Chapter 2: The Rooftop’s Edge

The rooftop, a classic setting in countless campus-themed literary and cinematic works, where protagonists experience various iconic scenes, was a place rarely, if ever, trodden by students in reality. In the memories of most, the door leading to the building’s rooftop was invariably locked, rendering it impassable; the scenery beyond it often existing solely within the imaginations of young boys and girls.

Perhaps, in a small way, this minor regret also served to protect their youth.

As the time on the phone screen reached ten o’clock in the evening, a sudden noise echoed through the deserted teaching building of Pingjing Normal University Second Affiliated Middle School. With a resounding ‘clang,’ a shattered padlock hit the ground, and a figure, hammer clutched tightly, fumbled open the door to the rooftop.

That particular lock, it was said, had been in use since the school’s inception. Nearly every student knew that, worn down by the passage of time, it had become a mere relic, yet no one had ever harbored ill intentions toward it until now.

The evening breeze, laden with damp air, swept across her face. The distant city lights, a tapestry of neon, faintly illuminated the intruder’s profile. As she brightened the screen of the phone in her hand, the shadows clinging to her receded.

This was a girl in a school uniform, her expression weary. She was the very student who had bumped into Zhang Qingwei just hours earlier.

She took a step forward, the illuminating screen swaying, revealing only a small area around her. She dared not use the flashlight function on her phone, fearing its beam would attract unwanted attention.

Designated a ‘forbidden zone’ strictly off-limits by school rules, the rooftop before her was far from the beautiful vista she had imagined. Yesterday’s heavy rain had left shallow puddles in some spots, while fallen leaves and several cigarette butts on the ground attested to its neglect for quite some time. Rusted equipment and haphazardly stacked clutter made the entire space feel cramped and chaotic, exuding a desolate atmosphere under the pallid light.

Carefully stepping over the obstacles beneath her feet, the girl reached the unguarded edge of the rooftop. From this precarious position, a single step forward would send her body tumbling, plummeting from the six-story roof to the ground below, shattering her, and bringing her heart to a permanent halt.

The courage that had propelled her to this moment had long since vanished. How to compel herself to take that final leap became a new, daunting challenge. As the girl slightly tilted her head to gaze downwards, her vision met only an unfathomable darkness, cold and suffocating, like a terrifying abyss, yet also akin to a tranquil, ethereal dream, silently beckoning her.

Even though she knew full well that only bare concrete lay below, the restricted view and her increasingly uncontrollable imagination caused her legs to gradually give way. Her ragged breaths brought on waves of uncontrollable dizziness. After a moment of tense hesitation, she stumbled back two steps, then, heedless of the muddy footprints, sank to the ground.

She had believed that coming here would bring her some measure of ease, but it was not so. The things that had accumulated in her heart, crushing her, still remained. Those sharp, unbearable voices, those nightmarish images, transcending time and space, lingered in her mind, filling a reality that was now almost entirely devoured.

Here, at this precipice between life and death, she recognized her primal instinct for survival, yet she was powerless. She could do nothing, nor could she imagine what else she might do. Her current gasping breaths were her final struggle.

Even as she reached this point, she struggled to recall why she had come. In her world, an unseen force seemed to control her, compelling her to watch her escape routes collapse one by one, until, faced with nothing but this absolute despair, it delivered a forceful push to her back, sending her plunging into the abyss.

The education she had received warned her that her current actions were wrong, irresponsible, an extreme form of escape. Yet, no one had told her how to break free from this predicament that could no longer be called life. No one had told her how to resist the malice and bullying of others. All she could do was face the wounds inflicted upon her body and mind with increasingly negative thoughts, then sink deeper into an inescapable quagmire, passively watching her last shred of hope be mercilessly swallowed amidst the exhaustion of her body and spirit.

Her rationality was gradually eroding, unable to function normally, while her emotions were the architects of this outcome. It was the simplest form of cause and effect, a pure, vicious cycle.

