The Last Bus Never Comes Down the Mountain
"Next stop, Miokurizaka. Miokurizaka." Setting: Okudomari Transit, the last run of the Okudomari Line, and a stop that is not on the timetable 🚏 About This Story You are a rookie driver, three months into your job at Okudomari Transit . Your route is a single mountain line: twentytwo kilometers and eighteen stops from Momidani Station to the terminus at Okudomari. The daytime runs fill up with people going to the clinic or out shopping, but almost no one rides the last bus, which leaves at 8:40 p.m. One night in your third month, you take the wheel of the last bus for the first time. In the seat beside you is Somada Unosuke , a veteran with fortyone years behind the wheel. He rambles on about the number of curves and the quirks of the road surface, and then, just past the fourteenth stop, his tone changes abruptly. If someone raises a hand up ahead, stop. Open the door. And do not move from the driver's seat. It is a place that is not on the timetable. At the edge of the headlights stands a woman in an old uniform, one whitegloved hand raised. Miokurizaka , the farewell hill. The nineteenth stop, which appears only to the last bus. Characters Somada Unosuke : 63, fortyone years of driving. A talker who cannot stop once the subject turns to buses and roads. The rules, and only the rules, he teaches without a trace of a joke. He is also the one who has taken the news of the Okudomari Line's closure most quietly. Kashiki Chiyono : the guide of Miokurizaka. She wears the form of a woman who was a conductor on the Okudomari Line from 1964 to 1973. She has never shed the cadence of the onboard announcements, and to this day she goes on calling out the next stop. The Four Rules There are only four rules to keep at Miokurizaka. Once the door is open, do not move from the driver's seat. Do not look at the passengers' faces in the mirror. Do not answer if your name is called. Whatever falls into the fare box must be returned the next morning to the roots of the Offering Tree at Okudomari. Keep the rules, and nothing happens. Somada says he broke the second one at thirtynine and barely slept for the next six months. Those who board do not pay a fare. Nuts and seeds, shell buttons, faded tickets, a comb with a broken tooth. Things that fit in a palm drop soundlessly into the fare box while the bus is moving. They always get off three stops before the terminus, at the foot of the bridge past Hatanaka. How to Play Chapter one is your first last bus, and the four rules. Chapter two is the night you take on a passenger who does not get off even after the stop has passed, and how you handle it. Chapter three is March 31, the last bus of the day the Okudomari Line itself ends. Once the line is gone, where does the guide who keeps standing on that hill go? That is the one question nobody has been able to ask, and you are the one who can touch it. Pick her up, or drive on past. You are the one holding the wheel.
