Chapter 1. I died.
"If everyone is going to leave me alone, then no one should even care if I jump off, right?" I muttered as I looked down from the roof of my school.
I was standing on the school roof, deciding whether to end my life right then and there; and why, if one might ask? It was because of everything that had happened in my life from the day I was born—even the things I don't know. For as long as I can remember, I was an orphan who didn't know who his parents were, what his birth date was, or what he was even doing on the streets. I didn't know anything about myself, but even then, I hadn't lost my will to live.
I survived by doing work like picking up trash, cleaning people's gardens, and even resorting to minor crimes like pickpocketing. I did everything that helped me survive, and it was as if God was watching me, impressed by my will to live, and sent someone for me—because one day when I was ten years old, an old lady, around the age of 50, picked me up from the road and adopted me. I don't know why she did that; whether it was out of pity, because I reminded her of somebody close, or because she was alone like me. One thing was certain: I was extremely grateful to her, as she filled my life with a happiness I had never known before.
She taught me what it meant to live with someone, what it meant to not be alone, and what life even meant. She provided everything for me—food, clothes, a place to live and call home, sending me to school, teaching me various things about the world, and everything else she could think of until yesterday.
Yesterday, I was kicked out of her house by her kids and grandkids, who had been nowhere to be seen until her death; she died just the day before due to cancer, leaving me all alone in this world once again. This time, the will to live that had sustained me for 16 years faltered, because I was now afraid to go back to the old life I had lived six years ago. I was afraid to be alone again, afraid of the solace that comes from knowing that no one in this world cares about you. I was depressed to the point that I didn't even think about where I would spend the night after being kicked out, and I roamed around the city until the sun came up.
Upon noticing that the sun had risen, I got ready to go to school, thinking that studies (in which I excelled because I didn't want to disappoint her) would provide some distraction, but to no avail. So, during the lunch break, I went to the rooftop to get some fresh air and tried to think of any random fact or useless thing to distract my mind, but—
"I don't want to be alone again, Grandma."
—this single thought kept crossing my mind again and again as I gazed down from the school roof, reminiscing about the handful of good memories I had made in my life.
As I was remembering everything that had happened, I heard a noise from the other side of the railing, so I turned to see what it was. There, I saw a cat barely hanging onto the railing and about to fall off.
"Meow~" she cried.
I looked around the roof, but there was no one there except me, so I decided to help her climb back onto the roof, albeit reluctantly. I went to help her, but she scratched my leg while trying to grab onto something and climbed back up; I, on the other hand, lost my footing and fell off the roof.