11:59 PM.
The clock on my phone reads 11:59. Battery 3%. Forty-seven missed calls. One draft message blinking in the text box: "I just wanted to know if it mattered."
I'm on a rooftop that's supposed to be part of a "luxury" building. The grass is fake. The railing is glass with a thin metal cap. There are planters with plastic succulents. Someone left a folding chair up here. Below, the city goes on: scooters, a convenience store with its door open, a couple under an awning sharing a cigarette. Neon signs change ads every few seconds. People keep moving. The noise is constant; if you stand back from it, it becomes a steady background hum.
I haven't prepared a speech. I haven't written anything important. I have a draft message and a list of small debts I'll never fully pay off in my head. I have routine disappointments: the job that eats time and gives me rent, friends who check in and then fade, the landlord complains that the sink is still leaking. Those are simple things. They don't sound like reasons when you say them out loud. They sound like facts.
The phone vibrates in my pocket. I don't check it. I can see the number of missed calls and the message without opening anything. The draft message is the bluntest thing I have left: I just wanted to know if it mattered. It is short. It says what I don't know how to say any other way.
The railing is cold under my palms. My shoes are on the concrete lip. I don't look down. Looking down is rehearsal. I look at the skyline instead—building windows, office lights on, somebody finishing a late shift. The city is well organized into whose lives are important and whose are expendable. You can see it in luxury towers and service entrances. I've been on the service side long enough to know the pattern: a few people make decisions; most people move to support those decisions. That's how it was where I came from. It's how it is up here, too.
People think falling is a single instant. It isn't. It's a sequence of small physical facts: the foot steps over the edge, gravity starts doing what it does, air pushes past, time compresses. Between the decision and the motion, you have room for a few clear thoughts. Those thoughts are not dramatic; they are practical.
If I step off and die, what will happen? An ambulance will come. Someone will call work. Someone will talk about me for a day or two. My phone will be searched. People will post a line or two that looks honest and then the next day someone will post something about a trending topic and that will be that. There will be paperwork. There will be condolences from people who don't know the first thing about me. The city will not shift its course because of my absence. That is the practical answer to the practical question: what changes when I'm gone.
There is another practical fact: if I don't step off, I will wake up tomorrow and the routine continues. Rent needs paying. The sink still leaks. People will still ask for favors I do for free. None of those are reasons to keep breathing if your logic is only about outcomes. They are, however, reasons that keep most people going because they are small obligations. I've kept going on small obligations for years. They were enough to tolerate the rest of it, until they weren't.
I check the phone again, but only with my eyes. The message blinks the same. The missed calls haven't gone away. I think of my mother making dinner, calling me to eat when I came home late from work. I think of a coworker who once told me he appreciated an extra shift I took. Those are small things. They do not add up to headlines. They do add up to a pattern that kept me from falling apart long before this night. They are the ledger of a life kept by small kindnesses and small debts. They don't feel enough now.
A couple walks by the access door to the roof and laughs. I can hear them close up. They don't see me. That's not dramatic; it's a fact. Most people on roofs are invisible. Most people in cities are invisible to everyone but themselves and their close circle. That's a functional truth. The world only notices faces that provide value, or that produce spectacle.
I think of value as a ledger entry. If the ledger says you matter, other people treat you differently. If the ledger doesn't include you, they don't. I'm tired of trying to earn an entry that keeps being erased because the economy I live in doesn't reward what I do. That is a neutral observation. It's not an indictment of individuals as much as it is an indictment of a system that sorts people into categories.
There is a small, private shame that comes with this kind of thinking. You want a sign. You want someone to tell you that your existence mattered to them. A text message. A voice on the phone. A hand on your shoulder. The draft message in my phone is an attempt to make someone say something that would register as evidence. It's a small test. Nobody passed it. People failed in predictable ways: they said the phrases people say when they aren't ready to do anything real. They offered time that was never given.
It would be easy to make this moment look beautiful. I could imagine a montage of things I did well or people who loved me. It wouldn't be true. I did some things well and some things badly. People loved me in limited ways, which is true for most people. Those facts don't make an argument either way.
The city below has its own pressures. If I fall, someone's day will shift. There may be a traffic jam. The ambulance takes a unit away from some other emergency. Someone will have to call family. Police will do their job. It will be inconvenient, and someone will be inconvenienced for months. That is part of the calculus I run when I stand here. A certain kind of guilt comes with being practical about harm. I feel it. I do not think it's noble to ignore it. I take it into account.
I can feel my hands trembling a little. Not because my nerves are heroic but because they are nervous. Muscles do that when you focus on an unusual simple act. My legs are steady enough. My breath is steady. My mind is steady. That steadiness is not certainty; it's clarity. I can list facts and consequences and still step. That's how clarity works in these moments.
There's one more fact: people will make stories about you if you let them. Some will call you a victim. Some will make you a symbol. Some will use your death to push agendas. That's how narrative markets work. They will take your image and turn it into something they can sell. I don't want to be a symbol. I don't want my life to be traded as proof for someone else's point. That's another small calculation in my head. If I step off, I'm handing over whatever is left to other people's use. If I don't, I keep control of my story, flawed as it is.
The last minute stretches. The numbers count down. I don't watch the clock that closely. I know it will reach midnight; clocks do that whether you pay attention or not. The couple by the stairwell move away. Someone below swears at a scooter driver. The neon ad above the convenience store flips to a new product. Life is granular in these details, and my mind goes through them because thinking about specifics keeps panic away.
11:59:40.
Fourteen seconds left. The thought that surfaces without drama is this: I've been keeping a ledger of obligations and kindnesses to anchor myself. That ledger is thin. It never padded my account enough to buy a life I felt comfortable living. That's not a confession; it's an observation. It's the same kind of observation I use at work when I assess risk.
11:59:50.
Nine seconds. The draft message still blinks. It's the only line that pretends to be a test of whether I mattered. There's a small, realistic anger in me about how inadequate that test is, because it presumes someone else's response will validate my existence. That's not fair to them. It's not fair to me. It's not a good test. But it's the one I have.
11:59:57.
Three seconds. I put my foot over the lip. The concrete edge presses under my shoe. The railing is to my side. I am not looking down. I am looking forward at the city. I don't rehearse memories or call anyone's name. I think only of the ledger and the fact that being known by a few people did not stop me from feeling erased. That is the last clear thing I let myself hold.
12:00 AM.
I step.
The motion is immediate. Air moves past my face. The sound of the city narrows until there's the rush of wind and the heartbeat. There is no light show, no soundtrack. It is plain physics and a decision. My last conscious thought is small and literal: did the message matter? Then the night closes around me.