Loop [Part 1]

The door to the school rooftop was seldom locked, as if they trusted the students enough to venture into the open space without attempting anything stupid. Forsaken in one corner was a small, octagonal glass cabin with a wrecked window, smashed in the last hailstorm and left untended ever since. Shayne used to seek solace on one of those long wooden benches inside the greenhouse, where he could loll through the entire lunch while chewing a cold sandwich or relishing a light doze, ostracising himself from the boisterous gangs and the often-jammed canteen. He would bask in the soothing warmth of the filtering sunbeams and the lingering steam that almost concealed him from the rest of the world, engulfing his consciousness and dreams the same way a hot bath could do. He had planted some tomatoes once but they never lived to be harvested. Now shattered pots of withering plants and decaying buds lay scattered in the cabin, ravaged constantly by the brutal winter gale and occasional downpour after the Gardening Society dissolved not long ago. The benches, covered completely in glass shards and often damp with revolting sprawling mould, were kept out of reach. Sometimes, Shayne would stand outside the cabin for a long time simply staring at the miserable content inside, wondering how life and death was only a matter of a flash of lightning or a sudden gust of wind.

There were thick, black railings on all sides of the rooftop, reaching up to Shayne's waist. Some paints had faded, scraped off by delinquents when they were up there smoking cigarettes, beating another unfortunate boy to a pulp or simply striking secret drug deals during the breaktime. Some tiles were missing due to the lack of maintenance, cracks visible on the concrete floor.

He leant on, no, pressed himself against the railing, exerting as much pressure as he could to test if it might break and fall off by any chance, freeing him from the confinement of this schoolground. He peered down at the narrow alleyway below where cars were parked on one side in a straight line and a few pedestrians strolled by with their heads down. They walked into the alleyway or passed one another in the intersection, and were never seen again.

Shayne leapt over the railing and landed on the ledge, where there was still room for him to shift around and slumped against the railing. He sat down slowly, legs dangling in the air. A hunched old lady with two grocery bags hopped into her yellow compact car and drove off. A man in a trench coat scurried past with a suitcase. A mother pushed her baby cart while consoling her wailing four-year-old who kept tugging at her sleeve. Nobody ever looked above their heads.

It was a cold day in winter. The street was cold. Everyone was cold.

Fleeting, misty clouds escaped his quivering soft lips as he rubbed his pale, icy hands together. He was merely wearing his school shirt, well-ironed because his father demanded so, always white and straightened without a single loose thread. The wind tapped his face and he fought back a shiver. His black leather shoes gleamed in the light, always brand new and polished because his father demanded so. He dug into his right pocket and took out a black stud. He put it on his right ear which he normally wasn't allowed to, because his father demanded so.

There was a dream below, a dream he had been having repeatedly for a while. He had been on the rooftop numerous times in his dream. Every time, he was slouching against the railing, legs hanging perilously over the ledge, eyes blinking at the deserted street below, his heart thumping, waiting for someone to look up from their phone screens and spare a second or so to see him fly. And sometimes, there was this outlandish, uncannily familiar image of him with a pair of dark wings, sometimes outstretched, sometimes clipped, sometimes exploding into a mass of stunning feathers that tickled his skin. There were two birthmarks resembling faded scars that stretched vertically down his back to prove that and ever since he was a child, he had had this far-fetched theory that he might have been an angel and a spiritual incarnation of some sort, or at least this was what he had been told as a toddler by his mother when she was lulling him to sleep. His father was constantly asking him to snap out of his fancy and that imaginative world of woe because being melodramatic and depressed all the time wouldn't gain him a straight A's and it made no contributions to his intellectual growth at all.

He could almost hear the sound of his bones fracturing and the screams that followed when the first person at the crossroads discovered the deafening bang and caught sight of the blood oozing out of his distorted limbs. He wondered who that would be, and if he would be responsible for mentally scarring him forever.

