The timetable was a liar.

It had promised a bus at 23:55, and yet the time on the cracked clock suggested that particular promise had been broken.

Four people stood at the stop, each one pretending they weren't waiting.

The man in the suit checked his watch, even though he already knew what it would say. He wasn't a man accustomed to waiting. Trains ran on time. Meetings started when they were meant to. People had routines and those routines did not involve standing at a damp suburban bus stop long after they should have been home. He should have called a cab. He should have done a hundred other things. But instead, he was here. He tilted his head and cracked his neck. Not the first time today. Then he rolled his shoulders like that might somehow shake off the unease that had been sitting there all evening.

The woman near the bench exhaled slowly, watching the air cloud in front of her. Some nights didn't feel real. Like that book she read the other day, the one about a talking dog in a museum. It was something about the silence, the way the streetlights buzzed like they were trying to fill an absence. This place felt like an in-between. She had spent enough time in hospitals to recognise one. The spaces where people hovered waiting for the inevitable; to be told what happens next. She caught herself rubbing her side, a phantom ache where something had once grown, then shrunk, then won.

The biro girl had given up sketching. There was nothing to draw. Just an empty road, an empty shelter, an empty night. She tucked her hands into her sleeves, covered in red ink, but already dry now. She glanced up at the timetable again, as if maybe, this time, it would display some sort of revelation instead of just Bus 42: Delayed.

The last man was watching the road. Not out of hope. Just habit. He looked calm, but it was the kind of calm that came from being too tired to panic. His shoulders ached. His head throbbed. His brain was trying to come up with a reason for the delay. Probably roadworks. Something boring and fixable. But nothing about this felt fixable. And deep down, he knew this wasn't just a late bus. Just like he knew those headaches weren't just headaches.

Then, as if summoned by their collective impatience, the bus arrived.

No lights in the distance, no rumble of an engine approaching; just the soft exhale of brakes as it materialised at the stop. It looked old. Not vintage, not retro. Just old, in a way that suggested it had been around longer than it should.

The doors slid open. No driver spoke. No destination was displayed.

The four of them hesitated, just for a second. Then, without a word, they all stepped inside.

The doors shut, and the city outside faded into the night.