The evening breeze was cool. With a vacant gaze, the girl looked into the distance. Beyond the school, the city remained brightly lit, its vibrant neon lights adorning the urban landscape, where night life would continue—stable, comfortable, warm… everything she sought seemed to exist in those distant lights and shadows.

She reached out, wanting to touch those glimpses of lively light, but they were impossibly far, beyond her grasp. The emotional distance was far more daunting than the physical. She could no longer imagine herself living amidst that warmth; she could only silently watch the glowing radiance, allowing herself to be assailed again and again by the surrounding darkness, which left her with frostbite that penetrated to the bone.

Burying her head in her arms, her eyes could no longer contain the overflowing liquid sorrow. Transparent, desolate tears streamed down her cheeks, leaving trails that merged with the small puddles left by the rainwater beneath her.

“Wuwu… wu… wuwuwu…”

The wind muffled the girl’s helplessness and grief. Unable to seek help from anyone, she reserved her final outpouring for herself. The pain was endless, but tears, too, would eventually run dry. After an unknown duration, her remaining spirit was filled with numbness, completing the final preparations for this ritual of termination.

Lifting her tear-streaked, disheveled face, the girl haphazardly rubbed her aching eyes with her sleeve. Her slender body, supported by her stiffening legs, slowly rose, teetering precariously on the brink of life and death.

She suddenly felt a strange gratitude for her current daze. This brief sensation of numbness, though insufficient to carry her into tomorrow, was enough to momentarily quell her desire to embrace it. In such a state of mind, everything seemed to lose its significance.

One step, two steps. She once again stood a single step from the edge, burying her last vestiges of hesitation and fear beneath a shroud of emptiness and numbness. She closed her eyes, her body beginning to tilt forward—

This way, everything would end. She would no longer have to endure anything.

No hatred, no resistance. On this night, just like any other, a splash of vibrant red would fall, then congeal, be washed away, and finally merge into the endless black.

“It will hurt, you know, if you just jump like that.”

The sudden voice reaching her ears startled the girl. It tore through the gloomy curtain that enveloped her, granting a moment of respite to the suffocating, confined space. Her muddled, chaotic consciousness instantly sharpened, jolted by the auditory stimulus. Yet, before she could search for the voice’s owner, her body had already left the rooftop, falling freely at an irreversible angle.

In a brief glance, the girl saw nothing, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that at the rooftop’s edge, growing ever more distant, a hand had arrived, albeit belatedly. Did such a hand truly exist? Or was the voice merely a figment of her imagination? She couldn’t find an answer; time no longer allowed her to.

Still, she wished such a hand existed, even if it was too late to save her. It would prove that someone in this world had wanted to hold her back, had wanted to share the suffocating pain and sorrow that weighed upon her.

Just the mere possibility of it, perhaps, was enough.

This single, inscrutable delusion was sufficient to make the last few tears trickle down her cheeks.

Loneliness, an unbearable loneliness, was more painful than anticipated. Only when one makes a choice, only when one sees that choice is irreversible, only when one swallows the bitter fruit born of that choice, does regret truly set in.

Idealized physics models had taught her that, propelled by the acceleration of gravity, her fall would take only a few seconds. Thus, fantasies and regrets alike would cease in an instant.

She could no longer hear the sound of flesh hitting the ground. Her consciousness did not sever immediately; this height and her falling posture were insufficient to grant her instant liberation.

Just as the voice had said, it hurt, intensely. Beyond the pain, there was no other thought. Before her life completely ended and dissipated, she would fully comprehend this unprecedented agony.

Such suffering, the price paid for seeking release, was truly etched into her bones.

Her life, like fragile, crystalline glass, shattered into meaningless, heart-stinging fragments.

****

Time could not be rewound, yet as the evening breeze caressed her skin, the chaos was merely an individual’s delusion. The distant neon lights persisted, while the destructive tilt had only just begun.

“…Huh?”

A deviation. Her body was tilting, the distant lights on the verge of dissolving into utter darkness.

The girl failed to grasp her current situation. The fall and death she had just experienced felt like a fleeting bubble vanishing into the night. Yet, her thoughts remained suppressed by the real and agonizing pain in her mind. Everything seemed to be starting anew; her body leaving the platform that sustained life, plummeting towards the hard, cold concrete ground. It was as if fate, with an ill-intentioned sneer, had pressed the replay button.