Seven floors up in the air. What would be the impact of his fall? How unsightly would be his death? He imagined the earth crack below, widening into an enormous bottomless gap – a dark portal leading to another dimension or universe devoid of solitude and affliction; where everyone carried the same stoic, torpefied face without the necessity of faking a smile, laughing, weeping or feeling at all. Fair enough. Nobody would envy someone else's happiness and nobody would grieve for anyone's loss. Everyone was equal. Equally void.

The wind blew harder, uncovering his choppy brown bangs he normally spent half an hour styling in the morning. He squinted and slowly rose from the ledge. He stood there, hands off the railing and counted...

Three.

Two.

'Wait!'

An intervention.

He reopened his eyes and frowned.

'Don't do that,' said a tumultuous voice, almost cracked as if the speaker was swallowing a sob or choking. 'Please.'

It didn't come from below, but from behind. The thumping stopped. He had been so thrilled a second ago to brace himself for the free fall and then this happened. Time ceased the very instant that beautiful voice caused a vibration in his eardrums. He stayed motionless for a long time, battling his own thoughts, half of which coaxed him into disregarding the intruder and slipping off the ledge while the other half was urging him to tackle that bursting curiosity and whirl around. His ears twitched, trying to pick up the slightest sounds from the intriguing stranger but all he could hear was his own heaved breathing blended with the almost inaudible weeps from behind.

He was hanging precariously in the sky, a few centimetres from where his feet would meet the air and his wings would flap. He was a thread, stretched to its limits, almost breaking.

'I'm begging you.'

He turned around sluggishly and met those flickering orbs for the first time. A mixture of sapphire and amethyst. Mesmerising and piercing. The boy had a head of sleek, bleached blond hair that complemented his unhealthily pale face that almost appeared translucent in the sun. His wavy, silky bangs were swept to the right, shading his white and dense lashes. His nose, thin and aquiline, made a magnificent sculpture with his high cheekbones and prominent jawline. His skin, so smooth and penetrable, almost gleamed in the light and his chapped red lips were another luscious sight. He could be a vampire in one of those cringey gothic romantic tales, but stuck on the ledge and rather disconcerted by the sudden appearance of this odd boy, Shayne had not the time to imagine what it would feel like to nibble those tantalising lips or to caress that head of downy feathers. The boy was around Shayne's height, slightly taller maybe, wearing a thick grey cardigan with a school batch on his left chest.

A gorgeous angel that didn't belong here. Not in this world.

The boy took a cautious step forward as his frown deepened. He looked so distressed for a moment Shayne thought their roles had switched and the boy was the one ready to fall to his doom. The corner of the boy's eyes sparkled.

Tears?

Why would a stranger weep for him?

'Don't move,' said the boy as he inched closer to the railing. 'Take my hand.'

The boy held out his right hand, half of which was hidden behind the excessively long sleeve of his cardigan. This reminded Shayne of the classic corny scene in Titanic where Jack offered his hand to Rose, dragging her back into the ship and had he never seen her that night on the deck or cared to intervene with her already deplorable fate or forced himself into her messed up life, maybe none of the tragedies would have followed.

'You'll regret doing this,' added he.

Shayne remembered cringing at that scene when he watched the film as a child, but he couldn't cringe when he now played the same character. He didn't know what crossed his mind, but between the merciless hard asphalt below and the unfathomably familiar figure before him, he chose the latter. So much for his déjà vu.

He had seen this boy somewhere, but couldn't recall when and where. He might have bumped into him on the street, unintentionally sat across him in the school library or driven past him in the neighbourhood.

And maybe he had only seen him in one of his dreams.

Shayne reached out his own hand and began to climb over the railing but the boy was faster. He grabbed him firmly and yanked him back. Shayne almost lost his balance and fell against this frail-looking boy, who heaved a sigh of relief and hugged him.

'Thank God.'

Still clueless and dumbfounded, Shayne furrowed his brows. He couldn't bring himself to return the hug, even though the trembling small frame was so tempting and the boy's hair had such a pleasant smell of lavender. Shayne recoiled from the awkward contact and stared at the boy sternly.

'Who're you?' asked Shayne, his heart racing.

'Erik.'