken to.
The hour and more passed quickly. Her stop was coming up. A family member was going to meet her there, and she couldn’t hide the happiness in her voice. She put on her backpack. She was getting off.
I stood to let her pass and reminded her, “Don’t forget your suitcase.”