Morning sunlight spread across the university campus with careless generosity, as if the world had decided—unanimously—that nothing was wrong.
The lawn was alive with motion. Shoes brushed through grass still damp from early irrigation. Laughter burst and faded in uneven rhythms. Someone argued loudly about an assignment deadline, waving a half-crumpled syllabus like evidence in a courtroom. Under a neem tree near the central path, a couple leaned shoulder to shoulder, sharing earphones, their heads tilted just enough to suggest intimacy without announcing it.
Life, in all its small, unremarkable persistence, moved forward.
MC walked through it like a quiet current cutting through shallow water.
He carried himself without hurry, without hesitation. Not aloof—never that—but contained. His gaze moved constantly, taking in fragments: the way a professor's smile tightened when a student asked an obvious question, the slight limp in a janitor's step that suggested an old injury, the subtle hierarchy in a group of final-year students standing near the library steps.
He noticed patterns. He always had.
It wasn't that he disliked people. He just preferred understanding them before speaking to them. Words, to him, were tools—useful, precise things—and wasting them felt irresponsible.
That habit had earned him a reputation.
His professors liked him because he didn't guess. When he answered, it was because he had already traced the logic backward, tested it from three angles, and found no cracks. His work wasn't flashy, but it was solid in a way that made people trust it.
His classmates liked him because he never showed off. He helped when asked. He explained without condescension. He listened, even when the topic was dull.
And she liked him because he listened even when it mattered.
She appeared behind him without warning and tugged lightly at his sleeve.
"You're thinking again," she said, voice threaded with amusement.
MC slowed, turning his head just enough to see her. Sunlight caught in her hair, turning it briefly copper. She had tied it back loosely, strands already escaping. Her backpack hung from one shoulder, perpetually threatening to slip.
"I'm always thinking," he replied.
She stepped into his path, walking backward now, forcing him to stop. "That's the problem."
He raised an eyebrow. "Since when is thinking a problem?"
"Since it started pulling you out of the moment." She smiled then—soft, familiar, disarming. The kind of smile that made ordinary days feel deliberate, chosen. "You were three steps ahead of yourself just now."
"Only three?"
She rolled her eyes and bumped her shoulder lightly into his chest. "You're impossible."
They fell into step together, heading toward the academic block. Their conversation skimmed the surface of things—safe territory.
Exams coming up faster than expected.A professor who graded like he was offended by effort.Weekend plans that might or might not happen, depending on deadlines.
She pulled out her phone at one point, nearly colliding with a cyclist as she did. "Look," she said, thrusting the screen toward him. "This meme. Tell me this isn't you."
MC glanced down. It was a cartoon figure drowning in thought bubbles.
"That's slander," he said.
She laughed, the sound light and unguarded. For a moment, everything aligned—the warmth, the noise, the shared rhythm of walking side by side.
Normal life.
Completely normal.
And somewhere beneath that normalcy, unnoticed by everyone else, a thin fracture ran through the day—silent, patient, waiting.
The evening sky was unusually clear.
The city often wore a haze like a second skin, but tonight the blue deepened as the sun dipped, revealing stars earlier than usual. MC noticed it as he left campus, adjusting the strap of his bag.
He chose to walk instead of taking the bus. The route cut through a partially developed commercial zone—concrete skeletons of buildings that had stalled halfway to completion, their futures trapped in legal disputes and budget shortfalls.
That was when he saw the crowd.
At first, it was just a knot of people ahead, phones raised like offerings. Then the murmurs reached him—fragmented, urgent.
"What's happening?""Is that real?""Call someone—did anyone call?"
MC slowed.
He followed their line of sight upward.
A boy stood on the edge of the rooftop.
Not pacing.Not crying.Not screaming into the void.
Just standing.
Balanced with unsettling precision, toes just over the lip of unfinished concrete, arms resting loosely at his sides. The wind tugged at his clothes, but he didn't sway.
Stillness wrapped around him like intent.
Sirens echoed faintly in the distance, their sound stretched thin by distance and traffic.
MC didn't know why he moved.
He could have stayed with the crowd. Could have waited like everyone else, eyes lifted, heart pounding, responsibility diffused across a hundred witnesses.
Instead, he stepped forward.
Pushed through the ring of onlookers, murmuring apologies he didn't fully register. Someone grabbed his arm, tried to stop him.
