The concrete stairs reeked of urine mixed with the smell of wet asbestos. Dark. Sticky.
Arka dragged his cramped right leg up the seventieth step, or maybe the hundredth. He had stopped counting after passing the eighth floor. The gaping toe of his dress shoe scraped against shards of liquor bottles scattered along the stairs. They let out a painful squeal. Like a rat caught in a door.
The abandoned building in Palmerah was like an ancient castle. Rebar jutted from concrete pillars that had never been fully poured, resembling rows of giant ribs stripped bare by rust and time. The night wind pierced through the empty elevator shaft. Whistling. Hungry.
The muscles in Arka's calves screamed for mercy. Cold sweat seeped from the pores at the back of his neck, mixing with the remnants of sewer water from the afternoon rain and creating an itchy sensation that made his skin feel as though a colony of red ants were crawling all over it.
But he didn't stop. He wanted his death to be as tragic as possible.
If he dared to jump from the highway pedestrian bridge, he might only end up with a shattered pelvis. Crippled. A burden on the nurses in a third-class ward, and once again the object of pitying looks. He was sick of being pitied. To him, pity was poison in the shape of candy. He needed a height that left no room for doubt. A height that guaranteed his skull would shatter against the asphalt before his brain's cortex had time to process the pain signals.
On the stairs at the thirteenth floor, he began coughing violently. His lungs nearly tore from lack of oxygen. He leaned against a brick wall half-covered in moss. His ears rang thickly, replaying the recording of the afternoon's voices like a tangled cassette tape.
"You're too stagnant, Ka..."
Arka tilted his head back. The darkness above him looked dense. "Stagnant my ass," he rasped into the empty stairwell. His saliva felt thick, almost like glue. "I climbed... fifteen floors, Nay. On foot."
"Please be a little kinder to yourself."
He laughed. The sound was more like a choking crow. The fingers of the hand he had kept clenched slowly opened. His right palm was still torn from the rusted fence at his mother's house. Thick blood dripped slowly. Tap. It fell onto the concrete dust. "I'm all cleaned up already," he said, wiping at his shirt collar, sticky with mud and sweat. "All that's left is... jumping. Then it's over."
The rooftop access door was made of thick corrugated metal, its lower hinge already eaten away by corrosion. Arka kicked it. Once. Twice. On the third kick, the door collapsed with a deafening metallic clang.
The Jakarta night wind slapped him in the face. Hard. Savage.
The stench of rotten copra, exhaust fumes, and the distant fishy odor of the Ciliwung River fought to enter his nostrils. The city sprawled arrogantly below. A sea of yellow, red, and white lights blinked like cold lava that never stopped flowing. This city never slept. It busily chewed up soft people like him, wringing out their sanity to use as lubricant for the machines of capitalism.
Arka walked slowly toward the edge of the roof.
There was no railing. Only a strip of concrete as wide as a brick. He stepped up onto it. The toes of his shoes now hung over empty air.
Thirty meters below him, the asphalt road looked like a glossy black ribbon left wet by the rain. Cars crawled along slowly like metal beetles. The pull of gravity suddenly felt so real. Strong. Promising the most certain embrace.
A strange euphoria suddenly blossomed at the base of his chest. An intoxicating lightness. The noise that had filled his head since morning—the curses, bills, and lies—suddenly fell silent. A silence so perfectly clear.
All this time, he had lived under someone else's control. Cast aside, used, and thrown around at the whim of the people he called family and the person he called his lover. But tonight... this second... gravity belonged to him completely. His death was the only veto power his uncle couldn't take away, his cousin couldn't manipulate, and Naya couldn't cast aside.
At this height, Arka finally held complete control over his own fate. The sole director of his final breath.
He closed his eyes. He stretched out both arms. The wind whipped his wet shirt into a wild flutter. He let the cold air freeze the trails of tears on his cheeks. More blood dripped from his palm, falling to soak the concrete floor right beside his heel.
One more step. All he had to do was lean forward.
His calf muscles tensed. His heel prepared to lift from the rough ledge. He drew a deep breath, sucking in the last of the city's oxygen—the city that had slowly killed him. Ready to fall. Ready to shatter.