The lights hummed their funeral dirge above Arrayan Dirandra's cubicle, casting everything in corporate purgatory's sickly glow. The office had emptied hours ago, leaving only ghost-scents of microwaved lunches and elevator pings from the cleaning crew.
Ian's fingers hovered above his keyboard, the cursor blinking in the email that had just arrived. His supervisor's words swam before tired eyes.
"After careful consideration... unfortunately unable to approve... perhaps next quarter..."
Next quarter. As if quarters mattered when you were drowning in real time.
His phone buzzed mockingly. Payment overdue. Account suspended in 3 days. Minimum payment required tomorrow.
Ian's gaze drifted to the framed photo wedged between his monitor and unfinished reports, a family photo from last year's gathering, his parents flanked by him and Sari, all of them smiling with the naive belief that things would get better. Now their smiles felt like an indictment, evidence of his failure as a son, a brother, a man.
The numbers had never lied. Debt: mounting. Income: stagnant. Expenses: relentless. His existence had become a bad investment, hemorrhaging value daily.
Ian closed his laptop with soft finality. He pulled out company letterhead and wrote:
"Mama, Papa, Sari—I'm sorry. The math doesn't work anymore. You'll be better without the burden I've become. Ian"
He folded the note, slid it into his jacket, and walked to the elevator with unnatural calm.
The rooftop access door groaned open, spilling Ian thirty-seven floors above Jakarta's sprawling lights. The city stretched endlessly. The wind caught his cheap shirt, making it flutter like a surrender flag.
Ian walked to the ledge with methodical resignation. His dress shoes found purchase on the narrow barrier, and suddenly Jakarta tilted beneath him. For the first time in years, he felt peace. This was his choice. His decision.
The wind pushed at his back like an encouraging hand.
His phone erupted into cheerful melody. The caller ID glowed, Sari with a heart emoji.
He almost declined. Almost.
"Ian! Perfect timing!" His sister's voice burst through.
"Have you eaten? Please tell me you've eaten actual food."
The question hit like a physical blow. When had someone last asked him that?
"You have to hear what Mama did today. She tried to use WhatsApp for groceries and ended up in a pigeon racing chat. Spent two hours trying to convince them she needed vegetables, not bird feed!"
Sari's laughter crackled through the phone. Ian could picture her perfectly. Twenty-six, still believing the world was good, still calling their mother "Mama" without irony.
"Ian? You're being weirdly quiet. Usually you'd be laughing by now."
The words lodged in his throat. Below, Jakarta danced with light and motion, indifferent to his drama. In his ear, Sari waited for him to be the big brother she remembered.
"I..." he croaked.
"Ian? What's wrong?"
Everything. He was a walking miscalculation, a human error compounded over thirty years into this moment on this ledge with this phone call tearing apart his resolve.
The sob escaped raw and ugly. "Oh, kakak," Sari whispered. "What's happening?"
But he couldn't talk. He could only weep. The phone clattered to the rooftop as he stumbled backward, his grand gesture crumbling into pathetic collapse.
He'd failed at everything, even suicide. Even in death, he was inadequate, saved by his sister's cheerful chatter about pigeon racing.
The pedestrian overpass stretched before Ian like a concrete bridge to nowhere, half its fluorescent bulbs dead, casting sickly pools of light across cracked tiles. He'd had to walk home.
The rooftop breakdown had left him scraped clean inside. He felt nothing now, just emptiness, vast and strangely peaceful.
Halfway across, a figure detached from the shadows. Thin, wiry, desperate, the kind of energy that came from too many sleepless nights and too few meals. A knife appeared in his hand like a magic trick.
"Wallet and phone," the man said, voice cracking. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."
Ian stared at his would-be robber, taking in trembling hands and hollow cheeks. Recognition flickered. The same trapped-animal look he'd worn for years.
Here was another man backed into a corner, ground down by the city's merciless arithmetic.
It started as a chuckle, then grew into broken laughter that echoed off the overpass walls. The cosmic absurdity finally hit him, hours ago he'd been ready to throw his worthless life away, and now here was a stranger risking everything because he believed that same life contained something worth stealing.
"You want it?" Ian gasped, fumbling for his wallet. "You actually want it? Brother, you have no idea what you're asking for."