Falling, liquid splashing, shattering, withering, pain, cessation—then everything returned to the beginning. An intact body, harboring a terrified consciousness, once again stepped towards annihilation, and the night, as always, remained oblivious to it all.

Could this be the punishment for abandoning life? Was she trapped in this fleeting cycle of life and death? The mental terror spurred her brain to its most immediate reaction. Her soul, instinctively unwilling to be crushed to oblivion in repeated deaths, sent out a desperate signal for help. This signal manifested in the girl’s actions as she, in her unbalanced rush towards death, twisted her body with all her might, reaching her hand towards the sky, even if that direction held nothing but void.

Saving a life, perhaps, did not require immense strength. Sometimes, as in this moment, the power to merely grasp a frail girl was enough.

In the suffocating darkness, an arm suddenly extended from the rooftop edge, gripping the girl’s hand tightly, saving her from gravity’s pull and a fatal end.

Panic, bewilderment, surprise, confusion—a complex and fluctuating array of emotions now played across the girl’s face. The strength holding her had granted her survival, and the warmth in the palm of her hand would be etched in her mind, an ember that would long refuse to die in her heart.

Someone had caught her, saved her life.

The string of unexpected events completely overwhelmed the girl’s thoughts. Before she could react further, the hand gripping her suddenly unleashed another surge of astonishing strength, resolutely pulling her body back onto the rooftop, allowing her feet to once again feel the solidity of the ground.

The thrilling sensation of a narrow escape teased the girl’s taut nerves. As her ragged breaths brought on waves of dizziness, as her violently pounding heart caused a faint ache, she finally felt the reality of ‘being alive.’ Her legs, having just touched the ground, immediately buckled, and her body swayed, pulling her savior down with her onto the ground.

The world spun. A cold, damp sensation seeped through her thin clothes into her back. A brief pain was followed by numbness in her buttocks. Compared to the excruciating, body-and-mind-tearing pain of her fall, which now felt like a hallucination, the current pain was negligible, even bringing a strange sense of relief.

Before she could collect her thoughts, the soft touch in her palm was withdrawn. This left the girl feeling somewhat disoriented. Under the influence of the ‘suspension bridge effect‘ (TL Note: A psychological phenomenon where people misattribute fear or anxiety aroused by a dangerous situation to attraction towards another person.), the unease of losing her support made her instinctively search for the other figure present.

A faint light appeared before the girl. Her phone, which she had carelessly dropped on the ground, had been picked up and now served as a guiding light for her gaze, finally allowing her to see the other person’s true appearance.

Unexpectedly, it was a beautiful young woman who appeared only slightly older than herself. A pair of eyes, faintly violet under the screen’s glow, along with her rather unusual attire, had already led the girl to an initial guess about the young woman’s identity. This stranger, who had appeared on the rooftop at some unknown moment, leaned against the wall, holding the girl’s phone and looking at her.

“How does it feel, abandoning life?”

The young woman’s expression was calm, her voice as still as a tranquil body of water, devoid of ripples. Though she posed a question to the girl, she seemed unconcerned with the answer, showing no expectation. The indifference and detachment in her tone were so pronounced that the girl, for a moment, found it hard to accept that the person before her could be the ‘kind stranger’ who had just saved her life.

The girl struggled to stand, facing the enigmatic young woman who seemed to meld with the night. In the shadow of a second death, her nearly shattered spirit, seeking to escape the trauma in her heart, involuntarily pondered the question. Her inner self quickly arrived at an answer, but that answer was deliberately erased the moment it formed. The question also reawakened her: her situation remained utterly unchanged. Even if she ultimately chose not to give up this night, even if she celebrated her choice, tomorrow she would still find no courage to attempt to alter her circumstances. The ephemeral image of her overwhelmed leap would still remain the only outcome.

Reality remained an airtight, suffocatingly oppressive high wall on all sides, and she still stood at the edge of the rooftop, with no retreat.

