Paper Planes

The darkness looms, engulfing my dreary world. I panted as I climbed up the stairs. Each of my steps rang and echoed deep into my ears. I placed a hand on my bruised stomach, hoping to lessen the pain… hope.

Despite my numb legs, I kept climbing. My school uniform often dragged on the dirty wall. I rubbed off the remaining blood stain on the corner of my mouth. Amidst my exhaustion, immersed in this single action of ascending, I arrived at the very top of the building before I realized it.

With little hesitation, I stood at the edge. The faint echoes of the city, cars, machineries, people, reached me. The city was beautiful, and yet ugly. The lights, the towering skyscrapers, the people, all ugly…

I dropped my backpack to the floor before looking down. One step, all would be over. In that dark alley below. I closed my eyes, their corners wet from the tears I’ve been holding in.

So sleepy.

Whispers on the back of my ears haunting me. I could have endured if it was all there was, but no longer. I’ve had enough.

One step was all it would take. But I trembled. I took a deep, shaking breath and opened my eyes.

A strange sensation in the air came upon me. I turned to my left. There was a girl atop another building wearing a school uniform, standing at the edge, like me. She had heavy eye bags, her hair a mess, and ultimately, she looked distressed… like me.

But it shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be there, for there should be no building right beside mine. I looked around, and indeed, there was none, yet she’s there.

As if I was looking through a clear puddle.

Turning to her right, her gaze ended up at me. She spoke, also confused, but I heard no sound.

“What?!” I shouted, but I assumed she didn’t hear me either.

I stepped forward, but stopped when I reached the edge. She, too, moved closer. But even if I were to reach out with my hand, I still wouldn’t be able to touch the mystical window. She spoke again, but no sound. I was curious. Thinking about how to do this, I had an idea.

I hurried to my bag and pulled out a notebook. I wrote two questions on a page.

“Why are you there?”

“How are you doing this?”

I ripped the paper from the notebook, folded it carefully and perfectly into a paper plane. Quickly, I returned to the edge with the notebook, pen, and the paper plane in hand. I aimed to the window and threw the plane.

It flew through the air, and true to my hopes, it went through the window.

The girl caught the paper plane, unfolded it, and read the contents. She frowned and pulled out a pen of her own from her pocket, writing her reply. Afterward, she folded the page into a paper plane and threw it back at me.

The plane flew through the gap between our buildings. I caught it anxiously and read her response.

“Why did you assume it was me? For all I know, you could’ve done this.”

She didn’t answer my first question.

I wrote a reply. “I didn’t do this. How can I? That aside, why are you there? You look terrible. Did something happen?” with that I sent the paper plane back.

She hesitated for a moment before writing her reply. “I could say the same to you. It’s just that a lot happened. The voices call for me here, whispering from the back of my ears.”

Like me.

I tore another clean paper and wrote my response. “I think we’re here for the same purpose. Mind telling me your story?”

I want to know her.

I threw the paper plane.

She replied. “My story is nothing special, once full of joy, and now nothing. Life is just exhausting.”

“I think no story is nothing special. Every one is worth sharing.”

“Tell me yours.”

I paused, reflecting on the life I lived, and it made my heart heavy. “Once full of joy, and now nothing. My parents died in a car crash. And now I’m alone.”

“I’m sorry. Must have been painful. What about friends?”

“My friends cannot help me in my life. They’re there, but they cannot change my present or future. Tell me something about you.”

“I don’t have many friends, everyone’s a bully, they don’t like me ‘cause I’m worth scrap. My few friends, on the other hand, have their own stuff to do. So, all I have in my life are my mom and dad. But, they’re fighting.”

“Fighting? They argue a lot?”

“You see, I was an accident. I shouldn’t have been born. Every night, they quarrel. I often hear them say ‘if it wasn’t for you I could have gotten a better life’ among many others. And now, they’re filing a divorce.”

“You’re losing your family, huh? What’s going to happen to you?”

“Not one of them wants me. I don’t know where I’m going.”

“That’s terrible.”

Before I knew it, she was crying as she wrote her reply. “It’s too much. I have been enduring for years, but this is too much. They’re signing the documents tomorrow. I can’t go on like this anymore. I even failed multiple subjects at school.” She trembled.

“I was suspended earlier because of brawling with some schoolmates. Add to it my failing grades. I don’t know what to do anymore either. Don’t even have the money to support myself, and a job is difficult to find. Keeps getting worse. The voices have been getting louder too.”

“They are tempting voices, guiding us to our deaths, or to our relief.”

“Yeah. I have always wanted to become a doctor. To help people.”

“I wanted to become an engineer with a big salary.”

“Now it’s impossible, huh? There’s no way I can achieve my ambitions now.”

“Yes. It’s impossible. It’s tiring always thinking about it.”

“Yes, it is.”

We faintly smiled at each other, but it was not of happiness, but of resignation. The world gave us both a terrible path, fate full of suffering.

But there was joy in my heart, it’s true. For I found someone just like me. One who relates to my suffering. We’ve been through the same path.

And within the darkness that loomed in my world, there formed a tiny speck of light. She was that light.

A light shining through that unreachable window. But because of that fact, the pain in my chest right now couldn’t be more painful. It’s so painful that it was almost hard to breathe. It saddened me.

I couldn’t even hear her voice.

I wrote on a clean sheet of paper. “I’m glad to have met you in the end.”

She replied. “I’m glad to have met you as well.”

On another clean sheet of paper, I wrote a question. “What’s your name?” I folded the paper plane and threw it into the window.

She wrote and folded back the plane to send it back to me.

Written on the paper was her name.

I smiled.

Along with it, she asked me back. “... What’s yours?”

I wrote mine and sent the plane back to her.

She faintly smiled upon reading and learning my name. “I wish we could have talked more personally.”

“Me too.”

“This is the end.”

“Indeed. Goodbye…”

“Goodbye.”

Both of us were tired. We stepped onto the edge once again. I looked down, then to her. She looked back at me. At least I wasn’t alone this time, and that realization shook off the fear in me.

I looked down again.

With the pages used to make the paper planes left behind, I took a step forward.

She did too.

Where did she come from? What was that window? I do not know. It was something beyond my understanding.

Was she even real?

Was she a mere delusion of mine?

There was no answer.

But I hoped she was real, even how cruel and frustrating this world could be.

And thus, as I fell, I prayed to the God of Death, whose embrace I would fall upon, that I could meet her again.