Chapter Text
Alva decided to end his life...
The smog was like a basin of murky water, sloshed from head to toe, sealing the whole high-rise in a suffocating shroud.
The wind wasn’t sharp, just dull and sluggish, shoving at him in fits and starts, like countless cold palms feeling along his shoulder blades and lower back, urging him one step farther.
Alva’s white hair clung to his forehead and neck like strands of cold, lifeless fish, dripping chilled sweat down his skin.
It felt as if his chest were flooded with molten lead, each breath threatening to snap his ribs apart. His stomach had shrunk into a stone, slamming again and again into his diaphragm, sour bile crawled up his throat, burning the root of his tongue numb. He tried to swallow, but only managed a mouthful of saliva with the taste of rust.
The muscles below his knees had long gone numb, like two withered stakes driven into concrete, yet deep in the marrow, an ant-biting ache began to bloom, crawling up through his veins to his belly, to his chest, to every frayed nerve ending.
His skin stretched tight with pain, as though someone were teasing open each pore one by one with a fine needle.
His eardrums swelled, blood roared inside them like an endless thunderstorm, grinding every sound from the outside world down to a distant, monotonous hum.
Alva lifted his foot, but felt nothing where his ankle should have been as that part of him had long since been sawn away, leaving only a vague knot of pain dangling at the edge of his trouser leg. Invisible threads stretched between the soles of his shoes and the slick concrete, clinging and tugging, as though intent on dragging the last of his weight into the abyss.
Mist-beads clung to his lashes, and every blink rasped against his corneas like sandpaper.
The world had collapsed into a single gray line, and at the end of that line was nothing, nothing that held, buried within it, all the stories he could never bring himself to tell.
His nerves had dulled to the stubborn grind of rusted gears, while the pain still ticked away somewhere deep inside.
It no longer screamed, it simply went on, steady, unhurried, dripping like a leaky faucet onto the back of his skull, onto his shoulder blades, onto the base of his spine.
Each drop carried away a trace of warmth, leaving behind a pinprick of darkness.
Looking down, the smog was deep enough to swallow any height, no lights, no streets, no people, only a churning field of dark gray, like a silent whirlpool waiting to pull his weight under.
His heart thudded in his throat, but so slowly, like water-swollen drumsticks striking a drum soaked through, each muffled thump… thump… sending a dull ache through his temples.
Fear came, but not the sharp kind that drives a person back, it was slow, viscous, almost comforting, like a wad of wet cotton stuffed into his chest, squeezing all other senses to the edges.
And at the center, one truth remained: one inch farther, and there would be no more breath, no more heartbeat, no more memory.
But it was precisely that thought that made him feel safe.
Death was no longer an ending, but a room without light or sound, a place he could curl up inside.
But memory rose in that moment, like silt stirred from the bottom of a pond, carrying the warmth of rot.
His nerves had long since been steeped numb in an excess of pain, like a rope tied and retied until it could no longer be pulled apart, only wound tighter, until his knuckles blanched and his nails dug into his palms without his noticing.
He lifted his left foot, the movement slow as if dragging it through thick glue.
The instant his sole left the concrete, the sock around his ankle tightened by a fraction, the faint rasp of fabric magnified until it sounded like the softest sigh.
From the knees down, numbness bloomed. Blood seemed to flee both toward his feet and toward his skull at once, leaving his calves a cold, hollow vacuum.
His body tilted forward, and the smog seized the chance to slip through his collar, gliding along his collarbone to his chest like a cold tongue licking across his heartbeat.
He thought: Half a step more, and I’ll never have to wake again.
So he let his toes brush the empty air, a gentle tap as if testing whether the surface of water was real.
Then, his whole body began to tip forward, white hair lifting one last time in the smog before the thick air pressed it back flat against his spine.
“Wait... are you really going to just die like this?”
The voice was like a thin, resilient thread, silently winding around his wrist from behind and yanking him back. Alva’s left foot was already hanging over the edge, only a dense layer of smog separated the sole of his shoe from the void. At the pull, his ankle gave a shiver, his toes brushing the air twice before slowly, sluggishly, retreating.
It wasn’t a loudspeaker, there was no static hum of electricity. Nor was it the rooftop PA, it was too light, so light it almost sounded like someone talking to themselves. Alva’s first thought was: A police negotiator? Here already? That fast?
But the thing was, Alva had never told anyone about his plan for today. And of course, now, he had no one, no friends, he could have shared it with anyway. How pathetic was that?
His phone had had its SIM card pulled three days ago and been tossed into the dumpster behind his building. His social media wiped clean. His entry records tampered with. He’d even gone out of his way to avoid the surveillance-heavy main elevator, climbing all the way up through the freight access instead. There was no way the police could have gotten here this fast, unless they’d planted a bug in his head.
The absurd thought made him chuckle briefly, the sound stuck in his throat like dry ice, releasing a sharp white mist.
His shoe sole scraped lightly against the edge of the concrete, so faint it almost whispered, “Wait a moment.”
“Well, since I’m going to die anyway,” he thought vaguely, “might as well hear what the police have to say. I’ve never been talked down by cops before in my life.”
He turned around. His eyes, which had been like two dimming tungsten filaments, yellowed, loose, ready to go out, suddenly snapped tight as if something twisted the filament, his pupils shrinking sharply.
Not the police??!
About ten meters away stood a young girl, like a fragment of pure white cut out from the thick gray haze.
Her dark brown hair, softened by the damp air into gentle curls, flicked its tips against the waistline of her white dress in a slow, rhythmic dance. The hem of the dress swayed and clung with the aimless breeze, like a lampshade opening and closing lazily.
She was barefoot, her ankles so pale they were almost translucent, revealing pale blue veins branching beneath the skin and fading away.
