I got to school early today. Not really on purpose traffic was just less than normal. So now I’m sitting in the staircase listening to mind-numbing YouTube videos waiting for classes to start. I could go and look for some of my friends, though I love them, they are a lot for the mornings. Midway through a video of a defunct theme park, a guy enters the stairwell. He doesn’t really look like he put much thought into his appearance. Though I can’t really fault him for that as I just put on the things at the front of my closet. He greets me with a quick “Howdy.”
I return his greeting with a “Hi,” and move aside to let him up the stairs. A bit later the bell rings and I go to my classes. It was overall a normal day.
I got to school early today. Traffic was light today. A guy who looks like he woke up on the wrong side of the bed enters the stairwell. He greets me with a quick. “Yellow.”
I return his greeting with a “Hello,” and move aside to let him up the stairs.
Wait, something about this feels familiar. Do I share a class with that guy? Well, it doesn’t really matter, the bell rings and I start heading to class. It overall was a normal day and it turned out he wasn’t in any of my classes today. Maybe I’ll have him tomorrow.
The traffic was light today so I arrived early. A guy wearing a ratty-looking sweatshirt enters the stairwell I was sitting in. Wait he seems familiar so I say. “Hey dude have we met before? Cause you look familiar.”
Instead of actually responding he just gives me a look of pure disgust and pushes up the stairs past me.
RUDE!
How dare he do that. I’m gonna go give him a piece of my mind. I march up the stairs after him. I found him at the top of the stairwell.
Wait? What’s he doing up at the cage that blocks access to the door to the roof? My anger at him is temporarily blunted by my curiosity about what he’s gonna do. He takes out a tie from his pocket, loops it through the cage, and pulls on it to activate the push bar on the other side of the cage. He then goes through the unlocked door to the roof. Resourceful but what the hell is he doing on the roof!?
RING RING
The bell goes up but at this point, I’m too curious to see what he's up to. I just have to know what's happening. I know it's nosey but I feel like I deserve it after he was rude to me earlier. So before the rush of students heading to class flooded up the stairs, I take the ribbon out of my hair and followed that guy's example, and headed up to the roof.
Well, now that I’ve been to the roof of a high school I can say it's honestly pretty underwhelming. It's all air conditioning vents and wires. Nothing interesting. Where's all that pizazz like in the anime? Though the view up here is kinda cool. Our school is one of the highest buildings in the area. It's basically all single-family housing in the area. So it's nice to see the area from a different perspective. Now back to what I was actually meant to be doing. Where is that guy? I look around and find him quite quickly. He was standing near the lip of the roof. Guess he wanted to see the view too. I get closer and hear him talking to himself. He says. “Three floors will do it. Three floors should free me. Three floors wi-”
I interrupt him, paying no attention to that weird three floors thing, with. “Hey! What you doing up here?” I think I surprised him as he jumped back from me, almost stumbling over the ledge. He really should be more careful.
“How’d you get up here?”
Wow, still RUDE not even answering my question. “I followed you up here, but again what ya doing?”
“Oh sorry.” He takes a moment to, what looks like, think something over. He then says. “Well fuck it you're not gonna remember it and maybe talking about myself will finally actually make me feel better. So here's the situation. God hates me, decides I shouldn't have happiness, and has imprisoned me in a time loop. So I’m gonna jump to see if it stops the loop.” He then takes a step up onto the lip of the building.
What the HELL!! He can’t just dump all that on a girl who followed him to yell at him. He can’t be for real, he must be imagining things. He's gonna jump and people who do that aren’t the best mentally so it's probably a figment of his imagination. Oh no right jumping. I wanted him to feel bad about being rude to me, not DIE. How can I stop him? I can’t tackle him, we’d both fall in that situation. Ummmmmmmmm Talking! That's right, keep him occupied with talking and maybe someone qualified will eventually come and take care of this. “Woah, woah wait man. Yo-”
He interprets me with a yell. “Don’t call me that!”
Ok, he doesn’t want to be called man. Weird but I can work with that. After all, I’m not gonna argue with a guy literally on the edge. “Ok got it, buddy. But about all that stuff you said earlier you’ve gotta be Joshin right? It's not like,” I managed to stop myself from saying gods not real. Don’t feel like this is the right time to question this guy’s faith. So instead I go with. “Time travel exists.”
“Nope, it does. This is my 4th run-through of this day.”
“Only 4 run through and you’re trying to kill yourself. I think the guy in Groundhog’s day even lasted longer than that.” God fucking damn my brain. It couldn’t bite back that one. I just had to say the first damn thing in my mouth. Think before you speak idiot! That obviously can’t be the right thing to say.
“Yeah, but it feels like the right thing to do.” He takes a simple step back and starts to plummet. I lunge after him but I miss and he just
F
A
L
L
S.
I’m too late and I’m forced to watch. It's like the most morbid version of watching a tomato drop. And like a tomato, he makes a red splash and doesn’t move once it hits the ground. I don’t feel like I can move. I only notice how long I’ve been rooted there when a pair of policemen arrive on the roof to collect me. They didn’t think I was in the right state to be questioned so they sent me home. I cry into my pillow. Today wasn’t a normal day.
—--
I arrived at school early as there was basically no traffic. A familiar-looking boy enters the stairwell and greets me with a “Yo.”
I greet him back with a “Yo.” and watch him climb up the stairs. It gives me a morbid sense of deja vu. Something bad's gonna happen to that kid. I can feel it. I should follow him and at least try and help. He looks like he could use it. I have a today might not be a normal day.
