Shirokuma Literature Club | Night Parade

1675 characters of text

I was the only one standing at the bus stop.
I hadn't been able to refuse overtime again. The last bus must have left five minutes ago, and I was left behind alone in the night alley. It was too far to walk home, and I couldn't afford a taxi. I just wanted to disappear.

As I hung my head at the bottom of the night, I heard a faint sound like ringing in my ears. A bus slid silently under the streetlamp. A plate reading "Bound for Dawn" was lit up.

The door opened, and the driver turned to face me. He was wearing a stark white mask.

"Will you join us?"

I nodded, hesitating.
It was clearly a strange situation. But I wasn't afraid. If anything, I was excited.
I was worked until I was exhausted every day, and I felt like I didn't care what happened anymore.

When I stepped on board, the bus was full of people wearing masks. A green bird mask with a sharp beak, a clown shedding tears, a smiling rabbit, a family of yellow pelicans—each was moving with a sense of liberation.

Some were reciting poetry, some were floating in the air as if in zero gravity, and some were floating through the bus like jellyfish while playing guitars. No one cared about anyone else.

I slipped through the parade-like interior and sat in the back seat. A little girl with a fox mask sitting next to me looked straight at me.

"Is this your first time?"
"Yeah, something like that."
"Then you have to choose a mask."

The girl opened a tin box she was holding on her lap. Inside, colorful masks were packed tightly.

"Please, take whichever one you like. You can be who you want to be, just for the night."

After some hesitation, I chose a silver mask with a moon pattern on it.
The bus started moving slowly.
Outside the window, I saw a cracked night sky and a forest growing upside down. A city made of stars, an ocean floating in the sky. In that ocean, a light blue mermaid was jumping along inside a kangaroo's pouch. The passing scenery was like fragments of a dream. It no longer mattered where we were headed.

Inside the bus, everyone lived as they pleased. No one got in anyone's way, no one competed with anyone. It was exhilarating, and somehow looked solitary.
The bus moved without a sound. The night quietly unraveled.

"See, you can do whatever you want."

The fox girl said over her shoulder. A prosthetic leg peeked out from her skirt.

"Make sure to return the mask when the night is over."

She began to dance ballet with her exposed prosthetic leg. A Nutcracker orchestra formed a circle and played pink instruments. Every time her prosthetic leg, extending straight from her ballet shoe with its untied ribbon, kicked up the night, her fingertips grasped the air, and her spine arched to draw a graceful trajectory, spotlights hidden beyond the darkness emerged. I worried that if she kept dancing like this, she might step over the boundary of the night. But it was okay. She traced the very edge of the world with her toes, never falling to the other side. Finally, she bowed slowly.
I stood up quietly and reached for the window. The glass rippled like water and sagged, sinking to the other side. There, I truly saw another version of myself.

It was me, writing the words I had wanted to write without hesitation, crafting an improvised, yet special story that no one had ever seen before.
That version of me had set out on a journey without a map, filming a road movie on par with Jack Kerouac.

Before I had time to commit them to memory, they had already drifted far away by the time I realized it.

After a while, we arrived at an unknown bus stop. As the sky turned slightly white and morning began to break, the lingering scent of the night remained.
I took off the moon mask, thanked the girl, and got off the bus.
Not a single passenger got off. Colorful masks were pressed against the bus windows, looking down at me.

I stood in the alley. The clear air of early morning felt like needles against my whole body. I didn't know if it was because I had taken off the mask, or if it was the pain of having to return to reality. I felt anxious, as if I had been left behind at the edge of the world.

When I turned around at a presence, the next bus was heading toward me with a faint sound like ringing in my ears.

#ShirokumaLiteratureClub I participated in this.