But the most striking were her eyes...
Black, yet black with a shifting layer of molten gold. Not a reflection, but like magma suddenly rising from the depths of an abyss, pulling anyone who gazed into them slowly downward, inch by inch.
Alva’s eyes were caught in those twin specks of dark gold, as if someone had threaded a glowing hot wire through his pupils and tied it directly to his brainstem.
He heard a faint, almost embarrassed “ahhhh” escape from his throat.
“You...”
His dry, cracked vocal cords managed only that single syllable, scraping like rusty iron against glass. Alva’s tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, but no second word came.
A cascade of thoughts exploded in his mind.
Police? Negotiator?
But clearly, the face before him hadn’t been dulled by police academy training.
A rookie cop? How dare they send a kid to handle something like this? If he really jumped, what color would that white dress be stained by the spray of blood? Would she have nightmares tonight? Would she never dare wear white again?
These thoughts crashed into him suddenly and absurdly, like a swarm of moths flying into a flame, battering his chest.
Alva could even imagine the small corner in tomorrow’s newspaper: “Rookie Female Officer’s First Case Ends in Failure, Man Commits Suicide on the Spot”, accompanied by her blank ID photo.
But the next second, he bit down hard on his molars, tasting iron in his gums.
What business is it of mine?
The voice echoed chillingly inside his skull, cold enough to frighten.
I'm about to die, and I’m supposed to worry about others?
All those “shoulds,” “musts,” and “what-ifs” weigh on me like damp blankets, creaking my spine. Now, even death has to consider if it’ll scare a stranger? Ridiculous.
I don’t want to care about anyone anymore...
That thought was like a dull blade, finally cutting the last thread of a spider’s web. He lifted his eyes, piercing through the haze, and for the first time, stared into those abyssal eyes without any guilt.
“So,” he heard his own hoarse voice say, “who exactly are you?”
After speaking, Alva’s gaze followed the sway of her skirt down to her bare feet. The skin was so thin that faint blue veins showed through, and her toes curled slightly, either from the cold or as ready to flee at any moment.
“Don’t your trainee cops wear shoes these days?” he sneered. “Or are you trying some kind of martyr act to soften me up?”
The girl paused, a faint crease forming between her brows. She raised her right hand, her fingertip gently touching her chest, moving so slowly it seemed she was afraid to disturb the air.
“Me?” she tilted her head, pure confusion swimming in those black-and-gold eyes. “I’m not a cop. I came to ask for your help.”
My help?
Alva’s temple twitched sharply. The word felt like a thorn, snagging the tangled mess of his thoughts. Instinctively, he took a half step forward, his shoe scraping out an impatient “scrape.”
“Me? You want my help?” He pointed at himself, twisting his mouth into a crooked smile. “Can’t you see...”
He raised his hand, making an exaggerated gesture that encompassed both the sky above and the abyss below.
“... I’m kinda busy dying right now.”
The last words shattered into fragments in the haze, sharp and unfamiliar even to himself.
The girl didn’t move. The hem of her dress was lifted slightly by the wind, revealing tiny specks of dirt on her ankle, like she had just run out from someone’s garden.
Suddenly, Alva felt a tightness in his throat.
He remembered a stray black cat he had when he was a kid, just as dirty, crouching in the rain with wide, round eyes staring at him. The cat later died, and he buried it in the neighborhood flowerbed. But at night, he kept hearing faint scratching sounds in the soil, and for three months straight, he had nightmares about it.
“Please, just go quickly,” he lowered his voice, as if afraid to disturb something. “If you’re not a cop... then you really should leave. The living shouldn’t witness these things...”
The last word caught in his throat.
He turned around, giving his back to that patch of white, as if that alone could sever all ties.
But his mind uncontrollably began to play out scenarios: Would she scream? Would she rush over and grab him? Would she crouch there trembling after he fell, unable to even cry?
These images scraped at his already numb nerves like a dull blade, cutting repeatedly.
“Stop meddling! Stop caring about others. If you’ve chosen death, then just be selfish... ”
He whispered this warning to himself, his toes hovering once again over the edge.
The girl seemed not to understand, or maybe she simply didn’t hear.
She took a step forward, the hem of her white dress brushing over her bare ankles like silent snow drifting toward flames.
“Do you need help then?”
Her voice was so soft it was almost just lip movements, yet it echoed inside Alva’s ear.
Before he could respond, the girl raised both hands, fingers together, palms facing his chest.
There was no warmth, no pressure, not even the resistance of air.
He felt a hollow “bump” against his chest, as if someone had pulled his heart right out from between his ribs, leaving behind a vacuumed hollow.
The next moment, a signal of weightlessness traveled down his spine, and his entire body, like water with its plug pulled, toppled backward with a splash.
Time suddenly stretched out.
Particles of haze slowly spun before his eyes, like dust under a microscope, each one reflected his fractured pupils.
Strands of white hair floated up one by one, like jellyfish tentacles torn by an undercurrent deep in the sea.
The rooftop’s concrete edge rose and receded in his vision, finally blurring into a gray line swallowed by the swirling fog.
The wind rushing past his ears lost its higher frequencies, leaving only a low, mournful “Oooooo... ”, like a whale’s song from the distant sea.
Blood surged backward toward his head, his temples pounding, and the edges of his vision darkened.
Drowsiness washed over him like tides flooding over reefs, layer after layer, dulling the pain, the fear, and even the very reality of “falling.”
In the final instant before his eyes fully closed, he saw the girl still standing where she was.
Her white dress was motionless, her black hair falling down, and those black-and-gold eyes cast downward, as if watching a pond about to freeze.
Then darkness closed in, and the world flipped into a silent, deep blue.
Thud!!!