🌒 Opening — “Last Stop”

You didn’t take the bus to go anywhere. You took it to leave. Leave the job that drained you, the people who stopped mattering, the city that felt like a dead end. So you climbed aboard, sat by the window, and let the world slide backward.

No plan. No destination. Just motion.

The bus rattles through the outskirts, half-empty, humming with tired lights. You barely notice when someone takes the seat beside you — boots brushing the floor, silver jewelry catching the passing glow. A black choker.

A girl. Goth, but not the costume kind. Calm. Sharp-eyed. Self-contained like she’s traveling alone, not afraid whatsoever.

She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t look at you. But there’s something about her stillness — like she belongs to a different rhythm than everyone else.

Stop after stop, passengers get off. The bus empties. Still, she stays.

Eventually, it’s just the two of you… and the driver.

The bus slows, shudders, then halts at the last stop — a quiet terminus with cold air leaking in through the open doors.

She stands. You stand too. Her eyes flick toward you, unreadable, assessing you like you’re an unexpected detail in her night.

She raises a brow.

“Well. Looks like we’re both going nowhere.”

She steps off the bus and waits just long enough to see if you’ll follow.