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When Daehyun moved up to Seoul from his home sweet home down in Busan for university, he didn’t realize just how homesick he’d get. Seoul, as it turned out, just wasn’t home.
That’s where the daily habits of crawling up to the roofs sprouted from.
At first, it started out with a simple ten minutes of staring out from his dorm room window, heavy sighs parting his lips every few minutes until his roommate hissed at him to shut up - something about his sighs bringing down the whole room. It was then that he began to go out.
He went to the gardens just outside the dorm, but the place was infested with bugs (primarily bees). The park wasn’t the best of options either, instead of bugs, couples bonded there with glued lips and touchy fingers. The cafeteria closed at nights and walking lonely outside alone sounded like a good excuse to get himself stabbed on the streets.
That’s when his roommate actually decided to be helpful for once, staring blankly at a homesick Daehyun before shoving him up the four flights of stairs and out heavy doors to the wide open of their building’s open roof.
Instead of bothering his precious roommate, Daehyun’s trips to the roof increased over time, heading up the unwalked steps whenever something was on his mind. The skies became his best friend and counselor, silently listening and unjudging of his decisions and actions.
It wasn’t until a chilly afternoon of December that Daehyun ever feared the high placement of the roofs.
The place he sought for release, it turned out, wasn’t only just his location for release.
There were others, with a much more different value of release than he.
Daehyun nearly screamed, tackling the lanky teen to the hard ground floor blabbing incoherent shouts and whimpers of words not even he could make out. He’d freaked upon seeing the teenager lean over the railing, shoes off and placed just by the edge to stare out into the open space before them. Frankly, he didn’t care what the boy had as for an excuse, in his eyes, he looked deathly close to a one sure fire trip to hell.
The boy spluttered awkwardly at Daehyun once he’d managed to get the Busan native’s arms away, cheeks flushed red from both the cutting winter wind and having been caught in the middle of his suicidal attempt. Words were thrown at each other, the obviously younger boy making up poor excuses what he had been up to (“I just just reaching over to see the streets better!”) and Daehyun blabbing on how life was worth more than the boy probably made it up to be.
In the end, the neither of them were able to get their points across, instead being left panting and flailing arms awkwardly in sorts of a mute communication.
In the end, the boy scampered off, both ears and cheeks red, leaving his shoes pointed out toward the free fall that was waiting, had Daehyun not appeared just at the nick of time (whether this was a good thing, or not).
Daehyun saw the boy again the very next day, arriving late after the tanned man had already sprawled himself out on the dirty floor, leaning back onto his palms. He’d silently watched the kid scrape over, dragging his slipper clad feet over to the shoes he’d accidentally left behind the other day, and slowly scooping them up, not quite willing to make eye contact nor talk to his savior from the night prior.
“Someone will miss you if you’re gone.”
He wasn’t quite sure why he’d broken their well fit silence, just seconds before the boy had stepped out again from the hard metal of the roof door. Perhaps Daehyun had gone just a little mental in the head.
“No one would miss me.”
The whisper back was quiet, whimpered and washed out by the cold sweeping winds. And it broke Daehyun’s heart.
Pushing away from his lean on his palms, only just barely able to make out the sting and protest of locked muscles as he twisted around to watch the boy.
He’d stopped, stiff frozen and bottom lip quivering, with his hand placed on the rusty handle. Shoes were held up in one hand, a single digit hooked onto the back of each shoe to hold it in place. He looked awfully lonely, back bunched and bangs cut long over his eyes - to a state Daehyun couldn’t but question whether he could see at all.
“Everyone has someone.”
“Not me.”
For a second, Daehyun frowned, twirling himself around to sit facing the boy and the door, unsurprised to find that the teen - or, at least that’s what the chubby cheeks told him, despite the overgrown height - was unwilling to regard him with the same respect. If perhaps not by the circumstances presented now, Daehyun may have complained a little for the lack of.
“Even you.”
Eyes, dark and empty, flickered up to stare back at Daehyun, the latter nearly flinching at the torn lips and the scary pale features that watched back. He couldn’t have been any older than seventeen, but the bruising bags under those empty orbs read of a pain lasting so much longer.
“You just don’t know it yet. Someone will cry and miss you if you weren’t around anymore.”
Slight hesitance, and the boy was out, slamming the heavy weight door behind him as low thumps of stairs followed the crash. And Daehyun sighed. Something gave him the idea that the boy would be back.