Thirty thousand rupiah. Expired credit cards. A photo of him with college friends from happier days.
"Worthless," he said, giggling. "Completely worthless. Just like everything else about me."
The robber snatched the wallet, his movements nervous. Ian's laughter was wrong.
"Are you crazy?!" the robber shouted, panic flooding his voice. "What's so funny?! You think this is a joke?!"
"Rich?" Ian's laughter bubbled up again. "Brother, if you only knew—"
"Shut up!" The robber lunged forward, shoving Ian hard. "Shut up with that laughing!"
Ian stumbled backward, reflexes dulled by exhaustion. His back hit the concrete railing, and he teetered there, arms windmilling. The robber pressed forward, driven by panic and desperation.
The knife went in almost by accident, a clumsy thrust born of terror rather than malice. Neither had planned for it. The robber's eyes went wide with horror as he felt the blade slide between ribs. Ian's laughter cut off like air escaping a tire.
"Oh," Ian said quietly, looking down at the handle protruding from his chest with mild surprise.
The robber yanked the knife free and stumbled backward. Blood bloomed across Ian's shirt.
"I didn't—I wasn't—" the robber stammered, then turned and ran.
Ian slumped against the railing, hand pressed ineffectively against the wound. His vision grayed at the edges, but his mind remained clear. The mathematics were simple, punctured lung, nicked artery, blood pressure dropping. The numbers didn't lie.
A laugh tried to bubble up but came out as a wet cough. Of course. He'd spent months planning his exit, and in the end death came as randomly as everything else in his life. Not a grand gesture of control, just bad luck and a desperate man's panic.
I couldn't even die on my own terms, he thought as Jakarta's lights blurred and faded. Even in death, I'm just a fucking accident.
Just another small failure in a life full of them, finally adding up to zero.
***
Ian's eyes snapped open like a camera shutter, body jerking upright with a gasp that tore through his throat. His hand flew to his chest, searching for a wound that should have been there, should have been final.
Nothing. Just soft cotton of a t-shirt he hadn't worn in decades.
The air tasted cleaner, tinged with his mother's cooking from downstairs. Sunlight streamed through windows facing the wrong direction, casting familiar shadows across walls covered in forgotten posters.
His childhood room.
Ian's breath came in sharp bursts as he cataloged impossibilities. The narrow bed with faded blue sheets. The desk where he'd done homework. The bookshelf crammed with dreams and expectations.
And there's a 2008 calendar turned to September, marked in his careful teenage handwriting. Exam dates. Study sessions. A future full of promise and terrible naivety.
His hands. Christ, his hands.
Ian held them up, staring at fingers too small, too smooth, unmarked by years of meaningless work. A child's hands, his hands, seventeen years younger.
He stumbled to the mirror, legs shorter than they should be, center of gravity wrong. The face staring back was a ghost from another lifetime, thirteen years old, round-cheeked, eyes bright with optimism that hadn't learned better.
But those eyes held memories that didn't belong to a child. His parents' worried glances when he moved back home. Sari's voice crackling through the phone. The robber's panicked face. The dull shock of steel finding flesh.
The memories sat in his skull like foreign objects, too large for this young brain. Every detail crystal clear, the taste of blood, stuttering lights, the sound his body made hitting concrete. All real, all his, all impossible.
Ian touched the mirror's surface. The boy reflected back looked innocent, hopeful, ready to believe hard work could build a decent life.
The thing looking out through those young eyes was something else entirely.
The shock burned away, consumed by something colder and infinitely more dangerous. Not rage. This was clarity, sharp and surgical.
They had taken everything from him. His dignity. His agency. His right to choose when his story ended. They'd stripped him to nothing, then brought him back. Reset him. Given him a second chance he'd never asked for.
Fine.
If God wanted to play games with his existence, he'd play along. But this time, the rules would be different. This time, he wouldn't be the victim of circumstance, the casualty of other people's choices.
Ian's reflection stared back with eyes that belonged in a much older face. His expression was perfectly flat, a mask of terrifying calm that made innocent features look wrong.
He leaned closer until his breath fogged the glass, voice barely a whisper.
"You took my life. You took my death." The words fell into morning stillness like stones into deep water. "Fine. This time, I'm taking everything else."
The boy in the mirror smiled for the first time since waking, and it was the most unsettling thing he'd ever seen.