The Night Bus

Yuna had booked the cheapest overnight bus ticket she could find, mostly because it meant saving one night of hostel fees, and boarded it at the Shinjuku bus terminal a few minutes before eleven thirty, half-asleep already from a full day of walking around Tokyo.

Her seat, 14B, was next to the window. The seat beside her, 14A, was empty when she sat down, and for a moment she allowed herself to hope it might stay that way for the whole eight-hour journey to Kyoto.

It didn't.

A tall, sleepy-looking guy with a backpack far too large for the overhead compartment squeezed into the aisle seat just as the doors were closing, apologizing quietly in accented Japanese to no one in particular.

"Sorry," he said again, this time in English, once he noticed her watching. "Nearly missed it. Ran the whole way from the station."

"I noticed," Yuna said, unable to hide a small smile. "You're lucky the driver waited."

"I am extremely lucky in general," he said, settling into his seat with visible relief. "Tom, by the way."

"Yuna."

The bus pulled out of the terminal a few minutes later, city lights sliding past the window, and settled into the quiet hum of the highway. Around them, most passengers had already reclined their seats and closed their eyes, blankets pulled up against the bus's efficient air conditioning.

Neither Tom nor Yuna closed their eyes just yet.

They talked quietly for the next few hours, careful not to disturb the sleeping passengers around them, voices barely above a whisper in the dim, moving darkness of the bus.

Tom was Australian, three months into a working holiday visa, currently somewhere between a farm job in Hokkaido and whatever came next. Yuna was Korean, finishing a photography degree, spending her last free summer before job hunting began in earnest, taking photos of places she'd probably never afford to properly revisit as a working adult.

"What kind of photos?" Tom asked.

"Mostly train stations, actually," she admitted. "There's something about them. Everyone passing through, going somewhere, coming from somewhere. I like photographing that in-between feeling."

"That's oddly poetic for someone doing it to save on hostel money."

"Both things can be true," she said, and he laughed, quietly enough not to wake anyone.

They compared travel stories for a while — his disastrous attempt at making friends with a farm goat, her three days lost in Osaka's underground shopping streets — the conversation moving easily between topics the way conversations sometimes do with strangers you know you'll likely never see again, precisely because there's nothing at stake in being completely, unguardedly yourself.

Somewhere around two in the morning, Tom finally admitted his eyes were closing whether he wanted them to or not.

"Wake me if I miss anything interesting," he mumbled, already half asleep.

"I'll take notes," Yuna said softly, though he was already gone.

The bus rolled into Kyoto Station just before 6:40 in the morning, early sunlight cutting sharply through the front windshield as passengers began stirring, stretching, gathering bags from overhead compartments in the particular groggy chaos of an overnight journey ending.

"We're here," Tom said, blinking awake as the bus slowed. "Already?"

"You slept through basically all of it," Yuna said, gathering her own bag from beneath the seat.

The aisle filled quickly with passengers eager to disembark, everyone suddenly moving with the brisk efficiency of people who had somewhere else to be. Yuna found herself pushed forward by the crowd behind her, Tom several places back, still wrestling his oversized backpack out from the overhead compartment.

"I'm heading toward the temples first," she called back over her shoulder, raising her voice slightly over the noise of the crowd. "You?"

"Not sure yet," Tom called back, still struggling. "Might just wander for a bit."

"Good plan," she said, smiling, already being carried forward by the crowd toward the doors.

"Hey, wait—" he started, but the words got lost somewhere in the shuffle of forty people trying to exit through one narrow door at once.

By the time Yuna stepped down onto the platform, blinking in the early morning light, Tom was nowhere in sight behind her.

She waited near the bus for a few minutes, telling herself she was just checking her phone, not actually looking around for anyone in particular.

He didn't appear.

Eventually, she made her way toward the station exit, slightly annoyed at herself for the small, unreasonable disappointment sitting in her chest over a conversation with someone she'd known for exactly seven hours and would, statistically, almost certainly never see again.

It was near the ticket gates that she noticed it: a paperback book, clearly well-read, spine cracked and pages slightly curled, sitting abandoned on a bench. She picked it up out of habit more than curiosity, and only then noticed the name written in blue pen on the inside cover.

Tom (not the actor).

Underneath, in smaller handwriting: If found, please return — currently somewhere in Japan, probably lost.

She almost laughed out loud, standing alone at the ticket gates at seven in the morning, holding a stranger's book with a joke written inside it for exactly this situation.

She had no way to contact him. No number, no social media, not even a last name.

She had, she realized, precisely one clue: a torn train ticket stub tucked inside as a bookmark, for a route continuing on to Hiroshima, dated two days from now.

Yuna looked at the ticket stub for a long moment, then, slowly, slipped the book into her bag instead of leaving it behind.