There's a rule every long-time commuter on the 156 route knows, the kind of rule nobody writes down and everybody keeps: if you're on the last trip of the night and the bus is empty enough to count the passengers, don't count them.
I learned it from a conductor named Aling Sylvia, twenty years on the route, who watched me counting heads one rainy 1 a.m. out of boredom and slapped my knee, quick and hard, like I'd reached for a live wire. 'Huwag,' she said. Don't. Then, softer: 'Kasi minsan hindi tugma.' Because sometimes it doesn't match.
She told me the route rules the way a nurse gives discharge instructions — flat, fast, non-negotiable. The last trip picks up six at Kamias whether six are standing there or not. You will feel the bus kneel and hear the fare, click-click-click, but you keep your eyes on your phone. The conductor issues tickets to the back row without looking. Six tickets. Always six. The bus runs light on fuel on that stretch no matter what the gauge says, and the aircon works too well, and if a wet umbrella rests against your leg in the dry season, you move your leg and you say nothing.
And above all: they get off at the depot. Not before. If the bus stops between Kamias and the depot — a red light is fine, but if the DOOR opens between Kamias and the depot — you do not look at who gets off, because whoever you watch leave will look back at you, and then you'll know their face, and Aling Sylvia says the ones whose faces you know can find you on other routes.
I ride the 156 twice a week for my shift. For three years I followed the rules and the rules worked, which is all you can ask of rules.
Last Tuesday the bus knelt at Kamias, empty street shining under the sodium lights, and I heard the fare click six times, and I kept my eyes down like always. We were two stops from the depot when the door opened on its own. Hydraulic sigh. Rain sound coming in. I stared at my phone so hard the screen blurred.
Five sets of footsteps went down the steps.
Aling Sylvia says the ones whose faces you know can find you. She never told me what it means when one of them stays.