The Ticket That Said 3:17

Chapter 1: The Bus Stop Across the Street Is Supposed to Be Abandoned. Something Still Pulls Up at 3:17 AM

On my sixth morning in the apartment, I found an old bus ticket beneath my front door.

It was made of thin gray paper, soft at the edges as if it had passed through many hands. A faded blue number was printed across the middle.

58

On the back, someone had written a time in pencil.

3:17

I assumed it belonged to Mile, the old man next door. The building leaned toward his apartment, and there was a gap beneath both doors wide enough for letters, dust, and the smell of his cabbage soup to travel freely.

I left the ticket on the radiator in the hallway and went to work.

By evening, it was inside my apartment, lying in the center of the kitchen table.

That should have frightened me.

Instead, I blamed myself. I had been tired since moving to the city. Tired people misplaced things. Tired people forgot small actions. My mother used to say that exhaustion turned the mind into a house with too many unlocked doors.