"Hey—don't—"
He slipped free and found the staircase.
It was unfinished, narrow, dust-coated. Each step felt heavier than the last, not from exhaustion but from a pressure he couldn't name. His thoughts tried to race ahead—to imagine outcomes, to calculate probabilities—but kept circling back to the same unresolved question.
Why him?
The rooftop greeted him with wind.
Sharp. Cold. Immediate.
Then silence.
The boy stood exactly as before, back turned, gaze fixed on the city below. From this height, the lights looked fragile, like something easily extinguished.
"You shouldn't be here," the boy said calmly.
MC stopped several steps away.
"You shouldn't either."
A soft laugh escaped the boy. It wasn't bitter. It wasn't hysterical. Just… tired.
"You think you can stop me?"
"I don't even know you."
"That's the point."
The boy turned slightly. Not fully—just enough for MC to see his profile. He looked young. Too young for this kind of stillness. His features were sharp but unremarkable, the kind that would disappear easily in a crowd.
But his eyes—
They were old.
Not in years. In weight.
"Tell me something," the boy said. "If someone had the power to judge this world… would they be right to use it?"
MC frowned. The question hit him wrong—not philosophical, but pointed.
"That's not how justice works."
The boy tasted the word. "Justice?"
A breath of wind pushed against them both.
"You still believe in that?"
MC didn't answer. He didn't know how.
Below, the crowd shifted. Someone shouted something indistinct. The sirens were closer now.
The boy took a step nearer to the edge.
"You see them down there?" he asked quietly. "They only react after the fall."
MC felt something tighten in his chest.
"Why are you doing this?"
The boy turned fully now, meeting his gaze head-on.
"For transfer."
The word landed like a foreign object.
"What?"
The boy's lips curved—not into a smile, but something adjacent. Recognition, perhaps.
"You're calm," he said. "You calculate before you speak. You don't shout like the others."
He took one slow step backward.
"From now on," he continued, voice almost gentle, "it's your responsibility."
"What are you talking about?" MC said, stepping forward. "Stop. Just—stop."
"One condition," the boy said softly. "Authority cannot move until the first owner dies."
Something in the phrasing made MC's skin prickle. Not fear—wrongness.
He reached out instinctively.
"Don't—"
The boy fell.
No scream.
No struggle.
Just air rushing past empty space.
Then impact.
The sound from below was sharp. Final. A noise that refused to be mistaken for anything else.
MC stumbled back as if struck.
The world fractured into fragments after that.
Hands grabbing him.Voices overlapping.Questions fired too fast to process.
"Did he say anything?""Did you push him?""Did you know him?"
"No.""No.""No."
Each answer left his mouth automatically, detached from thought.
By the time he reached his room hours later, the city felt unreal. Distant. Like a recording played too softly.
He sat on the edge of his bed, shoes still on, replaying the rooftop in relentless detail. The boy's eyes. The word transfer. The way the air had seemed to pause just before the fall.
For transfer.
Authority.
Nonsense. His mind rejected it even as it returned again and again.
He reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve his phone.
His fingers brushed against something else.
Smooth.
Cold.
A pen.
Black body. Silver clip.
His breath hitched.
He knew, with absolute certainty, that it wasn't his.
He turned it slowly in his hand. The ink visible through the translucent seam wasn't blue. It wasn't black.
It was darker. Too dark. Like liquid shadow.
He placed it on his desk.
Stared.
Nothing happened.
No glow.No whisper.No pulse of power.
Just a pen.
MC leaned back, exhaling slowly.
Coincidence.
Someone must have dropped it earlier.
The room felt colder.
For a moment—just a flicker—he thought he saw something move in the window's reflection.
Two shapes.
One dark.
One pale.
Gone.
His phone buzzed.
Breaking News: Local Businessman Under Investigation for Fraud Found Dead. Apparent Heart Failure.
MC's eyes drifted back to the pen.
He didn't know the man. Didn't recognize the name.
But something tightened in his chest.
Authority cannot move until the first owner dies.
He picked up the pen again.
It felt heavier than before.
Outside, sirens wailed.
Inside his room, the air shifted—subtly, irrevocably.
He didn't know the rules.
He didn't know the cost.
But somewhere beyond sight, something had begun to watch him.
And for the first time in his life—
the world felt like it was waiting.