The only thing that had changed, perhaps, was the escalating fear of death. So, if she couldn’t even bring herself to commit suicide, what else could she do? She had no other options.

Entanglement, helplessness, despair, hopelessness… through these emotions, the girl revealed the form of a monster residing deep within her soul. Precisely because she had once harbored hope, precisely because she had once tried to resist, this monster had grown immensely powerful, becoming unconquerable.

And a Negative Erosion Body (TL Note: A supernatural entity or phenomenon described as being born from overwhelming negative emotions.) often manifested in such minds, saturated with negative emotions.

The night remained oblivious to this unfortunate vessel, while the young woman silently took in the girl’s trauma. She could not be her savior, nor could she alleviate her pain or bring her any tangible salvation.

A dazzling light suddenly shone upon the girl. Instinctively, the girl closed her eyes, then heard the young woman’s voice near her ear:

“If you believe that the leap you just took shouldn’t be your only choice, then, take this.”

The girl’s right hand was gently grasped, and a cold sensation settled in her palm. The voice by her ear continued.

“Whether to use it is your freedom. If you don’t want it, simply discard it.”

The girl tried to discern the shape of the object in her hand with her palm, but this only deepened her confusion. Thus, she timidly spoke, asking,

“What… is this?”

“A bomb.”

The young woman replied without hesitation.

Upon hearing this answer, the girl immediately became panicked. She dared not open her eyes, yet she also dared not further explore the coolness in her palm. The oppressive presence so close in the darkness left her bewildered and helpless.

“A, a bomb…?”

“Yes, an expensive bomb.”

The young woman’s voice gradually receded, as if she were slowly walking away.

“It cannot eradicate your troubles, your dilemmas, your despair. It will even drag you into an even deeper, inescapable abyss, forcing you to pay an unbearable price, making you lose things more important than life itself.”

As the young woman described it, the girl only felt the object in her hand grow colder, its touch against her skin subtly seeming to pierce her palm.

“But in return, it can also bring you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“It can make people hear your lamentations. It will let people see you choose to be annihilated in a tragic explosion, thereby tearing away the veil of indifference, thereby witnessing the wounds inflicted upon your body and mind.”

Another evening breeze swept past. The young woman’s voice vanished into the shadows. The girl slowly opened her eyes, noticing her phone, its flashlight on, placed on the ground not far in front of her. She bent down, picked up the phone, and shone its light around, finally confirming that the mysterious young woman had vanished.

“Is this… a key?”

The girl cautiously spread her palm. In her hand, a small, translucent key glowed with a faint dark purple light, captivating her mind with an inexplicable allure.

Just looking at it, just holding it, the girl felt an indescribable presence stirring within her body, as if something was eager to break free from its chrysalis.

At this moment, the girl finally articulated the question she hadn’t been able to speak earlier, murmuring it to the silent night.

“Was that person… a magical girl?”

At least for this night, she would not find the answer to that question.

Almost simultaneously, dozens of meters away on the rooftop of another building, the mysterious young woman emerged from the shadows. With vision far surpassing that of ordinary people, she watched in the darkness as the faint light on the school rooftop gradually retreated into the teaching building. It seemed the girl had abandoned her intention to end it all tonight.

As for the girl’s choices thereafter, he would no longer concern himself. He had given the girl another chance to choose, and provided her with an option that was far from pleasant. That was all he could do.

After all, he was not some magical girl capable of bringing so-called love and hope.

He looked at his arm. The strength with which the girl had clutched him, as if to a lifeline, had left a deep impression. Now, in his heart, he had a rough assessment.

“Hmph…”

In the blink of an eye, the young woman’s place was taken by a man in a suit jacket and shirt. Zhang Qingwei tucked a pale red mini compact mirror back into his right pocket, then turned and departed the rooftop, walking towards the dim night sky where not a single star was visible.

People lived beneath this same sky. Some were already deep in slumber, some were still toiling, some harbored confusion about tomorrow, some carried disappointment from today. This would be another utterly ordinary night, just like always.