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【阅读理解】Reading: The Last Night Bus
Deng Wei was a night-shift accountant at a logistics company in Guangzhou, and she had taken the same night bus route 1,842 times.
The bus had 14 seats, one driver, and always smelled of roast chestnuts and mild disinfectant.
The driver, Lao Chen, had lost his veterinary clinic licence in 2016 and had been driving the route ever since.
Every night at 23:40 he said the same words: "Sit back. We gallop."
Deng Wei did not smile at this. She was not there to relax.
Since her mother's stroke in 2021, she had paid 4,300 yuan a month for a homestay nurse in Foshan.
The bus fare of 2 yuan was the only luxury she allowed herself.
At first the routine helped her: the bus bypassed heavy traffic, and the city lights from the elevated road made her sleepy.
She knew exactly where she would get off, walk 600 metres, buy a 6-yuan bowl of rice noodles, and sit in a rented room of 9 square metres.
Then one night in March, a passenger boarded with a parrot in a cage and sat beside her.
The man, an optometrist from Shenzhen named Wu Kai, said the parrot was called Aristotle and could predict interest rates.
Deng Wei laughed—an impulse she had not felt in eleven months.
That night marked a change. She began talking to Wu Kai, who was travelling to a hospital for eye surgery training.
He was 41, divorced, and spoke with the solemn precision of a man who had once wanted to be a surgeon.
They exchanged views on astrology, sociology, the ethics of large-scale construction, and the mortality of small shops.
She began to remember his sentences. He began to record her voice on his phone.
In June he asked her to skip the bus and take a taxi with him to a mansion in Panyu, where a celebrity chef would roast a duck and talk about Cantonese cuisine.
She went. The meal lasted three hours. The bill came to 2,780 yuan, and he paid.
By August the illusion had begun to decay. He cancelled meetings; his messages became irregular, then scarce.
She learned from a colleague in the freight department that he owed 1.6 million yuan and had been placed on probation for falsifying medical records.
The revelation did not offend her so much as instruct her. She had mistaken a man's attention for a permanent structure.
One Tuesday she waited at the stop for 47 minutes; the bus did not come.
Lao Chen had suffered a bereavement he would not discuss, and the company, restricted by an overtime ban, had cut the route's radius by 30 percent.
She walked 4 kilometres home. The rain was scorching at first, then cold. Her shoes held 200 millilitres of water each.
She did not stop working. But she noticed something she had once thought insignificant: the driver's hands.
Lao Chen gripped the wheel like a delicate instrument, and he never complained about his irregular schedule.
He had a badge that read, in Mandarin characters, "Competent. Civil. Responsible."
She asked him once why he stayed. He said, "Because the bus is a small civilisation. I do not abandon it."
She thought of her mother, who could no longer speak, and of the nurse who sent her photographs every Sunday.
She began to send money not as a duty but as a form of acknowledgement. The amount did not increase. The feeling did.
In January the route was cancelled. The last bus ran on a Friday at 23:40, with nine passengers and one parrot.
Lao Chen gave each passenger a small bag of roasted nuts and a printed instruction on how to find the replacement line.
Deng Wei sat in her usual seat. She took out her phone and deleted Wu Kai's number without ceremony.
Then she looked out at the delta, at the foaming water and the dredged channels, and she understood that she had been living inside a hypothesis—that patience would be repaid, that a stranger's interest would suffice.
It had not. The bus turned a corner. Lao Chen said, for the last time, "Sit back. We gallop."
She sat back. She did not gallop. She stayed exactly where she was, and the city went on populating itself with lights.
Questions
1. Why did Deng Wei take the night bus?
A. She enjoyed the smell of roast chestnuts and disinfectant. B. She wanted to avoid the traffic on the elevated road. C. She needed to save money for her mother's care in Foshan. D. She worked as a driver for the logistics company.
2. What was Wu Kai's profession?
A. A celebrity chef in Panyu. B. An optometrist from Shenzhen. C. A night-shift accountant in Guangzhou. D. A veterinarian who lost his licence.
3. What does the word "decay" in paragraph 8 most nearly mean?
A. Improve gradually B. Become less strong C. Disappear suddenly D. Stay the same
4. What can be inferred about Deng Wei's feelings towards Wu Kai by the end of the passage?
A. She planned to report him to the police. B. She still hoped he would return. C. She accepted that her trust had been misplaced. D. She felt angry and wanted revenge.
5. Which of the following is the best title for the passage?
A. A Vet's Licence B. The Accountant's Debt C. The Last Night Bus D. A Parrot's Prediction