It wasn’t the usual torrent site or cracked software forum that brought Lukas to “City Bus Simulator Munich Free Download.” It was a damp Tuesday evening, his bank account hovering at twelve euros, and a specific, almost pathetic longing in his chest. He missed Munich. Not the touristy Glockenspiel or the crowded Oktoberfest tents, but the grimy, rhythmic pulse of the U-Bahn stations, the hiss of pneumatic doors, the way the late-night 58 line curved past the dark English Garden.

Lukas looked into the side mirror. The reflection showed his real room: the cheap desk, the empty pizza box, the blinking router. But superimposed over it, faint as a watermark, was the old woman from the bus, standing directly behind his real chair.

The virtual world outside wasn't a procedural loop. It was a perfect, frozen replica of Munich at 2:47 AM on a drizzly autumn night. Every graffiti tag on the Leopoldstraße underpass matched his memory. The flickering neon sign over the Sexy Pizza shop. Even the broken cobblestone in front of the Türkenstraße tram stop that always splashed puddles.

He released the parking brake.

At the Marienplatz stop, a new passenger boarded. An old woman in a tattered green coat. She didn't sit. She walked to the front, leaned close to the virtual driver’s window, and knocked. Tap. Tap. Tap.