Chapter 1 Prologue
Prologue
On the seventh day after Christmas, the weather in the north of the country was extremely cold at this time of the year.. Around six o'clock in the morning was the intersection of night and day, which was also the coldest time of the day. However, because today was the first working day after Christmas, the young people in town all chose to return to the cities for work at this time. The bus station and the ticket hall were crowded with people.
Queenie Carter came out of the station with her suitcase. She had drunk so much at the party with her friends last night that she missed the bus this morning. During the travel rush, it was totally impossible for her to catch even the next bus.   
Fortunately, there were a lot of illegal minibuses near the bus station as an alternative with lower fares. People who failed to catch the bus or who wanted to save themselves some money would take the illegal minibuses. Back in shool days, Queenie would often take these illegal minibuses to university she went to in Buena City to save money. However, after she fell in love with Timothy Carter, he had forbidden her to take the unlicensed minibuses because he thought it was not safe. She had been nagged by him for several days after she took it once to save some money.
She and Timothy got married as soon as they graduated from university. They got the marriage license without even holding a wedding ceremony, because they were both afraid of losing the other. As a couple, they had been together since school days. And now, they were husband and wife. They would cling to each other all day long if they could. If it weren't for the fact that Timothy had been busy doing research in the laboratory, he would have come back for Christmas with her. She felt very sweet when he kept asking her to go back to him. She thought he must be missing her like crazy.
Carrying her luggage, she was stopped by an unlicensed minibus driver before she left the ticket office. "Miss, heading to the Buena City? Eighty dollars a person."
She observed him for a while. He was a man in his thirties. He looked like a decent man. "When do we leave?"
"Get in the car. We can go right now." He waved at her, leading her to the parking place.
Queenie hesitated for a moment. She knew that Timothy would yell at her if he found that she took an illegal bus, but she really missed him and wanted to go back to him as soon as possible.
"Seventy five dollars. Five dollars cheaper!" Seeing her hesitation, the driver immediately lowered the price.
"Deal!" She nodded in response. Anyway, how would Timothy know that she had taken the unlicensed minibus if she didn't tell him?
Following the driver, she carried her suitcase in silence. When she arrived, she saw a black minibus parked there. She looked inside the bus and found a lot of people sitting in the car, all dressed in thick winter clothes. Getting on the bus, she took a seat at the front row because she was afraid of getting carsick. This seat was facing the back of the driver's seat. When she looked up, she could see a picture of a little boy hanging on the rearview mirror in the crystal photo frame. It should be the driver's child. He looked very cute.
In order to save fuel, the driver didn't even turn on the air conditioner in the car. As soon as she got in the car, she felt it cold inside. After sitting down, she took out her mobile phone to tell Timothy that she was on the bus. She picked up her mobile phone from her pocket, looking at it. She found that there were two missed calls from him. She must have missed them because it was too noisy at the bus station just now. She pressed the shortcut key number 1 to call him. She called him several times, but no one came to the phone. Queenie looked at the time. It was around nine o'clock in the morning, she guessed that he should be in class or in the laboratory, so she hung up the phone. She sent him a message with her mobile phone. "Darling, I will be home at about 4 in the afternoon. For dinner, I want a hamburger, some roasted chicken and some tarts. Love you! XOXO."
She sent the message with a sweet smile. How she wished she could be home already and kiss him! At the thought of Timothy's gentle, handsome and charming face, Queenie could not help but feel her cheeks blushing and her heart beating. She loved him deeply. She thought that she was lucky enough to to be his girlfriend during university.
The bus had been started while the air conditioner was also on. Queenie finally began to feel warm in her hands and feet.
Closing her eyes, Queenie planned to sleep for a while. She could not help drooling when she thought that she would be able to eat delicious roast wings when she got home. Timothy didn't allow her to eat these junk food. After marriage, he always said that they should cook at home, but neither of them were good at cooking. At first, she would ask him to cook, but Timothy didn't like to add any seasoning, for he thought it was bad for their health. He even seldom added salt, making the food favorless. The food he had made was quite hard to swallow.
She had been eating the food he cooked for half a whole month. Finally, she couldn't stand his cooking anymore and decided to cook by herself. However, when she looked at his cunning smile, she felt that she had been tricked. However, every time she looked at his fair and slender hands and his beautiful and innocent eyes, she would give up exposing his tricks. She had compromised. After all, it was she who had fallen in love with him first and it was she who pursued him first.
Thinking about this, she felt sleepy. She was still a bit hangover because of all the wine she had drunk last night. As the car jolted on the road, she fell asleep soon. Therefore, she didn't know that the phone in her pocket had powered off, nor did she know that the driver had chosen to drive on a lane rather than the expressway in order to save some fuel. Therefore, the originally eight-hour trip turned into a ten-hour trip. On the way, the car crossed several tunnels, one of which was very long with strangely colorful lights. It seemed that even the road was twisted together with the wall.
Suddenly, there was a harsh sound outside the window, which woke up Queenie who had been asleep. When she woke up, she felt that the air seemed to be pressuring her body while her eardrums were buzzing.
After a dazzling light and sound, the passengers in the minibus all passed out. Even the driver had passed out with his head on the steering wheel.
In the distorted light, the minibus was like a boat floating in the billows. It was dragged back and forth. The crystal photo of the little boy on the rearview mirror was also swaying with the shaking of the bus...
Accompanied by a fierce light stream, the minibus suddenly rushed out, as if it was flying. Popping out of the strange aureole, it directly rushed out of the tunnel with its wheels skidded for several times. Finally, it hit the roadside fence.
There was smoke coming out of the car after the violent crush.
Soon, people gathered over.
"There was an accident!"
"Call the police!"
"Hello, 911? There was an accident outside the tunnel. There are many people on the minibus! "
"There are even children in the car!"
"The police arrived!"
Soon, the police blocked the area while all the passengers in the minibus were sent to the hospital by ambulance immediately.
After a witness posted the photos of the minibus on the Internet, the incident triggered a heated discussion. Soon, some netizens found out that the minibus was the one that had suddenly disappeared 20 years ago. 19 passengers together with the driver had also disappeared with the bus. It was one of the top ten mystery cases in the past 20 years.
At that time, the government of Buena City had even founded an investigation team of specialists from all fields to look for the bus and the passengers in it, but no clue had been founded. Many people suspected that the owner of the bus was a human trafficker, but others believed that there had been an accident. Anyway, this bus, which had disappeared 20 years ago, suddenly appeared today!
What had it gone through? The attention of the media was attracted by this riddle, so many reporters had been waiting at the police station for the sake of first-hand information.
However, no matter how sensational it was, the dozens of people in the bus were at a loss, as if they had heard something incredible. All they knew was that the ride had been extended from eight hours to ten hours because the driver wanted to save himself some fuel. None of them had thought the bus had been driving for 23 years!
They came to 2021 from 1998!