The rain had stopped falling on the city. It was falling into it instead.
Water hurried down the station steps in narrow, determined streams. It covered the old yellow safety line, gathered around the turnstiles, and carried a single dead leaf into the waiting hall. Above you, the city went on without noticing. Below, amber lights hummed behind a film of dust.
The station had been closed for years. You knew that much, although you could not explain why you had come down the steps, or why the ticket in your pocket was dry.
You took it out. Acid-yellow paper. No station of origin. No matter how carefully you turned it toward the light, there was no destination either.
Three people waited beside the dead platform screen.
The woman in the navy dispatcher's uniform spoke first. Her name was Zhou Qin, and she held a worn paper log against her chest as if the water might take it from her. She said she had just arrived for the night shift. Her silver watch had stopped at 23:47.
The man near the old maintenance exit was Chen Mo, an emergency doctor. He denied having seen the station before. When you asked whether there was another way out, he answered too quickly, pointing to a door hidden behind a faded panel.
Lin Lan stood farthest away. A closed scarlet umbrella rested against her cream raincoat. She was twenty-seven, she said, and she had also just arrived. Her ticket was the same impossible yellow as yours, but the station's dead system had never issued it.
Four people. Four accounts of arriving, none of which agreed with the log.
Then the old mirror on the opposite wall caught your attention. The glass was cloudy, the frame green with age, but it reflected the waiting hall clearly enough.
You counted once. Then again.
There were five shadows.
A speaker clicked somewhere above you. Zhou Qin tightened her hold on the log. Chen Mo stopped looking at the exit. Lin Lan folded her ticket once, carefully, as though she had made a decision she did not want to explain.
The first announcement began.