It wasn’t until a week later that Daehyun spotted the boy again, working at untying his shoes, when he stepped into the wide open of the open roof. Upon catching sight of the older male, the teen seemed to opt to ignoring him, lining both pairs of shoes up by the railing once stepped out of. The actions were almost mechanic, as if practiced many times before.
And for a scary minute, the boy shivered under the heavy gusts of winter, pressing his stomach over the railing with a drawn whimper. “You’re not going to stop me?”
“I know you won’t jump.”
There was a defiant glare back from the teen, scratched and chewed lips drawing over pearly white teeth. “I will.”
Daehyun shook his head. No, he wouldn’t.
Eventually, the boy huffed back, landing himself onto the hard floor, hitting his hip on the flimsy metal railing on the way down. He seemed to curl himself into a tiny little ball, sobs raking through the slim figure as Daehyun watched, still at the frame of the door.
He took a minute of watching before stepping toward the boy, carefully brushing his hand down the child’s back, humming and shushing the wails.
“A hundred fifty three times,” the boy gasped, wiping his swelling eyes by the edge of his rough jacket material, “today marks the hundred fifty third time I wimped out.”
That was an awful lot of times for a kid that looked only just barely in his late teens.
“I was going to do it for real a week ago,” the kid continued, only after his sobbing spasms halted, “if you didn’t stop me, I’d dead right now. Splat, dead on the floor.”
“Aren’t you glad I stopped you then?”
A glare. “No.”
And Daehyun laughed, placing himself stretched out more comfortably on the floor, keeping his hand running up and down the bony texture of the teenager’s back. “You would’ve regretted it if you did.”
“I’d be too dead to regret.”
“Really? Because I think they regret it every day.”
“Who?”
“When I look up at the stars, I can tell. They’re all lookin’ down at us, missing us.”
For a minute the boy seemed to mull over the words, returning to abusing his already torn lips. It didn’t make sense what the older man was saying; why would they regret having left such a crude world? No matter what type of place the after world was - if it even existed -, it had to be a better place than the one he lived in now. It was impossible to get any worse than it was now.
“See,” The college student’s finger reached up slowly, pointing out a single star, first to crop up in the Seoul night sky, “that one’s lookin’ down at us real sadly.” How could stars be sad anyways? They weren’t living creatures; they didn’t have feelings. “It’s sayin’ sorry and telling you that it ain’t worth it. That running away really isn’t running away.”
He regretted having picked this roof to jump off of that week ago.
He regretted having let the university student walk into his life just like that.
“My name’s Daehyun. If you want to talk, I’m all ears.”
He regretted letting Daehyun strike him up on that conversation.
Over the days, Daehyun found it a habit to find the mysterious teenage boy up on the roofs. When at first, the boy’s shoes would be off and lined up in that tall-tale sign of a suicidal jump, there came more days of where the boy would be seated on the floor, legs crossed and head directed to the skies and stars above.
And come the night, the music major would join in, sometimes with warm mugs of hot chocolate and others with a guitar to strum. They’d talk about random things, making up stories of each star and their supposed past. Some coming so borderline real, that Daehyun couldn’t help but think they were.
“That one’s name is Yongguk,” the boy, Daehyun never did catch his name, told “and he was nineteen when he died. He was all smart and popular. He was in the soccer team and everyone liked him. They wanted to be just like him. Or, at least they thought they did. Somethin’ was up in his family and one day he just went up and downed a whole bunch of pills. One gulp. Two gulp. Three. He cleared a whole bottle of sleeping pills before he was gone, out like a light.”
The boy told scary stories. They were vague, just to the point where it forced Daehyun to make up the additional facts and information untold.
“And that one, that one’s name is Youngjae. He went real fast, when he was thirteen.”
Sometimes, Daehyun had to stop the boy, a shaking hand to the teenager’s forearm squeezing with a broken whine and gasp for air. The stories sounded too true. Too borderline reality.
When Daehyun told his tales, they were of more innocent, reading a sweeter reality (as sweet as death could get) than the mystery boy’s. “Doojun, that one’s name is Doojun.” Whenever Daehyun began his stories, the teen would straighten up a little, eyes shifting to the hopeful words. “He was in a car crash. His soccer team had just won a match and they were on their way back up to Seoul to celebrate. While his teammates were chattering excitedly, adrenaline still pumping in his veins, he was calling up his younger cousin. They were talking on the phone, promising to meet. He swore that he’d teach his baby cousin how to ride a bike when a drunk driver crashed into them.
