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Bus 45 rolls across the afternoon asphalt road, the cabin filled with stuffy air and the smell of burning rubber from tire friction. Sunlight cuts diagonally through the window, casting a bright band of light across the seatbacks. In the window seat of the third row from the back, a young girl has fallen asleep with her head tilted, her ponytail loosely draped over her shoulder, her eyelids twitching slightly as if trapped in a nightmare. It is quiet inside the cabin. A young man wearing headphones in the front row keeps his head down, scrolling through his phone. A middle-aged woman in the middle seat cradles a black pressure cooker with old cloth strips wrapped around the handle. A man in a neon green jacket holds a selfie stick, lowering his voice as he says to the camera, "Hey guys, today I'm taking you on a city transit tour." An uncle with a suitcase curls up in the corner, clutching a red suitcase in his arms like he's holding a heavy tombstone. The clock quietly ticks past 13:41. Suddenly, a rapid electronic ringtone chimes—it is "Canon," its melody light and cheerful, yet carrying a sense of urgent prompting. The girl's eyes snap open, her pupils not yet focused, her fingers instinctively reaching for the phone in her pocket. But the ringtone lasts for only two seconds before being cut off by a far more brutal sound. BOOM— An explosion. Flames burst from the middle of the bus, glass shattering into ten thousand flying blades, a wave of heat carrying metallic debris as it crashes into the bridge's guardrails. The girl's body is lifted by the blast wave, tracing an arc in mid-air before plunging into the murky river below the bridge. In that instant, all sound is swallowed, leaving only a sharp, ringing hum like tinnitus. Then, everything stops. In the next second, the girl's back is pressed against the hard plastic seat once again. The sunlight still cuts in at the exact same angle, and the smell of rubber still lingers in her nasal passages. She jerks upright, her chest heaving violently, the fine hairs on her forehead pasted to her skin with sweat. The phone screen in the front row is still lit up with the exact same game; the old cloth strip on the pressure cooker is still tied in the exact same knot. The man in the neon green jacket holds up his selfie stick, his mouth shaping to say "Hey guys." She looks down at her phone screen—the time shows 13:41:30. The "Canon" ringtone begins to play again. <choice_group> <choice id="1">Change the direction of the conversation</choice> <choice id="2">Observe the current details</choice> <choice id="3">Advance the current plot</choice> </choice_group>