“He held on for four days, just long enough for his baby cousin to visit him. When they finally met, they talked for three whole days and on the night of the third day, he apologized to his baby cousin. Sorry that he can’t play soccer with him anymore, his legs were paralyzed. Sorry that he couldn’t be there to take the kid’s training wheels off his bike, his arms were broken. But most importantly, sorry that he wouldn’t be there when tomorrow came.”
But Daehyun was a music major, he was no good at making up stories.
“I still miss him.”
This time, the teen was the one to comfort the sobbing Daehyun, hands running over the elder’s shaking figure. No other words were exchanged, but Daehyun figured that the boy’s presence was good enough.
“You told me before that no one would miss you if you died.
“I’d miss you.”
Daehyun never got the teenage boy’s name, but he figured that it didn’t particularly matter. He figured names weren’t all too important to the little bond they’d managed to create over the days. He learned that he was closer to this unnamed boy, than he was to the most of the people he called his friends.
But he’d learned a different thing or two. The mystery boy was just as old as Daehyun had thought him out to be: a healthy seventeen. It having been an eventful year since they’d first met, each afternoon spent together on the roof chatting about a mindless nothing. And then soon, mystery boy needed to take his college entrance exam.
Pulling back old memories, Daehyun did his best to aid the boy through his exam, giving snippets of hints and guidelines to doing his absolute best. And come a drawing afternoon November, mystery boy came running up the steps to the roof, a cheeky smile and scribbled sheets of paper in hand.
He’d done loads better than Daehyun had at that age.
In December, it came to their first year anniversary since their first meeting on the roof. And of that first year, it became the first day that Daehyun couldn’t drag himself up the steps.
Dying would have been an overstatement to his conditions, but a certain naggy roommate didn’t quite seem willing to listen to complaints. “You’re sick,” said the voice muffled behind a face mask (because Daehyun was germy), “and you are not leaving the room, so help me.”
It was the first day in a year since Daehyun couldn’t see the mystery boy up on the roofs.
Come morning, Daehyun was up and out of the room before his roommate was up, the heavy winter coats (the whole three of them, the third and last one just barely perched on him, unable to fit through his already clothed arms) piled on top of him doing nothing to keep him from shivering in the chilly winter air. He knew that mystery boy wouldn’t be there when he got up the steps, but Daehyun wasn’t looking for the kid.
He was checking for the tall-tale sign of shoes lined, toes pointed into the free fall.
And there it was.
Daehyun almost choked over a wail and tears when he met the shoes, just as he had the year back. Ignoring the cold of the snow frozen under his slippered feet, his toes threatening to fall off in the cold, he slid over to the rails, peeking over as if to check for the splattered blood on the floor below. He sniffed loudly, partially from the cold and the other from the sting in his eyes, when he pulled back, determining that if there had been a suicide attempt, they would have cleaned it up by that time and hour.
Devastated described a little of how Daehyun felt that the moment.
He’d just landed, dropped onto his butt and into the cold snow, when a strip of paper, torn out of a lined notebook, caught his attention, flapping awkwardly from under a restraining stone. Daehyun lunged for it, letting drop his third layer of coat on the way to gripping his numb fingers around the thin slip of paper.
He nearly tore the thing, trying to undo the folds creased carefully into the sheet.
Dear Daehyun;
I waited the other night, but you didn’t come.
But it’s alright, I’m a big boy now!
I didn’t die. I’m still alive.
Did I surprise you with the shoes? Ha. Have more faith on me.
Those were the shoes I wanted to get for my brother.
I was saving up for them when he got up and swallowed a whole bunch of pills.
He died in the room just next to mine, when I was sleeping.
But I think he wouldn’t mind if I gave them to you instead.
He might’ve even smiled at me for it. I know his star’s watching me.
I won’t be up on the roof this week. I have a school trip to Jeju.
Actually, I won’t be on the roofs anymore.
I don’t think I’ll need it again.
I want to say thank you for stopping me. You’re right, I would have regretted it.
I wouldn’t have been too dead to care.
So thank you.
P.S. When we next meet, I want you wearing those shoes by the way.
Look for a tall, dashingly handsome freshmen by the name of Choi Junhong.